Obama Begins Record of Failure at the Presidency’s Greatest Task.

It Took 3 Full Days.

The first job of government…everything else being secondary…is to provide for the security and protection of the American people.
When George W. Bush was informed about the attacks on the Twin Towers on 9/11/01 he was reading aloud with a second grade class at Emma E. Booker elementary school in Sarasota, Florida…having arrived at 9:04 a.m. and left at 9:12… as part of a program to heighten awareness of education. He was severely criticized later because, having been informed of the attack by Andrew Card, his chief of staff, he looked startled and returned his attention to the kids, saying they read so well they were equal to sixth graders, this before he left after several minutes and took on the active role of commander-in-chief.

Photos taken at the time show he was stunned and that he continued his reading for several minutes…clearly turning over in his mind all the ramifications: were the two attacks terrorist-related or a horrible coincidence? Anyhow the angry Left took advantage of the interim to maintain two contradictory things: (1) he was dumb and unable to react with alacrity; and (2) he was traitorous, well aware of the attacks earlier, having had some insidious connection with them as a plotter of them with the CIA.

The charges were, of course, ridiculous. In all, it was a very short time spent in ruminating about the domestic and international implications of such an attack. Rather than being transfixed and paralyzed with indecision after the attack, he undertook such decisiveness that he has been criticized by the Left ever since. In fact in short order, he launched two attacks on what he deduced were source-spots of al Qaeda, Afghanistan a month later (October, 2001) and Iraq which he concluded had weapons of mass destruction (in March, 2003). He has been sorely criticized by the Left and others for this although, dismissing the inability to find WMD, the nation’s preeminent scholar of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, said that for the first time the forces of Middle East terrorism had been struck back after an attack…Lewis adding that, apart from the weapons-of-mass-destruction issue, the fanatics never succeeded with attacks on America again.

Contrast this with the attitude of the Obama administration concerning the abortive attempt to destroy an airliner on Christmas Day—an attempt that has been acknowledged by al Qaeda as part of its plan.

It took three full days for the president of the United States, Barack Obama, to address this issue with the American people. During that time, his secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano…who had made a point of dropping the word “terrorist,” substituting for it the words “man caused disaster because we want to rid ourselves of the politics of fear,” succeeded in mucking up the situation very well…saying first that the failed attack proved the system is working (despite the fact that the terrorist entered the airliner without difficulty and it took passengers on the plane to subdue him)…and then when the ridiculousness of her statement was evident, had to walk back the statement saying that it is evident the system failed and that it needed tightening.

I should say it does. There have been more terror incidents (12 in number) including foiled plots on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any other year since 2001. The system failed in at least two ways—failing to revoke a visa that the 23-year-old terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (not alleged terrorist as Obama says with lawyerly condescension) that he had obtained in June despite a later warning given to the Nigerian consul from Abdulmutallab’s father that he was a danger to public safety and not adding his name to a no-fly list instead of allowing it to sit on a lesser watch list.

Yesterday from his vacation in Hawaii, three days after the attack, Obama finally addressed it. And even then his statement was highly unsatisfactory. Maddeningly, he described it twice as an “attempted terrorist attack” when in fact it was not attempted but a terrorist attack period. Maddeningly also, in his statement he said Abdulmutallab “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, sitting off a fire.” Allegedly. Suppose the attack was successful: would Obama describe it as “an alleged attack that was allegedly successful to the extent that the passengers and crew were all allegedly killed by the alleged terrorist”?

This nicey-nice stuff from a malignly stupid president who is failing in his first mission beyond all others, so concerned about changing our economy into a European system that he ignores his major duty.

The language and the fact that Abdulmutallab was indicted on criminal charges means one thing: the Obama administration reacts as it always had against the Nigerian as a law enforcement issue, meaning that Abdulmutallab will have all the benefits of U. S. law despite the fact that he is not a U. S. citizen, including, presumably, Miranda. That’s the same thing that will happen to the five 9/11 terrorist plotters including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad who will be tried in a civilian court, decided by Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder.

In contrast to this is the record of what happened when a German submarine landed 8 Nazi saboteurs on a Long Island beach on June 17, 1942. They were tried in a military tribunal, found guilty and were executed within three months. The president who ordered this was Franklin D. Roosevelt who understood his first duty well. Unlike this alleged 3rd world refugee who has been educated beyond his intelligence.

If we are lucky, we will survive this madness that envelopes not just Obama but has transformed what was once an acceptable political ideology into a faux secular religion…not a substitute for religion but a religion in its own right…which differs from others in that it is completely uneducable when confronted by truth or any factual basis. It is not just Obama, it is The New York Times, major media, sweet little Katie Couric, and the spawn of Ivy League universities that cling to man is infinitely perfectible by those who will transform the kingdom of heaven to this earth.

Atheists and agnostics all, they see themselves as gods and in that capacity ignore reason. In a very real sense they are like the ancient Church father Tertullian who remained loyal to a concept even though is conflicted with Divine Revelation as well as reason. For that sin of misguided non-profundity, Tertullian was deprived of canonization but his words are identical with the views of American liberals: “credible est, quia ineptum est” (it is believable precisely because it is ridiculous)…and “certum est, quia impossibile” (it is certain because it is impossible).

The credo of liberalism in this juncture can be stated “though he slay me, still will I believe in him”…plodding dumbly to apply Marques of Queensbury Rules to terrorist combatants, believing along with the misguided radicals of the Enlightenment, that sweet beneficence will convert all.

It is clear by now that this nation has had its belly full of Obama and far-Left liberalism. But whether our time will run out before this courtly evader of morbid Leftwing fixity succeeds in destroying this greatest country in the world is the question… the answer I to which I, at age 81, am not sanguine.

Personal Aside: Daschle’s Loss Underscores that You Can’t Sell Out Your Church, Your Wife and 3 Kids, Become an Influence Peddler and Hope to End Up a Serious Policy Maker Too.

On the Make.

I first met Tom Daschle many years ago…in 1980… when he was a choir-boy-looking second-term House member from South Dakota: as a matter of fact, the ONLY House member since he ran at large and squeaked out a tough victory with exactly 110 votes votes over his opponent.

In those days you could hire a congressman to make a speech…and since Tom was on House Ag, he agreed to fill in Quaker executives for $1,000 plus travel (the usual rate in those legal honoraria days). His plane was late at O’Hare and I told him we didn’t have enough time to take a cab which would get snarled up on the Kennedy.

“Then—then what are we going to do?” he asked anxiously. He was a neat looking country boy, seemingly eager to please. I said we’d take the new “L” from O’Hare which stopped right at the Merchandise Mart. Sure enough, 20 minutes later we got off and bounded into the M & M club where our guys were waiting. “Wow,” said Daschle, then in his 30s, “that sure was fun. Never saw a train go so fast. What do you call it?”

The “L.”

“Short for what?”

Yes, he was like that. A Catholic from Aberdeen, S. D. with German roots although his people came from Russia. The oldest of four boys.

Yes, he was like that. His speech was good, fact filled and our ag economists were busily taking notes. Not a hint of partisanship.

“You see, I checked you guys out,” he said as we rode back to O’Hare on the “L.”

“Your boss was or is the Republican national committeeman and you’ve been around the track in Minnesota as well as Illinois.”

We chatted about Reagan who had just been elected; Daschle was suitably impressed. We talked about abortion since he and I shared Catholicism. Daschle didn’t think that would be a problem for him—he’d vote with the Church. Well, that was then.

I suspected it then but Tom Daschle was on the make. On the make for a new wife, for one thing: the next year, despite having three kids and a nice countrified wife, he divorced and married a looker lobbyist who was a beginning corporate rep with the airline industry.

And, following that, he began to go Hollywood. He started to vote pro-abortion and developed a smug way of defending it to his bishop—saying at first that he was pro-life but in our pluralistic system he couldn’t do better than vote for what he felt was the public interest. The bishop didn’t like that—but then, rather than now, bishops were namby-pamby on the issue and Daschle got along…receiving Communion even though he was divorced and remarried. Throughout the early `80s he was even more on the make—taking ever more left-wing positions. Once we grabbed lunch when I was in Washington and working against a farm bill he was advocating.

You know what happened to old George, I said, meaning McGovern. McGovern a minister’s son, started as a kind of rural populist in South Dakota and went Hollywood—leading the Democratic ticket to defeat in 1972 against Richard Nixon and later losing his Senate seat because he was skewed too left for his state.

“Didn’t do it right,” Daschle mused. “Got way, way out front, beyond his state. Spent a lot of time in New York and didn’t get home all that much.”

He indicated that this would never happen to him.

Well, what happened was not that Tom Daschle stayed away from South Dakota geographically---but that he moved away from it emotionally. He got elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986. He had a touch with the Democratic in-crowd, being named to the prestigious Finance committee right away. Then he was adopted by the smoothest article to serve in that body since Idaho’s Frank Church: George Mitchell. Mitchell, the Senator from Maine, had been a district judge and the way he looked at the TV cameras when he spoke was rather like an ultra-fair-minded professor. When you heard George Mitchell expound from a standard Democratic talking-points card, you got the impression that he was straining…straining so very-very hard…to be fair. Yet at the end, he embraced all the details of his talking points. That flair got him to be Senate Democratic Leader. And once he did, he decided he wanted to have a well-scrubbed country boy with a ruddy outdoorsman’s face to be his assistant. Daschle.

That’s when Daschle started going Hollywood. When Mitchell was out of town or otherwise engaged, Tom would swallow the same talking points, but put on his homely rural Aberdeen, South Dakota face…wreathed with smiles…as he stuck it to the Republicans. By then his old plain pipe rack suits disappeared. His comely missus, Linda Hall, was hitting the big time as a lobbyist, due to her relationship with him: and she was representing Boeing, Lockheed Martin and American Airlines. They were living well. As assistant Senate Democratic leader Tom had a car and driver taxpayers’ expense. The two were quite a pair…Linda with her entourage, Tom with his. Of course they vowed never to communicate about either Linda’s clients or Tom’s work—but no one in Washington ever did buy that idea from anyone else, much less Tom and Linda.

Then George Mitchell quit and Tom Daschle became Senate majority leader—with a more officious car and snooty driver. Linda went to work as the acting head of FAA under Bill Clinton, an investment that cost them money…but which in the long run added to her stature and earning power when she returned as a lobbyist. Oh I’ll tell you those days were golden: Tom on TV blasting the Republicans, Linda generally doing the corporate semi-Republican business on the Hill. He was majority leader, then minority leader after George W. Bush got picked as president by the Supreme Court in 2000. Then Jim Jeffords a very tacit liberal Republican from Vermont switched his affiliation and Daschle became majority leader again. Oh those were heady days.

Tom Daschle was easily the most identifiable member of the U. S. Senate when in 2003 he got tagged by the newly-named conservative Catholic bishop of South Dakota, Robert Carlson. The Senate was considering a vote on partial birth abortion and Carlson wrote Daschle to get his thinking. Up to then, Daschle had been skittish on the issue…voting pro-choice now and pro-life then. NARAL gave him a 50% rating. But a 50% rating on abortion is not satisfactory for one who wants to be a Democratic presidential candidate as Daschle wanted to be. And Daschle wanted to be the Democratic nominee in 2004. That was the year he was supposed to run for reelection but he was thinking about taking a long-shot…nailing down the nomination early enough so that he would skip Senate reelection. He figured this way: time was rolling on and he’d either take a run at president and make it—or, he’d leave the Senate and make some money…at least make enough money to tie his lobbyist wife.

