Fyi

     Well, it's started, of course.  What's started?  The 2012 presidential campaign, silly.  You mean you hadn't noticed?
 
     Only Republicans, of course.  The Dems assume their guy will run again.  But the GOP?  Off and away!
 
     Arkansas' Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses this year, will visit Iowa again November 20th--stops in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, part of a tour promoting his new book. And talk little politics?  You betcha, as someone would say.  He'll have a bus with his picture on it.
 
     Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a young hopeful, will visit the state November 22nd, keynoting the dinner of a Christian conservative group.  South Dakota Senator John Thune:  "I'm just trying to help the team," may be staying closer to home;  he's up in 2010.  But he knocked off Tom Daschle to win his Senate seat, and he's hot.
 
     The Republican governors are holding their annual conference this week in Miami, and hopefuls will blossom like roses.  Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty will be there making a speech.  Florida's own Governor Charlie Crist will be there, also making a speech.  He's on all the 2012 lists.  Sarah Palin is likely to be there, and likely to talk.  I mean, you can't ask them not to talk politics;  it's what they do.  It would be like asking a preacher not to pray.
 
     Mitt Romney is only a former governor, so he won't be there, but the AP quotes a friend as saying he's keeping his options open.  And columnist Bob Novak has just written a piece talking up former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who, face it, would probably not say no.
 
     So it's started again.  Already.  No, that's wrong.  It just never stopped.  It never does.
   

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November 7, 2008

     Well, he's started staffing his administration.  Done pretty well so far--Rahm Emmanuel is smart and Washington-wise, for instance.  What will be interesting, though, is now bi- or non-partisan he is.  One suggestion several columnists have made is to keep Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense.  The Pentagon is a mysterious place (trust me, I covered it for a few months years ago) but the people who cover it now seem to like and respect him.
 
     I hope he brings back Colin Powell in some top job.  Powell wasn't a great success as Secretary of State, but that's because others in the Bush administration fed him phony data about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and he used that bad information to give a UN speech defending the U.S. invasion.  Iraq didn't have such weapons, of course. and the invasion remains, in my book anyway, George W. Bush's principal blunder as president.  Let's hope the new administration doesn't play those games.
 
     The tone Obama sets may matter more than which person gets which job.  What really needs to change in Washington Is the atmosphere of petty, pissy partisanship--I'll block you on this issue because you blocked me on that one.  It's the main reason why Americans tell pollsters that have a very low opinion of Congress.  Obama needs to get Congress, and his own people, thinking country first,  trying to do what's best for America, not just make partisan points on tomorrow's front page.
 
     He knows he needs to do this;  he talked about it during the campaign.  Let's all hope he has the skill, and judgment and luck to bring it off.  
    

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November 6, 2008

 

 

 

 

     "It's morning in America."  That was a Ronald Reagan campaign slogan but it feels truer now than it did then.  It is morning.  The sun is up.  I am proud of my country again, a feeling I've often missed these past few years.

 

    There have been lots of proud moments over the years--we were on the right side in World War Two;  we were for the United Nations;  we passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and we heard Lyndon Johnson, a Southern president, quote the civil rights anthem, "We shall overcome."  Good moments.

 

     But lately?  We've actually had an administration announcing which kinds of torture it endorsed.  Torture?  In America?  Yes indeed.  We've had tax policies designed to help the rich; the poor, our leaders figured, could help themselves.  We've neglected housing, neglected education and left me, quite often, with the unfamiliar feeling of being ashamed of my country.

 

     That's over, for now at least.  We don't know how well Barack Obama will do as president, but we do know, I think, that he will try to make us better again, to make us see a new sunrise with a bright future ahead.  Ronald Reagan, aside from proclaiming morning, used to speak of America as a "shining city on a hill."

 

     For the first time in several years, I think I can see the city again.  It's a ways off, but if we start moving, and I think we can now, we might get there one day after all.    Another proud moment.

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November 5, 2008

 

 

     The poet Langston Hughes wrote of America as the place "that never was and yet must be/ the land where every man is free."  We aren't there, of course;  we are not all equal nor all free and some of us usually go to bed hungry.  But we are a lot closer to Hughes's vision today than we were yesterday because we have elected a black man to be our president.

 

     "Change has come," Barack Obama said, and of course he's right.  I'm 78, old enough to remember Martin Luther King saying that he could see the Promised Land but wouldn't get there.  Obama's there.  If you'd asked me, twenty or thirty years ago if I would live to see this day, I think I'd have said no.  I am delighted to have been wrong.

 

     President-elect Obama (have to get used to typing that) may of course wish he hadn't sought the job.  He inherits two wars, an economy in serious trouble, a declining manufacturing base which means Americans will need better education to compete in the new technological environment--well, I could go on but you get the idea.  Still, one big barrier has come down. Mothers of any color can tell their two year-olds, hey, you can grow up to be president.  In fact, after Hillary Clinton's formidable campaign, they can say it to girls as well as boys.

 

     One of the songs the civil rights marchers used to sing goes, "Gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-walkin', till we get to Freedom Land."  We're not there yet, but yesterday we covered a lot of ground.   

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November 4, 2008

    No column this election day.
   Just two heartfelt, important words:  please vote. 

