VOTE TOTALS

1.) Do you think that every American should have the right to universal health-care coverage or just to the coverage they can properly afford?
• 784 Total Votes
o Universal. o 354 votes 45%
o What they can afford. o 364 votes 46%
o I choose not to vote on this referendum. o 66 votes 8%

2.)
• Should the United States increase social security payroll taxes by 2% in order for the federal government to ensure income security for future generations of senior citizens?
• 771 Total Votes
o Yea. o 359 votes 47%
o Nay. o 298 votes 38%
o I choose not to vote on this referendum. o 114 votes 15%

3.)
• Should the Selective Service System, which would most likely be the basis for a modern military draft, be expanded to include women?
• 772 Total Votes
o Yea. o 328 votes 43%
o Nay. o 348 votes 45%
o I choose not to vote on this referendum. o 96 votes 12%

4.)
• Should laws such as the Equal Protection Clause, which states: “No state shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” apply to illegal aliens? • 775 Total Votes
o Yea. o 229 votes 30%
o Nay. o 444 votes 57%
o I choose not to vote on this referendum. o 102 votes 13%

5.)
• Referendum 71: • 776 Total Votes
“The legislature passed Engrossed Second Substitute Senate Bill 5688 concerning right and responsibilities of state-registered domestic partners… This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage.” Should this bill be:
o Approved. o 345 votes 44%
o Rejected. o 280 votes 36%
o I choose not to vote on this referendum. o 151 votes 20%

6.)
• When considering the United States’ responsibilities concerning the war in Afghanistan which option do you prefer?
• 781 Total Votes
o Decrease Troop Number: train, equip, and advise Afghan Security forces to better protect themselves. o 315 votes 40%
o Maintain Troop Number: American troops should conduct the counterinsurgency campaign against the Taliban. o 183 votes 23%
o Increase Troop Number: Follow General McCrystal’s plan of providing an additional 40,000 troops to escalate the removal of terrorist networks. o 139 votes 18%
o I choose not to vote on this referendum. o 144 votes 19%

7.)
• Should the government ensure a guaranteed college education to those who desire to pursue it by raising federal taxes in some areas?
• 768 Total Votes
o Yea. o 314 votes 41%
o Nay. o 364 votes 47%
o I choose not to vote on this referendum o 90 votes 12%

8.)
• “The U.S. government’s $6.4 billion swine flu vaccination program is likely to put the American public health sector under unprecedented strain and expose serious shortcomings, experts say.”
• 764 Total Votes
o Our health-care sector should continue to focus solely on the swine flu epidemic.
o 103 votes 13%
o Our health-care sector should reconfigure the resource distribution to over multiple threats simultaneously. o 532 votes 70%
o I choose not to vote on this referendum. o 129 votes 17%

9.)
• Do you feel things in this country are generally going in the right direction or do you feel things are heading in the wrong direction?
• 794 Total Votes
o Right direction. o 100 votes 12%
o Wrong direction. o 403 votes 51%
o Holding steady. o 180 votes 23%
o I choose not to vote on this referendum. o 111 votes 14%

March 28, 2008

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”

Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.

“You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says.

Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

“The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’”

“No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz says he told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’”

Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?”

“Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said.

Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says.

The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”

The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.”

Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.”

“I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

Produced for Morning Edition by Michael Garofalo”

Spin Control is a weekly political column that also appears online with daily posts, videos and reader comments at www. spokesman.com/blogs/ spincontrol. See the McMorris Rodgers video and hear audio from her Colville interview on the blog.

By Rich Noyes

by Joel Stein

Joel Stein is a columnist for The Los Angeles Times. His e-mail address is jstein@latimescolumnists.com.

Take it from a Brit: Losing the No. 1 world superpower spot won’t be that bad. Really.

By Chris Ayres

December 27, 2008

There has been much talk in the media about America’s threatened superpower status — a result of its near-fatal exposure to the Kryptonite of subprime mortgages, among other factors — and how the country will inevitably find itself going the way of that other once-undefeated political juggernaut, the dear old British Empire.

To which I say: Lucky America!

I mean, yeah, it’s going to sting a bit. Losing any big, sexy-sounding job title will inevitably deliver a blow to your self-esteem. Yet it can also be liberating.

Do Tehranis and Muscovites blame Britain for the culture of mindless self-gratification that brought down the global economy? Of course not. They blame America — even though Britain is arguably the more guilty party, what with its foreign-debt-to-GDP ratio standing at an unconscionable (and, really, quite embarrassing) 490%, as opposed to the United States’ puritanical 89% (according to the 2007 “purchasing power parity” GDP and external debt figures supplied by the CIA World Factbook).

The fact is that when you’re No. 1, you always get blamed for everything. When you’re No. 3, or No. 5 — or No. 135 — you can put your hands in your pockets and whistle tunelessly with a “Who, me?” look on your face, and no one ever asks any questions.

Take Slovakia. Five years ago, Slovakia invaded Iraq. Admittedly, it did this with the help of a few other countries. But still, does Slovakia ever get the blame for all the trouble that has gone down over there since then?

Nope.

Imagine, for a moment, the relief of being simply too unimportant to be held responsible for any event of consequence. Imagine Barack Obama being roused by the proverbial “red phone” at 11 a.m. — the leaders of low-ranking countries can presumably nap until late morning — to be informed of a terrible rumpus in deepest Nmbubu-Oobu, and his only responsibility is to write a stern news release calling on Belgium to act. And when it all goes horribly wrong — as it inevitably will — all he has to do is tut disapprovingly and mutter something about those arrogant Flems in Bruges.

Being British, I speak from some experience when it comes to lost superpowerdom. I was born in northern England in the mid-1970s — a time when my grandparents still believed that Britain was the mightiest nation on Earth, even though the prime minister, Harold Wilson, was being warned that the country was facing “wholesale domestic liquidation” unless it could secure an emergency, Third World-style bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

In Britain in those days — as in America now — people bought consumer products based on patriotism. The misery! I later fell victim to this nonsense myself: My first car was an antique 1974 MGB, the electronics supplied by the pride of postwar British manufacturing, Lucas Industries. When I bought the MGB, I sincerely believed that British sports cars were the finest in the world. Then the wiring loom under the steering wheel short-circuited when I was halfway down Caledonia Road in North London and I had to jump out with my trousers literally on fire.

My next car was Japanese.

Today, of course, there are pretty much no truly British cars. And who cares? We live in an era of globalization. The Indians might own the company that makes Jaguars, but I probably have money in a pension fund somewhere that owns stock in that very same Indian company. So, in a small way, the British are still in the car business — with the added benefit that a modern Jag probably won’t cause a trouser fire.

And even if you own a “foreign” car these days, chances are that at least a few bits and pieces of it have been sourced from your homeland. That’s the way it should be: Countries that are good at one thing should concentrate on it, and countries that are bad at that same thing should stop doing it.  [See Law of Comparative Advantage - Kautzman]

Besides, abandoning consumer patriotism is as liberating as no longer being blamed for everything. It’s especially liberating when shopping for an automobile. Farewell, beige Ford Taurus! Hello, gunmetal-gray BMW M3!

Not all domestic industries suffer when a nation goes into an irreversible decline, of course. Others suddenly find themselves booming. The beleaguered American newspaper industry, for example, might very well be able to profit immensely by simply dispatching its most snide and ironically detached correspondents to the new capitals of world power, from which they will be able to report with maximum condescension about the hilarious earnestness of the locals. Mark my words: Demoralized Americans won’t be able to get enough of these reports, and thus will buy multiple newspapers every morning while traveling to work on buses and trains, having abandoned their cars when the U.S. government stopped qualifying for its bulk oil discount from the Saudis.

Not that working 8-to-7 six days a week will seem so important when you’re no longer ruling the world. If Britain’s experience is anything to go by, Americans will soon find more satisfaction by trying to break pointless world records — crossing Greenland on a pogo stick, using only one arm, while dressed in native Bolivian costume, for example — or writing absurdist comedy, or recovering from apocalyptic, three-gin-and-tonic lunchtime hangovers.

Oh yes, you’re in for a treat.

Chris Ayres is Los Angeles correspondent for the Times of London and the author of “Death by Leisure: A Cautionary Tale” (Grove Press, February 2009).

Skeptics Challenge Assumptions Made

By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 29, 2008; A02

Could the polls be wrong?

Sen. John McCain and his allies say that they are. The country, they say, could be headed to a 2008 version of the famous 1948 upset election, with McCain in the role of Harry S. Truman and Sen. Barack Obama as Thomas E. Dewey, lulled into overconfidence by inaccurate polls.

