BELIEVE IT, IF BUSH’S INTELLIGENCE CHIEF FLUBBED UP AS OFTEN HE’D BE TOAST. MORE.

                                       3 Monkey Foul-Up.            
     In one day…in an administration intelligence 3 member panel—blind, deaf and inept forecasting…(1) the National Intelligence chief made the astounding contention that the Muslim Brotherhood is secular not religious (huh?; why the Muslim name then?), (2) eschews violence, and (3) has criticized al-Qaeda as a “perversion of Islam” while (4) the CIA director patted himself and his colleagues on the back saying the U.S. government has not been taken by surprise—then  announcing (5) that Hosni Mubarak could well be stepping down later that day (he didn’t and announced he was staying)  as (6) the FBI director swatted his supposed boss,  the National Intelligence chief for his Muslim Brotherhood-is-secular comment.
        I’ll tell you this: if that three-man catastrophe happened under George W. Bush the New York Times, the AP, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, the Daily Kos, Yahoo news service and broadcast networks…especially CBS with Katie Couric’s wide blue eyes snapping and cute button nose wrinkling in disgust…would be demanding a shakeup on the basis of incompetence, misfeasance and malfeasance.   As it was, hardly a peep out of anybody but Fox.
     What rarified brand of hashish National Intelligence Director James Clapper was smoking is questionable as the Muslim Brotherhood is, of course, religiously extremist—no serious doubts about it. Clapper was wrong again: It does not and never has ruled out violence. It’s very cozy with major elements of al-Qaeda. Wrong yet again: The CIA director Leon Panetta patting themselves on the back for a good job was disproven at the panel where he gave out wrong information about Mubarak’s decision while his colleague FBI Director Robert Mueller contradicted Clapper saying “obviously elements of the Muslim Brotherhood here and overseas have supported terrorism”—leading Clapper to send out a “clarifying statement” later with the correction.
       You can just wonder if this isn’t banner headline news underscoring incompetence what it will take to get two of the three…Clapper and Panetta…fired—as well it should. Clapper has already made one major goof by appearing on Diane Sawyer’s CBS-TV morning show and sitting there dumbfounded when she, a news anchor, informed him of a serious terrorist attack that happened hours earlier in London—something every news consumer knew but he. Panetta was a Dem congressman and Bill Clinton’s chief of staff but was never known as an intelligence expert.
        A scandal that rivals this  incompetence is the obvious liberal “understanding” cover-up between the so-called mainstream news media and the Obama administration to spike unfavorable stories—and I will bet you anything that this morning—a day after it happened—you will not find it in any sense but buried in the regular press.  The Sun-Times has a dutiful stenographer of favorable Obama doings in Lynn Sweet…who has the makings of an excellent reporter but who has turned cosmetician. 

The other day there was a minor occurrence at a White House    social event which, had it happened under George W. Bush,  would have qualified as banner-line if Ms. Sweet were reporting it.   Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior counselor, was enjoying herself at an elegant reception when a  uniformed  4-star general passed by.   Somehow Jarrett thought he was a waiter, held aloft her glass and asked for a Chardonnay refill.   If that ever appeared in Sweet’s reportage which when favorable things happen takes in every little detail, I missed it. 

                         Conservatism’s Great Peril.

      Acceptance of self-outed gay “conservatives” at the CPAC meeting this weekend reflects the possibility of a dire threat to the movement.    Extremist libertarians or libertines are responsible who have been pushing gay rights for all they’re worth for some years.   They scored a breakthrough this year when accommodationist David Keene got seduced by the money these folks would pony up—and everyone else except the highly principled Heritage Foundation followed suit.

       American conservatism has been endowed with the Burkean brand since its inception—the belief in solid religious principle that is tied in indissolubly with economic freedom and societal order.   Let libertines in who say they’re libertarians and you have the wack-a-doodle Ron Paulites who not only endorse outed  homosexuality but eschew any discipline the state may have over drugs and who…many of whom with an anarchic glint in their eyes like Paul’s…want to dissolve the intelligence systems of the country and pull defenses back to Fortress America—which even if these battlements were to be attacked, these guys would be zonked out on hashish to care.

          Which means that it would only be a matter of time before what  happened yesterday—with Dick Cheney booed as he introduced Don Rumsfeld…booed because the libertines hate our going to Iraq….in short typify anything short of holding off terrorists when they invade your home as example of overactive government.

         Such libertines as I describe them (to differentiate between them as solid libertarians who are rightfully fighting over-regulation and taxation) won’t take over the party but if allowed to continue will cause social conservatives to whom their espousal of gay rights…and in some cases abortion…as repugnant, leading to formation of a third party for social conservatives that will destroy any chance of affecting change at the ballot box.

        The libertines should as pro-active gay rights people should have been kept out.  Ron Paul himself if not an active proponent of these things is an advocate of unilateral disarmament…a supporter of cashing in the Federal Reserve and letting Congress—God help us—set interest rates.   All you have to do is to take a look at this frenzied creature to know that extreme proponents of this kind of thinking should be institutionalized.   By which I don’t mean his  kid, Rand.                         

                       

IV THE FINALE: “GEE, ROCK—I SURE WOULD LIKE TO TRY!”

