April 19, 2009

    We're coming up on Barack Obama's first one hundred days as president. There will, of course, be massed battalions of columns on how he's doing.  You probably don't need to read them.
 
     I don't think a hundred days is long enough to be a good measurement.  Sure, Franklin Roosevelt got the bank holiday through Congress quickly and, sure, they declared war on Japan and Germany the day after Pearl Harbor.  But that was then.  The country was simpler;  the emergencies were more urgent than today's recession, painful though it's been.
 
     And Congress has changed for the worse.  You have to go back to the 1960s--civil rights, the Vietnam War--to find Congress debating big issues--Democrats and Republicans on both sides.  More recently Congress seems to have specialized in petty partisan politics with not much substance involved.
 
     So a president who wants to change the country in big ways, as this president surely does, faces two challenges.  First, he has to see what the problems are and know what he would do to make things better. Mr. Obama, I think, gets good marks there.  He clearly sees areas, like health care, that need change and he has some ideas about what those changes should be.
 
     Second, he has to get the Congress to change its ways, concentrate on the issues and get stuff done. It's too early to know how successful he'll be at that.  Two years from now--the 2010 election season--might be a good time to think about that.
 
     That way, if we decide it's Congress's fault, those of you who have Congressmen (not me;  I live in Washington, D.C.) can vote them out.    

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

April 14, 2009

 
     President Obama has lifted some of this country's sanctions against Cuba.  Americans with family in Cuba will now be able to visit there as often as they like and send as much money as they like.   American telecommunications companies can try to bring their technologies to the island.  Personally, I wish he'd gone further and lifted all the restrictions first imposed back when Dwight Eisenhower was president and Fidel Castro's revolution was young.
 

     I'm prejudiced, I admit.  I like the place, the people.  The first time I went doesn't count.  Mikhail Gorbachev, I think it was, was going to visit so a lot of American reporters went.  But Gorbachev canceled; there'd been an earthquake back home.  We each filed one story which began "Had he come he would have seen...." and then went home.   The second time was when Pope John Paul II visited in 1998, and that was better.
 
         I got to do several stories, got to get out of Havana and see some villages, and I learned some things. The first was that the Cubans had figured out their government and how to work around it.  Lobsters, we'd been told, were strictly a government crop--no private selling.  But several of us went to supper at one the family restaurants--Cubans run them in their homes and are limited to a dozen or so guests.  The entree was lobster, of course, and yummy.
 
     Another time we were in a rural market and they were auctioning some farm animal--pig, cow, whatever.  The farmers politely asked us not to shoot that;  it was illegal.  We politely agreed.  They had learned, obviously, to get around the rules.  They didn't hate us either;  they seemed to like Americans.  I have no idea why.
 
     That visit was cut short too.  I remember coming back from a shoot and being told, "Get on the next plane back to DC!! There's this White House intern...."  Hi, Monica.  Thanks a bunch.
 

     Still, I came away liking the Cuban people after a week in their country.  It's hard to see why having normal relations with them,  exchanging ambassadors and tourists and all that, would hurt either one of us.  The sanctions go back almost half a century to the height of the Cold War, fear of Communism and all that.  It was a long time ago, and the Communist Empire no longer exists.
 
    

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

April 12, 2009

     Well, the First Family has done one thing right--they've gotten the dog.  Cute little fella.  With small kids you probably don't want a Great Dane, although we had one years ago and she was so gentle the kids used to climb on her.  Good name for the new guy too--Bo.  I think it was James Thurber who wrote that dogs should have simple, one-syllable names.  Bo works.
 
     The Prez has some other problems, of course.  He came into office hoping for bipartisanship and that hasn't happened.  The Washington Post's wise David Broder points out that not a single Republican in Congress voted for the President's budget.  The gap between Obama's approval rating among Democrats--88% and Republicans--27% is 61 points, higher than it was for George W. Bush or Bill Clinton at this point in their first terms.
 
     Still, Broder thinks that swing voters--a key element in many states--want action on things like energy and health care and will probably support the President as he pushes in these areas.  If that happens some Congressional Republicans will probably get the message too.  They do, after all, want to get reelected.
 
     Then there are the wars.  President Obama has now visited Iraq.  When Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe during World War II, was running in 1952, he promised, "I will go to Korea" where the U.S. was fighting the China-backed North.  When he came back, he said, "Every gun that is fired signifies a theft from those who are not fed," and he told his press secretary, James Hagerty, "The war is over. I hope my son is going to come home soon."  The war was over;  the son did.  So, there's an example, if Mr.Obama chooses to follow it.
 
    None of this will be easy.  But he's done one very important thing.  President Harry Truman said one, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."  Obama has.  

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

April 9, 2009

     Lots of worrying aloud these days about why Iran mustn't become a nuclear power, let alone a power with a nuclear bomb.  Well, why shouldn't it?
 
     The United States, of course, is the only country that's ever used nukes in a war.  It was World War Two, a long time ago, and then-president Harry Truman had good reasons for using it against Japan:  he'd been told that a regular invasion--landing craft, troops on the beaches--might cost a million American casualties.  The bomb seemed better than that, and in fact, it ended the war.
 
     The nuclear club has grown since then.  Russia, China, France, Britain, India, Pakistan--a mostly Muslim country, it's worth noting--have all joined and I've probably left someone out. Dangerous?  Of course.  A Roman Catholic cardinal named Joseph Bernardin noted a generation ago that man, for the first time, had the power to destroy God's created order.  He was quite right. But we've managed not to do it.
 