“We believe it is a very close race, and something that is frankly very winnable,” Sarah Simmons, director of strategy for the McCain campaign, said yesterday.

Few analysts outside the McCain campaign appear to share this view. And pollsters this time around will not make the mistake that the Gallup organization made 60 years ago — ending their polling more than a week before the election and missing a last-minute surge in support for Truman. Every day brings dozens of new state and national presidential polls, a trend that is expected to continue up to Election Day.

Still, there appears to be an undercurrent of worry among some polling professionals and academics. One reason is the wide variation in Obama leads: Just yesterday, an array of polls showed the Democrat leading by as little as two points and as much as 15 points. The latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll showed the race holding steady, with Obama enjoying a lead of 52 percent to 45 percent among likely voters.

Some in the McCain camp also argue that the polls showing the largest leads for Obama mistakenly assume that turnout among young voters and African Americans will be disproportionately high. The campaign is banking on a good turnout among GOP partisans, whom McCain officials say they are working hard to attract to the polls.

“I have been wondering for weeks” whether the polls are accurately gauging the state of the race, said Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Minnesota. Borrowing from lingo popularized by former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Schier asked what are the “unknown unknowns” about polling this year: For instance, is the sizable cohort of people who don’t respond to pollsters more Republican-leaning this year, perhaps because they don’t want to admit to a pollster that they are not supporting the “voguish” Obama?

If so, that could mean the polls are routinely understating McCain’s support. “I have no evidence that this is happening,” Schier said, but he added: “I’m still thinking there’s a 25 percent chance that this is a squeaker race and McCain pulls it out.”

Other experts are less uncertain. Ruy Teixeira, a political demographer at the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation, said averaging the daily polls points to “pretty much the same thing — that the race is pretty stable and that Obama has a stable lead. Typically, when you are this far ahead at this point, it’s hard to lose.”

“It is very unlikely that we are going to get surprised by a last-minute movement,” said John R. Petrocik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Missouri. “Obama has been running six to eight points ahead for the better part of two weeks, and it’s hard to imagine that turning around.”

The McCain campaign’s case that the race is closer than many polls suggest appears to rest largely on the proposition that the composition of the electorate this year will closely resemble that in 2004.

McCain pollsters do anticipate that turnout could be even higher this year than the robust turnout four years ago, but they also expect that Democratic gains among African American voters and younger voters will be offset by higher turnout among more Republican-leaning voters. They also assert the race is tightening in battleground states, with independent voters increasingly receptive to McCain.

“As other public polls begin to show Senator Obama dropping below 50% and the margin over McCain beginning to approach margin of error with a week left, all signs say we are headed to an election that may easily be too close to call by next Tuesday,” McCain pollster Bill McInturff wrote in a memo released last night by the campaign. Obama officials voiced confidence in their ultimate victory but said they have always expected the election to be close.

To buttress its point of view, the McCain team points to results reported yesterday by the Gallup organization, whose daily tracking poll showed Obama up 49 percent to 47 percent using Gallup’s traditional turnout model, which assumes that turnout will follow the patterns of past elections. Obama has a larger lead, seven points, using a model that allows a higher presence of first-time voters.

A Pew Research Center poll released yesterday shows a 15-point lead for Obama, a result based on relaxed criteria for when to consider an African American respondent a likely voter, said Andrew Kohut, president of the center. He said the poll shows that roughly 12 percent of the electorate this year is black, up from 2004, with a similar increase among younger voters. Kohut defended this approach, saying there are historically high levels of interest in this contest among both demographic groups. At the same time, he added, “we’ve consistently shown less enthusiasm and engagement among Republicans than is typical, and the composition of the electorate shows that.”

Kohut said several variables signal Obama has not convinced voters, such as a large number of respondents in the Pew poll who see the Illinois Democrat as a risky choice. But Kohut said the odds are against “a huge shift” in voter preferences by Election Day.

Some polls show Obama with a healthy lead even without an assumed surge in African American and young voters. Obama’s seven-point lead in the Washington Post-ABC News poll is not premised on disproportionately higher turnout among those demographic groups. The poll’s turnout model currently shows that 10 percent of likely voters are black, compared with the 11 percent who voted in 2004, according to the network exit poll. Voters younger than 30 make up 16 percent of the Post-ABC sample, little different from the 17 percent four years ago.

Post polling director Jon Cohen said the survey designers “carefully consider a range of likely voter scenarios and use our best judgment. Our polling throughout the campaign has been on target and, we believe, helpful to understanding what is really happening. I hope it stays that way.”

He noted that to address “one potential pitfall,” The Post and ABC conduct interviews with a random selection of those who have only cellular phone service alongside a traditional random sample of those with residential phone service. One recent criticism of current polling has been that it does not accurately capture the sentiments of those who primarily use cellphones.

September 01, 2008

We are so very ‘ umble.
—Uriah Heep In “David Copperfield”

Cognitive dissonance—believing, sincerely and simultaneously, contradictory ideas—might be considered a genteel mental disorder were it not such a nearly universal phenomenon that it seems less a disorder than part of the natural order of things. It afflicts—if it really is an affliction rather than a normal accommodation to life’s ambiguities—individuals and collectivities, such as the American electorate.

Today, Americans seem to demand a government that is an omnipresent and omni provident cornucopia of entitlements, but that also is small and imposes low taxes. Dissonance? This is cognitive cacophony.

Now Americans are about to choose a president who—judging by political rhetoric, which responds to voters’ expectations—is supposed to be an economic wizard, a national pastor, a Florence Nightingale in providing health care and a diplomat of Metternichian guile and Franciscan goodness. But Americans also are being plied and belabored with dueling warnings that the two presidential candidates from whom they must choose, both of them U.S. senators, are—Heaven forfend!—not common men.

John McCain, the son and grandson of admirals, married a wealthy woman and is supposed to be scorched to a cinder by the disapproval of a nation that is encouraged to think that he has too many houses. Barack Obama, with his two Ivy League degrees (Columbia, Harvard Law School), lives in an expensive home in Chicago’s tony Hyde Park section, an academic enclave hard by the University of Chicago.

Well. “The house, situated in a landscaped clearing on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River, is a large rambling structure faced with stucco and fieldstone.” So reads the National Park Service Web site on Springwood, where Franklin Roosevelt “was born to a family of wealth and social position” and where he is buried. This estate at Hyde Park was where young Franklin learned “the things that a young gentleman of his class should know,” including “horsemanship, rowing, fishing, sailing, and ice boating” on the river.

People who believe in architectural determinism should believe that FDR’s housing must have prevented him from empathizing with common folks. And nowadays voters demand empathy from candidates in a way that voters never did of austere George Washington or crusty John Adams.

At the nation’s founding, Americans believed that government exists to protect people in the exercise of their pre-existing “natural” rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But time passed, bringing us FDR and Oprah and other facets of modernity. Now Americans believe that government exists to create new rights for them, and to solve their problems, and that it can do so only if politicians empathize with voters’ conditions and “feelings,” and that perhaps politicians cannot do so if they do not live lives of conspicuous normality.

Actually, the politics of Uriah Heepism—histrionic humility—and flamboyant empathy had infected politics by 1840. The country was in its worst depression to date and the Democratic Party, which had held the presidency for 12 years, was in bad odor. When the Whig Party nominated William Henry Harrison, a hostile newspaper said that all Democrats would need to do was “give him a barrel of hard cider” and a pension and he would be content to “sit the remainder of his days in his log cabin.” Whigs saw opportunity in the insult, saying that the remedy for hard times was hard cider. Harrison had lived in a log cabin only briefly, and by the time he ran for president the house on his Ohio estate was grand enough that his campaign had to tone it down for public viewings. Never mind. Log cabins and cider jugs became symbols that propelled Harrison to the White House.

A story, perhaps apocryphal but certainly plausible, is that a child once began a school essay with this sentence: “Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin he built himself.” Although Lincoln did not build it, being born in such a very ‘umble dwelling was for him an excellent career move.

Charges of “elitism” are hardy perennials, but surely Americans can accept two axioms. The first is: The central principle of republican government is representation, under which the people do not decide issues, they decide who shall decide. The second is: Elections decide not whether elites shall rule but which elites shall rule.

Robert Alphonso Taft (1889–1953), the son of President William Howard Taft, became known as “Mr. Republican” during his 14 years as a U.S. senator from Ohio. He was a conservative representing a state whose electorate included many farmers and blue-collar industrial workers, and opponents charged that he was out of touch with such ordinary people. In 1947 a reporter asked Mrs. Taft, “Do you think of your husband as a common man?” Aghast, she replied:

“Oh, no, no! The senator is very uncommon. He was first in his class at Yale and first in his class at the Harvard Law School. We wouldn’t permit Ohio to be represented in the Senate by just a common man.”

