Archive for December, 2006

Death and Politics

Thursday, December 14th, 2006

The murmurings that the media and Republicans, and quite frankly the murmurings show that the Democrats are fixated on this as well, have focused their coverage of Tim Johnson’s sudden medical emergency on electoral ramnifications — how a possible Tim Johnson replacement from the Republican South Dakota Governor (mentioned in the first paragraph of every story on the situation I’ve seen or heard) — elicits one response from me, the writer of the “Skull / Bones” blog:

“You were expecting something else?”

I can’t even say it can be otherwise, even if we wanted the world to be nice.  Could the average American voter pick Tim Johnson out of a line-up?  To ignore the electoral ramnifications in carrying out a story on the situation.

It looks as though Tim Johnson will be fine, and will carry on his Senate term, up in November of 2008.  Which puts him ahead of the three Senator who my civic memory is able to come up with who died, and then had much of their subsequent political coverage concerned largely with how they affect electoral outcomes.

In 2000, Georgia’s Republican Senator died.  The Democratic Governor of Georgia appointed a Democratic Senator, who I will not mention except to say that you hate him.  The media then reported that the Democrats now had a better chance of winning the Senate, now that the Democrats only had to win four Senate seats instead of five.

In October of 2000, Mel Carnahan, in a tight race with John Ashcroft in Missouri, died.  And the media dutifully reported on how this affected the Senate situation — as it goes, it was thought to be a negative for the Democrats because, as Republican strategists put it, “John Ashcroft is unlikely to lose to a ghost.”  The political considerations that the Democrats had was to keep their voters coming anyways, because a loss of Democratic voters would hamper the gubernatorial candidate and Al Gore.

And in October of 2002, Paul Wellstone died.  It took a couple days for Walter Mondale to be thrust into the race.  Norm Coleman took a lesson from Ashcroft’s failed race against a ghost, and went on to win.  The media covered the electoral situation.

It’s… how it goes.

Skull/Bones 2008 III

Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

From kos:

Imagine, if you will, that the three front-runners for the Democratic nomination were: 1) Joe Lieberman; 2) a fundamentalist Christian governor of Utah, and; 3) an anti-choice former mayor of Colorado Springs who isn’t just against gay marriage, but who actively and publicly dislikes gay people.Ouch.  That wouldn’t be much fun.  In fact, it might well sour the Dem base on the entire primary process.  Fortunately, we have a much less offensive candidate pool.   But Republicans looking at their real field of candidates must feel much the same as we would in the nightmare scenario above.   Because each one of the top three candidates in the inaugural 2008 GOP Cattle Call has at least one trait that makes them anathema to large swaths of the Republican base.

Mitt Romney’s name has been mentioned by Republicans as someone who’s electoral value is proven by the fact that he won in Massachusetts, even that loathsome state. Which does present the “I suppose”, but what you must be or must do to get elected in Massachusetts — no matter how good a governor by Republican’s standards one is — is going to hold you away from Republican primary voters. Hence the reverberations from Romney’s posturing that he makes a better gay rights advocate than (again, loathsome) Teddy Kennedy.  It is inevitable in the same manner that a Democratic governor from Utah would clash with the Democratic primary voter.  Nonetheless, Romney has a better chance of getting through this clutter than Rudy Giuliani, and Romney may end up president where Giuliani never will.

Mitt Romney’s name has been mentioned by Republicans as someone who’s electoral value is proven by the fact that he won in Massachusetts, even that loathsome state.  Which does present the “I suppose”, but what you must be or must do to get elected in Massachusetts — no matter how good a governor by Republican’s standards one is — is going to hold you away from Republican primary voters.  Hence the reverberations from Romney’s .  It is inevitable in the same manner that a Democratic governor from Utah would clash with the Democratic primary voter.  Nonetheless, Romney has a better chance of getting through this clutter than Rudy Giuliani, and Romney may end up president where Giuliani never will.On the Democratic side, I note that kos has Barack Obama as #1, ahead of the for the past two years presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton.  Maybe this is a good thing — I think I like Obama better than Clinton, but I have a certain Obama problem, and the Obama Problem is something that infects American politics.