So Daschle answered Bishop Carlson in a very preemptory way—not the way a South Dakota Catholic ought to do it…but then he was a national figure, wasn’t he? Bishop Carlson was very pointed in his letter to Daschle, saying that if he voted for partial-birth abortion he’d have trouble with the Church. Well he was in trouble with the Church because of his marriage anyhow—but the Carlson letter got him riled.

He answered Carlson by using his favorite theme. Whenever you attacked Daschle you were not honest but a tool of the far-right. So Daschle said the bishop was “more identified with the radical right than with thoughtful religious leadership.” That wasn’t be smart for a South Dakota senator to say which seemed to make it all the more imperative that Daschle put all his chips on getting the presidential nomination and kissing South Dakota goodbye.

Well, things didn’t work out that way. For one thing, the Democratic party was falling in love with an anti-Iraq war firebrand, the former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean. Dean could make a fiery speech; Daschle was more of a slow-talker, easy-going. Then others joined the fray and since Daschle was tied up in the Senate, he missed out as the news focus went from retired general Wesley Clark, a 4-star apparent wonder-boy…to John Edwards, the cracker-talking liberal one-termer from North Carolina…to John Kerry, a gigolo who married rich women and who finally married one of the richest—the heir to the Heinz catsup fortune. Tied up in the Senate, Daschle decided he couldn’t cut it this year (2004) for the presidency, but then he was only 57. He figured Kerry would get the nomination and blow the election just as Gore did. So Daschle would make one more run for the Senate in South Dakota…and wait it out to 2008 when Bush would be gone and the time would be ripe for a Democratic president.

Except when he went back to South Dakota, Tom Daschle found…to his horror…that he was being perceived as another George McGovern—and more than that. McGovern had always been pro-choice. Daschle started out pro-life and switched, voting for partial birth abortion. But his letter to Bishop Carlson and his choice of words riled up not just the Catholics of South Dakota but a number of Protestants who resented Daschle calling the bishop a far-right zealot just because he was pro-life.

To make matters worse, South Dakota’s Republicans named a bland, conservative nominee a devout evangelical Norwegian married to another devout evangelical Norwegian. Abortion was an issue, of course, but not the main one. Thune pictured Daschle the way he became—anti-war in the same radical mood that George McGovern showed (except that McGovern had been a World War II hero)…that Daschle was chief obstructionist, killing nominees to the Supreme Court, that he, in fact, didn’t stand for anything South Dakotans really believed. He was a careerist.

Thune won by a narrow margin—51% to 49%--but it was enough to send Tom Daschle to the showers. So he turned to what he really wanted to do second only to being president—and that was to make a lot of money. Now, he wasn’t a lawyer which would have been helpful and he really didn’t want to be a registered lobbyist because there was something smelly about the trade. So he decided to accept an offer from one of the major hirelings who had left the Senate, a man who knew the cost of everything and the value of very little—good old Bob Dole whose favorite word was “whatever.”

So without being a registered lobbyist so as to keep his skirts clean, Tom Daschle decided to use his name as an influence peddler…giving “advice” and “counsel” to his big money employers like Alston & Bird. He decided to have it both ways and wrote a book advocating the further encompassing of health care under the aegis of the federal government. But at the same time, he used the book and his name to peddle influence for the health care industry: a major step of duplicitous strategy that gave him the reputation of being the fanciest, smoothest stepper and fixer-upper on K street. And of course he got a car with driver again, made millions each year—raking in dough from United Health Care, Inter-Media where he earned millions, raking in dough from speeches with honoraria in the tens of thousands. All the while his Linda was hauling it in.

But Tom Daschle missed the bright lights. He wanted it all. So he wisely hooked on to Barack Obama early and became one of his leading lights. Sure enough, Obama told him he needed Daschle for two major policy jobs—one as secretary of health and human welfare and the other in the White House as health czar. He had it all papered. The Senate, his old body, would confirm him. All the while wife Linda could continue earning big dough and he’d have to scrape by on the $150,000 plus as a cabinet secretary—but he’d have a car with driver, a full plate of activity and…something he missed dreadfully…he’d be hot enough to get back on “Meet the Press,” “Face the Nation” and be a celebrity once again in Georgetown.

One minor matter. He owned $128,000 in taxes primarily for personal use of a car and driver provided by the personal equity firm for which he consulted…headed by a good pal who was his old fund-raiser. He had thought about that debt a lot during 2007 but put it off…taxes can be such a pain. Then when it looked like Obama would win, he asked his accountant to check to see how much he owed. He owed a lot. But Tom Daschle put it off. Maybe Obama would lose. After all, he was still four points under John McCain. Tom wasn’t concerned enough to actually pay his taxes—waiting to see how the election would go. If Obama won, he’d hurry up and pay his taxes. Well, Obama won. Tom got to work but before he could act on it, the Obama team…which sorely wanted him. All the while, Tom’s accountant flagged to his attention the fact that he owed more than $255,000 over three years as income. He still waited—to see if he’d be named secretary. Once he was, he applied the old U. S. Senate magic oil and manfully told the Obama people what he owed and that he would make it good.

But others came before him with similar problems. Tim Geithner the treasury secretary designate got a lot of heat for his being in arrears. Tom Daschle winced, realizing he may have waited too long to pay his taxes to be sure he’d have the job before he wrote the check. He waited too long. Another Obama appointee, a woman who was supposed to be the White House efficiency czar had a lean on her D. C. house stemming from failure to pay her hired help’s benefits.

Tom Daschle started out to win confirmation in the Senate with his old little choir boy humility. Oh God, he had made a mistake—a clerical error. He was sure to override the thing until yesterday AM. That’s when the august “New York Times” editorial came out and to Tom Daschle’s stunning surprise, recommended he withdraw.

When after all the commotion about non-payment of taxes, the “New York Times” ruled him unsatisfactory, Obama had no choice but to throw Tom Daschle, humble Tom Daschle of Aberdeen, South Dakota, under the bus. So yesterday he withdrew. He’s going to have to make do with a car and driver paid by his lobbying friends. And never, never, ever be invited to be on “Meet the Press” or “Face the Nation” again.

That’s why late yesterday afternoon, when explaining it to his friends, Tom Daschle wept. Maybe he wasn’t weeping because he lost the cabinet job. Maybe because of the whole shooting match…selling out his first wife, getting a divorce and splitting from his three kids…marrying a beauteous lobbyist…selling out his Church…

Maybe that’s why he wept. You think?

Naw. That’ll come later. He’s only 62. That’ll come about ten years from now when he’s, maybe, sick and infirmed…and starts thinking about his early Catholic training and his immortal soul. That’ll come later.

He’s crying now because there’ll be no “Meet the Press.”

Personal Aside: “Who, Me?” Catholic Citizens Calls for Boycott of Radical ACORN Funding Group…Whom Would You Name to the Senate if You were Blago?

Who, Me?

Chicago’s Catholic Citizens of Illinois is calling for a contributors’ boycott against the radical Catholic Campaign for Human Development—for which collectors’ plates will be passed next Sunday in every archdiocesan parish Mass. The baskets will be passed notwithstanding that for many years, CCHD has been either openly or surreptitiously cooperating in supporting programs that are deleterious to true Catholic social policies including right-to-life.

The CCHD nationally has been a supporter of ACORN which is the far-left wing of the Democratic party. In line with the age old duplicitous nature of left-wingers in the church (notably the late Msgr. John Egan, called a saint by the unknowing but who cooperated with Saul Alinsky and was one of those who launched “Call to Action,” a group that often has been engaged in vocal heretical practice vis-à-vis church teaching). The usual technique is that money is conferred to hostile, pro-abort groups and when called to account, a representative of the bishops says “huh? Aw gee, we’re sorry!’ Sort of like the way Fr. Scott Donohue (a great “who, me?” actor) did after pro-abort Hillary Clinton was invited to speak in behalf of the Mercy School for Boys & Girls while she was a Democratic presidential candidate.

The first stage of “who, me?” was for Donohue to say he didn’t invite Clinton at all—it was a committee of supporters. When the committee of supporters said that they voted for Clinton to come, all right but it was Donohue who invited her, he said, “What? Who, me?” The cardinal signed off on it.

Then the cardinal’s people said, “no he didn’t.” “Yes, he did.” Following which they correct themselves, “well, he was told about it too late so what could he do, poor man!.” That same kind of indirection, Machiavellian strategy, really has guided the CCHD in its support of radical groups for many years. “Who, me?” In the meantime, the collections go on. And many of those in the pews either doze on or forget.

The CCI Statement.

Mrs. Mary Anne Hackett, president of Catholic Citizens of Illinois, a group of authenticist Catholics which is not affiliated with the bishops, Sunday called upon all Catholics to boycott the CCHD. She can be reached at (708) 354-5373. A portion of her statement follows:

“The CCHD was sold to Catholic parishioners with a slogan of ‘a hand up instead of a handout’ but instead, CCHD has heavily invested in the political organizing techniques of Saul Alinsky, a Marxist organizer from Chicago who founded the nationwide Industrial Areas Foundation which in Chicago is known as United Power. United Power has been financed by various mainline Protestant churches and has made great inroads into the Catholic church in Chicago, recruiting parish ministers and receiving funding from various parishes through dues and contributions. For all practical purposes, United Power is an extension of the far-left wing of the Democratic party.

“In a November 4 report in the ‘Washington Times,’ the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has announced it has hired forensic accounting specialists to investigate more than $1 million in church funding to voter-registration group ACORN suspecting that the money may have been spent in criminal acts that would negatively impact the tax exempt status of the Church.

“The CCD has given more than $7.3 million to ACORN over the past decade for about 320 projects, including $900,000 in 2008 and $1,110,000 in 2007. In June of this year, the Catholic church allegedly froze a $1.2 million grant for 38 ACORN chapters after the community-organizing group was accused of voter fraud in 15 states. Critics of CCHD have clallenged the USCCB to provide evidence of the freeze and confirm that no paymengs have been made to ACORN in 2008.”

President Hackett added, “It is well known that ACORN played a major role in the current financial crisis by intimidating banks through public rallies, invasion of bank lobbies with large groups of ACORN activists and picketing bank executives’ homes. ACORN bullied banks into making loans to people who could not repay them. To avoid vilification as racist, local banks were forced to make loans to unqualified borrowers even allowing them to use food stamps as collateral for the loans.”

End of Hackett statement.

ACORN Sprouts Vile Weeds.

ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) claims to have more than 350,000 members and more than 850 chapters in more than100 cities across the U. S. It endorsed Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential primary (Obama along with other lawyers had represented the group in a 1995 lawsuit). Since then it has been prominently listed as a front for the Obama campaign and Justice department and FBI agents are scouring the group’s records in response to citizen complaints of militant extra-political action.

The archdiocese of Chicago has approved the collections scheduled for this coming Sunday at every Mass.

It will be indeed interesting to see if…and how…the Chicago area media will cover news of the boycott before the collections are taken up this Sunday.

Whom Would You Name to the Senate?