        Some people think there’s been a Parson Weems flavor to the buildup of Ronald Reagan.  Yes, it’s true-- but it’s  by no means comparable to that of JFK.   We live now in a purposely engendered romanticized bubble invented by liberaldom’s twisted historian-hack, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. where everything about  John Kennedy is pronounced great. His womanizing hasn’t dented his stature at all—whereas Richard Nixon who  accomplished the major coup of splitting the Sino-Soviet bloc, a major turning-point in the Cold War—is regarded as evil, corrupt and a disgrace.
       Why is that?    Liberal media?   Sure.   But also style.  Nixon’s was a hyper-aggressive style.  Kennedy’s was relaxed, filled with surety but low-key.
       Just recently the Kennedy family women, dominated by Maria Shriver has driven out of circulation a Kennedy documentary that is unfavorable.
     But Parson Weems, who told saccharine little stories about how George Washington owned up to cutting down  the cherry tree and how the 1^st president threw a silver dollar across the Potomac was not much different: his goal was to build a godly image of Washington. Ridiculous fellow.   Washington couldn’t have thrown a silver dollar across the Potomac because one wasn’t coined until shortly before his death.  Besides , the Potomac’s width made it impossible.    Others correcting Weems said it was more likely that he threw a hunk of slate across the Rapahonnock which at its narrowest point was about a hundred feet wide.
            My point is: who cares?   Bonnie Rockne, the widow of Knute, cared and she made sure that the 1940 script “Knute Rockne: All American” showed a man flawless in every way. Actually if she had allowed the real Rockne to emerge, the stature of the great coach wouldn’t have been diminished.   As the immaculately researched “Shake Down the Thunder” [by Dr. Murray Sperber: 20303] shows, Rockne…who lived as a kid in Logan Square…invented his own rules because when he coached there were  very few.  Sperber went to the basement of the athletic department and unearthed Rockne’s correspondence.  
         He was no saint nor was he a devil.   He was a wildly successful football coach at a small cow college.  Catholics disappointed by the defeat of Al Smith…feeling bigotry had something to do with it…turned to huzza’ing for the cow college.  Rockne was a sharpie who played all the odds and got away with it since there was no NCAA but there was a Carnegie Foundation which inspected but had no power to enforce. Carnegie frequently called Rockne for hyper-aggressive recruiting,  paying athletes under the table and winking when they ditched classes.
       Nobody got away with more derelictions than George Gipp who was an outstanding baseball player. He didn’t have enough high school credits to qualify but he got in anyhow.   He was 20, started in as a school waiter but quit, inventing a unique jobs program—earning money shooting pool (a real pool shark) and playing cards with professional gamblers traveling salesmen and hangers-on around the bars in South Bend. He made so much money that he could afford to move out of the dorm and take up lodging at the Oliver Hotel in South Bend, the best residence hotel in the city and home to business travelers who played high-stakes billiards and pool well into every night.
      Rockne knew about it; he didn’t snitch to the priests—but then they’d have to be blind, deaf and mute not to know.  He knew he had a goldmine in Gipp from the day the kid…who never played football before…drop-kicked a 62-yard field goal into the wind against Western State Normal of Michigan in a freshman game on Oct. 7, 1916.  Gipp’s transcript shows that for two of his four full school years he received no grades whatever. 
     Finally the priests couldn’t stand it and expelled Gipp.   Every big school bid for him.  Rockne fended them off but the toughest time he had was with West Point which offered many more bucks than anyone else—the school’s head being none other than Douglas MacArthur. All the while, Rockne lobbied the South Bend business community and wealthy alumni to get the school to re-admit Gipp.  The Notre Dame president yielded, gave Gipp an oral examination which to nobody’s surprise the kid passed.
        Rockne’s scheme for getting the school publicity was ingenious.    He knew that sportswriters in Chicago and elsewhere were underpaid so he hired them as part-time referees. Again, there were no conflict of interest rules. Rockne made sure that if the sportswriter didn’t praise Notre Dame he’d never get hired again. 
      After reading the 635-page book I think if Warner Brothers had made the true film about Gipp it’d have been more of a winner than it had with the heavily romanticized version. But of course Bonnie Rockne wanted her dead husband to go down as a Catholic saint.  Now we get to Ronald Reagan’s portrayal of Gipp. 
     “Did you ever see the film `Knute Rockne All American’?” Reagan asked me after I told him I doubted he could cut it for the presidency both for his then rightist philosophy and his largely non-fact-filled speaking style.   I said yes—usually on the Night Owl movie programs.
     Reagan was by no means a big name when he landed the part of George Gipp….a part he incessantly lobbied for—including making a personal visit to Bonnie Rockne.  His very first film was shot only three years earlier—a clunker called “Love is On the Air.” By the time he got her approval for Gipp he had done 19 films—including “Dark Victory” where his role was far down the list…topped by Bette Davis, George Brent and Humphrey Bogart.  But Bonnie Rockne saw it and she approved Reagan. 
      Interestingly enough, the part of George Gipp lasted only ten minutes in the 97-minute movie.  Lloyd Bacon, the director, wanted to show Gipp was a novice in football, was a baseball player—which was accurate.
      “The script writer would do the script over and over,” he told me. “It would have to pass muster with Mrs. Rockne.  We actually shot some rushes which after she saw, she vetoed. She had complete control of the script.”
        Then he told me of a scene that was shot which she vetoed for one reason or another.   Gipp is pictured throwing a baseball to another guy—a very impressive toss that went far-far down the baseball field. Rockne—played by veteran actor Pat O’Brien [1899-1983] fitted with a plastic nose to resemble Rockne’s—is drilling his squad and sees this kid through the baseball far down the field.   After the rush was filmed she vetoed it….wanting Gipp to kick a football a huge distance instead.  That was a big fight.  Gipp authenticists insisted he throw a baseball; she wanted a football. She won as she did every other disagreement.
      But the failed baseball take was the one that Reagan said was most meaningful to him, even though it wasn’t used.
       “Pat O’ had the nickname `One Take O’Brien’” said Reagan. “He was a big star—having done `Angels with Dirty Faces’ with Cagney.  I was just beginning and if I didn’t do well, they could get rid of me for another replacement—providing Mrs. Rockne approved, of course.
         “The original script called for him to dazzled by how far Gipp through the baseball.  So in this take O’Brien walks over to me and this was his line:  `Hey, kid—if you can throw a football like you threw that baseball, you’ve got a job on my team: are you game?’
         “My line was to be, `Gee, Rock I sure would like to try.’”
        Reagan said he did the line at least ten times. Each time O’Brien would have to walk over to him and toss out the same line…following which Reagan would deliver the line with different inflections and each time the director would shout “cut!”  At least ten times.
         Finally the sun went down and shooting was over for the day. Lloyd Bacon, the director, called both Reagan and O’Brien to his office.
        “He said to me `Reagan, we don’t have to stick with you in this picture!  In fact, after seeing those takes I’m ready to ditch you right now!  But we’ll try again tomorrow!.  O’Brien, take him out and show him what I want!  You know what I want! Show him! If it doesn’t work on the second or third try, he’s out!.`”
        Reagan said O’Brien took him to a bar with a full mirror behind the bartender where the bottles were lined up.
       “Reagan,” said O’Brien, “how old are you anyway?”
        Twenty-nine.
       “Gipp is supposed to be nineteen…ten years younger than you.    Reagan,  you come across as a cocky Irish kid—know-it-all.   Gipp is supposed to be a shy, humble  kid, impressed with Rockne.  Unsure of himself—which is what you’re not.  Reagan, Bacon wants you to look…what’s the word?...deferential.   Now here’s how to do it. You’ve always heard that the camera tells the truth.  I’m here to say the camera is…seducible!    It can be fooled!   The way to show deferential…meaning you have a lot  to learn…is to bob your head how can I say it…bob your head humbly.  I can’t think of any other word but deferential.  You bob your head and say `Gee, Rock, I sure would like to try.’ Incidentally Reagan, you have a lot to learn too.  Keep that style—head bobbed, deferential. Make it your mark.   It’ll serve you well. Now while I drink this bourbon practice it over and over in front of this mirror—bob your head deferentially and say `gee Rock, I sure would like to try’”
         Reagan said they stood at the bar, O’Brien ordering one after another saying “again…again….again.” 
        After the fifth drink, O’Brien said “it’s getting better. Now go home and stand in front of your bathroom mirror and do it a hundred times and hope you’ll remember how to do it tomorrow.”
        Reagan said he did—and on the second take Bacon said “excellent.”  He said he had to abandon the style for his next film “Santa Fe Trail” where he played the headstrong George Custer (with Errol Flynn as J.E.B.Stuart) but practiced it again for other films, especially his one masterwork…that of a youth maimed by a sadistic surgeon “King’s Row.”
        “The reason I learned from that one is this,” he told me. “When I was running against Pat Brown for governor I had to debate him and our research people delivered a book this thick”—extending his two hands—“for me to memorize about the details of California government.   Brown was a kind of  walking encyclopedia of state government since he had been there so long and I was running as a citizen, non-politician.
      “Well I prepared for that debate but details wouldn’t stick which was funny because I never had any trouble memorizing before.    So I called O’Brien. He came over and said, `Ron, your role is to be the good-hearted guy coming in as a citizen not a politician.   Remember your old line, `Gee Rock, I sure would like to try’?  You know what you want to do with California government don’t you?    You got to go back to basics, show the camera you’re humble, have a lot to learn but want to learn it. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to match Brown on details.  Give `em three or four points—tell the camera `I sure would like to try.’”
     When he finished, the two cops and I agreed: he had the formula.  
     “So,”  he said, unconsciously bobbing his head deferentially, “when I have to debate John Anderson or Bush or Carter who have all these statistics in their head….I remember the four or five points I want to make—and…”
     It was time to put him on the plane for Santa Barbara.
     When he flew off I experienced a strange sense of loss—knowing I’d never see him up  close again.  But through the  years whenever he’d have a news conference and an obnoxious guy like Sam Donaldson would raise his hand and say:”Mr. President….you were wrong about such-and-such..”
        Details.
       And I’d see him standing at the podium, head lowered slightly, saying “well…” 
      Gee Rock, I sure would like to try.
        It presaged a new turn in political forensics.  The old wise-guy Hubert Humphrey rat-a-tat-tat rhetoric was over…supplanted  by a reasonable, humble, twinkling civility.  The only time I saw him flummoxed as president was after Iran-Contra.  And even then the style eventually returned to serve his needs.
       That’s why what I learned that day with him has made all the difference.
       Style. 
      