In 1950, Taft was re-elected in a landslide.

ST. PAUL

Thursday night, after Barack Obama’s well-orchestrated, well-conceived and well-delivered acceptance speech in Denver, Republicans were demoralized. Twenty-four hours later, they were energized — even exuberant. It’s amazing what a bold vice-presidential pick who gives a sterling performance when she’s introduced will do for a party’s spirits.

There are Republicans who are unhappy about John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin. Many are insiders who highly value — who overly value — “experience.” There are also sensible strategists who nervously note just how big a gamble McCain has taken.

But what was McCain’s alternative? To go quietly down to defeat, accepting a role as a bit player in The Barack Obama Story? McCain had to shake up the race, and once he was persuaded not to pick Joe Lieberman, which would have been one kind of gamble, he went all in with Sarah Palin.

Some media mandarins were upset. One reporter noted that — horrors! — Palin had never even appeared on “Meet the Press.” Time’s Joe Klein remarked disapprovingly that McCain didn’t know Palin well and had never worked with her. He noted by contrast “that when Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, House Speaker Tip O’Neill, who had worked with Ferraro, was not only vouching for her, but raving about her.”

Of course, Ferraro was widely regarded as an unsuccessful V.P. choice. Maybe rave reviews from D.C. insiders aren’t the best guarantee of future success.

And Obama supporters can’t get too indignant about Palin’s inexperience. She’s only running for the No. 2 job, after all, while their inexperienced standard-bearer is the nominee for the top position. And McCain doesn’t need a foreign policy expert as vice president to help him out.

Meanwhile, a Republican operative here mentioned to me that Barack Obama has cited this 1992 comment by Bill Clinton:

“The same old experience is irrelevant. You can have the right kind of experience or the wrong kind of experience. And mine is rooted in the real lives of real people, and it will bring real results if we have the courage to change.”

But the crucial political fact is that the Obama campaign no longer has a monopoly on “the courage to change.” Facing an electorate that wants change, McCain has given himself a fighting chance to win the election.

And he has staked a lot on Sarah Palin.

Voters are unlikely to learn much that is new or surprising about Obama, McCain or Joe Biden over the next two months. Palin’s performance as the vice-presidential nominee, on the other hand, is the open and unresolved question of this campaign. She is, in a way, now the central figure in this fall’s electoral drama.

If Palin turns out not be up to the challenge for which McCain has selected her, McCain will pay a heavy price. His judgment about the most important choice he’s had to make this year will have been proved wanting. He won’t be able to plead that being right about the surge in Iraq should be judged as more important than being right about his vice-presidential pick.

McCain has gambled boldly on Palin. If she flops, McCain could lose by a landslide.

On the other hand, if Palin exceeds expectations, and her selection ends up looking both bold and wise, McCain could win.

The Palin pick already, as Noemie Emery wrote, “Wipes out the image of McCain as the crotchety elder and brings back that of the fly-boy and gambler, which is much more appealing, and the genuine person.” But of course McCain needs Palin to do well to prove he’s a shrewd and prescient gambler.

I spent an afternoon with Palin a little over a year ago in Juneau, and have followed her career pretty closely ever since. I think she can pull it off. I’m not the only one. The day after the V.P. announcement, I spoke with an old friend, James Muller, chairman of the political science department at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. He said that Palin “has been underestimated over and over again. She took on the party and state establishments here in Alaska, and left them reeling. She’s a very good campaigner, a quick study and a fighter.”

Muller called particular attention to her successes in passing an increase to the oil production tax and facilitating the future construction of a huge natural gas pipeline. “At first the oil companies thought she was naïve, and they’d have their way. Instead she faced them down and forced them to compromise on her terms.”

Can she face down the Democrats, Joe Biden and the national media over the next couple of months?

John McCain is betting she can. Perhaps, as he pondered his vice-presidential selection, he recalled the advice of Margaret Thatcher: “In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.”

September 01, 2008

By E. J. Dionne

ST. PAUL, Minn. — By all rights, there should be a revolt at this week’s Republican convention against John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate — for the very same reasons so many Republicans opposed President Bush’s selection of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court.

Palin is, if anything, less qualified for the vice presidency (and the presidency) than Miers was for the court. But there is one big difference: Palin passes all the right-wing litmus tests, which means she is unlikely to suffer Miers’ fate.

It’s amusing to watch Republicans play gender politics. At the time Bush chose Miers, he was under pressure to pick a woman to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. But most of the plausible women jurists were either too moderate to satisfy conservatives or so right wing that they faced serious confirmation problems.

So Bush picked his close White House aide, hoping that his own standing with the right would push her through. Conservatives would have none of it. They assailed Miers’ lack of judicial grounding. And they certainly had a case. But what really bothered them was that they had no idea how she would vote on the court. Fearing she was a closet moderate, they blocked her.

McCain, it appears, also wanted a woman, and so he went with Alaska’s young governor with strongly conservative views. How do Palin and Miers compare?

Miers, at least, had been a lawyer for 35 years, the head of the state bar in Texas and White House counsel. Palin’s experience comes down to a couple of years as governor and six years as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town with a population of under 10,000.

Where Miers definitely tops Palin is on the question of whether her patron can vouch for her. Bush knew Miers well, worked with her closely, trusted her deeply. You can question Bush’s judgment in pushing her for the court — for the record, at the time I called the choice “too clever” and thus “dangerous” — but at least he had good reason to believe in the person he was asking others to count on.

McCain, as far as anyone can tell, met Palin only once before considering her for vice president, and once more before settling on her, which is to say he barely knows her. For the purpose of courting disaffected Hillary Clinton voters and satisfying the social conservatives, McCain is willing to place someone he knows mostly from press clippings in the direct line of succession to the presidency. There is a breathtaking recklessness about this choice.

There are many who say that in choosing Palin, McCain has taken the issue of experience off the table. I disagree. Now, the balance on experience shifts toward the Democrats, and it’s not just for the obvious reason that Joe Biden is manifestly more qualified than Palin.

Conservatives have complained that we barely know Obama. This is nonsense. Obama has been thoroughly vetted over the four years since he entered the public spotlight. We have been given fewer than 70 days to get to know Palin.

In particular, we know Obama’s foreign policy views in great detail. About Palin’s opinions on foreign policy, we know absolutely nothing. According to a 1999 Associated Press report, she sported a Pat Buchanan button when Buchanan visited Wasilla during his campaign for the 2000 Republican nomination. Does this mean she shares Buchanan’s isolationist foreign policy views? Who can say? There is no record.

That only a handful of conservatives have so far expressed doubts about Palin demonstrates that ideology is what drove them during the Miers fight, and drives them still. Miers’ lack of experience was, for many conservatives, a convenient rationale for opposing someone they worried might become another David Souter. Palin’s lack of experience is irrelevant because she is right — actually, quite far right — on the conservatives’ issues.

As a purely political matter, McCain’s choice of Palin will overshadow this week’s convention. The Republicans once hoped to use their gathering to persuade Americans not to trust Obama. But as the speakers here make their case, the media will rightly be doing their job, trying to figure out who Palin is. Palin, not Obama, will be the issue, in a way that Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty or some other well-known figure would not have been.

But there is also the question of principle. In picking Biden as his running mate, it’s Obama who made the prudent choice. McCain is asking us to roll the dice. You’d think that people who call themselves conservative would have a problem with that.

Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/harriet_miers_for_vice_pr.html at September 01, 2008 – 09:47:42 AM PDT

September 01, 2008

By Gerard Baker

Democrats, between sniggers of derision and snorts of disgust, contend that Sarah Palin, John McCain’s vice-presidential pick is ridiculously unqualified to be president.

It’s a reasonable objection on its face except for this small objection: it surely needs to be weighed against the Democrats’ claim that their own candidate for president is self-evidently ready to assume the role of most powerful person on the planet.

At first blush, here’s what we know about the relative experience of the two candidates. Both are in their mid-forties and have held statewide elective office for less than four years. Both have admitted to taking illegal drugs in their youth.

So much for the similarities. How about the differences?

Political experience

Obama: Worked his way to the top by cultivating, pandering to and stroking the most powerful interest groups in the all-pervasive Chicago political machine, ensuring his views were aligned with the power brokers there.

