May 7, 2009

 
 
     I learned in Gail Collins's New York Times column today that Bristol Palin--yes, the governor's daughter, yes, the new mom--is now advocating abstinence as spokesman for the Candie's Foundation, which fights teen pregnancy.
 
     Forgive me, but isn't this a little like asking Bozo the clown to play Hamlet?
 
     I mean, there she is with the baby, saying "I just want to go out there and promote abstinence."  Promote, I guess.  Practice?  Obviously not.  She said of her baby, "You have so much responsibility.  It's just hard work all the time."  Well, maybe, mom.  My kids are grown now, much older and, thank goodness, wiser than you.  And, sure, babies are a lot of work;  I can remember that.  But they are also, or they can be, the objects of great joy and great love.  I don't know whether any of that has reached you yet, but I hope it has. Your mother's had, what, five kids;  she can probably talk to you about the joy, if you ask her.
 
     The evidence, anyway, is that teaching abstinence doesn't work unless you teach sex education along with it.  Gov. Palin has said that her daughter opposes "explicit" sex education which is, of course, the only kind that does any good.  
 
     Bristol Palin teaching abstinence just seems silly.  Will the baby appear at the events?  It's a little like John Edward preaching marital fidelity.  Just not quite there, somehow. 

 
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May 5, 2009

 
     Something weird is going on.  The Washington Post reports today that 50% of the Americans in its most recent poll think the country is going in the right direction, compared with 8% last October, just before we elected our new president.
 
     Then you look at the headlines in the New York Times.  "Where Home Prices Crashed Early, Signs of a Rebound" or "Health Officials Begin to Ease Public Alerts About Swine Flu" or "S and P 500 Erases 2009 Losses as Stocks Jump" or "Chrysler and Fiat have hopes for Happy Relationship."   Good news?  Breaking out all over?  What's going on?
 
     Well, maybe things are getting better, I don't know.  But news is never unmixed;  there's always some good in the bad and vice versa.  And good news, of course, is bad for pundits, columnists, commentators, the grumps who need something to worry about on the air or in print two or three times a week.  What are we going to do now?
 
     Relax, that's what.  To paraphrase Bogart to Bergman in "Casablanca,"  we'll always have Pakistan.  No chirpy headlines coming out of that place.  Taliban seizing this province, and that one - getting closer to the capital.  And if they knock over the government, it isn't one imperfect set of rogues replacing another.  So what?  If the Taliban win, they'll control Pakistan's nuclear bombs.  And if that doesn't worry you, you're just not trying.
 
     So the next seventeen columns may be about Pakistan.   It's easier, I  guess, to write about fear than cheer. 

 
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May 1, 2009

     Arlen Specter didn't suddenly become a Democrat because the Republican Party's philosophy was making him uncomfortable.  Of course not.  Arlen Specter switched parties because he thought that was his best chance of keeping his Senate seat.
   
     He was probably right.  In the GOP primary, he would have faced a more conservative Republican, Pat Toomey, who gave him a hard fight in 2004 and who would beat him now, according to public opinion polls. Specter figured he'd have a better shot in the general election, where Democrats and independents could vote for him.  He's probably right.
 
     But if the switch was purely out of self-interest, it still is a warning for the Republicans.  They like to insist there's really a conservative majority in the country.  But the evidence is that the middle is where most Americans are.  The number identifying themselves as Republicans has gone down in recent years.  The number of Democrats hasn't gone up all that much, but the GOP is losing voters.
 
    My own feeling is that's because the party's most militant conservatives are pushing, with some success, for the party to take hardline views on their issues--abortion, cuts in spending, and so on.  That's driving voters away.  The party needs to be more open, encourage debate and compromise on some of these issues.  I don't know if they'll do that, but if they don't, Specter will look like something of a prophet.

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April 29, 2009

 
     Well, it's a hundred days and the President will celebrate or ask for sympathy by holding a press conference.  It's an old tradition.
 
     Woodrow Wilson held the first formal one (I read this;  even I don't go back that far) in 1913.  But you couldn't quote him;  it was off the record.  Herbert Hoover took written questions submitted in advance and answered only the ones he wanted to.  Sometimes reporters just got remarks, no answers at all.
 
     Franklin Roosevelt held the most press conferences--more than a thousand--but he was president longer than anybody else too.  It was very different from today, of course, a handful of reporters with notebooks in the Oval Office.  And again, you couldn't quote him;  you had to write, "The President thinks..." or "is known to believe..." or something like that.
 
     You could quote Dwight Eisenhower.  He had one almost every week, but there was a catch.  Radios could tape the press conference, cameras could film it, but then you had to wait for the White House to clear the tape and film to make sure the president hadn't put his foot in his mouth, said something he didn't mean to say.  
 
     John Kennedy was the first POTUS to hold live press conferences, a sign of his confidence on television.  He didn't have nearly as many as Ike, but they were live and added excitement to the show. Lyndon Johnson had press conferences in more different places than most presidents, including his Texas ranch.
 
      And now Obama.  Is the press getting bored?  One network, Fox, says it will carry regular programming, not the Prez.  But press conferences remain a good way of telling the country what you think about things.  Can you have one if Helen Thomas doesn't ask the first question?  I'm not sure.

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April 28, 2009

 
     Big day tomorrow.  It's President Obama's 100th day in office, of course, but it's also the day the Supreme Court hears arguments on a section of the 1966 Voting Rights Act which helped elect him.
 