Understand, Blago is bent on self-destruction. But also he’s a man of surprise. If you were Blago, what would you do?

The easiest thing to do is to name that old buzzard Emil Jones. He’d fit right in with Ted Stevens (too bad Stevens won’t be around). But Emil would find a fast friend with Bobby Byrd the ex-Klansman. They’d put race aside to grovel in earmarks up to their armpits. No, that would be too predictable for Blago to do.

Blago’s prime enemy is U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. So name Fitzgerald to the Senate to get him out of the way. Naw. Fitzgerald is too canny to take the job.

Another irritant may be U. S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. who is hustling the media and everyone else to get named to the job. In fact, he has transgressed the line of decorum…is absolutely slobbering over the job. What would you do if you were Blago and you wanted to have some fun? Name Sandi Jackson, Jackson’s wife and alderman, a lawyer in her own right, to the job and watch the fur fly. They’d arrive in Domestic Relations Court in short order.

You are Blago and you worry about Lisa Madigan running against you in 2010. Name her to the Senate. She probably wouldn’t take it. Her poppa would forbid it, saving her to run for governor. Then name poppa. No good. Although Mike Madigan would be the most laconic lawmaker since Blind Tom O’Brien served in the House.

How about that burr under Blago’s saddle Pat Quinn? Now HE’D TAKE IT. You betcha. Quinn has been salivating for higher office since he and his brother started that misnomer the “Coalition for Political Honesty” which under the duplicitous rubric that it would reduce numbers in the House set up the Big 4 leadership and made everyone else mushrooms. Do you know how holy he looks when he lies—which is just about all the time? Look at his eyes when he’s rolling them…saying that “the peeepul” have to get this and that? Those sanctimonious eyes look like they’re going to pop out of his head when he’s straining, the veins standing out on his forehead to affect sincerity. But there’s also a look of guilt in them: some still residual in that old con. He seems in pain when he lies. Looks like that statue of Saint Sebastian in the Vatican basement shot full of arrows, gritting his teeth and suffering—offering it up.

Suppose he would name Michelle Obama? That’d be a true Blago whacked out decision. Take everyone by surprise. He’d get the blacks back with that.

Name Mike Flannery of Channel 2. He’s earned it and he’d take it and he’d be so happy to vote straight party-line to support Barack. A better choice would be Eric Zorn who’s earned it too…but he’d bore the hell out of us by making distinctions. Also he’d have to bring Mary Schmich along to help him sort out the variegated ethical niceties…the kind without absolutes, of course.

A public service to public television would be to name Joel Weisman—getting him out of WTTW…thus creating a Jewish seat—the first in state history. He’d take it too. One thing: you’d have a grinner there—a grimacer, actually…in contradistinction to Durbin who’s a frowner to make believe he’s engaged in such tiring hard work that is the people’s business.

Name Carol Marin of the “Sun-Times,” Channel 5 and Channel 11 whose earned it as well in a lifetime of hemophiliac service to liberal causes with never a break in lefty regularity. She too would take it in a minute. Can you imagine her in the Senate, its Mother Superior? Looking reproachfully at her colleagues…taking the floor to pronounce “icky poo” on pragmatism and shaking a manicured forefinger to those who are cutting deals?

Republicans should hope he names Neil Steinberg. Brash, loud, anti-Catholic, erratic. Obnoxious who’d tell everybody how he stopped drinking. He’d take it and as such even the moribund GOP would have a chance against him.

Too bad Andy Greeley is sick. He’d be a natural choice. He’d take it in spades and become the best wheeler-dealer there age 80 or not, immaculate in his black suit and roman collar. A true Cardinal Richelieu. No, Wolsey? Maybe. Naw—Archbishop Cranmer more appropriately. Chuck Schumer would have a devil of a time getting to the TV cameras as Andy stepped between them and the sage of New York. Andy’d have great fun in service of dissent. The Pope said priests should not hold public office which even got Fr. Drinan to quit. Not Andy. (I pray for Andy every day at Mass…did so even when he was well. Or appeared to be well).

Personal Aside: What Will a President Obama be Like? Look at the Governance Style of Other Axelrod Clients.

Deval Laurdine Patrick lived as a child in a two-bedroom apartment in the Robert Taylor Homes housing project. He was tapped, molded and marketed by David Axelrod for the Massachusetts governorship contest in 2006. Axelrod, born fairly upper and radical in New York city, is a shrewd merchandiser of unusual African American candidates who can catch the favor of white liberals and money people. Not that Axelrod isn’t savvy to the ways of the Dem machine world: he is since he’s one of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s plum advisers. He also makes millions as an astro-turf lobbyist for the city: not as a registered brass-rail hanger-on but as an orchestrator of media concoctions that sell Daley’s choice ideas like the Olympics in 2016.

Dem machine regular he is, but still Axelrod has long held a theory that in the selling of a candidate, particularly black ones, issues and dull statistics-wielding don’t count—symbols and pretty word pictures do and they have to sound like they’re reformers. As far as getting by an electorate, the propping up of attractive black candidates worked. Only one hitch: after election nothing worked. . And that’s the way it has been with the shining paragon of Hope, Deval Patrick who is now the failed and continuing-to-fail governor of Massachusetts. With Barack Obama supposed to usher in a new era of idealism and “hope,”—indeed often the very same words that Axelrod candidate Patrick did—it’s instructive to see why Axelrod’s black candidates often fail to live up to promise and often inculcate widespread cynicism and in some cases virulent media rage when they govern. Indeed by Axelrod’s own testimony (in a laudatory New York Times article) Obama’s campaign rationale was field-tested on Deval Patrick.

Patrick the Obama Model.

First the inspiring liberal bio—ripe to attract idealistically liberal media types. Get this: abandoned by his father, Patrick was in middle school here when one of his teachers referred him to a national organization set up to identify blacks for an academic supercharge. He went to prestigious Milton Academy in Massachusetts, then to Harvard following which he worked with the UN in Africa. Then back to Harvard where he was enrolled at the law school. Awarded a JD. Worked for legal aid, became a partner in a law firm that ultimately folded.

Caught the eye of the Clintons and was named assistant attorney general for the civil rights division where he so enforced prisoners’ rights laws one warden called him a “zealot.” Being a zealot for prisoner rights canonized him with the media. Following the Clinton years he took a prestigious partnership at Day, Berry & Howard and after huge media exposure (as a member of the UAL board where he encouraged the airlines to offer domestic partner benefits to all employees), he was named vice president and general counsel for Coca-Cola. Tired of commuting between Massachusetts and Atlanta, he retired after six years and ran for governor of Massachusetts. He served on the board of ACC Capital Holdings, with extensive financial interest in Massachusetts. Media were impressed.

Next the personal stuff—Married to an attractive female lawyer, specializing in labor and employment law: good for media interest. He leads a highly publicized fight “against anti-gay marriage” i.e. the traditional marriage amendment which intrigues the media. More: one of his daughters announced she’s a lesbian—and he and his wife stood by her, getting huge coverage. Media like gay rights stuff.

Now the Axelrod campaign running on high octane idealism—brimming with slogans including “Yes We Can!” Can do what? Who knows? Another: “a time for hope!” Hope for what? Answer: it’s up to you. He didn’t stress issues but his own biography and he will fight entrenched back-room politics. The only entrenched backroom politics in solidly one-party Massachusetts is in his own party but nobody cares—the idea resonates. . Massachusetts liberals thrilled as he becomes only the second elected black governor in U.S. history. Unstated. Never mind. His victory in 2006 hiked the Democratic margin—already a supermajority—in both Houses of the state’s legislature.

The bright new beginning at the inauguration, propelled by civil rights symbolism, so revered by the trendy media. At Axelrod’s suggestion, Patrick broke with the tradition of being inaugurated in the old House Chamber of the Massachusetts state house. Instead, he was sworn in and delivered his inaugural address on the west portico of the state house, facing Boston Common. Why? More people could witness this breathtaking introduction to “more transparent” governance. Also, as Axelrod noted, as he took his oath, he faced a monument to the first black regiment in the Civil War. That made liberals tingle. But wait! There’s more! His hand was placed on the famed Mendi Bible, belonging to John Quincy Adams, former president and later congressman who as a lawyer won the case to free the slaves from the ship La Amistad in 1839, memorialized (in many cases inaccurately) by Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film for Dreamworks. Brilliant glitz.

I can tell you, folks: news media loved it. Especially when the new governor said (in words written by Axelrod): “I come here to change politics as usual.” Then these words: “What’s missing from politics is hope!”But a tip-off of trouble to come: the transition team he named excluded any members of the legislature, which media cheered but alienated lawmakers of both parties. Also the new governor’s chief of staff had no experience in politics, an Axelrod sales-point to the media but didn’t thrill the various interest groups to be dealt with: organized labor, the police unions.

Ah but then came…

....the Governmental Letdown.

After all the pretty photo ops were taken and filmy rhetoric delivered, it became time to govern. The poetic words dissing old-time politicians rankled Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, veteran Democrat.

First, there were little things that smelled old-time hack politics but which irritated the media and ordinary people greatly. Item: like a machine lifer, he decided the draperies for his statehouse suite were too drab so he ordered new ones at cost of $11,000. Media frowned and taxpayers drowned the statehouse with letters and emails. They pressured him to pay for the draperies out of his own pocket. Item: he felt the car the governor rode in should be upgraded, so he upped the customary car lease for a Crown Victoria to a Cadillac. Media growled. More letters, phone calls and emails. Again they forced him to pay for the upgrade personally. Item: he decided his wife should have the services of a chief of staff, so he hired a former campaign worker at a cost of $70,000. Media shouted and the emails turned into a tsunami: “what’s this? Is this is New Politics?” The new hire quit.

The gaffes continued and got bigger. Item: trying to do a favor for a company where he served on its board, ACC Capital Holdings whose mortgage subsidiary. Ameriquest, was in meltdown, Patrick phoned former Clinton treasury chief Robert Rubin of Citigroup just as an old-time hack would, using his connections. This was truly the Old Politics since Citigroup has huge holdings in Massachusetts. Again a firestorm and Patrick dodged, saying he called Rubin as a private citizen. But he’s not. Thus the Messiah of the New Politics was getting his toga tainted by special interest mud.

Then came the bigger more consequential errors where Axelrod’s so-called “refreshing independence” came into play—the all-thumbs style of a dilettante. Normally a Democratic governor should be expected to get along with a Democratic Speaker but it was not the case with Salvatore DiMasi whom Patrick had vilified along the campaign trail as one of the old fashioned baronial types. DiMasi picked Hillary Clinton as his candidate in the Massachusetts primary; Patrick endorsed Obama. In the primary the Dem pols went with Clinton overwhelmingly, repudiating the new governor. Then came Patrick’s bid to allow three gambling casinos into the state which he proclaimed would generate thousands of new jobs and mega-millions in revenue. But Patrick neglected to consult legislative leaders, the first rule in Politics 101.