Palin: Worked her way to the top by challenging, attacking and actively undermining the Republican party establishment in her native Alaska. She ran against incumbent Republicans as a candidate willing and able to clean the Augean Stables of her state’s government.

Political Biography

Obama: A classic, if unusually talented, greasy-pole climber. Held a succession of jobs that constitute the standard route to the top in his party’s internal politics: “community organizer”, law professor, state senator.

Palin: A woman with a wide range of interests in a well-variegated life. Held a succession of jobs – sports journalist, commercial fisherwoman, state oil and gas commissioner, before entering local politics. A resume that suggests something other than burning political ambition from the cradle but rather the sort of experience that enables her to understand the concerns of most Americans..
Political history

Obama: Elected to statewide office only after a disastrous first run for a congressional seat and after his Republican opponent was exposed in a sexual scandal. Won seat eventually in contest against a candidate who didn’t even live in the state.
Palin: Elected to statewide office by challenging a long-serving Republican incumbent governor despite intense opposition from the party.
Appeal

Obama: A very attractive speaker whose celebrity has been compared to that of Britney Spears and who sends thrills up Chris Matthews’ leg

Palin: A very attractive woman, much better-looking than Britney Spears who speaks rather well too. She sends thrills up the leg of Rush Limbaugh (and me).

Executive experience

Obama: Makes executive decisions every day that affect the lives of his campaign staff and a vast crowd of traveling journalists

Palin:Makes executive decisions every day that affect the lives of 500,000 people in her state, and that impact crucial issues of national economic interest such as the supply and cost of energy to the United States.

Religious influences

Obama: Regards people who “cling” to religion and guns as “bitter” . Spent 20 years being mentored and led spiritually by a man who proclaimed “God damn America” from his pulpit. Mysteriously, this mentor completely disappeared from public sight about four months ago.

Palin: Head of her high school Fellowship of Christian Athletes and for many years a member of the Assemblies of God congregation whose preachers have never been known to accuse the United States of deliberately spreading the AIDS virus. They remain in full public sight and can be seen every Sunday in churches across Alaska. A proud gun owner who has been known to cling only to the carcasses of dead caribou felled by her own aim.
Record of bipartisan achievement

Obama: Speaks movingly of the bipartisanship needed to end the destructive politics of “Red America” and “Blue America”, but votes in the Senate as a down-the-line Democrat, with one of the most liberal voting records in congress.

Palin: Ridiculed by liberals such as John Kerry as a crazed, barely human, Dick Cheney-type conservative but worked with Democrats in the state legislature to secure landmark anti-corruption legislation.

Former state Rep. Ethan Berkowitz – a Democrat – said. “Gov. Palin has made her name fighting corruption within her own party, and I was honored when she stepped across party lines and asked me to co-author her ethics white paper.”
On Human Life

Obama: Devoutly pro-choice. Voted against a bill in the Illinois state senate that would have required doctors to save the lives of babies who survived abortion procedures. The implication of this position is that babies born prematurely during abortions would be left alone, unnourished and unmedicated, until they died.

Palin: Devoutly pro-life. Exercised the choice proclaimed by liberals to bring to full term a baby that had been diagnosed in utero with Down Syndrome.

Now it’s true there are other crucial differences. Sen Obama has appeared on Meet The Press every other week for the last four years. He has been the subject of hundreds of adoring articles in papers and newsweeklies and TV shows and has written two Emmy-award winning books.

Gov Palin has never appeared on Meet the Press, never been on the cover of Newsweek. She presumably feels that, as a mother of five children married to a snowmobile champion, who also happens to be the first woman and the youngest person ever to be elected governor of her state, she has not really done enough yet to merit an autobiography.

Then again, I’m willing to bet that if she had authored The Grapes of Wrath, sung like Edith Piaf and composed La Traviata , she still wouldn’t have won an Emmy.

Fortunately, it will be up to the American people and not their self-appointed leaders in Hollywood and New York to determine who really has the better experience to be president.

Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/sarah_palin_vs_barack_obama.html at September 01, 2008 – 11:24:34 AM CDT

Published: Feb. 28, 2008 at 5:06 PM

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 (UPI) — The birthplace of U.S. presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., brings up an age-old question about what constitutes a “natural-born citizen.”

McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone. If he wins the general election, he would be the first person to take the presidential oath with an official birthplace beyond the 50 states, The New York Times reported Thursday.

“There are powerful arguments that Sen. McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent,” said Sarah Duggin, a Catholic University law professor.

When “natural-born citizen” was penned in 1787, little direction was offered about whether a candidate had to be born on American soil. In McCain’s case, he was born on a U.S. military installation where his parents were stationed at the time.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and an ally of McCain, said it would be inconceivable that a son of a military member born on a military post could not run for president.

“He was posted there on orders from the United States government,” Graham said. “If that becomes a problem, we need to tell every military family that your kid can’t be president if they take an overseas assignment.”

© 2008 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.

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Will discuss possible White House run Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press

The Associated Press

updated 9:26 a.m. PT, Fri., Feb. 22, 2008

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WASHINGTON – Ralph Nader could be poised for another third party presidential campaign.

The consumer advocate will appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Nader launched his 2004 presidential run on the show.

A spokesman for Nader did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Kevin Zeese, who was Nader’s spokesman during the 2004 presidential race, but is no longer working for him, said Friday that Nader has been actively talking to “lots of people on all sorts of levels” about the possibility of making another run.

Zeese said he could only guess what Nader might do, but added: “Obviously, I don’t think (”Meet the Press” host) Tim Russert would have him on for no reason.”

Last month, Nader began an exploratory presidential campaign and launched a Web site that promises to fight “corporate greed, corporate power, corporate control.”

Nader’s appearance on “Meet the Press” was announced Friday in an e-mail message from Nader’s exploratory campaign. The message from “The Nader Team” urges supporters to tell friends and family to watch the show and requests online contributions.

“As you know, we’ve been exploring the possibilities in recent weeks,” the message says.

Nader is still loathed by many Democrats who call him a spoiler and claim his candidacy in 2000 cost Democrats the election by siphoning votes away from Al Gore in a razor-thin contest in Florida.

Nader has vociferously disputed the spoiler claim, saying only Democrats are to blame for losing the race to George W. Bush.

Though he won 2.7 percent of the national vote as the Green Party candidate in 2000, Nader won just 0.3 percent as an independent in 2004, when he appeared on the ballot in only 34 states.

Nader was forced to fight dozens of court battles over ballot access in 2004, as Democrats pressed legal challenges over whether he gained enough legitimate signatures to get his name on the ballot.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, January 9, 2008; 7:17 PM

MERRIMACK, N.H. (AP) New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson ended his campaign for the presidency Wednesday after twin fourth-place finishes that showed his impressive credentials could not compete with his rivals’ star power.

Richardson planned to announce the decision Thursday, according to two people close to the governor with knowledge of the decision. They spoke on a condition of anonymity in advance of the governor’s announcement.

The Richardson campaign would not comment on the governor’s decision, reached after a meeting with his top advisers Wednesday in New Mexico.

Richardson had one of the most wide-ranging resumes of any candidate ever to run for the presidency, bringing experience from his time in Congress, President Clinton’s Cabinet, in the New Mexico statehouse as well as his unique role as a freelance diplomat. As a Hispanic, he added to the unprecedented diversity in the Democratic field that also included a black and a woman.

But Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama dominated the spotlight in the campaign, and Richardson was never able to become a top-tier contender. He accused his rivals of failing to commit to bring troops home from Iraq soon enough.

He portrayed his campaign as a job application for president, and ran clever ads that showed a bored interviewer unimpressed with his dazzling resume. The commercials helped fuel his move to double-digit support in some early state polls, and advisers argued he was poised to move past former vice presidential nominee John Edwards for the role of third-place challenger.

But he was not able to build the momentum and came in a distant fourth place in Iowa and New Hampshire. Richardson didn’t get quite 5 percent in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday and came in with just 2 percent in the Iowa caucus last week.

Tomorrow, a relatively small percentage of the population in a relatively small state will make a relatively huge decision that will impact the presidential race in profound ways. Together, Iowa and New Hampshire literally have the power to shape this country’s future.

In this age of infotainment it has become impossible for underdogs in this race to grab the attention of the country. Celebrity status due to the media’s obsession with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has overshadowed more experienced candidates like Joe Biden. Throughout the entire presidential race, Joe Biden has never polled more than 5% nationally. Hillary, on the other hand, has never polled below the high 20’s. It’s pretty sad, when you think about it, that most Americans don’t even know the name of the most experienced candidate in the race. It’s pretty sad, that in the birthplace of democracy people are either too busy to care, or too locked into what the TV set tells them to consider alternatives to the media’s darling “rock stars.”

