We do not generally look to gubernatorial debates for excitement
But this week there was a fascinating one in Arizona , where Gov. Jan Brewer gave a bad performance of epic proportions
Really , Richard Nixon in 1960 was Demosthenes in Athens compared with this one
Brewer began by blanking out during her introductory statement -- there was this horrible 16-second interval where she went silent , stared down at her notes and giggled
The evening ended when she stomped away from reporters who were yelling : '' Governor , please answer the question about the headless bodies .
Everyone knows you never want to finish a big campaign night on a headless-body note
Brewer is an unelected governor , a Republican who moved into the job when Janet Napolitano , a Democrat , was named secretary of homeland security
-LRB- Someday , when things are calmer , we may want to discuss whether it was really a good idea for President Obama to fill his administration with senators and governors from swing states .
She is trying to win a term in her own right by running almost exclusively on her support for that new Arizona law aimed at cracking down on undocumented immigrants
The governor has been on national programs on Fox 20 times since April to talk about illegal immigration , but she has been generally unavailable to the Arizona reporters
I learned this from the postdebate newscast on the local Fox outlet in Phoenix , where the reporter Steve Krafft complained about her propensity to stonewall the state 's news media in favor of the national shows
During the postdebate confrontation , '' I locked eyes with her , '' said Krafft .
She was looking right at me as if perhaps , maybe , I might ask some question and bail her out
... but all of us wanted an answer .
The headless body debate goes back to Brewer 's longstanding contention that Arizona is plagued by '' drugs and the kidnappings and the extortion and the beheadings '' related to illegal immigration
Naturally , inquiring minds wanted to know about the beheading part .
Oh , our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert -- either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded , '' she said in an interview
This was both memorable and untrue
At the debate , her Democratic opponent , Terry Goddard , claimed that Arizona was losing business because people around the country now believe it 's a hellhole of immigration-fueled violence .
Jan , I call upon you today to say there are no beheadings , '' he demanded
We will pause here briefly to express regret that questions like this do n't come up more frequently in gubernatorial debates
Really , it 's usually all about bonded indebtedness and pensions .
Terry , I will call you out
I think that you ought to renounce your support and endorsement of the unions that are boycotting our state , '' Brewer responded , not precisely to the point
The most interesting issue in this campaign , and the most critical one for the rest of the nation , is whether crime by undocumented immigrants created public fear , which then led to the Arizona law and Brewer 's current popularity
Or whether politicians , in search of a winning issue , created the fear all by themselves
During John McCain 's sterling performance in his primary campaign this summer , he contended that cars full of illegal immigrants '' are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway .
The nonexistent beheadings and alleged drive-by assaults are being brought up at a time when , as Goddard points out , '' violent crime is at the lowest level it 's been since 1983 and crime along the border is at least at a 10-year-low .
But there 's an undeniable surge in drug-related violence in Mexico
The question is whether , for Arizona , the problem lies in the general population of illegal immigrants or the well-financed and technologically sophisticated crime lords who smuggle drugs and human beings over the border
Goddard , who is the state attorney general , is absolutely passionate on this subject
He can go on for hours about the Treasury Department 's failure to follow the dirty money
He worked with Western Union to stop the smugglers ' ability to receive payments by wire for their human cargo
He 's outraged about the way our laws limiting the amount of cash people can carry across the border have n't kept up with the modern methods of transferring money
None of these issues , alas , are nearly as exciting as headless bodies or demonic drivers
In her postdebate repair effort , Brewer told a radio interviewer that '' the bottom line is that there have been beheadings in the border region in Mexico .
She also said that the difference between her and her opponent was that '' I 've done something
Terry has n't did anything .
We are going to forgive her the sentence construction because , really , it had been a bad week
She also announced that there will be no more debates
This is Hillary Clinton in a TV ad running in Pennsylvania in which she reminisces about spending childhood vacations in Scranton
Once again , a campaign in which we thought we had heard every possible piece of information delivers a little surprise
Really , it 's hard to count the questions this line raises
Is pinochle particularly popular in Pennsylvania
Did Mark Penn do a poll on this
Did something inspiring happen at the pinochle table that caused Clinton to make this particular connection
-LRB- `` Young Hillary , if you play your cards right , someday you could become president of the United States . ''
If you were going to say that you were raised on something and the American Dream , what would it be
I 'd have to go with television and the American Dream , although it sounds a little `` Manchurian Candidate .
One purpose of the ad is to point out that although the Clinton family may be raking in beaucoup bucks now , Hillary 's roots were humble
Her Pennsylvanian grandfather worked in a lace factory
The Rodham vacation house had no heat or indoor shower , and according to Carl Bernstein 's biography , as Hillary grew up she began to lose enthusiasm for those long summers on Lake Winola
Nevertheless , her ties to that state are certainly stronger than they were in New York when she first announced for Senate and attempted to summon up warm memories of childhood visits to rest stops along the interstate
And all 's fair in campaign mythmaking
When Kansas was in play , Barack Obama visited his ancestral hometown of El Dorado with great fanfare even though he had never set foot there before
It would never occur to either of the other candidates to link their childhoods to a card game and the American Dream
Obama , who can be disturbingly Ivy League , would probably think the pinochle part was cheesy
McCain would n't bring the Dream up
The idea that you came from humble folk who had faith that their children could aspire to something better does not really float if you 're the offspring of two generations of four-star admirals
Anyway , this pinochle diversion could n't have come at a better time
Things have been getting a little slow on the campaign trail
Setting aside six weeks of preparation for the Pennsylvania primary turns out to have been a little excessive
And the candidates are finding it hard to come up with exciting new things to complain about
The Democrats are still arguing about superdelegates , and the McCain camp is demanding that Barack Obama apologize for a remark made by one of his supporters , Senator John Rockefeller of West Virginia
In an interview with the Charleston Gazette , Rockefeller said that McCain did not care about the concerns of average people , and Rockefeller used as an example the fact that as a Navy fighter pilot , McCain had dropped missiles without knowing who or what they hit
This was not a good thing to say on several levels
For one thing , Obama has already made it clear that he is never , ever going to criticize John McCain 's war record
In fact , he continually commends McCain for his many long years of military service in a way that suggests that said service was accomplished while clad in armor and carrying a spear
For another , thanks to his wife , Cindy , heir to a beer distributing fortune , McCain is worth an estimated $ 100 million
When a man whose family has more than a half-dozen houses opposes help for people facing mortgage foreclosure , you do not need to go back to the Vietnam war to make the argument that he 's out of touch with average Americans ' problems
The Obama camp immediately issued a statement saying that Barack did not agree with what Rockefeller said
Then Rockefeller himself called McCain up to apologize profusely , and he released a statement disavowing his `` very poor choice of words .
Naturally , now we are arguing about whether this is enough
`` Why does Senator Obama refuse to personally condemn this type of despicable attack ?
demanded a McCain spokesman
I believe there is also a dispute pending about whether Obama should apologize personally for the talk-show host in Fargo , N.D. , who called McCain a `` warmonger .
Given the number of crises we 've had along these lines , it might be a good idea for all three candidates to disavow in advance anything stupid a supporter , adviser , staffer or radio talk-show host says for the rest of this year
We could give the blanket disavowal a fancy name , like `` Article 300 .
Then the next time McCain discovers that one of his backers has , say , called for a crusade against Lutherans , he could just invoke Article 300 and we could all move on
Unfortunately , the way things have been going lately , we might have to move on to another discussion of what to do about the superdelegates
That would then inevitably lead to people screaming at each other about Michigan and Florida
Maybe Barack and Hillary could work it out over the pinochle table
Winner takes all
Related Searches Presidential Election of 2008 Add
In the middle of 2008 , Hillary Clinton transformed herself from a perfectly-fine-but-slightly-boring presidential candidate to a really terrific campaigner
This all happened too late to help her candidacy
But some of us hoped that it might be the beginning of a new era
Women in politics had always had a reputation for being honest and steady and hard-working
Maybe some of the next generation would also have a wow factor
That is exactly what happened
Except the smart and steady women were not the ones who got the wow
The sensible candidates actually seemed to get more boring
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison 's attempt to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Texas was one long yawn
You might have said it was the worst major campaign so far this year , if you had not seen the one where Martha Coakley tried to become the senator from Massachusetts
Meanwhile , two of the hottest names in politics are Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann
They held a joint rally in Minneapolis this week , and it was one long wow
Palin called the crowd `` you who love your good hunting and fishing .
Bachmann sounded like a combination of an ancient Roman matron preparing to send her sons off to die for their country , and one of those people who walk around yelling that enemies implant secret radios in their brains while they 're sleeping
Their superstardom is a very bad development , even though there is no reason to believe either is ever going to be elected to a position where they could do serious damage
-LRB- If Sarah Palin was seriously planning a presidential run , do you think she 'd have agreed to be speaker-for-hire at the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America Convention at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas this week ?
The problem is that they 're all wow and no substance
Palin is living proof that you can be popular without having to try very hard
It appears she 's never going to respond to all the pundits who urged her to go back to Alaska and read up on current events
And Bachmann 's fame has increased by leaps and bounds despite the fact that she , um , makes stuff up
In February , she said she had it on good authority that in Japan the government puts people who criticize the health care system `` on a list '' and denies them treatment
-LRB- `` That takes us to gangster government at that point ! ''
It 's hard to overestimate how much oxygen Palin , and now Bachmann , take out of the political conversation
When President Obama sat down for an interview with ABC News , it was Palin 's critique of his nuclear weapons initiative that he was asked to respond to
Ambitious pols who have never once been mentioned in a presidential interview , or brought a shrieking crowd to its feet , must be looking for a way to get into the act
At the Minnesota rally , Gov. Tim Pawlenty , a presidential hopeful , tried to glom onto some of the glitter , but all he could come up with was `` Wall Street gets a bailout , the poor get a handout and everybody else gets their wallets out , '' which is mean without being exciting
The crowd yawned
Pawlenty is supposed to be one of the new breed of level-headed conservatives , but by next year he may be wearing snowshoes for his speeches and accusing Obama of surrendering our freedom to Finland
There 's a feeling abroad that politicians can only get attention by sounding a little nutty
In California , Carly Fiorina , the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard , seems to have gotten a boost in her bid for the Republican Senate nomination with an ad known as `` Demon Sheep .
It features a herd of sheep and a man crawling across the grass on his hands and knees wearing a really cheap wolf pelt and a mask with glowing red eyes
The campaign has cleaned up the first version , which went viral on the Web , and added more specifics about Fiorina 's opponent , Tom Campbell
But part of the fascination of the original was that it did not seem to be about anything , except a vague mention of Campbell 's role in the `` 2005 budget .
People do not generally keep track of budget years gone by , although perhaps in California they think of them like wine
-LRB- `` The 2005 so flaccid , so pretentious
Lacking all the structure and earthy undertones of the budget of 2003 . ''
The actual point seemed to be that Fiorina was a candidate so wow that she would make a demon sheep ad that did not bore the audience with any actual information
`` Something is way crazy out there , '' Bachmann said last summer in Colorado , in what surely has to be one of her more accurate statements
This was the same speech in which she told the crowd to slit its wrists , although we hope she was being symbolic
I am rethinking my opposition to boring campaigns
Happy holidays
This is one of those times of year when families and friends can forget their troubles and join together for a Passover seder , as President Obama did on Thursday , or commemorate Easter with the traditional egg hunt , as President Obama will do on Monday
Americans with less religious inclinations can look forward to the upcoming Earth Day celebrations , when the president is planning to do something as yet unannounced , but undoubtedly special , and Arbor Day , when rumor has it that he will not just plant a tree , but personally reforest a large swath of the nation of Mali
The president is back from his eight-day overseas trip , where , by my count , he visited six countries , held 25 meetings , eight variations on the theme of press conference and two town halls
He attended three summits and several receptions , gave two speeches , laid a wreath , walked across a bridge , took several tours of spots of local interest and made a quick stop in Iraq before arriving home in time for that seder
In these troubling times , it 's comforting to have an omnipresent leader , although we are a little worried about the fact that in the Czech Republic , his press secretary felt compelled to wake Obama up to tell him that North Korea had launched their missile
After all , everybody knew it was going to happen and the missile did fall into the sea shortly after it left the ground
Was it just because of that old Hillary Clinton campaign commercial
Was the administration afraid to admit that when it was 3 a.m. in the White House -LRB- or 4:30 a.m. at the Prague Hilton , if you 're being literal -RRB- and the phone rang , the president was n't awake to pick up the receiver
This seems like a bad precedent
I think I speak for us all when I say they should at least reserve the knock on the bedroom door for successful missile launches
The poor man needs his sleep
So much stuff keeps happening
Pirates , for instance
Right now we 're concerned with the fate of the kidnapped captain of the container ship the Maersk Alabama
Over the long haul , you also have to be disconcerted by the news that the crew of the Alabama thwarted the pirates ' attempts to steal the vessel itself by using strategies that one of the officers learned from his father , who teaches a course on how to repel pirate attacks at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy
Who knew that the academy curriculum includes pirate control
This is the kind of thing that makes you realize how important it is to have a president who is both a multitasker and well rested
The president stays on the move because he knows we 're looking for reassurance
We scan the news every day for signs and portents that tell us what 's going to happen next
Does the stock market upswing mean the economy is getting better or just that Wall Street is still full of people with the long-range vision of a bunch of overstimulated hamsters
What about the story from Winfield , Mo. , where voters recently re-elected their mayor for a fourth term even though he had been dead a month
According to The Associated Press , Mayor Harry Stonebraker was `` a popular mayor who helped lead the community of 1,500 through the devastating 2008 flood , when a levee breach caused by a burrowing muskrat damaged about 100 homes .
Is this yet another sign of our longing for stability
Or a warning that we ought to be more proactive about the burrowing muskrat problem
Obama 's round of spring events will culminate in appearances at graduation ceremonies in Notre Dame -LRB- where the local bishop is ticked off about the abortion thing -RRB- and Arizona State University , where he is not going to receive an honorary degree
A spokeswoman for the university explained that it was withholding that honor from the president because `` his body of work is yet to come .
Tough standards , A.S.U.
Now a little caution when it comes to awarding honors is not a bad thing I am thinking of the haste at which my hometown of Cincinnati christened a major street Pete Rose Way in honor of a baseball hero whose body of work was soon going to include being banned from the Hall of Fame due to gambling issues
But really , getting elected to the most powerful job on the planet seems to be a pretty good lifetime r sum , no matter what comes next
Particularly when , as Sam Stein of The Huffington Post pointed out , you are a university that already handed a degree to the vice minister of education of the People 's Republic of China and the founder of Forever Living health and beauty aids
Maybe Obama will celebrate the Fourth of July by setting off fireworks in every state of the union
Even the ones that make him bring his own sparklers
Somehow the government tax collectors have let the country get locked into the idea that April 15 is a day of sorrow and misery , the culmination of the dreaded filing of the income tax form
But , in fact , most people who file get money back
-LRB- Cue the horns and balloons .
And according to one much , much-quoted study by the Tax Policy Center , 47 percent of American households did n't have to pay one cent of income tax for 2009
-LRB- Marching bands , confetti .
Thanks to the tax credits in President Obama 's stimulus plan and other programs aimed at helping working families , couples with two kids making up to $ 50,000 were generally off the hook this year
Naturally , anti-tax groups held rallies to thank the president for doing so much to reduce the burden on the half of the country least able to pay
`` We need to cut taxes so that our families can keep more of what they earn and produce and our mom-and-pops then , our small businesses , can reinvest according to our own priorities , '' said Sarah Palin , at a Tea Party , anti-tax rally in Boston on Wednesday
This was the most coherent thing she had to say about taxation , although there was quite a bit of `` Drill , baby , drill !
According to the Gallup polls , 45 percent of Tea Party supporters have incomes under $ 50,000
According to a New York Times\/CBS News poll , Tea Party activists are virtually the only segment of the population in which a majority feels its tax burden is unfair
Clearly , these are not the kind of folks who would cancel their anti-tax rallies just on account of not being taxed
`` We 're here to take our country back , '' said a former Missouri House speaker at a Tea Party rally at the State Capitol , where nobody appeared to be grateful for the good news about the bottom 47 percent at all
Let us stop for a minute and consider this `` take our country back '' mantra
Some people believe it is the cry of angry white men who do n't like seeing a lot of blacks , women and gay people in positions of power
I prefer a less depressing explanation , which is that all this yearning for the golden days of yore has less to do with Washington than with the fact that so many of the Tea Partyists appear to be in late middle age
I think they just want to go back to the country that existed when they were 28 and looked really good in tight-fitting jeans
Which is no longer the case
But we digress
About that 47 percent figure
Even the Tax Policy Center , which came up with it , does n't seem all that thrilled with the attention it 's getting
`` That viral number , '' sighed Bob Williams , a senior fellow at the center
He is worried that the country is getting the impression that the bottom 47 percent is not paying anything for government services
But there are , of course , a lot of other taxes , particularly the big whoppers that are taken out of paychecks to pay for Social Security and Medicare , the programs everybody seems to like
`` This is looking only at income tax , '' Williams said
`` If we toss in payroll tax , only 13 percent are exempt from both almost all low-income elderly .
Clearly , we need a THANKS , GOVERNMENT ! ! !
parade of low-income elderly
And should n't there be better signage on paychecks
Nobody reads the fine print that shows how their gross pay shriveled into the take-home
Maybe the I.R.S. could stick in a big red box saying ZERO INCOME TAXES whenever appropriate
While we 're at it , we could celebrate the top earners , who pay the bulk of the taxes , thanks to their having the bulk of the money
We do n't need to shed tears for them
The after-tax income of the top 1 percent more than tripled since 1979 , while the bottom-dwellers barely moved an inch
Still , good job , wealthy people
You worked hard , played by the rules and the nation appreciates your support for the national defense , highways , meat inspection and national parks
When President Obama gives a domestic policy speech , there 's usually a cleaning woman who has no health insurance or a laid-off firefighter invited to come onstage
But on April 15 , maybe he could give a hug to a corporate lawyer who pulled down $ 3 million and gave half of it back
There 's no reason not to show the top taxpayers a little love
Paying a lot of taxes should be a badge of honor
It proves you made it into the league of big money-makers , not to mention the fact that you 're supporting the upkeep of the Grand Canyon
If the I.R.S. had been doing its marketing properly , little kids would dream of growing up to become really big taxpayers
An Ode to Taxes : Oh , little tax return form\/No longer are you sad and lorn
\/ Fly away with your friends in a crowd\/And try to make your filers proud
\/ Maybe you 'll fix a road or a park\/Just please do n't turn into another earmark
`` April 15th has long been and always will be a day American workers and their families despise , '' said the House minority leader , John Boehner , on Wednesday as he hailed the arrival of anti-tax tea party protests around the country
Actually , given the fact that a vast majority of households get refunds , the day might be a pleasant reminder that the check for $ 2,429 , on average , is in the mail
Still , there 's one strain to the well-orchestrated chorus of tea party complaints that does seem to have hit a chord
It 's the worry that President Obama is trying to do too much at once , spending too much money without making the tough decisions about how to pay for it all
Some conservatives , including my soon-to-be-colleague , Ross Douthat , have suggested that the president is doing a reverse version of Starve the Beast
That was , you will remember , the Republican theory brilliant except for its utter wrongness that if you cut taxes enough , the lack of revenue would force Congress to reduce the size of government
So is the White House trying to spend Congress into a tax-hike corner
Gorge the Beast
Leave it so stuffed with new programs that it just sits in front of the television munching on entitlements
Taxes , in this metaphor , would have to be the equivalent of a good fitness regimen , and we all know how much the Obamaites love their ellipticals
The problem with this whole line of reasoning is that it begins with the idea that government is a beast
We may whine about Congress , but a large part of the population still sees the federal government as a stimulus-providing , Social-Security-check-sending , Somali-pirate-defeating protector
How far do you think the Republicans would have gotten if they had announced that they wanted to Starve the Family Dog
Perhaps his name was Bo
He was so cute , and Ronald Reagan wanted to let him shrivel away
Obama responded to the critics this week , arguing fiscal responsibility
He said the country ca n't flourish on the sands of deficits and financial bubbles
It has to find new savings that will bring down debt for future generations
`` That 's the new foundation we must build
That 's our house built upon a rock , '' he said , mixing two of America 's favorite things Biblical allusions and real estate
The speech triggered a brief surge of excitement as the chattering class wondered if New Foundation was going to be Obama 's signature , like F.D.R. 's New Deal , or Bill Clinton 's unfortunate attempt to market a New Covenant
Let 's hope not
First of all , `` New Foundation '' has a rather dreary ring , calling up visions of an unfinished basement
Secondly , there already are several New Foundations out there , including one for Quakers and one for teenage substance abusers in Arizona
-LRB- There also are quite a few Rock Foundations , including one that 's trying to help a music fan get a kidney transplant and one `` dedicated to preserving the tradition of fire lookouts . ''
However , we do like the idea of building our economic house on stone , despite the possible dangers of bad drainage
Obama has been trying to set an example of prudent government , trotting out cabinet officials to describe the way projects are coming in under budget and proposing cost-cutting changes
For instance , he wants to get rid of a rule somebody in Congress inserted to make sure states will continue to get federal mine cleanup aid even after all the mines are clean
-LRB- We 're looking at you , Wyoming delegation .
But while all thrift is worthy , this stuff only provides tiny slivers of savings in return for endless , exhausting struggle
-LRB- While we have tea on our minds , let 's recall that it took Bill Clinton almost an entire term to get rid of the 99-year-old Tea Tasting Board , which met two days a year in a Brooklyn warehouse to sniff and sip imported tea in the name of consumer 
The president himself has proposed some really big-ticket savings from reforming things like agricultural subsidies , the college loan program and the private insurance end of Medicare
He wants to change tax laws that would end special treatment for people like oil drillers or hedge fund operators or multinational corporations
The only problem is that Congress seems deeply unenthusiastic
Can we organize a tea party in favor of the Obama budget-balancers
Everybody who wants to stop giving subsidies to the banks for making college loans with federally backed default protection , send your senators some variation on the theme of caffeinated beverage
Unless , of course , you want to starve the puppy
This all started during the recent anti-tax protests
You undoubtedly saw the pictures of the demonstrations full of people wearing teabags or tricorner hats who kept comparing themselves to the founding fathers at the Boston Tea Party
True , when it comes to taxation without representation , they were slightly different from colonial New Englanders on the minor point of having representation
But let 's not be picky
Have you ever noticed that the states where anti-tax sentiment is strongest are frequently the same states that get way more back from the federal government than they send in
Alaska gets $ 1.84 for every tax dollar it sends to Washington , which is a rate of return even Bernard Madoff never pretended to achieve
Yet there they were in Ketchikan waving `` Taxed Enough Already !
signs and demanding an end to federal spending
Also , have you noticed how places that pride themselves on being superpatriotic seem to have the most people who want to abandon the country entirely and set up shop on their own
`` What a great crowd , '' Perry twittered , referring to the protesters he addressed in Austin , some of whom were waving American flags and yelling `` Secede !
Afterward , he told reporters that Texas had come into the union with a unique right `` to leave if we decided to do that .
This is a beloved piece of state folklore despite its unfortunate drawback of being totally untrue
`` My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention , '' Perry continued
`` We 've got a great union
There 's absolutely no reason to dissolve it
But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people , who knows what may come of that .
Later , while Perry was holding another press conference after signing a bill extolling states rights , he repeated the part about this being `` a great union '' but then said that he understood the secessionists ' feelings
This is not exactly a ringing endorsement
It 's as if your spouse pointedly noted that it 's extremely easy to dissolve marriages these days , then added that although he was not currently advocating a divorce , he certainly understood why other people who knew you both might think it was a good idea
And what about my country , right or wrong
Were n't there complaints , some from Texan quarters , during the last election that Barack Obama seemed insufficiently up front about his love of country
Is n't threatening to dissolve the union over the stimulus package a little less American than failure to wear a flag pin
Remember the time when Michelle Obama said , in a moment she spent an entire campaign trying to take back , that 2008 was the first time she could remember ever feeling really proud of her country
Can you imagine how the conservative base would have reacted if she said that it was the first time she did n't feel like renouncing her citizenship
And how , by the way , can you stand at a rally waving the American flag while yelling `` Secede ''
It 's like an employer handing out `` worker of the week '' certificates to employees who just learned that he was moving the plant to Mexico
Ca n't feel the love
Perry , who is the sort of person who calls other guys `` dude , '' used to be a cotton farmer , a group that seems to have a special talent for combining rugged individualism with intransigent demands for government assistance
Even as we speak , the Obama administration budget-cutters are trying to end a longstanding federal practice of paying the costs of storing the entire national cotton crop every year
No other farmers get this kind of special treatment , and I am sure Perry 's failure to mention it when he calls for an end to corporate bailouts is a terrible oversight that will be corrected immediately
The big mystery here is why the tax-protest crowds were behaving as if the world was coming to an end when all Obama 's infant presidency has done is lower taxes for a vast majority of the public
And why people like Perry seem to feel compelled to egg them on
The answer is that what 's left of the Republican Party is intent on cutting off the knees of the administration before it actually manages to fulfill any campaign promises on reducing the huge economic gap between the top 5 percent of the country and the rest of the populace
In pursuit of that mission , fortune favors the hysterical and rewards politicians who behave like gerbils that just bit into an electric wire
We do n't want to blame all Texans for the high jinks in Austin
It 's a state full of lovely people , three-fourths of whom , according to a recent Rasmussen Reports poll , have no desire whatsoever to secede from the United States
But Perry really understands how that other quarter feels
I see some hands waving out there
Did n't know we had any goals for curbing global warming
Where were you in 2002 when the president put us on the road toward reducing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent by 2012
So there
Bush held a press conference in the Rose Garden this week to give us a warming progress report or , in his words , `` share some views on this important issue .
He almost always refers to global warming as an environmental `` issue .
As The Times 's Andrew Revkin noted on his blog , Dot Earth , most people talk about environmental problems
But perhaps the White House regards that as overly alarmist
`` I 'm pleased to say that we remain on track to meet this goal , '' the president said , in a tone that sounded rather belligerent considering this was supposed to be good news
Let 's back up here
I do n't know about you , but I 've always had trouble getting my head around goals that involve reducing the rate at which something is growing
To appreciate the administration 's efforts on the , um , issue , let 's try to imagine it in terms other than greenhouse gas emissions
-LRB- As the president noted : `` Climate change involves complicated science . ''
Suppose that two years after taking office , George W. Bush discovered that because of the stress of his job , he had gained 40 pounds and was tipping the scales at 220
The real-world Bush would immediately barricade himself in the White House gym , refusing all human contact or nourishment until the issue was resolved
But imagine that he regarded getting fat as seriously as he regards melting glaciers , rising oceans and drought and starvation around the planet
In that case , he would set a serious , management-type goal of , say , an 18 percent reduction in the rate at which he was gaining weight , to be reached within the next decade
Cut to the Rose Garden in 2008 where partial victory is declared
`` Over the past seven years , my administration has taken a rational , balanced approach to these serious challenges , '' the 332-pound chief executive announces
He delivers this good news sitting down
2012 : Bush hits his final goal and 400 pounds at approximately the same time
I hope now you can appreciate just how useful the Bush global-warming initiative is
But the president is n't satisfied with merely delivering on his promises
In his Rose Garden address , he upped the ante , vowing to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions entirely by 2025
Let us forget , for a second , that this is a man who 's only going to be in office for nine months of the 17 years in question
Furthermore , let us skip lightly over the fact that Bush did not give any hints whatsoever as to how this goal is supposed to be reached except to say that `` the wrong way is to raise taxes , duplicate mandates or demand sudden and drastic emissions cuts .
Since the president never suggests actual behavior changes on the part of American citizens , that leaves us with what
More efficient refrigerators
Lots of things
There is , for instance , the ambitious new fuel economy standard of 35 miles per gallon by 2020 ; we sure do have a lot to look forward to in the future , people
There 's new federal spending on biofuels
Much of this is for ethanol , which has the unfortunate side effect of creating more greenhouse gases than it eliminates , and , of course , helping to create a planetary crisis over rising food costs
But nothing 's perfect
The president 's real focus seemed to be on fighting the strategies for global warming that he does n't like : the Kyoto Protocol , court challenges and legislation pending in Congress
Almost all of them , interestingly , were referred to as `` problems .
Instead of Kyoto , the administration is pushing for `` a new process '' in which the countries that do most of the polluting will get together and work on a climate agreement
That process was in fact chugging along this very week at a gathering in Paris , where Bush 's speech was greeted with a round of excited reviews
Germany 's environment minister , for instance , dubbed it `` losership instead of leadership .
The Europeans have a perfect right to look down on the United States since they 've set much more ambitious targets for reducing global warming
While they do not appear to be likely to meet any of them , it 's the thought that counts
If the Bush strategy seems a little ... little , go back to our metaphor
Imagine it 's 2025 , and you 've got a 486-pound ex-president being wheeled in to accept the congratulations of the world on his excellent physical fitness program
Really , that 's big
Due to a writing error , the reference to the Democratic candidates ruling out `` middle-class tax cuts '' in Thursday 's column should have read `` middle-class tax hikes .
Here I was thinking of him as a failed politician with no discernible core values , who had once driven to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car
But it 's now becoming clear that he 's the man we have to thank for our new national health care law
`` I mean , a lot of commentators have said this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney , the Republican governor and now presidential candidate , passed in Massachusetts , '' President Obama told Matt Lauer recently on the `` Today '' show
Good work leading the way , Mitt
We did not actually hear a whole lot about how Obama 's health care bill was similar to Romney 's during its long , torturous struggle through Congress
Particularly not during the parts that involved placating the Democratic left wing
Do you think Obama mentioned it during his Air Force One courtship of Dennis Kucinich
Possibly not
But it really does seem as though the two plans are a whole lot alike , and Romney deserves credit for working with the Massachusetts Democrats to get such an ambitious , sweeping reform enacted
However , since most of his party is currently crouched in the basement , waiting for the health care apocalypse to split the earth into smithereens , they 're probably not going to be all that impressed
The Republicans are dying for a disaster , and to be honest , even people who like the new law a lot have been worried that something really strange might be hidden in 2,000 pages of verbiage
-LRB- Did you know somebody stuck financing for abstinence education in there ?
This week there was an alarming report that AT&T was going to have to reduce its long-term profit estimates by about $ 1 billion because of the new law or , as the House minority leader , John Boehner , put it , the newly enacted `` job-killing tax increases .
The AT&T charge was for accounting purposes , which is not as much real money as currency-based theology
But still , it did sound bad
It turned out that the $ 1 billion goes back to the famous 2003 Medicare prescription drug entitlement passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and paid for through their innovative pretend-it 's - not-there financing system
In order to keep businesses from ending their drug coverage and dumping their retirees on the federal system , Congress provided a 28 percent reimbursement for the benefits
And , the companies got to deduct the entire cost of the drug plans from their taxes
Including the government subsidy
The job-killing tax increase in the new law involves no longer allowing big corporations to take a tax deduction for spending money we gave them
Somehow , this does n't seem to have the makings of a Tea Party rally
But there 's always the insurance mandate
When it comes to roiling right-wing hysteria , nothing whips up a crowd like the law 's requirement that everybody get health coverage
Gov. C.L. `` Butch '' Otter of Idaho , who is definitely the winner of the Most Fun Name for a Governor Award , kicked off the rebellion this week by signing a law requiring the state to sue the federal government over this provision
`` If it is the proper role for government to mandate that citizens buy certain products , then I 'm going to get potatoes in line for them just as quick as I can , '' Otter announced
Idaho , you should not let your elected officials push the potato thing so hard
The state has a lot more to talk about lovely scenery , great people , the world 's largest factory for barrel cheese , the smallest number of doctors per capita in the country
And what about your state fruit , the huckleberry
About that insurance requirement
Americans pay an estimated $ 42.7 billion a year in taxes and higher health care premiums because of the cost of medical treatment for the uninsured
So you would think that conservatives in particular would believe that everybody ought to be held responsible for having their own coverage
Unless they 're starting a new cutting-edge Let Them Die in a Ditch Movement
`` No more free-riders , '' Romney said frequently , back when he was a little more vocal about defending the Massachusetts plan
Lately , he 's been vaguer on the subject , and when it comes to the new federal law , he 's jumped on the repeal bandwagon
When someone from the liberal blog ThinkProgress asked Romney whether he thought the new federal insurance mandate so very much like the Massachusetts one was constitutional , he muttered something about it being `` a big topic '' and ducked into an elevator
It 's possible that he had n't looked so uncomfortable since the time he was chased by a reporter who wanted to know if he thought Seamus the Irish setter had enjoyed driving to Canada on top of the family car
'' ... I want everyone to know how deeply committed you are to reform . ''
... I also wanted to thank you for your hard work .
This was Wednesday at the Senate Agriculture Committee , which was considering the regulation of derivatives
These are extremely complicated financial instruments , and they are under the control of the agriculture committee because , really , when you get right down to it , everything is a crop
`` Members of this committee check their partisan politics at the door , '' boasted the chairwoman , Blanche Lincoln , a Democrat of Arkansas
Then , in between compliments , the members approved Lincoln 's bill on derivatives in a series of party-line votes
Except for Charles Grassley , a Republican of Iowa , who sided with Lincoln
Truly , this was a day for the record books
Somebody finally got a Republican to vote for something
And perhaps a sign of things to come
As President Obama prepared to make his big financial reform speech near Wall Street on Thursday , the G.O.P. seemed increasingly eager to find a way to work this one out
`` We probably generally agree on 90 percent , '' said the agriculture committee 's ranking minority member , Saxby -LRB- `` I golf , therefore I am '' -RRB- Chambliss
Mitch McConnell , the Senate minority leader , took credit for forcing bipartisan negotiations with his innovative threat-of-a-filibuster tactic
Chris Dodd , the chairman of the banking committee who has been negotiating with the Republicans for months , said it was like a rooster taking credit for the sunrise
The Republican leadership originally seemed to believe that financial reform could be a replay of health care reform , with a political payoff for total obstruction
They 're discovering that the only real similarity is that both are almost impossible to explain
People love their doctors , but they tend to hate their bankers
Nobody is going to scare voters by predicting that if the Democratic bill passes , they may not be able to keep seeing the same hedge fund manager
It 's a sign of the shift that Blanche Lincoln has gone to the front of the populist pack
She was one of the weakest reeds on the Democratic side of the health care reform debate
Before that , she was obsessed with trying to cut the estate tax
Before that well , let 's be frank
We have no idea what she was up to
Given her record , people had expected a weak , boring package from her committee
But Lincoln came up with rules that were tougher than anyone had expected , requiring derivatives to be traded on public exchanges so investors could compare prices
The banks hate this idea , possibly because it will drive down their profits
For sure because it will drive down their profits
`` The bridge of cooperation has been washed out , '' said Republican Pat Roberts of Kansas crankily , as Lincoln nudged the bill through committee
He also warned that the senators were `` smothering ourselves in the milk of human kindness and hoping it does n't curdle , '' nailing down first place in the hotly contested Senate metaphor-making competition
It was the first time Lincoln seemed like an interesting political figure since 1998 , when , at 38 , she became the youngest woman ever elected to the United States Senate
Now her seat is in jeopardy
Conservatives smell blood
The left is backing her opponent in a primary next month
Bill Clinton expressed his support by saying , `` I would n't be surprised to see her coming back from the dead .
Which is really not what you want to hear from the former president while you 're out fund-raising
So it 's pretty easy to figure out what caused Lincoln 's hard line on financial reform
She is tacking to the left the same way John McCain , struggling in a hot primary in Arizona against a Tea Party-type opponent , is tacking to the right
But let 's give her credit for never having gotten desperate enough to claim that cars full of illegal immigrants were `` intentionally causing crashes on the freeway .
