January 2, 2012

Today is a kind of toy holiday for most Americans.  The real New Year's Day was, of course, yesterday.  The government and a lot of businesses are closed today so employees do get that extra day off.  For a smaller group of us – political junkies – the New Year really starts tomorrow.  That's when Iowans go to those caucuses and declare:  "I'm for Jones;"  "I'm for Smith;"  or "I'm for none of the above."  Actually, you can't do "none of the above" at a caucus but it might be fun if you could.  What if "none" won?

 

Anyway, it's starting – the whole wonderful, foolish panorama:  Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, etc.

 

Predictions are common at these things.  I will offer only one:  the man usually labeled the frontrunner, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, won't get it.  Runs in the family, I guess.  His father, George, was once governor of Michigan.  He didn't get it either.

 

Who will?  I have absolutely no idea.  The woman?  I'd say no.  but she was born in the state, represents neighboring Minnesota in the Congress and you just never know with these things what will happen.

I guess that's their charm.

 

I plan to stare at the television more than usual, read the newspapers with more than usual interest – in general, behave like the junkie I am and get my fix.

 

Allow me one more prediction:  I will have something to say about it.  See you Wednesday.

December 31, 2011

Well, here we are again – the end of an old year, the beginning of a new.  As it has in the past, the column takes note today of some people we lost during the old year and whom we'll miss in the new.

Geraldine Ferraro died, a woman of charm and intelligence who proved you don't have to be mean to be in politics.

My personal list of those I'll miss starts with Andy Rooney, the longtime commentator for CBS' 60 Minutes.  "I want to do this forever," Andy used to say.  If there are gods and if they are kind, there is a corner somewhere in the afterlife where with a typewriter, a microphone and maybe a baggy tweed jacket we shared one year, he's doing just that.

On the Republican side Betty Ford, a remarkable woman who, among her many accomplishments, proved exactly the same thing.

Journalism lost David Broder, a reporter who covered politics.  I had the same beat for a number of years and would have to say he was the best I ever saw.  He probably knew more county chairmen by their first names than any reporter in America.  Good night, David.

Those of us who covered politics will miss Sargent Shriver, a principled man whose greatest public legacy would be his stewardship of the Peace Corps.

Elizabeth Taylor died.  She led such a turbulent life – multiple marriages, illnesses, tragedies, lots of movies which made lots of money.  It's hard to know what to say about her because she transcended so many of our ideas about what is possible for one person, however gifted, to achieve.  It's a life I really cannot imagine.  Nor could I imagine that the legend of her violet eyes was true until I saw them.

There are three who died this year I will not miss-- North Korea's Kim Jong Il,  Libya's Muammar Qaddafi and, of course, Osama bin Laden.  All three were dictators in one way or another in stark contrast to another international loss:  Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic, who emphatically was not.  He believed in and fought for democracy.  The world is a better place for the deaths of three;  better, for the life of one.

 

December 23, 2011

 

We have reached, gentle reader, that curious time of year call The Holidays.  Curious because nothing much ever seems to happen.  We spend a lot of time and effort on presents for each other.  A surprising number of them turn right around and head back to the shop they came from.

 

People don't do much either.  President Obama is still the president, of course, but you haven't seen his name in the papers much recently.  He's being what the scholars call "an inactive or passive president." 

 

The Congress?  That's a harder case.  Sure, they haven't done much lately but, then, when did they?

You never run out of adjectives for Congress:  passive or inactive, sure, but fulltime not just a seasonal lull like the one Obama is in.

 

You have to wonder what would happen if some country attacked us right now.  Would Congress notice?  And if it did, would it actually abandon its 535 golf courses and get together to do something for the country?  The feeling here is probably not.

 

The harder question then is how did we get this way as a country?  Answer:  damned if I know.

 

There's an old saying which I always thought was preposterous:  God is kind to drunks, fools and the United States of America.  Who knows?  Maybe it's true.  That would be my holiday wish.

December 20, 2011

I begin with a really astonishing fact:  the serious - real folks' actual voting - presidential season begins two weeks from today.  That's when the good people in Iowa – Republicans only this time, of course – hold their famous caucuses.  Sit in your neighbor's living room and try to determine who the next president should be.

 

Democrats have no voice in this, of course.  They have a president who presumably is seeking a second term.  The betting here is that he gets it.  But that's beside the point.

 

Iowa is a good state in which to start things.  Iowans are well educated voters who by and large like the process and have elected over recent years intelligent Republicans like Charles Grassley and Democrats like Harold Hughes.

 

This time Republicans can choose from amongst a varied if disappointing field:  Mitt Romney (Gertrude Stein's old line keeps running through my mind, "There is no there there");  Rick Perry, the longest serving governor in Texas history, may be wondering just where his "there" went;  Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker.  He seems like a long shot this time around.  There may be just too much "there."  He may be the darling of the moment of the party's right, but that doesn't guarantee a thing.

 

Anyway, it will be a lot of fun.  First the Iowa caucuses then the New Hampshire primary, South Carolina, Florida, etc – until, by golly, there's a nominee.