Not only did DiMasi administer a sharp defeat to his governor when the media went to the governor’s office to get a comment, they found he was—guess where?—in New York city signing a $1.1 million book deal extolling his new way of governing generating excitement which pleased Axelrod. But not the Boston media. His once high popularity sank like a stone to 41% with 56% disapproval. And media which had led the charge to elect the bright young Harvard candidate of change turned on him like a junkyard dog. He now is regarded as a man who couldn’t live up to the hype. His onetime pledge to cut property taxes has been scotched. Now, says The Wall Street Journal, Patrick’s popularity rating at 45% is “still 20 points off its inauguration high.” The reason: Patrick can’t govern. Marooned he’s nervously eying reelection but hoping a President Obama will rescue him from Boston and give him a cabinet post. No comment has come from David Axelrod—who has been too busy duplicating Patrick’s p. r. for Obama.

If the Patrick case history were the only one in Axelrod’s file, it wouldn’t be news worthy. The fact is, there are several. All black candidates echoing the Axelrod lefty tirade of opposing the old order of doing this…then falling back on the cynical old style of machine dealing, cutting back to “independence” and failing in the governmental attempt. Here are some others:

Stormy Mayors with the Same Mantras.

With past mayoral candidates, Axelrod picked old-line machine pol types but merchandised them as anti-machine independents…with terrible results in governance.

Chicago’s Harold Washington: Here was not just a barnacle-encrusted Dem hack but one who had done time in jail before he was mayor (non-payment of state taxes), a first even for Chicago (jokers said Cook county jail even sported a banner for a short time: “Washington Slept Here!”) Aha, but then he turned reformist which turned the media ga-ga. Axelrod handled his 1987reelection, after the change was made with the same refrain Axelrod guided his 1987 reelection continuing the line that has been Axelrod’s unique refrain, designed to get quick and easy media. Washington, a former Dem machine hack but from this city’s Hyde Park, changed his attitude late in his career and blasted decades of machine rule. He intrigued the media, proclaimed he would reform patronage, refused to work with the patronage-prone Democratic party and so battled with his own party for his first term that the city that works got a new name, “Beirut on the Lake.” Axelrod ran the image bubble machine for the reelection that blamed all on (largely) white intransigence in the city council—but as one who knew both sides, I can say the mayor refused to deal—utterly. Washington was hugely governmentally ineffective though a media-centric mayor, one who could never make peace with disparate elements—largely isolated from much of the publics that were non-minority. He toppled dead at his desk four months after reelection at age 65, a liberal icon but a tragically ineffective mayor largely because of his own doing because he preferred to be seen as a racial symbol.

Detroit’s Dennis Archer: Axelrod took charge of the image-making for the Dennis Archer campaign for mayor of Detroit in 1992. Archer was a prominent black former judge and a former machine worthy. The old lion mayor of Detroit, Coleman Young, also black, was in ill health and retiring. Archer rallied liberal-radical elements, announced for office with a typical Axelrod idealistic burst of rhetoric declaring “The days when a handful of politicians can sit in a back room and carve up this city are over. It’s time to open the windows and let fresh air into city hall!” Media was entranced when Archer declared “Detroit for all! All for Detroit!” Nice catchy slogan. Predictably Young was outraged. He backed an opponent to Archer. Archer won with a minority of black votes and indeed won reelection but battling with the city council dismayed many. A recall drive was mounted to ditch the idealistically liberal mayor. There were some economic gains but Archer had had enough and he bowed out.

Philadelphia’s John F. Street: Axelrod ran his campaign ads and repeated his mantra that the old style gang would be replaced by idealistic governance from former Dem hack Street. Result: Street was listed in the April 17, 2005 issue of Time as one of the three worst big-city mayors in the United States. During a reelection campaign, the FBI acknowledged it had placed recording devices in his office as part of a massive investigation of city corruption. Among those fingered by the feds was Street’s brother who allegedly traded on his relationship with the mayor to obtain lucrative city contracts but who failed to pay taxes on more than $2 million in income. Corruption reigned supreme but few news stories rivaled the IPhone controversy. He was spotted standing in line for hours in front of an AT&T store, waiting to get the highly anticipated Apple iPhone. Embarrassed, he left and went to his office but placed two of his security guards to hold his place in line. No longer mayor but regarded as just about the worst in Philly history, Street is teaching at Temple University. Teaching what? Urban politics, of course.

….Looking at the Future with Obama.

Carefully merchandised by Axelrod as a breath of fresh air and a refreshing independent, Barack Obama is, of course, anything but. Using Axelrod style rhetoric, Obama matriculated here in Chicago as a young hustler on the make, playing the old Dem machine game: using the government treasury to get ahead, understanding the need to steer pension funds and investments to help your pals whereupon they will help you back. Hyde Park, once at war with the old Daley outfit, has been assimilated and now happens to be the far-left wing of the machine but heavily in the machine. Obama had a choice to support an anti-machine Democrat for president of the Cook county board or a dying hack: he picked the dying hack. Then he stuck with the hack’s incompetent son, Todd Stroger. Not to do so would have upset Mayor Richard M. Daley, the powerful Stroger family that is tied to the Daleys, Emil Jones his machine mentor and would have been against the interests of now-convicted developer felon Tony Rezko.

But all the while the goofy boob media, here and throughout the nation, buys into Obama who spins rhetoric both he and Axelrod concoct that hangs in the air like haze, wonderful to inhale but entirely nutrient-free. If Obama is elected, it will be interesting to see if he ends up like all the other Axelrod clients: ineffective and at the end, paradoxically, savaged by the fickle media who brought him to power.

A look at the past Axelrod candidates and what happened to their governance should provide a solid tip-off for the educated voter.

PALEN PICK STILL BAFFLES THE EXPERTS BUT THE LOGIC WAS BRILLIANT.

However GOP Could Win the Campaign but Lose the Election
With No “Ground Game.”


By Thomas F. Roeser


CHICAGO—Why, oh why, asks Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer, who supports John McCain, did McCain pick Sarah Palin and shatter his argument that Barack Obama is the inexperienced one…especially when, during the GOP convention, McCain was within only a few points of Obama in the polls and Mitt Romney would have solidified the seasoning argument plus add the likelihood of carrying Michigan? By picking Palin, Krauthammer wrote, McCain sacrifices the experience issue he has heretofore commanded and taken a chance on losing the key battleground state of Michigan which is essential to any Republican electoral college victory.


The Need for a Good Ground Game.

A good point, one which I shared at the time of the Palin picking…but when I held that view, my 40 years of strategizing as a Republican operative in two states failed me. Romney’s sagacity as a brilliant expositor of the economy and his almost sure-fire knack of carrying Michigan (a key battleground state) would have been indispensable in a normal year…but this one militated for something vastly different. The Republicans are almost bereft of expertise in what we political types call “the ground game” which the Democrats have over us superlatively. And what is the ground game?


In short, political organization—the volunteers essential for tasks that need to be performed by many thousands…even millions across the country…to see that those who want to elect the Republican ticket are (a) registered to vote, (b) continually motivated with literature, bumper stickers, yard signs etc., (c) reminded to get out to vote on election day with (d) those who are physically indisposed to vote absentee—is almost nonexistent in a GOP that cannot rely on armies of union workers hitting the streets. Republicans—even partisans—are famous for disdaining get-out-the-vote activities. That kind of work is only done in the Republican party by ideologically-committed followers aka evangelicals. John McCain has never been the choice of evangelicals. In 2004 a massive get-out-the-vote drive was run by Karl Rove. The White House can’t be involved so such an extent now with George W. Bush not running and the GOP brand tainted by heavy congressional-White House spending. So while McCain and Obama were knife-edge close in polling during the conventions, poll numbers do not by themselves supply the motivation for Republicans to show up at the polls.


Ergo, McCain saw he had to rev up the conservative base and tossed a long down-the-field pass to a youthful woman governor, baptized a Catholic but led by her parents to the Assembly of God church, she then abandoning it for generic evangelical churches. Because Sarah Palin is a perfect 10 on pro-life, maintained by her insistence on going ahead with the birth of her Down Syndrome child number 5, her support of home schooling, her fierce endorsement of the 2nd amendment, moreover a hunter who knows how to dress an antelope for her dinner table, a fisherman, Bible-reading near literalist, supporter of Intelligent Design being taught side-by-side with evolution in public schools, a fierce proponent of voluntary prayer being returned in public schools McCain, a kind of wishy-washy Episcopalian cum Baptist, decided that as good as Romney is on the economy he cannot stimulate the grassroots to such paroxysms of enthusiasm as does Palin. I think he’s right and the Palin pick was a stroke of genius…an insight that didn’t come to McCain from his staff but from his instinct as a poker player—a hunch which occurred to him alone.


Thrown for a loop by the Palin nod, Obama headquarters issued a statement that was folly—charging that their candidate has more managerial experience since his presidential campaign has more employees than Palin had as mayor of Wasilla: an odd comparison since Palin has moved on to become governor of Alaska with a stunning 82% favorability. Obama immediately disowned his staff’s statement. Then Obama followed up by disowning his earlier Saddleback interview with evangelical pastor Rick Warren where, when asked when life begins he responded that the answer was above his pay grade, saying rightly that his answer was flip. Meanwhile, his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) went on “Meet the Press” to aver that life indeed begins at conception and that as a Catholic he is morally bound to accept that fact (putting himself at sharp odds with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) but that he is loath to “impose my view on others,” a weak, shilly-shallying.


Dems’ Inability to Sell Themes.

Never before have I seen the Democratic party…which I alternately covered as a journalist or faced as a GOP strategist in two states since 1955…with greater natural advantages. Eighty percent of Americans feel the U.S. is on the wrong track. Yet it can’t satisfactorily close the argument—and it is not because it has a black candidate. Why this is I will answer shortly…but for now consider the Democratic campaign narrative and you will see why it is failing to evoke response in significant quarters of the public. Democratic Theme No. 1 is that McCain equals Bush. That is unconvincing when one considers the spectacular infighting both have waged with each other on many issues since 2000. Ergo: the theme doesn’t fly.


Democratic Theme No. 2 is that Sarah Palin has a thin resume which should shock people if she were put within a heartbeat away from the presidency. Thin resume for the presidency certainly next to Dwight Eisenhower a 5-star general of the army and Ronald Reagan, a 2-term governor of California but not when contrasted to most other presidential candidates. It’s instructive to note that possessor of one of the best resumes for president in the 20th century was Herbert Hoover, self-made multi-millionaire, food czar in World War I who saved millions from famine, innovative commerce secretary at time of great 1920s prosperity but who became, arguably, the worst president of our time by worsening the Depression’s effects.


Also, here the Democratic narrative contradicts the longstanding Democratic argument for women’s rights. There have been replete instances in modern history of stay-at-home moms joining the fray and exceeding their resumes—notably Nancy Pelosi, Madeleine Albright and Geraldine Ferraro…even Hillary Clinton… whom the Democrats have repeatedly celebrated. Compared to them, Palin has exceeded at her age spectacularly—having negotiated a natural gas pipeline with not just the oil companies but Canadian, federal, provincial and Inuit governments. This in fact is far more experience than Barack Obama has compiled. Ergo here again the theme doesn’t fly.