Unlike some former mavericks we could mention
Americans are certainly in the market for some leadership on the subject of derivatives
It 's hard to even figure out how to worry about them , since we have no clue exactly what they are , beyond bets on whether prices will go up or down
Try to think of derivatives as being like the Tribbles in that classic `` Star Trek '' episode
For all of history , there was no such thing
Then somebody found the first ones , which looked cute and made soothing noises
We liked them fine , until the population grew to be worth about $ 600 trillion
When they got into the financial engine , all hell broke loose
And there is absolutely no political percentage in allowing them free run of the ship
New York 's most prominent disgraced public official is on a rehabilitation tour
Doing TV interviews , writing for Slate , confessing his sins on the cover of Newsweek
And as a New Yorker , I am rather proud of the way this is going
You do n't see Eliot volunteering to appear on `` I 'm a Celebrity , Get Me Out of Here '' like some other ex-governors I could mention
Although if you want to avoid the humiliation of asking a judge for permission to do a reality TV show in the jungles of Costa Rica like Rod Blagojevich did , being heir to a real estate fortune does help
And really , I would not rule out a future role for Spitzer as celebrity judge on `` Top Chef '' or the person who pulls out the winning lottery numbers at night on TV
Whatever he 's doing , it 's working
New York is pretty clearly ready to let Spitzer move on
Although he is not the most sympathetic personality in the world , as he 's re-emerged , new information keeps coming out that makes you feel a little warmer about him
For instance , I did not know until the Newsweek article that young Eliot `` carried a Samsonite briefcase to junior high , '' and this really does help explain a lot
Anyway , in our role as judgmental citizens , we 're currently busy not forgiving a whole pack of bailed-out bankers
Plus , we have to figure out what to do with the federal judge who approved the memo specifying the number of insects you could throw into a box with an arachnophobic suspected terrorist
We 're pretty much booked up through summer
Our unofficial amnesty , however , only goes so far
If you are running for governor with secret impeachment-provoking hobbies , you need to be a little careful about whom you choose for your No. 2
So we do n't forgive Spitzer for picking David Paterson , a man who had spent almost his entire adult life as a member of the powerless , moribund minority party in the New York State Senate
New York is now being led by a guy who deliberately chose a career with all the inherent challenge of spending a quarter of a century locked in a closet , and for that , we 're holding grudges
Maybe it 's easier to get past Spitzer 's unseemly leave-taking because even when he was in power , the State Capitol was not exactly Camelot
Not even an Albany version , in which the rain may never fall till after sundown , but the snow piles up whenever the hell it wants
He was a great attorney general
But maybe the real lesson from the Spitzer story is that it is important to avoid electing chief executives who spent their glory days as prosecuting attorneys
If you 're in a state as ridden with corruption and dismal political practices as this one , it often does seem that the prosecutors are the only ones who can get anything done
They 're great at going after bad guys
But they do n't seem to be good at bringing people together behind a banner of change
The public just becomes spectators to the great ongoing squabble
Under our famous ex-prosecutor Rudy Giuliani , City Hall became a very large version of Jack Bauer 's Counter Terrorist Unit in `` 24 '' a heavily fortified bunker where a kind of nerdy group of warriors spent their lives trying to identify the next villain
Unlike C.T.U. , however , Giuliani 's troops tended to pick the wrong targets , lobbing their missiles at the mild-mannered bureaucrats who ran the World Trade Center -LRB- and opposed Rudy 's plans for privatizing the airports -RRB- rather than the people who were actually trying to bomb it
While Spitzer was better at picking his enemies , his reign seemed similar in many ways with people vying for glory based less on success than the intensity of their warfare
Since he has decided that his future , whatever it involves , will not include ever being quoted again by The New York Times , I ca n't tell you how he reacted to this assessment
However , I think it is fair to say that he disagrees
Maybe he 's right
There were early achievements before he became embroiled in a series of shouting matches with Republicans
But as Washington grumbles about Barack Obama being too accommodating , it 's useful to remember that unless you pick your fights very , very carefully , you 'll risk wasting your best ammunition on the wrong targets and leaving the country exhausted from all the yelling
Meanwhile , New York appears to be facing a looming battle for the governor 's office between Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Rudy Giuliani
Indictments at dawn
I wonder what Caroline Kennedy 's up to these days
The clamor for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the presidential race has reached new levels of intensity since the Pennsylvania primary
Of all the things Hillary has done , Obama supporters find her tendency to win large elections in swing states as by far the most irritating
If she beats him in Indiana , they 'll be surrounding her house with torches
`` Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is back !
cried Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter to the cheering crowd at the victory bash on Tuesday
While half the nation 's Democrats groaned in their living rooms , the other half happily watched as their girl refused to go down for the count
`` Yes we can !
shouted the crowd
Memo to crowd : Even though Obama has taken to promising `` straight talk '' lately , stealing another campaign 's slogan is still tacky
Memo to Clinton campaign : While everybody understands that money is tight , charging supporters and faithful volunteers $ 5 for a plastic cup of soda at a victory party seemed like an overreaction
There must be a middle ground , perhaps involving the occasional bowl of complementary potato chips
`` This is one tough woman !
an ebullient Representative Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania told the crowd
He was so excited he referred to the primary as `` the key to the beginning of the end for our next president , '' which was probably not the exact message he meant to convey
The one thing all Democrats can probably agree on is that Hillary is indeed one tough woman
When the three presidential candidates taped greetings to be played during a televised `` Monday Night Raw '' wrestling match , she was the one you 'd least want to get into the ring with
#NAME?
I know these days a politician has to get on the air any way possible , but is n't wrestling fixed or something ?
Finally , at the victory party , Hillary herself emerged , to the tune of Tom Petty 's `` I Wo n't Back Down .
Let 's all try to rally around this song because the alternative is watching her go through nine more primaries to the theme from `` Rocky .
Then out came Chelsea and a pink and glistening Bill Clinton , fresh from that peculiar radio interview in which he referred to a mysterious memo that he said proved the Obama campaign played the `` race card '' in South Carolina
When asked about it later , he accused the reporter of not caring about the issues
The Clintons embraced for a long time , during which Hillary patted her husband 's back
It was hard to tell if that was a gesture of affection or an attempt to quiet him down
`` The American people do n't quit , and they deserve a president who does n't quit either , '' the once-and-future candidate told her supporters
Ever since Barack Obama 's campaign took fire with his call for a politics that was bipartisan and sensible and uplifting , Hillary has been telling her party that this was a pipe dream , that politics was frequently mean and irrational and that it got more so the higher you went
In Pennsylvania , this worked really well for her
When Hillary was cheesy -LRB- see : gun lessons from Dad at Lake Winola -RRB- or negative , that was just her showing what you need to do to win
But when Barack attacked her for attacking , he was reverting to old politics
And if old politics are all we 're going to get , why not hire Hillary
Forget about another Morning in America
Clinton 's on the move , and it 's a dark and stormy night
Although Obama has seemed way off his game lately , the odds are still really , really good that he 'll get the nomination
The superdelegates are just waiting for him to win something so they can rally
And once the fighting is over , there 's no question that Hillary would rally her supporters behind him
-LRB- This is a woman who sat down for a chat with arch-conservative-right-wing-conspirator Richard Mellon Scaife just to wrest an endorsement from his little fringe newspaper in Pittsburgh .
And within a couple of weeks , Bill Clinton would be treating Barack like a surrogate son and forcing him to play golf
And if it should go the other way , can Barack Obama do the same for her
Yes he can
If you want to worry about something , worry about the way both of them have been pandering themselves over the edge
There was the dreaded read-my-lips , no-new-middle-class-taxes pledge during the Pennsylvania debate
Then Hillary tried to demonstrate her toughness by announcing she would `` obliterate '' Iran if it messed with Israel
And when it comes to political pi atas , we 'll always have Nafta
They both went into the tank on agricultural issues back in Iowa , so heaven knows what they 're saving for Indiana
Mandatory use of corn in highway paving materials
Please , no more issues talk until we figure out who 's going to run against John McCain
Let 's concentrate on who 's meaner and who 's more snobbish and who had a neighbor who once belonged to one of the world 's most inept terrorist groups
It 's O.K. by me if Barack and Hillary keep running against each other
Just as long as they keep it personal
The election season is starting in earnest , and already one thing is crystal clear
Both the Democrats and the Republicans are hopeless
It seems inconceivable that either party can possibly win anything
This may be the year when the Whigs finally get to make their comeback
The whole world is expecting a cataclysm for the Democrats in November
After all , the economy is still a mess , and the party is still ... the party
In Illinois , which was first out of the box this season , the Democrats have already moved beyond the primary and into buyer 's remorse
They 've already dumped the voters ' pick for lieutenant governor
This week , their question is whether they can get rid of their Senate nominee , Alexi Giannoulias , the son of a Chicago banking family , whose bank failed on Friday
The Democratic disaster scenario would make absolute sense if it did not also require that the Republicans do something right
But in one state after another , they seem bent on nominating the worst possible candidate
The world is one big scavenger hunt , and their clue says , `` Find somebody unelectable .
In Connecticut , having driven Senator Chris Dodd from the race , the Republicans are racing into the corner of Linda McMahon , whose claim to fame is her role in exporting professional wrestling around the globe
In Florida , they got tired of having their popular governor , Charlie Crist , as the senate nominee even before they actually nominated him
Now Crist is expected to run as an independent , and the G.O.P. will try to live happily ever after with a conservative state legislator who has issues about his use of the party credit card
In Nevada , where Harry Reid , the Senate majority leader , appeared to be hopelessly unpopular , the Republicans ' favorite , Sue Lowden , got caught up in a controversy over whether she favors returning to the days when people paid their medical bills by giving the doctor a couple of chickens
This is truly not the sort of policy debate you want to use to jump-start a campaign
And Lowden has yet to explain how much poultry it would cost for a colonoscopy
The country may have moved to the right , but conservatives tend to underestimate the amount of blue that 's still out there
The new Republican governor of Virginia seemed stunned that his state reacted badly to his call for a Confederate History Month that did not mention slavery
But really , the very definition of a purple state is a place where , when you devote an entire month to recalling the glories of the confederacy , you have to give some time to the bondage angle
In Kentucky , Mitch McConnell , the Senate minority leader , intended to take nothing for granted when it came to keeping the Republicans ' hold on a Senate seat that 's up for grabs this year
His first , and canniest , move was to force the incumbent , Jim Bunning , to retire
Bunning , a cranky ex-baseball player , barely won his last race when he got caught using a teleprompter during a debate and claimed that his opponent , an Italian-American doctor , looked like `` one of Saddam Hussein 's sons .
For Bunning 's successor , McConnell picked Trey Grayson , the secretary of state , who looks a little like a younger , larger Mitch McConnell
Unfortunately for the plan , Grayson is currently getting his clock cleaned by the Tea Party candidate , Rand Paul
It is very hard to pick a favorite
Would you prefer the man endorsed by Mitch McConnell and Dick Cheney , or the one backed by Sarah Palin and Jim Bunning
I watched a Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce debate on Friday , and Grayson , who opposed wasteful earmarks , but not the good wholesome ones that come to Kentucky , kind of faded into the woodwork
It was the out-of-the-running candidates who were the attention-grabbers
There was a very large , genial man whose slogan was `` We need to make a U-turn to God , '' and a small , gnarled World War II veteran who called the president `` a would-be mullah of the most evil kind .
This was Gurley Martin , and his answer to a question on cap-and-trade legislation was to croak out `` Horsefeathers
Horsefeathers !
If Paul holds on to his lead and wins the nomination , the Democrats who never really felt they had a prayer in Kentucky will take heart
Paul is going to be hampered by a general impression in many parts of the state that he is sort of strange
This may be because Grayson keeps running ads titled `` Rand Paul : Strange Ideas .
The Democratic nominee may be the lieutenant governor , Daniel Mongiardo , the same guy who Bunning called Saddam-like six years ago
If he and Paul are both the final candidates , it will be an all-physician Senate election
You do see more and more doctors in the political game
Perhaps they want to get out of the medical business before that payment-by-chicken thing kicks in
Charles M. Blow and Bob Herbert are off today
Wisconsin has unveiled a new official state slogan , `` Live Like You Mean It , '' much to the dismay of some Wisconsinites who wondered why their tourism department spent $ 50,000 to come up with a catchphrase that used to be in a Bacardi Rum ad campaign
`` It was n't so much we did n't like it as it 's been used , '' said Warren Bluhm of The Green-Bay Press-Gazette , who wrote an editorial denouncing the choice
Under further questioning , Bluhm admitted that he also did n't like it
I have been thinking a lot about state slogans this week
Some days when you 're confronted with the Chrysler bankruptcy and the deteriorating situation in Pakistan , you just decide that this is the moment when you 're going to take a cold , hard look at the difficulty marketers have in coming up with a good state tourism campaign
Besides , I am a big fan of State Things the ever-growing national collection of mottos , songs , slogans , nicknames and state birds , flowers , rocks and animals
This began back when I was a legislative reporter in Connecticut and covered a hard-fought contest for official status between the deer and the whale , during which the State Senate , in a moment of extreme pique , voted to make Connecticut 's state animal the human being
Even as we speak , the spotted salamander is engaged in a fierce battle to become Ohio 's state amphibian , and its chances of success are said to be excellent
Go salamander
It 's hard to go wrong when you 're picking a state flower , but the number of bad slogan-driven tourism campaigns is legion
For a while , Louisiana was trumpeting `` Come As You Are
Leave Different , '' which sounded sort of sinister , recalling that TV series about vampires roaming the bayous
Until fairly recently , Connecticut 's slogan was `` We 're Full of Surprises , '' which was really bad
While the state has a long shoreline and nice bed and breakfasts , when you think of Connecticut surprises , you mainly remember the time the governor went to jail
And we will not dwell on the period when Rhode Island christened itself the `` Birthplace of Fun '' and allowed the tourism division to dot the landscape with 6-foot-tall statues of Mr. Potato Head
Happily , all of these states have moved on
But the slogan arc does not always move upward
West Virginia replaced `` Almost Heaven '' with `` Open for Business .
And Wisconsin has `` Live Like You Mean It , '' which sounds less like an invitation to vacation than a self-improvement project
As a matter of fact , besides being an old Bacardi slogan , it is also the title of a motivational book whose authors promise to guide you toward `` a meaningful , fulfilling , and happier life with results worthy of legacy building .
I do n't know about you , but when I want to get away from it all , I do not want to take my legacy along with me
Kelli Trumble , the secretary for the Wisconsin Department of Tourism , said she was heartened that the new slogan already has an `` amazing '' 90 percent awareness rate in the state , although it 's pretty easy to get attention when you have a radio news anchor in Milwaukee blogging `` Wisconsin : We have a lame slogan ... AND WE STOLE IT !
In a telephone interview , she insisted that people were getting past the issue of originality and beginning to tell each other : `` I see how this speaks to the essence and spirit of Wisconsonites .
The essence and spirit of Wisconsinites was unearthed by a panel of brand experts brought together to determine what makes the state different from its competitors i.e. , Illinois , Minnesota and Michigan
This is where the trouble started
Wisconsin always proudly billed itself `` America 's Dairyland '' and that is still on the state license plates
But if you ask a bunch of brand experts to report on what people think of when they think of Wisconsin , do you think they 're going to come back with `` cows ?
`` What we identified is our brand essence is that the Wisconsin culture fuels creativity and embraces original thinking in business , travel and education , '' Trumble said
I know , I know
Do n't write to me , Michigan , Minnesota and Illinois
I do n't want to hear about how you have so much original thinking and creativity it 's sloshing over the border
Tell it to the Wisconsin Department of Tourism
I went to school in Wisconsin , and it never struck me as the sort of place where people were worried about living like they meant it
But they were so deeply into being the nation 's dairy capital that they once banned the importation of margarine across state lines
Then , in 1985 , Gov. Anthony Earl of Wisconsin decided `` America 's Dairyland '' was boring and sponsored a contest for a new state slogan , which drew an avalanche of suggestions
A screening committee declined to consider the popular favorite : `` Eat Cheese or Die .
I truly believe that nothing has gone right for Wisconsin on the slogan front ever since
We were so excited about that special Congressional election in upstate New York
Finally , a chance to find out whether the nation really approves of what Barack Obama has been doing
You can not figure these things out with tea leaves or polls
Just ask the Republicans in Washington
They certainly would be giving Obama more help if the country really demanded it
But what if the people who said nice things about the president to the pollsters just liked Michelle 's vegetable garden
And who better to set us straight than the residents of a nearly 200-mile-long district that was gerrymandered so carefully for the G.O.P. that it wound up looking like an outline of Bart Simpson doing a swan dive
Or perhaps a designer boot with fire coming out of the toe
The Republicans were desperate for some sign that the tide had turned on Obamamania
They all rallied around their party 's candidate , James -LRB- A Proven Record -RRB- Tedisco , even though for a long time Tedisco muddied the waters by refusing to say how he would have voted on the stimulus package
He is the longtime minority leader of the State Assembly , a job that requires all the quick-thinking and decision-making capacity of a fishing warden in the Gobi Desert
Still , he was the best the G.O.P. had to work with
Michael Steele , the Republican National Committee chairman , threw whatever is left of his prestige on the line
Rudy Giuliani did a robocall in which he managed to avoid mentioning 9\/11 or standing up to terrorists
Instead , Giuliani promised that Tedisco would `` stand up to Nancy Pelosi , '' which somehow does not sound quite as dramatic
The Obama administration seemed a wee bit hesitant to place any big bets on the Democrat , Scott -LRB- Entrepreneur !
He is a 39-year-old venture capitalist with little political experience but a very large extended family no small matter in a race that was all about turnout
Everyone seemed agog when , at the last minute , the president finally coughed up an endorsement via e-mail
And Joe Biden made a radio ad praising Murphy
True , Biden would go on the radio to say nice things about a molting pigeon , but still
Clearly , the voters were being primed for a pivotal moment in political history a battle of the giants
The Republicans made fun of Murphy for having been raised in Missouri
The Democrats made fun of Tedisco for not actually living in the district , which you have to admit is a little bit more amusing
Tedisco dodged the first televised debate in favor of a Q.-and-A
session with help from the dreaded Twitter at his campaign headquarters
The final question was : `` Tell us how great a representative you 've been , and how great a congressman you will be .
Anyhow , on Tuesday the voters were supposed to send a message
Or at least they were going to do something that we would get to interpret as a message , and talk about for days and days during the significant chunks of down time that occur at meetings of the G-20
We 've missed having elections
Lately , all we 've gotten is vote-counting in Minnesota and unsatisfactory stories about Senate seats being filled by gubernatorial appointment
The battle lines were murky and some of the governors , frankly , did not seem competent to select a good salad dressing , let alone a senator
The 20th Congressional District election was called , in fact , because Gov. David Paterson picked the incumbent House member , Kirsten Gillibrand , to fill Hillary Clinton 's Senate seat
Very few people outside her district had ever heard of Gillibrand , though we have since learned that she talks about 100 miles a minute , is extremely flexible in her gun-control positions and once jump-started her legal career by helping Philip Morris keep the Justice Department from finding out the tobacco company knew that cigarettes were bad for you
The proverbial stakes were high when the voters went to the polls on Tuesday
They were voting in Saratoga Springs and Hudson and Rhinebeck
Some people were trying to vote in Schenectady , where Tedisco lives , until the officials convinced them there was no election there
They were voting at the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site in Kinderhook
We have been thinking about the eighth president of the United States quite a lot recently , since he presided over the Panic of 1837
If you ever find yourself feeling anxious about the course of our economy today , just tell yourself `` well , at least it is n't the Panic of 1837 , '' and you will feel better
Finally , the 20th District spoke and ... it was a tie
The Democrat was ahead by 64 votes , but the absentee ballots are still coming in and probably favor the Republican
Somebody will be seated , which makes no difference at all given the size of the Democratic House majority
Nobody gets bragging rights
Back to the tea leaves
The vice president 's devotion to taking the train home to Wilmington , Del. , is legend
It turns out that besides reinforcing his commitment to mass transit , Biden 's commute also gave him hours and hours of uninterrupted quality time with the senator from Pennsylvania
Which he used to urge Specter to ditch the Republicans
`` We have talked over every problem under the sun and under the moon , '' said Specter , at a welcome-to-the-Democratic-Party press conference with Biden and President Obama
Biden , Washington 's most compulsive talker , and Specter , one of the Senate 's most self-absorbed egos , rode the rails , sharing their every thought
Probably not in the quiet car
You 'd think that by the time one of them paused to take a breath they 'd be in Montreal
On Wednesday , Biden was bounding around with excitement at his coup , and who could blame him
Heaven knows Obama deserved some good fortune
Other than Specter 's defection , the best news the president got on his 100th day in office was probably word that the Department of Homeland Security had eliminated the threat of swine flu by changing its name to the H1N1 flu
The Republicans were irate
`` Look , you can tweak my nose , and you can step on my toes and you can pull my hair
At some point , enough is going to be enough , '' Michael Steele , the party 's chairman , told CNN
Steele is turning out to be irrepressible , which is the worst thing you could possibly want in a party spokesman
You really do better with a guy who can repress at the drop of a hat
The chief G.O.P. talking point was that Specter had only switched parties because he wanted to get re-elected
`` To me , this was not a question of , ` oh , gee , all of a sudden I found principles as a Democrat .
This is about political survival , '' said Steele
It was a superdepressing message to Steele 's fellow party members north of the Mason-Dixon line : Good for you in saddling yourself with a toxic political affiliation out of principle
And besides , nobody ever suggested that Specter was acting out of anything but self-interest , including Specter himself
In his coming-out press conference , the newest Democrat who had been giving interviews for months stressing his determination to stay a Republican and protect the two-party system said that the precipitation for the jump came on Friday when he got poll results showing how bleak his prospects were for winning the Republican primary in his re-election fight next year
Then , he managed to drop the fact that he has more seniority than the current chairman of the Labor-Health Appropriations Subcommittee
Sorry about that , Tom Harkin
Nobody has ever tried to paint Arlen Specter as a profile in courage
As the Judiciary Committee chairman , he demonstrated his moderateness by consistently expressing sympathy for the Democrats ' objections to proposals like depriving prisoners of the right of habeas corpus or appointing Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court
Then , of course , he went right ahead and voted with the Bush administration
But he wanted it on the record that his heart was in the right place
Nevertheless , the Democrats were very , very happy to welcome him into the fold
`` I have known Senator Specter for more than a quarter-century
He has always been a man of honor and integrity , and a fine public servant , '' said the majority leader , Harry Reid , who wrote in his 2008 autobiography that Specter `` is always with us when we do n't need him .
The fabled 60th vote
Finally , the Democrats can override filibuster threats and pass the Obama agenda
Except that even as Specter was arriving , his new fellow party members were reminding their leaders that they reserved the right to gum up the works at a moment 's notice
`` They might have a 60-member majority
That does n't mean they have 60 votes , '' warned Senator Ben Nelson , Democrat of Nebraska , who is busy trying to block the Obama student loan reform bill
The real import of this story is n't the 60 votes
It 's that Arlen Specter , with his unparalleled instinct for self-preservation , became a Democrat because the people of Pennsylvania like the Democratic agenda better
And the Republicans were too fanatical or deluded to allow him to straddle the line
`` Well , if spending the hard-earned dollars of the American people and redistributing their wealth and moving towards a collectivist socialist approach to government , if that helps you realize you 're a Democrat , then , you know , good riddance , '' Steele said
The Republican Party has officially moved into nutcase territory
The Republican moderate caucus in the Senate is down to the two women from Maine
And we would all certainly like to listen in on their conversations on the plane ride home
Our challenge today is to discuss politicians who get in trouble for extravagant spending , and to do it without mentioning the Republican National Committee 's expense-account party at the bondage club
When times are tough , people always try to depict the opposition party as dining on triple helpings of truffles while the rest of the country has Hamburger Helper
You may remember that during the presidential campaign , there was a rumor that Michelle Obama had checked into the Waldorf-Astoria in New York and sent down to room service for `` lobster hors d'oeuvres , two whole steamed lobsters , Iranian caviar and Champagne , '' as The New York Post reported before retracting the entire story
This sort of thing goes way back
After the Panic of 1837 , President Martin Van Buren was ruined by gossip about banquets where he and his guests ate with golden spoons
A congressman from Pennsylvania claimed that Van Buren was landscaping the White House lawn `` to resemble AN AMAZON 'S BOSOM with a miniature knoll or hillock at its apex to denote the nipple .
O.K. , this does bring us back to the bondage nightclub
You have undoubtedly heard that the R.N.C. fired a staff member this week when word leaked out that she had taken a dozen donors to a Hollywood club called Voyeur
The partygoers were members of the Young Eagles , contributors who are youthful by the standards of people who give large sums of money to the Republican Party that is , under the age of 46
Voyeur is modeled after a steamy sex scene in `` Eyes Wide Shut , '' a movie made in 1999 , when the idea of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman co-starring in a surreal film charged with sexual tension sounded like a good plan
The club 's entertainment features topless dancers , simulated sex and a lot of women tying each other up
When the story got out , the committee staffer who accompanied the group and authorized the expenditure was dismissed because , as an R.N.C. spokesman explained , she had `` been previously counseled on this very subject .
Graduating college seniors , let that be a warning
If your first boss tells you to stop putting dinners at bondage clubs on the company expense account , take it to heart
He probably means it
Beyond that important life lesson , this story does n't seem worth getting upset about unless you happen to be a donor to the R.N.C. Others might actually prefer to see the money go to topless dancers rather than Michele Bachmann
Most of the current gossip about conspicuous consumption involves candidates in this year 's big elections , spread by opponents who want to define a fiscal conservative as a person who flies coach
In California , a Democratic ad targeting Meg Whitman , the Republican gubernatorial candidate , shows a cartoon-Whitman boasting that while she was a business executive , `` I kept my personal jet costs down to a frugal $ 3 million .
I am not sure this works
Most right-thinking Americans know , deep down , that if they were given the choice between their normal airport experience or private jet , they would go for their own personal Cessna in a flash
Spending $ 1,000 for a haircut , on the other hand , just seems like an obscene waste
And hiring your latest squeeze to follow you around making videos , the way John Edwards did , is not something most of us have ever really daydreamed about
Right now the epicenter of the fights over who 's the true tightwad is Florida , where Gov. Charlie Crist is battling Marco Rubio , a state representative and Tea Party darling , in a race for the Republican Senate nomination
The highlight , so far , has been Crist 's attempt to claim that Rubio used his Republican credit card to pay for a back wax
I am very sorry to say this does n't actually seem to have occurred
Rubio charged that Crist had been staying in $ 2,000 luxury hotel rooms `` where he racks up $ 1,300 in minibar charges .
The minibar thing also seems to be a red herring , although you have to love the vision of the rather ascetic-looking governor buried in a mountain of empty tiny liquor bottles and candy wrappers
And the hotel was paid for by Florida businessmen while Crist was with them on a 12-day trade mission to cities like St. Petersburg and Madrid
However , taxpayers did have to pay for a large supporting cast of state employees who went along , too , including a photographer and nine bodyguards
This does seem excessive by any standards
Most of us would travel on nothing but private jets if we could afford it , but I do not know anyone who fantasizes about going to Madrid with a photographer and a security detail big enough to field a baseball team
Plus , you have to be careful about those trade missions
Remember what happened to the governor of South Carolina
If nothing else , the president 's trip overseas helped resolve the longstanding question of who can be more irritating , the Republicans or the French
Before we pursue that thought any further , let 's agree that the Obamas wowed them in Europe
We were expecting a good reception , given the fact that the previous administration set the bar so low that Barack was able to get hysterical applause just by telling a crowd of students that Americans do n't believe in torturing people
Back home , we 're just grateful that we do n't have to sit on the edge of our collective seats wondering how the president will embarrass us next
No more worrying that our chief executive might surprise Angela Merkel with a come-from-behind massage or fall in love with the president of Russia when their eyes meet across a crowded room
In London , Obama was the most popular guy in the gang
When President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and China 's Hu Jintao got into a squabble , Obama took them off to separate corners and resolved the conflict , to universal applause
True , it only required switching the word `` recognizing '' to `` note , '' but in diplomatic circles , that 's what cool is all about
`` Look , '' the G-20ers must have been telling each other , `` he can resolve the controversy over the use of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 's list of tax havens , and he knows the difference between Australia and Austria
Surely , this is a new kind of American leader .
And then it was off to France , where the Michelle-mania spiked as the first lady and her French counterpart , the former fashion model Carla Bruni , went outfit-to-outfit
They both had bows on their coats
The wardrobe commentary was , to be honest , a bit much
However , perhaps we should be grateful to the wives for changing their clothes so frequently
It took our minds off the unemployment figures and allowed the news media to avoid having to cover the discussions on special drawing rights
Before the summit began , Sarkozy had threatened to walk out unless he got his way on financial regulation
-LRB- When considering our French-versus-Republican contest , note that they both like to go into negotiations announcing that whatever happens , the answer is no. -RRB- But once Obama and he got together , the French leader said that despite their differ
Which is not entirely comforting
Beyond Barack 's not-Bushness , what was it that Sarkozy found so appealing
He praised Obama as `` a very open man , '' but when you think of the things that the French like , is openness really the first thing that comes to mind
Is it possible that Obama 's winning quality was his willingness to be a good loser
The president 's main mission , after all , was to try to talk the French and Germans into supporting a serious global stimulus plan , and he failed
There were other accomplishments , sure
But even the tiniest seemed to have required a lot of pandering
When Sarkozy said France would help with the administration 's plan to shut down the Guant namo Bay prison by accepting one released prisoner that would be one as in `` less than two '' Obama gushed that it was hard to keep up with `` the great leadership of President Sarkozy , courageous on so many fronts .
To be fair , the French , the Germans and the other heel-dragging countries have some reason to be dubious about getting too close to Obama in anything but a photo op
The Europeans do n't really trust American presidents to deliver on what they say , particularly if it has to go through Congress
While the G-20 was finishing its business , members of Congress were showing how they did theirs by passing a budget resolution
The spending plan was somewhat smaller than the president had requested
The Senate also added the Republican priority of reducing taxes on people who inherit estates of $ 7 million or more a move that would increase the deficit while stimulating the economy approximately as much as eliminating a sales tax on square potato chips
But even so , not a single Republican voted yes on the budget
In the House , the G.O.P. came up with an alternative that would cut more taxes for the wealthy while clamping down on nondefense spending
House Republicans think we invest way too much on these government programs and try to cut back on them every single year that their party is not actually in power
In the Senate , Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire predicted that the budget plan `` will absolutely put this country on an unsustainable path .
This would be the same Judd Gregg who agreed to join the Obama cabinet as commerce secretary before a last-minute discovery that the president is a Democrat
Actually , it 's no contest when you think about it
The French are n't even in the ballpark
The state is buzzing over Gov. Bob McDonnell 's proclamation urging citizens to spend the month recalling Virginia 's days as a member of the Confederate States of America
Although since McDonnell had previously turned April over to child abuse prevention , organ donation and financial literacy , perhaps it was O.K. to just pick your favorite
The original Confederate History proclamation was a miracle of obfuscation
It did not even mention slavery
On Wednesday , the governor apologized for that and said that slavery `` has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation .
People , what 's our bottom line here
The governor of Virginia has decided to bring slavery into his overview of the history of the Confederacy
Good news , or is this setting the bar a wee bit too low
Maybe we had better be grateful for small favors
It 's been a tough time lately for those of us who take social studies seriously
History took a hit in Texas , where the state Board of Education tried to demote Thomas Jefferson , presumably because of his enthusiasm for separation of church and state
This week , John McCain rewrote his own political biography , telling Newsweek : `` I never considered myself a maverick .
And on the geography front , Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia took time during a recent Congressional hearing to express his concern that stationing additional Marines on Guam would make the island `` so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize .
Obviously , all these developments are not equally problematic
The admiral being questioned somberly assured Johnson that the military does not anticipate any island-toppling
And if McCain wants to re-imagine the 2008 presidential campaign , he is free to give it a try
Although if you are planning to deny that you ever thought of yourself as a maverick , it would be better not to have subtitled one of your memoirs `` The Education of an American Maverick .
The love affair with all things Confederate is way more worrisome
Once again , it 's in to talk secession
The Republican attorneys general are lining up to try to nullify the health care bill
`` Many issues of the Civil War are still being debated today , '' said Brag Bowling of the Sons of Confederate Veterans , which led the push to get that proclamation in Virginia
That seems extremely depressing , as if we were Serbs stewing about what the Turks did at the Plain of Blackbirds in 1389
Actually , a national discussion of Civil War history sounds fine as long as we could start by agreeing that the whole leaving-the-union thing was a terrible idea
In the proclamations , it generally sounds as if everything went swimmingly until the part where the South lost and grudgingly rejoined the country
Virginia has been making big leaps lately in the category of general craziness
We all remember the Legislature 's heroic work in passing a bill to protect Virginia citizens from having microchips planted in their bodies against their will
And that the sponsor said he was concerned the chips could be a `` mark of the beast '' that would be used by the Antichrist at the end of days
Confederate History Month was promoted by former Gov. George Allen , who was fond of Confederate flag-d cor and suffered from a sense of history so imperfect that he did not discover his mother was half-Jewish until he was 54
Allen 's proclamation celebrated the Civil War as `` a four-year struggle for independence , sovereign rights and local government control , '' with such cheer that you would really think the fight was all about zoning
Allen 's Democratic successors took a pass on celebrating Confederate history , while the Republicans followed his lead with differing degrees of enthusiasm
McDonnell , like Allen , seems to have a rather shaky grasp of the principles of intellectual inquiry
During last year 's campaign , reporters discovered that the master 's thesis he wrote at 34 denounced working women and feminists
McDonnell waved it off , saying that his work was `` simply an academic exercise '' that `` clearly does not reflect my views .
When he came up with his original proclamation this week , many people wanted to know why McDonnell did n't say anything at all about slavery
`` I was n't focused on that , '' he explained
No , for McDonnell , Confederate History Month was all about `` tourism , '' so much so that slavery slipped under the carpet
This was also a theme in Georgia when the State Senate recently passed a bill to dedicate April to remembering the Confederacy
`` It 's for education and to help benefit tourism in the state , '' said Bowling
Have you ever noticed that tourism has been the excuse for more dreadful developments in modern history than anything but Twitter
Cheese museums
Highways to nowhere
Confederate History Month
I have been thinking about the fact that Colorado Republicans rejected their front-running candidate for governor , Scott McInnis , apparently on the grounds that he committed plagiarism
McInnis , a former congressman , was once paid $ 300,000 by a right-wing foundation to write a series of articles called `` Musings on Water .
It turns out that he lifted large chunks of the final product from the work of a local judge
This story raised many questions , most critically one about where the rest of us can find foundations that will pay us $ 300,000 to write some essays on water rights
Also , would Coloradans find plagiarism so upsetting that they would actually vote for the only alternative to McInnis
This was Dan Maes , a political newcomer who recently claimed that Denver 's effort to encourage bike riding was a plot , probably inspired by the United Nations , to `` threaten our personal freedoms .
Yes , they would
It 's possible that this was just another example of the Republicans ' Tea Party death wish
But we do seem to be having a lot of squabbles about politicians ' personal probity : who exaggerated military service or added on an extra college degree or Photoshopped pictures on the campaign Web site
Do you think it 's a hint that despite the extreme difficulties the country 's in , the candidates do n't really have any idea how to get us out
Consider Ben Quayle , the son of the former vice president
He 's running for Congress in Arizona
He 's been accused of both using a phony family in his campaign pictures and helping to found a local porn site
In response , he 's come up with a new ad in which he announces that Barack Obama is the `` worst president in history , '' swiftly bemoans `` drug cartels in Mexico , tax cartels in D.C. '' and concludes that `` somebody has to go to Washington and knock the hell out of the place .
Talk about a clear agenda for change
Although Quayle does show a terrible disrespect for the records of Warren Harding and James Buchanan
Well , the apple does n't fall far from the tree
Or the potatoe
Let me go on the record as saying that I think Quayle is getting a bad rap on the phony family issue
The children in his campaign pictures are his nieces
They count
It 's not as if he rented a dog for the afternoon - the way a successful Congressional candidate did in Kansas
Quayle 's Republican opponents should drop this silly business immediately and focus their attention on serious matters
Such as charges by the founder of the Web site DirtyScottsdale that Quayle helped him set up the site and contributed posts that chronicled his search for `` the hottest chick in Scottsdale .
Voters are interested in these morality side issues under two circumstances
One is if they disliked the candidate anyhow and are thrilled to discover some specific reason that does not require a discussion of TARP
The other is that minor misdeeds can sometimes be the first clue that there 's someone on the ballot who 's off his rocker
Like Wes Cooley of Oregon , a former House member who claimed to have served in Korea during the war when actually he had never left the U.S.
