Why 2012 Should Be a GOP Year Monday, Jan 9 2012 

History and Politics , , , , victorgold 9:58 am

“Why 2012 Should Be a GOP Year”

— Headline, George Will’s New Year’s column

The Oracle has looked into his crystal ball and foreseen the future. According to the Washington Post‘s pre-eminent conservative pundit, Republicans should “stride confidently” into the coming election year, with nothing but good news ahead – unless you include losing the presidency again to Barack Obama.

That’s what the man said: Republicans will win the House and Senate but because of a flawed nominating process will lose the White House. They can then spend the next four years blocking everything Obama wants to do in a happy state of partisan gridlock.

Flashback: I recall a bright young Post columnist once summing up a dismal political situation with the trenchant observation that “if you set your standards low enough a train wreck can be counted a success.”

That columnist, if my octogenarian memory serves, was George Will. But of course George, as he confessed in another recent column, has now reached the septuagenarian stage of life, so he can be forgiven a few lapses; such as recommending, in his  second column of the new year, that a Romney-Santorum ticket is just what Republicans need to capture the key state of Pennsylvania come November.

That would be Rick Santorum, the Great Right Hope of the moment, who lost his home state of Pennsylvania by 17 points when he ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate. Small wonder why Will is touting a Romney-Santorum ticket for the fall: He’s out to make his prediction of an Obama victory a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I digress — a common failing among those who have lived through too many presidential elections to take the promise of “change” seriously. My original point was that if the GOP loses to Obama in November it won’t be because of its nominating process but the fact that Republicans took over the House in the mid-term elections.

Lucky Barack Obama. What would the odds against his re-election be this new year if he didn’t have an out-of-control Republican majority in the House to blame for his failure to deliver “change you can believe in.”

A little political history is in order, if Professor Gingrich won’t mind my muscling into his territory:

In 1948 Harry Truman was so unpopular that both the left and right wings of his party broke off to nominate their own candidates for president. Yet he won re-election not by running against his nominal opponent, Tom Dewey, but a Republican Congress whose time and energy had been spent trying to repeal the New Deal.

Flash forward half-a-century to find another unpopular Democratic president rescued by the mid-term election of a Republican House that undid itself by closing down the government because, as its Speaker confessed, he was asked to leave Air Force One from the rear rather than the front exit.

In that case, it was lucky Bill Clinton. What would the odds against his re-election have been in 1996 if he hadn’t had an out-of-control Newt Gingrich to blame for his failure to deliver the New Covenant he’d promised.

Obviously the idea that elephants never forget doesn’t apply to pachyderms of the political species. On the other hand their Democratic opponents have taken heed: A front-page New Year’s headline in the New York Times tells us OBAMA PLANS TO RUN AGAINST CONGRESS.

SOUND BITE TO REMEMBER

Steele might become a reasonably good writer if he would pay a little more attention to grammar, learn something about the propriety and disposition of words and, incidentally, get some information on the subject he intends to handle.

                                 — Jonathan Swift on Richard Steele

 

Thirteen years? Unlucky (or unlikely) number Thursday, Dec 8 2011 

History and Politics , , , victorgold 12:49 pm

So Herman Cain has dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination after a woman came forward with a lurid story of a 13-year sexual relationship with the one-time GOP frontrunner.

My cynical Louisiana-bred reaction? Big mistake to leave the race. In former Gov. Edwin Edwards’ famous formulation, there is no practical reason for any modern-day politician to quit running unless he’s found in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.

Consider David Vitter, still spouting platitudes on the U.S. Senate floor, despite being listed as a frequent guest at a wicked Washington call house. Or, for that matter, the private life of Cain’s successor as the Iowa frontrunner, Newt Gingrich.

No, what Herman Cain should have done on getting word of a pending sex scandal was punch in Edwin Edwards’ number to find out what Edwards advised Bill Clinton when a model named Gennifer Flowers claimed that she had a 12-year relationship with Clinton during his days as attorney general and governor of Arkansas.

As Edwards recalled the occasion, Clinton, then in the early stage of his run for the presidency, got news of the charge while on a fund-raising trip to New Orleans. Concerned about its impact, he asked his fellow Southern governor, Edwards, what he should do.

“I told him,” said Edwards, “that if that sort of claim were made against me I’d say, ‘12 weeks, maybe. Twelve months, maybe. But 12 years? Never.’”