      
           
              

PART III: REAGAN’S STYLISTICAL GENIUS--SOFT THEATRICALITY IN POLITICS--WAS TAUGHT TO HIM BY PAT O’BRIEN.

 
    *******************************************************
       Probably the most interesting thing I learned from Ronald Reagan in the four hours I spent with him before getting him to the plane to Santa Barbara in 1979 was not his Chicago abode or watching him fix the bathroom plumbing in the O’Hare Hilton room but his genius for soft theatricality in politics.
      For the hard-arguments were not on his side.
       You must remember the political conditions that existed then.  A major conservative columnist was James J. Kilpatrick, 59, a  syndicated columnist who tangled each Sunday for nine straight years as the crotchety rightwing voice paired against Shana Alexander every Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” This was before cable, before the Internet. There was only broadcast television and Kilpatrick…formidable and convincing (living down the fact that he had been a forceful even racist segregationist in the `50s) …syndicated to 172 papers…was the most prominent right-wing voice of the time—far more powerful than George Will has come to be.  Or William F. Buckley for that matter. Buckley had an elite conservative magazine.  Will was a bow-tied intellectual, a columnist, with the maddening proclivity to trace tax policy back to an offhand remark made by William the Conqueror to his mistress in 1066.
      Kilpatrick was the average guy conservative.
       Kilpatrick made all kinds of news in 1979 when he pronounced that for the upcoming election of 1980 “Ronald Reagan is a little long in the tooth,” saying he missed his chance by inches in losing the nomination to Jerry Ford—but the future demanded somebody more viable than a 68-year-old ex-movie actor and governor.   Sixty-eight was then fearfully old to run for president, as medicine was not so advanced; there were no heart bypasses such as saved me from death in 2004; no operations for subdural hematoma, the delicate brain operation which spared me from certain death--after a four-hour surgery in 1985.   People checked out regularly in their late `60s with no weeping or gnashing of teeth.  For proof check the obits today.   People are in their late `80s,  mid-`90s.
         So Kilpatrick’s sentence of Reagan as too old was devastating.  Not only that but in January of 1979 Reagan’s longtime adversary, Nelson Rockefeller, died of a massive heart attack at  71.   It did not assuage things that Rocky was engaged in a strenuously amorous physical pursuit at the apartment of  a 27-year-old girl devotee research assistant who at his command did not call 911 but helped the old codger dress and cabbed him to his Manhattan office before she made the call whereby by the time the wagon came the billionaire philanthropist was dead.  (She doesn’t have to worry about her old age now by the way—her finances are all taken care of. So long as she doesn’t write a book.)
       I was far from a close Reagan operative in 1979…although the only Quaker officer to be for him—the remainder following the CEO and playing it safe by being for John Connally… but I was close enough that I could perceive the Reaganites were gravely shaken by Rocky’s death.  Besides there were a whole younger crop—Connally who for the life of me I never saw the attraction although that year he graciously lectured at my Kellogg school class at Northwestern…Poppy Bush (GHW) former CIA director, UN ambassador and China emissary…white-thatched, self-righteous John B. Anderson later to bolt the party and run as an independent…the ever-present Bob Dole, then as ever unburdened by ideological conviction…Howard Baker who was a prominent Republican Senator…and Phil Crane who was running to Reagan’s right.  And a host of little guys.
           Social conservatives like me really had no choice but Reagan although intriguingly he had signed the most liberal abortion bill in the U. S. as California governor (almost but not quite tied by Rocky in New York).  But Reagan had hit the sawdust trail and became an outstandingly articulate advocate for pro-life with an evangelist’s fervor.  Connally was pro-abort as were Baker and Bush (known as “rubber George” because he urged the government to dispense far more condoms than they had been to developing nations). Anderson was an angry fire-eating patriarch about “a woman’s right to choose.”
      .  Dole was on the issue as he was on everything else. He had beaten an abortionist doctor in a close race in Kansas where he became an instant pro-lifer but after being returned to the Senate had shut up about it.  Crane…then probably the handsomest dog running with jet black hair and flashing smile… gave lip-service to it but he really was more of a libertarian and as with everything else in the House was inactive…”he comes down to take his meals” Henry Hyde said of him… being content to while away his time on frivolities…for which he ultimately whizzed away his solid district.     
         Reagan was not only the most viable pro-lifer and excepting Crane a sort of walking Cato Institute…to the right of everyone else. People were still rubbing their scabs about Vietnam and everybody was  skittish of undue foreign entanglements…were talking détente… but Reagan was touting  “why not victory?” Everybody was generally in favor of ERA (except Crane of course) but not Reagan. The Watergate scandal was still resonating and Republicans were flirting with more and more 1^st amendment control over campaign donations—but not Reagan.  He wanted unlimited campaign donations so long as they were made public right away. 
       Everybody was for gun control—but not Reagan.
  *********************************************************
     When he finally fixed the plumbing in the room and sat down to the steak sandwich, I said this:
      “I’m really for you but for the life of me I don’t see how you’re going to win.  We have a lady in this state, Phyllis Schlafly…”
          He said, “I know and like Phyllis very much.”
      “So do I,” I said….”but she ran twice for Congress and couldn’t get elected.   Now when he was sensible and a conservative, I was very much for John Anderson…until he got goofy.  He’s one hell of a debater.  What I want to know is…you’re going to have to debate these guys. Your positions are the same as mine.   And given the prevailing temper of this country for liberal ideas, how are you going to sound different than Phyllis Schlafly?  The other thing is one guy who is just your age and who co-founded ADA with you when you were a Democrat, Hubert Humphrey is rat-a-tat a walking encyclopedia.   You’re not.
      “ What I’m getting at is this:  Are you just a cult figure of the right…making great speeches…a movie actor who happened to hit it right in California with a vibrant Orange county conservatism and an inept governor in Pat Brown?  In essence how do you sell this thing?”
       The cops  in the room were aghast at my frankness but this is what I did all the time. Fortunately for me, at Quaker they liked it and not only tolerated it but welcomed it…and even encouraged me to get on the radio and WTTW as a commentator and write for the Sun-Times—so long as I didn’t identify Quaker with my views.
        Digression: I was usually identified on WBEZ as “a corporate executive.”  Bruce DuMont almost upended me years down the road by identifying me as “a cereal executive with offices in Quaker Tower.” End of digression.
        I added:  “For example, Carter is a detail man….Connally is a former treasury secretary.  He can talk debentures that sound persuasive even though most people think he’s talking dentures.  John B. Anderson…a longshot… is a student of legislative policy.  He talks about a bill and how it appeared in subcommittee …how it was changed in full House committee…how the Senate fooled around with it and changed it such-and-such…how the conference committee rectified this and that—adding a section saying this and that.
       “Bush gives off a séance about national security stuff he can’t tell us about because he headed the CIA.  Then when he talks about foreign policy it’s stuff he picked up at the UN.  Ask about China and he’s been our emissary.
      “  I guess I’ve only heard you give exhortatory speeches but how are you going to make out in the scuffle of debates in primaries leading up to the convention?”
       This was too much for one cop who went to the bathroom and stayed there for awhile.
       Reagan said: “I learned something when I did `Knute Rockne’.  Did you ever see it?”
      I said I see it regularly when I’m up at midnight every Saturday.
     He said: “Let me tell you that I think the answer to your question I learned when I made the film.”
      Inwardly I groaned.  But he told me something that changed me from that time on…convincing me that I was munching steak with a political genius…one who could well change the dynamics of Republican politics from then on.
  _____________________________________________________
    To be continued.