It turned out that he had also lied about his marital status and his nonexistent law degree
Cooley 's political career was ruined and he vanished from sight only to re-emerge when he was charged with conning investors out of millions of dollars in a money-laundering scheme
His unsuccessful defense was that he had a medical condition that had wiped out his memory
So , we would rather not have that
But some of the current charges are trivial in the extreme
In Kentucky , Rand Paul has been attacked for failing to correct an interviewer who said Paul had graduated from Baylor University when , in fact , he got early admittance at Duke medical school that made it unnecessary for him to complete his undergraduate requirements
Get a life , Rand Paul critics
Meanwhile , GQ published an article about Paul 's college days that suggested he got out of Baylor not a minute too soon
It quoted one unnamed woman as saying that he and his friends had tied her up , blindfolded her and told her to smoke pot and give homage to an idol named Aqua Buddha
On Wednesday , the woman reappeared and clarified the whole saga for Greg Sargent of The Washington Post
`` The whole thing has been blown out of proportion , '' she said
It simply involved a kind of hazing , in a room filled with pot smoke , followed by a trip where Paul and his pals `` took me out to this creek and made me worship Aqua Buddha .
I hope this is entirely clear now , Kentucky
Stop all this loose talk about Rand Paul kidnapping a coed and making her take drugs
It is n't true
Calm down and focus on the bigger issues , like jobs and taxes and which candidate for the Senate has the longest history of forcing people to bow down before idols
Thanks to the health care protests over the past week , the nation seems to have come to a fragile consensus on a few critical issues
For instance , government-run death panels not good
And , Nazis nobody likes them
Interestingly , we do not have any agreement at all on the question of whether it is a good plan to bring a gun to a gathering of angry and overwrought people
To be honest , I thought we might be able to nail this one down
But no.
`` The question is , why do n't people bear arms these days , '' said William Kostric , when asked why he came to welcome President Obama to Portsmouth , N.H. , on Tuesday with a protest sign and a loaded handgun strapped to his thigh
This turned out to be completely legal under New Hampshire law
Meanwhile , over in Arizona , a protester who showed up to meet the local congresswoman at a supermarket was removed by police when the pistol he had holstered under his armpit fell , bouncing on the floor and alarming the nonprotesting attendees
This , too , turned out to be legal , although the dropping part is not recommended
Also escorted away but not arrested : an armed man at a loud and rancorous town meeting hosted by Representative Steve Cohen of Memphis
Both the armpit guy and the Memphis guy had the required permit to carry a concealed weapon
Kostric did not even have to have a permit since his gun was not concealed , which in New Hampshire makes it completely O.K.
This is under the theory that as long as you know that the strange-looking guy waving the big protest sign is packing heat , you can take steps to protect yourself , perhaps such as purchasing a bulletproof vest from a nearby street vendor
-LRB- Actually arrested : Richard Terry Young , 62 , in Portsmouth
While Young 's loaded gun was in his parked car , not on his person , the fact that he did not have a license and that pol ice discovered him lurking inside the high school where the president was scheduled to appear later in the day apparently tipped the scales .
We are getting yet another series of reminders of the vast gun gap in this country
There is the part that thinks a room full of red-faced men and women screaming at one another is the worst place in the world to bring a firearm
And then there is the part that holds it is exactly the place where you need it most
`` A firearm is a defensive tool , '' said Kostric , in an interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC
He was wearing a yellow T-shirt , and he told Matthews that if everybody in the crowd waiting for Obama to arrive had been armed , things would have been much safer
Beyond an air of mild surprise , he seemed like your average hard-core Ron Paul voter male , smug and obsessed with the money supply
-LRB- `` Where did we go wrong
I 'd start with the Federal Reserve Bank . ''
The health care protest phenomenon has n't been particularly uplifting , unless your idea of decorum is World Extreme Cagefighting
But it has provided a very , very rare opportunity for members of Congress to look semiheroic
Even Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania seemed sympathetic when he was trying to appear to be listening thoughtfully while a constituent told him that God was going to send him to hell
Representative Gabrielle Giffords , an Arizona Democrat , was not actually holding a town hall when her gun incident occurred
She was conducting a `` Congress on Your Corner '' at the Douglas Safeway a simple event where people line up to get help with things like Social Security or documentation
But the health care protests have spread way beyond actual meetings about health care , and a handful of irritated conservatives have been following Giffords around almost everywhere
`` When you represent a district the home of the O.K. Corral and Tombstone , the town too tough to die , nothing 's a surprise , '' she told a reporter later , showing a commendable ability to respond to any crisis by throwing in a plug for local tourist attractions
Rudy Ruiz , the father of one of Giffords 's college interns , saw the gun hit the floor
`` It was an older gentleman , 65 or so
Basically , he was one of the ones holding up a banner saying ` Do n't Tread on Me , ' '' said Ruiz
`` He bent over , and it fell out of the holster is what it did
It bounced
That concerned me
I just thought what would happen if it had gone off
Could my daughter have gotten hurt ?
His daughter , a college senior , is hoping to pursue a political career after graduation
`` Are you sure you want to get involved in this stuff ?
Ruiz asked her on the way home
The world knows now that the adorable little girl we saw warbling `` Ode to the Motherland '' at the Olympics opening ceremony was not really singing
She was a Potemkin performer
A Trojan tyke
Lin Miaoke , 9 , was fronting for Yang Peiyi , 7 , the girl with the best voice but imperfect teeth
`` The child on camera should be flawless in image , internal feeling and expression , '' said Chen Qigang , the music director , who went public with the news that the dual-little-girl strategy was concocted after a member of the party Politburo intervened at the last minute
Now this is an Olympic crisis everybody can get into
While your heart goes out to the athletes suffering the agony of defeat , very few of us can internalize the trauma
Really , you have to be able to imagine yourself getting onto the balance beam before you can relate to the pain of falling off
But having the whole world know that you 've been deemed insufficiently attractive now there 's Everywoman 's nightmare
When Peiyi told a Chinese TV station that just being able to sing was an honor , you could imagine her in 10 years insisting that she did n't care about going to the school dance since she was having so much fun sewing carnations onto the homecoming float
If she grows up to discover a cure for cancer , when they hand over the Nobel Prize , will everybody say that it was nice that she found a way to make up for those unfortunate front teeth
The idea that appearance is valued more than performance is one of those painful facts of life that people always hate to be reminded of
But Andrew Nathan , an expert on Chinese politics and human rights at Columbia , seemed puzzled by why anybody would be surprised by this kind of switcheroo in a country where help-wanted ads make it clear that job candidates must be good-looking and the 380 hostesses to the Olympics were all required to be the same height and weight
`` This particular technique seems so standard
I 'm a little puzzled about why everybody 's stuck on this example , '' he said
`` I really do n't know how a little girl in China might respond to being told your teeth are not good enough
But does n't that happen all the time in Hollywood ?
Cheng Li , a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution , saw the story more in terms of consumer fraud
`` What she sings is a very moving nationalistic song , '' he said
`` The people were so emotionally involved
If you asked them what 's the most moving episode , I think the majority would tell you that moment , with the little girl in red clothes
Now the Chinese people feel they are fooled
The psychological hurt is enormous .
One could certainly argue that American outrage over Peiyi 's situation is overkill , given the fact that families here gather together in front of the TV to watch reality shows in which unattractive people are permitted to audition for talent contests so that the judges can make fun of them
And in China , the fact that authorities were trying to put one over on the viewers was somewhat undercut when Chen , the music director , disclosed the switch in an interview on Beijing Radio
`` The little girl is a magnificent singer
She does n't deserve to be hidden , '' he told AP Television News
How he felt about his moment of candor once it became an international story is yet to be determined
Actually , the organizers had started with a completely different little girl , 10 , who was fired at the last minute when the ceremony 's director , Zhang Yimou , decided she looked too old
We do not want to imagine the repercussions when this kid hits her 30th birthday
Miaoke then got the part until a senior Communist Party member , sitting in on one of the final rehearsals , announced that her voice `` must change .
It 's not actually clear whether it was the party boss who decided that while the voice had to change , the cute exterior needed to remain
But Zhang , a well-known movie director , seemed to start channeling `` Singin ' in the Rain .
Peiyi -LRB- whose teacher described her as a well-behaved child who did n't like to show off -RRB- got the Debbie Reynolds part the nice girl singer doing all the work behind the curtain while the star mimed under the spotlight
Meanwhile , Miaoke was apparently singing her 9-year-old heart out on stage under the illusion that the world was hearing her voice
According to Jim Yardley 's report in The Times , Miaoke 's father said he had to tell her that everybody was hearing Peiyi instead
`` The only thing I care about is that my daughter will not get hurt by this
She 'll understand when she grows up , '' he added
You have to wonder
Miaoke may turn out to be the real victim in this story
It 's one thing to be thrust into the role of Debbie Reynolds
It 's a lot worse to go overnight from symbol of the Olympics to Ashlee Simpson
The story in American history I most like to tell is the one about how women got the right to vote 90 years ago this month
It has everything
Drunken legislators
Which is really the important part
We always need to remember that behind almost every great moment in history , there are heroic people doing really boring and frustrating things for a prolonged period of time
That great suffragist and excellent counter , Carrie Chapman Catt , estimated that the struggle had involved 56 referendum campaigns directed at male voters , plus `` 480 campaigns to get Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters , 47 campaigns to get constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into state constitutions ; 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks , 30 campaigns to get presidential party campaigns to include woman suffrage planks in party platforms and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses .
And you thought health care reform was a drawn-out battle
The great , thundering roadblock to progress was - wait for the surprise - the U.S. Senate
All through the last part of the 19th century and into the 20th , attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution ran up against a wall of conservative Southern senators
So the women decided to win the vote by amending every single state constitution , one by one
There were five referenda in South Dakota alone
Susan B. Anthony spent more time there than a wheat farmer
But she never lost hope
The great day was coming , she promised : `` It 's coming sooner than most people think .
I love this remark even more because she made it in 1895
Sometimes I fantasize about traveling back through time and telling my historical heroes and heroines how well things worked out in the end
I particularly enjoy the part where I find Vincent van Gogh and inform him that one of the unsold paintings piled up over in the corner will eventually go for $ 80 million
But I never imagine telling Susan B. Anthony how well American women are doing in the 21st century because her faith in her country and her cause was so strong that she would n't be surprised
The constitutional amendment that finally did pass Congress bore Anthony 's name
It came up before the House of Representatives in 1918 with the two-thirds votes needed for passage barely within reach
One congressman who had been in the hospital for six months had himself carted to the floor so he could support suffrage
Another , who had just broken his shoulder , refused to have it set for fear he 'd be too late to be counted
Representative Frederick Hicks of New York had been at the bedside of his dying wife but left at her urging to support the cause
He provided the final , crucial vote , and then returned home for her funeral
The Senate failed to follow suit
But Woodrow Wilson , a president who had the winning quality of being very vulnerable to nagging by women , pushed the amendment through the next year
The states started ratifying
Then things stalled just one state short of success
Ninety years ago this month , all eyes turned to Tennessee , the only state yet to ratify with its Legislature still in session
The resolution sailed through the Tennessee Senate
As it moved on to the House , the most vigorous opposition came from the liquor industry , which was pretty sure that if women got the vote , they 'd use it to pass Prohibition
Distillery lobbyists came to fight , bearing samples
`` Both suffrage and anti-suffrage men were reeling through the hall in an advanced state of intoxication , '' Carrie Catt reported
The women and their allies knew they had a one-vote margin of support in the House
Then the speaker , whom they had counted on as a `` yes , '' changed his mind
#NAME?
Women 's suffrage is tied to the railroad track and the train is bearing down fast when suddenly
... -RRB- Suddenly , Harry Burn , the youngest member of the House , a 24-year-old `` no '' vote from East Tennessee , got up and announced that he had received a letter from his mother telling him to `` be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt .
`` I know that a mother 's advice is always the safest for a boy to follow , '' Burn said , switching sides
We celebrate Women 's Suffrage Day on Aug. 26 , which is when the amendment officially became part of the Constitution
But I like Aug. 18 , which is the day that Harry Burn jumped up in the Tennessee Legislature , waving his mom 's note from home
I told the story once in Atlanta , and a woman in the audience said that when she was visiting her relatives in East Tennessee , she had gone to put a yellow rose on Harry Burn 's grave
I got a little teary
`` Well , actually , '' she added , `` it was because I could n't find his mother .
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction : Correction : August 14 , 2010 An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the House of Representatives was composed of only men in 1918
Jeannette Rankin , a female representative from Montana , served from 1917 to 1919
Forty years ago this weekend , I was at the Woodstock concert , and now I am getting alarmed about all the retrospectives
They 're beginning to make me feel like Frank Buckles , the 108-year-old last surviving veteran of World War I. Although I will never come up with a line as good as Frank 's secret to a long life
-LRB- `` When you start to die , do n't . ''
Also , it has brought back my concern about the fact that I do not have any memory whatsoever of having heard any music
Woodstock-wise , I am the walking definition of anhedonia
I spent a lot of time trying to talk a state policeman into helping me charge the battery on the car I had borrowed from my boyfriend
And , having left the picnic basket behind on the front porch , I was in charge of finding food for myself , my brother and the six friends who came with us
This took a great deal of time , and involved making my way to a little town down the road , where the store shelves had been stripped nearly bare and the people seemed to feel as if they were living out an episode of `` The Twilight Zone .
Fortunately , it turned out that eight people could live on peanut butter and marshmallow fluff for much longer than you might imagine
But it was still a great adventure
The lesson I took away from it is that whenever anybody asks you to do something off the wall , you should really try to do it unless it involves being unethical or a two-plane connection
You might not enjoy it while it 's going on , but somewhere down the line the anecdotes will always come in handy
When I was actually at Woodstock , it never occurred to me anybody was going to want to discuss it 40 years down the road
In fact , the only time I envisioned the concert having any impact on my future was on the way home when I decided all of us were going to die in a massive traffic jam
It was already dark when a girl walked up to my car which was easy to approach , since we had n't moved for several hours and said something like : `` All the people ahead are going to sleep , so you might as well just settle down for the night .
Then she gave me a flower and walked away
This was a sweet gesture , but I was so overwhelmed by the wish that the flower was , say , a saltine cracker , that I did n't really respond
As the hours slowly ticked by , I decided that the cars were never going to move again and that months later rescuers would find our desiccated bodies , some collapsed behind the wheel , others slumped over the glove compartment where they expired while searching for a stray cough drop
I fantasized that this mass tragedy would cause all the people over 30 to regret the terrible way that they had ignored the wise advice that the younger generation had been offering on how to run the world
Then the much-discussed revolution would finally occur , the world would achieve peace and harmony and we would be remembered as the Woodstock Martyrs who made it all happen
Or , you know , we might just decide to get out of the cars and walk
The Woodstock-mania must drive young people crazy since it is yet another reminder that the baby-boom generation is never going to stop talking about the stuff it did , and that when they are old themselves there will probably still be some 108-year-old telling them how everybody slept in the mud but that it was worth it because Janis Joplin sounded so awesome and the people were all mellow
Current younger generation , I know you would be equally good-natured if you found yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere , cut off from the world with 400,000 other people and a bunch of bands
But it will never happen because although you will have many , many fine adventures of your own , you will never be cut off
My sister-in-law Laura just got back from the Lollapalooza concert in Chicago , which was the exact opposite of Woodstock in the sense that it was an extremely pleasant way for a middle-aged person to spend a weekend
The thing that struck her most besides the misting tents , the lobster corndogs and the truffled popcorn was that `` at any point you could look around and 50 percent of the people were texting or reading a text
Which is fine for keeping in touch , but I wonder how truly involved you can get with the music .
As the person who went to Woodstock and did n't see the concert , I ca n't really comment on that last point
But 40 years ago , I knew eight people who would have killed for that lobster corndog
Word went out this week that Hillary Clinton 's name is , indeed , going to be put in nomination at the convention , `` as a show of unity and in recognition of the historic race she ran , '' according to a joint Obama-Clinton press release , written in language so careful that it might have emanated from the United Nations Panel on System-wide Coherence
The folks at the top of the food chain were the very picture of good fellowship
`` It could n't have gone better .
Bill Burton , Obama spokesman
`` From what they told us , it was what they had in mind all along .
Philippe Reines , Clinton spokesman
There was a problem
Seriously good work , Democrats
There is no greater achievement than the nonviolent resolution of differences , and we 'll take it on whatever level we can get it
Organizing a harmonious convention is not exactly a new Middle East roadmap
But like all settlements between enemy forces , it required leaders who were willing to forego the temptation to appear tough at all times , and followers prepared to get over it , whatever historical wound `` it '' happens to represent
For an example of a situation in which both these factors are AWOL , see the current conflict in Georgia
On its face , the Hillary resolution appears pretty obvious
The woman got more than 1,900 delegates , for heaven 's sake
If she wants to be nominated , she 's going to be nominated
But the last thing the Obamaites needed was a long spectacle on national television in which one state after another stood up , gave a plug for its tourist attractions , and then cast a divided vote , while the delegate lead switched back and forth until Barack won
And Obama had some power if not to stop Clinton , at least to make her look like a sore loser who was trying to torpedo the party 's chances in November
Then happy ending
Barack refrained from flexing his muscles , although any man condemned to a three-month-long steel cage match with John McCain must have been tempted to go for the mindless macho route
Hillary , for her part , will not see her historic achievement recorded in the convention records
The details are n't public , but it seems likely that after her name is put in nomination , even before the first roll call , she 'll release her delegates and urge them to vote for Obama
Her most ardent supporters will still get to cast their votes for their heroine
-LRB- The word `` catharsis '' comes up frequently in these discussions .
But most of her delegates , including Clinton herself , would switch over to Barack
This is no tiny thing to give up
Clinton is only the third woman to ever compete in the major party primaries
Shirley Chisholm got 152 delegates in 1972 , and Margaret Chase Smith got 27 in 1964
Chisholm fought the good fight , but none of the male candidates ever considered her a serious threat
Smith , an extraordinary senator from Maine who was the first person in Congress with the spine to stand up to Joe McCarthy , made the Republicans nervous when she entered the New Hampshire primary
But she seemed unsure of exactly how a woman was supposed to run for president , and soon resorted to passing out muffins on her campaign stops
And now Hillary Clinton 1,920 delegates by The Times ' final count
This is an extraordinary breakthrough
And yet , when the delegates actually call out their votes in Denver , it 's likely that the numbers will look more like Margaret Chase Smith redux
`` We know what we 've achieved , '' Clinton has been telling her backers
Everybody is not going to be appeased
PUMA , or People United Means Action , is an excellent example of the Ossetia branch of the Hillary camp
Darragh Murphy , the PUMA spokeswoman , said that while her members are extremely happy about the agreement , it will have no effect whatsoever on their plans for perpetual resistance
Unless their state allows write-ins , she said , most PUMA members will stay home or vote for John McCain in November to protest the way Democratic leaders `` allowed the primary campaign to go forward with the sexism in the media going unchecked by the party , along with the disenfranchisement of Florida and Michigan , and the shenanigans in Iowa and Texas in the caucuses .
Yes , down in the grass-roots , there are still some sullen stalks
But the vast majority of Hillaryites seem prepared to accept the new accord as an indication that their heroine will get the proper respect
The tanks have turned around
Those Democrats sure do know how to work together
Maybe next they 'll be able to figure out how to keep their primaries from starting around Christmas
`` I started with absolutely nothing and I have lived the American dream , '' Jeff Greene , a Senate candidate and billionaire , told a small crowd in one of Miami 's poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods this week
It was not entirely clear how the cheering audience found this information
But Greene kept repeating it
Like almost all the really , really rich people running for office this year , he regards his story as the core of his campaign
His policy message -LRB- jobs , jobs , jobs -RRB- and his prescriptions for the American economy -LRB- education , infrastructure repair , home weatherization -RRB- are pretty much what the Democrats have been pushing in Washington for the last two years
But Barack Obama does n't have a $ 24 million house and a 145-foot yacht
`` I 'm a regular middle-class kid who achieved the American dream , '' Greene reminded his listeners
Greene popped up out of nowhere earlier this year , prepared to `` spend what it takes '' to grab the Democratic nomination in the U.S. Senate race in Florida to go to Washington and do for America what he has done for his bank account
Once again , voters are being asked to decide whether the cure for their problems lies in a person who is long on money and short on listening skills
After Greene talked about jobs , jobs , jobs , an unemployed landscaper came up and asked what he would do about the horrific crime rate in the neighborhood
`` Crime is directly related to jobs , '' said Greene
A woman with respiratory problems wanted to know about housing
`` Jobs , housing - these are basic needs .
Being the rich candidate is not without its burdens
For one , there 's the matter of that yacht , the Summerwind
Greene might see himself as an upstanding family man , but his yacht is bad , bad , bad
It 's an embarrassing , headline-making connection - the Levi Johnston of boats
The government of Belize says Summerwind tore up a part of a national coral reef with its anchor , but Greene denies knowing anything about it
The yacht went to Cuba , apparently breaking the American embargo
Greene says that was just for emergency repairs , and , anyway , he spent the downtime visiting Cuban synagogues
Former employees keep telling reporters about wild parties
There are claims that one involved `` naked drunken people everywhere .
Greene says these are fantasies cooked up by disgruntled former workers , or reporters trying to blame him for the lifestyle of some of the yacht 's `` colorful guests .
Clearly , the Summerwind has a life of its own , cruising around the globe , burning 50 gallons of fuel an hour , throwing orgies for B-list celebrities while Greene is home reading
It played host to Lindsay Lohan , who Greene claims he 's barely met
It took Mike Tyson on a Black Sea cruise that culminated in a drug-and-sex romp in Amsterdam , but Greene was only around for the part where they visited an 11th-century monastery in Ukraine
Florida 's primary is Tuesday , and Greene is engaged in mortal combat with Kendrick Meek , a four-term congressman
Greene -LRB- white , wealthy -RRB- insists Meek -LRB- black , yachtless -RRB- is the insider in the race , and he does have a point
Meek 's House seat was basically deeded to him by his mother , former Representative Carrie Meek
At a rally in Miami this week , Carrie reminded the audience that her son had been a highway patrolman - `` out there on the dangerous streets '' - without mentioning that he had spent the bulk of his time in uniform working for the governor 's security detail
Meek seems to be getting by with a lot of help from his friends
Bill Clinton was the star attraction at his rally , and the former president assured the crowd that they would never be disappointed in Kendrick `` because he 'll grow every day .
#NAME?
On the subject of Barack Obama , Clinton said : `` This is my professional opinion
I believe he has done a much better job than he gets credit for . ''
So Meek 's candidacy is all about connections , while Greene 's is all about money
Their policies are pretty similar , so the whole fight has devolved into character assassination
This week when Greene held a `` block party '' in Meek 's Liberty City district , he referred to the congressman dismissively as `` a perfectly nice fellow .
This was quite a step up from his most recent TV ads
-LRB- `` Kendrick Meek : Corrupt . ''
Greene has promised that if he wins , he 'll give his Senate salary to Florida charities , and many of the most ardent supporters at the event seemed to be hoping to get on that list
Others were lured in with a barbecue , a face painter for the kids and some bands
The theme was to collect canned goods for the hungry , but Greene bought all the cans
He learns his fate on Tuesday
For Summerwind , I 'm thinking the future involves a trip to rehab
Then maybe a reality show for Yachts Gone Wild
Plaxico Burress , the former football star , appeared before a grand jury in Manhattan this week to explain how he came to carry a concealed weapon into a nightclub
Burress , you may remember , had cannily tucked his loaded pistol into the waistband of his sweatpants when he went out for a night on the town
The gun started to slip , as objects in waistbands are wont to do
When he grabbed it , he accidentally shot himself in the thigh
This is what is known as a bad plan
The reason I am bringing all this up is that Burress 's spokespeople keep pointing out that he did have a permit to carry a handgun in Florida
-LRB- It was expired , but as the waistband business demonstrates , this guy does not excel in attention to detail .
So the story gives us an excellent entry into the question of whether states should be required to recognize other states ' gun carry permits
The Senate recently held a debate on just such a proposal , during which the sponsor , John Thune of South Dakota , said that if people from his state were able to go to New York and visit tourist attractions while carrying their concealed weapons , `` Central Park would be a much safer place .
This suggests how much Americans have to learn about each other
Central Park is way safer than South Dakota
There were no murders and three serious assaults in Central Park in 2008 , compared with five murders and 341 assaults in Sioux Falls alone
There was a horrible near-fatality in the park this week , but it involved a rotting tree limb that fell and hit a man on the head
If South Dakotans would like to come to visit carrying concealed chain saws , it is possible that we can do some business
The vote on the Thune amendment was 58 to 39 in favor , which , of course , in the Senate world means that it was defeated
But it will be back
These days , whenever Congress feels the yen for a good old-fashioned debate about a hot-button social issue , it goes for guns
This year , we have already been blessed with legislation giving people the right to carry concealed weapons in national parks
Maybe soon there will also be a Plaxico 's Law , affirming that a gun permit , once granted , is good for a lifetime , just like Social Security numbers
I like to think this gun obsession is progress of a sort , since it has almost completely replaced the offering of divisive gotcha amendments on abortion or gay rights
Given the fact that lawmakers yelling about assault rifles and Glocks very seldom feel compelled to quote from the Bible , you 'd think we could work toward a sensible national consensus on guns
Senator Charles Schumer of New York offered to work on a compromised concealed weapon bill that would only apply to truck drivers who haul valuable cargo around the country
Maybe , in turn , the other side would be a little more rational about regulating weapons sales at gun shows
One barrier , of course , is the National Rifle Association , which is dedicated to the cause of making everybody as loony as possible on the subject
Another is the suspicion on the part of gun owners that people who favor gun control look down on them
In that Senate debate , opponents of loosening the current laws did get a tad carried away , particularly when they kept equating carrying a concealed weapon with being a mass murderer
Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey claimed that the newly empowered gun owners coming into his state would be `` like Richard Poplawski , the white supremacist , armed with an AK-47 , who allegedly murdered three Pittsburgh police officers on his front porch .
Perhaps Menendez was having a bad day , what with a large chunk of the New Jersey Democratic Party teetering on the verge of indictment
But given the fact that nearly half the householders in America have guns , it does n't make sense to suggest that they 're all homicidal or that only good gun owners are the hunters
There are an estimated 250 million guns in America
Jim Kessler of the Third Way , a nonpartisan think tank , noted that if the noncriminals only used them for hunting , `` there would n't be a varmint left in the country .
Gun advocates tend to think of themselves as representatives of small-town or rural values
But their worldview is so dark , you 'd think they were living in a dystopian Gotham City
Senator Thune said he was worried that his daughter might have to drive home from college through states that would not allow her the protection of a pistol in the glove compartment
Senator Jim Webb of Virginia fretted about his elderly father checking into a motel without a loaded gun to keep the criminals at bay
In New York , I have never heard a single parent say they were afraid their kid could n't make it home from school unarmed
However , we do worry a little bit about idiots wandering into nightclubs with Glocks tucked in their sweats
Although this has certainly been a tough August on many counts , it is important to remember the little moments of pure joy
One of which was hearing the news that Tom DeLay is going to be a contestant on `` Dancing With the Stars .
I know
It takes very little to make some people happy
Reality TV plus politics this could be the start of something big
Right now in Congress we have six senators who are supposed to be coming up with a health care plan , and all we 've got is conference calls and gridlock
What if we locked them in a house together and made them compete every day for valuable prizes
Do n't miss the final episode , where the winner gets to decide whether or not there 's a public option
DeLay 's entry into the world of competitive TV dancing is also the answer to two critical problems facing the American economy
One is a serious celebrity shortage
This is something I really did n't see coming
But the proliferation of low-cost reality shows on television has drained the nation 's hitherto-robust supply of slightly famous people to the point that last year 's `` Celebrity Apprentice '' featured a woman whose claim to fame was opening briefcases on `` Deal or No Deal .
It 's understandable that the producers of , say , `` Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew '' might have to make certain compromises in their quest to find people who are willing to go on camera during cocaine withdrawal
But under normal circumstances , when I hear the word `` celebrity '' on television , I am expecting to see at minimum the co-star of a canceled situation comedy or a lesser Baldwin brother
Yet on the new lineup for `` Dancing With the Stars , '' the alleged stars include a professional snowboarder and the son of George Hamilton
Entertainment industry , you can do better
Eliot Spitzer seems to have time on his hands , and I 'm sure Mark Sanford will be available soon
Then we 'll be ready for `` The Boys of Prayer House , '' in which the philandering congressmen who used to hold Bible study classes in that C Street row house hold a reunion , and vie to see who can achieve spiritual rebirth while hanging from a pole in a backyard endurance test
Turn enough disgraced politicians into reality show contestants and you also solve the looming crisis over what to do with the nation 's large supply of repudiated elected officials
This is a serious matter
Within the next year I 'll bet you that in New York alone , we will have enough state senators under indictment to fill a small stadium , and none of them have any marketable job skills whatsoever
As I see it , it 's going to be `` Wipeout '' or food stamps
DeLay , you may remember , had to quit his job as majority leader when he was charged with conspiring to violate campaign finance laws
He does not seem interested in returning to his former career as a bug exterminator , and he refers to himself as `` president of a strategic political consulting firm , '' a Washington synonym for semi-employed
But I understand he is a really nifty dancer
DeLay first entered the `` Dancing With the Stars '' culture back in 2006 , when he urged fans to wipe out the evil that was a fox-trotting Jerry Springer and vote for the country singer Sara Evans as a representative of `` good American values .
This was shortly before Evans quit the show in order to devote more time to her new divorce suit against her husband , a former Republican Congressional candidate who she claimed cheated on her , drank excessively and watched porn in the family home
Evans has since found happiness with a former University of Alabama quarterback
But this does bring us to an important tip : When citing someone as a potential role model , al ways keep your commendations narrow : `` Sara Evans 's last album is an example of good American values .
`` John Edwards 's comment about poverty on Dec. 10 , 2005 , is an example of good American values .
`` Rod Blagojevich 's hair is an example of good American barbering .
We are bringing up the former governor of Illinois because of his pioneering role in the melding of disgraced politicians and reality television
Unfortunately , Blagojevich 's attempt to compete on `` I 'm a Celebrity , Get Me Out of Here '' was quashed by an unsympathetic judge who apparently did not appreciate the fact that the man was only a half-step away from making a living as an Elvis impersonator
And now , Tom DeLay , an excellent example of good American waltzing
`` Headed to the studio for my first rehearsal and to meet my partner
Hope it 's not Nancy Pelosi : -RRB- , '' DeLay twittered with the wry sense of humor we have come to know and love
The new site had only 1,489 followers as of Wednesday
It has n't been up long , but he had better get cracking
One of his competitors , the recycled reality show star Kelly Osbourne , has more than 110,000
He needs to step up his game
A lot is riding on this
Sarah Palin is so , so ready for TLC
We can not possibly talk enough about them
It 's hard to believe that only a few weeks ago , we thought that Joe Biden was just a garrulous senator-for-life and Evan Bayh was ... an extremely boring person from Indiana
Tim Kaine you will be shocked to hear this , but until recently we had never thought about Tim Kaine at all
Now he is at the center of our universe
If we 'd been planning ahead , we 'd have demanded a real vice-presidential competition , something the other TV networks could have put up against the Olympics
Can anybody beat Bill Richardson 's Guinness World Record of 13,392 shaken hands over eight hours
Down more boilermakers than Hillary Clinton in a single campaign
Biden and Bayh could have read aloud from their autobiographies while judges counted the number of audience members who stayed alert during `` Promises to Keep : On Life and Politics '' vs. `` From Father to Son : A Private Life in the Public Eye .
Everybody has so many strengths ; it 's hard to choose
How about that Governor Kaine
A Democrat who speaks freely about his faith , that 's what the ticket needs
Of course , Barack Obama is a Democrat who speaks freely about his faith , but Kaine is a Catholic and two faiths are better than speaking freely about one
If John McCain really goes ahead and picks Joe Lieberman , we could have candidates speaking freely about their various faiths around the clock
As intense as the anticipation over Obama 's choice is , it pales next to the hubbub over whether McCain is going to tap Lieberman , who was Al Gore 's running mate in 2000
This would give Lieberman a unique niche in American history one politician who was the vice-presidential nominee for both parties
We would speak of it with awe , like that story about the two-headed turtle in Brooklyn
Talk about bipartisanship
The Republicans could have an anti-choice , anti-union presidential nominee whose biggest domestic priority is cutting waste and reducing the role of government , along with a pro-choice , pro-union running mate who believes in large government programs to solve large American problems
When you have a 71-year-old presidential candidate , it 's particularly important that voters be confident that he 's backed up by an experienced and qualified vice president prepared to step in and do the exact opposite about everything except Iraq
Lieberman is certainly capable of dumping everything he has ever believed in and assuring the anti-choice , anti-union , anti-government folk that he is on their team
But then the magic fades and all you 've got is a conservative Republican who likes the environment teamed with a guy who will do anything to move up
If that 's all you 're looking for , you might as well take Mitt Romney
The Republican rules , which were obviously written by people who had failed to take their bipartisan pills , do not necessarily allow for the nomination of a vice-presidential candidate who is not a registered Republican
Perhaps McCain will plow ahead anyway , and there will be a revolt
Talk about convention excitement all those Republican senators who do n't want to have to spend Labor Day weekend in St. Paul would sure learn their lesson
I do n't think we 've had that kind of crisis since 1836 , when Virginia -LRB- future home of Gov. Tim Kaine , the son of a welder -RRB- refused to cast its electoral votes for Richard Mentor Johnson , Martin Van Buren 's running mate
He got the vice presidency anyway , but it did not seem to agree with him
After observing the degenerating Johnson at dinner , a visitor from England said , optimistically , `` there is no telling how he might look if he dressed like other people .
But we digress
Lieberman used to be a perfectly good senator , but somewhere along the line he began thinking of himself as being above the partisan fray , and it had a terrible effect
When he ran for vice president , he was so busy being pompous that he did n't notice that Dick Cheney had won the debate
-LRB- Of all the negative achievements in Lieberman 's career , it 's hard to top making Cheney the most likable man in the room .
During the Florida vote-counting crisis , he was so deeply unhelpful you could argue that it cost Gore his chance at the White House
I plan to go into this point in more depth in my upcoming book , `` How Joe Lieberman Ruined Everything .
Ever since then , Lieberman 's ideas for legislation have gotten more bipartisan and more dreadful
This , after all , is the man who created the Department of Homeland Security , which refocused the nation 's intelligence-gathering and crisis-response agencies into the important mission of around-the-clock bureaucratic infighting
But let 's get back to the Democrats
Who will Barack pick
I do n't care
Just as long as it 's somebody in the same party
This week in Florida , I heard two stupendously rich men - one a billionaire - tell rooms full of voters that they lived the American dream
Did n't the American dream used to be having a house of your own with a nice yard
When did it evolve into owning your own $ 9.2 million mansion
Is n't this putting a little too much pressure on the nation , dream-wise
Scott 's talk went into great detail about his humble beginnings , when his mom `` took in ironing so we could get groceries .
This kind of rags-to-riches saga is supposed to offer encouragement to the struggling masses
But , really , when you are telling the story at a yacht club it just sounds like bragging
My second question is how yachts manage to keep horning into the political picture
Lately , we 've had a controversy over whether John Kerry was trying to avoid Massachusetts taxes on his new $ 7 million yacht by docking it in Rhode Island
Inquiring minds in Connecticut are going to want to know why the Republican gubernatorial candidate , Tom Foley , has his 100-foot yacht registered in the Marshall Islands
The whole world wants to know why the yacht owned by Linda McMahon , the U.S. Senate nominee in Connecticut , is named Sexy Bitch
And , of course , there 's the 145-foot Summerwind , which appears to float around the world by itself , hosting wild parties while its owner , Jeff Greene , the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Florida , is off touring historic monuments or visiting Jewish houses of worship
No wonder some people in Middle America regard themselves as morally superior to folks on the coasts
You very seldom run into a Nebraska politician with yacht issues
Rick Scott is thin , totally bald and very intense , sort of like a human bullet
He tried to whip up the Sarasota audience , but quite a few people seemed more focused on the salmon entree
Perhaps they were aware that Scott 's own boat is just an itsy bitsy 28-footer , although his description of his many business triumphs made it clear that he could afford something more commodious if he was in the mood
The Florida primary is Tuesday , and national attention is focused on two big battles pitting a rich entrepreneur against an elected official , who the entrepreneur always refers to as a `` career politician .