Clinton, a simple Arkansas philanderer who lacked the flair of his Louisiana counterpart, said he didn’t think he could do that. Instead he and Hillary headed for “60 Minutes” and the first of what would be an eight-year series of “Stand by Your Man” reconciliations.

It worked, but I still prefer Edwards’ way. Mendacious perhaps, but it had the virtue of political wit, an element sadly lacking in the current race for the Republican nomination. For that reason alone, we’re going to miss Herman Cain’s presence in the field. He was the only candidate running who could at times be intentionally funny.

Sound Bite to Remember (Occupiers and Tea Party members take note)

“Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.”

                               — Theodore Roosevelt (1913)

 

When is a lobbyist not a lobbyist? Sunday, Nov 20 2011 

History and Politics , victorgold 4:40 pm

“I wasn’t a lobbyist, I was a strategic adviser.”

— Newt Gingrich, explaining why he took $1.8 million in fees from Freddie Mac, a federal agency that operates on taxpayer/bailout money

Move past, if you will, the part of this story that involves a Republican presidential candidate’s having what reporters call “baggage” (though in this particular candidate’s case it’s sure to be either Gucci’s or Louis Vuitton’s).

That Newt Gingrich has always viewed political cachet as a route toward becoming Newt Getrich dates back to his first touch of power, assuming the House speakership in 1995 and immediately hooking onto a $4.5 million book deal he gave up only after being pressured by his embarrassed Republican colleagues.

No, Gingrich-being-Getrich shouldn’t be the focus of media attention here. That’s old news. The question to be raised – the thing to be condemned by good government moralists in the media – is why federal departments and agencies like Freddie Mac are allowed to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to lobby Congress for additional millions of taxpayer dollars.

Gingrich’s audacity (somebody has to pay those Tiffany bills, so why not Freddie Mac?) simply expresses the routine acceptance by members of Congress — Democrat and Republican alike — that influence-peddling not merely for but with taxpayer money is now the accepted norm in Washington.

There ought to be a law against it — and as a matter of fact, there is: Taxpayer-subsidized federal departments and agencies are strictly prohibited from using their funds for lobbying purposes. But then, this isn’t lobbying, is it? No, it’s “strategic advice,” given when the price is right by ex-Republican and ex-Democratic congressmen alike.

Who says there isn’t bipartisan agreement on some federal expenditures?

Sound Bite to Remember (circa 1955)

“Why is it that when I take it, it’s stealin’, but when a governor who’s a lawyer takes it, it’s called a fee?”

 Alabama Governor Big Jim Folsom, complaining about the inequity of it all

 

Biden in 2016? It’s All in the Game Wednesday, Oct 26 2011 

Media and Politics victorgold 5:51 pm

I can’t pinpoint precisely when Presidential politics turned into a game, but I can tell you who owns the casino.

Flashback: Halfway through the Nixon v. McGovern campaign of 1972 — ancient history, but bear with me — Vice President Spiro Agnew arrived in Los Angeles prepared to answer reporters’ questions about the Vietnam war, Nixon’s new economic policy, and a host of other major issues (including the Watergate break-in five months earlier). Instead, the first question asked by a local TV reporter was whether the Vice President was planning to run for president in 1976.

As Agnew’s press secretary at the time I’d long since learned to expect the unexpected when the man was provoked by what he regarded as nattering nabobs. What followed was true to form: A glare, a clearing of the throat, then: “In ten years of holding press conferences on a local, state and national level,” said the Vice President, “that is absolutely the stupidest question I’ve ever been asked.”

All of which came to mind last week when I tuned in to hear CNN’s Candy Crowley ask Vice President Joe Biden the same stupid question: Was Biden, in his campaign travel this year, laying the groundwork for a presidential bid in 2016?

For Crowley, of course, the question was anything but stupid. It was smart television, what she’s paid to do. That whatever answer Biden gave – it was predictably vapid – would shed no light on the issues and substance of the current campaign made no difference. As a political correspondent for a cable news network, her job is to give the dull grind of a presidential campaign the casino touch.

It’s all about the game – the ratings game – and second only to controversy, there’s nothing like speculation to entertain an audience, raise the numbers that keep sponsors happy. What value would those vacuous candidate “debates” be without a covey of instant analysts and partisan touts coming on to tell us who won, who lost, who held the hot hand, who crapped out.