     The section being challenged is the one that requires "preclearance," meaning that states and localities which have discriminated must get federal permission to change their voting procedures.  But the question in a way is, because we've elected a black president, do we still need such a law?
 
     Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, the New York Times says, thinks times have changed.  In extending the Act in 2006, he says, "Congress wrongly equated Alabama's modern government and its people with their Jim Crow ancestors."  And he notes that voter registration rates for blacks and whites are almost identical.
 
     On the other side, Thomas Shaw, a law professor and former NAACP official says, "Race still plays powerfully in electoral politics in this country.  If it weren't for the Voting Rights Act, there would be no president Obama."
 
     The Court has upheld the Act in the past.  And, surprise surprise, Justice Anthony Kennedy is widely expected to be the key voter.  The Times quotes him as having written recently,  "Racial discrimination and racially polarized voting are not ancient history.  Much remains to be done."
 
     Sounds good to me.  And if you don't want to discriminate, why object to a law that says you can't? 

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April 25, 2009

    
 
     I am indebted to Colbert King for his column in today's Washington Post proving once again that supposedly grownup politicians often aren't.
 
     It's titled "In D.C., a Spat Among Spongers"  but I think I'd have called it, "Tacky Toys for Greedy Girls and Boys."  It's all about free tickets to Washington Nationals'  baseball games. These are, of course, pearls of great price.  The team lost 102 games last year and has the worst record in the majors so far in this young season.
 
     Anyway, during the negotiations with the city the team agreed to give the City Council 19 tickets to suite 61 in the ballpark, wherever thus.  The mayor, Adrian Fenty, also got tickets to a separate suite.  But the clever mayor apparently got hold of the tickets the Council thinks are its, and won't give them up.  Standoff! Confrontation!
 
    In the first place, of course, the team shouldn't have to give any politicians, Council members or mayor, free tickets.  It's a bribe.  If it were money, we'd all recognize that.  I have tickets to a few games this year and they cost me twenty bucks apiece.  The seats the mayor has are much more expensive, but he ought to have to pay for them.  Public officials shouldn't be on the take.  It's just that simple.  
 
     If the team wants to give away tickets, this far from perfect city has plenty of poor kids who'd like to go. Bribing well-paid politicians is different and wrong.  So thank you, Mr. King.  Your column made me angry, but in a good cause.  

 
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April 23, 2009

     The United States tortured suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush administration.  This was wrong and shameful.  As an American it makes me ashamed for my country.  The practice has stopped now because President Obama has ordered it stopped.  That's good, of course.
 
     What we are hearing now is a chorus of demands for an investigation, to go back to those dark days in the torture cells and find out just who did what.  I hope we don't.   We don't need a lot of details;  we don't need a lot of names.  If Sgt. Smith was torturing some suspect, it was because  Lt. Jones told him to. And Jones was carrying out an order from Capt. Miller, who was carrying out an order from Col. Williams, and so on up the chain.  People, I'm sure, mostly did what their superiors told them to do.  If we want to punish someone, we should punish the man at the top of the chain. "The buck stops here," Harry Truman once said of the presidency.  And the blame for torture stops with the man who must have approved it, George W. Bush.
 
      Did torture work?  Probably not.  Different people say different things, but I've read that one suspect was waterboarded more than a hundred times.  Surely it didn't work with him, or they wouldn't have had to keep trying it.  Today's New York Times has an op ed piece by former FBI man Ali Soufan, who says that Abu Zubaydeh gave him and other questioners  "important actionable intelligence" when questioned by "traditional interrogation methods."   Soufan adds that throughout his intelligence career, these traditional methods worked.
 
     And torture?  If you're in pain you'll say something, no doubt.  I remember John McCain, who as a POW during the Vietnam war was tortured, saying that when his questioners demanded the names of the other pilots in his squadron, he gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line.  Who in Hanoi would have known the difference?
 
     Anyway, we did it and it's past.  Let's not go back and parcel out blame and accusations.  Let's look ahead and make sure we do better. 
 
 

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April 20, 2009

      Americans keep killing one another with guns.  That's not new, of course.  One recent survey I saw said we have 14.4 gun deaths a year per 100,000 people--the highest if any industrial country.  Japan had the lowest rate, .5.  It's been in the news a lot lately--stories today about a father who killed his wife, his three kids and then himself.

 

     President Obama, in Mexico, talked about American guns there and here.  He expressed hope that things would get better,  but he added, "None of us is under the illusion...that would be easy."  Well, no.  The problem is the Second Amendment to the Constitution which says:  "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."  Never mind militias, which we don't really have any more.  The Army or the National Guard will give you a gun if you join up.  But the second part of the amendment is pretty straightforward:  "The right...shall not be infringed." 

 

     Gun dealers run background checks on potential customers.  At gun shows, that isn't even done.  Your basic nut case can buy a gun there.  And there's no great chance of that changing any time soon.

 

     E J Dionne points out in his Washington Post column that President Obama wasn't elected by gun owners.  He cites an exit poll showing Obama carried 37% of the voters in gun-owning households, 65% in households that didn't own guns.  But does that mean the president is going to push hard for more stringent regulations?  Not that I've noticed.

 

     Congress is notoriously scared of the gun lobby.  Mr. Obama isn't picking a fight with it either. 

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