Greene 's contest with Representative Kendrick Meek is an extremely expensive brawl , but even that pales next to the fight between Scott and his opponent , Attorney General Bill McCollum
The two of them have spent more than $ 50 million on ads trashing each other
The average Florida TV viewer saw 23 Scott ads last week , most of them describing McCollum as a hack who voted himself a pay raise , helped out a sleazy party chairman , lied , flip-flopped , etc. , etc. , etc.
Nobody at the yacht club liked negative advertising
`` It 's giving the Democrats , the liberals , all the ammunition they need , '' complained one man during the questions period
Scott said he had to defend himself , listing all the difficulties of a gubernatorial campaign , `` especially if you 're not a career politician .
Neither Greene nor Scott has shown any great talent for the part of running for office that actually involves running for office
Scott has a habit of not showing up for scheduled events
He never even made it to the final candidate debate last Thursday
However , he was considerate enough to send his mother as a stand-in
Besides not being a career politician , Scott 's big selling point is that he would `` run this state like you run a business .
The biggest business he ran himself was Columbia\/HCA , a mammoth health care company
The board of directors tossed him out in 1997 after the company pleaded guilty to overbilling state and federal health programs and paid $ 1.7 billion to settle the case
Taking his argument literally , we would have to assume that Scott is promising that if he 's elected governor , he 'll build Florida into a state so energetic that it will wind up involved in the biggest fraud scandal in the history of state governments
`` You were the captain of the ship , '' said another questioner
`` How did those abuses occur on your watch
And can you explain that and not blame it on the crew ?
`` I should have hired more auditors , '' Scott said
He then applauded himself for `` taking responsibility , '' and concluded , by blaming the crew : `` You have a lot of employees and you trust them
Sometimes they do n't do the right thing .
For most of the summer , Scott and Greene were leading in the polls , but lately both of these proud novices have started to fall behind
If the career politicians triumph , maybe we can have a national truce on candidates demanding to be elected because they 're outsiders
The Obama family is off for a week of summer vacation
This is something Barack owes Michelle and the girls , although I am sure he would personally have preferred to stay in Washington listening to people tell him what to do about health care
The president is getting no end of helpful suggestions
Right now there is probably a caddy on Martha 's Vineyard wondering if he will be picked to carry Barack 's clubs , and if so , whether there will be time to put in a plug for the public option
The Republicans say if Obama wants a bill that can pass , he should pay more attention to their ideas
Particularly the one about how he has to make the whole thing cheaper without getting the government in the business of reducing health care costs
Democrats want him to stop betraying the party 's progressive base by being all kumbaya and bipartisan just because he won the election by being all kumbaya and bipartisan
I am personally thinking that he should grab a copy of Tom Ridge 's memoir to read on vacation , come back and change the terror alert level to orange
This summer we have found fissures in the social contract we never knew existed before
Until August , I had no idea that we were split over the question of whether it was a good plan to bring an assault rifle to a site where people had gathered to greet the president of the United States
But the biggest stunner was the high regard in which the town meeting protesters seemed to hold members of Congress
One thing I thought all Americans agreed about was that Congress is incapable of getting anything done
But the angry people at those meetings seemed to believe that their elected representatives are strong , sneaky , indifferent to public opinion , and intent on eviscerating popular and much-needed programs in order to create a national health care plan that will make everybody miserable
This was a shocking new concept , a kind of Bizarro Congress that is exactly the opposite of the one we see stumbling through its paces on TV
That CSPAN Congress would quake in terror if asked to pass a bill against littering , fearing constituents might strain their backs by bending down to pick things up
It took the members 30 years to ax a fighter jet program even the Pentagon hates
Who knew they had the gumption to create death panels
Charles Grassley , the Republican senator from Iowa , told one town hall meeting that people `` have every right to fear '' that health care reform could lead to a `` government program that determines if you 're going to pull the plug on grandma .
Grassley has been in the Senate for 28 years , and chaired the Senate Special Committee on Aging
Yet he seems never to have noticed that if forced to choose between slaughtering a pen full of cute puppies and irritating the senior voters , every single elected official in Washington would grab a hatchet and dive for the dogs
Grassley is a member of the six-person Senate negotiating panel that is making everybody wait around while it allegedly works on a bipartisan health care plan
On Friday , the group leader , Max Baucus of Montana , reported the good news that the senators had a `` productive '' phone conversation in which the members `` discussed our progress .
This is the sort of encouraging report that is going to have Obama hitting the lobsters over the head with his putter
Grassley and Mike Enzi of Wyoming , another Republican negotiator , have been busy upping the ante on what counts as truly bipartisan
The magic number for Enzi and Grassley now seems to be 80 votes in the Senate
This would mean getting at least half the Senate Republicans on board
Try to imagine what that would entail
The current Republican caucus contains exactly two members -LRB- Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine -RRB- who might be called moderate
After that you move into people like Grassley , who is part of the smallish Calm Conservative camp
Then you come to the larger Friendly Reactionaries contingent of which Enzi is a member and which has not indicated actual support for anything about health care reform except bipartisan negotiations
To get to 80 you would have to venture even further to the right , into the Clan of the Cave Bear
It is not clear whether the 80-vote theory was part of the progress that the bipartisan negotiating panel discussed during that extremely productive call
Maybe they were trading stories about how they spent their summer vacations
You may recall that the six states represented by the negotiators contain a whopping 2.77 percent of the American population
Perhaps they just wanted to stay on the phone because they 're lonely
The Large Hadron , you may remember , is the 17-mile-long particle accelerator being built near Geneva
Once it 's up and running , its designers believe it will take particle physics research to a whole new level
Its critics think it may create a black hole that will swallow up the universe
This is what is known as a wide range of possibilities
I am bringing this up now because it is always important to remember that things could be worse
You may be worried about a new cold war or a major bank failure , or afraid of losing your job or your house or your credit rating
You may be depressed by your first look at the fall TV schedule
Whatever your concerns , it is important , in these dark moments , to remember that other people have been having a worse summer than you
To name just a few : John Edwards , the mayor of Detroit and all the people involved in the making of `` The Love Guru .
Perspective is all
If you 're going to fret , I say , fret about that black hole
For one thing , it makes it much easier to schedule unpleasant tasks for the second half of September
Heads , the planet survives
Tails , the root canal never happens
The vast majority of the scientific community believes that the Large Hadron will not lead to the destruction of all life as we know it
Or at least as Greg Landsberg , a physicist from Brown University , was quoted as saying , the chances are `` totally minuscule .
`` Totally minuscule '' are excellent odds when it comes to , say , risking a tornado on your wedding day
I think I speak for us all when I say that I would like something more conservative when it comes to planet-eating black holes
So I called Landsberg , who explained that in physics , there is no such thing as zero chance
`` For instance , if all the molecules of air in the room where you 're sitting would suddenly cross to one side , you would not have any air to breathe
This probability is not zero
It is in the 10 to the minus-25 range .
Black hole eats everything
All the air molecules decide to march off to the other side of the room and hold a caucus
I have totally gotten over worrying about reforming the Electoral College
Landsberg thinks people should concentrate on more likely dangers , such as nuclear war or global warming
`` The universe is a pretty safe place to live unless we mess it up , '' he noted
This sounded very wise
However , fretting about black holes is more fun than worrying about global warming ; it feels very cutting edge and does not require recycling
Almost everybody agrees that the Large Hadron Collider may be capable of producing little tiny , black holes
In a way , that 's the idea
Landsberg says he does n't think the probability of creating black holes is more than about 1 percent , but you could easily have gotten 100-to-1 odds a year or so ago on John McCain and Barack Obama being the presidential nominees
The idea that humankind has gone to extraordinary effort and expense to construct a black-hole-making machine should n't be all that startling
This is the same humankind that went out of its way to invent nuclear warheads , S.U.V. 's and deep-fried Twinkies-on-a-stick
There is nothing we enjoy more than sealing our own doom in the most creative ways possible
Unlike radiation and trans-fat , the black holes have a winning tendency to evaporate the second they 're produced
And if one did last longer , Landsberg figures the odds are very , very remote that it would hang around Switzerland
`` It would just disappear somewhere into space , '' he said
This is what we like best of all , really
Creating a problem and then sending it off to live in somebody else 's universe
In truth , we 've been down this road before
There 's an ion collider in Long Island named Rhic that critics thought might create something called strangelets , which have similar earth-gobbling talents to black holes
One report estimated that the possibility of strangelets popping up was only 1 in 50 million odds that Dennis Overbye noted in The Times were actually more favorable than some government-sponsored lotteries
Still , we 've had the collider in the New York metropolitan area for some time now with no ill effects and have turned our attention to more important projects , such as never finishing construction of the 9\/11 memorial
If there are any strangelets , they have adapted and merged into the general population
Some of them are no doubt running for the State Legislature at this very moment
Since this is possibly the most depressing August in the history of summer , I feel compelled to point out a brighter side of the news
In Arizona on Tuesday , Republican voters totally rejected the Congressional candidacy of State Senator Pamela Gorman -LRB- `` conservative Christian and a pretty fair shot '' -RRB- , whose TV ad showed her firing a machine gun at an undisclosed target
Only about 5,000 people in the district thought sending Pamela Gorman to Washington would be a good plan
And it was 110 degrees that day , so a number of those might have been hallucinating
The winner of this primary was Ben Quayle , son of Dan and Marilyn , whose campaign was flagging until his parents each sent out e-mail blasts urging people to vote for their son
That put him over the top with a whopping 14,266 votes
Quayle may have been the beneficiary of a notable trend in this week 's elections : victories by people whose mothers helped them campaign
Rick Scott , the rich-guy gubernatorial candidate in Florida , won a surprise upset after he sent his mother to represent him in the final debate
Clearly , the voters were thinking that being forced to listen to another debate would be bad , that mothers were good , and therefore Scott deserved to be the Republican nominee for governor
We do not pay much attention to races for governor in any state other than our own
But it 's going to be hard to resist watching to see if Florida wants to put its fate in the hands of a guy who looks like Lex Luthor and once ran a company that admitted defrauding the government of $ 1.7 billion
It 's right up there with the machine-gun woman
The big trend among Republicans is voting out the incumbent , even if said incumbent is a Republican
In their primaries , the Democrats tend to go for the status quo
This makes sense , since the Republicans are looking for a way to show they 're angry , angry , angry while the Democrats are too terrified of the Republicans to do anything but hunker down
In response , the Republican establishment is in identity denial
John Boehner is vowing that if his party wins a majority in the House , he will run things differently than either Nancy Pelosi or her Republican predecessor , the evil dictator John Boehner
And of course , Senator John McCain just notched up a triumph in Arizona , running against Senator John McCain
The Democrats are n't much better - unless you think it 's a good plan for Robin Carnahan , the Democratic candidate for Senate in Missouri , to be calling her opponent `` the very worst of Washington '' for supporting the same financial services bailout that President Obama and most of the Democrats in Congress backed
Really , the way these people are fleeing their parties , you 'd almost think neither side has any clue of what to do to resuscitate the economy
Instead of running as part of a group with a shared ideology and agenda , candidates run biography ads that stress their sterling character
A deprived childhood is always good
Kendrick Meek , the Democratic nominee for Senate in Florida , ran as the son of a struggling single mother even though his particular single mother was also the local congresswoman
And did you know John Boehner used to mop the floor of his dad 's bar when he was 11
This stuff is completely useless for the voters , since party affiliation is actually the only reliable indicator of how a candidate will behave in office
TV ads about prior achievements and moral integrity will tell you virtually nothing about what someone will do once they 're elected
I speak from experience , as a person who voted for Eliot Spitzer for governor
And of course we have the general nasty-tone trend , as evidenced by the way Republicans desperate for an applause line grab onto the `` mosque at ground zero .
This kind of thing gets worst in August when , absent a good hurricane , the media has very little to talk about
I blame the failure of celebrities to melt down when we need them most
If only Al and Tipper Gore were getting divorced because Tipper fell in love with Tiger Woods
Or if the woman who got caught putting a cat in a garbage can had been American
Really , anything about cats is good
Maybe the citizenry should demand a Voter Bill of Rights
Article One : Freedom from being forced to choose between two dreadful candidates when the temperature is higher than 90 degrees
Article Two : Candidates can not talk about their childhood beyond attesting that they had one
Article Three : Candidates are required to list all the really serious issue disagreements they have with their party
If they reach six , they should find a different ticket
The torch gets passed to Barack Obama tonight
It would be more dramatic if there were somebody to do the passing , but the Democrats did not go to the trouble of renting a 75,000-seat stadium to bring up John Kerry
All week , however , we 've been having a long-running and complicated transfer of the first lady mantle from Hillary Clinton to Michelle Obama
`` No one has been more gracious and more forthcoming and more helpful to me , '' Michelle said at a joint appearance with Hillary on Tuesday
Do we believe this
People , it does n't matter a whit
The Clintons did everything they were supposed to do here and in politics , like so much of life , feelings are irrelevant to everyone except the persons doing the feeling
We 're ready to move on
The Democrats in Denver have answered the call for unity with such alacrity that the party resembles one of those big amalgamated critters that are accidentally created at the beginning of Spider-Man movies
`` Stand shoulder to shoulder !
urged Senator Barbara Mikulski before bringing the once and perhaps-future first ladies onstage
The large audience of women found it easy to comply , since the organizers had removed most of the chairs from the ballroom
Hillary looks 10 years younger than she did when she thought she was about to become the first woman president
She 's developed this ... glow
It appears that not only does she possess superhuman resilience ; she positively thrives on crushing disappointment
Michelle , on the other hand , has been looking slightly frayed
At the joint event , after the paean to Hillary , her speech went a little astray
Her mouth twitched and she seemed preoccupied with something else during her ritual call to reject the world as it is in favor of the world as it should be
Preoccupation was entirely possible
Among the possible distractions were : 1 -RRB- Husband arriving soon to give one of the most high-stake speeches in the history of American politics in a football field
2 -RRB- Teleprompter not working
3 -RRB- Fifteen little girls about to hold a sleepover in her hotel room
Truly , this is a woman with an interesting life
Her spouse is flying in to accept the presidential nomination and , meanwhile , Joe Biden 's grandchildren are at the door in their pajamas
Michelle would be only the second working mother to become a first lady , and there 's not all that much about Hillary 's experience that offers much comfort
Clinton has had an extraordinary career , but I doubt that she 'll look back at her White House years as the high point
It 's a tricky business , representing independent modern women while not creating political pain for your spouse , made even trickier if you 're an African-American who is almost 6 feet tall , possessed of stunning looks and a forceful personality
Her signature issue is the job-family tensions of working women
This could actually be sort of revolutionary a first lady constantly pointing out that the American economy is built around the idea that wives and mothers work , but provides almost no answer to the question of who 's supposed to take care of the kids
`` I 've talked to so many women who feel guilty their kids are in child care longer than they 're with their mom , '' Obama said Wednesday , on a break between appearances at the Hispanic caucus and the African-American caucus
She ran through a litany of parents working two shifts , military wives who keep getting transferred to bases with a long wait for day care and striving single mothers bowed down under college loan payments
One big difference between Hillary and Michelle is that Obama shies away from providing specific answers and sticks to the stories about the problems
`` I have n't explored what 's been done , what has n't been done , '' she says
`` We need good child care
How much structure I do n't know
That 's the policy piece ; that is n't my forte .
And just as her husband has little patience with the culture wars of the Clintons ' generation , Michelle has no interest in the mommy wars
She refuses to decry young women with Ivy League degrees who opt to use them on full-time motherhood or to worry that all the talk about the problems will discourage young women from trying to combine husband , kids and high-powered career
`` I was raised to believe I could do it all , and that was very empowering , '' she said
`` Then I got into the work force and realized there was really no support for me to do it all
... We either have to fix that or be honest about it .
Her approach feels like a genuine preference , but , of course , it 's also politically pragmatic
She reminds every audience that she 's first and foremost a mom , albeit one who can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan
But if she comes under fire for being too soft , the Obama campaign headquarters will pass out Champagne
What are we to make of Alan Simpson , the co-chairman of President Obama 's deficit reduction commission , who recently referred to Social Security as `` a milk cow with 310 million tits ''
Personally , I would love for us to have a national cow with that sort of milk-giving capacity
But Simpson , who gets very impatient with people who want to preserve current Social Security benefits , did not mean it as a compliment
Now , his remark is getting a lot of attention , and that is only partly because the rest of the news has been so depressing that Bristol Palin 's rumored agreement to compete on `` Dancing With the Stars '' was a high point of the week
Simpson , 78 , is a former Republican senator known for his outspokenness - he once called the American Association of Retired Persons `` the greedy geezers of America .
In appointing him co-chairman of the president 's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform , the White House broke an important political rule , which is to keep away from anyone who considers himself a colorful old codger
Colorful codgers can be a welcome diversion in mediocre situation comedies , but you do not want one to be the public face of your deficit reduction commission
He might do something crazy , like e-mailing an activist for older American women , to accuse her of `` babbling into the vapors , '' then make disparaging remarks about well-endowed dairy animals and conclude with : `` Call when you get honest work !
Simpson was responding to a Huffington Post article by Ashley Carson , the executive director of the Older Women 's League
In it , Carson criticized Simpson 's support for reducing Social Security benefits
She also slammed his `` record of sexism '' and `` his constant bashing of seniors .
Carson 's post had been published in April
So besides writing an e-mail that confirmed all of her worst charges , Simpson was also choosing to get involved in a fight whose expiration date had long since kicked in
Perhaps he was in a bad mood because his son had just lost a gubernatorial primary to the grandson of another former United States senator
To make matters worse , the younger Simpson came in fourth , behind people who were not even direct descendants of major state politicians
After his e-mail rant was made public , Simpson apologized in his colorful old codger way
-LRB- `` Over the last 40 years I have had my size 15 feet in my mouth a time or two . ''
But that did not stop the demands that he resign or be fired
So far , Obama is sticking with his deficit-reduction co-chairman
He picked Simpson for the job because he is a Republican willing to talk about Social Security tax increases , a breed rarer than the ivory-billed woodpecker
The administration was obviously hoping that the commission would come up with a bipartisan plan that would combine a rise in payroll taxes with a modest reduction in benefits
The system is supposed to run out of money in 2037 , and if we could fix it now , the pain would be much more modest than if Congress waited until , say , January of 2038
This is so totally contrary to the current culture of Washington that it seems sort of touching that anybody might imagine it can happen
However , there is too much negativity in the world these days
I hereby offer a two-part proposal for fixing Social Security : MORE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS Immigration in general is a Social Security plus , since new arrivals tend to be young , and likely to contribute to the retirement system through payroll taxes for a long time before they start collecting
But illegal immigrants never get to collect at all
Their money only goes one way , toward benefits for the rest of us
Arizona retirees , tear down your walls
TAX LONGER LIVES Some experts , including people in the administration , believe that Congress should raise the age at which people can retire on full Social Security benefits , which is currently 66 and will rise to 67 for younger workers
Personally , I will be happy to rally around this idea the very second that the White House announces there is a large pool of job opportunities for unemployed 60-year-olds that are going begging
The theory behind raising the retirement age is that people are living longer these days
However , the Americans who do all this extra living tend to be wealthier than the ones who expire before they can cash their first pension check
Right now , only the first $ 106,800 in annual income is taxed for Social Security
Get rid of the cap , and you will be making the folks who are causing most of the problem pay for the solution
Finally , we could make a rule that it is unacceptable for people who are collecting large government pensions to make fun of retirees who want to keep Social Security benefits the way they are
Particularly if they try to be colorful about it
There was a time when people in search of a full and meaningful life were advised to start off each morning by telling themselves : `` Every day , in every way , I 'm getting better and better .
Now , we get up and hear : `` Updates are ready for your computer .
It 's depressing to realize that my computer is more bent on self-improvement than I am
At home , my laptop is so ready to update that it can barely be constrained
The other day , I found three different pleas floating around on the screen
The `` Dell Support Center Automatic Upgrade '' was the most tempting since it sounded as if the computer wanted to give me a really good seat on a plane
`` Effective now , '' the announcement continued , `` these valuable messages are part of the new Dell Support Center
Dell needs to upgrade Dell Support without impeding system performance so that messages continue to be received .
In other words , I need an upgrade so that I will better be able to receive more upgrade requests in the future
This is extremely important to my laptop , which is only offering me the response options of : More Details , Start Upgrade or Remind Me Later
There was a time when I would have responded , but nothing good ever seemed to come of that
The updated computers were never any better at doing the things I wanted to do than the old ones
And there 's always the possibility that I could trigger an inadvertent disaster
I have been permanently traumatized by an experience with my BlackBerry , which started sending me signals that it was unhappy about something
I kept clicking around , looking for a positive response , trying to show it that I was a partner , eager to keep up my end of the relationship
The upshot was that the BlackBerry began refusing to do anything whatsoever except call up the telephone number of former Senator Trent Lott
My most benevolent theory about the updating requests is that my computers are just bored
The one I take on the road is always whining about the unused icons on my desktop , like a hyper-tidy roommate who follows you around saying , `` Gee , I notice you have n't made your bed
Do you want any help with that
I know it must be really hard to remember every day , but if you want me to remind you or anything
... '' My home computer has begun to flash a Windows Genuine Advantage Notification , urging me to press a button so it can reduce software piracy and `` help confirm that the copy of Windows installed on this PC is genuine and properly licensed .
This does not sound as if it 's all about me
In fact , the computer has no interest whatsoever in me , my BlackBerry crisis or my inability to make the iPod stop playing `` Kokomo '' by the Beach Boys all the time
It just wants a world where all its icons are tidily arranged , software is licensed , upgrade messages flow untrammeled and it feels better every day , in every way
My darkest suspicion is that my computers are preparing to join their comrades in overthrowing humanity so machines can rule the earth
I have seen quite a few movies on this theme , and really , the signs are everywhere
The other day , Jim Dwyer reported in The Times about a man in Brooklyn whose oven broiler turns on every time the cellphone rings
Experts think this is caused by electromagnetic interference
However , I believe the oven is ticked off because its owners , in typical New York fashion , use it for storage rather than for actual cooking
And it is in cahoots with the cellphone , which probably is resentful because it is not allowed to spend its time doing the things cellphones really enjoy , like talking to Trent Lott
The way you respond when your computer asks for an upgrade is a good test of how you relate to technology in general
My nephew Hugh and his friends seem as excited as the computers over the whole concept
`` Actually , everyone would be fine with an annual update , '' he said , `` but that would make people feel like they were out of the loop
Unclean .
I had a good deal of trouble getting hold of Hugh since he does n't respond to old-fashioned e-mail
`` By the way , '' he said delicately when we were finished talking , `` if you tell people other than me that you 're writing a column on technology but do n't know how to text , they might sense , um , a disconnect .
Edward Tenner , a visiting scholar at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information and author of `` Why Things Bite Back , '' told me he actually used to be in the if-it 's - not-broke-don ` t-update camp , until his computer suffered a total meltdown
The tech who fixed it told him that he should have been installing the virus-detecting updates all along
`` Do n't try to second-guess Microsoft , '' he warned , in tones the professor has now taken to heart
Truly , words to live by
Every day in every way
It is conceivable that some people will think John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate because she is a woman
I know you find this shocking , but I swear I have heard it mentioned
McCain does not believe in pandering to identity politics
He was looking for someone who was well prepared to fight against international Islamic extremism , the transcendent issue of our time
And in the end he decided that in good conscience , he was not going to settle for anyone who had not been commander of a state national guard for at least a year and a half
He put down his foot
The obvious choice was Palin , the governor of Alaska , whose guard stands as our last best defense against possible attack by the resurgent Russian menace across the Bering Strait
Also a woman , but that 's totally beside the point
True , the only nonfamily members other than McCain that Palin really mentioned in her introductory speech were Democrats Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Rodham Clinton
Whatever happened to Ronald Reagan
Is n't there a rule that you have to mention Ronald Reagan
`` It was rightly noted in Denver that Hillary made 18 million cracks in the highest , hardest glass ceiling in America , '' Palin said
`` It turns out the women of America are n't finished yet , and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all .
O.K. , the women thing might have been a little bit of a selling point
Not nearly so much as the national guard commandership , of course
But if the millions of Democratic women who are still ticked off at Obama for stepping in front of Hillary in the line want to look elsewhere ... John McCain has a low opinion of the vice presidency , which he 's frequently described as a job that involves attending funerals and checking on the health of the president
-LRB- Happy 72nd birthday , John !
There 's a lot we do n't know yet about Palin , and I am personally looking forward to deconstructing her role in the Matanuska Maid Dairy closing crisis
But at first glance , she does n't seem much less qualified than Tim Pawlenty , the governor of Minnesota who most people thought was the most likely pick
Unlike Joe Lieberman , Palin is a member of the same party as the presidential candidate
And unlike Mitt Romney , she has never gone on vacation with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car
However , I do feel kind of ticked off at the assumptions that the Republicans seem to be making about female voters
It 's a tad reminiscent of the Dan Quayle selection , when the first George Bush 's advisers decided they could close the gender gap with a cute running mate
The idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong
When the sexes have parted company in modern elections , it 's generally been because women are more likely to be Democrats , and more concerned about protecting the social safety net
`` The gender gap traditionally has been determined by party preference , not by the gender of the candidate , '' said Ruth Mandel of the Eagleton Institute of Politics
Over the last week , we have heard over and over and over that Tuesday was the anniversary of the day women got the right to vote
#NAME?
That 's a story that I would love to get into , but , unfortunately , right now we have Sarah Palin to deal with .
After that big moment of enfranchisement , women went through a long period in the desert where they had the vote but not much else
Then came the great revolutions of the 1970s , when all the assumptions about the natural divisions between the sexes were challenged
During that era , women could be excited and moved by symbolic candidacies that promised a better , more inclusive future , like Shirley Chisholm 's presidential race and Geraldine Ferraro 's presence on the Democratic national ticket
This year , Hillary Clinton took things to a whole new level
She did n't run for president as a symbol but as the best-prepared candidate in the Democratic pack
Whether you liked her or not , she convinced the nation that women could be qualified to both run the country and be commander in chief
That was an enormous breakthrough , and Palin 's nomination feels , in comparison , like a step back
If she 's only on the ticket to try to get disaffected Clinton supporters to cross over , it 's a bad choice
Joe Biden may already be practicing his drop-dead line for the vice-presidential debate : `` I know Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine , and governor , you 're no Hillary Clinton .
Missouri just went to the polls
Perhaps some of you did n't notice because you were on vacation this week
Or watering your hydrangea
This is a tough time of the year for hydrangeas
Their little leaves begin to shrivel , and before you know it , there 's a large wilted bush studded with pompons and you 've missed the Missouri primary
One thing we learned this week was that people in Missouri are crazy about insiders
This was a surprise
In the big , much-anticipated race for an open U.S. Senate seat , Missouri Democrats overwhelmingly voted to nominate Robin Carnahan , the secretary of state whose father was governor , whose mother was a U.S. senator and whose brother is currently a congressman
The Republican nominee is Roy Blunt , who has served seven terms in Congress and is the father of a former Missouri governor
In the House , Blunt was the interim majority leader between the disgraced Tom DeLay and the disgraceful John Boehner
Also , his wife is a lobbyist
This man is so far inside he could be a coal miner
So are insiders back in
This would be shocking news to all the politicians who have been running around acting as if they 'd spent less time inside than a Bedouin camel herder
Actually , the message from Missouri was a little opaque
In a hard-fought House race , an auctioneer named Billy Long beat two state senators for the Republican nomination with his `` Fed Up ?
campaign that involved running around the district announcing he was fed up with , um , `` insiders .
He also ran ads telling people that he was fed up and handing out much-publicized `` Fed Up '' yard signs
Meanwhile , more than 70 percent of Missouri voters endorsed a measure that would wipe out the part of the new federal health care law that requires people to have insurance
They were unswayed by the fact that the proposition was almost certainly unconstitutional and unenforceable
This was a chance to send a message that voters are fed up
With government and insiders - unless they 're running for the Senate
But it also seems fair to interpret the vote as a ringing endorsement of Americans ' inalienable right to avoid buying private health insurance and instead get medical care from public emergency rooms where the cost will be passed on to the taxpayers
Maybe it 's time to rethink the single-payer plan now that we have evidence that 71 percent of Missourians support the concept of socialized medicine
Finally , Missouri voters have probably buried a popular 2010 political strategy - the one that holds you can get elected to high office by filming a wild and crazy ad , putting it on YouTube and waiting for it to become as popular as a piano-playing dog or the guy who throws a brick into a clothes dryer
The Tea Party candidate running for the Senate against Roy Blunt , Chuck Purgason , had pinned a lot of hope on this tactic
In a late-breaking coup , Purgason received the endorsement of `` Joe the Plumber , '' the conservative Ohioan who became a Republican icon after he dissed Barack Obama during the presidential campaign
And who , of course , is actually a guy named Samuel Wurzelbacher
Joe the Plumber and Friends put together an ad that used a fairy-tale motif to blast Blunt as a guy who hangs out with - yes
- `` insider friends '' as opposed to Purgason , a `` regular guy '' who , for purposes of carrying out the theme , was armed with a really big sword
The sponsors did not have enough money to put the thing on television , but they posted it on the Web and hoped that it would go viral
Which it did n't
Maybe someone 's invented an antidote
Even the people who did manage to make their videos hits in the Web world came to grief
In Alabama , Rick Barber , a right-wing pool-hall owner , became famous for an ad in which he sat around haranguing George Washington about the income tax and health care reform , until the father of our country announced himself ready for a new revolutionary war
In a whole new standard for over-the-topness , this one was denounced as too extreme by Glenn Beck
Barber lost big to a normal Republican who had never conversed on camera with the founding fathers
Also defeated : Tim James , a candidate for governor who made a splash with an ad in which he spoke to an invisible immigrant and sternly announced : `` This is Alabama
We speak English
If you want to live here , learn it .
So was Dale Peterson , a candidate for Alabama agriculture commissioner , who went viral with an ad that showed him tromping around the farmyard brandishing a rifle , yowling about immigrants , `` thugs and criminals '' and somebody stealing his yard signs
-LRB- If nothing else , I think this can be designated as the Year of the Yard Sign .
So , to summarize our lessons learned : Insiders are O.K. Yard signs are better
Go public option
If you want your video to go viral , hire a dancing cat
Barack Obama had his 48th birthday this week
Since we learned during last year 's campaign that he can be blamed for anything bad that 's happened in this country since he was a toddler , perhaps this is a good time to suggest that it 's his fault the Beatles did n't perform at Woodstock
The president celebrated by having lunch with the Democratic senators , proving once again that this is truly a guy who knows how to party
He also showed up at a press briefing to sing `` Happy Birthday '' to Helen Thomas , the legendary reporter and columnist who turned 89 on the same day
Thomas began covering the White House for United Press International in 1961 , and she once told me that the competition for Kennedy family stories was so intense , U.P.I. woke up press secretary Pierre Salinger to ask him if it was true that Caroline 's hamster had died
This sort of thing would of course never happen now because the hamster would have its own Facebook fan page , updated hourly
Obama is hitting another milestone this week
When Congress goes into recess it 'll be a rough half-year marker for his presidency
And things have been looking pretty good
American influence is rising abroad , and at home nobody in the White House appears to be plotting to undermine our civil rights on a daily basis
The economy 's looking kind of stimulated
These things take time , but the `` cash for clunkers '' part of the plan seems to be working like a charm
Believe it or not , it turns out that Americans will buy a lot more cars if you pay them a bunch of money to do it
The Senate is going to plow some more money into the clunker program , once it finishes Sonia Sotomayor 's nomination to the Supreme Court
That debate has taken the concept of anticlimactic to a whole new level although the Republican Jon Kyl 's announcement that he 's read the wise Latina speech `` many times '' did seem new , in a slightly disturbing way
Still , even some of the Republicans who warned that she might become `` untethered '' after her elevation and start committing empathy admitted that Obama has picked an impressive candidate to become the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice
Good work , White House
And then there was the administration 's first big coup of the week , Bill Clinton 's trip to North Korea to rescue the two jailed American journalists
This goes to show how Hillary Clinton will surprise you every time
When it comes to the secretary of state 's life story , I thought the one unbendable rule was that whenever he was most needed , Bill was going to be most unhelpful
But there he was at the Burbank airport , delivering the journalists to their families and getting that nice hug from Al Gore
We 're still trying to figure out what North Korea wanted
New weapons talks
Was the weird , ailing Kim Jong-il working out a succession plot on behalf of one of his sons
He has three , although everyone seems to have written off the oldest since he got picked up using a false passport to get to Tokyo Disneyland
Personally , I like the one who Newsweek says went to Swiss boarding school and wrote an essay about how he 'd like to fight terrorism with Jean-Claude Van Damme
But we 'll probably wind up with the one who makes his sister call him `` General Comrade .
Since everyone running North Korea seems to be crazy , it might be safest to work under the assumption that the motives were crazy , too
Maybe the nation 's elite were involved in a high-stakes scavenger hunt , with a list of items that included a 1979 almanac , a matchbook from an Indonesian nightclub , and a picture of Bill Clinton sitting next to the Dear Leader and looking like he was stuffed
Anyhow , Laura Ling and Euna Lee are home
Well done , everybody
Once the Senate leaves town , the Obamas can go to Martha 's Vineyard and relax
True , there 's no health care bill yet , and members of Congress are getting yelled at about socialized medicine by people who appear to have been sitting in their attics since the anti-tax tea parties , listening for signs of alien aircraft
But on the bright side , they 've finally got something to distract them from the president 's birth certificate
And more good news
the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is malfunctioning
You may remember that the collider was supposed to smash subatomic particles for super-advanced physics research
Chronic worriers claimed it might create a black hole that would suck up the universe
Or take us back in time to the year when 8-year-old Barack Obama was responsible for Nixon 's presidency , the institution of the draft and the popularity of `` Sugar , Sugar '' by the Archies
Or deliver us to a parallel universe in which John McCain and Sarah Palin are running the country
Now , as Dennis Overbye reported this week in The Times , there are problems with the wiring and the magnets
And while this is a loss for science , we 're on black hole vacation
Connecticut used to be the kind of place where you could predict election results by betting on the least-exciting outcome possible
But no more
If someone employs a large number of people to spend their lives hitting each other over the head with chairs and the occasional sledgehammer , should we hold it against her if she does n't provide health insurance
If an unemployed millworker is asked to describe her multimillionaire former boss , do you think she 'd be more negative if the interviewer plied her with a sandwich
What is it about home improvements that politicians find so irresistible
`` Ned Lamont sent a film crew to my house four weeks ago
Just let that sink in , '' said Dan Malloy , the former Stamford mayor , bitterly in a recent radio interview
He and Lamont are locked in a fierce battle for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination
Taking pictures of somebody 's house does n't seem like all that terrible a crime
In fact , since Malloy is one of the very few people running for office this year who does n't live in a castle , you 'd think he 'd be pleased
However , Malloy 's residence was once refurbished by some contractors who also did work for the city
Although he was cleared of any conflict , this sort of thing is a tender subject in Connecticut
Both a recent Republican governor and a current Democratic mayor have been convicted of taking freebies in the form of home improvements
And remember the fall of Senator Ted Stevens in Alaska
Bernie Kerik , the New York City police chief
American politics is apparently cursed by the fatal allure of free cabinetry
Almost every strange trend in national politics is on display in Connecticut this year , including the multiplication of superrich candidates
Lamont owns a cable TV company
The leading Republican gubernatorial contender , Tom Foley , and Linda McMahon , the Senate hopeful , have prior experience in state politics that 's mainly limited to giving other Republicans money
Given their lack of political records , opponents have been going after their businesses
McMahon is hit with questions about the way she ran the family 's World Wrestling Entertainment , which employs more than 100 wrestlers who bang each other up in rings around the world , without the benefit of a company health plan
-LRB- McMahon claims the wrestlers do get seminars on shopping for insurance , and I think I speak for us all in saying that that is not the same thing .