II: HOW I FOUND REAGAN’S CHICAGO ABODE—AND MORE.

 
   Marking  the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth, this is a continuation of the story of our having lunch in 1979 at the O’Hare Hilton which led to the discovery of his abode in Chicago (1914-15).
     ******************************************************.
               John Sears said to meet Reagan at Allegheny airlines at Gate K-8 at O’Hare.
              “One thing,” he added.  “There’ll be two Chicago cops there, in uniform.  They’re off-duty and doing this on their own because they love the guy. This is their way of helping out. I don’t think the Police Department knows about it but that’s their problem.   Believe me you’ll find them helpful.”
             I asked why.
            “You  don’t get it, do ya? A lot of people don’t. This guy [Reagan] is one of the most familiar of Americans—because he’s been in the movies since 1937,  hosted `Death Valley Days’…gone on to be governor, has had his own radio program on and on.  Because the guy’s more familiar than  most politicians, you’re going to have to have some help getting through the crowd—believe it!”
              I didn’t….because for years I had met dignitaries at O’Hare and escorted them to their limos.   The week before I picked up John Connally and we walked through the concourse with only a few heads turning.  The month before I did the same with Poppy Bush, two weeks before that with Bob Dole…the winter before with Howard Baker.  The last real political celebrity I ushered in was in 1964 when I picked up Everett Dirksen.  It took awhile to get him to our limo because he looked like…well….Dirksen—hair askew, jowls sagging, eyes bugged out, wearing a rumpled suit with shoulders sprinkled with snowy dandruff , lips pursed, not unlike Bert Lahr playing The Cowardly Lion in `The Wizard of Oz.’   But even so it was not a strenuous exercise.  Some people wanted to chat with him but I kept saying,  `Sorry---the Senator has to keep moving; he’s late for an appointment!”
       “I’ll give you a tip,” Sears said.  “You’re going to want to take him to the Seven Continents [the elite restaurant at O’Hare].  Don’t.  You’ll never get a word in.   Get a room at the O’Hare Hilton and order lunch. Order him a lean steak sandwich and a coke.  The cops must be with   you.   You don’t have to buy their lunch. They’re happy just to be with the guy.”
         I did it—ordered the room in my name; had the key in my pocket and ordered four lean steak sandwiches with cokes….for all of us: Reagan, me and the cops.
        ******************************************************
          I got to Gate 8 and there was only me, the gate attendant and the two cops.   The plane’s arrival was called and we….the cops and I…waited for everybody to debark.   The last guy off the plane was Reagan,  hair meticulously combed, superbly trim in a blue suit, red tie—and carrying his own overnight bag.  One cop sprinted to his side to take the baggage check for pickup downstairs.
        Thanks, he said.  Here it is.  Guess we’ll meet you at the car. He gave me a warm glance for reassurance.  
         I introduced myself:   Tom Roeser from Quaker Oats.
        He bobbed his head deferentially and said, so softly I had to put my ear near his lips (and in those days my hearing was perfect), said  with eyes twinkling : Well tell me, do you fellas still make the old-fashioned steel-cut?
       Steel cut is the coarse oatmeal with part of the edible hulls included that  your mama said would put hair on your chest.
        I said yes.
       They served it at Eureka, he said (referring to his college in southern Illinois located between Peoria and Bloomington where he graduated in 1932 when I was age four).
        He added:  You could live on that even if  you ate nothing else.
        I asked to take his overnight bag.  He smiled and declined.  At 68 he was trim but his face, ruddy,  lined and craggy, showed every year.   And he did have a small hearing problem. In the concourse when people engaged him, he instinctively put a cupped hand to his left ear.
           I noticed we were gradually being surrounded by gawkers.
        “Ronald Reagan?” one guy asked.   His voice wasn’t that loud but in the way things do, it attracted others—those who are quick to note when something’s happening in a crowd.
        He nodded, modestly.    Here I must point out a distinct contrast.  Hubert Humphrey’s centennial comes this May.  I was assigned to cover him in Minnesota for a wire-service as he sought a second term in what was 1954’s most important Senate targeted contest.  Like Reagan, Humphrey was born in a small town, above a drug store…and after years in politics had huge visibility.    But Humphrey’s style was 100% different. He’d do the standard political thing, barge up pushily like a small town convention barker, pump hands, toss out pointed, often funny reposts.
          Reagan…maybe because of his low-key-appealing unassuming nature had people in the concourse barging up to him.  
        By that time we started walking and by the time we got to K-6 we were picking up quite a few gawkers.
        “Governor!” a  guy shouted:  “Do you think you can beat Carter?”
       Well, he said, somebody better!
       The famous lean, craggy face opened in a grin, cupped his hands around his lips and asked softly--
       Had enough? 
       There was a loud response: “Hell yes!” said one guy.
        Now we were at K-4.
        “Folks,” shouted the cop to the walkers who numbered about forty , “we have to keep on movin’.”
        “Ron!” shouted a guy on the other side of the concourse—and Reagan stopped, some of those trailing us bumping into each other.
         Yes?
        “I got a bet with a guy here for $50,” he shouted.  “What was your name in “King’s Row”’?
        They encircled him now, he lowering his head in a kind of new-guy-in-town attitude.
        Drake McHugh, he said softly.
        “See that?” the guy said to his pal.  “I was right!  Fork over the dough, Henry!”
       Henry, Reagan said quietly, almost to himself, yet   everybody heard: If you had gotten to me first, I’d have told you and you’d still have your fifty!
     The crowd, now reaching more than sixty, roared.   The guy said: “Hey, he called me Henry—Reagan did!”
      Now we had a good hundred around him as we got to K-1 and the escalator going downstairs under the street to the O’Hare Hilton.
       He stopped and turned to the crowd.
       Here’s where I get off!  Good luck everybody—and thanks!
       “Have you ever seen anything like it?” the cop said to me.
       I answered truthfully: No, never.  It’s an answer I can give today 58 years after the first political candidate I ever covered.
       Upstairs in the hotel, our lunch and his baggage were waiting.   He took off his jacket and went to the bathroom to wash his hands.
       He came out a minute later and said:  
      Guess what?
       What?
      He said, cupping his ear: Hear that?  Leaky faucet.
      “Watch this,” said a cop.  “We’ve seen this before.”
      Reagan said:  As I told them (nodding to the cops) when I used to travel the mashed potato circuit and even before when I had to make out-of-town appearances, I’d every so often get a hotel room with a faucet that leaks just like that one in there.
      …so, he said, I’d bring along these.
     He opened his overnight case and after fiddling around pulled out a purple cloth kit something like your mother had for her fancy silverware knives and forks.   Except lined up were silver wrenches of different sizes.  He pulled one out carefully and marched to the bathroom.   I went along….and I tell my grandchildren I stood there in the bathroom with the man who was to become the 40^th president…as he skillfully undid the faucet, inspected the screw that ran the waterflow, carefully applied the small wrench, bit his lip as he tugged and the drip-drip-drip stopped instantly.
        There, he said, that son-uv-a-gun won’t keep anybody awake any more.
       We returned to the main room; he sat down we all started in on our steak sandwiches.
      Not bad, he said as we all nodded in agreement:  We all have to thank Quaker Oats for this.
     I said teasingly:  I was thinking of importing some steel cut oatmeal for us but decided this was better.
     You made a wise decision, he said and the cops agreed.
       That’s where we had a conversation I’ve never forgotten—from roughly noon to about a quarter after three in the afternoon.
_______________________________________________________
     More tomorrow.