Obama’s chief political asset is that he has no long record to poke holes in so that someone may pin him down.  He is a fresh face with no baggage.  He can continue to be all things to all people, and all things to all interests.  Considering his Monday Night Football opening, a football analogy seems appropriate.  He is the back up quarterback the fans love and clamor the coach to switch over to, because the starting quarterback’s flaws are painfully evident while what we’ve seen of the back-up quarterback has been spectacular — never mind what we’ve seen of the back-up quarterback has been against second and third string defenses at the end of blow-out games and pre-season games and his spectacular college career.

A Senator may be elected president, but I believe it would have to be a senator who has had roughly the amount of Senate service as Obama.

I’m not so sure my preferred Democratic presidential candidate, out of the group that is running, isn’t Bill Richardson.  The problem is he has a resume.  He has served as a Congressman, US Ambassador to the UN, and US Secretary of Energy, and governor of New Mexico.  Which is what I would want, and what I would think the American voter would want.  But it isn’t what they want.  His track record is open to interpretation, and a significant part of the elctorate is going to believe he’s responsible for North Korea having nukes.  Similar things may be interpreted in his other jobs.  Thus the baggage.

 

To be enshrined into the Cascadian Constitution

Tuesday, December 12th, 2006

A law that is going to be enshrined into the Cascadian Constitution:

The tie goes to nature.

The details and laws that relate to this constitutional rule will shift, but this principle will guide the decision making process concerning such things as… recovery and rescue missions.

A Texan and a New Yorker are currently stuck on Mount Hood, apparently having decided to embark on a “quick climb”, impulsively recognizing climbing Mt Hood as a lark, wandering up from “Zig Zag Glacier”. They are now apparently minutes away from going Dahmer Party on us.

Under the Cascadian Constituion, “all ties go to nature”, it is a coin flip from the start on whether the Cascadian Government will leave these adventurers there, or attempt a rescue mission. Should they manage to find and rescue them, they will be flown back to their homes, New York and Texas, be strapped in a parachute, and tossed out the helicopter, the helicopter leaving immediately and never looking back.

If a friend or relative says at a press conference, as has happened here, “If anyone can survive this, they can”, Cascadia will not search for them. In fact, it will be against the law for any private parties to organize a search. This we regard as a Dare on their parts, and taking at face value, the Adventurers would have wanted it this way — to face Nature. It is a test of their toughness and ability to conquer nature, and all of Cascadia will be watching to see how it turns out.

Meanwhile, our national news coverage — the tv news being overtly and upfront Cascadian propaganda — will cover the event with sympathies lying with the awesome Mount Hood (should the relatives and freinds boost of the adventurers like that). The news stories will excitely speculate on what Mount Hood may have in store with the intrpeid adventurers — a way of stoking up national pride.

The other recent “Search and Rescue” mission — the travelers from San Francisco — will likely follow a different path under the “All Ties go to nature”, and that case study will have to be delved in as we flesh out the laws.

continuing the list

Tuesday, December 12th, 2006

Duncan Hunter is never going to elected President.
Dennis Kucinich is never going to be elected President.

Oh, what the hell.  As insane as it may be to bring them up:  Mike Gravel is never going to be President.  Lyndon Larouche is never going to be President.

The matter of Gordon Smith

Tuesday, December 12th, 2006

It’s something of a cliche that I’ve noticed in Oregon’s liberal blogosphere to say that the Oregonian keeps trumping up Gordon Smith as a moderate.  Indeed, the paper does seem to have a feature every few months which delves into what they say a “Gordon Smith” is.

Cue “Senate Wars:  Revolt of the Smith” May 22, 2005 by David Sarasohn.

Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most quoted people in Washington — who says “I like Gordon Smith a lot” — sketches out the levels of Republican Senate dissent, like someone drawing a star chart.

A handful of Northeasterners clearly are more moderate than the Republican conference.  Then, with Arizona’s John McCain somewhere between the two groups, there are the mavericks:  Ornstein offers the example of Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.  Others in the maverick round-up include Lindsay Graham of South Carolina — skeptical early on the Bush social security idea, and George Voinovich of Ohio, who dropped a sudden and unexpected roadblock in front of John Bolton as United Nations ambassador nominee.

“Gordon’s not quite in that group,” Ornstein says.  “Hagel drives the White House to distraction.  Gordon doesn’t.”