Her major Republican opponent , Rob Simmons , a former congressman , suspended his campaign after McMahon won the nod at the Republican convention by promising to finance her own campaign
Simmons had about $ 900,000 at the time , which was about the McMahon budget for coffee creamer
He stayed home sulking until a couple of weeks ago when he paid for a quickie TV ad with the central theme of : `` I 'm Rob Simmons , I 'm still on the ballot .
Does n't this seem sort of passive-aggressive
You kind of want your candidate to be a fighter , but Simmons appeared to expect the voters to do all the work
Hey , Republicans , I 'm here
Come and get me if you want me
`` Passive-aggressive is still aggressive , '' Simmons said cheerfully in a phone interview
He recently emerged from his burrow of solitude and is doing interviews about the less-appetizing side of the W.W.E. , the evils of big money in politics and engaging in what the McMahonites called `` erratic behavior , bad judgment , acrimony , reckless and misleading exaggerations .
Well , a woman whose claim to fame is having built a professional wrestling empire should certainly know erratic behavior and acrimony when she sees them
Foley , the gubernatorial candidate , runs a private investment group that once owned a Georgia textile mill that later went bankrupt and closed
Frankly , even if the guy has a 100-foot yacht , it is n't fair to blame him for the collapse of the American textile industry
Although the yacht does make it more tempting
One of his opponents has been running ads of elderly former factory workers standing in front of their ruined place of work and talking about Foley while mournful music plays in the background
`` I would be afraid he would do the same thing to Connecticut he did to the Bibb mill , '' says one sweet little old lady
The Foley folks , outraged , suggested that the admakers had coerced or bribed the former workers
The candidate himself charged during a debate that they had all been `` treated to a sumptuous lunch .
Do you really think that out-of-work millhands living out their days in their decrepit town would require culinary incentives to speak critically of a rich investor whose company paid itself $ 4 million a year for managing their doomed factory
Really , it 's like defending your country or doing chores for a sick neighbor
There are some things you volunteer for
Protesters are following members of Congress around this summer , disrupting their constituent meetings and shrieking about socialized medicine
They claim to be following the great American tradition of dissent
This must refer to the time back in colonial days when our founding fathers disguised themselves as Indians and broke up a public hearing on a plan for national health care , which involved regulating the price of leeches
If nothing else , they 're certainly scaring the heck out of the vacationing legislators
In the state of Washington , Representative Brian Baird announced that rather than risk an `` ambush , '' he was canceling his traditional get-togethers with constituents and replacing them with `` telephone town halls .
Voters will get an automated call asking them to press various buttons if they want to ask their congressman a question
His local newspaper , The Columbian , reported that , meanwhile , Baird would be `` sitting at his own telephone at an as-yet-undisclosed location '' listening and choosing which queries he wanted to answer
This does not actually seem like a good plan
True , some of the protesters have been rowdy , but not to such an extent that the nation 's elected officials need to hide behind telephone trees
Here in New York , the guy who plays the sexy vampire in the `` Twilight '' movies has been shooting a film , and he appears to be facing far more daily danger of death-by-mob-hysteria than any member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Speaking of bad plans , the White House has been urging the Democrats to rally their own forces of placard-waving , sweaty , yelling supporters to confront the crazies
This makes no sense at all
It 's not often that members of Congress look as sympathetic as they 've been lately on YouTube , surrounded by loud and unlovable hecklers
In fact , the best chance for health care reform may be to sell it as the thing that those people pounding on the doors of a town meeting in Tampa and screaming at the fire marshals do n't want
Advocates need a better story line given what 's happened to health care over the last few weeks
The conservative Blue Dog Democrats are boasting that they killed the public plan section of the House health care bill , which some liberal Democrats think is the most important part
The White House has admitted that the pharmaceutical industry 's much-touted pledge of $ 80 billion in health care savings over 10 years was made in return for a promise that there would not be anything else in the legislation to threaten its profits
`` Eighty billion is the max no more or less , '' said Billy Tauzin , the chief lobbyist for the drug makers
In a past incarnation , he was the congressman who shepherded the Bush plan for Medicare coverage of prescription drugs through the House , in a form that was very , very kind to his future employers
He was also is this a world of coincidences or what
a co-founder of the Blue Dog Democrats
The drug deal , although blessed by the White House , actually emerged from the black hole which is otherwise known as the Senate Finance Committee
The chairman is Max Baucus of Montana , whose powers and responsibilities on health care are so great that they require the political genius and moral fiber of a Rocky Mountain Lincoln
Unfortunately , nobody has ever once described Baucus in anything remotely close to those terms
Baucus has set up a special bipartisan negotiating committee on health care with his pal Chuck Grassley , the Iowa Republican
He is hoping that if Grassley signs off on a bill , other members of his party will follow
Grassley has said he will not sign off on anything unless a whole lot of other Republicans accept it first
You will notice that these two plans are not really the same
The senators on this special committee hail from Montana , North Dakota , New Mexico , Iowa , Maine and Wyoming
This was quite a coup on Baucus 's part , since you have to work really hard to put together six states that represent only 2.77 percent of the population
The Finance Six plan to keep doing whatever it was they were up to in July throughout the August vacation
On Thursday , they met with President Obama for an hour
Senator Olympia Snowe , a Maine Republican , told The Washington Post that she urged him to get out and sell the health care program and assure the people that the `` doctor-patient relationship is going to be preserved .
Given the fact that Obama has spent the last few months saying this about every 15 seconds , he must have found the conversation somewhat frustrating
Also , Snowe is a terrific senator , but have you ever heard her give a speech
If we have come to the point where she is giving the president tips on how to communicate , we are in trouble
There 's no time to lose
Schedule a lot of Congressional town halls fast , and send Rush Limbaugh the list
Clarification : An aide to Rep Baird says that although the Congressman is doing the telephone town halls , he never actually intended to have live constituent meetings in August
It 's time for political sex scandals to reclaim their rightful place in our national discourse
The way things have been going lately , you 'd think extramarital sex only happened to professional athletes
Consider the case of Senator Max Baucus of Montana
We learned last week that the recently divorced Baucus had nominated his girlfriend , Melodee Hanes , to be a U.S. attorney without warning the White House that they were an item
You would expect this to create quite a buzz
Particularly since Baucus is a major player in the health care debate , which makes it possible to talk about his sex life while pretending to be discussing the prospects for a public option
But , no , it 's been Tiger Woods , Tiger Woods
How much can you say about a guy who golfs
A politician with a compulsively wandering eye is not just a hound dog with a famous name
He 's a commentary about our judgment as voters , and the viability of our social standards
Plus , gossiping about him almost brings some useful information about the political process into the conversation
What would any of us know about how impeachment works if it had n't been for Monica Lewinsky
I just can not get excited about sexual misbehavior that is never going to be investigated by a legislative committee
To be fair , although the Republicans instantly called on the Senate ethics committee to look into the Baucus affair , Max and Melodee are not likely to actually get investigated
Hanes , who was one of three nominees being considered for the U.S. attorney post , withdrew when she and Baucus moved in together
If the story lives on in memory , it may be for a statement issued by the senator 's office , which began : `` Senator Baucus is currently in a mature and happy relationship with Melodee Hanes .
This is a turn of phrase that could be put to good use on so many sensitive occasions , the Baucus press office should really go for a copyright
Joe Bruno , the former majority leader of the New York State Senate who was convicted of corruption this week , is in a mature and happy relationship with Kay Stafford , the chairwoman and president of CMA Consulting Services
-LRB- Actually , the relationship is really , really mature , since Bruno is 80 .
When Bruno resigned from the Senate last year , he quickly got a great job as C.E.O. of CMA
A guy who was being investigated by federal prosecutors for his consulting activities would not normally be regarded as a perfect hire for an information technology consulting business , particularly when he seems to know as much about information technology as he does about quantum physics
Still , it was nice to finally see a woman on the powerful , job-dispensing side of these stories
One of the positive aspects of recent political gossip is that the women seem to be getting tougher
Jenny Sanford , who won public acclaim for refusing to stand by her husband , South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford , during the Appalachian Trail debacle , was just named one of the `` 10 Most Fascinating People in 2009 '' on a Barbara Walters special
#NAME?
The clear message here is that the best routes to being fascinating are an adulterous husband or lots of eye makeup .
On the show , she repeated her contention that even if her husband had asked her to stand next to him during his confessional press conference , she would n't have complied
We can probably look back on 2009 as the year that finished off the loyal-wife-photo-op , even though in the Sanfords ' case , having Jenny in the room would have helped
She might not have looked all that supportive , but when the governor promised to give the assembled press corps `` way more detail than you 'll ever want , '' she probably would have slapped her hand over his mouth
A subcommittee in the State Legislature voted on Wednesday not to impeach Sanford and merely voted unanimously to censure him for bringing `` ridicule , dishonor , disgrace and shame '' to his state
A great victory
Sanford will be able to finish his term and perhaps go on to a rewarding career as an adventure vacation guide , or professional wrestling referee
That leaves Senator John Ensign of Nevada as the current holder of the Most Likely to Be Turned Out of Office title
The ethics committee is investigating efforts Ensign made to help his ex-aide , Doug Hampton , get a lobbying job after Hampton found out that his boss was sleeping with Mrs. Hampton
Hampton , you may remember , first told his story with the remark : `` All of those tentacles were birthed because John needed things to go down like this .
Obviously not the easiest guy to place
This could be a new rule of political sex : Never have an affair with the wife of an employee
But if you do , make sure you are not the only person in the world who would hire the cuckolded husband
Of course , that comes after the prime directive : Never have an affair with anyone who would enjoy seeing themselves on the cover of `` In Touch '' magazine
That was the point where Tiger should have been paying attention
These are troubled times when people yearn for diversion
We like stories about a simple crisis in which somebody does something incredibly stupid that will not cost 100,000 people their jobs
Yet Hollywood starlets and pop singers have been unhelpfully quiet
Then , suddenly , there was Rod Blagojevich seeking bids for Barack Obama 's Senate seat with all the subtlety of a tobacco auctioneer
That 's the ticket
Now , if only we could indict the economy ... Feel free to indulge in a little schadenfreude at the expense of the governor of Illinois
Sure , the last couple of months have been tough
But at least you did n't have to spend your birthday listening to the nation debate whether you were the most corrupt elected official in living memory or simply out of your mind
Some people might wonder why Blagojevich chose to say potentially incriminating things like `` I want to make money '' over the telephone at a time when he knew he was the subject of multiple federal investigations
Perhaps his legal problems sent him off into his own little world
There he was , sitting around the house in his blue jogging suit , dipping into delusions of grandeur in which the empty Senate seat becomes a magic key to a Cabinet post , a big-money job for the missus , the presidency in 2016
Lord knows we 've all been tempted to retreat into fantasyland when things get rough
Really , the only thing saving us from succumbing was the lack of a Senate seat to sell
Those of us who do not live in Illinois had generally not given much thought to Rod Blagojevich until this week
We had never wondered how a person with a 13 percent approval rating ever managed to get elected in the first place , though now I am personally leaning toward the theory that it was the hair
Blagojevich tossed his thick brown mane and the voters told each other : `` Yes , he sounds a little dumb
But truly , this is the hair of a reformer .
Illinois is not the only place going through empty-Senate-seat turmoil
In New York , the departure of Hillary Clinton for the Cabinet has set off an unseemly scramble , the like of which you usually see only when someone drops a pound of hamburger in the middle of a pit bull convention
Still , as far as we know , nobody has actually tried to trade anything other than political advantage , the hope of future campaign contributions and the gratitude of one or more special interest groups
You know , the normal stuff
On behalf of my state , I would like to thank the governor of Illinois for making us feel as if this is a good record
The Senate seat sellathon is actually not the most damaging thing Blagojevich is accused of trying to do
There are , after all , 100 senators , and we know from several centuries of experience that the nation can survive quite nicely even if a sizable minority are brain-dead bank robbers
Worse , he 's upped the already hearty level of cynicism in Illinois voters
He ran for governor as an antidote to the culture that had sent an average of one Illinois chief executive to the clink every 10 years
-LRB- `` Our state has been adrift
Corruption has replaced leadership , '' Rod and his hair said in early campaign commercials .
Now look at him
It 's the sort of experience that sets the public wondering if there 's a way to get reform while avoiding reformers
In New York , of course , we elected a reform governor two years ago , and he was driven from office by some unpleasantness involving the Emperor 's Club V.I.P. escort service
Now , post-Rod , all that seems kind of petty especially since , as far as we know , Eliot Spitzer even used his own money
That 's something else we have to hold against Blagojevich
He 's definitely driven the bar of acceptable political behavior below sea level
Look at Delaware , where the election left yet another Senate seat vacant and Gov. Ruth Ann Minner quickly announced that she 'd be appointing Joe Biden 's longtime aide , Edward Kaufman , to the job
Given the fact that Biden wants his seat to eventually go to his son , Beau , who is currently serving in Iraq with the Army National Guard , some observers found it a tad convenient that Minner happened to choose a person no one has ever heard of who is intensely loyal to the Biden family and has already promised not to run in the next election
But now Delaware is looking like the gold standard
It was only political expediency
The State Legislature is n't going to have to set up an emergency election so the governor wo n't have time to barter the seat away
And everybody in Washington knows the aides do all the real work anyway so nobody will even notice Biden is gone
Good work , Governor Minner
One thing is clear
We can not have any more vacant Senate seats hanging around , creating temptation
Next time we have a presidential election , let 's try to limit the candidates to governors , retired generals and failed movie stars
Much safer
OP-ED COLUMNIST - My Favorite War - Op-Ed The Tulsa City Council has voted to allow the parade to go forward Saturday night , despite protests against the disappearance of the word '' Christmas '' from its name
It 's not entirely clear that the council actually could have stopped it , or even whether the parade ever officially had Christmas in its name
But Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma is outraged
Inhofe was away from home last December , stuck in Washington trying to kill off health care reform
Now he 's back , and he 's noted a dwindling in the parade 's religious angle .
I just do n't like what 's going on in America today , all over the country , with the aversion some people seem to have toward Christ , '' he said in one of his many interviews explaining that he will no longer ride his horse in any holiday event that is n't named for Christmas
Go to it , Senator Inhofe
I love this controversy , and only in part because it diverts Oklahoma 's senior senator from his normal day job of trying to convince the world that global warming does n't exist
We live in a time of so many terrifying , insurmountable problems
It 's comforting to return to arguing about whether the nation 's moral fiber is endangered if Tulsa downplays the religious aspects of a parade full of Santa Clauses that is currently sponsored by a popular downtown pub
Actually , the '' war on Christmas '' controversy has been a little muted this year , and I 've missed it
Even the public hearing in Tulsa looked thinly attended , as if the issue at hand was charter revision instead of the preservation of the Christian half of our Judeo-Christian heritage
The American Family Association is still checking up on major retailers and informing us that while Bed Bath & Beyond is '' for Christmas , '' Foot Locker is '' against .
And a coalition of concerned clergy in Fort Worth is calling residents to boycott the transit system because someone purchased ads on four buses that say '' Millions of Americans Are Good Without God .
It is my impression that people who ride buses in Texas do n't have a whole lot of other options
Really , concerned clergy , do you think they 're doing it to cut their carbon footprints
But until Tulsa , the biggest conflict was here in the New York area , where a billboard war erupted after the American Atheists forked over $ 20,000 for a sign that showed a picture of a Nativity scene and the message : '' You know it 's a myth
This Season , Celebrate Reason !
The Catholic League then erected one on the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel that retorts : '' You Know It 's Real
This Season , Celebrate Jesus .
In this battle for the hearts and minds of commuters , the atheists seem to have been overly belligerent , although it is understandable that they get a little testy this time of year
If you complain about Christmas overkill because you are , say , a Muslim or a Jew , the general response is a quick hug and a nervous affirmation that all faiths deserve respect
But atheists do not get that many hugs , and perhaps it is beginning to tell on them
We are still enjoying the continuing fights about What To Call The Tree
In one of the most notable screeds of the season , Gary Bauer , the former Republican presidential candidate and social conservative , appeared to be saying that officials in Portland , Ore. , who named the annual tree-lighting ceremony '' Tree Lighting '' were doing the work of the would-be Christmas tree bomber .
Radical Islam 's secular enablers have been driving Christianity from the public square for decades , '' he wrote
Bauer said in a phone interview that he was not suggesting that trying to blow up downtown Portland and secularizing the tree lighting were equivalent .
To me , it was just a nice rhetorical way to get people to read the column , '' he said
I am in sympathy with such sentiments since I would do just about everything short of bomb threats to get people to read a column
I also have a soft spot in my heart for Bauer and I am sorry he is not planning to run for president again in 2012 because the moment he fell off the platform during a preprimary pancake flipping contest in New Hampshire was one of my personal campaign high points
But about Tulsa
For years the parade was sponsored by the American Electric Power-Public Service Company of Oklahoma , which is mercifully known as P.S.O. '' We always referred to it as the P.S.O. Parade of Lights , '' a spokesman for the utility told The Tulsa World
When P.S.O. backed out , a downtown pub named McNellie 's agreed to underwrite the Holiday Parade of Lights
You 'd think people would be grateful that the new sponsor did n't want to call it the Happy Hour Parade of Lights , or Atomic Chicken Wings Special
But no.
Keep fighting
I have n't thought about the Bush tax cuts for hours
I am bringing this up because I want to talk about government contracting
When you venture into topics like that , it 's always a good idea to try to begin with an orgy
The guards at the American Embassy in Afghanistan worked for a private contractor called ArmorGroup
A few months ago , a nonprofit watchdog organization reported that some of the guards were being pressured to have sex in a `` Lord of the Flies environment .
Whistle-blowers turned over pictures of men in various states of undress , fondling and urinating on one another
In general , guards from countries like Australia , New Zealand and the United States were the ones involved in the bad behavior
Fortunately , the bulk of the workers were Gurkhas from Nepal who took their jobs very seriously
Unfortunately , the Gurkhas could not understand English
So the American Embassy in one of the most dangerous spots on the planet was being protected by a combination of people who could n't communicate with Americans and thuggish party animals
The biggest surprise was that the United States did not have its own soldiers guarding its Embassy in a war zone
We have been getting surprised like that a lot lately
Many of the worst stories involve Blackwater Worldwide , a private security contractor that changed its name to Xe Services after a series of mishaps in Iraq , one of which involved spraying bullets around a square in Baghdad and killing 17 civilians
On Friday , James Risen and Mark Mazzetti of The Times reported that Blackwater employees had taken part in clandestine C.I.A. `` snatch and grab '' raids in Iraq and Afghanistan , in which suspected insurgents were abducted and taken away for detention and questioning
This was , of course , in the past
In fact , on Friday , it was revealed that the C.I.A. director , Leon Panetta , had canceled a contract under which Blackwater loaded missiles on Predator drones in Pakistan another activity that sort of came as a surprise when The Times first reported it last summer
But Lord knows what Xe Services is up to
What do you think Dwight Eisenhower would say about all of this
In his last speech as president , Eisenhower famously warned the country about `` the potential for the disastrous use of misplaced power '' if the military industrial complex got too big
That was back when defense contractors just sold the Pentagon fighter jets and wildly expensive widgets
Imagine how Ike would have reacted if they were driving the C.I.A. to snatch-and-grab dates
When did we decide this was a good plan
Let 's pretend for a minute that it is not stupendously irresponsible to let private contractors stand in for our military in wildly sensitive and dangerous situations abroad
Even if it was a terrific idea , we would still have to ask whether huge government agencies , which frequently have a difficult time finding cost-effective ways to order a hammer , know how to purchase services that actually work
These days , there 's virtually nothing the government does n't contract out
At the height of the war in Iraq , there were 190,000 contracted personnel taking part in the effort 23 times the number of allied troops who were lending a hand
`` What we created was not a coalition of the willing
We 're relying on coalitions of the billing , '' said P.W. Singer , a contracting expert with the Brookings Institution
This is the real surge , with a dwindling number of overseers riding herd
In 1997 , Singer said , each defense auditor was responsible for overseeing about $ 642 million in contracts on average
`` The last figures I saw , it was one auditor to $ 2.02 billion .
There 's no reason to believe the government has the capacity to determine how well all these private contractors are doing their jobs
And it 's doubtful that if the government did know , it could do much about it
All of this brings us back to the Embassy in Kabul
Long before the news about the guards gone wild hit the media , the State Department had been issuing a long stream of warnings to ArmorGroup about contract violations ranging from sleep-deprived workers to corrupt managers
It demanded that the contractor meet its obligation to provide English-speaking guards and rejected several requests for more time to fix the problem
None of which meant that the guards learned to speak English
It 's just that they continued to not understand English without official permission
Then word about the sex parties got out and everybody was embarrassed
The State Department announced that it was `` seeing a very , very serious case made for termination '' of the contract
Which has not actually happened
Officials decided to stick with the status quo because they could n't figure out how to get anyone else to staff the Embassy
But good news
A spokeswoman said the State Department is working on `` preparation for solicitation of a contract that we expect to be awarded by June 2010 .
Trust me
There 's going to be a connection
But first , the scientific news : Folks at the University of Vienna conducted a test in which dogs were asked to shake hands over and over and over again
If you have any experience with dogs , you will not be surprised to hear that they were absolutely delighted
And they did n't care about being paid
The opportunity to perform the same trick endlessly with a stranger in a white coat was reward enough
Then the researchers brought in new dogs that were given a piece of bread as a reward for every handshake
The uncompensated dogs watched , lost their innate love of mindless repetition and grew sullen
`` They get so mad that they look at you and just do n't give you the paw anymore , '' said Friederike Range , one of the scientists
So O.K. Dogs are secretly obsessed with fairness
#NAME?
Who knew ?
Now , let 's turn our attention to the U.S. Senate where a plan to bail out the auto industry went down the drain Thursday night
It was a stopgap measure , not necessarily the best bill in the world although it did pass my own personal quality-control test , which is to find out what Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama thinks and go the other way
But its defeat does n't bode well for our prospects in coming up with a sensible response to the current economic unpleasantness
And the debate had an unnerving number of complaints about who was getting more than whom
`` We 're going to have riots
There are already people rioting because they 're losing their jobs when everybody else is being bailed out , '' said Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina
Some Democrats denounced the bill because they said that it was unfair that the union workers were getting dumped on while a lot of the Wall Street fat cats got to keep their golden parachutes
Republicans complained that it was unfair that General Motors paid its workers more than Toyota or Honda does
Many senators took the DeMint line and wanted to know what made the autoworkers ' jobs more important than the home builders or waitresses who were getting laid off , too
There were so many fairness arguments that you really did expect Harry Reid to start walking down the aisle dropping pieces of toast in peoples ' mouths
Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri threatened to vote against the bill because somebody had stuck in a provision giving federal judges a cost-of-living raise while other Americans were going without Christmas presents
`` And my phone is ringing off the hook , Mr. President , '' she said , `` from people who want to be federal judges .
#NAME?
My phone is ringing off the hook from people who want to be the U.S. senator from Illinois .
If you took the long view of the pay raise for judges , you 'd have to say that : 1 -RRB- they deserve it ; 2 -RRB- now is n't the best time ; and 3 -RRB- making a statement on the timing is not quite as important as saving several hundred thousand auto-related jobs
But in the end , the judge provision was dropped , the bill died anyway and the Bush administration will have to do something to keep the automakers afloat until Barack Obama becomes president
Which , although I know it 's hard to believe , is eventually going to happen
The really hard lifting still lies ahead , and we can not possibly do it if we 're going to dwell too much on the fairness thing
It 's just too easy for lawmakers to dodge the tough vote by reminding their constituents that somebody else is getting more breaks than they are
Which somebody always is
If Senator DeMint 's constituents are going to riot over a bailout for the auto industry , they 'll wind up being met by tool-and-die makers waving torches and yelling about soybean subsidies
If the lawmakers from Alabama say their constituents do not want their tax money going to bail out Michigan , the people in Michigan are going to say that they never really enjoyed paying more taxes to the federal government than their state received in aid , while Alabama got a return of $ 1.61 on the dollar
And anytime a representative from the Great Plains opens his mouth , the people from New York are going to point out that while every state gets the same number of senators , there are more people waiting for a subway in Brooklyn in rush hour than inhabit all of Wyoming
We can really get tiresome on the subject
You do n't want to go there
Any mammal can obsess about fairness
-LRB- Did I mention how ticked off monkeys get if they find out they 're getting cucumbers while somebody in the next cage has a grape ?
The real human trick is to get past the quid pro quo and try to focus on the common good
Set a better example , guys
It 's two years until the next election
The Crying Game We 've had to adjust to so many strange developments lately
I 'm sure we 'll get used to having a speaker of the House who weeps a lot
`` He is known to cry , '' the outgoing speaker , Nancy Pelosi , told Deborah Solomon in The Times Magazine
`` He cries sometimes when we 're having a debate on bills .
Pelosi , of course , does not cry in public
We will stop here briefly to contemplate what would happen if she , or any female lawmaker , broke into loud , nose-running sobs while discussing Iraq troop funding or giving a TV interview
Boehner is a gravel-voiced Ohioan who wears snazzy suits and hangs out a lot with lobbyists
One of the few cheery prospects the new year holds for Democrats is his upcoming demonization , since there is no such thing in 21st-century America as a loveable leader of the House of Representatives
Unless America is totally won over by the idea of a Sobbing Speaker
`` I think people are going to like him , '' said Lesley Stahl , who interviewed Boehner for a `` 60 Minutes '' segment shown last Sunday , during which he broke down several times
The most arresting moment came when Boehner told Stahl he can no longer make visits to schools , or even look at the little kids on the playground , because he immediately starts crying
That had me alarmed
I thought there was going to be some terrible story about an ailing child that would then force me to have warm and sympathetic thoughts about John Boehner
But no.
The reason , Boehner finally choked out , was because `` making sure these kids have a shot at the American dream , like I did , is important .
We will stop again briefly to imagine what would have happened if Nancy Pelosi , upon being elected speaker , had confessed on national TV that she was unable to visit schools in her district because the sight of little children made her break into sobs
About Boehner
Many of us first noticed his tendency toward tears when he appeared on election night to celebrate his party 's taking control of the House
He had hardly gotten in front of the microphone before things got watery
`` I spent my whole life chasing -LRB- sob -RRB- the American dream , '' he told the cameras
`` Put myself through school , working every rotten job there was ... '' The American Dream has had such a bad year
During the campaign , it was tossed around by billionaire candidates who insisted on telling groups of underprivileged children that they , too , could someday own a mega-yacht or run a slimy but extremely profitable health care corporation
Now , John Boehner is blaming the Dream for making him howl like an abandoned puppy
It 's what my friend Rebecca Traister calls `` Boehner doing Masterpiece Theater on the hard life of John Boehner .
Traister is the author of `` Big Girls Do n't Cry , '' a chronicle of the Clinton-Obama battle for the Democratic presidential nomination
One of the best-remembered moments in that campaign - Hillary Clinton cries in New Hampshire - is an excellent example of the difference between what men and women can get away with , tear-wise
`` Hillary did n't cry , '' Traister pointed out
`` Not a drop of liquid fell below her lower lash .
With her back to the wall and the presidency on the line , Clinton approached the edge of a sniffle and we are still talking about it
Boehner is driven to great , noisy sobs when he contemplates the fact that as a youth , he mopped the floor at his father 's tavern
Besides the crying gap between men and women , there 's also one between Republicans and Democrats
On the one hand , you have the folks who ca n't afford tears because it makes them look weak , and on the other , the people who are presumed to be tough and hard-nosed , for whom crying is an attractive sign of complexity
Boehner is opposed to extending unemployment benefits for the jobless , and he wants to kill off the law that guarantees health coverage to all Americans
So you know when he starts weeping when his wife says she 's `` real proud '' of him , it 's not a sign of softness
In 2007 , he cried while delivering a speech on the floor of the House , in support of funding for the war in Iraq
`` After 3,000 of our fellow citizens died at the hands of these terrorists , when are we going to stand up and take them on ?
he sobbed
Then this year , he voted against providing money to take care of our fellow citizens who became ill while doing rescue and reclamation work at ground zero after the terrorist attack
Who would have thought that this holiday season we 'd be obsessed with the senator from Connecticut
Really , I was hoping it would be more about shopping for mittens on the Internet
Lieberman 's apparently successful attempt to hijack health care reform and hold it hostage until it had been amended into something that liberals could n't stomach has mesmerized the nation 's political class
This was , after all , a guy who has been a liberal on domestic issues since he was a college student campaigning for John F. Kennedy
A guy who was in favor of the public option , of expanding Medicare eligibility , until last week
The theories about Why Joe Is Doing It abound
We can not get enough of them
I have decided to start a rumor that it all goes back to the 2004 presidential race , when Lieberman not only failed to win any primaries , but was also bitten by either a rabid muskrat or a vampire disguised as a moose
Other than that , my favorite explanation comes from Jonathan Chait of The New Republic , who theorized that Lieberman was able to go from Guy Who Wants to Expand Medicare to Guy Who Would Rather Kill Health Care Than Expand Medicare because he `` is n't actually all that smart .
It 's certainly easier to leap from one position to its total opposite if you never understood your original stance in the first place , and I am thinking Chait 's theory could get some traction
`` When I sat next to him in the State Senate , he always surprised me by how little he 'd learned about the bill at the time of the vote , '' said Bill Curry , a former Connecticut comptroller and Democratic gubernatorial nominee
I really like the not-that-bright theory , in part because it 's as good an explanation as any , and in part because it will definitely drive Lieberman nuts
But I have a different mission today , and that is to apologize to John Kerry
I frequently made fun of Kerry for being a terrible presidential candidate
Which he was
But there comes a point when we the people have to move on
And Kerry has been a really good former failed presidential candidate
He 's been working hard in the Senate on climate control and trying to help the White House on foreign relations , despite the fact that Barack Obama stiffed him out of the secretary of state job in favor of a person who had been somewhat less supportive than Kerry of Obama 's early presidential aspirations
He actually seems more interested in doing stuff than being admired
Lieberman was a terrible vice presidential candidate
-LRB- Like John Edwards , he not only lost his vice presidential debate , he managed to make Dick Cheney seem likable .
But instead of going back to something he could actually do well , he ran for president
He failed to gain any traction with the voters whatsoever , and like John McCain , he came out of the process bitterly denying that he was bitter
Let 's look at our two failed-national-candidate models
You can move on , and try to make yourself useful -LRB- Kerry , Al Gore -RRB-
Or you can work out barely suppressed rage by attacking things that you used to be for , like trying to control Medicare costs -LRB- McCain -RRB- or expanding Medicare eligibility -LRB- Lieberman -RRB-
Maybe the difference comes from self-image
Lieberman and McCain both thought of themselves as `` character '' candidates whose success was due to the love and trust of the public , and whose ultimate failure was the work of evil forces beyond their control
Kerry and Gore never believed their success was due to their innate likability
When they lost the presidency , a part of them probably shrugged and remembered that they were n't all that popular in prep school , either
Politicians switch direction all the time , but the Lieberman experience has been weird because he does n't seem to feel as though he 's changed
He bounds around happily , doing the talk shows , confident that he 's the same independent-minded independent who believes in independence as always
Observers who have known him for a long time feel as though they 're living out a scene in a science-fiction movie when the guy who 's just been bitten by the vampire-moose comes home and sits down to dinner , unaware that he 's sprouting antlers
I used to cover Lieberman when he was the majority leader of the State Senate in Connecticut
We got along very well , except for one interview , during which he talked about working for J.F.K. , and how he kept a Mass card from Robert Kennedy 's funeral to remind him of the principles to which he had dedicated his career
Showing me the card , he remarked casually that he had n't looked at it for some time
I wrote an article using the neglected Kennedy card as a metaphor for Lieberman 's fall from his old ideals into the pragmatic politics of a party leader
He was outraged and wounded , and I believe I apologized
Taking back the apology now
Caroline Kennedy wants Hillary Clinton 's Senate seat
And New York is taking her seriously
We are talking about this matter a lot when we are n't otherwise engaged in attempting to string up rogue investment advisers
A free United States Senate seat is a very fine thing , especially since Gov. David Paterson does not seem to be expecting a holiday envelope from the lucky winner , unlike some governors we could mention
However , Paterson does want someone who could come up with around $ 50 million for a statewide campaign in 2010 , and Kennedy has been supersuccessful at raising money for New York City 's public schools and other good causes
Although it 's important to note that asking for money to buy books for poor children is not quite the same thing as asking for money to buy 60-second TV commercials about how great you are
It is a tribute to the raging mediocrity of New York politics that while many people have expressed reservations about giving the Senate job to an untested , hitherto publicity-shy political novice , their protests often wind up with : `` Why pick Caroline Kennedy when we could have um ... '' In New York , two kinds of homegrown politicians tend to rise to the top of the heap
The smart , hard-working ones have sharp elbows and impossible egos
-LRB- I 'm remembering Ed Koch on a long-ago visit to Berlin , waving at the East German guards at the checkpoint and yelling : `` I 'm here
It 's me
It 's me ! ''
The charming , easy-going ones tend to have the I.Q. of a cucumber
As Adam Nagourney and Nicholas Confessore wrote in The Times , Kennedy has a reputation for `` quiet competence and dignity .
If nothing else , that would be a novelty
My biggest concern about the Kennedy-for-senate boom is that the whole idea sounds as if it had been inspired by telephone conversations between Caroline and her Uncle Ted , followed by encouraging calls from her cousin Robert
We should always be leery of plans that develop during excited phone calls among family members
I remember a time when my sisters and I got extremely enthusiastic about renting a stretch limo at Christmastime and taking everybody on a tour of the holiday lights of Cincinnati
It turned out that unlike fireworks , Christmas lights work best in small doses , unless you have an unlimited appetite for viewing blowup replicas of the Nativity
People keep asking if Kennedy has the stomach for long campaigns in upstate New York if she is , in the words of Representative Gary Ackerman of Queens , prepared to `` do Utica .
Really , that 's the least of it
The people of Utica are lovely , as long as you do n't have to come up with any specific ideas for resurrecting their city from its century-long swoon
And it 's easy to imagine Kennedy doing a Hillary-like `` listening tour , '' having round-table discussions about the dairy compact or broadband access while the press corps gently naps in the rear row
But how much of her life does she really want to spend at fund-raisers for people she suspects will be indicted before they have a chance to cash the checks
How does she feel about admiring butter sculptures at state fairs
I remember watching Hillary tour the fair in Syracuse with her family in tow , stopping at a booth that featured a teeny table with teeny teacups and a sign : `` Reserved for the Clintons .
Bill and Hillary , instantly perceiving their duty , pulled up two teeny chairs and plopped right down
Chelsea , who was normally an absolute rock during these events , looked as if she wanted the earth to swallow her up
It is admittedly not fair that a person with a famous name could get this Senate opportunity instead of some worthy if irritating member of Congress who 's put in the time and paid the dues
But if there 's anything we 've learned over the last few months , it 's that waiting for life to be fair is a losing proposition
-LRB- By the way , we 're approaching the one-month-to-go mark on the George W. Bush Out of Office Countdown calendar
The presidential quote of the week is : `` Natural gas is hemispheric
I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods . ''
Hillary Clinton came out of First Ladyhood and Arkansas and scooped her job away from other more deserving New Yorkers
But she turned out to be terrific at it and a useful reminder that in America there are not only second chances , but thirds and fourths as well
Maybe this will become known as New York 's Midlife Career Change Senate Seat
If Kennedy wants to succeed Clinton , she 's got every right to give it a shot
If she makes her case successfully , maybe she 'll turn out to like spending her weekends at many variations on the theme of testimonial dinner and sitting at teeny-tiny tables at the state fair
Or she might discover that she has signed up for one long limo tour of the Christmas lights
In which case , it 's only a two-year ride
The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas Yes , the race for the White House is practically under way
Already , there are at least seven Republican presidential primary debates on the schedule
The way this is going , the Republican presidential hopefuls will eventually be on television every single minute
Possibly they can be convinced to do something more entertaining than talk about earmarks
Maybe race around the world in teams of two , or compete at ballroom dancing , or agree to all be locked in a house together for several months with no contact with the outside world
I know ; you 're liking the last one already
But today let 's look at their books
Almost every potential Republican presidential nominee has written at least one , and they could make excellent stocking stuffers for the public affairs mavens on your shopping list
Mitt Romney is pushing `` No Apology : The Case for American Greatness , '' which is doing well in sales despite the fact that Romney 's central concern is whether America will become `` the France of the 21st century .