It’s sad but it’s possible to overcome. There is a parallel story in this race that no one seems to be talking about. Consider the campaign of John Edwards in 2004 and these national polls…

October, 2003

13% Wesley Clark
12% Howard Dean
11% Joe Lieberman
10% John Kerry
9% Dick Gephardt
3% John Edwards

Now take a look at a 2007 poll from October…

49% Hillary Clinton
26% Barack Obama
12% John Edwards
3% Joe Biden

The dynamics of the race were very different in 2003, but what remains the same is that Edwards and Biden were both far back behind the pack months before the caucus. Now take a look at these national polls taken within the closing days, just before the caucus and note the similarities between Edwards of 2004 and Biden of today.

January 8th, 2004

20% Howard Dean
13% Wesley Clark
8% Joe Lieberman
7% Dick Gephardt
7% John Kerry
4% Carol Moseley Braun
4% John Edwards

December 17th, 2007

45% Hillary Clinton
23% Barack Obama
13% John Edwards
4% Joe Biden

Heading into the Iowa caucus in the last primary election, John Edwards barely made a dent in national polls. He raised only $1.9 million in the fourth quarter while national frontrunners Dean and Clark raised $15.9 million and $10.3 million respectively. Despite the lack of money, media coverage, and polling success, Edwards’ Iowa surprise catapulted him past Gephardt, Lieberman, Dean, and Clark. He ended up winning 534 delegates in the primaries, compared to Dean’s 170 and Clark’s 57.

What does this all this mean? Well, Joe Biden finds himself in exactly the same boat as Edwards did in ‘04. Biden does not have the money to compete much anywhere outside of Iowa and New Hampshire. He is rarely taken seriously by the mainstream media because of their obsession with several candidates and the polling numbers that result from that obsession. Everyone seems to have written him off, except Iowans. They don’t like to be told what to think by the media and they have a history of surprises. Edwards polled 4% nationally in 2004 but raked in 32% of delegates in Iowa. It was a shock that surged his momentum and landed him in second place by the end of the primaries.

I am not naïve. I do not expect Joe Biden to pull off 32% in Iowa. Hell, he may not even top 10%. He may not even top 5%. So don’t misread this diary as a prediction that the good Senator is going to shock the world with an amazing improbable result. All I know is that Joe Biden is packing every venue he goes to in Iowa right now. He is drawing crowds in the hundreds and two hundreds and three hundreds where he used to speak to small groups of 20 people or less. Other campaigns are sensing strong pockets of support for him in areas that complex caucus rules make very important to the final result. I’m not sure of the exact numbers but Biden has been endorsed by more House members in the state than any other candidate, including the Majority Leader and Assistant Majority Leader. The ingredients are there for a surprise, not a 32% surprise, but a surprise nonetheless.

If one of the big three slips and Biden manages to pull off a 15% strong fourth or even third place finish, he will be the talk of the media and he will be lifted nationally and in New Hampshire. If he surprises in New Hampshire, which has traditionally been a very open minded and independent state, he could be seen as the “comeback kid” and as a new viable alternative to Hillary Clinton.

Most will read this diary and say “Yah, it could happen, but even if he does surprise in Iowa and New Hampshire, Joe Biden will never have the organization to compete with Hillary and Barack outside of the first couple states, he has no chance.” To you I would reply that organization is the most overrated quality in a campaign for president. Did anyone seriously believe that John Edwards was going to have the money to compete with Howard Dean outside of Iowa in 2004? For every $100 that Edwards raised in the fourth quarter, Dean raised $840 but Edwards still dominated him all over the country.

It may just be me but when it’s crunch time and democratic primary voters are picking a leader, I don’t believe the questions they are asking themselves are, “Who has the best campaign organization?” We are all smarter than that. There are only a couple questions they are going to ask themselves, “Who is the best leader to take this country into the future? Who has the spine and the strength to repair the damage of the Bush years and restore our nation? Who has the experience to build bridges across nations and protect our children? Who is going to unite the parties to rebuild the middle class?” Those are the questions they will ask in Iowa and it’s because of this that I’m holding out for a Biden surprise. Senator Biden has served his nation since he was in his 20’s. No one questions his experience. He’s a straight shooter, and with the right running mate I think he’s an easy winner in the general election because the country hasn’t had a chance to get to know him yet.

So if you are an Iowan I beg you to vote your conscience. If you have refused to take a good look at Joe Biden because you don’t think he can win the primary, I urge you to look again with the lessons of 2004 in mind. If you are caucusing for Hillary or Obama or Edwards because you truly believe they are the best this party has to offer, then I commend you.

This primary isn’t about choosing a candidate based on who can win the primary. It’s about choosing the person who will be the best president.

Chris Jordan

Robert Archer
Special to the Spokesman-Review
December 29, 2007

T oday, I had four students show up to class with neither pencil nor pen. Another nine had no paper.

Yesterday, I took up student journals to grade. This was no surprise, since it had been written on the board. Six students did not even have their journals with them, even though these are daily required materials in my class.

Last week, I handed out a packet on fragments and run-ons, a packet that was their homework to turn in the next day. At the end of class, I found three of them left behind on the floor of my classroom.

So, just for a quick summary: 15 weeks into the school year, I had 13 students who had either nothing with which to write or nothing on which to write it, six who didn’t have a homework assignment that was a graded daily requirement and three who couldn’t possibly complete the graded assignment for the next day. And all of these numbers come from a single class of 25 ninth-graders!

The numbers are remarkably similar in my other classes.

Yet my department head, my principal, my district, my state, my entire society is mandating that I teach all students assigned to me what parallel structure is, what a comma splice is, what the theme is in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” what the difference is between a simile and a metaphor, what a good thesis sentence looks like, what the typical five-paragraph essay should be, what context clues can be used to decipher unfamiliar vocabulary words. And much more of the same.

Don’t get me wrong. As an English major, I fervently relish these concepts; as an English teacher, I fully appreciate the social value of attaining such skills; and as a professional, I am altogether committed to doing my best to impart such knowledge to every child who passes through my door daily.

The state and the district refer to such skills as GLEs, for grade-level expectations, and they are subject-specific to each secondary core curriculum needed for graduation from a Washington public high school; they are non-negotiable.

However, I’m wondering – just wondering, mind you – if I really am, at the heart of it all, teaching these children what I truly should be teaching them.

Curriculum, curriculum, curriculum – it’s on what the GLEs focus; it’s what the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) tests; it’s what the PSAT and SAT test; it’s on what the federal No Child Left Behind Act was built.

Thus, it certainly seems that our entire society values curriculum above all. Yet nowhere built into that mandated curriculum is the purposeful instruction in ethical principles. Nowhere. You can even check the Washington Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction Web site ( www.k12.wa.us) if you’d like to double-check my facts.

A solid work ethic? Timeliness? Preparedness? Organizational skills? Responsibility? Socially acceptable behavior? Integrity? Respect? Honor? Diligence? Nowhere to be found in any official curriculum guide; thus, not to be emphasized in the public school classroom.

But a comma splice must be both taught and tested. The same goes for the ability to comprehend a piece of text written by John Steinbeck or Harper Lee or Frederick Douglass. And the same for the definitions of the words “superfluous” and “pernicious.”

I am by no means suggesting that we begin to ignore the aforementioned curricular abilities; to me, they are still absolutely necessary in order for an individual to become a learned and productive member of the greater society. Rather, I desire that some perennial values be deliberately instilled in our children via an ethically comprehensive curriculum in our public schools.

Some may ask me why I don’t have pens, pencils and paper in my high school classroom for thoroughly unprepared students; or why I don’t allow for several days, or weeks even, for thoroughly neglectful students to turn in late work to me; or why I don’t run out and find thoroughly disorganized students in their next classes to get work to them they have left behind in my classroom.

The answer is pretty simple – I refuse to teach just curriculum. There are far more crucial issues that have been ignored in the education of our children for far too long. I want to remedy that deplorable fact. I want our state, our nation, our society to want the same.

By Joel Stein

There is something noble about this. Driving hundreds of miles across Iowa, fueled by fast food and a few hours of sleep, Willie Lomaning to groups of 20, selling them on how to make our country better. You have to be real close, however, to see this nobility. Because from a distance, running for President as a second- or third-tier candidate looks like self-delusional narcissism.

There are 17 people left running for President from the two major parties, most of them powerful, important Senators and Representatives who, when they decided to run, seemed as viable as a black first-term Senator, a Mormon former Governor of Massachusetts or a much reviled former First Lady. Yet now, for various reasons, they can’t get anyone to pay attention.