HOW I DISCOVERED REAGAN’S CHICAGO ABODE…AND MORE.

  
           Thirty-two years ago…on a Spring morning in 1979…my phone rang at the Merchandise Mart HQ of Quaker Oats (where I was veep-government relations aka lobbyist).    On the line was John Sears, lawyer, former top staffer to John Mitchell in the Nixon Justice Department.  I always held John in the highest regard, ever since he and I were canned in 1970 for different reasons by the Nixonians…I returning to Quaker and he to a lucrative law practice.
        John had run the Reagan challenge to Jerry Ford at the convention of 1976 and had come within inches of dislodging the 38^th president with a spirited challenge from the former governor of California.  I had told him I’d like to help in the general election of 1976 but Ford made the cut.
        “What are you doing next Tuesday?” Sears asked in his soft, unpretentious voice.
      Nothing. Why?   You coming to town?
     “No.  Better than that. Reagan is going to spend a few hours in Chicago, changing planes….flying in from Charlotte, will arrive at 11:35 a.m.  and will have to wait for a change of planes before he goes out at 4:30 p.m. for Santa Barbara.   That gives you a few hours to get your boss and a few other CEOs together to grab lunch with him….maybe at the O’Hare Hilton….and you seeing him on the plane to California afterward.  Can you pull something like that together?”
       I said I thought I could.   Reagan hadn’t announced yet for 1980 but it was very much in the cards.
       Repeat: I said I thought I could.  But I found to my dismay I couldn’t. The year before, Big Jim Thompson had been elected governor (with George Ryan for lieutenant governor) and had committed the state GOP  to mushy,  non-Reagan accommodationist politics—meaning that the party’s leaders were supportive of anyone but…for ideological reasons… Reagan.   Big Jimbo saw himself as having potential for president and so he had his emissaries “joining” various campaigns as moles.  The biggest chunk signed up for John Connally, the former Texas governor: that included George Ryan and the Illinois Tool Works crowd—headed by Harold Byron Smith, Jr., prodigious fund-raiser and GOP leader extraordinary: former state chairman, national committeeman,  fund-raiser for the Republican state senate and House,
       Connally was the decided favorite.  The next biggest group was for George H.W. Bush.  Still other moles went to Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee…Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas with one lonely outcast sent to help  Rep. Phil Crane.  Later as Reagan grew in popularity one mole was dispatched to his campaign—Sam Skinner.     God’s angry progressive was running as well—Congressman John B.  Anderson but of course Big Jimbo wasn’t interested in him because they were both liberals but still two moles were sent in hope that if Anderson were to be elected somehow there might be a cabinet office open for Big Jimbo.    The only prominent Illinoisan for Reagan was Dan Terra, a billionaire head of a printing ink company.
        Normally it should have been an easy trick to line up guys to have lunch with a leading though unannounced presidential candidate but the CEOs were all so timid they felt they didn’t want to jeopardize their standing.   
           So I reluctantly called Sears after a few days of futility and said I struck out.
            I expected I’d be chewed out but instead Sears said: “Not surprising. Just what I thought. “
           Then there was a long pause as he thought.
         “Well,” he said, “how would you like to have lunch with the old man.   Cripes, somebody has to see he gets on the plane for Santa Barbara!”
           I said: Well, John, he doesn’t want to have lunch with a punk like me.
         “Of course he doesn’t. But he likes to tell stories and you like to tell stories and I can’t let him just sit around in the Admirals Club of American Airlines alone for four hours!  I tell you, he’s one of the most recognizable of Americans.   People go to him like flies to honey!  He’s so damn nice he’ll have some guy bending his ear in the Admirals’ Club about whether or not he ever met Clark Gable.   So I’m deputizing you to see that doesn’t happen.   See, you’ll be his aide for four hours.  I can’t pay you anything but I figure your payment will be in talking with him. He’s a great guy.  You’ll be surprised to know that he’ll talk your ear off about old time Hollywood.   Is it a deal?”
          That was the start of the most fascinating lunch I ever had…with, as it turns out, one of the great presidents of the 20^thcentury.
    _____________________________________________________
                                        More tomorrow. 

HELD FOR QUESTIONING: Obama’s Religious Faith…Is Mubark Right—“If I Go Now Chaos?”…The Double Standard of Capitol Fax.

 

        Q.  Charles Krauthammer on Fox is rendered uneasy about presidents’  “religiosity.” Does he have a point in defense of Obama whose supposed Christianity is an open question with Americans?

       A.  No. Secular Jews like Krauthammer…like the ruling family of The New York Times, the Sulzbergers…often profess “uneasiness” with public expressions of Christian faith by presidents and others because of the historical precedent in Europe where often such public testimony implied—indeed fomented--anti-Semitism. It really implies that none of us should express religious belief because it makes Charles uneasy.

         Let this octogenarian tell you that this is a fairly recent development. I’m old enough to remember when FDR and Churchill meet on HMS Prince of Wales off Nova Scotia on August 12, 1941 when they signed the “Atlantic Charter.” They stayed over on a Sunday and in reporting via radio to the American people, Roosevelt said they co-sponsored an Anglican-Episcopal service on board.  They picked one hymn apiece, Churchill “Onward Christian Soldiers” and FDR “Oh God Our Help in Ages Past.”   Nary a peep out of Jews and/or the ACLU.  As a footnote, the Prince of Wales was sunk by Nazi torpedoes four months later with terrific loss of life.

       Even today, observant Jews such as Norman Podhoretz aren’t bothered because they realize that public profession of Christian belief is more usually a trademark of evangelical Christians who are unabashedly pro-Jewish, pro-Israel.  Krauthammer is a very perceptive news analyst, a Pulitzer prize-winner, but he ought to stop trying to intimidate people because he is insecure in his faith.  

        Q.  Getting back to Obama, he said at the National Prayer Breakfast yesterday that people doubting his and Michelle’s Christian faith strengthen both.

         A.    People doubt Obama’s belief in Christianity because of his heavy 3^rd World connections and education in a Madressa…which is why a heavy majority of those polled don’t know what religious he espouses, if any.  They also see how mention of the word “Creator” has stuck in his throat three distinct times when he sought to cite Jefferson’s words in the Declaration.  Reagan went to church as infrequently as Obama but nobody doubted his religious faith.  Why not?   Because religious profession did not stick in his throat as it does Obama’s.           