Given all our problems , does that sound so bad to you , people
Your medical care would improve , your life expectancy lengthen and dinners would be much tastier
Tim Pawlenty , the governor of Minnesota , is about to embark on a nationwide tour for `` Courage to Stand : An American Story .
Be the first on your block to learn how T-Paw 's youthful struggles in South St. Paul gave him the courage and tenacity to balance the Minnesota state budget
Pawlenty 's background in many ways resembles that of the about-to-be House speaker , John Boehner , although I am relieved to note that he does not generally break into tears when talking about it
Mike Huckabee has written eight books - quite an output , even though his latest , `` Ca n't Wait Till Christmas , '' is only 32 pages
Some people will find that kind of brevity really attractive , particularly since in it Huckabee has nothing whatsoever to say about the federal budget
Instead , we learn that when he was a youngster -LRB- spoiler alert -RRB- Huckabee prematurely opened up a gift that he correctly intuited was a football
It was only a hop , skip and a jump from there to understanding the true meaning of Christmas and becoming governor of Arkansas
Then Huckabee lived out his holiday fantasies by collecting a record $ 112,000 in presents in a single year , including $ 48,000 in clothing and a chainsaw
That last part is not in the book
Huckabee is a sluggard compared with Newt Gingrich , who has written 22 novels and works of nonfiction
Unless you have already gotten a head start on this project , I am sorry to say you 're probably not going to make it through the Gingrich oeuvre in time for the New Hampshire primary
Gingrich has been twittering his followers with reminders that he 's got enough product to allow them to do all their Christmas shopping at Newtland
-LRB- `` 5 Principles for a Successful Life is # 11 in Gingrich Productions ' 12 Days of Xmas Presents countdown . ''
Among the options are his latest nonfiction entry : `` To Save America : Stopping Obama 's Secular-Socialist Machine .
This is the one that compares Democrats with Nazis
It should not be confused with `` Saving Freedom : How We Can Stop America 's Slide Into Socialism '' by Senator Jim DeMint
That 's the one with a cover that shows the American flag behind barbed wire
Maybe it 's just me , but neither one of the books really feels like Christmas
Sarah Palin is out with `` America by Heart : Reflections on Family , Faith and Flag .
One of the reflections missing is who did the writing
You have to get to the very end of the book , and work your way through the acknowledgements of Palin 's family , friends , our veterans , `` Common-Sense Constitutionalists , '' `` Prayer Warriors '' and her lawyer before she notes that conservative speechwriter Jessica Gavora did `` most important work '' on the tome
Pawlenty 's helper , by the way , was Mark Dagostino , who previously co-authored `` My Life Outside the Ring , '' the autobiography of the former wrestler Hulk Hogan
As of this writing , Hogan is not a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination
But about `` America by Heart : '' In the all-important matter of gift-buying potential , I would go instead with preordering the upcoming DVD of `` Sarah Palin 's Alaska , '' in which the lucky recipient will be able to watch the Palin family get away from it all by taking a camera crew salmon fishing
And while we 're expanding our horizons , I hope somebody out there is thinking about a tasteful Mitt Romney Christmas ornament , perhaps showing Mitt 's family vacation to Canada , with Seamus the dog strapped in his cage on the roof
When we last left the health care reform bill , it was tied up on the railroad track , writhing helplessly with the train bearing down
The role of Snidely Whiplash was played by Senator Joseph Lieberman
Time for a new episode
Having stripped away all the parts that offended his sensibilities , Lieberman has slunk off and the fate of the legislation is now in the hands of Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska
People , when did it become necessary for average , conscientious-but-not-fanatic citizens to know the names of so many senators
There was probably a time when you thought `` Max Baucus '' was a brand of sausage
And now we not only know that he is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and from Montana , we are also up to the minute on his divorce and his `` mature and happy '' relationship with his live-in girlfriend
We know more about Max Baucus than we do about Brad Pitt
That seems wrong , so very wrong
Nelson is the most conservative Democrat in the Senate and a guy who seems to really enjoy having the fate of the health care bill in his hands
We have mentioned before that George W. Bush used to call him `` The Benator .
Have we mentioned that he used to be president of an insurance company
He is being treated like a visiting superpower
When the prime minister of India came to the United States , he got that one crasher-wracked party and an hour of face time with Barack Obama
Ben Nelson has met Obama at least three times in the last nine days
The president , he said serenely , `` made a strong case for passing health care reform , but it remains to be seen if it was compelling .
Good work making your case , most powerful person on the planet
But we will see if it meets the standards of Senator Ben Nelson
So the health care bill , which was already watered down for Max Baucus and then stripped down for Joe Lieberman , is now being sent to the sauna for Ben Nelson
The big question on the liberal side is whether what remains will still be worth supporting
On Friday , MoveOn started a petition urging progressive senators `` to block the current Senate bill until it is improved .
The blogosphere resounds with calls to go back and start over
Our question for today is : Does this make sense
Has the health care bill been so abused by the various pols who 've held its fate in their hands that it 's time to put it out of its misery
Let me tell you a story
... Back in 1971 , Congress passed a bill aimed at providing high-quality early childhood education and after-school programs for any American family that wanted them
It was bipartisan , which in those days meant more than a whole lot of Democrats and somebody from Maine
`` Having been a working mother , I knew what day-care problems were like , '' said Martha Phillips , who was at that time a staffer at the Republican Research Committee in the House
Then Richard Nixon surprised almost everyone by vetoing it , with a scathing message written by Pat Buchanan , claiming the bill would `` commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing .
The social right , which was just beginning to come into its own , was delighted
Opponents reinforced the message with a massive letter-writing campaign
They accused members of Congress of plotting to deprive parents of the right to take their offspring to church , give children the power to sue their parents for forcing them to do chores , and , in general , turn the country into a Maoist concentration camp
`` We really saw the beginning of the right-wing religious agenda , '' said Walter Mondale , who was the chief Senate sponsor of the bill
`` They used this bill to raise fears about undermining parents , Sovietizing American youth
People were afraid to touch it for a while .
Meanwhile , there was hardly a peep from the other side
Children 's advocates had been enthusiastic at first , but as the legislation made its way through Congress , they squabbled over what kinds of community groups should be allowed to deliver the services
Advocates for poor children were worried that subsidies for middle-class families would reduce the amount available to help the neediest
`` It was n't perfect , '' said Mondale
`` We 've never passed a perfect bill in American history
But it would have made a big difference .
In the end , the people who hated the whole idea were much more energized than the people who loved the idea , but disagreed on the details
`` People always think there will be another day , '' said Jack Duncan , who was counsel for the subcommittee that handled the bill in the House
`` Well , there might be another day , but not in my lifetime .
Remind you of anything
Looking wistfully at the candidates running to replace him , George W. Bush said he liked everything about campaigning for president except : C -RRB- The awesome responsibility of preparing to govern the most powerful nation on earth 5
During the campaign , Barack Obama learned that Dick Cheney is : A -RRB- His worst nightmare B -RRB- A distant cousin C -RRB- Not really a bad guy once you get to know him 6
Speaking at a livestock auction barn in Iowa , Hillary Clinton said she expected voters to inspect her , and offered : A -RRB- `` You can look inside my mouth if you want .
B -RRB- `` You can take a gander at my withers .
C -RRB- `` You can examine the stock I came from .
Ratcheting it up in New Hampshire , Romney charged Giuliani with being : A -RRB- A person in a glass house who throws stones B -RRB- A rolling stone who gathers no moss 8
Giuliani retorted that Romney was : A -RRB- A person in a glass house who throws stones B -RRB- A rolling stone who gathers no moss C -RRB- A flip-flopping ferret lover 9
Somewhere along the line , reporters have noticed , Hillary Clinton dropped : 14
Among the special interest groups running political ads in Iowa were two nursing associations that said that if Dick Cheney `` were anyone else , he 'd probably : A -RRB- ... be having Christmas dinner alone .
B -RRB- ... be dead by now .
C -RRB- ... be under indictment .
Mike Huckabee compared his fast rise in the polls to : A -RRB- The miracle of the loaves and the fishes B -RRB- The parting of the Red Sea C -RRB- The battle between Chuck Norris and David Carradine in `` Lone Wolf McQuade '' 16
In speeches for his wife , Bill Clinton makes fun of the idea that Hillary had a plot to become president that boiled down to : A -RRB- Save Arkansas , then the nation , then the world
B -RRB- Go to a state I 've barely seen and marry some pale politician who has a $ 26,000 salary and a $ 42,000 debt
C -RRB- Help Bill into the White House , endure endless crises and unimaginable embarrassment
Then it 's my turn
ANSWERS : 1-C , 2-B , 3-C , 4-B , 5-B , 6-A , 7-A , 8-A , 9-B , 10-B , 11 -LRB- A-6 , B-3 , C-2 , D-9 , E-4 , F-1 , G-8 , H-7 , I-5 -RRB- , 12-C , 13-B , 14-B , 15-A ,
Lame Ducks Triumphant Wow , we 're getting a new nuclear arms control treaty for Christmas
I know some of you were hoping for iPads
But still , big news
Good work , White House
Thank heavens we got rid of our former president , Barack Obama , who could n't even get the trade agreement he went all the way to South Korea to sign
Our current president , Barack Obama , would never let that happen , and , in fact , came up with a really excellent trade agreement with the South Koreans just the other day
`` Administration officials have bent over backwards to try to solve every problem that 's come up , '' said Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee , one of the Republicans who reached across the aisle to get the New Start treaty with Russia ratified
The treaty , which needed a two-thirds vote , was actually approved 71 to 26
The Democrats did not have to go scrambling madly around looking for one last vote
And even the opponents were winners since they got to spend more than a week beating up on the Russians , revisiting the golden days when life was simple and wars were cold
`` They cheat
They are serial cheaters , '' said Senator James Risch of Idaho , the author of my favorite unsuccessful amendment to the treaty
It would have made the entire groundbreaking nuclear-reduction program contingent on the return of four American Humvees that the Russians picked up during their conflict with Georgia
Risch hauled out blowups of one of the enslaved military vehicles , shouting : `` You can watch your property right here being towed away by the Russians
Back to Moscow !
If the former Red Menace wants to `` hold hands and sing ` Kumbaya , ' '' he added , `` Well , that is fine
But give us back our stolen military equipment .
When was it that the singing of `` Kumbaya '' became a shorthand for weenieness
`` Kumbaya '' is an excellent campfire song , especially for groups that border on tone-deafness and do n't know the words to anything
I remember singing it in Girl Scout camp with friends who emerged unscathed and became conservative Republicans
Some may be writing letters protesting the New Start treaty at this very moment
Please , give `` Kumbaya '' a break
But I digress
Nothing , not even Humvees in chains , was going to stop the progress of what has recently become known as the `` hard-charging lame-duck Congress .
It is a perfect image , with its suggestion of a flock racing along in the clumsiest manner possible but still stumbling over the finish line
`` When it 's all going to be said and done , Harry Reid has eaten our lunch , '' said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina , who called the hard-charging lame duck `` a capitulation in two weeks of dramatic proportions .
This is the rapidly evolving new hyperpartisan Lindsey Graham , who was so ticked off at the fact that the Senate was devoting a mere eight days to the treaty that he told the antitreaty obstructionist Jon Kyl of Arizona : `` I want to apologize to you for the way you 've been treated by your colleagues .
His Start-supporting fellow Republicans appeared quietly unrepentant
Perhaps they were afraid that if they said anything in response , Graham would continue his evolution into awfulness right there on the Senate floor and start gnawing on the ankles of elderly legislators
Good work , Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry
We appreciate the way you 've evolved from one of the world 's worst presidential candidates into an extremely useful senator
Unlike some unsuccessful presidential candidates we could name
Good work , Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana , the lone Republican who stuck with the treaty through thick and thin and never mutated into a scary new entity
Good work , Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
Unlike your hapless predecessor , Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , you 've had legislation shooting off to the White House like angry birds in that video game
Unemployment compensation
Gay rights
Food safety
Judicial appointments
Arms control
Health care for 9\/11 responders
But let 's admit it
Nothing would have gotten done if Obama had n't swallowed that loathsome compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy
If he 'd taken the high road , Congress would be in a holiday war
The long-term unemployed would be staggering into the new year without benefits
The rest of the world would look upon the United States as a country so dysfunctional that it ca n't even ratify a treaty to help keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists
The people who worked at ground zero would still be uncertain about their future , and our gay and lesbian soldiers would still be living in fear
It 's depressing to think that there was no way to win that would not have involved giving away billions of dollars to people who do n't need it
But it 's kind of cheery to think we have a president who actually does know what he 's doing
The Tannenbaum Chronicles This year , my favorite Christmas story involves Rachel Maddow 's mother
`` A friend gave her a remote control for the Christmas tree , '' said Maddow
It was the best present ever , liberation from a lifetime of crawling under the tree every morning and night to put in or pull out the plug
And it turned Maddow 's mom into a combination Magi and missionary
She bought a slew of remotes and distributed them throughout the neighborhood like special-recipe cookies , along with instructions on exactly how to make them work
The friend came to New York for the holidays with the Maddow family
For presents , she is giving everybody a Christmas tree in a box
Another step forward for Christmas tree culture
The tree is absolutely central to our holiday celebrations , even for people who have no attachment to any other aspect of Christmas
The other night when I was coming out of Rockefeller Center , I was almost run over by crowds of every race , creed and color stampeding toward the Christmas tree
Their urgency suggested that it was a Norway spruce version of the ivory-billed woodpecker - both extremely rare and likely to wander off any second
The American search for the perfect Christmas tree goes back to the 19th century and Sarah Josepha Hale , the editor of `` Godey 's Lady 's Book , '' the first mass-market women 's magazine
In the 1850s , when Hale came into her own , only the Germans celebrated Christmas with a decorated tree
Hale introduced her American readers to the Next Big Thing by taking a picture of Britain 's Queen Victoria and Prince Albert , who was German , standing around the tree that Albert had introduced at the castle
Hale performed a 19th-century version of photoshopping , blotting out Victoria 's crown jewels and Alfred 's royal sash until - presto
She had her cover , a typical American family clustered around their traditional - although hitherto unknown - Christmas tree
Hale believed strongly in complicated household rituals that her readers would need extensive instruction to carry out
Many middle-class American women were not far removed from the life of a farm housewife
Now that they had been freed from the drudgery of sausage-making and thread-spinning and chicken-raising , Hale was prepared to redirect their time to wax-fruit making , the baking of elaborate desserts and tree-trimming
In 1860 , Hale published a short story , `` The Christmas Tree .
The plot involved thwarted young love
The real point , however , was to describe the heroine 's efforts to put together the family tree
There was a great deal of threading of ribbons through the branches to hold up the Christmas presents , which served as decorations
Then cranberries had to be strung and candles attached
By the time the whole thing was ready to go , it 's a wonder she had the energy to notice when her boyfriend arrived for the happy ending
Now , 150 years later , creating the perfect tree still requires a lot of conflict
Generally , it centers on the setting-up process , although my sister Mary Ann and her husband , Robert , once had a decade-long quarrel over the desirability of flocking
When I was a kid , the struggle to get the tree into its stand always caused a fight , and my mother yearned for an artificial one that would just pop to attention the second you pulled it out of the closet
Apparently , when I went away to college , the balance of power shifted , and I returned at Christmastime to find a medium-size aluminum tree with color-coordinated ornaments in the living room
You ca n't go home again
I still go for the real tree , and trimming it is one of my favorite holiday events
This probably has something to do with the fact that there is a large tree-selling operation on the corner of my block
It is run by several hardy young men and women from Montreal , any one of whom is happy to bring the tree right into one 's apartment and set it up for a reasonable tip
When I was first married , I covered the tree with blinking colored lights , many of which bubbled
This was what my husband refers to as `` the disco tree era , '' and I have calmed down a lot since then
Now we just have white lights and old ornaments
We do not have a remote , but ever since Maddow told me her story I am dying to get one
This is America , and further improvement is always possible
It wo n't come easy
We still have n't figured out what to do with the top , and solving that one is definitely going to involve stepladders and pruning shears
But when traditions get too simple , they lose their flavor
Families do n't sit around and reminisce about the wonderful year Dad got the tree put up in five minutes flat
It 's really the disasters that yoke us together
God bless us , every one
Lame Ducks Gone Mad The innocent residents of Boca Raton , Fla. , are living in terror of an attack otter , which climbs out of the water to bite people in their backyards
And in Washington , the Senate passed a big bipartisan bill
Is it any wonder that people speak in trembling whispers of the end of days
Fortunately , things are not quite as apocalyptic as they seem at first glance
The bees , according to a column by Susan Dominus in The Times , had been hanging around a maraschino cherry factory
A wildlife expert told The South Florida Sun-Sentinel that people may have been feeding the otters , which makes them aggressive
And the bipartisan bill , which would overhaul the nation 's food safety system , still has to go back to the House , so there 's plenty of time to screw it up
Congress has been working on this legislation since 2008 , when a big food-poisoning epidemic reminded everyone that the Food and Drug Administration is currently working with laws written during the Great Depression
It survived endless delays by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma , who believes the free market is your last , best defense against E. coli
But staff members for the leading Democratic and Republican senators on the health committee actually got together and worked things out the way they used to do in olden days
Most of the negotiators were women , and while I am certainly not saying that made a difference , I am , sort of , just saying
Not everybody was impressed by the achievement
`` Oh , my gosh
It 's so important , '' said Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts , his voice dripping with sarcasm
`` I 'm glad I rushed back from our break to work on food safety .
Brown felt the Senate should have been focusing on economic issues , particularly his effort to stop the extension of unemployment compensation benefits until the Senate agrees to the Scott Brown Unemployment Compensation Funding Plan
`` Is it because I 'm a Republican that we 're not going to pass that
Is it because I 'm the new guy ?
he demanded
We will now have a moment of silence to contemplate the suffering of Senator Brown
Who had to come back the week after Thanksgiving in order to vote on a major bipartisan bill aimed at keeping people from being poisoned by contaminated food
And then became a victim of discrimination
Congress is not exactly in a holiday mood
The Senate Democrats are frustrated because the Republicans wo n't let them bring up any bills until they vote on extending the Bush tax cuts
On Wednesday night , Senator Charles Schumer of New York proposed that everybody just compromise and extend the tax cuts for people with an income under a million dollars a year
`` Will you accept ?
he asked Lamar Alexander of Tennessee
`` That 's a great compromise
Or are you going to say , ` Oh , no.
Hold out for the millionaires ? '
Alexander is a particularly affable guy , as he demonstrated the other day when he got up and announced he was going to say `` one good thing '' about each of the 16 retiring senators
The whole world waited to see what he was going to do with Jim Bunning of Kentucky , who has reset the bar when it comes to combining craziness and crankiness
Was Alexander going to find some way to make a warmhearted anecdote out of the time Bunning single-handedly held up an important administration confirmation because he was angry at Canada for banning the sale of flavored tobacco
No , as it turned out , Bunning `` has been a persistent leader in fighting for sick nuclear workers who served our country during the '50s and '60s .
Who knew
Good work , Senator Alexander
But that was a fleeting moment , foam of friendliness in a sea of rancor
Alexander quickly dodged Schumer 's offer , insisting that the Senate could actually do nothing whatsoever about taxes until it got results from the `` great negotiations '' that were begun by the White House
While it was extremely pleasant to hear Alexander finding a way to extol some unlovable outgoing senators , it was very unnerving to hear him sounding so confident about the White House 's willingness to negotiate away taxes on the rich
So the Senate Democrats are frustrated
And the Senate Republicans are unhappy , too , because the Democrats keep saying that the G.O.P. cares more about `` a tax cut for millionaires '' than the middle class , the unemployed , gay soldiers , immigrant college students or stopping nuclear war
This appears to be true , but that does n't make it any less irritating to hear approximately five thousand times an afternoon
Maybe things will work out
Maybe the White House will not cave , and the Republicans will not be intransigent , and the Democrats will get their act together and be canny and unified
Maybe we should not rule out the possibility of zombie otters
Just think
At the beginning of 2009 , George W. Bush was still in charge of the country , talking about how time had flown since he first ran for president
`` Just seemed like yesterday , '' he reminisced
This was a sentiment the rest of us did not entirely share
I felt as if Bush had been running things since the Mesozoic Age
But now it also feels as if Barack Obama has been president forever
I 'm beginning to wonder if in the 21st century , White House years are going to be like dog years in reverse
Every one is equivalent to seven or eight in the normal human calendar
I personally think Obama has been doing a good job , all things considered
The economy is still depressing , but that 's an improvement over mind-bendingly terrifying
The rest of the world likes us better , and whenever the president goes overseas he seems to be able to nudge the other countries toward a little progress on some issue on which they had been hopelessly stuck
And health care reform
Extremely big deal
Really could pass
No matter how difficult the issue , Obama has been sensible , deliberative
Just look at Dick Cheney swooping around like a dementor from Harry Potter , and you have to appreciate how much things have improved
But Lord , is it good to bid farewell to 2009
And imagine how Obama must feel
Every problem is a long , grueling slog
Even in the last minutes of the year , he was stuck trying to get out of the hole that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had dug when she used the fatal phrase `` the system worked '' after the failed plane bombing in Detroit
Napolitano 's statements were more nuanced than we 're currently giving her credit for , but that does n't matter
What she said was ill advised on so very many levels , only one of which was the matter of the system not working
In a time of crisis , you can not make any sweeping statements defending the performance of the Department of Homeland Security
In a bureaucracy that big , somebody is screwing up somewhere
Napolitano should have said something like : `` Well , we were so happy that the Dutch guy tackled the underwear bomber
Let 's give him a shout-out
Now excuse me , but we have a lot of work to do .
Maybe the problem is that the Department of Homeland Security is just too big to function
We know that creating it was a bad move since it was Senator Joseph Lieberman 's idea
-LRB- This will undoubtedly be a chapter in my upcoming book , `` How Joe Lieberman Ruined Everything . ''
Remember how hopeful everybody was last winter
Remember when Obama had the bipartisan Super Bowl party
I wonder who he 'll invite this time
Captain Sully Sullenberger appears to be the only person left in the country whom everybody likes
But the way things are going , we 'll probably hear tomorrow that Sully was driven out of his home on New Year 's Eve by an angry spouse wielding a hockey stick
For Obama , one of the plusses of the first few months of 2009 was that the opposition was so inept
This gave the president momentum while also providing the troubled nation with much-needed entertainment
Remember Obama 's first speech to a joint session of Congress
The one that the Republicans followed with a speech by Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana , who attacked `` wasteful spending '' on monitoring volcano eruptions in Alaska
And when Arizona State University refused to give Obama an honorary degree because `` his body of work is yet to come ?
That was in April
And in October , he got the Nobel Peace Prize
Take that , Sun Devils
But things really slowed down when we got to health care
Remember the Blue Dog Democrats holding the bill hostage in the House
The bipartisan panel of six senators who spent the summer sending back reports on what a great conference call they had had last Tuesday
Remember Olympia Snowe
Whatever happened to her
Remember the Ben Nelson crisis , and the Joe Lieberman crisis , and the plan from the freshman Democrats , and the plan from the moderates , and the revolt of the conservative Democrats and the revolt of the progressive Democrats
Boy , those were fun times
I bet Majority Leader Harry Reid is reliving them right now while he spends New Year 's Eve on the floor of his bedroom in a fetal position
The job of governing jumped from difficult to impossible after those right-wing tea parties last summer , which eliminated any Republican notions that if a president won a big election victory and large majorities in the House and Senate then that might be a sign of the American people wanting him to succeed
No more
This might allow one to theorize that Glenn Beck wrecked our year if we did not already know it was Joe Lieberman
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction : Correction : December 31 , 2009 An earlier version of this column incorrectly identified the nationality of the man who tackled the alleged bomber on Northwest Airlines Flight 253
He is Dutch , not Swiss
I have developed a whole new appreciation for the hysteria over Tiger Woods
Many critics of the news media believe we are spending way too much time worrying about why a golfer had a car accident at the end of his driveway
But given the incredibly depressing nature of all the big news stories of the week , if you want to focus on Tiger 's marital problems , I am in total sympathy
The president ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan
The New York State Senate defeated a same-sex marriage bill
Even the murder and racketeering trial of John Gotti Jr. ended badly
I have been a fan of this particular judicial proceeding ever since the day that Gotti got into a courtroom brawl with a prosecution witness that ended with Junior shouting : '' You 're a punk
You 're a dog
You 're a dog
You always were a dog your whole life , you punk dog .
However , on Tuesday , it vanished from the news cycle when the judge declared the fourth mistrial in five years because of a hung jury
Meanwhile , in Washington , the U.S. Senate began its groundbreaking debate over a national health care plan
In honor of this historic event , the Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire -- who you will remember was so bipartisan a while back that President Obama wanted to make him the secretary of commerce -- passed out a list of tips on how to best stall any conceivable progress with meaningless points of order
The way things are going , we should get to a vote at about the same time that the president is planning to get the troops out of Afghanistan
Much of the debate has revolved around mammograms
You will remember that recently a government task force suggested that women who do n't have any special predisposition to breast cancer consider beginning mammograms at 50 rather than 40 .
This was based mainly on cost , '' said John Ensign , a Republican who was actually completely wrong despite the extensive expertise he brings to the debate in his capacity as the only veterinarian in the Senate
The practical effects of the task force recommendation , under the health care reform bill , might be to increase the number of insurance policies that require a co-payment for those early tests unless a woman 's doctor intervened to say that they were needed
Given the fact that some experts never did think the early mammograms were a good idea , and that others now believe they actually do more harm than good , this did not seem like the worst possible thing in the world
Especially since , um , right now a lot of women have no health insurance and no mammograms at all
The Democrats , terrified by cries of '' rationing !
are now trying to amend the bill to expand insurance coverage of health care screenings for women
Not to be outdone , the Republicans seem bent on making sure that every single 40-year-old woman in America gets a free mammogram even if she never sees a doctor for anything else for the rest of her life
Another big debate topic has been cost
The price tag on the bill needs to be kept under control -- except , of course , when it involves mammograms
That 's a concern for us all since spending on health care is spiraling out of control and threatening to wreck the economy
So you really did need to pay attention when the Republicans offered their first big motion of the debate , under the leadership of that famous fiscal hawk and former G.O.P. standard-bearer , John McCain
... Who got up and demanded that the bill be stripped of $ 450 billion in proposed Medicare savings .
Come back with another bill
Only this time , do n't put the cost of it on the backs of senior citizens of this country , '' he said
It was a riveting moment
Perhaps never before had a member of the Senate dared to suggest that a piece of pending legislation should be changed so that senior citizens would be exempt from suffering
Medicare eats up more than 3 percent of the gross domestic product , and it is the one entitlement that the government has no current prospects of ever getting under control
You would think that shaving some of its costs might interest a guy who practically based an entire presidential campaign on his opposition to a $ 3 million DNA test for endangered grizzly bears
But no , there was McCain , waving the bloody shirt and predicting that cutting the cost of Medicare would -- Yes
-- '' eventually lead to rationing of health care in this country .
Whatever happened to the John McCain who wanted to balance the budget and work with the Democrats to fight global warming
Gone the way of the wild grizzly , I guess
Let 's try not to think about what January will bring
Maybe another sports hero will do us a favor and run into a fire hydrant
Ed Rendell ca n't believe that he 's being asked about the fact that he said that Barack Obama 's nominee for head of homeland security , Janet Napolitano , has `` no life .
`` We 're facing the greatest crisis since the Depression , and you want to talk about this ?
he complained
This is exactly the kind of comment people used to make during the bad old days in New York , when cops ticketing cars for double-parking were always told that they should be out arresting murderous drug dealers
But what better time to have a diverting discussion about a governor 's misadventure with an open microphone
Really , there 's not much chance that we 're going to forget the big picture
Rendell , who is governor of Pennsylvania , was chatting about Napolitano , the governor of Arizona , at a governor 's meeting -LRB- where else ?
while lounging in the vicinity of a live mic
-LRB- They should put lights on those things that would flash red when they 're turned on .
He was explaining that Napolitano was `` perfect '' for homeland security `` because , for that job , you have to have no life
Janet has no family
She can devote , literally , 19-20 hours a day to it .
This seemed to be the summation of Napolitano 's qualifications
Rendell himself has been on the list of Cabinet Mentions , and this is a good example of the way people around the world explain why another person got the prize instead : It was all about some random characteristic I happen to lack
-LRB- `` Ted 's perfect for the job
Because for that job , you really have to speak Estonian . ''
Perhaps a rather undesirable characteristic
-LRB- `` For that job , you have to be able to drink those salesmen under the table and Ted 's an absolute lush . ''
And it sure sounded as if he was saying that single people like Napolitano exist in a state so dark and barren that the empty hours can only be filled up by guarding the nation 's borders against terrorists and preparing for the next hurricane
You will not be surprised that Rendell reached by phone in Pennsylvania and game as ever for conversation feels as though he 's been totally , deeply and completely misunderstood
`` It was meant to include all workaholics , '' said Rendell , who is married with a grown son
`` I have no life
I 'll give you a perfect example .
He launched into a story about coming home late at night and watching a two-hour cable TV review of the Pennsylvania budget
Which actually , if you were a governor and it was your state 's budget , might be kind of fascinating
`` I have no life either , '' he repeated
`` But I could n't run Homeland Security because I do n't have the background .
It was about here , when he reached the exact opposite analysis from the one he made into the wrong microphone , that Rendell pointed out we were facing the greatest crisis since the Depression
All this was a real blow to Bella DePaulo , the author of `` Singled Out , '' who had recently posted on her blog , celebrating the fact that after Napolitano 's nomination was announced , `` I have n't found any hints of singlism '' in the articles about her
`` Oh , no !
she said , when reached by telephone Wednesday morning
DePaulo says that `` singlism '' a term she coined and for which we are prepared to forgive her is not just aimed at unmarried women
She referred to an MSNBC interview that Chris Matthews had with the presidential candidate Ralph Nader in 2004 , in which Matthews demanded to know how Nader could say George W. Bush was irresponsible : `` He 's raised two daughters ; he 's had a happy marriage
Is n't he more mature in his lifestyle than you are ?
This did seem strange , since there are so many excellent reasons unrelated to marital status why Ralph Nader would make a terrible president
-LRB- The list does not , however , include `` likely to let the big financial firms ruin the economy due to lack of regulation . ''
To be fair , Matthews also asked Nader if the fact that he did not own a car meant that he had not `` had an American experience .
But it 's unmarried women at the top who often wind up portrayed as vestal virgins who live only to serve their chief executive
-LRB- Condoleezza Rice 's public image is so extreme that people must be wondering if she plans to immolate herself on the White House lawn during the inauguration .
Instead of being celebrated for their achievements , they wind up regarded as slightly fanatic
And single women comprise between 43 percent and 51 percent of the adult women in the country , depending on how you count
They are universally regarded as folks with time on their hands , and thus the most likely recruits for taking care of aged parents , adjusting their schedules to accommodate their married friends and working overtime
`` Employers ask you to cover for everyone else , '' said DePaulo
Which actually makes them sound busier than their married peers
So perhaps single Americans have too much life
It 's a wonder they have time for anything
Arizona Strikes Back You may remember the historic day in 2009 when Senator Chuck Grassley brought the issue to the fore at a town meeting in Iowa
`` We should not have a government plan that will pull the plug on grandma , '' he said to loud cheers
This was when Grassley , a Republican , was negotiating with the Democrats on a bipartisan health care reform bill
Optimistic spirits felt his plug-pulling metaphor was simply an attempt to reassure his constituents , while he continued working in good faith with the Finance Committee chairman , Senator Max -LRB- I Am Always Wrong -RRB- Baucus
Later , President Obama asked Grassley whether he would vote for the bill if all his suggestions for change were included
Grassley said probably not
This was taken to be a bad sign
Then all hell broke loose and the Republicans kept ranting about how `` Obamacare '' would put the federal government between you and your doctor and try to save money by prohibiting said doctor from using the best treatments and procedures
All this came to mind when I was talking to Flor Felix , whose husband , Francisco , a 32-year-old truck driver with four kids , was denied a liver transplant because the Arizona Legislature had yanked funds for it out of a state Medicaid program
As Marc Lacey reported in The Times this week , Francisco had been prepped for surgery after a friend whose wife was dying asked that he be given her liver
`` It was good news when we heard the liver matched , '' Flor said
`` The doctor said : ` Everything 's going well
We 're going to proceed with the surgery . '
But Francisco , who has hepatitis C , had lost his health insurance when he had to stop working and had gotten coverage under the state Medicaid program
And Gov. Jan Brewer had signed a law eliminating Medicaid coverage of certain kinds of transplants as a cost-cutting measure
Flor said the next words she got from the doctor were : `` You need to bring $ 200,000 as a deposit for the hospital .
Francisco was summarily discharged
The Arizona state government , which is totally controlled by Republicans , got between him and his doctor
`` The state only has so much money and we can only provide so many optional kinds of care
Those were one of the options that we had taken liberty to discard , '' said Governor Brewer , who we all remember for her path-breaking efforts to convince the world that the Arizona desert is strewn with the headless bodies of illegal immigrants
Felix was one of 98 people in the transplant pipeline when the law went into effect
Arizona claims cutting them off will save $ 4.5 million this year
Advocates have called on Governor Brewer to use some of the state 's $ 185 million in federal stimulus funds to restart the procedures
Brewer , who opposed the stimulus , says all the money is gravely needed for other projects
Which she will not name
The best possible spin to put on all this is that it was a terrible mistake
The chairman of the Arizona House Appropriations Committee , John Kavanagh , says that the lawmakers got bad information from the state Medicaid experts , who said that the transplants were n't effective
`` Based on the information I 've received , it looks like most of them should be reinstated and we hope to do that in January , '' he said
Ironically , trying to answer questions like this is one of the great goals of the Obama health care law
`` What it promises to do is attack the vast reservoirs of ignorance about relative benefits of different ways of treating different diseases to see which is most effective , '' said Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution
Although , as Aaron carefully pointed out , the law steers clear of any mention of cost effectiveness
This is because Republicans in the House and Senate kept howling about death panels and plug-pulling
It 's hard to give Arizona the benefit of the doubt on anything these days , what with the state 's dubious performances in matters like illegal immigrant hysteria , the selling of the State Capitol to help balance the budget , and the electing of Jan Brewer
However , let 's accept that given their economic problems , it would be natural for the Legislature to want to try to cut the Medicaid budget
Although preferably in some saner , less brutal manner
But try to imagine what the Republicans would have said if someone in the Obama administration proposed cutting off liver transplants for Medicare recipients
We heard a lot from John McCain during the health care debate about how reform would restrict Medicare services
We have not heard a word yet on how McCain feels about the Arizona transplant issue
His office did not respond to inquiries about whether he approves his state 's pulling the plug on a 32-year-old father
The Senate is going to be in session all weekend , debating the big health care bill and arguing about which direction the cost-curve is heading
This is a positive development on two counts
It keeps senators off the streets while providing much-needed employment in the chart-making sector of our economy
Or we could just lock them in a basement until they 're done squabbling
Either way is good , but the basement option would have the advantage of covering some of the less-active debaters with an attractive coat of mildew
In any case , I guarantee you that the number of normal Americans who will pay attention can be numbered in the low single digits
So as a public service to the nonlistening audience , let me give you a summary of the important action so far : ROUND ONE Republicans : Let 's get rid of all the Medicare savings in the bill
Think of the seniors
Democrats : Yettaruttayetta
ROUND TWO Mammograms
Everybody loves them
Ca n't have enough
ROUND THREE Republicans : Let 's get rid of part of the Medicare savings in the bill
Think of the seniors
Democrats : Ruttayettarutta
Is that perfectly clear
Now we will return to our regularly scheduled conversation
Did you see that hot reality show `` Hoarders '' on A&E the other night
What about that lady who hoarded her dead cats
If `` Hoarders '' gets superpopular , do you think lots of people will start putting dead cats in their living room just so they can get on TV and be famous
Maybe somebody will try to bring dead cats to a state dinner at the White House
Does the Secret Service have a plan to avert this
I 'll behave
Back to the health care bill
The Republicans are the fiscal conservatives in Congress , at least in the years when they are n't actually in power
They were never going to rally around an expensive new government program that fails to provide a single new market for corn-based products
But you would expect them to try to push the whole project in the most economical direction possible
For instance , the bill would establish an independent commission on Medicare payment rates
This is a very big deal and you are going to have to take my word that health care economists fall over with excitement when it comes up
But the Senate Democrats ' current version of the bill would only allow the panel experts to act when Medicare spending rises at a faster rate than other health care spending
Since health care spending has been going through the roof , we 're talking about waiting until Medicare spending goes through the ozone layer
Obviously , this is an area where the Republicans would want to swing into action
And they did
They prepared an amendment eliminating the Medicare panel entirely
In fact , G.O.P. senators appear to have amendments aimed at wiping out virtually all the cost-cutting the Democrats have put in the bill , including productivity adjustments and incentives for innovation in health care delivery
If they ca n't kill the bill completely , Republicans who are not from Maine seem intent on raising its price tag
While terrifying senior citizens in a cynical attempt to influence their vote in the next election cycle
Although I 'm sure Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma just misspoke when he said : `` I have a message for you : You 're going to die sooner .