Joe Biden, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a man who has been in the Senate since he was elected 35 years ago at age 29, is sitting in the fluorescent-lit community center in Grundy Center, Iowa, facing 18 senior citizens, when his tiny wooden chair snaps in two. “Ruth,” he says, standing up and looking at the first name tag in front of him, “this is a dangerous job, running for President.” In a time of war, Biden is the candidate with the most foreign policy experience. He was talked up as a possible front runner when he ran for the 1988 Democratic nomination. This time, however, his candidacy has gotten nowhere.

Biden clearly knows a lot, rattling off practical liberal-policy solutions for all manner of domestic and international challenges, but he’s just all wrong for 2007. He refers to himself in the third person, calls the Russians “Soviets,” leans patronizingly into people’s faces and brags about passing legislation by saying “I did it with my own little paw, folks.” When a young girl from the Scholastic journalism program asks him when he’ll bring the troops home, he gives her a three-minute-long answer that’s not really an answer.

That night, he attends a Democratic presidential debate. This is not one of the ones nationally broadcast on CNN or even PBS. It’s held by a tiny Democratic group in Waterloo, Iowa, that got in its head that anyone can host a debate at the local high school. More absurd than this is the fact that Biden and Chris Dodd both show up. As the elderly moderator goes over the detailed, confusing rules about time limits–the breaking of which will result with loud beeps like a very unfun game of Taboo–the Senators stand quietly at their lecterns, having been rebuked for interrupting. Only 20% of the seats in the high school auditorium are filled, but the audience gets to witness the only political debate outside of China with 100% agreement on everything.

Chriss Dodd, the head of the Senate Banking Committee, pulls in 1 more percentage point in national polling numbers than you do. Instead of trying to get people to come see him, Dodd goes where the people are. On a Friday night he’s buying a buffet of Irish stew and soda bread at Jameson’s Bar in Waterloo and walking around like the perfect dad at his daughter’s wedding.

If you live in Iowa and you haven’t had your back slapped by Chris Dodd, you are not getting out enough. Steve Ferguson came to Jameson’s after work to meet some friends and talk about his baseball league. “I was just sitting there, and I got a slap on the back, and it’s Senator Dodd,” says Ferguson. And for those who don’t get out enough, Dodd has scheduled “kitchen table” events, in which he goes to your house and talks about the issues.

Sure, a quarter of the people at the packed bar are talking through his speech, with its perfectly calibrated shouting that doesn’t feel like shouting, exactly what Howard Dean was attempting when he derailed, the kind that makes you want to totally crush the other football team. But even the talkers like the bits they catch. “Buck, I tell you what we’re going to do,” Dodd yells from the stage to the bar’s owner. “I’m going to need a bartender in the White House.”

Dodd isn’t leading a campaign so much as a party at which the host is having too much fun to realize no guests have shown up.

Tom Tancredo, the far-right Republican Congressman with such an extreme stance against illegal immigration that, he says, he’s been barred from the White House, handles his dying campaign like a bombing stand-up comic. “I must admit, there was a debate I won hands down,” he tells a group of supporters he’s gathered for lunch. “The NAACP one. I was the only Republican that showed! But I got a standing ovation. It was because I showed up! But they gave me a standing ovation when I left. Maybe that’s because I left!” Tip your waitresses. But check their papers first.

Tancredo’s version of Dodd’s Irish bar is anywhere there are guns. In two days in Iowa, he hits up two shooting ranges. His speech is riddled with self-interruption, his anti-immigration venom prefaced by endless apologia about how this isn’t about race, guys, seriously. He simply cannot match the intensity of his base; in fact, when he took an online test to see which candidate he would support, Tom Tancredo was only 89% in alignment on the issues with Tom Tancredo. And he’s not sure how long he can keep this up–these delayed connecting flights causing him to miss votes in the House and his grandkids’ football games.

With just over $100,000 cash on hand, and having decided not to run for re-election in Congress, Tancredo is down to just a few aides, one of whom, not seeing the irony, signs off her campaign e-mails for “Tank” Tancredo with “Keep on Tankin’.” The Colorado Congressman says he was never running to win; he just wanted to move his anti-amnesty, pro-assimilation agenda to the forefront of the party’s agenda. But now it seems as if he’s wondering if he’s the wrong messenger. And if he’ll be glad when it’s over.

Each of these candidates harbors a Rocky-like hope. But they’re also in deep–financially to donors and emotionally to volunteers who have quit jobs or taken a semester off from school–so they need a reason to stop other than pride or exhaustion.

In mid-October, a few days before he will drop out of the race, Republican Senator Sam Brownback is lost and late, being driven around Iowa by a college intern in the Brownback family’s Chrysler minivan. He is looking at a map, pumping his own gas, paying with his own credit card and then running into McDonald’s. “$7.15? For a yogurt parfait and a small cheeseburger?” Brownback asks the cashier, who explains that the college kid got a Big Mac. “Oh,” he says, and drags a $20 bill and a quarter from his pocket.

The Kansas Senator cannot figure out why his conservative message isn’t connecting, and is confounded when Republicans bemoan the lack of a real conservative in the race. “Whenever I hear it, I’m over in the corner raising my hand: ‘Hello? Hello?’”

Now, at Loras College, a tiny Catholic school in Iowa, Brownback is speaking to a pro-life group. Five minutes into his talk, standing in front of a statue of Jesus on the Cross, he mentions his daughter. He has been talking to her on the phone all day as she boards flights to head home to Kansas. He hasn’t seen her since she joined Teach for America months ago. It will be days before he’s home. And he starts to cry.

Jim Shea
Hartford Courant
December 26, 2007

Turn out the lights, the party’s over.

The Republicans have a presidential candidate.

John McCain has broken loose from the pack and become the man to beat. Just you wait and see.

What has turned things around for old “Walnuts”?

A key endorsement.

No, not the one from the Boston Globe or Des Moines Register. Except for the candidate who receives it, no one pays any attention to a newspaper endorsement.

What we’re talking about here is much more significant. What we are talking about here is the official stamp of approval from Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Wow!

Joe traveled up to the American Legion hall in Hillsborough, N.H., on Dec. 17 to tell the country that the next president is going to be the long-shot senator from Arizona, a Republican.

What makes this endorsement especially newsworthy is that – as of this writing – Lieberman is not a Republican. He is still a registered Democrat, although he now calls himself an independent Democrat, which, as a far as anyone can tell, is kind of like being a modern-day Mugwump.

Anyway, all the 200 or so Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have been secretly lusting after Lieberman’s support for months.

Chuck Norris may bring muscle to a campaign, Oprah her star power. But Lieberman offers something other celebrity endorsers can only hope to match: Joementum.

Once you get Joementum working for you, it is all over but ordering the balloons.

Following last week’s endorsement, the political pundits were explaining that Joementum gives McCain a much needed boost among New Hampshire’s independent voters.

See, this is why political pundits get the big money.

A lot of people look at Joe’s record in New Hampshire and conclude that he has about as much influence as Theodore Cleaver.

In 2000, when Joe was Al Gore’s vice presidential running mate, New Hampshire was the only New England state to go for George W. Bush.

And when Joe ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 – remember when he moved to Manchester? – he came in fifth, with 9 percent of the vote.

Yeah, Joementum sometimes works in mysterious ways.

In his speech endorsing McCain, Joe said:

“You know, political parties are important in our country. But they’re not more important than what’s best for our country. They’re not more important than friendship.”

Of course, this is something Chris Dodd doesn’t get. He backed Joe in the Democratic senatorial primary in 2006, but after Joe lost to Ned Lamont, Dodd backed the party nominee. Joe couldn’t get his head around that.

This is probably why Joe hasn’t gotten behind Dodd’s current bid for the Democratic nomination. (Although you can’t discount Dodd’s Iowa haircut as also being a factor.)

Besides friendship, the other major litmus test for Joe is going to war. This is why it is surprising that Joe didn’t throw his mo to Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani has seemed much more irrational on the subject of attacking other countries than McCain.

I’m sorry, President McCain.

Jim Shea
December 22, 2007

I’m voting for Barack Obama because Oprah is supporting Barack Obama and if Oprah thinks Barack Obama will make a good president, well, that’s good enough for me. Outside of James Frey, Oprah never steers you wrong. Plus, Oprah seems like a real nice person, and is very generous, and she has a good sense of humor. Another thing I like about Oprah is that she is really good at dieting.