Democratic Theme No. 3 deals with the economy which truly seems fragile today…even though it grew by 3.3% during the last quarter (which mainstream media largely ignored). A legitimate issue but while Obama proscribes tax cuts for the middle class, he wants tax hikes for the wealthy, a throwback to his party’s William Jennings Bryan demagoguery of punishing the successful. Indeed tax hikes on the wealthy was Herbert Hoover’s solution which he made at the onset of the Great Depression—and the idea is slowing dawning on the blue-collar lunch-bucket crowd that raising taxes in a near-recession is no way to meet the economic emergency. He is pushing redistribution, telling Fox’s Bill O’Reilly that the very rich should find it “neighborly” to take a tax hit so that a low-paid waitress can benefit from a tax cut…to which opponents of redistribution say the low-paid waitress cannot hire anyone but the wealthy restaurant owner can.


Not surprisingly in this economic climate, Obama and the Democrats haven’t been able to sell the idea of refundable tax credits (payments to those who pay no income taxes) and a massive national health care program because of public—even Democratic in some quarters—skepticism. Ergo: incredibly the Democrats’ supposed biggest issue is sputtering despite the fact that the economy that is in Republican hands is sputtering as well.


GOP’s Themes Selling Surprisingly.

In contrast, Republican themes under McCain-Palin seem to be thriving incredibly by Republicans running against the Republican-led government and its excesses. Republican Theme No. 1 which should be the Dems’ major one, the Iraq War has been seemingly converted into a net plus because the surge is successful and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly got Obama to acknowledge that contrary to Obama’s original view the surge “is working beyond our wildest dreams”…although Obama still insists he was right to oppose the Iraq War. Yet when he opposed it, Obama was in the Illinois state legislature—and since he joined the Congress has supported its funding. Obama now argues it is safe to leave, which he has long supported but the issue of the war seems to have lost its original zip and has been converted by Republicans to a bare plus for McCain’s so-called prescience. McCain also has been seemingly spared from anti-Bush, anti-war assaults because he severely criticized both Bush and Donald Rumsfeld for their early mismanagement of the war.


Republican Theme No.2 is McCain’s harnessing of consumer anger at having to pay $4 a gallon for gasoline blaming Democrats for resisting more offshore drilling…with Palin likely to convince McCain to change his historic opposition to ANWR drilling. Nancy Pelosi is falling back from her party’s old quasi-religious opposition to drilling.


Republican Theme No. 3 is McCain’s success at capitalizing on conservatism’s old time religion, abandoned under George W. Bush, lower spending, no earmarks, tax cuts for all to stimulate investment and lessened regulations on business…these tied closely to opposition to inside the beltway mores which gravitate to the failure of the last Republican congress with its winking at episodes like Cong. Mark Foley’s attempted propositioning of young male House pages.


Worries about the Oldest President in Office.


A senior citizen myself, I am stunned to see the 72-year-old McCain so hale and hearty rocketing around the country…a man who has been badly abused physically in his 5-year POW confinement and who has had at least two cancer scares. He suffers from degenerative arthritis and limited arm movement, has had cancerous skin spots removed including an invasive melanoma from his left temple in 2000. He has suffered kidney stones and benign colon polyps and received treatment for an enlarged prostate in 2001. But the pace he is under is savage leading him to tell the Washington Post “if I put in three or four 18 hour days in a row, then I’m not sharp. It’s just a fact. I can be sharp if I can get a little more rest.” He has not had a mental acuity test in eight years.


That’s why what worries me about McCain is not physical. At his age..and for all of us in his bracket…dimming mental acuity carries risk. Twenty-two percent of Americans 72 years old are affected by mild cognitive impairment, a decline in brain function that causes memory loss and can lead to dementia. Ronald Reagan’s last years in office (he was just shy of his 78th birthday when he stepped down) did not match his early years, especially when it was shown that he was apparently (but maybe not) unaware of clandestine efforts within the White House that encouraged middlemen to arrange for sale of grossly overcharged arms to Iran, a fourth of the profits going to aid the Nicaraguan contras in violation of a congressional act that banned all U.S. help.


All presidential candidates young and old make verbal gaffes (Obama said he visited all 57 states in the Union, called Israel a great friend of Israel and confused which concentration camp his uncle helped liberate in World War II). But more attention is focused on McCain because of his age…on gaffes like ignoring the former Czechoslovakia’s current status as the Czech Republic, his statement that Iraq borders Pakistan (it’s Afghanistan) and that Gen. David Petraeus regularly drives in an unarmored Humvee around Baghdad (he most certainly does not). The latter was probably pure rhetorical invention but all the same neuroscientists have identified a phenomenon in the elderly that they call confabulation, or the pleasure of false beliefs.


Ronald Reagan exercised this when he told a traveling press corps that two-thirds of pollution comes from trees giving off natural gases which led press secretary Jim Brady, a Reagan friend but comic, to warn the press about “killer trees.” Confabulation takes untrue “facts” and wrapping them around like a shroud, giving to himself what is called “the pleasantness of false beliefs.” The McCain report of Gen. Petraeus driving in an open car may have been one of these. In any event, it’s a worry for Republicans and all Americans but nothing can be done about it.


A Rorty Worry for the Democrats.


If we have to pray hard that a President McCain will stay healthy, physically and mentally at 72, there are many things that can and should be done by the Democrats to shore up their party. For if Republicans win this election (at this writing McCain is 10 points ahead of Obama) despite all the advantages Democrats have going for them, that party should take serious cognizance of how far their candidates have deviated philosophically from the essence of contemporary America.


Democrats appear not just to be too liberal but too imbued with the intellectual legacy of a prime University of Chicago philosopher who seems to have had subliminal influence on Barack Obama and many of his generation. Richard Rorty who died in 2007 was a major postmodernist philosopher who taught that objective truth is unknowable…and so all wise men must pursue purely pragmatic goals. His teaching may be dense to read but its flavor predominates the faculty lounges of Chicago, Harvard, Wellesley, Princeton and the University of Virginia. I encountered it at Harvard where I taught 31 years ago. It is brim-full in the liberal Democratic party and in the elite sectors of the media.


The Democrats should worry because it is cresting with Obama, manifesting itself in his conversations with Rick Warren at Saddleback. It is not acceptable to American voters at this point in time. Lest you think that Rorty was a passive thinker, focus now on a statement he made shortly before his death which is the epitome of liberal arrogance. “The fundamentalist parents of our fundamentalist students think that the entire ‘American liberal establishment is engaged in a conspiracy.’ The parents have a point. Their point is that we liberal teachers no more feel a symmetrical communication situation when we talk with bigots [sic] than do kindergarten teachers talking with their students. We are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.” [Italics mine].


Intentionally or not, the dominant liberal wing of the Democratic party has substituted the “we know better than you” for what was the so-called party of the workingman of my youth.


If McCain-Palin win, overcoming all that is against them, it is this Rorty thinking in the Democratic party stemming from its left wing intelligentsia that will be responsible. Thus the Democrats have a bigger worry than Republicans with McCain…if they will only recognize it.

OBAMA’S BIG MISTAKE: NOT PICKING HILLARY. McCAIN SCORES WITH PALIN PICK.

An Assessment for The Wanderer, the Nation’s Oldest National Catholic Newspaper.

By Thomas F. Roeser

CHICAGO—Remember the story I told you about British Prime Minister Harold Mcmillan? He said politics was less a chess game than a series of “events, my dear boy, events.” Well, the last two weeks where I have been absent from The Wanderer, have been filled with highly determinative events to produce what will surely be regarded as one of the century’s most exciting contests in presidential history.

Two weeks ago to his dismay, David Axelrod of Chicago, Barack Obama’s top strategist and a man whom I have known for 30 years, discovered that while his client’s Iraq trip was a roaring success, his European speech was a failure—so much so that it was ridiculed as being eloquent but shallow despite all the media pazzaz. Why? Because his client seemed too simplistic, too innocent, too guileless, too idealistic. As one habitué of Manny’s Jewish deli here told Axelrod, “I get the idea that Putin would pat him on the head and say `there-there young man; go play with your ideals while we adults play politics the old fashioned way.”

Then came the first event which convinced Axelrod that his client needed a grown-up realist on the ticket with him—not first term Virginia Governor Tim Kaine or the youthful Indiana senator Evan Bayh, two nice young boys with no wrinkles in their cheeks so indecisive that between them they would have difficulty deciding where to have lunch. The event:

1. The Saddleback Back-to-Back TV Interview on Moral Issues. Axelrod’s client drew the first appearance before an evangelical audience with Rev. Rick Warren. The subjects included social issues and world problems cast in moral perspectives. Axelrod, a pro-abort, was appalled (a close associate told me) at how badly his client did on one central question: when does life begin? That was a question everyone could assume would be asked of a presidential candidate but Obama looked like a deer caught in the headlights. The answer Axelrod had given him was standard operating procedure for a pro-abort: viz through the centuries philosophers, even Augustine, disagreed, Augustine believing it came at “quickening” i.e. when the unborn child stirs in the womb. Augustine was hobbled by ancient biology but Axelrod had trained his pro-abort candidates to start with this absurd antiquity and move quickly to weave an aura of doubt to be resolved by support for greater federal expenditures in pre-natal and post natal care winding up with universal health care, a smooth formulation.



Instead, Axelrod was jarred out of his wits to see his client stumble around on the question as if he and Warren were engaged in casual Harvard faculty lounge banter and wind up by confessing that the solution as to when life begins “is beyond my pay grade.” Axelrod slammed his hand down on the TV table when he saw his client fumble it and decided that Obama needed someone by his side to give some old-fashioned moxie to issues like this. For example, someone who has been around the track a long time. Delaware’s Joe Biden, a pro-abort Catholic, had learned to finesse a question like this. And certainly on foreign policy and defense issues Biden could rattle off the lexicon with the best of the Republicans. At that point Axelrod made a phone call and immediately Joe Biden was sent overseas to Georgia to get a first-hand feel of the dispute between it and Russia. This led to

Event No.2, the picking of Joe Biden for vice president. The liberal media love the 65-year-old Delaware senator and has long forgiven him his almost terminal faults. Raconteur, first-rate wit and nice guy who has invested much in appearance improvement (heavy duty teeth whitening so when he flashes a smile it looks incandescent and painful hair plugs to take a nearly bald pate and make it cluster with grey locks), Biden has lived and laughed down his past but he is nevertheless a walking time-bomb of political gaffes and judgment blunders. It started when he copied someone else’s final paper in law school at the University of Delaware, put his own name on it and was discovered as a plagiarist. He was given an “F” in the course but was allowed to take it over the next year after he begged. Even then he passed with a gentlemanly “C”—graduating 76th out of 85.

Dogged with the idea that for all his charm he is dumb, Biden began a campaign of bragging about his intellect. It has continued throughout his career even after being found-out. He began telling audiences in Delaware and elsewhere that he graduated high in his law class. Then when discovered, he would say he graduated “in the top half.” Not so. He was regularly embarrassed through the years when the facts came out. Interrogating Robert Bork before Senate Judiciary, he tried to challenge the jurist on an item of natural law, a study Bork has made part of his life’s special work…but it was Biden who was humiliated. But his attempts to make himself an intellectual have never stopped. The fudging over his resume came to a dismal end one day in 1988 when Joe Biden was running for the presidency in the Iowa caucuses. He set himself up as a blue-collar working man who zoomed into the intellectual class. He began quoting Neil Kinnock who overcoming poverty became a brilliant expositor of the British Labour party. Kinnock rose from grinding poverty in Tredegar, Wales. His father was a miner who lost his job because of black lung and had to settle for common laborer. Kinnock was running against an ultra-leftist who insulted Kinnock’s working class accent. This spurred Kinnock to deliver a brilliant oration that won for him the election and which helped him become prime minister of England.