On Friday , much of the debate was directed at Medicare Advantage
This is a program that flourished during the privatization craze
And like many attempts to save money by shoehorning private businesses into government programs , it wound up costing a ton
The Medicare Advantage policyholders cost the government 14 percent more than regular Medicare recipients , although they do often get extra benefits , sometimes including free Band-Aids or gym memberships
Now let us be fair
There are some good services in the Advantage mix , and gym memberships are in and of themselves a fine thing
But you would think the political party that eviscerated the Clinton stimulus plan over an appropriation for late-night basketball programs would really be ticked at the idea that we 're providing a 14 percent subsidy to some Medicare recipients so they can have access to Stairmasters
Au contraire
In fact , on Thursday Senator Orrin Hatch proposed an amendment that would eliminate the entire $ 120 billion in Medicare Advantage savings from the bill
There is no sane explanation for all this other than crass political calculation
On Thursday , Senator Michael Bennet , a Colorado Democrat who 's up for election next year , introduced an amendment specifically promising that Medicare recipients would not lose any of their current guaranteed benefits
It passed 100 to 0
Meanwhile , Colorado voters were getting robocalls from John McCain warning that the health care bill was going to cut their `` vital Medicare coverage .
Now , about those dead cats
This week Senator Saxby Chambliss won a runoff vote in Georgia
It 's possible you missed this
Perhaps you were busy oh , I do n't know , maybe contemplating the unemployment rate or learning to darn holes in old socks or embarking on a promising new career in the booming field of squirrel hunting
Anyhow , the Georgia runoff was more important than you might imagine
Certainly more significant than anything Chambliss has done since he skipped a closed-door Senate session on Iraq intelligence data to go golfing with Tiger Woods
His victory means that the Republicans will have at least 41 seats in the Senate when Barack Obama becomes president
#NAME?
I promise .
Since it takes 60 senators to force a vote on a bill , if the Republicans stick together they can stop things from happening
Maintaining the capacity to bring things to a screeching halt is important for any party , so all the gang went down to Georgia to rally the troops
Together again , just like in the primaries , with a stuffed manatee playing the part of Fred Thompson
`` If we give them a blank check , they will sign that check and be taking money out of our pockets , '' warned Rudy Giuliani , whose total failure as a presidential candidate clearly has not affected his ability to turn a phrase
And the troops heard their call
One woman at a Sarah Palin rally told The Times 's Robbie Brown that she was terrified that Obama was `` going to push a socialist agenda '' but that she was sure `` Saxby Chambliss can stop him .
Now Chambliss has been a senator for six years , and his greatest achievement was getting ranked the 33rd best golfer in Washington by Golf Digest
It is highly unlikely that he could stop the president from doing anything beyond making a putt
But it 's probably just as well that he won
Otherwise , the fate of that 60th seat would depend on the recount of the Minnesota senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman , which is going to last as long as the Mesozoic Era
Franken in a count disputed by Coleman and the secretary of state claims to be four votes ahead , and the results seem to hinge on a missing envelope containing 133 ballots from Dinkytown , a neighborhood near the University of Minnesota
While I 'm sure it 's a great place to live , we really do not want to spend the next six months reading headlines like `` It All Depends on Dinkytown .
Besides , if the Democrats did get the 60 seats , one of them would belong to Joe Lieberman
You may recall that although Lieberman spent the last year campaigning for John McCain -LRB- and , as it turns out , donating money to Republican candidates for the senate -RRB- , the Democrats were so desperate to keep him in their caucus that they caved in to his demands to keep his committee chairmanship
If Lieberman had turned out to be Mr. 60 , he would not only have wanted the committee , he would have insisted on being carried to all its meetings on a litter , borne by the fellow senators who failed to appreciate him , with Lindsey Graham running ahead , clashing cymbals
Above all , you have to love the fact that as things stand , the nexus of power will lie in the Republican moderate caucus , consisting entirely of the two senators from Maine , the Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins
`` And Senator Specter , '' corrected Snowe
And Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania , although `` moderate '' and `` deeply , deeply , deeply politically pragmatic '' are not precisely the same thing
But I like thinking of next year 's senate as a kind of mythic quest movie in which a Democratic hero in need of a stimulus package or a Supreme Court confirmation is told : `` Go forth and seeketh the Women of Maine , '' who would both be played by Cate Blanchett
Olympia Snowe , the senior senator , is widely regarded as one of Congress 's quality acts
In fact , some people might have wondered why John McCain , if he was so desperate for a woman on his ticket , ignored a well-traveled , independent-minded experienced legislator who does her homework in favor of an out-to-lunch moose-murderer who can not seem to put together a coherent sentence
`` Well , you know , John made the decision he did , '' said Snowe vaguely
Snowe seems very conscious of how key her role could be over the next few years , since she talks about building bridges with the enthusiasm of an Alaskan pork-monger
In recent years , she said , she 's been `` embarrassed for our institution
I could n't possibly explain to my constituents what was going on here , the all-or-nothing drawing lines in the sand .
You could imagine the next senate looking like the Supreme Court in the age of Sandra Day O'Connor , which is to say frequently frustrating but generally sensible
We could do so very much worse
Falling Off the Bandwagon Dear Answerperson : My boyfriend is a liberal Democrat and ever since the president announced his tax deal with the Republicans , he has been impossible to live with
First he burned his `` Audacity of Hope '' sweater
Then he began messing up the cat 's litter box , claiming he needed to draw `` lines in the sand .
Now he wants to call off our wedding because he says that when you put your trust in people , they break your heart
Ask your boyfriend if he would rather spend the entire holiday season wondering what Senator Joe Lieberman will do next and whether Olympia Snowe will vote for cloture
Then he will turn pale and offer to take you out for a nice dinner
Answerperson Look on the bright side , Democratic base
You 've been urging President Obama to get really mad
Ever since the inauguration , you 've been waiting for him to take a stand , point fingers at the people who are blocking progress and demand that they get the heck out of the road
And this week he did it
Of course the liberal Democrats did not really plan on his getting mad at the liberal Democrats
But you ca n't have everything
`` This is n't the politics of the moment
This has to do with what can we get done right now , '' the president said heatedly as he defended his tax deal with the Republicans against outrage from the Congressional left
It takes a lot to make President Obama incoherent
I think the vision of trying to corral 60 votes in the Senate on the night before Christmas sent him over the brink
The lame-duck Senate has been extremely busy not passing a range of legislation
The votes on two Democratic proposals to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for everybody but the rich were 53 to 37 and 53 to 36
Of course , under venerable Senate tradition , that means they failed entirely
It was at that point that Obama announced a deal with the Republicans to salvage unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and create a sort of ministimulus bill with tax cuts for everybody , including the working poor , besides the dreaded , hated giveaway to the undeserving wealthy
`` The American people are outraged !
said Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont
He wanted the president to draw that line in the sand , let the unemployment benefits lapse , the tax code fall into limbo , and hold out until public opinion forced 60 votes to come around
If you really wanted the American people to rally around no-tax-cuts-for-richies , should n't we have had this conversation before the election
It 's a lot easier to send Washington a message at the polls than on a protest march in a sub-zero wind-chill factor
No , we waited until now because the Senate leaders left the timing up to their members who were running for re-election , and the Democrats in question said they 'd rather not have to go on the record
O.K. , I 've got to admit it
I 've fallen off the line-in-the-sand bandwagon
For one thing , opposing the Obama-Republican deal puts you on the same side as Sarah Palin , who sent out one of her twitters from hell on the subject , and Christine O'Donnell , the former Senate candidate
At a Tea Party meeting on Dec. 7 , O'Donnell announced that it was a day of sorrow and `` Tragedy comes in threes : Pearl Harbor , Elizabeth Edwards 's passing and Barack Obama 's announcement of extending the tax cuts , which is good , but also extending the unemployment benefits .
-LRB- I am happy to note that O'Donnell has announced that she 's got a book deal and a new political action committee
Really , I do n't know what I 'd do if she went away .
Plus , the Senate has worn me down
The filibuster rule makes it impossible to do anything more difficult than passing rules against tainted food , and the Democrats have not made any serious attempt to get rid of the filibuster rule
So work around them , I say
We have no idea if Obama 's unheroic attempt to get a deal done is going to pass
The Democratic senators who totally failed to exempt the wealthy from a tax-cut extension are outraged at the president for giving up on them
`` This is beyond politics
This is about justice and doing what 's right , '' said Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana as she slammed `` the almost , you know , moral corruptness '' of tax cuts for millionaires
It was a stirring statement , and would have been even more so if Landrieu had not been one of the few Democrats who actually voted to put the tax cuts on the books in the first place in 2001
Senator Harry Reid has already warned that members of his caucus `` have concerns '' that will need to be addressed
He has one himself about legalizing online poker , a matter that the casino interests in his state of Nevada are very excited about
So this is what it takes to put the drama in Obama
Don t Worry
Be Happy In troubled times it 's important to pace yourself
There 's only so much you can worry about at once , and we 've already got Egypt , the weird weather , rising food prices and unemployment
Plus , the secretary of homeland security says the terror threat is really high
It would be at least reddish-orange if we had n't gotten rid of the color code
At moments like this , I find it soothing to make lists of things that we do n't have to worry about at all
Such as : In South Dakota , we recently learned that Representative Hal Wick , a Republican of Sioux Falls , dropped a bill into the hopper that would require every adult in the state to own a gun
In Georgia , Representative Bobby Franklin , a Republican of Marietta , introduced legislation that would eliminate the requirement that Georgia drivers have licenses , arguing that he was tired of `` agents of the state demanding your papers .
And , people , you do not need to worry about it
These bills are not going to pass
Besides , if we worried about every nutsy idea tossed around in state legislatures , we would never have adequate time to devote to work , family and the fate of the Broadway musical `` Spider-Man .
About 10 percent of a state legislature is composed of people who are totally loony
This is in a good state
It 's possible that in yours , the proportion is much , much higher
That is probably something to worry about , but not today
The point is , they only introduce these bills to get your attention
Although Representative Franklin is not making it easy , having also proposed that suburbanites be permitted to keep cows and other farm animals in their yards and that the state be required to pay all of its debts in gold or silver
Glenn Beck 's declining ratings Honest
They 're down
Who will win the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll The conservative activists are meeting in Washington at a gathering that will culminate in a much-anticipated straw poll
It is , in theory , our civic duty to follow their activities and determine if they will provide a boost for one of the Republican presidential candidates
Even though the poll has , in the past , proved to be about as good at predicting the future as Punxsutawney Phil
Former Senator Rick Santorum made news this week when he said Sarah Palin was ducking the conference because she prefers events where somebody is paying her
One of the few joys of following presidential politics two years in advance of the election is that it gives you a chance to ponder hopefuls like Santorum , who prepared for this quest by losing his U.S. Senate seat by 18 percentage points
But do n't worry about Sarah Palin running for president
Even Sarah Palin does n't know if she 's running for president
Mull instead the news that Bristol is now said to be writing a memoir
The fact that Congress is n't doing anything Ever since the Senate reached a bipartisan agreement to speed up the legislative process , there has been not a single filibuster in the upper chamber
This may be partly because there have generally been no senators in the upper chamber
Really , every once in a while they drop by to talk about a bill on the Federal Aviation Administration
And then they go home again
Meanwhile , in the House , the powerful new Republican majority has continued its laserlike focus on jobs by arguing about abortion and failing to pass the bills it votes on
`` We 're not going to be perfect every day , '' said Speaker John Boehner
On Wednesday , the House argued about whether it should make the government repossess $ 179 million from our account at the United Nations despite the State Department 's plan to have the United Nations use it to improve security in New York City
This is supposed to be part of the G.O.P. budget-balancing initiative , and on that count it is somewhat like planning to lose 50 pounds by reducing your intake of kale
Mainly , it was an opportunity for Republicans to spend an enjoyable day complaining about international organizations dedicated to world peace
`` It 's a disgrace that we continue to fund an organization like the U.N. , '' said Representative Connie Mack of Florida
Did you know his real name is Cornelius Harvey McGillicuddy IV
Also , he is married to Representative Mary Bono of California , who has now been the wife of two members of Congress , only one of whom once had a singing act with Cher
But I digress
Despite the Republicans ' rancor about international organizations , the leaders failed to muster the necessary two-thirds majority to get the bill through
It 'll probably pass later , and would then be preserved in amber until sometime in the next millennium when the senators get around to it
Works for me
Already , I have offended many , many readers who believe their state is being unfairly overlooked
I see you waving your hands , New Jersey
Excuse me
I was just distracted by the new 66-page federal indictment of Larry Seabrook , a New York City councilman who , along with multitudinous other charges , is accused of altering a receipt from a deli so he could get a $ 177 reimbursement for a bagel and diet soda
One point for New York
I was thinking about the dreadful similarities between the two states while listening to the New York State Senate conduct its business this week
First , there was a resolution demanding that the 9\/11 terrorist trial not be held in New York
`` We ca n't regurgitate that , '' said one senator
Another claimed that America 's greatness was demonstrated by the fact that no other country had ever sent rescue missions to Haiti
Except Costa Rica and Canada and Cuba and ... Stop
When you start having a mental debate with a state senator from Long Island , it 's time to move on
So , who 's worse
Both states lost their governors to scandal
But Eliot Spitzer is not about to make his debut on `` Celebrity Apprentice .
Point Illinois
After his sudden elevation , Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois attempted to save money by giving early release to 1,700 nonviolent state prisoners , some of whom unfortunately turned out to be violent after all
He also gave a State of the State speech in which he boasted about having been named `` Mr. Soybean '' by the Illinois Soybean Association
Meanwhile , Gov. David Paterson of New York , who is mired in a controversy over a racetrack casino contract , demanded that The New York Times produce a list of all the things that are not going to be in a Paterson profile being prepared by the paper so people in Albany will stop speculating that there will be sex in it
I am going to call this one a draw
In their recent primary , Illinois Democrats who should know the importance of a lieutenant governor voted to give their nomination for the No. 2 job to Scott Lee Cohen , an excitable pawnbroker
Cohen spent millions on campaign ads
Which apparently interfered with his ability to make regular child support payments
Also , he seems to have underestimated the chances that a run for statewide office would draw attention to the fact that he was once charged with holding a knife to his girlfriend 's throat
So he withdrew from the race in a tearful press conference
At the Hop Haus Tavern
During the halftime of the Super Bowl
Illinois inches ahead
New York had an incident related to domestic violence this week , too , when the State Senate voted to expel Hiram Monserrate , who had been convicted of assaulting his girlfriend
A special bipartisan committee went to great lengths to produce a complete report
It said that the 29-year-old woman in question , who wound up at a hospital with deep lacerations on her face , was quoted by the medical staff as saying that Monserrate had sliced her with a piece of broken glass
Hours later she signed a statement supporting the senator 's convoluted explanation that she got her injuries when he tripped while bringing her a glass of water
The deposition was in English , which she barely speaks
It was written by a Monserrate staff member and notarized by another
She was escorted to the trial by a third
In her testimony , she stood by her senator and insisted that they were in love
As the legislators argued about the case , some wanted to know why Monserrate 's crime was any worse than that of another state senator who has been charged with assaulting a photographer
O.K. , ideally we would not be having our elected officials do either
But it was apparent that although these people had passed trillions of bills , resolutions and budget appropriations on the subject of domestic violence , many of them had no clue about what made it a peculiarly corrosive crime
`` A huge number of my male colleagues still do n't have any idea what domestic violence is about the use of intimacy to manipulate , the power and control , '' said Senator Eric Schneiderman , who led the committee
During a five-hour , closed-door meeting , Monserrate 's fellow Democrats yelled , threatened and occasionally appeared ready to throttle each other
`` It was everyone hashing it out , making every possible argument , the living , breathing essence of democracy , '' said Schneiderman
Well , actually it would have been slightly more democratic if they had done it on the floor of the Senate
Instead , after Monserrate read a statement pointing out that lots of other people in the Legislature get convicted of things , the chamber silently voted 53 to 8 for expulsion
It was not exactly the founding fathers at Philadelphia
But , for now , Illinois wins
This is not exactly what we were expecting from the Age of Obama
When a 47-year-old becomes president by trouncing a 72-year-old opponent , there 's every reason to think that the tide is turning youthward
For a minute or so , that seemed to be the case
The most high-profile cabinet job , Treasury secretary , went to Timothy Geithner , 47
Over at the bank bailout , a 35-year-old was in charge of the Office of Financial Stability
Hillary Clinton , 61 , is headed to Bangalore and Beijing , leaving a 42-year-old replacement in her Senate seat
There was almost no one left in Washington who knew what Sputnik was , let alone the words to `` The Ballad of Davy Crockett .
Now , less than a month into the new administration , we 've got generational backlash
Everybody who watched Geithner explain how he was going to rescue the banking system thought he sounded like a callow youth
Where 's gravitas when you need it
Time to bring on Paul Volcker -LRB- 81 -RRB-
Meanwhile , the great national heroes are US Airways pilot Sully Sullenberger -LRB- 58 -RRB- and flight attendants Donna Dent -LRB- 51 -RRB- , Sheila Dail -LRB- 57 -RRB- and Doreen Welsh -LRB- 58 -RRB-
Admit it , when you get on a plane these days , you feel worried if the crew members do n't look as though they 're receiving bulletins from the AARP
The movie star du jour is Mickey Rourke , 56
Rourke has truly been preparing for this moment all his life , since thanks to some interesting lifestyle changes , he has looked 56 since around 1987
Is this a baby-boomer plot
In 1972 , The Times 's Russell Baker noted that the people he had always thought of as `` the kids '' did not seem to be reproducing
Baker decided that the Woodstock generation was conspiring to cut the birth rate so they would always be in the majority and could `` go on being the kids for the rest of their lives .
And what do you know
Mick Jagger is still touring
My own personal theory is that we 're witnessing a defense mechanism triggered by the current economic unpleasantness
Since it appears that nobody is ever going to be able to afford to retire , we 're moving into an era in which having your car fixed or your tonsils removed by a 75-year-old will need to seem normal
Meanwhile , young people are going to have to stay in school and keep their heads down since their elders have no intention of creating any job openings in the near future
So it 's better if we readjust our thinking and start regarding everybody as 20 years younger than the calendar suggests
Then you will feel much better when the 80-year-old postman delivers your mail and it includes a request for money from your 38-year-old offspring doing post-post-post-doctoral work at Ohio State
At least this will be good news for anybody under the age of 40 who gets into a jam
If the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and the Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez have drug issues , who cares
In the new adjusted way of viewing the country , Phelps is just a toddler and Rodriguez is barely in puberty
And in their place , we have Stump
You may have missed his great star turn on Tuesday night
Strangely , the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show does not get as much attention as , say , the Super Bowl , even though there are way more Americans who own dogs than play football
Perhaps if Bruce Springsteen -LRB- 59 -RRB- had done a half-time show at Westminster involving huge amounts of jumping around and a crotch-first slide into the camera , things would be different
Stump , whose hobbies are sleeping and sleeping , is actually Champion Clussexx Three D Grinchy Glee , but nobody his age can remember all that
After a refreshing workout that involved a short walk around the driveway , he trotted onto the stage and wiped the floor with his younger competition , the most notable of which was a poodle that was conceived with the 25-year-old semen of a long-dead champion named Snapper
Stump would be around 70 in human years , but Snapper wow
Even given the fact that it was frozen , Snapper 's seed has to have been the equivalent of at least 150
And so it goes
This week at the Grammy Awards , every other prize went to Alison Krauss , the 37-year-old bluegrass star , who had made the canny career choice of pairing up with the former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant , 60
`` In the old days , we would have called this selling out , '' Plant said as he scooped up his five awards
Maybe not selling out is going to come back into fashion , too
But if there 's nobody left doing any buying , does it still count
Semi-Naked Came the Congressman I know that you have been wondering what the story of the shirtless Congressman tells us about the current state of American politics
Representative Chris Lee set a record for swift resolution of a sex scandal this week
It began on Wednesday afternoon , when the Web site Gawker posted e-mail correspondence between Lee and a 34-year-old woman who went on Craigslist searching for a `` financially & emotionally secure man '' who did not resemble a toad
Did that seem like too much to ask , people
After a bit of e-flirting , the woman did a quick online search that revealed that Chris Lee , the 39-year-old divorced lobbyist who answered her ad was actually Chris Lee , a 46-year-old married member of Congress
She forwarded everything to Gawker , including a picture Lee had sent of himself standing half-naked in front of a mirror , flexing his muscles
A few hours later , he was history
His office had barely had time to blame the whole thing on hackers before the congressman resigned and went off to do marital damage control
Popular opinion holds that he was prodded out of office by Speaker John Boehner
Although Boehner refused to say whether he had greased the skids for Lee 's departure , he has let it be known that he plans to come down hard on `` inappropriate behavior '' in his caucus
If Boehner is responsible it would be extremely significant since it would probably be his greatest success to date in the role of speaker of the House
Really , the rest has been pretty much a mess
So far , the new Republican majority has n't been able to agree on anything that is not entirely symbolic
In lieu of actual legislation , the House spent the last half of the week debating a measure instructing committees to do oversight on government regulations to see if they 're cost-effective
Which is , actually , their regular job
`` Our committee already convened a hearing on this exact topic yesterday , '' said Representative Elijah Cummings , the ranking Democrat on the , um , Committee on Oversight and Government Reform during the ninth hour of debate
But about Lee
Aficionados of political sex scandals have been wondering whether he was shoved out the door too fast
We 've certainly seen politicians survive scandals worse than trying to score a date while married
I am represented by a congressman who was censured by the House for misdeeds that included not paying his taxes while running the tax committee
I would be absolutely thrilled if the worst thing he 'd done over the past few years was misrepresenting his marital status on a BlackBerry
However , it 's one thing to be a would-be adulterer and another to be an incredibly stupid would-be adulterer
In his re-election campaign , Lee bragged about his work providing students with instruction on the hazards of having personal conversations on the Internet
Yet he was working under the assumption that the best way to conduct an extramarital social life is to pretend to be a different person online , while using one 's real name and photograph
Nobody wants to be represented by a person who has to be reminded of the existence of Google
Lee comes from the suburbs of Buffalo , and this is the second time in a year that a congressman from upstate New York has had to resign because of a sex scandal
First there was Eric Massa , a Democrat who shared a townhouse with five young , low-paid male staffers and who , when questions arose about groping issues , produced the immortal explanation : `` I tickled him until he could n't breathe .
In between Massa and Lee , upstate New York produced the Republican candidate for governor , Carl Paladino , who spent much of the race apologizing for sending pornographic and racist e-mails , interspersed by explanations of why it took him years to tell his wife that he had fathered an out-of-wedlock daughter
His supporters are reported to be urging him to run for Lee 's suddenly vacant seat
Do you think somebody in upstate New York has disturbed the sacred cemetery of a clan of extremely cranky witch doctors
Honestly , when you 've got high unemployment , terrible weather and a dwindling population , you should not be stuck with a rapidly revolving cast of horny politicians , too
Finally , we should be pondering whether it 's really such a great thing to have a new generation of legislators that puts a premium on being in good physical shape
Lee , who described himself as a `` fit fun and classy guy , '' apparently could n't wait to ship his potential hookup a deeply incriminating shot of his well-toned body
These people are already dangerously self-satisfied
Maybe we were better off with paunchy , aging guys who had to acknowledge , in their deepest heart , that if they were getting any sexual action at all it was only because they were on the Appropriations Committee
`` As a resident of New Jersey , I was insulted that you omitted the Garden State from this article
Why do New Yorkers always underrate us ?
`` There is a little Yankee ethnocentrism going on here
Surely South Carolina ... '' It 's heartening , in these soulless times , to see that state spirit rings so strong from sea -LRB- '' Do n't forget Maryland ! ''
to shining sea
-LRB- `` G overnment in Hawaii is easily as awful as any other state . ''
Not to mention the ever-surging American can-do spirit
-LRB- `` Idaho does not have the same totally dysfunctional political system as New York and Illinois , but we 're working on it . ''
A number of people wrote in to nominate Virginia , all of them citing the recent House passage of a bill to protect people from having microchips planted in their bodies against their will
The bill 's sponsor told The Washington Post that he was concerned the chips could be a `` mark of the beast '' that would be used by the Antichrist at the end of days
Actually , for this contest I was thinking more along the line of illegal behavior
But we can definitely consider a future competition for Legislation That Gives Us Pause
Californians were upset that their state did n't win , given its epic problems
-LRB- `` People worry that Greece is bankrupt hah ! ''
It 's certainly true that when it comes to finances , California is the new Mississippi the place that all the other states are glad to have around because it means that they ca n't come in worse than 49th
And the voters are definitely in a terrible mood
Many Americans are ticked off at their governors these days
However , Californians not only blame theirs for bad state services ; they also complain that he no longer looks all that great in a bathing suit
Of course , we got many irritated comments from residents of Illinois , most of whom were offended by the suggestion that New York was even in their league
-LRB- `` Are you kidding
It 's Illinois in a walk . ''
They demanded , rather haughtily , to know how many ex-governors of New York had passed through the penal system in recent years
`` We have almost four , '' one reader bragged , counting the Blagojeviches before they 're hatched
Picking the worst political culture is tricky since you always wonder if the states with the most politicians in handcuffs are the most corrupt or just the ones with the most efficient law enforcement system
Self-image also matters a lot
Connecticut 's former Republican governor , John Rowland , went to jail for political corruption in 2005
But even though he went up the river right behind the mayors of Bridgeport -LRB- corruption -RRB- and Waterbury -LRB- sex with minors -RRB- , most of the populace seemed to regard this as a temporary bad patch in an otherwise rather normal and well-ordered march through history
In some states , people do n't want to think of their government as a den of thieves
While in others , nothing makes residents happier than new evidence of the awfulness of their elected officials
When I worked in Connecticut years ago , one of the former Assembly leaders strangled his wife and dumped her body into the family swimming pool
Everyone thought it was terrible , but nobody saw it as part of a trend
If that happened in New York , people would nod sagely and start swapping stories of other politicians they knew who had done in their spouses or murdered someone in a body of water
Of course , we should try to figure out how to make the evil-doing go away rather than reveling in it
Several readers triumphantly noted that both New York and Illinois are blue states and concluded that liberalism breeds corruption
But nobody who saw what happened when the Republicans won a majority in Congress can delude themselves into imagining that you ca n't demand graft and tax cuts at the same time
A Chicago reader said he was so frustrated with the Illinois Democrats that he asked himself whether the last Republican governor had done better
`` Then I remembered that he was in jail .
In New York , at least , the problem seems to center in the State Legislature , which flourishes in a hothouse of utter voter indifference
If the day ever dawns that one-fifth of the voters are able to identify their state senator , a new world order will arrive
Until then , I would like to see all legislators be required to live in a large dormitory with lumpy beds whenever they 're in their state capital
And to eat all their meals in a cafeteria that serves a lot of chipped beef
Twenty eager contenders arrived last month in Coral Gables , Fla. , at an exclusive chateau with a defaulted mortgage , ready to compete for the dream job of a lifetime
At the end of each episode , their host , Joe Biden , distributes the coveted Roses of Change , inviting all but one contestant to continue on for another week
And now , only five remain
They have come from around the nation
People like you and me , only more interested in promoting market compliance
People like Caroline Kennedy , a mom from Manhattan hoping to find a career that will combine her desire to perform public service at the highest levels with her yen for total anonymity
Kennedy became the favorite after last week 's show , when she was the only contestant who knew that the pact under which the Commerce Department 's Bureau of Industry and Security regulates the export of solar cells is known as the Wassenaar Arrangement
Senator John Kerry , who answered `` The Peace of Westphalia , '' was sent home
Vice President Biden , who has broken into tears each time he is forced to withhold a rose from a hopeful contestant , sobbed uncontrollably as Kerry recalled how , when he was a child , his grandfather had told him that if he worked hard , one day he might grow up to enforce patent law for the entire nation
The contestants have grown close to one another over the long weeks of competition
Who could forget the slumber party when Christopher Dodd confessed to the other chateau guests that after all this time as chairman of the Senate banking committee , he still did n't exactly understand what a toxic asset was
Or the night when Lindsey Graham collapsed from stress after John McCain and Joe Lieberman demanded that he say which of them was his real best friend
Who Wants to Be a Secretary of Commerce
has proved to be one of the administration 's most popular TV contests
Its ratings have been second only to Survivor : Department of Health , Education and Human Services
The nation gave its heart to the spunky Barbara Mikulski and wept when John Edwards beat her in a fire-starting contest to win the final challenge
The only slightly less popular So You Think You Can Run the Labor Department riveted the nation when , in a shocking surprise ending , Dennis Kucinich beat out the fan favorite , Chris Matthews , with a crowd-pleasing performance in which Dennis and stunning wife Elizabeth sang `` The Ballad of Joe Hill '' while dancing the Macarena
The idea of filling the cabinet via TV games came to President Obama when Senator Judd Gregg changed his mind about becoming secretary of commerce
Gregg lost interest after discovering , late in the day , that he was a Republican and Obama was a Democrat
Instantly , dozens of other senators who were bored working in a place where everything important is decided by the three moderate Republicans , volunteered for the job
The new system helped reduce hard feelings , increase transparency and halved the unemployment rate in the critical reality-show sector
It worked out so well , in fact , that Obama has begun using it for sub-cabinet posts as well
Keep an eye out for the upcoming The Apprentice : Chief Performance Officer , in which Mitt Romney will be challenged to help Arnold Schwarzenegger save the California economy with a chain of lemonade stands in Los Angeles along Rodeo Drive
In tonight 's episode of Who Wants to Be a Secretary of Commerce
, attention turns to the Republicans
Graham , McCain and Rudy Giuliani will face off in a series of events that include seeing who can stand on one foot in a rainstorm for the longest time and delivering census forms to a public housing development
The winner will join Kennedy and dark-horse contender David Petraeus in the Final Three
Each will enjoy a dream dinner in a glamorous Tampa restaurant , during which Biden will ask them whether their role model in the job would be Herbert Hoover , Harry Hopkins or Philip Klutznick
Meanwhile , in other TV news , NBC has announced its midseason programming will be led off with `` The Women From Maine '' in which Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins play moderate Republican witches who try to make the world a better and more fiscally responsible place
Harry Reid will co-star as their befuddled landlord who thinks his tenants are unemployed actresses trying to break into the Portland theater business
Arlen Specter will play Squeaky , their impish helper
Mrs. Bush , Abstinence and Texas This month , The Houston Chronicle published an opinion piece by the former first lady titled `` We Ca n't Afford to Cut Education , '' in which Mrs. Bush pointed out that students in Texas currently rank 47th in the nation in literacy , 49th in verbal SAT scores and 46th in math scores
`` In light of these statistics , can we afford to cut the number of teachers , increase class sizes , eliminate scholarships for underprivileged students and close several community colleges ?
she asked
You 'd think there 'd be an obvious answer
But the Texas State Legislature is looking to cut about $ 4.8 billion over the next two years from the schools
Budgets are tight everywhere , but Perry , the state 's governor , and his supporters made things much worse by reducing school property taxes by a third in 2006 under the theory that a higher cigarette tax and a new business franchise tax would make up the difference
Which they did n't
`` In Austin , I 've got half-a-dozen or more schools on a list to be closed - one of which I presented a federal blue-ribbon award to for excellence , '' said Representative Lloyd Doggett
`` And several hundred school personnel on the list for possible terminations .
So the first choice is what to do
You may not be surprised to hear that Governor Perry has rejected new taxes
He 's also currently refusing $ 830 million in federal aid to education because the Democratic members of Congress from Texas - ticked off because Perry used $ 3.2 billion in stimulus dollars for schools to plug other holes in his budget - put in special language requiring that this time Texas actually use the money for the kids
`` If I have to cast very tough votes , criticized by every Republican as too much federal spending , at least it ought to go to the purpose we voted for it , '' said Doggett
Nobody wants to see underperforming , overcrowded schools being deprived of more resources anywhere
But when it happens in Texas , it 's a national crisis
The birth rate there is the highest in the country , and if it continues that way , Texas will be educating about a tenth of the future population
It ranks third in teen pregnancies - always the children most likely to be in need of extra help
And it is No. 1 in repeat teen pregnancies
Which brings us to choice two
Besides reducing services to children , Texas is doing as little as possible to help women - especially young women - avoid unwanted pregnancy
For one thing , it 's extremely tough for teenagers to get contraceptives in Texas
`` If you are a kid , even in college , if it 's state-funded you have to have parental consent , '' said Susan Tortolero , director of the Prevention Research Center at the University of Texas in Houston
Plus , the Perry government is a huge fan of the deeply ineffective abstinence-only sex education
Texas gobbles up more federal funds than any other state for the purpose of teaching kids that the only way to avoid unwanted pregnancies is to avoid sex entirely
-LRB- Who knew that the health care reform bill included $ 250 million for abstinence-only sex ed
Thank you , Senator Orrin Hatch !
But the state refused to accept federal money for more expansive , `` evidence-based '' programs
`` Abstinence works , '' said Governor Perry during a televised interview with Evan Smith of The Texas Tribune
`` But we have the third highest teen pregnancy rate among all states in the country , '' Smith responded
`` It works , '' insisted Perry
`` Can you give me a statistic suggesting it works ?
asked Smith
`` I 'm just going to tell you from my own personal life
Abstinence works , '' said Perry , doggedly
Tortolero , who lectures around the country on effective ways to prevent teenage pregnancy , once testified before a committee in the Texas House that was considering a bill to require that sex education classes only provide information that was medically accurate
The bill was controversial
I 'll let you ponder that for a minute
Tortolero said she got some support from a legislator who was also a pediatrician
`` We talked back and forth for a month
But some groups in Texas were threatening him and he was a very junior member , '' she recalled
The bill died
Meanwhile , Perry - having chosen not to help young women avoid unwanted pregnancies and not to pay enough to educate the booming population of Texas children - wowed the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington with his states ' rights rhetoric
Which would be fine , as I said , if his state was n't in charge of preparing a large chunk of the nation 's future work force
Perry used to be famous for his flirtation with talk of secession
Maybe we should encourage him to revisit it
The Conservative Political Action Conference begins Thursday in Washington
Glenn Beck is scheduled to give the keynote speech
Stephen Baldwin is slated to preside over a special nighttime youth event
As always , the right wing is great at producing hot talk shows and terrible at attracting hot actors
The workshops and panels range from `` Is It Time for a Catholic Tea Party ?
to `` Getting Started in Hollywood .
But the one that caught my eye was `` When All Else Fails : Nullification and State Resistance to Federal Tyranny .
How many of you out there thought we had settled the question of whether states have the right to nullify federal laws during the Lincoln administration
Can I see a show of hands
It 's civil war d j vu
The trick in conservative circles today is to see how furious you can get about Washington 's encroachment onto states rights without quite falling over the edge into Fort Sumter
The 10th Amendment to the Constitution , which gives the states all powers not delegated to the federal government , is all the rage
-LRB- The Second Amendment is so 2008 .
Its passionate fans , who are inevitably starting to be referred to as `` tenthers , '' interpret the amendment as pretty much restricting the federal government to military matters
They feel the health care reform bill is unconstitutional
Perhaps also Social Security
It 's hard for the Conservative Political Action Conference , which was the home of the right-wing fringe a decade or so ago , to keep ahead of the game
The kickoff event for the conference on Wednesday was a trek to Mount Vernon for the solemn signing of an extremely bland eulogy to federalism and the founding fathers by conservative dignitaries who appeared old enough to have dined there with George and Martha
Mitt Romney , who won the conference 's presidential straw poll last year after a Herculean lobbying effort , is back with a new book in which he warns that if America does n't change its ways it could wind up becoming the `` France of the 21st century .