On a wide range of issues, from taxes to timber to terror strategies, Smith is steadily with the administration and the GOP leadership.

He’s … moderately moderate?  Or perhaps moderately moderately moderate.  Which is to say, to detect his deviations from Republican whipped lines, you moderate the measure to the nth degree… squint hard enough and you will notice it.  He didn’t quite make it to the “Gang of 12”, but should the Gang of 12 have been expanded to be a “Gang of 18”, maybe he’d be in it.  The Oregonian would later give a number to the number of straight and out Republicans who do not deviate from Bush’s line one iota — 40 or 45 or something, and again define Gordon Smith as somewhere between the “moderates” and this mass.  The articles blur together in my mind, and I don’t want to take the trouble of looking for this other article.

The wikipedia entry on Gordon Smith notes that CQ rates him as #50 on the ideological chart.  That should change in the next senate, of course, as probably five people to the right of him on that chart have been dropped and replaced with Democrats.  That shallow and arbitrary rating will no longer be at the disposal of the Oregonian when they set out to give meaning to an otherwise meaningless Senator yet again in a few months.  They will have to find something else.

Gordon Smith is an inoffensive sort.  Which is pretty well how he likes it, I imagine.  I cannot hate him or have a strong opinion of him, because if I were to hate him or have a strong opinion of him and remain ntellectually honest, I would have to have a strong opinion on a whole mass of politicians I would not be able to pick out of a line-up.  At a Portland Democratic campaign phone-bank in 2002, there was a picture of Gordon Smith on the wall, ready to throw darts at.  It takes a special type of partisan for this, and I suppose it is in a sense an admirable trait.  Otherwise, how can you hope to get your preferred candidate of your preferred party elected?

I have no insights or original observation about Gordon Smith’s reversal on the Iraq War.  It is what it is, whatever that may be.  Is he in any position to do anything about it, and if he is will he bother?  The answer to both questions appears to be “not really.”

Unexceptional Politicians in the News

Saturday, December 9th, 2006

Doc Hastings poked his head into the national news just yesterday, delivering the not-terribly awaited Mark Foley report.  I heard two radio hosts describe what he had to say.  Rick Emerson (a purveyor of Politics as Spectator Sports and not much else), who grew up in Kennewick and to his credit has never heard of the man, called him the most bland Congressman he’s ever heard.  Rachel Maddow described him as milquetoast.

It was a predictable anti-climax.  Everybody has lost interest, and the political points to be made had been made — the most implicated politicians had suffered political damage to their careers if nothing else.  I can’t quite say that it should be anyway else, but I can’t quite say otherwise.

Another unexceptional northwest politician, Gordon Smith, has also attracted attention by making a forth-right statement against the war.

I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that any more. I believe we need to figure out not just how to leave Iraq but how to fight the War on Terror and to do it right.

He then went on to say we either need to “Cut and Run” or “Cut and Walk”.  The problem with Gordon Smith coming out and saying such things is it is impossible for me not to see it as anything other than sticking his finger out and blowing with the wind.  I recognize that sometimes a politician has a legitimate change of heart or reacts to the reality of the situation in a not so cynical reasoning, but I just don’t see it with Gordon Smith.  Had he been up for office in 2006 and probably 2004, he would have lost.  Oregon essentially elected to round up all of its Republicans and toss them in the Pacific Ocean.  And so there it is: the 2008 elections.  He managed the trick of staving off his challenger in 2002 by raising money by the boatload, and riding a Republican friendly environment.  It is kind of interesting how successfully re-elected and re-re-elected Senators versus defeated Senators often are tied to just what years they had to deal with the elections and the pesky voters.

So it is that the national media covers the words of Gordon Smith, something that’s not worth doing otherwise.  Good job, Mr. Smith.

Commemorating Pearl Harbor Day

Saturday, December 9th, 2006

The other day — Thursday to be more precise — somebody said to a group of people of whom I was one, and I quote “Happy Pearl Harbor Day.”

There is no “Happy” Pearl Harbor Day.  There is a “Respectful” Pearl Harbor Day, perhaps.  Maybe a “Dignified” Pearl Harbor Day.  There might even be a Happy day on a Pearl Harbor Day, but not a Happy Pearl Harbor Day.