Dearest me.  Tom Vilsack has announced that he is no longer running for the presidency.  Do you understand the implications?

I was getting all set to kick Tom Vilsack around a bit.

No, I wasn’t.  Actually now that Tom Vilsack is out of the race, there is no reason to bother voting.  Of the 300 million residents in America, Tom Vilsack was the only person remotely qualified for the presidency.

Or something.

I guess I will just have to gravitate back to Mike Gravel.

Monitoring Mike Gravel on google, I have watched this blog slide down to #15 and then back to #9.  It currently sits at #11.  All this while ignoring the topic for a week.  This suggests that it doesn’t matter what I do or do not do with Mike Gravel — I am indented into Google’s fabric with regards to Mike Gravel.

I suspect the second piece on google lead a stephanie to the blog entry to come to this comment:

1. stephanie Says:
   February 22nd, 2007 at 11:20 pm eAbsolute garbage to say Gravel would have voted to extend Vietnam. Shame on you.

In my group of postings on Mike Gravel, the only item I feel somewhat dirty bringing up is the “Washington Fringe Benefit” allegation that was floated his way from out of another congressman’s sex scandal.  This even though I layered heaps of incredulity on the topic.  On reflection, it almost seems a low level sort of the equivalent of Fox News reporting on the “rumors” of Obama’s Madrassa.
I do not feel ashamed for what I said about Mike Gravel with Vietnam.  All I can go on are contemporary New York Times articles defining his race against Gruening as a hawk.  Granted, the only direct quotes out of Gravel were of him calling Gruening “outside the mainstream on foreign policy”.  Beyond that, there’s that matter that the anti-war movement from Alaska’s college campuses, with help from George McGovern, attempted a write-in campaign on Gruening’s behalf.

Perhaps Mike Gravel was comparing his internationalist views (as manifested in his role in the “One World” organization) with Gruening’s isolationism, and the New York Times misunderstood or took out of context Gravel’s 1968 campaign?  That would be a stretch.

Okay.  Cross out the question on my “12 Questions for Mark Gravel” concerning… um… Richard Nixon’s Enemies List… and replace it with:

What was the process by which your opinion shifted on the Vietnam War?  When did it happen?  And why should we not give the same latitude in allowing other Democratic candidates to do the same on the issue of Iraq, to be looked at on a case to case basis, contrary to your speech at the DNC Winter Meeting?

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