 

The view from is that he – or she – Michelle Bachmann, remember – will face an uphill fight.  But so what?  It's all good, clean American fun.  Let the games begin!

December 3, 2011

 

The first computer memory of the day was of a group of letters – 12 maybe 13 – clearly lost and looking for a home.  I wondered if it were easier or harder in Charles Dickens' day. David Copperfield begins, you may remember, with a chapter title that says simply "I Am Born."  At least you knew what the rest was going to be about.

 

I miss those simpler days sometimes.  Chapters that explain simply how so-and-so got hit by a fast ball or some other so-and-so plonked by a computer program.

 

I love computers, of course.  I own one and stare at it some every day.

 

But I'm afraid we've gotten away from the good old fashioned letter that explained to a friend or a loved one how the world was treating you and how you were getting on.

 

I wouldn't give up my PC (well, maybe for a MAC) but I do sometimes envy Mr. Dickens all by himself in a bare room with only a desk, a chair, a pot of ink, a half dozen quill pens and some paper.

 

Simpler times, those.  But maybe more wondrous.  "I am born."  Go, Charlie, tell on.  LOL ': )

November 24, 2011

The country has been kind of half a sleep these past few months-- half at war, half at peace.  Politically the slumber is about to end.

 

The serious swing from your chandelier political scene gets underway just a couple of months from now with the always talked about, always written about Iowa presidential caucuses:   the boom in the living room heard around the world.  I guess the front runner for the Republicans is still Mitt Romney--ink stained, tear blotted, come on "get the dog off the roof of the car" please, Mitt-- but gee, who knows?  Iowa could go to anybody--Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Gingrich…you know the list.  What a tired bunch!

 

I keep waiting for a knight to break loose from the lack luster field.  Barry Goldwater did just that in 1964 ("in your heart, you know he's right").  It didn't matter of course.  Right as rain or wrong as thunder, he got clobbered.  Can Romney win the White House, I very much doubt it. Can any of the rest of them?  Probably none.

 

Maybe that's something they should all be thankful for.

November 14, 2011

Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama, surely ain't.  Neither is he Abraham Lincoln nor, for that matter, Millard Fillmore nor Warren Harding.  It seems to this retired political reporter that Obama has been an okay president – not the best, not the worst.

 

Sure, the economy is kind of in a mess but, if you're old enough to remember the Great Depression (and I am), this isn't even close to that league.

 

I think you have to give the President average grades on almost everything.  He's gotten us almost out of one (Iraq) of the two extremely foolish wars in which his predecessor, George W. Bush, involved us.  There's less progress in leaving the other trouble spot (Afghanistan) but even there we see some signs that Obama would like to leave.  He avoided committing American ground troops to Libya;  you can imagine how the mighty W. would have jumped into that briar patch. 

 

So, overall he has been kind of an average president.  Give him a C+, perhaps even a B-, if only because he looks so well in class.

 

On a few things he might rate an A+:  Osama bin Laden is dead;  the national health care bill passed;  "don't ask, don't tell" is gone. 

 

Anyway, compare Barack Obama and Joe Biden, almost certain re-election candidates, against what the Republican candidates offer.  It's enough to make your head spin.  Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain?  They're not in the same league.  This is not an endorsement, of course, but I don't see any of them making the grade.

 

 

November 11, 2011

This column is about the magic of presidential politics, all right, but unlike a lot of stuff you may have read already, it does not foresee doom, gloom and defeat for Barack Obama.

 

Neither, of course, does it foresee Obama thundering to victory, pursued by a herd of world class Republican rivals.  My vision, instead, is of an average horse, Obama, crossing the finish line in front of a lame field of GOP opponents who might have trouble qualifying for the pony race at the county fair.

 

Rivals, contenders?  Well, there's Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, who finished tied with somebody else in a straw poll.  Wasn't it Herman Cain in Iowa?  Or does memory blur?  With this crowd that happens quite easily. Today they are the two frontrunners.  With the allegations against Cain, his position could well change with the next poll.

 

Republican hopes centered briefly on Rick Perry, the allegedly charismatic governor of Texas.  It was Perry, remember, who armed with his very own hand gun while out on his daily jog shot and wounded a coyote.  Wounded only, of course.  Texas Rangers, normally armed when protecting their governors, finished the job.  This is just one in a series of Perry "oopses."  In a debate Wednesday night, the Governor could remember the names of only two of the three federal agencies he wanted to cancel:  Commerce, Education and "Oops" (which turned out to be Energy).

 

Don't forget the slew of others in this mix:  Michele Bachmann; Newt Gingrich; Ron Paul; Rick Santorum – and Jon Huntsman, a former ambassador to China, who may actually be qualified to be president.  At the back of the pack are some whom I guarantee you've never heard of – I least I know I never have:  Gary Johnson, Tom Miller, Matt Snyder, Vern Wuensche.  It all feels like a pile up at the starting gate.

 

Where's the magic in this field?  Can't the GPO do better than this?  Doesn't a race for the presidency deserve some magic?  Don't we?