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November 3, 2008

 

     Americans elect a president tomorrow, of course, but they also (well, not those of us who live in Washington, D.C., but the rest of you) elect a Senate, and there are some interesting races. One of the most interesting is in Minnesota where a real comedian (we've had lots of unintentional ones in Congress, of course), a professional, Democrat Al Franken is running against incumbent Republican Norm Coleman.  It's supposed to be close.

 

     Then there's New Hampshire, where former governor Jeanne Shaheen is running against Republican incumbent John Sununu, who beat her six years ago.  She's led most polls, but again it's close.

 

    You may remember Morris Udall, a Democratic Congressman from Arizona for thirty years or so.  His Democratic family is all over the west--Representative Mark Udall is favored in Colorado, where Republican Wayne Allard is retiring.  Representative Tom Udall is thought to be leading Steve Pierce in New Mexico, where Republican Pete Domenici is retiring.

 

     Incumbents are usually favored.  In Arkansas the Republicans never found a candidate.  Mark Pryor only has to beat the Green Party nominee.  In Georgia, Republican Saxby Chambliss is running against former Congressman Jim Martin, who would need a heavy black turnout to have a chance.  Louisiana's Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu is thought to lead Republican John Kennedy (how does a Republican with that name campaign?) but it's close--her races always are.

 

     In South Dakota, Democratic incumbent Tom Johnson, who's recovering from a brain aneurysm, is favored.

 

     Alaska's different:  longtime Republican incumbent Ted Stevens, convicted on seven counts of failing to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts, is running against the mayor of Anchorage, Jim Begich.  No one seems quite sure how that one will turn out.

 

     Most of the forecasts have the Democrats gaining some seats. They hope to get sixty--enough votes to cut off Republican filibusters.  But they'll have to win just about all the close ones to do that.

 

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November 2, 2008

     Nicholas Kristoff points out in the New York Times today that in an "unscientific" poll of 109 professional historians 61 rated George W. Bush as the worst president we've ever had.  Well, yes--I'd certainly agree. 
 
     What it is, I think, is that he's lessened us in the world.  I am old enough to remember when the U.S. was truly a world power.  I recall an incident in the 1950s sometime--Dwight Eisenhower was president--when Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser announced he was going to nationalize the Suez Canal.  Britain, France and Israel sent troops to prevent this.  Eisenhower, without revving up a single helicopter, sent them a message--hey, guys, bad idea.  Why don't you bring your troops home?  All three countries did.  That, as we used to say in Chicago, was clout.
 
     It's hard to imagine an American president with that kind of influence today.  But we need to hope that the next one--I think it will be Obama, but whoever--can get some of that authority back.
 
     For one thing, we have to care about others' opinions of us;  we have to talk to other countries;  we have to look for interests we have in common.  We shouldn't be in Iraq;   we shouldn't be flailing about in a worsening war in Afghanistan with no clear idea of what to do next.  We should be talking to Iran because, as Winston Churchill famously said, "Jaw jaw is better than war war."
 
     But specific countries aside, we need to work at being the good guys again.  We shouldn't, for example, be debating what kinds of torture might be legal.  The United States should be against torture--any kind, any time, anywhere.
 
     Lots of people--not everyone, not all countries, but lots--used to see us as the good guys--relatively disinterested in territorial gain, anxious to help peace and stability where we could.  The next president should try to get some of that back.  It won't, I fear, be quick or easy. 
 
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      Nobody ever said campaign ads were supposed to be fair or accurate or anything like that, of course.  If you're old enough, you can remember one in the 1964 campaign of a little girl whose play is interrupted by an atomic bomb exploding.  The point was that Barry Goldwater might do that (no proof offered of course) but not good old Lyndon Johnson.  It only ran once, but it had a large impact.

 

     Then there was Willie Horton, the criminal paroled on Michael Dukakis' watch as governor of Massachusetts.  That ran, it seems to me, about a million times and had an affect though, to be fair, he was paroled under a program Dukakis supported.

 

      And we can all think of more, of course.  But North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole may have retired the trophy for the scuzziest, most shameless ever in an ad she's running this fall against her Democratic opponent, state senator Kay Hagan.  It's about God.

 

     The ad shows members of an atheist group--the Godless Americans Political Action Committee, talking about some of their goals--removing 'In God we trust' from U.S. currency, the words 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance, and so on.  The ad questions why Hagan went to a fundraiser at the home of a man who advises the group.

  

     'Godless Americans and Kay Hagan,' the ad says. 'She hid from cameras. Took Godless money.  What did Hagan promise in return?'  Then the ad shows a picture of Hagan while a woman's voice says, 'There is no God!'  It's not Hagan's voice, of course, but the folks who made the ad don't tell you that.  Why would they?  Truth is not their goal.

 

     In fact, Hagan is a Presbyterian church elder and sometime Sunday school teacher. Her campaign has sued, charging Dole with defamation and libel.

 

     We don't know how the suit will turn out, of course, and the election is supposed to be close. You know, I'm sure, who I'm rooting for.  I wish Mrs. Dole had consulted her husband, who ran candid and basically clean campaigns for the Senate and the White House.  I suspect Bob Dole is a little embarrassed at what his wife is up to these days.

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