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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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.    

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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.
 
    

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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.  

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