The speech Kinnock delivered to justify his lowly origins went like this—and it was video-taped: “Why is it that Neil Kinnock is the first in his family ever to go to a university? Why is it that my wife is the first in her family ever to go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because they didn’t work hard? My ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of Wales and would come home after 12 hours to play football for four hours?” For a few times, Biden used that speech with attribution but in one grand climatic speech he did not and appropriated Kinnock’s speech to himself. He even changed the locale. Where Kinnock referred to his ancestors who worked in the coal mines of Wales, Biden said “my ancestors who worked in the coal mines of northern Pennsylvania.”

Unlike Kinnock’s ancestors, Biden’s were well-to-do. His father was a polo playing dilettante and his parents went to comfortable colleges (his father squandered his money and turned to selling used cars for a time but that had no resemblance to Kinnock’s grinding poverty). Biden’s spectacular dishonesty came when he was in midlife. Still the almost psychological references to his attainments have continued. Early this year in the primaries, he was confronted by a man in an audience who questioned his facts. Biden wheeled about, cited his own intelligence and raged that his IQ was bound to be higher than his questioner’s. The crowd fell silent, embarrassed for Biden.

Yet on the stump Biden is both impressive and a superb attack dog. Axelrod has decided to take a chance that Biden’s old weaknesses will not surface. Also to take the chance to mar his client’s claim that his administration will be free of the old barnacles of party hackdom. Biden said (in this Spring’s primaries) that Obama is not ready for the presidency, that he—Biden—would be pleased to run with John McCain. Notwithstanding, Axelrod (in football terms) hurled a pass on spec a long way down the field. Whether it will pay off is unknown—but my feeling is Biden was a bad choice. The logical way to bind up the Democrats’ wounds would be to hold one’s nose and nominate Hillary Clinton. For two reasons: (1) The Clintons would thus be invested in seeing the Obama-Clinton ticket win and (2) to clean up an LBJ analogy, it is far better having a rival inside the tent spitting out than outside the tent spitting in. But Axelrod has been ill-treated by the Clintons and he could not abide another Democratic administration where he would be treated as an outsider.

Now however the Clintons are free to roam like two cancer cells in the Democratic body politick to subtly encourage the defeat of Barack Obama so that in four years Hillary can run unchallenged for the presidency at age 64. So I see the choice of Joe Biden as a grave error.

Event No. 3: the pick of Sarah Palin. All the while, John McCain who unlike Obama does his strategizing himself, was cognizant of his own weaknesses. The normal thing to do for one who is remarkably close in polling to a projected victor…when one’s party’s president is heavily unpopular and when one himself is 72 years old…is to play it exceedingly cautious: pick a running-mate who embodies what you don’t have (in McCain’s case a thorough knowledge of economics) and who stands to carry some battleground states. That would normally warrant Mitt Romney who is himself a wunderkind on the economy and who could easily help the ticket carry Michigan where his late father George is still revered. But McCain wasn’t buying.

He noticed the coolness of the Republican right to him. He decided the election would be lost by caution…so he chose—as we all know by now—an unknown governor, but a woman governor of 44, mother of five who is an indissoluble pro-lifer and social conservative, who not only talks the talk on abortion but when informed her unborn was a Down syndrome child, had the baby and welcomed him with great joy. Evangelical Sarah Palin is a perfect 10 where social conservatives are concerned…on all the grassroots movement issues, gun ownership, drilling in ANWR. But she still was unknown. But the Democrats helped McCain to get her known. They attacked her while Axelrod winced—attacked her implying she is a hypocrite because she promotes abstinence programs in the Alaska schools while her unmarried 17-year-old daughter was made pregnant by her boyfriend (whom she will marry and with whom she will have her baby).

The spectacle of Democrats attacking a young pro-life mother-governor and abstinence supporter whose daughter fell into sin is, without cynicism, the best thing that could happen to a Republican ticket that until recently was regarded as ho-hum. The spectacle of Democrats doubting that a woman governor has the ability of succeeding to the presidency when they themselves have ditched a veteran woman senator to nominate a man not yet through his first Senate term is rich irony. I see the nomination of Sarah Palin as brilliant, although with a very young candidate open to a vast liberal media assault there are very real dangers.



Event No.4, Hurricane Gustav. Michael Moore, the left-wing Catholic who made millions as a film documentarian, cheered with all his 320 lbs. quivering with happiness when weather forecasters announced that a massive hurricane was racing to decimate New Orleans at exactly the hour the Republican convention would open in St. Paul. I could see what Moore meant. It would (a) spotlight the alleged ineptitude of the Bush administration vis-à-vis Hurricane Katrina; it would (b) take the media focus off the Republicans and substitute human interest agonies instead of political speakers and (c) it would be a great device for the Democrats to criticize anything short of perfection in rescue operations.

Instead, Gustav was a decided plus because (a) it provided an excellent reason for the party to eschew its highly unpopular president and vice president (Bush and Cheney are popular with the GOP rank and file but their being on view in St. Paul would trump McCain and Palen); (b) it provided a showcase for five Republican governors to work smoothly with the Republican national administration, a difference from 2005; and (c) gave a decided thrust to the career of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, 36, brightest of all the new governors to work his weal in behalf of his state.

What Can Go Wrong?

Lots. The mainstream media have redoubled their energies to elect Obama. Example: Andrea Mitchell, NBC-TV political correspondent, an agnostic as is her foxy husband Alan Greenspan but far-far more liberal and a Democrat-rooter, gasped when she saw Obama’s 6-minute-long rambling answers in contrast to McCain’s staccato ones on Rick Warren’s Saddleback program and immediately used a baseless filmy rumor to charge that somehow McCain had advance knowledge of the questions…as if “when do you believe life begins” was not to be deduced for a program for evangelicals. First, the media will zero in on Palin and try to transform her into a Dan Quayle, especially in the Oct. 1 debate with Joe Biden. Mitchell will be enlisted in that effort.

Second the media will reemphasize its campaign that at 72 McCain is a doddering old man who will turn the country over, either by death or senility, to a brash young woman who is likely to be intemperate and plunge us into war. Third will emphasize that neither McCain or Palin have a clue on how to resurrect the economy, having succeeded in driving Phil Gramm out of McCain’s camp by insisting Gramm’s statement that we have become a nation of economic whiners….correct in my view…was hideously insensitive.

Fourth, the hope that Palin’s nomination would automatically draw Hillary Clinton Democrats to the GOP is far less likely than McCain initially surmised. Hillary Clinton women…and there are a great many of them in my suburb where she was a neighbor a few blocks away…are definitely pro-abort…not gun rights enthusiasts or share any of the values of Sarah Palin. Morever these women sorely want the presidency to be Hillary’s, not anyone else’s and may feel the election of the first woman vice president being a Republican as a no-no. Yet Palin might just bring home one trophy. Geraldine Ferraro has said she has not yet decided whom she will vote for and cited McCain’s pick of Palin as one good reason.

Finally, the sleepy eye of the electorate has remained open longer than anyone expected…noticing favorably Obama’s acceptance speech before a pillared set that on close examination was designed to resemble the Lincoln Memorial before which Martin Luther King gave his smashing speech—an example of Axelrod’s subliminal genius at its best. It blinked in disbelief when Obama punted in inept cowardice on the issue of when life begins and contrasted this with McCain’s punchy responses. It initially liked the selection of Biden and can see him in the presidency which it still has difficulty with Obama. It doesn’t know what to make of Palin as yet…cannot visualize her as president (no matter how enthused the GOP base is about her) and can easily be convinced by the duplicitous media that she should be home with her kids and her daughter who will make her a young grandmother.

The answers to all these and issues I have not foreseen will come soon.

HOW THE LIBERAL MEDIA STONEWALLED THE EDWARDS STORY.

By Thomas F. Roeser

CHICAGO—What is important about the John Edwards story…about which we have not heard the end… is not the scandal nor the former presidential candidate lying about it. It’s how the mainstream media sought to protect Edwards by putting a gag on the story—which actually succeeded long after disclosures first came out in 2006…the gag lasting effectively until earlier this month. It goes to the heart of what many Americans are only now beginning to see: Mainstream” media are as biased for liberalism as conservatives say.

Two journalistic liberals now attest to the fact. Howard Kurtz, media critic for The Washington Post last week blasted his mainline journalistic colleagues for trying to snuff out the truth because Edwards is a fellow liberal. He wrote, “the widespread allegations…were an open secret that was debated in every newsroom and reported by almost none.” He was joined by Clark Hoyt, ombudsman for The New York Times whose job is to determine how impartial his newspaper is. He wrote, “The John Edwards `love child’ story finally made the national news media and made the front page of yesterday’s Times. For weeks, Jay Leno joked about it, the internet was abuzz and readers wondered why The Times and most of the mainstream media seemed to be studiously ignoring a story of sex and betrayal involving a former Democratic presidential candidate who remains prominent on the political stage.”

Hoyt harshly condemned his employer: “Before Edwards’ admission, The Times never made a serious effort to investigate the story, even as [The National Enquirer] wrote one sensational report after another.”

What were the ostensible excuses given for this mainstream attempted gag on the news? There were four. One: Edwards is now a private citizen and is not running for public office. Answer: This doesn’t wash. Edwards was on a short-list for the vice presidential nomination and on a very-very short list for attorney general of the United States in an Obama administration.

Two: a private sexual affair should remain private especially if one is not in government. Answer: But when one intends to be in government, the threat of blackmail is particularly important. Why? Undisclosed sexual peccadilloes leave public officials open to all kinds of “payments” that can direly affect public policy through commission or lack of commission of acts that can affect the nation. Alexander Hamilton bravely faced up to such blackmail when as treasury secretary he divulged the full nature of a sex scandal where he was being importuned to finagle with treasury policy to keep his actions hushed. He blew the lid off and ended his career accordingly.

Three: disclosure of marital infidelity would be a heartless act in view of Elizabeth Edwards’ wife who is suffering from cancer. Answer: Edwards and his wife campaigned as a team, he regularly attesting to the importance his marriage had in his life, Later, as it turned out, Elizabeth Edwards, a lawyer, had known of the infidelity when it was first committed, in 2006, and agreed to let the campaign be started knowing of its likely affect on Edwards with the possibility of future blackmail were he to be elected—a shocking denial of responsibility by two officers of the court who placed Edwards’ election foremost no matter what might be divulged later.

Four, and most often cited: The National Enquirer is a sleazy supermarket tabloid which freely admits it pays its informants for tips, a practice shunned by mainstream press. Furthermore it stumbled once, having to retract a story on Elizabeth Smart when it admitted two informants had provided false information. Answer: It’s lurid and not everybody’s cup of tea (certainly not mine). But the paper has been right on the money many other times, beginning with the Gary Hart-Donna Rice story, important elements of the O. J. Simpson story such as Simpson’s writing the sensational book If I Did It laying out how he would have killed his ex-wife and her friend supposedly in theory; also the details of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky story; the deal Hillary’s brother cut to get a presidential pardon for a client from Bill Clinton in return for a $400,000 fee. Furthermore The Enquirer was the first to break the Rush Limbaugh story where the conservative talk show host acknowledged dependency on painkillers which triggered Florida authorities to probe his drug use—a story the liberal mainstream media jumped on with exultant glee.