     I'm not quite sure how;  our record of restraint and prudence in other areas leaves much to be desired.  But we haven't blown up the planet.  It's entirely possible the Iranians won't either.
 
     In any case, it's very hard to limit technology.  If Iran wants the bomb enough, it can hire or bribe it way into getting it.  Our best hope is probably to talk to them, try to understand them and help them understand it so that, if and when they do get the bomb, they won't be an more inclined than the rest of us have been to use it. 

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

April 4, 2009 (Out of order due to Technical Glitch)

(Apologies, this was sent to the blog page on the 4th but doesn't appear to have posted.)

Dr. Martin Luther King was killed forty-one years ago today. By the time he died, he had changed America. He used to preach that he might not live to reach the Promised Land, but he had seen it. And of course he had.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of '65 changed America more than any legislation I can think of. I am old enough to remember the bus station with two waiting rooms, the restaurants with signs that said "whites only." I can remember once, a year or two after those laws had passed, going to a restaurant in the South with a group of reporters which included a black or two. The owner wouldn't admit us; we then explained which news organizations we worked for and asked if he really wanted to be on the front page and on netwotk TV. He let us in.

So Dr. King changed America, which only a few of us manage to do, and lived to see those changed taking hold. Racism in America has lessened since his death--not vanished, but diminished.

You have to wonder, though, what he would make of America today--a black American president and his black wife touring Europe to thunderous applause. The French, who can be a picky bunch--loved her style, her clothes, and indeed she and France's First Lady looked just terrific in the pictures I've see. Talk about style!

And President Obama is smart and suave and well-spoken--and that shows too. It's been quite a week for Europe, quite a week for America. If Dr. King's spirit is somewhere that lets him see what's going on, I'll bet he's smiling.

We're not there yet, but we've traveled far.

April 6, 2009

It isn't our national pastime anymore, of course. Football might be, or maybe NASCAR. But there's something about Opening Day all the same, "such stuff as dreams are made on," the notion that your team, no matter how awful it was last, might just do it, might just win the World Series. People in a dozen different cities can believe that.

It's partly that the season is so long--162 games. Sure, you can say, we've been terrible so far, but it's only June, plenty of time to come from behind. Sometimes they do.

And sometimes it's fun to be wrong. Dave Sheinin, who writes about baseball for the Washington Post, notes that last year, "I had the Mariners winning the AL West (they finished last) and the Tigers winning not only the AL Central (they finished last) but the World Series as well." Eight teams made the playoffs, Sheinin notes, and he picked only two. Well, that's about how well I did, but it's part of the charm of it.

This year? The Yankees acquired a couple of superstars, a pitcher and a hitter, but they're always doing that and they haven't won lately, not the way they did in the glory days of DiMaggio and Mantle, anyway. I think I'd pick the Red Sox--maybe to go all the way and win the Series. But I don't know for sure, of course, and that's why I like it so much.

I have, I admit, a special problem. I grew up in and around Chicago; I'm a Cubs fan. Talk about losers! The Cubs last won the Series more than a century ago, in 1908. They won their division last year but were promptly blown out of the playoffs, losing three straight. Could they do that again? Sure. Could they lose for a second century? Of course.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Have a great season.

April 2, 2009

The West Michigan Whitecaps are a class A minor league baseball team. They play their home games in Comstock Park, in a suburb of Grand Rapids. But I'm writing about them because they are clearly a team which thinks big. Really, really big.

How else to explain the new addition to the ballpark menu--a 4800, yes that's 4800, calorie burger. The monster costs twenty bucks and weighs four, count 'em four, pounds. It consists of five beef patties, five slices of cheese, nearly a cup of chili and liberal lashings of salsa and corn chips. It comes on an 8-inch bun.

Needless to say, the forces of good have attacked the monster. A group called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, based of course in Washington, has asked the team to label the burger a "dietary disaster," which increases an eater's risk of cancer and heart disease.

A team spokesman says it's a gimmick and is being promoted as unhealthy.

But I don't know, there's something very American about it. We love big--biggest car, biggest bucks, biggest...whatever. I have no idea what it would be like to try to eat one. Could you hold it in one hand, for instance? If you drop it, could it crack your knee?

Lots of misgivings. Lots of questions. But there's a small, guilty part of me that would kind of like to try one. Rare, please.

April 1, 2009

John McCain is a happy warrior when he has a good cause. He has one these days. He thinks the President should pardon Jack Johnson, who was America's first black heavyweight boxing champion a very long time ago.

Johnson won the championship in 1908 when the referee stopped his fight with the Canadian champion, Tommy Burns. This lead, in those more racist times, to a search for a "Great White Hope" to beat Johnson. A former titleholder, Jim Jeffries, came out of retirement, but Johnson beat him in a fight called "The Battle of the Century." Riots followed.

Johnson finally lost the title in 1915, but he'd held it for seven years. In 1913, he was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which outlawed transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes. The woman involved was white. Johnson fled the country, then came back and served ten months in prison. His conviction, then and now, was widely regarded as motivated more by race than by evidence.

"I had admired Jack Johnson's prowess in the ring," McCain said, "And the more I found out about him, the more I thought a grave injustice was done." Representative Peter King and filmmaker Ken Burns are also calling for a pardon.

Presidential pardons of dead people are rare, but there is much to suggest that the case against Johnson was rigged. Justice late is better than justice never. Relatives of the old champ are still alive, and I'm sure they'd agree with that.