      Q.  Mubarak has said that if he goes now there’ll be chaos. Agree?

      A. I agree wholeheartedly.   Somehow it has been ordained in our political psyche…purveyed by our news media including, regrettably, Fox…that because we are a republic we are manifestly obliged to side with any chaos coming from the street against an ally. Of course as I said yesterday it’s a holdover from the last befuddled university professor we had as president—I mean the one before Obama…Woodrow Wilson.

         George W. Bush and his goo-goo librarian wife added their idealistic two cents.  Let’s understand:   we as a nation are definitely Exceptional because we take into account the public consensus—but we are not ordered by almighty God to democratize the world or to toss Mubarak to the tender mercies of the Muslim Brotherhood which would be against our interest.   If they want a revolution, let `em carry it out.  But this prattling…especially from our secretary of state…who wants Mubarak not to defend himself against chaos is extremely short-sighted. 

        Q.  Capitol Fax is horrified that Sen. Mark Kirk is so partisan…this time about his opposition to global warming.

        A.  Does that publication realize how two-faced it is by giving one of the leading Democratic hatchet-men in the Senate…Dick Durbin…a pass and wringing its hands about Mark Kirk?

FOREIGN POLICY IN OUR RIGOROUS SELF-INTEREST: THAT IS THE QUESTION.

          Q.  George W. Bush said the other day that he’s out of the politics business, won’t raise money and won’t go out to attack any other president  i.e. Obama.  What gives?

          A.  Terrific. That gives us all a break. What it means is now that I’ve had mine, let others fend for themselves.

          Bush was generally a satisfactory president…acceptably pro-life and firm on defense.  His response by invading Iraq, capturing Saddam and belting `em where they lived was salutary….prompting the acknowledged top expert on Middle East policy, Bernard Lewis, to point out that for the first time ever terrorists experienced some serious discomfort. But beyond that he was a wuss—probably because he was listening to his professional librarian wife—like her kids pro-abort, pro-gay marriage and flaky all round on other things.    Like her mother-in-law also with the big round  syrupy eyes and the rich-lady pearls at her throat: Barbara who almost fatally infected his old man.

       What do I mean by this?  The nonsense he spouted in his first inaugural address which was arrant Wisonianism.  We want to encourage our world neighbors to adopt Jeffersonian democracy. That’s rich lady League of Women Voters talk, the talk of the country clubs

         Q.  By that remark I take it you are a “realist” rather than an “idealist” in foreign policy.

          A.   Absolutely.  I’ve had my innings off the reservation but never veered from the contention that Professor  Wilson was probably one of the worst presidents we ever had—although eclipsed by good old  Number 44, Professor Obama, he of the 3^rdWorld.

         Q.   As a former foreign service officer,  how do you think Obama’s doing on Egypt?

         A.   Lousy.   But he reflects on this a lot of contemporary foreign policy talking heads. We have been following a pattern for decades of not supporting our friends when they get into trouble.  As an old guy, I go back to what we did to our longstanding ally in China,  Chiang Kai-Shek.   He fought on our side during World War II against  the Japanese but right after VJ Day  the Chinese Reds who had many allies in our own State Department started an internecine rebellion against him saying….horrors!...Chiang is an authoritarian!  Of course he was!  Did China ever have a democracy? No!

         The old Wilsonian dogma took hold and we were suckered into raising hell with Chiang because he wouldn’t accept Mao’s people into a coalition cabinet.  He told us what would happen if he did: They’re not democrats but worse than authoritarians—Communists. Well, Truman sent George Marshall over there who gave Chiang an ultimatum: accept a coalition government or we’ll pull military aid. He refused, the Chinese Communists defeated him and the government they installed was far worse than Chiang’s.

        Q.  Well, that was one time.

        A.  One time my eye. With South Vietnam we became disillusioned with Diem because he was an authoritarian.   So with the concurrence of Establishmentarian Henry Cabot Lodge we looked the other way while he was killed. The successors…supposedly democrats….couldn’t run things so for all practical purposes we lost the war.  You see what we showed the world then?  The worst thing to happen to you is if you’re an ally of the United States. Were the North Vietnamese democrats?  Of course not.

          Q.  Well that was the second time.

          A.   We were an ally of the Shah.  But he was an authoritarian. So we Wilsonians were upset about that.  We didn’t stand by him and he fell. The point is: we never learn, do we?    And who are the people who are always wrong?   Liberal editorial pages, mainstream news media.  Now we get to Murbarak.

        Q.  What are we doing wrong there?

         A.  We’re telling him how to run his country….telling him to make nicey-nice with the mobs in the streets.   He looked out his window and saw right away from the way they dress, the way they shave that they were from the Muslim Brotherhood.  Then there’s the “democracy activists”…liberals, affected by our nihilistic journalists.  They’re rallying around Mohamed ElBafradel the Nobel peace prize guy as their champion.   ElBafradel hates our guts. Moreover he’s  weak—much like Kerensky who preceded Lenin.  When are we going to learn?

       Q.  Some of our prized journalists were mugged by vicious thugs over there, though.

       A.    By which you mean indubitably Anderson Hays Vanderbilt Cooper of CNN.    Knowing Cooper it was probably the thrill of his life to be manhandled

DON’T GIVE IT TO RAHM WITHOUT A FIGHT; CHICO CAN STILL DO IT!

  
                                                Chico.

        The threat of Carol Moseley Braun becoming mayor…running second in the polls…beckoned me to support Rahm Emanuel as the only recourse to allowing Chicago to become another Detroit under the erratic Ms. Braun.  But now that threat has been dispelled.

        It was dispelled for all practical purposes last Sunday when at a church function,  the wild-card Ms. Braun turned to Patricia Watkins,  the other African American candidate in the contest and said the only reason Watkins hadn’t heard what Braun had been doing after her U.S. Senate service was that “you were strung out on crack cocaine” and had an arrest record for it.   Watkins is up from Cabrini-Green, has beaten a drug habit and was never arrested for crack.

      After which Braun refused to apologize.   We have the true white media-ordained Black Messiah to thank for Braun, the always alliterative Rev. Jesse Jackson. .

           The day she hurled the hideous calumny to Watkins, the threat of Moseley Braun becoming mayor disappeared.  This means that there is every possible chance to elect the undeniably good-tempered, most experienced candidate—Gery Chico who made a great record as an educational reformer, having worked with Paul Vallas as president of the Chicago School Board.  Instead the shruggers appear to be giving it to Emanuel, a disgustingly manipulative chameleon sans moral core.

          I had feared Chico would be dominated by Eddie Burke but that prospect…had it ever existed…ended with Burke’s repudiation by the Illinois Supreme Court which acted wisely to keep Emanuel on the ballot.

         So we turn to the immediate question at hand.   And this is what the media should focus on: Haven’t middle class taxpayers had enough to put up with due to Old Watery  Eyes Quinn’s  tax hikes without bearing the Little Prince’s tax hike he’s ordained from the Tuileries?

          The time remaining—Feb. 22—is sufficient to change the odds. The campaign is now starting to resemble the situation in Paris in the fall of 1791.   The elites are clinking cocktail glasses at the Tuileries, the palace on the right bank of the Seine while the crowd gathers below.   Across the country….across the world…average people are growing tired of the same-old, same-old.   The revelers inside the Tuileries are Wall Street donors, LaSalle street pragmatists,  Hollywood agents…all committed to Emanuel.  

        As I have said earlier, we should thank David Axelrod for  producing the cinema verite commercials that show the candidate at his lackluster realistic best: haggard, laconic, unsmiling, petulant.  That and another commercial showing Bill Clinton extoling him.  That would be the Bill Clinton who advised his wife to by all means run for the Senate from New York—to spare them both from having to move to ….ugh….awful Chicago.