The mainstream media then is left with no responsible answer except that they protected Edwards because they agreed with him on major issues and feared his involvement in scandal would jeopardize the campaign of their favorite, Barack Obama, to be elected president.

Mainstream’s Move to the Center.

All the same, the Edwards matter has shown a gradual move of some mainstream outlets to the center from the ultra-left. Several events are responsible for it: the great drops in newspaper circulation and TV viewing of broadcast networks and the competition of other outlets including cable TV and the internet. Not long ago all U.S. political thought was seemingly orchestrated by the mainstream including the major national newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and the major broadcast entities, NBC, CBS and ABC as well as the major newsmagazines Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.

That was a formidable bloc of solidly liberal opining which were responsible for a culture of pretty boy candidates including the near deification of a very ordinary but attractive young president, John F. Kennedy into a national icon. Kennedy’s 1000 days in office produced the Bay of Pigs which led to Nikita Khrushchev’s view that JFK was a callow, immature leader whereupon he ordered the Berlin Wall to be raised. Kennedy told James Reston of The New York Times that Khrushchev’s slighting view of him would mean the U.S. would have to win the Vietnam war, meaning a significant troop buildup. Khrushchev’s bad impression of Kennedy led to the Cuban Missile crisis where Kennedy convinced our media he had stood up firmly to the Russian while privately he and his brother Bobby pacified the USSR by pulling U.S. missiles out of Turkey.

The only saving grace was his tax cut, forced on him by Douglas Dillon and Walter Heller which helped the rich, bringing the top income rate down from 91% to 65% and which spurred the economy. It’s a tribute to Old Media cosmetology that Kennedy’s luster still endures for bright tokens such as the Peace Cops and the partial test ban treaty (which the Soviets cheated on) despite more than 40 years of revisionist scholarly research that verifies his as a mediocre presidency.



However, since the JFK romance with the media, three earthquakes changed the mass communications. First was the introduction of cable TV, the second the repeal of the “Fairness Doctrine” that liberated talk radio which spawned Rush Limbaugh and his imitators who tapped a hitherto unperceived market of angry conservative males producing huge profits for AM radio which hitherto had been near financial death; and the third the birth of the Internet which gave ordinary Americans access to unregulated and uncensored opinion and information. All three radically transformed U. S. media from a largely controlled opinion enterprise to a liberation of right-wing (and left-wing) thought.

Aftershocks followed immediately. Neo-con Press baron Rupert Murdoch began to buy newspapers and television stations all over the country. The New York Post once an icon of the left turned overnight to the right. Murdoch’s purchase of Fox News gave conservatives control of a major television arm. His winning control of The Wall Street Journal changed a solidly economic conservative (albeit dull) newspaper with a lucid editorial support of supply-side economics into a more readable, politically conservative (albeit neo-con) newspaper (last week a splendid feature focused on the agony suffered by women who undergo abortion).

Not that the old-guard liberal media establishment didn’t put up a fight for the gag order on Edwards news. The editor of the Los Angeles Times, the major daily owned by the Chicago Tribune, issued an order to his reporters who write on the paper’s blog: “I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notice.” Bob Schieffer of CBS News, aging watchman at the drawbridge protecting against anti-liberal news, sniffed on Don Imus: “I believe this is a story we will be avoiding because it appears to me that there’s absolutely nothing to it…This seems to be just sort of a staple of modern campaigns, that you get through at least one love child which turns out not to be a love child. And I think we can all do better that this one.”

The arch-purveyor of proper liberal news interpretation on TV is Jim Lehrer (a surname he pronounces “Jim Lah-rah” in fashionable eastern intonation, despite his Wichita, Kansas and San Antonio upbringing) of the “Jim Lehrer NewsHour” on PBS. He pronounced himself appalled that the scandal detracted from the real import of the news concerning health care and energy.

But notwithstanding CBS and the LA Times, the seismographs are still rattling with the earthquake-like changes. The Washington Post has now begun to move center-ward. In the past, the Graham family coterie and its employees had not only been liberals but Philip Graham played a powerful broker’s role in Democratic party counsels; Kay Graham, his widow, became a popular liberal duenna in Washington, D. C. society and her faithful employee, Ben Bradlee became a JFK insider, bursting into print with Kennedy scoops (such as the naming of Robert Kennedy as attorney general) in recompense for which Bradlee kept mum about JFK’s sexual escapades. They were all—the Grahams and the Bradlees with Ben’s many wives including the last, Sally Quinn—were kingmakers of Georgetown society. Now the Grahams are dead, Bradlee at age 87 is long retired and Kay Graham’s granddaughter is the paper’s publisher. The new Kay in town, Kay Weymouth, is a far different breed of cat than Kay Graham. Harvard and Oxford-trained, she is a lawyer and accountant by training and deeply worried about the Post’s falling revenue.

Kay Weymouth has to face competition from The Washington Times which has only a fourth of the Post’s circulation but has a bottomless coffer of money from its owner Sun Myung Moon who has spent $2 billion on the paper so far and has announced he will spend as many future billions as is needed to keep the paper competitive. So Kay Weymouth made the decision to turn the direction of The Post rightward, if it only means going from ultra-fashionable left to the center. When Murdoch fired his centrist Wall Street Journal editor, Marcus Brauchli because he was not knee-jerk rightwing enough, Weymouth snapped him up and put him in as editor of The Post.

Quickly the newspaper moved under Brauchli from being a predictable critic of George W. Bush to supporting the Iraq War, opposing a timetable for troop withdrawal, endorsing Bush’s CAFTA [the Central America Free Trade pact] and boosting the partial privatization of Social Security. Then one of its key political reporters, Dana Milbank began making fun of Barack Obama’s messianic fetish—an astounding development at the paper. Now Howie Kurtz, Post media critic is finding fault with his colleagues for not moving more aggressively on the John Edwards story (the Post was asking questions of Edwards quite early in the game).

It’s too early to tell whether the other Post properties—Newsweek and the Post/ Newsweek TV stations—may follow the center-ward trek directed by Kay Weymouth but last week reporter Jonathan Darman led off with what may be a change in direction. Newsweek has been a reliable mum’s-the-word protector of liberal secrets in the past but Darman wrote an exclusive with our only personal character sketch of Rielle Hunter who was involved with John Edwards. It so happened Darman was on a small plane with the two of them when Hunter was ostensibly running a film crew that was taping Edwards.

Darman: “The first time I laid eyes of Rielle Hunter I could tell she was a story. She had frizzy blond hair with dark roots, wore bright nail polish and moved like someone who knew how to work a room…Her speech was peppered with New Age jargon---human beings were being dragged down by `blockages’ from their actual potential. History was the story of souls entering and escaping our field of consciousness…Her latest project was John Edwards. Edwards, she said [to Darman], was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential…[H]e had the power to be a `transformational leader’ on par with Gandhi and Martin Luther King. `He has the power to change the world!’ she said.”

Well, Rielle Hunter nee Lisa Druck certainly changed Edwards’ world and probably did all of us a good turn by doing it.

The On-Going Campaign.

Latest compilation of electoral votes from Votes from Abroad, a nonpartisan group, has Obama at 289 and McCain at 249. Needed to elect: 270. The tally shows an ever-so-slight tipping, almost imperceptible, to McCain. Realclearpolitics lists the close fight in key tossup states. Colorado, Obama 47.3, McCain 45.7. Virginia, Obama and McCain tied at 46.7. Missouri, Obama 45.6, McCain 47.3. Ohio, Obama 46.6, McCain 45.5; Florida, Obama 45.8, McCain 47.0.

One interesting poll not pertaining to the horserace but to attitudes was taken by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and released last week. Obama may be the fresh face the world’s been crying for but 48% said they’re hearing too much about him while just 26% said the same about McCain. Two-thirds of Republicans and half of independents say they’re heard too much about Obama along with a third of the Democrats, a very significant number. At the same time, nearly four in 10 said they’ve been hearing too little about McCain—about four times the number who said the same thing about Obama. About half the Republicans, four in 10 independents and even a quarter of Democrats said they’ve not heard enough about the GOP candidate.

Baked Alaskan.

By Thomas F. Roeser

Last Week’s column in The Wanderer, oldest national Catholic weekly (with some updating since publication).

Baked Alaskan.

CHICAGO—The indictment and likely conviction last week of the top Senate Republican in seniority—after 40 years brokering deals, most of them fiscally reckless-- underscores the moral decay that has made the GOP only slightly less tolerable in governance than the Democrats.

And the corruption goes far deeper than the $200,000 worth of gifts that Alaska’s Ted Stevens, an Episcopalian, is accused of accepting and not listing on his Senate ethics forms. That’s minor league stuff. For at least a generation, most leading appropriating Republicans like Stevens have dealt under the table with Democrats—not on legislative issues where compromise is acceptable—but sharing the pie on billions of dollars of taxpayers’ expenditures, to keep the same crooked incumbent Demi-publican (or Republic-crat) party afloat, whose slogan is “where’s mine?”

Major media focus is on the 84-year-old Stevens’ money graft but this is peanuts next to the deals he has made to keep himself in power at the expense of the taxpayers as either Senate appropriations chairman or ranking Republican who has a deal going with the Democratic chairman, 90-year-old porker Bobby Byrd (D-WVa.). Still, the private boodle has ended his career. Federal authorities raided Stevens home in the resort town of Girdwood, 40 miles south of Anchorage, last summer. From May, 1999 to August, 2007, say prosecutors, Stevens hid “his continuing receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things of value from a private corporation”—VECO, a major Alaska oil services company—from his Senate ethics disclosure form. This included major improvements to his vacation home in Alaska, including a new first floor, garage, wraparound deck, plumbing, electrical wiring, car exchanges, a gas grill, furniture and tools. In addition the feds charge he got huge discounts on cars by swapping cheaper models for more expensive ones—receiving a brand new Land Rover for his son worth $44,000 in exchange for a 1964 Mustang worth under $20,000.

But the big scandal is the dexterity with which Stevens primed the pump of federal spending on so many projects with bluster (“I’m a mean SOB” he declared on the Senate floor as his colleagues nodded, knowing he will never forget or forgive one who doesn’t support his spending). Born in Indianapolis, reared in California in modest circumstances, he graduated from UCLA and Harvard law on scholarships. He went to Alaska because it was virgin territory and ripe for a hustler, moving from U.S. attorney in Fairbanks to the legislature and then an appointment to the Senate at age 45. Since then he has been known as the purveyor of what is called in Alaska “Stevens money.”

The snuffling into the federal money trough never stopped. When he was appropriations chairman he ruled the roost but when he wasn’t he cut deals with the Democrat who was…swapping his votes for their projects so he could get repaid in turn. Some of the stuff he did for his state was good: getting the oil pipeline through by one vote in 1973, forcing through repeal of the stupid law banning exports of Alaskan oil, which opened up lush east Asian markets. And he has been the point man for opening up the ANWR to oil drilling. But as the years rolled on, Stevens became both sloppy and greedy. As much federal largesse as he could stuff into his bag, he would assign to Alaska. His state is a semi-welfare state, occupying first in per capita federal spending for more than a dozen years, with $13,800 spent on each Alaskan this year. The economy largely depends on oil and fishing on government-owned land and sea. Each of the state’s 680,000 inhabitants gets an annual payout of $1,654 from the Alaskan oil fund.