In their book The Permanent Campaign and Its Future, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein deplore the impact that pollsters and spin doctors have had on our political system, blurring the line between running for and holding office. All to the good, as far as the boys (and girls) on the Permanent Campaign Bus are concerned.

Joe Biden running in 2016? Why should this question come up now? The answer is that having exhausted the list of prospects for the 2012 race, there was nowhere else to go. Remember Trump, Daniels, Barbour, Palin, Christie?

The last named, you’ll recall, became so tired of telling reporters he wasn’t going to run that he famously asked, “What do I have to do to convince you? Commit suicide?”

And if a non-candidate did in fact kill himself to end speculation about his running, what then? No problem. I can hear Chris Matthews now: “Good campaign move.”

Sound Bite to Remember (1972)

“He’s a Democrat. What would you expect him to say, ‘Kiss my elephant’?”

— Campaign manager Frank Mankiewicz explaining why his candidate George McGovern told an obnoxious heckler to ‘kiss my ass’

 

September Headlines Monday, Oct 3 2011 

Politics , , , victorgold 12:36 pm

Under the headline “Why We Need a Third Party,” Washington Post columnist Matt Miller condemns both the Democratic  and Republican parties for being “prisoner  to interest groups” whose chief aim is “to win elections, not solve problems.”

Some deep thinking there. Miller goes on to list unemployment, the budget, health care and education as problems “we need to truly fix,” then  quotes the late Senator Pat Moynihan saying “If issues can’t be discussed, they can never be advanced.”

What’s needed to bring about “a new politics of problem-solving,” writes Miller, is a third party that would offer “candidates with the vision and nerve to fill today’s void.”

Now why didn’t I think of that? Possibly because my thought waves were hung up on a New York Times headline earlier in the month:

PLAN WOULD KEEP MILITARY

IN IRAQ BEYOND DEADLINE

My, what a surprise that was — along with a Post headline the same day that expressed the Pentagon’s view that we’re involved in an “endless war.”

In his 2010 book “Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War,” retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich predicted it all, down to the matter of American lawmakers, Democrat and Republican alike, approving billions-per-month to build roads, hospitals and schools overseas, while ignoring the need to build roads, hospitals and schools  here at home.

And more: “With current Pentagon outlays running at something like $700 billion annually,” wrote Bacevich, “the United States spends as much or more money on its military than the entire rest of the world combined,” with “approximately 300,000 troops stationed abroad occupying 761 ‘sites’ in 39 foreign countries.”

There lies a “problem,” one would think, that third-party advocates like Miller would add to their list of things “we need to truly fix.”

But no – the Post columnist, while purporting to speak with “vision and nerve,” is no better than the issue-dodgers he criticizes when it comes to confronting what our last soldier-president, Dwight Eisenhower, called “the military-industrial complex.”

Why is it that the only politicians willing to do that, e.g., Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, are widely derided as kooks? A ventured guess: Because, Mr. Miller, when the “problem” involved is the Bush-Obama Doctrine of “endless war,” what America needs isn’t a third party — it’s a second party.

 

The Bachmann Corollary to Santayana’s Rule Monday, Oct 3 2011 

Politics , victorgold 12:35 pm

The upside to not knowing history is that you don’t run the risk of forgetting it.

 

You’re the President of the United States . . . Monday, Sep 5 2011 

Politics victorgold 11:56 am

. . . and you’re sending a long-overdue jobs program to a contentious Congress. To work up public support you plan to deliver a prime-time speech from the Oval Office, asking the American people to call, write, contact their representatives on Capitol Hill, to let them know their constituents support the President’s program.

Question: What’s wrong with that scenario? Answer: Nothing if you’re a politically savvy president named Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton, more interested in getting your message across than in the spotlight of delivering it.  What better way to put pressure on members of Congress than a direct appeal to their constituents?

But if you’re Barack Obama, that’s not the way to go: Center stage, captive audience, on-camera — daytime, prime-time, anytime — is the be-all and end-all of his presidential leadership. So it is that having earned the distinction of being the most over-exposed president in American history, the Lecturer-in-Chief now moves to make the calling of a congressional joint session commonplace.

What’s that, the President again, speaking to Congress? Must be a summer re-run. Flip the channel.

 

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