I’m voting for Hillary Clinton because Babs (Barbara Streisand) is supporting Hillary Clinton, and I agree that “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” The other reason I am influenced by Babs is that she still has her original nose, which in a place like Hollywood says something about you.

I’m voting for Mitt Romney because JFK is supporting Mitt Romney (in spirit). Mitt Romney (a Mormon) and JFK (a Catholic) both had to talk about their religious views while seeking the presidency. JFK had to convince religious extremists that religion had no place in government, while Romney had to convince religious extremists that he was a religious extremist just like them.

I’m voting for Mike Huckabee because Chuck Norris is supporting Mike Huckabee. Chuck Norris says Mike Huckabee is Chuck Norris approved. Mike Huckabee says Chuck Norris doesn’t endorse, he tells America how it’s going to be. That’s good enough for me.

I am voting for John McCain because Curt Schilling is supporting John McCain. Normally, I don’t pay any attention to anything Curt Schilling says away from baseball because he is basically an idiot. But because the Red Sox just won the World Series and I’m a huge Red Sox fan, I’m voting for John McCain because Curt Schilling is a big-game pitcher.

I’m voting for Fred Thompson because Arthur Branch is supporting Fred Thompson. Arthur Branch is not as big a celebrity as Chuck Norris or Babs, but he is one of the most well-respected district attorneys in the country. Arthur Branch is also very smart and a good political infighter, which is what this country needs to break the partisan deadlock in Washington.

I am voting for Rudy Giuliani because Pat Robertson is supporting Rudy Giuliani, and Pat Robertson claims he can leg press 2,000 pounds. To put that in perspective, Robertson was 76 when he says he leg pressed a ton; the leg-press record at Florida State University is 1,335 pounds, and to get 2,000 pounds on a leg-press machine you have to stack 22 45-pound plates and one 10-pounder on each side.

I am voting for John Edwards because James Denton, the actor who plays Mike Delfino, is supporting John Edwards. Mike Delfino is the plumber on “Desperate Housewives,” and I have always found plumbers to be good judges of people, especially when they are figuring out what to charge you.

I am voting for Dennis Kucinich because Sean Penn is supporting Dennis Kucinich. I would be more enthusiastic about Kucinich if Captain Kirk was supporting him because of the UFO stuff, but Penn is pretty far out there himself.

I am voting for Chris Dodd because Paul Simon is supporting Chris Dodd. If Paul Simon were not supporting Chris Dodd, then I would not be supporting him because he has abandoned Connecticut for Iowa and gotten this brutal haircut that makes him look like he’s running for president of the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce.

Ron Paul’s worked up about U.S. sovereignty.

By Gretel C. Kovach

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 3:37 PM ET Dec 1, 2007

Ron Paul wants you to be scared. There’s a conspiracy in the land—what he calls a “conspiracy of ideas”—to give up America’s sovereignty. It’s a shadowy scheme that begins with the NAFTA “superhighway,” a road as wide as several football fields that will link Mexico, the United States and Canada. “They don’t talk about it and they might not admit it,” Paul said at the CNN-YouTube presidential debate last week. He didn’t say exactly who “they” are, but perhaps one can guess. “They’re planning on [taking] millions of acres … by eminent domain,” warned the prickly libertarian. But elected government officials aren’t acting alone. There’s “an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments” pushing the idea, Paul wrote in October 2006. “The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union—complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union.”

Only it’s not true. The main purveyor of this broad conspiracy theory is Jerome Corsi, coauthor of “Unfit for Command,” the book that helped Swift Boat John Kerry’s presidential ambitions. His latest offering is “The Late Great U.S.A.: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada,” which became a best seller on The New York Times’s business list this summer. Corsi plays on growing nationalist fears. He sees a scenario in which a North American Union is born and shares a currency, the “amero.” Even some right-wing standard-bearers regard the fears as over-blown. Jed Babbin, editor of the conservative newspaper Human Events, says: “I guess there are people who believe in [the plan for a North American Union]. But there are people who believe in Bigfoot.” “The evidence is out there,” says Corsi.

Like all good conspiracies, the NAFTA superhighway is a strange stew of fact and fiction, fired by paranoia. There is a big road planned. It’s called the Trans-Texas Corridor. The idea was unveiled in 2002 by GOP Gov. Rick Perry. And it’s true the corridor was originally designed to be 1,200 feet wide, including a highway for vehicles, railway lines, petroleum pipes, electricity and water lines and broadband fiber optics. (It’s since been scaled back slightly.) A considerable swath of Texas land, perhaps as much as a half-million acres, will be taken by eminent domain.

It’s also true that more than one organization wants to improve commerce between North American countries. The “unholy alliance” Paul speaks of is the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). It was launched in 2005 by the heads of state of the United States, Mexico and Canada. Part of the SPP mandate is to increase security cooperation against terror threats. It also aims to improve trade. But much of the home page of the SPP Web site is devoted to “Myth vs. Fact.” It dispels tales about a “secret plan” to build a superhighway.

Texas officials are still trying to convince locals their $180 billion idea was not hatched to undermine American sovereignty. Controversy stalled the project for several years, but now construction could begin in 2009. Perry has had to explain repeatedly that no federal funds will be used to build the project, and that Texas turned to private firms to finance the road because they could build it quickly without taxpayer money. (The contractor, Cintra-Zachry, is a Spanish-Texan consortium that expects to earn a profit by collecting tolls. Critics, even those who don’t see a conspiracy, say the state is mortgaging its infrastructure to foreign investors.) Texas Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson says he’s startled by superhighway fears. He tells NEWSWEEK he had never heard of a North American Union until people started badgering him about it. “They say, ‘Is this part of the NAU and the amero?’ … And I say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ ”

National politicians are facing similar questions. According to press reports, campaign aides have said that anxieties about the supposed scheme are the second most popular topic Mitt Romney is asked about in New Hampshire. Rudy Giuliani, whose law firm represents Cintra, has also taken questions about it. Ordinary people may be taking the conspiracy seriously because mainstream news organizations—and countless blogs—have. CNN newscaster Lou Dobbs, a trade protectionist, has featured the superhighway on his show as if it were a fact.

Corsi is only too happy to stir things up. When the Eagle Forum, a conservative association, presented him with an award in September for “courage and leadership in protecting America’s sovereignty,” Corsi offered a warning: President Bush’s supposed determination to force North American integration, he told the audience, could cost the GOP the 2008 presidential election. Corsi may have a conspiratorial bent. But he sure knows how to spin stories that shake up an election—and at least one candidate seems happy to help him.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/73372

This one is not for credit, but feel free to comment; it falls under the category “Are you kidding me?” 

Associated Press
December 7, 2007

LAS VEGAS – The one-time other woman in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s life says she’s considering casting her vote for the former first lady.

“I can’t help but want to support my own gender, and she’s as experienced as any of the others – except maybe Joe Biden,” Gennifer Flowers said in a recent interview.

Flowers said she is still undecided, supports abortion rights and has long wanted to see a woman in the White House.

“I would love to see a woman president, I just didn’t think it would be her,” Flowers said.

In the 1992 presidential race, the former television reporter claimed to have had a 12-year affair with then-candidate and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Clinton initially denied the allegation, but later, during his deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, acknowledged a single sexual encounter with Flowers.

The 57-year-old lounge singer says she plans to stay far away from presidential politics.

That’s not to say she isn’t watching the race closely.

Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, she said, is “smart, sexy and experienced.” Mitt Romney is also on her short list.

Peter Baker
Washington Post
November 17, 2007

WASHINGTON – Maybe he’ll bring the slide show.

Former Vice President Al Gore plans to return to the White House after Thanksgiving, apparently for the first time since leaving office, to be honored by the man who beat him seven years ago.

President Bush will host five American winners of this year’s Nobel Prizes in the Oval Office on Nov. 26, including the winner of the Peace Prize, who fell 538 votes short of hosting the event himself. No word on whether the Supreme Court will be on hand to mediate in case of trouble.

The president regularly invites Nobel laureates for a handshake and photograph and decided this year would be no different, even if they include his vanquished rival from 2000. The Gore camp said the White House went out of its way to accommodate the former vice president’s schedule, even moving the event when there was a conflict with the first proposed date. Bush telephoned Gore on Friday to finalize the arrangements.

“The president wanted to call him and lock that in and make sure he’s going to be able to come,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. “He also offered his congratulations and said he looked forward to having him here.”

A Gore adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged the awkward nature of the event. “It’s unusual, that’s for sure,” he said. “But the conversations were good, and the White House has been very gracious about it.”