In 1998 Stevens held up the entire Senate in his fight to get federal goodies for a tiny Aleutian village of King Cove, gobbling $37.7 million for an airport road, a project that sent lawmakers’ eyes rolling in disbelief.

In the last two years alone, he treated tax money like it was his own personal philanthropy: $17 million for anti-alcohol funding in the state, $5.5 million for the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; $35 million for a commission to study Mount McKinley; $10 million for something called the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board; $16.8 million to study sea lions in Alaska; 150,000 for a botanical garden in Anchorage; $900,000 for an aquarium in Ketchikan; $525,000 to upgrade a quarry in Nome; $750,000 to upgrade a quarry for something called the Bering Straits Native Corporation; and millions to pay Japanese technicians to come to Alaska to evaluate salmon eggs (the Japanese said they would only buy them if their technicians could inspect them and without these sales the fisheries would be unprofitable).

The limit seemed to have been reached in 2005 when Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla), a cost-conscious conservative, challenged the Old Lion and moved to de-fund the Ketchikan-Gravina bridge which Coburn called “a bridge to nowhere” which would connect the town of Ketchikan (population: 8,900) with an airport on the island of Gravina (population: 50) at a cost to federal taxpayers of $320 million. The bridge would relieve townsmen of having to wait from 15 to 30 minutes for a ferry and be charged $6 per car. Coburn argued the money should be used instead to rebuild a New Orleans bridge destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Stevens took to the floor and shouted: “I will put the Senate on notice—and I don’t kid people—if the Senate decides to discriminate against our state, to take money from our state [italics mine] I’ll resign from this body. This is not the Senate I came to. This is not the Senate I’ve devoted 37 years to , if one senator can decide he’ll take all the money from one state to solve a problem of another.”

His resignation threat was viewed by most of his Republican and Democratic colleagues with alarm, not because they were endeared with the crotchety, profane Stevens but because as appropriations head, he was the body’s top broker of projects for their states. So they rallied and beat back the Coburn amendment 82 to 15.

Stevens’ role meant during the Clinton administration depended on support he got from the Oval Office for his Alaska projects. He paid Clinton back in spades in December, ,1998. That month Henry Hyde (R-IL), chairman of House Judiciary personally brought the House-passed bill of impeachment to the Senate to vote for conviction. There were two charges, one definitely provable, perjury under oath, the other less so—obstruction of justice.

Hyde, a close friend of this writer, was confident that any reasonable senator would vote to convict the president on perjury which special prosecutor Kenneth Starr had proven beyond a shadow of doubt with confiscated emails and computer hard-drive from Monica Lewinsky. Sixty-seven votes or two-thirds of the Senate were needed to convict. But when Hyde met privately with a group of leading Republican senators (along with the House prosecutor, Chicagoan David Schippers), it was Stevens who declared that Bill Clinton would not be convicted. He looked across the table at Hyde and said these words (according to Schippers who was interviewed by this writer):

“I don’t care if you prove that [Clinton] raped a woman and then stood up and shot her dead—you are not going to get sixty-seven votes.”

The nervous GOP leader, Trent Lott who was worried that the Clintons would leak stuff on his suspected indiscretions as a male cheerleader at Old Miss, smiled weakly. Stevens’ words meant far more than they conveyed. They meant Stevens would do all he could to save Clinton with whom he had several deals cooking. Hyde then knew conviction of Clinton was likely lost. Old Lion Stevens covered his tracks while working in behalf of Clinton. Working behind the scenes, he got malleable Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania to vote “not proven.” He collared liberal Republicans John Chafee (RI), Susan Collins (Maine), Fred Thompson (Tenn.) who needed an appropriation from Stevens for his state and John Warner (Virginia) who he knew was “always available for a deal.”

Then Stevens blurred his own record to give himself an argument for folks back home. While voting “not guilty” on the issue of perjury—the one count that could have easily convicted Clinton—he turned around and voted “guilty” on obstruction of justice, the harder-to-prove count to cover himself with conservatives and yet not hurt Clinton. At the last minute, rounding a turn in the Senate cloakroom he nailed another “not guilty” on perjury for his bag—conservative Richard Shelby (Ala.). Shelby was ready to vote Clinton guilty on perjury but really needed money for a dam in Alabama so as to make his reelection come easier. Result after bargaining with Stevens, Shelby voted “not guilty” on perjury. Clinton was spared conviction he richly deserved for perjury 45 “for” and 55 “against.” Freeing Clinton of obstruction was a piece of cake when even easy-going John Warner joined Stevens in voting “guilty” for a tally of 50 guilty and 50 not-guilty, still far from the 67 needed. That’s how the Senate’s ace dealmaker has always operated.

When he narrowly beat Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to save his expensive “bridge to nowhere,” the officious Stevens walked over to Coburn’s desk, leaned over and snarled in his ear: “You don’t care how you harm the Republican party, do ya, Tom?” “No, Ted,” said the evangelical Coburn, a medical doctor, calmly, “you’re the one who’s killing the party.” Last week Coburn was proved right. Stevens is very likely to lose re-nomination later this month and a Democrat is heavily favored to fill his Senate seat. If Stevens were to resign his seat now and be replaced on the ticket by a Republican, the GOP might hold the seat but the old man is going to go down fighting and bring his party in Alaska with him.

The Presidency: Enough Gaffes to Go Around.

Slowly but surely the Electoral College map is swinging rightward to favor John McCain, despite the fact that voters want change, despise George W. Bush and have a cynical view of Republicans except for national security. Realclearpolitics.com’s most recent poll shows Obama dipping below the win mark of 270 votes for 238. McCain has 163 and toss-up states total 137. That’s despite the fact that McCain made a huge gaffe in his supposed area of expertise on “Good Morning America” when asked how serious the situation in Afghanistan is. “I think it’s serious,” said the 22-year senator. “It’s a serious situation but there’s a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I’m afraid it’s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border.”

One problem. Iraq and Pakistan don’t share a border. Afghanistan and Pakistan do. Yet the public isn’t watching him but is watching Obama. For that reason, the election is Obama’s today but his to lose. What worries Chicago’s David Axelrod, Obama’s top strategist, is that Obama is doing fairly well in that department. He s currently viewed as favorable by 51% (Rasmussen report) and McCain by 55%. This is the lowest rating for Obama since he wrapped up the nomination. The Illinoisan is viewed favorably by 83% of Democrats, 22% of Republicans and 47% of unaffiliated voters. McCain: 87% favorable by Republicans (a big change), 26% by Democrats and 61% by unaffiliated voters, a figure that is growing seemingly with every poll. Even more devastating is that only 31% of white voters tell The New York Times that they have a favorable impression of Obama compared with 83% of blacks. Last week Colorado went from Obama up five to McCain up two; Michigan from Obama plus six to plus four, Minnesota from Obama up 17 to up two and Wisconsin from a 13-point Obama lead to an 11-point lead.

Obama’s gaffes have not been geographic but glaring ego hubris. In late June for a press conference in Chicago, his staff assemble a presidential-looking seal on his rostrums where he spoke. The oversized blue seal was emblazoned with the Latin phrase Vero Possumus meaning “yes, we can!” Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times wrote he “has decided not to wait for any of the formalities of a presidential election or even a nomination which he still hasn’t official won yet.” The seal was dumped the next day.

The next month, after a brilliant tour in the Middle East where the Iraqi premier seemed to endorse him and kiss him on both cheeks, came his speech to 200,000 at Victory Column in Berlin. There his messianic ego seemed to control him. “Tonight I speak to you as…a citizen of the world!” he said. There was a low rumble from his blue-collar labor union backers back in Chicago who wanted someone to put the U.S. back to work in manufacturing jobs not be a citizen of the world.

By the end of July when he had returned to the U.S. there was an adoration session for him with fellow Democratic lawmakers in the Cannon House Office building caucus room. Capitol police cleared the aisles as they do for an incoming president and committee chairmen arrived early as they do for the State of the Union. Cops and secret service hustled him in a side door as they do an incumbent president. And this is what he said, according to a liberal reporter, Dana Milbank of the pro-Obama Washington Post:

“This is the moment…that the world is waiting for…I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to its best traditions [italics mine].”

On the way to a meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Willard Hotel, believe it or not a full block of F Street was closed and some 40 security and motorcade vehicles filled the street. Later, after a meeting with the Pakistan premier, he issued a presidential-style statement: “I had a productive and wide-ranging discussion…I look forward to working with the democratically-elected government of Pakistan.” At a Jewish deli I frequent on Saturday afternoons, a blue-collar Democratic joint, somebody cracked: “All he needs now is a cape.”

In late July, in Missouri, Obama made what may have been not just a gaffe but a fatal miscalculation when he told an audience that the McCain campaign is going to “try to make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making [italics mine].” It was an attempt to churn up anger against fancied racism. The Sleepy Eye of the electorate may just have opened wide at that point, evidence that Obama will use race to gain sympathy.



Not that the Republicans didn’t ever recently use the race card. In 2006 the RNC produced a TV commercial against outstanding, relatively conservative black Tennessee senate candidate, Cong. Harold Ford that featured a provocative white woman winking at the camera and saying “Harold—call me!” That was one of the most scurrilous commercials I’ve seen which contributed to Ford’s loss in Tennessee. But now Obama himself seemingly played the card and the reception he got across the country wasn’t pretty.

By early August, political analysts decided on Obama’s trademark. All presidential candidates have them. Daddy Bush was “a nice guy but out of touch.” Bill Clinton: “smart but randy.” Bob Dole: “heroic but too old.” Gore: “a fibber and a bore.” George W. Bush: “pleasant but dumb.” Obama has now become “charismatic but arrogant.”

Veep Possibilities.

Mark down Sen. Evan Bayh (Indiana) as top-drawer for Obama running mate but Virginia Governor Tim Kaine is right up there. Kaine is a Catholic, called “devout” by the media--but then all Democrat Catholics pols usually are so called by journalists. Kaine may have a claim however since he took a year off from Harvard law school to work as a missionary with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Honduras. But sure enough, he’s an agonized Catholic “pro-abort” as he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose, stressing that he’s personally opposed to abortion—but…a stand first taken by Jimmy Carter. But he won’t have to worry about a Catholic prelate blistering him for his abortion stance. Bishop Francis Xavier DiLorenzo has greased the skids already by declaring he is for “an integrated approach to right to life” and in Arlington, Bishop Paul Loverde has a similar stance.

On the Republican side, if McCain doesn’t pick Mitt Romney of Michigan he may be regarded as eccentric, a speculation he has faced often before. Romney seems to be the only one who can fortify the candidate’s shaky views on the economy plus having a chance to carry the state where his father Governor George was immensely popular and which Mitt carried easily in this year’s primary. Yet Romney’s Rube Goldberg health care program in Massachusetts, devised when Mitt was a liberal Republican, has been drawing fire for being as much a boondoggle as the Democrats can devise. It may be that the best candidate McCain can pick is John Kasich, the former Ohio congressman who has been a Fox network TV host. Kasich is blue-collar, pro-life and could go a long way for the ticket to carry essential Ohio.