         Yes….that Bill Clinton who now tells Chicagoans they’ll get a great bargain by voting in Emanuel as their mayor. 

       As Churchill said seventy-five years ago: The battle for France has ended.  The battle for  Britain has begun.

       The spectacle of Moseley Braun has ended. It is not the prospect of après moi le deluge.   The time is now to reexamine the Emanuel tax on “luxuries” and decide if there is not a better alternative at hand…as assuredly there is in Chico.

ASK ME YOUR QUESTIONS AND I’LL TELL YOU NO LIES.

 

         Rahm’s Search-and-Destroy Nixon Fixation Jeopardizes His Lead.  Moseley Braun’s Name-Calling Her Black Opponent Destroys Her, Leaving Chico a Long-Shot but Preferred for Feb. 22.

       Q.  What’s this?  Just when he looks inevitable Rahm’s threatening businesses which cooperate with Chico?

       A.  Yep, this is the same old Rahm who can’t stand prosperity.  The dead fish in the opponent’s bed, the plunging a steak knife into a table to show what he will do to his enemies.   When Gery Chico tried to hold a news conference at a gym to underscore his belief that Emanuel’s tax policy on so-called “luxury services” the forces of the Little Weasel threatened the gym owner and the guy caved.   This because they know the Little Weasel made a mistake on his tax plan and can’t get out of it. He’s going to tax rich gentlemen’s athletic clubs but not average-guy’s gyms?  How do you write tax policy like that?  You can’t.  Right now  Chico’s got him on the ropes and if it continues, Rahm’s toast. 

      Q.  But-but you were for Rahm getting on the ballot weren’t you? What’s this—a switch?

       A.  Yeah.  I was for Rahm initially because the crazy lady was running second and as I wrote then with Chico in single digits, I thought a vindictive little weasel without a moral core but with a vested interest in his own success was preferable to somebody who could easily turn Chicago into Detroit in one term—whereas it took Coleman Young twenty years to do it.

        That possibility has diminished. Moseley Braun has taken care of that eventuality all by herself by assailing the other black woman in the contest as being “strung out on crack.”  (The same derogatory reference she used years ago to call George Will a Ku Kluxer because he criticized her Nigerian deal with Dictator Abacha).  The spectacle of someone who’s a U of C lawyer, former prosecutor, former Senator unable to handle her own financial affairs with four mortgages on her Hyde Park house  is  sad.     But she’s history.

      The logical improvement to Rahm is Gery Chico who throughout the campaign has been making far more persuasive arguments.  Frankly we all ought to be indebted to Axelrod whose commercials for Rahm are cinema verite—showing a sullen, laconic tight-fisted little arrogant Napoleon…presaging what we’re likely to get. So I don’t regret having supported Rahm staying in the race.

      But now’s the time to pick the better of the two top candidates. Ergo: we don’t have a choice between moi and l’deluge —but between two candidates, one skilled and reasonable and the other who while accomplished in feathering his own nest is obviously the same Nixonian clenched fist “I’ll-get-you-you so-and-so” type I knew when we were on public radio a quarter-century ago.   Frankly I had hoped him growing up, working in the Clinton White House, becoming an investment banker and making $18 million,  getting elected to Congress, serving on Ways and Means, running the D Triple C, getting to be White House chief-of-staff had matured him.   Nope.  He’s the same little twerp.

        Q   You think there’s still time to elect Chico?

        A.  Of course. Two weeks plus is an eternity in politics.

      Q.  Your take on the Egyptian crisis?

       A.   I think Obama’s follies are coming home to roost and his legacy could well be the guy who lost Egypt in the same way Carter lost Iran.  This junketing all over the world, bowing at the waist to potentates of color and saying we’re the Muslims’ friend showed our allies they can’t count on us and our enemies that they can exploit our weakness.

       Q.  The federal judge’s ruling that ObamaCare is unconstitutional?

       A.  It gives real resonance to the Republican drive for  repeal.  Before the Court acted, repeal was seen as a impotent ploy.  Not now.  It’s become Number One for 2012—much as the Supreme Court’s nix of Truman’s seizure of the steel mills inflamed the presidential campaign of 1952 when governmental usurpation first became an issue.  It gives oomph to the drive for repeal or better still, that the Supreme Court itself will invalidate it.

  

OBAMA’S SUPER-PROTECTIVE MEDIA SECURITY BLANKET.

                       

      Establishment Media Either Spikes Negatives Including Personal History or Responds with “Racism” Whenever Danger Looms.

      An enlarged, updated article which appeared last week in The Wanderer, America’s oldest national Catholic weekly.                                            

                                                Size 44 Weird.

            Many  presidents have, on occasion, done weird things—only one president of the 44   is Weird.

        Our current 44^th.

      On the night before his abdication  Nixon (the 37^th) went from public room to public room in the downstairs White House saying goodbye to the portraits on the wall (“Bye-bye James Madison...John Quincy Adams!”)...He had weird episodes but was not ipso facto Weird with a capital W.  In fact he was the cockeyed genius who split in twain the dread Sino-Soviet twin-headed bloc…for which in liberal-written history books he has been given insufficient credit…

       … Jimmy Carter (the 39^th) claimed that while canoeing near his Plains, Ga.  summer White House he was attacked by a vicious rabbit which tried to climb in his boat while he beat it back with a paddle (Secret Service said it did not observe this scuffle). Despite bouts of weirdness, he was successful in the Camp David Accords in alleviating for a time a Middle East war. 

       … Ronald Reagan (the 40^th) faithfully obeyed Nancy Reagan’s astrologer about the most propitious time for him to schedule things while important matters were put on hold waiting for the Beverly Hllls lady seer’s answer.  This was an example of weirdness but he was not Weird.  Far from it.   He broke the back of the USSR with negotiations in Geneva and  Iceland when he convinced Gorbachev we had the stuff to produce STAR-WARS and they didn’t.   Brilliant.

       And presidents have often overcome familial difficulties to do important things.

        Take Bill Clinton (the 42^nd), always a scarred veteran of a broken family which showed —original name: William Jefferson Blythe IV whose 4-times married mother, a practical nurse, was a regular blowing her hard-earned bucks at the $2 window at Hot Springs’ Oaklawn race track.  As a child Billy Blythe stood between her and an abusive male boyfriend who threatened to beat her to death.  She left nursing after a probe opened up about the sudden deaths of two elderly patients in her care at a nursing home, ending in her acquittal by the Arkansas medical examiner. Clinton was not unfamiliar with weirdness ala Monica Lewinsky but wisely adopted a GOP congress’s welfare reform and budget strategy which aided an economic boom.

       Verdict: He could be weird but was not Weird.

              And then we get to 44.

              The difference: He is—and embodies--Weird.    

         Previous presidents had no trouble spelling out their belief in God.

        Not so Number 44.

           No previous presidents bowed to foreign potentates.

         Not so Number 44 who bowed deferentially to the King of Saudi Arabia….then after being criticized, bowed waist-down to Japan’s emperor and empress—both rulers of color.

       All presidents since Roe v. Wade were either totally against killing babies in the womb or ambiguously compliant urging abortions “safe [sic]… and rare.” Like Clinton.

        Except Number 44.

        This year in a celebratory statement for Roe he declared it protects women “from governmental intrusion.”

            Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a raving pro-abort, ex-ACLUer says catapulting the issue to the Supremes was an act of legal folly, short-circuiting the process by which she hoped legislatures one after another would legalize the procedure so as not to precipitate the national crisis of division we have endured since.  By the Court interfering, it preempted the people. Not governmental intrusion?

            Ginsburg’s as liberal as one can get.

         But she can’t touch Old 44 who’s got a hold on Weird.

       As Illinois state senate judiciary chair he killed the Born Alive bill that would have mandated nutrition, medicines and humane comfort be accorded to babies born live from botched abortions.  Call him the walking embodiment of King Herod with a light touch.

        The fact he’s so remorseless shows he’s unconcerned not unaware of the magnanimity of his deed.

         Like a gerbil sans conscience, he had his two daughters show Chinese President Hu Jintao their command of Chinese—their genially smiling father unconcerned that the Chinese government has forced women to have abortions under the “one-child policy” forcing urban dwellers to abort, punishing second pregnancies with forced sterilization with particular disdain to female infants through abortion, purposeful neglect, willful abandonment and infanticide known to be imparted to girl babies.

           Later, displaying baleful unconcern he praised Hu: “While it’s easy to focus on our difference of culture, let us never forget the values that our people share: a reverence for family…and, most of all, the desire to give our children a better life.”[Italics mine].

           That’s what Weird is, folks.

                       Weird Attracts Weird at Tucson.

         And he draws weirdos -- as iron filings grovel to a magnet.

         Just before Obama was to read his ghost-written Tucson speech on the teleprompter… the university-designated representative Invoker marched to the podium.  Not a priest, rabbi or Protestant minister—but an Obama-clone iron filing Weird from the U of Arizona, with a glint in his eyes, holding aloft an eagle feather.   

         Yep.  While an iron-filing Weird …he was pushed forward by those filings on the Arizona faculty drawn to the Obama event like other odd ones, scurrying to the central magnet.

       After the professor moved from platitudinous self-indulgence of his own biography, he got around to delivering a “prayer” he described it as of ancient Indian origin. His invocation was a true fit-- Perfect Weird—a capstone illustrative for the Obama  presidency. It didn’t mention God, didn’t ask for God’s blessing of comfort on the assemblage.   It called for honoring the “Seven Directions”—including Father Sky, Mother Earth but he didn’t get around to the other five.

          I hereby give excerpts.  

     “O Creator, may the two energies, the masculine energy and the feminine energy, come together in our center where the Creator exists. For each of us have a piece of the Creator...”

     At least he could manage to say the word “Creator.” Our president ex-University of Chicago lecturer on “constitutional law” couldn’t get himself to do that on three separate occasions …alleging that we were endowed with certain inalienable rights but by Whom stuck in his throat.  

          “Let us not forget our fellow creatures,” the U of Arizona professor intoned.  “those that crawl on the earth, those that slither on the earth…”     We’ve acknowledged those which crawl and slither—which presumably includes those which wriggle, creep and slink.  He finally gets to those which skulk around under the earth.

         Finally the professor gets to something like us:  “those that stand” but there’s no reference to humans.  “Those that stand” on two legs can also refer to ostriches and birds.  This description covers  macropods, kangaroo mice, springhare and hominem apes.   The ancestors of crocodiles were once bipedal.  In fact I’m told they still….rarely it is true… rear up on their hind legs to fight or copulate…to reach food, look out for enemies, threaten a competitor and try to seduce females in courtship.

       He never included humans as a classification. 

       It’ll likely not surprise you that the weird invoker was just another flaky super- liberal Catholic, Tucson variety.   He is Dr. Carlos Gonzales, an associate professor of medicine (God help us), who, it just struck the University of Arizona president drawn personally to Obama to be the perfect guy for the invocation for Obama’s address.

     “I was asked  by the University to give a traditional Native American blessing,” Gonzales said.  “This is the type of blessing that we give at memorial services to open up a ceremony.  A medicine man will do a variation of it to open up a pow-wow—and how each direction has a certain characteristic that when you pray to that direction, you ask for the inspiration that comes from that direction.” You see, an Indian view has no heaven, no hell.”

       He added, “my prayer is whatever your particular denomination deems to be the important entity.”

       You can just bet this nihilism was not lost on Old 44, he understanding he must sublimate his weirdness for the time being as Billy Daley works to get him reelected but at least one bona fide Weird got the message through at Tucson that day.

         The chemistry that tips the emotional lefty pool tables so the balls roll toward Obama caused Rahm Emanuel to get himself kicked out of the lunatic 3^rd World insane asylum in the White House after he used 4-letter words to tell the incumbent to change his ways from the concept there is no patriotism but global--and rush to the relatively bucolic order of Chicago Squid politics to keep his sanity. Emanuel’s not Weird just a Squid pragmatist weasel born without a moral core.

    Last week he passed muster on his Chicago residency with the Illinois State Supreme Court. After all, its majority is Democrat and The Squid still has the “paid for” receipt—but still the vote was unanimous.  

           Recycling the Birth Certificate After It’s Been Forgotten..

         Understand that most writers, even some conservatives, have been cowed by the politically correct supine media under direction of the White House to  never touch the radio-active Hawaii birth certificate issue since to do so is to question the eligibility of 44 and be labeled racist.  This was ordained by David Axelrod who unlike Emanuel is 14-carat Obama devotee whose mother was an early reporter for the newspaper PM, known in the `40s as the Uptown edition of The Communist Daily Worker.

         Then foiling Axelrod’s plan, two weeks ago, another Obama-attracted iron-filing Weird…an ex-university professor who left the House with an 89% ADA record after 10 terms to become Democratic governor of Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie…announced that as governor he—Abercrombie—had the authority to find the whereabouts of the missing hard-copy Obama birth certificate and rid the issue of presidential eligibility once and for all. 

       After all, said Abercrombie, he knew Obama and his mama Stanley Dunham (yes, her first name was Stanley, her mother placating her husband by that name who was so disappointed he didn’t father a boy he insisted she take his name) equipping her as fitting progenitor of Size 44 Weird). But, wait—Abercrombie wasn’t there when Obama was born.   But then Abercrombie like Obama is a fellow Weird.  And weird is as weird does.

              Abercrombie said he will expose the “fraudulent” story by producing the hard-copy birth certificate. The long accepted answer given out to the media is that under the Hawaii privacy act no one could get hands on the hard-copy from the state of Hawaii except an official state source (no official comment on why Obama hadn’t demanded to see it to clear things up).   Now Hawaii Gov. Abercrombie would reopen the search and produce it for the world to see justifying the “natural born” status of No. 44 to keep the reactionaries from slurring No. 44 in 2012. As an  issue it is moot and Axelrod shuddered,  but then as I said earlier, Abercrombie is also Weird. 

             “It was actually written,” Abercrombie told the press.  “This is what our investigation is showing.  It actually exists in the archives, written down…What I can do and all I have ever said is that I am going to see to it as governor that I can verify it to anyone who is honest about it that this is the case.”

       Well he didn’t fix anything at all—he worsened it. Nobody can find it.  One lady civil servant said she thinks she saw it somewhere but it’s vanished.   The supine national media determined to give protection for this fraud to Obama which it would not supply for anyone else, still eschews the issue—blasting its use as “racism.” Not a line about this in any establishment paper or on any establishment network. 

    My conclusion which will surely label me a birther, racist or worse:

     The suspicion is growing in my mind that the state of Hawaii can’t produce a hard-copy birth certificate for Weird 44 for the same reason it can’t produce one for me.     

     Because I was born in St. Francis Hospital, Evanston.