The situation is not entirely unprecedented. Bush invited Jimmy Carter to the White House to mark his Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, even though the former president had been lambasting the march to war in Iraq.

President Bill Clinton honored defeated challenger Bob Dole with the Presidential Medal of Freedom three days before taking the oath of office for the second time in January 1997.

But Bush and Gore, while together at events such as the opening of Clinton’s library in 2004 and Gerald Ford’s funeral last year, have never reconciled the bitterness from their showdown, and the adviser believes that Gore has not been back to the White House since leaving as vice president.

Gore has been a vocal critic of Bush’s policies, while the president has been dismissive of his former opponent’s work against global warming. Asked once whether he would see Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Bush had a curt response: “Doubt it.”

This could be the chance to change that. “I’m sure he would love to give the slide show to the president,” the Gore adviser said.

Eric Boehlert
Media Matters for America
November 6, 2007

Did you notice the contrasting media responses to comedian Stephen Colbert’s short-lived plan to get his factually challenged TV namesake on the ballot for the South Carolina presidential primary? The mainstream Beltway press could barely contain its glee as it cheered on the stunt, lavishing all sorts of media attention on Colbert and basking in the entertainment glow that his act brought to the White House campaign trail.

By contrast, it was mostly left to nontraditional online outlets, such as The Huffington Post and Gawker, to strike a skeptical chord, to suggest that perhaps this wasn’t the best idea since Colbert’s publicity stunt might pose a distraction at a time when the campaign should be focusing on big issues.

That’s a fair point. But consider this: The Colbert candidacy only became a distraction because the press allowed it to, because the press literally drives itself to distraction on the campaign trail. That’s not an unfortunate side effect of the process. That’s the goal.

I’m almost relieved that Democratic officials in South Carolina squashed the Colbert stunt by denying his attempt to get on the ballot. That’s the only way the press was going to drop the story.

Think of the political press corps as that fat kid from “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” Augustus Gloop. For too many journalists, the lure of the Colbert candidacy is akin to Wonka’s river of chocolate, the one that lured the candy-loving Gloop into the deep end and got him stuck inside the tubes. The press already seems to do everything it can to avoid covering campaign substance. Instead, it pursues trivia such as John Edwards’ haircut, or Hillary Clinton’s laugh and her cleavage. The allure of a saccharine story like Colbert’s running gag was simply too tempting.

That’s because the press has decided to cover presidential candidates as celebrities, as personalities. The media phenomena became enshrined during the 2000 contest when the press announced that presidential campaigns were no longer about how candidates might function as presidents, what they might actually do as commander in chief. Instead, campaigns were about personalities – which candidate was fun to be around and which one was authentic.

The approach is thriving today. Look at the latest research findings from the campaign trail: “Just 12 percent of stories examined were presented in a way that explained how citizens might be affected by the election,” according to Editor & Publisher magazine. “And just 1 percent of stories examined the candidates’ records or past public performance.”

The obvious media reaction to the Colbert candidacy should have been to note it as the book-selling publicity stunt that it was, have a chuckle, and move on. Instead, the press lingered, giving the story way too much attention, and often at the expense of more pressing topics.

For instance, ABC’s “Nightline” found time to cover the Colbert candidacy. Yet “Nightline” has not found time during the past six weeks to cover the war from Iraq.

Colbert’s race did momentarily seem to gain newsworthiness last week when a Rasmussen poll showed the “Comedy Central” host grabbing an impressive 13 percent when positioned as an independent candidate.

None of the news reports I saw about the polling results mentioned it, but what exactly is the point of conducting a national poll since Colbert is only trying to get on the ballot in one state? Meaning, of the 1,200 people Rasmussen polled, it’s likely that, based on census data, maybe 10 or 20 of the respondents were actually from South Carolina. It’s like running a national poll on whom Americans would prefer to be the next senator from New York; it’s a perfectly pointless exercise except, of course, that in the case of Colbert it’s fun and entertaining.

Nonetheless, on Oct. 29, “Good Morning America” host Diane Sawyer, in an apparent reference to the Rasmussen poll, suggested that, “If (Colbert) keeps gaining at the rate he’s gaining, by the end of November he could be the leading candidate.”

Question: In the history of modern-day American presidential campaigns, has a new candidate ever entered the race polling at roughly 10 percent and then proceeded to pick up an additional 10 percent each week for four weeks running? Ever? Why would anybody suggest that a late-night comedian might be able to accomplish what no other candidate has ever done in American politics? What would prompt somebody to suggest that Colbert, by next month, might soon be garnering 40 percent and be the leading candidate for president?

Answer: Because it’s fun.

By Steve Rushin

If the 2008 presidential election comes down to a choice between Hillary Clinton and front runner Rudolph Giuliani, Americans will elect a woman before they will elect a bald man. The U.S. has had more than five bald Presidents, but Americans haven’t voted one into office in 51 years, when Dwight Eisenhower won a second term over Adlai Stevenson–the second consecutive election in which two bald men went head to glorious head.

That was 1956, when 20th Century Fox released The King and I, starring Yul Brynner as the King of Siam. It was an annus mirabilis for hairless potentates but also the twilight of their brief golden age–the last time heads of state were not synonymous with heads of hair.

When President John F. Kennedy went hatless during his Inauguration speech in 1961, he committed in essence a double homicide: of the hat industry and of the prospect that any bald man would ever have to the nation’s highest office.

Since Eisenhower left the White House, voters have carved out a Mount Brushmore of Presidents–Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton–with magnificent hair. What we need is a tonsorial memorial to those giants–Ike, Winston Churchill, Mohandas Gandhi, David Ben-Gurion–of the World War II era, that one brief and very shining moment in history when baldness was tantamount to greatness.

Today the only thing voters like less than a candidate who gets a $400 haircut is a candidate who doesn’t require one at all. Whether or not they realize it, voters think of great leaders as people with haircuts, and really great leaders as people with haircuts named for them. George Clooney once wore a Caesar. It is unlikely that he will ever ask his stylist for a Stevenson.

Or a Giuliani. Indeed, the last time Giuliani was elected to anything (re-elected as mayor of New York City in 1997), he had a scalp full of hair (wink, wink), even if that comb-over was the biggest political cover-up since Watergate.

In the present presidential campaign, some of Giuliani’s rivals have receded (John McCain), and some have even reseeded (Joe Biden, whose scalp is less spartan than it used to be), but none are nakedly, unabashedly bald. Not even Homer Simpson, who announced his candidacy to David Letterman and combs his pair of hairs to the right, a two-string comb-over that still leaves him two strings shy of a ukulele.

Hair is, quite literally, political cover. The emperor may have no clothes, but he damn sure better have a comb. Charles the Bald, the 17 century King of France and Holy Roman Emperor, was not bald but fully maned, to judge by the portraits and coins of the day. The nickname was evidently ironic, the way 300-lb. members of Hells Angels frequently answer to “Tiny.”

I wish it weren’t so. As a bald man, I long for a President who is, in the words of the English poet Matthew Arnold, “bald as the bare mountaintops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.” This is the baldness of Sean Connery or Michael Jordan or Buddha.

But as a realist, I know I can never be President, will never be part of the American hairistocracy. The presidency is not one of those high-profile jobs in which you can sneak by with a paisley head scarf (think Steven Van Zandt of the E Street Band) or a pompadour wig (think Steven Van Zandt of The Sopranos).

Balder men can be aldermen, even Governors and Senators. We seem to have a competitive advantage as late-night TV sidekicks (Paul Shaffer and Kevin Eubanks) and early-morning TV weathermen (Al Roker and Willard Scott).

But no bald man has been voted into the White House in 12 elections. (Gerald Ford doesn’t count. And neither does Dick Cheney.) Before Ike, you have to go all the way back to the election of 1836 and Martin Van Buren. But his white sideburns were so overcompensating–two enormous parentheses bracketing the nonrestrictive clause of his face–that he is seldom thought of as bald.

The country’s most prolifically failed presidential candidate, Harold Stassen, ran nine times, and in many of those elections he wore a toupee so alarming that the Washington Post thought it resembled a “sullen possum that had been dipped in bronze.”

But Stassen knew that wearing a bronzed possum was safer than hitting the stump with a naked scalp. Why? For the same reason, perhaps, that bald men are icons of evil in the movies, from Lex Luthor to Dr. Evil to Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. Sometime in our political history, baldness was downgraded from Churchillian to … Dr. Phil-ian.

Hairless breeds never win the Westminster Dog Show. And they no longer win the dog-and-pony show that is a presidential election, no matter what surveys say about Giuliani as the Republican front runner. Forget the Roper polls. I trust the barber poles.