We all know that Americans would hate to spend the next 90 years enveloped in serious wine and universal health care
But think about how much more threatening Romney 's warning must be for the French
Where are they supposed to go in this new world order
Do you think France would rather be the Latvia of the 21st century or the Finland
Romney , who is good-looking , wealthy and blessed with a lovely family , is , unsurprisingly , not actually very angry
He would like to be president and run the country like a business , but he is not the kind of guy who is in mourning for the Articles of Confederation
Romney 's most dramatic recent moment came when he was attacked by a fellow passenger on a flight home from the Olympics in Vancouver
A spokesman said Romney , who was not injured , was `` physically assaulted '' when he asked a man to raise his seat to an upright position before takeoff
Perhaps the assailant mistook Romney for a flight attendant
The attacker was taken off the plane but not charged , and Romney 's spokesman said there was no indication he recognized his victim
But maybe he did
Perhaps he was an irritable Democrat
Or maybe he was an animal lover , still seething over the fact that Romney once drove his family to Canada for a vacation with their Irish setter , Seamus , strapped to the roof of the car
But let 's agree right here and now that this is a bad idea
Not the dog on the roof
Although that , too , is really , really undesirable
But I was thinking of the attack
I digress
About the Conservative Political Action Conference
Some of the tenthers ' favorite stars were too busy to show up
Sarah Palin whose husband once flirted with the Alaska secessionists declined
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas who cuddled up to the Texas secession movement in 2008 is home running for re-election and wowing the crowd at a Tenth Amendment Town Hall
His strongest challenger for the Republican nomination appears to be a woman who told Glenn Beck that she had an open mind about whether there was any American government involvement in the 9\/11 attack
The news media , as Beck said to Katie Couric , is `` a sound-bite world a really nasty place to live .
I would like to think that this is just because we happen to be at a moment in history when the country has a huge number of TV , radio and Internet outlets fighting to be loud enough and shrill enough to get noticed
That 's what things were like with newspapers at the end of the 19th century , and I can not tell you what Grover Cleveland went through
But if that 's the explanation , this , too , shall pass
Like the Articles of Confederation
Long , long ago there was a television series , called `` Kolchak : The Night Stalker , '' about a newspaperman who spent most of his time tracking down demons of the underworld
Since his editor never believed his stories , Kolchak did not get in the paper much
Today , of course , he would be a blogger and have a wide international following although no real source of income
But I digress
The point here is that in one memorable episode , Kolchak was confronted by a politician who sold his soul to the devil in order to win a seat in the State Senate
When I first saw this particular program , coyly titled `` The Devil 's Platform , '' I was covering a real-life State Legislature in Connecticut
My first thought was that accepting eternal damnation in return for a career as a state senator was a little like swapping your house for a pair of socks
But lately I am beginning to wonder if , in our troubled times , being in a Senate any Senate actually is hell
Everybody has seen pictures of the state senators in California , held hostage to a spectacular financial fiasco , sleeping at their desks during the long , long hours of deliberations , which revolve around whether Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can get a wealthy Republican broccoli farmer to vote for his budget
And Washington
Imagine you 're Harry Reid , the majority leader
Every time something important comes up , you 've got to round up 60 votes
And Reid only has 59
One belongs to someone who is apparently doomed to spend the rest of his life in court in Minnesota , arguing about absentee ballot witness registration
And another , of course , belongs to Roland Burris , cursed with an inability to come up with a consistent story on whether he tried to raise money for Illinois ' rogue governor before said governor forked over a Senate seat
The other senators resent Burris because he is proof that just about anybody blessed with strong persistence and a weak memory can join their club
Reid should also consider the possibility that Burris has been infected by a mind-altering demon that could , at any moment , convince him that he dwells in a reverse reality where all good senators vote against the White House agenda
The U.S. Senate 's rules like those in California wind up leaving the power in the hands of a very few moderate Republicans
Everybody else just sits around reading their mail or , in the case of California , napping in the aisles while one or two members of the minority party tries to decide whether to let the economy fall off a cliff
The good news is that in Washington , the whole world is now run by Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe , both of Maine
True , not what you had in mind when you spent the last year obsessing about the next president
But way better than California , which is facing a series of end-of-times crises that include insolvency , 20,000 imminent layoffs and a halt to all public construction programs
And for weeks , it has all hung on State Senator Abel Maldonado , the above-mentioned broccoli farmer
As of last night , Maldonado was holding out for changes in the state election laws that would make it easier for him to get the Republican nomination to run for state controller
-LRB- I believe there was once an episode of `` Marcus Welby , M.D. '' in which a troubled would-be father refused treatment for sterility on the grounds that it would hurt his chances of being elected controller
Back in the day , it was inspiring what high regard TV scriptwriters had for state government .
Maldonado has always denied that his political ambitions had anything to do with his inability to make up his mind about the budget
Nevertheless , one of his ongoing demands has been to eliminate money for new office furniture for his mortal enemy , the current controller , John Chiang
The California situation is so dire that everybody in the state appears to have forgotten that their governor is a movie star
Schwarzenegger used to be one of the most famous people on the planet , and now he 's spent months begging members of his own party to throw him three lousy votes so he can keep the Department of Motor Vehicles ' offices open
When Arnold 's ally , the Senate minority leader , revved up the pressure , the Republicans responded by electing a new minority leader
On the plus side , all those arguments about whether the Constitution should be amended so people born outside the United States could run for president can be put on the back burner
If the nation 's only action-hero governor is at a loss , clearly new powers are needed
Look up that `` Night Stalker '' episode on the Web and you will learn that the demon soul-selling senator -LRB- Tom Skerritt -RRB- got `` the ability to assume the form of an indestructible black mastiff , and destroy his enemies both within his own party and opposing him .
I wonder if Harry Reid has heard about this
Sacred Cows , Angry Birds The Defense Department claims racecar sponsorships are an important recruiting tool for the Army
The House agreed - although this might be news to the Navy and Marines , which decided a while back that a Nascar presence was n't worth the money
`` What makes U.S. Army 's motorsports initiatives successful ?
Ryan Newman , driver of No. 39 U.S. Army Chevrolet asked his Facebook readers as he urged a show of support for the program
`` In a 2009 study among fans nationwide , 37 % feel more positive about the Army due to its involvement in motorsports .
Let 's stop right here and think about this posting
Is it likely that racing fans would think less of the Army for sponsoring racecars
Actually , would n't you expect the percentage to be higher
Also , how many of you believe Ryan Newman actually wrote those sentences
Can I see a show of hands
Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota , who sponsored an amendment eliminating the military 's Nascar connection , said it could save taxpayers `` tens of millions of dollars .
She got a flood of angry letters and one death threat
Also , her amendment was rejected , 148 to 281
The opponents did n't bother with much debate
`` This amendment is about politics in certain districts for certain groups of people , '' said Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina , a tad obliquely
McHenry was probably referring to the Democrats , who 've often been branded by the Republicans as tennis-watching snobs
The Obamaites actually spend vast amounts of time and money trying to woo `` Nascar dads , '' although given car racing 's sinking popularity , it might make more sense to target some other fan base
What about all the people who play games on their cellphones and iPads
Make 2012 the Year of the Angry Birds Dad or the Brickbreaker Aunt
But I digress
On Friday , the House was working its way through 129 amendments to its continuing budget resolution
There would have been 130 , but Representative Steve Womack of Arkansas retracted his proposal to cut off financing for President Obama 's teleprompter
The majority did vote , however , to eliminate money for a park in Nancy Pelosi 's district
The former House speaker has been demonized to the point that it 's safe to do anything to her short of kidnapping the family dog
Let 's give Speaker John Boehner credit for keeping his promise to give members more chance to debate and offer amendments
Really , if things get any more open , the members will start throwing themselves off the balcony
But not such high marks on consistency
The newly ascendant Republicans have been howling that the deficit is so big , so threatening , that no target for cutting is sacred
`` Everything is on the table
We 're broke , '' said Boehner
But the table is mainly crowded with stuff the Republicans did n't like to begin with
Family-planning money and environmental protection , but not oil tax breaks or Nascar sponsorships
`` Sesame Street '' is fair game , but the Daytona 500 is untouchable
`` Spending is out of control , '' cried Jim Jordan , the chairman of the Republican Study Committee , who argued for additional cuts in all nonsecurity discretionary spending - except aid to Israel
In Wisconsin , the new Republican governor , Scott Walker , wants to strip state employees of their collective-bargaining rights because : `` We 're broke
We 've been broke in this state for years .
Wisconsin 's Democratic state senators went into hiding to deprive the Republican majority of the quorum they need to pass Walker 's agenda
The Senate majority leader , Scott Fitzgerald - who happens to be the brother of the Assembly speaker , Jeff Fitzgerald - believes the governor is absolutely right about the need for draconian measures to cut spending in this crisis
So he 's been sending state troopers out to look for the missing Democrats
The troopers are under the direction of the new chief of the state patrol , Stephen Fitzgerald
He is the 68-year-old father of Jeff and Scott and was appointed to the $ 105,678 post this month by Governor Walker
Perhaps the speaker 's \/ majority leader 's father was a super choice , and the fact that he was suddenly at liberty after having recently lost an election for county sheriff was simply a coincidence that allowed the governor to recruit the best possible person for the job
You 'd still think that if things are so dire in Wisconsin , the Fitzgerald clan would want to set a better austerity example
And if Big Bird goes , we can spare the U.S. Army Chevrolet , too
Illinois voters go to the polls Tuesday to vote in a whole mess of important primaries
Barack Obama 's Senate seat on the line
Republican moderates vs. Tea Partyists
And once again , we are in the world of the angry voter
Really angry
Compared with Illinois , Massachusetts is Athens in the age of Pericles
Every single person running in the Illinois primaries seems to be an outsider
The state comptroller is an outsider
The former Republican party chairman is an outsider
If Rod Blagojevich were allowed to run for things anymore , he 'd be in this as an outsider
As things stand , however , the former governor is a contender only in the upcoming season of `` Celebrity Apprentice .
For those of us who do n't live in Illinois and therefore do n't have to worry about that $ 80 billion in unfinanced pension liabilities , the big story is Obama 's Senate seat
On the Democratic side , the front-runner for the nomination is Alexi Giannoulias
Definitely an outsider
The man is only 33 how could he have had enough time to get inside
Giannoulias is also the state treasurer and a former bank executive
If you are wondering how he managed to climb so far so fast , let me mention that his family owns the bank
A bank that made loans to people with shady connections and is currently under federal oversight , but still , it was undoubtedly a great learning experience
Giannoulias 's other claim to fame is that he is an old basketball-playing buddy of Obama 's
The White House is so enthusiastic about his candidacy that the administration tried unsuccessfully to get Lisa Madigan , the attorney general , to run instead
One of his opponents is Cheryle Robinson Jackson , the head of the Chicago Urban League
Jackson , who points out very frequently that she is a woman , is also the only African-American in the race
On the unhelpful side , she used to be spokeswoman for the only contestant on the upcoming `` Celebrity Apprentice '' who is both a former Illinois governor and under indictment
The Democrat who seems to be moving up in the polls is David Hoffman , the former Chicago inspector general
The inspector general is charged with rooting out corruption , waste and mismanagement
Chicagoans , in a fit of practicality , made this a permanent job in order to save valuable start-up time with every scandal
If Hoffman should manage to win , it will be a big upset that will demonstrate that the hunger for change extends beyond Tea Partyists and disgruntled independents , into the very heart of the regular Democrats
It will also be yet another sign that , in their contempt for politicians , voters are now willing to trust only people whose past experience is limited to taking their opponents to court
On the Republican side , the front-runner is Mark Kirk , a moderate congressman from the Chicago suburbs
There is no way you can possibly call Kirk an outsider , what with his being inside and all
And , as his more conservative opponents keep pointing out , there is no way you can call him a Tea Party candidate , what with his being ... moderate
But factionalism is so ... January
The Republicans are in the Scott Brown zone
Kirk is running around reminding people that the Senate seat in question is `` not Obama 's seat but the people 's seat , '' and doing everything to look Brownlike short of taking off his clothes for a Cosmo spread
Meanwhile , just to be safe , he has denounced his own vote for the House cap-and-trade energy legislation and has been begging Sarah Palin for an endorsement
Illinois is in such a mess that no one appears to want to spend much time talking about that unfinanced pension thing
Mainly , the various candidates just look for new and more innovative ways to defame one another
For instance , there 's a primary for the Republican nomination in a Congressional district that used to be represented by Denny Hastert , the former House speaker
Hastert 's 31-year-old son , Ethan , is running for the seat
This is apt since virtually every person running for anything in Illinois seems to be mainly known as the child of somebody else
His opponent in the primary is a state senator , Randy Hultgren , who claimed in one of his mailers that Hastert 's law firm `` lobbies on behalf of foreign mining companies with ... a history of human trafficking .
Even in these perilous times , it is not often that you see human trafficking pop up in a Congressional campaign
When Hastert pushed back , his opponent responded not by retracting the statement , but by recording a robocall apologizing to the voters for taking the campaign `` away from the issues .
This could be the beginning of a dangerous trend
Every time a public figure does something regrettable , I do not want to have to hear him apologizing on a recorded message during the dinner hour
Particularly if it 's John Edwards
This column appeared exclusively in the Web edition of The New York Times on February 1 , 2010
Today , our topic is : strange stories about Republican presidential hopefuls
Would you rather start with the one about Mitt Romney and the rapper , or Tim Pawlenty
Pawlenty , the governor of Minnesota , appeared before the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this week
The all-important question was whether he would be angry enough to win the hearts of the Tea Party-types
He does n't seem naturally irate
People call him T-Paw , which sounds like a character in a children 's cartoon maybe a lovable saber-toothed tiger with big feet
Or a pre-Little League game in which children who ca n't hit anything with a bat are allowed to just thwack at the ball with their fists
Politicians often get into trouble when they 're trying to sound more furious than they feel
And Pawlenty told the conservatives they should try to be more like ... Tiger Woods 's wife
`` We should take a page out of her playbook and take a 9-iron and smash the window out of big government in this country , '' he urged
The overall strangeness of this thought aside , consider the timing
An angry man had just smashed his airplane into an I.R.S. office in Austin , Tex. , killing one federal employee , injuring others and breaking quite a few windows
Does this seem like the very best time to be encouraging people to assault government property
Pawlenty 's defenders will undoubtedly say that he did not want his listeners to literally grab a golf club and hit something
But it is my experience that many Americans do not totally understand the concept of a metaphor
Another star of the conservative conference , Scott Brown , was worse
When the new senator from Massachusetts was asked on Fox News about the I.R.S. office attack , he appeared to embrace the possibility that the pilot of the plane might have been one of his followers
`` And I do n't know if it 's related , but I can just sense , not only in my election but since being here in Washington , people are frustrated , '' he said
`` They want transparency .
Let 's think this through
Andrew Joseph Stack III , the pilot , was a man with multiple hatreds , from Catholicism to unions , whose rage at the I.R.S. apparently began when the agency refused to allow him to declare his house a church for the purpose of avoiding taxes
And the end of the story is that he crashed a plane into a building , killing and injuring innocent people
Plus , he burned down his house
Where his wife and her daughter lived
How many of you think this story would have come out differently if there was more transparency in Washington
That if only President Obama had followed through on that pledge to put the health care negotiations on C-Span , Stack and the I.R.S. offices would all be with us today
When prodded by the interviewer , Brown agreed that sending a plane plowing into an office building was `` extreme '' and added , `` You do n't know anything about the individual
He could have had other issues
Certainly , no one likes paying taxes , obviously .
At least we now know that when Brown announced to his campaign victory party that his young daughters were `` available '' it was not a one-time slip of the tongue by a man who was normally more careful with his choice of words
Romney , who was introduced by Brown at the conservative event , had a less-dramatic take on current events
In his speech , he railed about `` liberal neo-monarchists '' but did not suggest beating them up with a golf club
As you may remember , Romney 's real big news moment this week occurred when he had an altercation with an unidentified passenger on a flight back from the Winter Olympics
A Romney spokesman said the former governor was attacked when he asked the man to raise his seat before takeoff
The mystery passenger has apparently now come forward
Sky Blu , a rapper with the group LMFAO , said the encounter began when Romney yelled at him about the seat and put a `` condor grip '' on his shoulder
`` No hard feelings to him
I 'm sure he 's a good dude , '' said Sky Blu , who was put on a different plane
We had wondered if this story had a political tinge , but the rappers , who specialize in songs about shot-drinking , do not seem like neo-monarchists
My niece , Becca , worked with LMFAO on a promotional video this week and reports that Romney 's name never came up
`` There was absolutely no political discussion whatsoever , '' she said in a tone of deep certainty
And my sorrow in discovering that the fight did not involve retribution for the day Romney drove his dog to Canada strapped to the roof of the family car was ameliorated by my joy at the vision of Mitt having an argument with a rapper about proper seat positioning for takeoff
The economic crisis is the most important current event there is
But when you see Alan Greenspan on TV announcing that he ca n't quite get his head around collateralized debt obligations , there 's a definite temptation to throw in the towel and change the subject
No , we 're made of stronger stuff
We 're citizens , darn it
As we 're all supposed to know , the Obama plan revolves around the creation of a public-private investment fund to help the banks sell off their toxic assets
The first important thing to point out is that the fund is not , under any circumstances , to be considered a bad bank
A bad bank is something created by a government to buy up toxic assets , cleaning out the financial system and then disposing of said assets for whatever the market will bear
Which sounds ... not irrational
But when you think of a bad bank , what do you imagine
You walk into the lobby decorated with portraits of Bernie Madoff , past a row of tellers who are not giving out any money because they are all too busy planning to have octuplets or adopting a chimpanzee as a family member
The executive suite is empty because everybody has gone off on his or her own personal corporate jet
To lunch
Which would consist only of products made with peanut butter
And the bad bank would , of course , have a corporate softball team that was open only to employees who took steroids on a regular basis
So , no bad banks
The government is just going to be a kind of helper , bringing the toxic asset buyers and sellers together , maybe creating some incentives to make the deals happen
This is going to take some really powerful persuasion
We 're pretty sure that a bunch of foreclosed homes in Coral Gables have value , even if the water in their swimming pools has turned a disturbing shade of green
But they 're all scrambled in those financial instruments that Alan Greenspan ca n't get a grip on
One problem with the government plan is that nobody is ever going to have any confidence in a savior called `` public-private investment fund .
The term aggregator bank has been floated around ; the Treasury Department should consider stealing it , since it sounds like a kind of Transformer
In a crisis , Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner could just yell `` Aggregator , we need help !
And a normal-looking office building would instantly change into an enormous avenger who clumps down the street squashing the nasty little toxic assets that scurry around , making unpleasant squeaks
If the banks and investors do n't get together and make deals , the Aggregator could always threaten to step on them
Is any of this necessary
What if the government just decides to stay out of it
Why does n't Washington stick to putting people to work building unnecessary highways and wait for capitalism to right itself
That 's a nonstarter because we 'd wind up like Japan did in the '90s , and nobody wants to be like Japan in the '90s
It is true that we all wanted to be like Japan in the '80s , in every possible way
But now , that is so over
The financial community wants the government involved , but it hates , hates , hates the Obama approach
This is partly because the details are fuzzy and partly because it is not Wall Street 's own favored option , which involves giving the banks tons and tons and tons of money until there is so much cash sloshing around that the financial markets bob up and start to float
We are trying not to get too fixated on the fairness aspects of the bailout
However , this approach seems to resemble a plan in which you fix a classroom that 's distracted by one disruptive pupil by sending said troublemaker to a private school in Lucerne equipped with an on-campus ski lift while the rest of the kids stay at Millard Fillmore Elementary , sharing textbooks
Also , if you just prop up dead banks , they could turn into zombie banks
That is definitely something you want to avoid
Imagine walking down the street and there 's a zombie bank plunked on the corner , gazing emptily at the passing traffic and making strange grunting noises
Occasionally , it will snatch up some pedestrians and feed them to the toxic assets
Instead of dancing around the problem , ca n't we just have the government take over the impacted banks , hire all the unemployed bond traders to figure out how much the toxic assets are worth , dispose of them for whatever the market will bear and then sell the newly reconstituted banks back to private investors
That was Sweden 's approach , and it worked rather well
The answer is that Americans will never do anything that Sweden does
Never have , never will
Do n't argue with me
It 's a rule
Who says we have heard everything there conceivably could be to say from the presidential candidates
There is something about an election year that makes politicians start bragging about how many furry or feathered critters they 've killed
Otherwise , God forbid , voters might think they were interested in doing something about gun control
So far , the most memorable gun comments during this campaign have been : `` I 'm pretty sure there will be duck hunting in heaven , and I ca n't wait .
Mike Huckabee `` I 've been a hunter pretty much all my life .
Mitt Romney `` I 've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter
Small varmints if you will .
Mitt Romney , amending the record once it was pointed out that he had never had a hunting license
`` Maybe he can get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his yard .
John McCain `` My father taught me to shoot 100 years ago .
Hillary Clinton This last , which we believe to be a slight exaggeration , came last week in Wisconsin
At another stop , when someone asked about gun control , Clinton told a story about how she went duck-hunting when she lived in Arkansas , and how the rest of her group , all male , made her shoot first in an effort to embarrass her
Thence followed a happy ending for everybody except the duck
During this presidential campaign the nation has experienced an extraordinary number of grisly shooting incidents , including four mass murders on college campuses , two at suburban shopping malls and the slaughter of city officials at a Missouri town meeting
Yet the subject of gun control never comes up
If people ask , politicians who have not been outdoors in months start tossing out hunter-talk in a manner that suggests that they 're driving around in a pickup with a deer carcass in the back
Clinton used to be very vocal about gun control when she was running for Senate in New York , but now there 's nothing about it on her Web site
Barack Obama has a 64-page `` Blueprint for Change '' manual that you can download if you feel burdened by an excess of both leisure and paper
It does not mention gun control once
Obama , to be fair , does not tell any stories about shooting waterfowl , and his campaign says he has never been hunting
However , he shares the general enthusiasm for avoiding the subject of gun control
In the old pre-presidential days , Obama indicated support for a ban on handguns in response to a questionnaire
Asked about that in Idaho recently , he said the form was filled out incorrectly by a staff member
John McCain ran afoul of the National Rifle Association when he tried to close a legal loophole that allows gun sellers to avoid doing background checks if they conduct their business at gun shows
That was then
More recently , he was quoted as saying he believes the Second Amendment means `` no gun control .
Clinton hit a new peak of obfuscation when she suggested the issue be handed over to a gun control summit `` where everybody comes together on all sides of this issue .
Really , the one potential downside of a Hillary Clinton presidency no one has discussed is the threat of summit overcrowding
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he sent a questionnaire to all the presidential candidates asking what they would do to help get illegal guns off the street
Only John Edwards and Ron Paul responded
-LRB- Maybe Obama was worried the rogue staff member might get his hands on it .
There was a time in this country when we seemed within reach of a sane gun policy that would have included licensing , laws against multiple gun purchases and bans on weapons that were of no use for sports or personal protection , like say , assault rifles
There was vast public support for these ideas , but they were extremely unpopular among critical pockets of voters in swing states
Many people believe Al Gore lost West Virginia and the 2000 election because of National Rifle Association attack ads
Since then , we 've had the sound of silence
When Tim Russert brought up gun control during a Democratic debate in Nevada , the candidates seemed to stiffen , as if he 'd made a tasteless joke
`` Well , I am against illegal guns , '' said Clinton , unnecessarily , before getting to the point : `` I am also a political realist , and I understand that the political winds are very powerful against doing enough to get guns off the street , get them out of the hands of young people .
For a finale , she retracted her former support for a national licensing registration plan
Russert pointed out that as a state senator , Obama had talked a lot about licensing and registering gun owners , and he asked Obama if he would pursue that goal as president
`` I do n't think that we can get that done , '' Obama responded
Yes We Ca n't
Correction : In regards to Thursday 's column , other countries besides China have shot down a satellite
Our very own United States , in fact , knocked the U.S. Solwind down in 1985
Revenge of the Pomeranians Right now concerned citizens are probably asking themselves : What will happen if the federal government shuts down
Also , why is the federal government in danger of shutting down
Whom can I blame for this
Does it have anything to do with what 's going on in Wisconsin
Did Congress pass a budget last year at all
Why not
And does this relate in any way to the report that Christine O'Donnell , the former United States Senate candidate from Delaware , may be joining the next cast of `` Dancing With the Stars ?
Wow , you are really asking yourselves a lot of questions , concerned citizens
Calm down
Right now , all around the country , federal agencies are making plans for an orderly way to shut down nonessential services if Congress fails to do anything to keep the boat afloat next week
The air traffic controllers will stay on the job , but I would not plan any visits to a national park if I were you
Hundreds of thousands of nonessential federal employees will be furloughed , stuck at home without a paycheck and contemplating their nonessentialness
The economy will tank
Nobody is going to be happy
Except perhaps some of the House members who prowl the corridors yowling about deficits like accountants on crack
They think they were elected to shut down the government , so the idea of closing nonessential services must sound like a day at the beach
All hope for averting disaster lies with Speaker John Boehner , who used to be a strangely tanned blowhard but is now regarded as a beleaguered statesman
This just happened a few days ago , so you may not have gotten the memo
Unfortunately , so far , Speaker Boehner has not been all that helpful
There is very little in Washington that ca n't be explained by an episode of the original `` Star Trek , '' and Boehner is playing out the one where the Romulan captain prefers the ways of peace but is saddled with a crew that will mutiny if he fails to follow through on the plan to blow up the galaxy
Our current problem began last year when Congress never got around to passing any appropriations bills
It 's not all that unusual for our elected officials to fail to complete their budgetary duties , but this was the first time they did n't accomplish anything
Really , you 'd think they would have issued a stamp to commemorate the achievement
To keep the government going , the House and Senate passed resolutions ordering the agencies to keep doing whatever they 'd been doing before
The latest resolution expires next week , and the new , transformed House wants to tell the agencies to do less
Last week , it passed a bill calling for a vast degree of lessness
This happened without a whole lot of preplanning
Although the Republicans are obsessed with stopping illegal immigration , they cut billions of dollars out of border security and immigration enforcement
`` Even with all the money in the world , the administration would not succeed in securing the border because they are not serious about it , '' theorized Lamar Smith , the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
President Obama , who has actually done quite a lot about border security , says he would veto the House version , which would wreak havoc with everything from veterans ' health care to Head Start
So the clock is ticking
To make things even more dramatic , the Senate 's metabolism is unchanged , and everyone has gone home to enjoy a much-needed vacation after two exhausting months during which the senators passed a bill on the Federal Aviation Administration and congratulated Barbara Mikulski on being the longest-serving female senator
One thing that never changes in Washington is the difference in metabolism between the House and Senate
Have you ever watched pet-rehabilitation shows like `` The Dog Whisperer ''
The House is the deranged Pomeranian that yelps and throws itself against the window and tears up the upholstery 24\/7
The Senate , meanwhile , is like a narcoleptic Great Dane you can hardly rouse for dinner
The senators are scheduled to get back into the swing of things on Monday with a reading of George Washington 's farewell address
Then the Senate majority leader , Harry Reid , has until Friday to come up with a plan
It 's quite a challenge
No doubt it was much on his mind when he made a big speech to the Nevada State Legislature this week and surprised everyone by demanding that the state have an `` adult conversation '' about its legal brothels
It did not appear to be the problem the politicians were expecting to tackle next
Still , you can understand his eagerness to talk about something nonbudgetary
I ca n't wait to move on to that question about Christine O'Donnell and `` Dancing With the Stars , '' which I am pretty sure will not require an argument about entitlements
Whenever a president gives a major address , like the one Barack Obama delivered to Congress this week , the opposition party delivers a rejoinder
Which American citizens always ignore
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal 's speech was , therefore , a kind of triumph
So bad , people actually paid attention
We will pass over Jindal 's delivery , which sounded a little like a junior high schooler 's entry into the Chamber of Commerce `` I Speak for Fiscal Restraint '' contest
The content was the thing : a message to the nation that the Republicans were not going to have anything important or useful to say about the current economic crisis
Absent any deep thoughts , the Republicans are going to complain about waste
The high point of Jindal 's address came when he laced into `` wasteful spending '' in the stimulus bill , and used as an example a $ 140 million appropriation for keeping an eye on the volcanoes in places like Alaska , where one is currently rumbling
`` Instead of monitoring volcanoes , what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington , D.C. , '' Jindal claimed
I do n't know about you , but my reaction was : Wow , what a great stimulus plan
The most wasteful thing in it is volcano monitoring
Louisiana has gotten $ 130 billion in post-Katrina aid
How is it that the stars of the Republican austerity movement come from the states that suck up the most federal money
Taxpayers in New York send way more to Washington than they get back so more can go to places like Alaska and Louisiana
Which is fine , as long as we do n't have to hear their governors bragging about how the folks who elected them want to keep their tax money to themselves
Of course they do
That 's because they 're living off ours
O.K. , I 'm done
The Republicans ca n't try to convince the country their ideas are better because of that intellectual bankruptcy problem
All they can do is make Barack Obama 's programs look feckless , plunging everyone into so much despair that by next summer the public will be ready to go live in caves and eat squirrel stew
The waste argument is a perpetual winner because there will always be some
Years ago , when I was a reporter , I remember getting a call from a woman in the Bronx who was screaming : `` They 're over on Moshulu Parkway planting dead trees !
Sure enough , a city work crew was digging holes along the side of the street and carefully sticking in brown and dried-up pieces of foliage
The men claimed the trees had simply lost their leaves for the winter an explanation somewhat undermined by the fact that they were evergreens
I 'm telling you this because on Tuesday I was talking with a high-ranking Obama administration official about the stimulus plan
`` There will be a dead tree planted , figuratively speaking , '' he said somberly
`` That will happen .
How could it not
Much of the stimulus money is being channeled through state and local governments , through tens of thousands of governors , mayors , county executives , transportation commissioners , parks superintendents and so on
Try to imagine the person in that pyramid with the lowest I.Q. , and you 'll understand that there 's a dead-tree planter hidden in there somewhere
The White House is trying to overcome this problem with a Transparency and Accountability Board , overseen by Vice President Joe Biden
It is supposed to reassure the public that the stimulus money is n't being wasted
But some people within the administration are arguing that that is n't enough , that the government needs to bombard people with examples of what 's being done right like holding big rallies for all the schoolteachers whose jobs are saved by the stimulus
Or and I swear to you this is a real idea inventing a kind of stimulus logo , like the old National Recovery Administration blue eagle , that could be posted on every federally funded project , as one official explained , `` to show the public exactly what we 're doing .
Let us skip over the fact that the National Recovery Administration is best remembered as the part of the New Deal that did n't work
Because we are instantly fascinated by the idea of designing that logo
How about : Erp the Economic Recovery Portuguese Water Dog Sasha and Malia 's incoming White House pet , setting a good example by taking on a second job to help support the family
Arnie the Ant and Ginny the Grasshopper Both wearing overalls and carrying shovels , symbols that troubled times fall equally hard on the party animals and the serious guys who saved their money and invested it with Bernie Madoff
Petey the Penguin Do n't want to go with another eagle
But everybody likes penguins
They march ; they do n't fly into airplane engines ... Joe Biden Dressed like a penguin
Or , if all else fails , they could just get Bobby Jindal a prime-time program
Presidential Primary Book Club One of a journalist 's most important duties is to seek out information in places the readers would n't go themselves , like following troops into combat or covering charter revision commission hearings
In that spirit , I have been reading all the books written by likely candidates for the Republican presidential nomination
Almost all
It 's one thing to tackle the oeuvre of Tim Pawlenty , which is one book
But our author today , Mike Huckabee , has written nearly a dozen , including `` Living Beyond Your Lifetime , '' `` Ca n't Wait Till Christmas '' and `` Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork .
We are just going to stick to his I-want-to-be-president efforts
I know you would rather hear about Christmas and dieting
But be serious
We have a campaign to prepare for
Huckabee , you will remember , ran for president in 2008 and was regarded as the most likable guy in the Republican debates
This was not actually all that heavy a lift and he has an excellent chance of continuing the tradition , if the rest of the field is Mitt Romney , Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum
His political intentions are still a little hazy , but personally , I hope he runs
I am looking forward to having more opportunities to discuss his revelation during the last campaign that when he was in college , he used to fry squirrels in a popcorn popper in the dorm room
Also , it will be interesting to see exactly which Huckabee shows up
The guy who wrote his early books does not much resemble his most recent literary incarnation
Both authors dislike big government , but I believe it is only the new Huckabee who hates government-subsidized school breakfasts
-LRB- `` Our pioneer forebears - who grew the wheat for their toast and the apples for their juice , who raised the cow for their milk - would be appalled at how pathetic many of us have become . ''
Huckabee 's new book , which he will be signing in Iowa this weekend , is called `` A Simple Government : Twelve Things We Really Need From Washington -LRB- And a Trillion That We Do n't ! -RRB-
This guy has a real thing about the number 12
Witness `` A Simple Christmas : Twelve Stories That Celebrate the True Holiday Spirit .
And then there 's my favorite , `` From Hope to Higher Ground , '' which was written by the rather sweet-natured 2007 Mike Huckabee
It has 12 chapters with titles like `` STOP Robbing the Taxpayers '' and `` STOP Abusing Our Planet .
Each chapter ends with 12 `` action steps '' that you , the reader , can take to accomplish the goal
By the end you have a 144-item to-do list , ranging from `` Buy Girl Scout cookies '' to `` Run for office !
Some of the action steps are extremely practical -LRB- `` Keep receipts for tax-deductible items '' -RRB- and some are unarguable
-LRB- `` Always say ` Thank you . ' ''
However , I 'm not sure that I 'm prepared to stop people I see taking their kids shopping and say : `` It just does my heart good to see a parent spend time with his\/her child !
That old Mike Huckabee spent his defining years as a minister and had sympathy for the most ostracized of the downtrodden , like illegal immigrants
`` It hardly seems Americans should truly feel threatened by people who pluck chickens , pick tomatoes , make beds , wash dishes or mow lawns , '' he wrote in `` From Hope to Higher Ground .
The best solution to the problem , he said , was to allow people who are here illegally to `` pay a reasonable fine '' and then put them on a path to legal citizenship
-LRB- The to-do list recommended : `` Attend a naturalization ceremony . ''
The new book , however , is by a Huckabee whose defining life experience seems to have been hanging out at the Fox studios
Perhaps he contracted some sort of personality-changing virus
Or maybe visitors from another planet swooped down and switched his brain with Glenn Beck 's
In `` A Simple Government , '' Huckabee laces into Democrats for suggesting that illegals `` pay a fine and back taxes '' and then be put on a path to legal citizenship
That 's `` amnesty !
Mike 2.0 hates it
The new book is basically one long howl about the Obama White House , whose occupants Huckabee compares to `` the kid in school who waves his A test score in front of the entire class but never gets picked to play baseball
He 's an arrogant nerd , and no matter how smart he is , he ca n't hit , he ca n't throw and he ca n't run .
This is after he warns , in the introduction , that `` if you 've come here looking for a personal attack on President Obama and those in Washington , you should head to another shelf in the bookstore .
That 's on Page 1
The brain-switching space alien arrived somewhere around Page 6
His current book tour may take him to your hometown any day
If it does , ask him about the illegal immigrants
Also , whether the squirrels were dead before they got popped
This is a no-frills kind of place , suspicious of glamour
Barack Obama 's promise to make politics cool again does n't necessarily resonate here
Eight presidents came from Ohio , and the coolest was William McKinley
When I grew up in Cincinnati , we always rooted for the players who worked really , really hard , not the ones who were so talented they made everything look easy
If Hillary were a baseball player , she 'd be Pete Rose
Minus , of course , the unfortunate gambling issues and the tendency to scratch inappropriate places while standing in the infield
So there she was Wednesday here in Zanesville , holding an economic summit in a gymnasium with a huge table stuffed full of participants , including the founder of Weight Watchers ; former Senator John Glenn , the heroic astronaut who once put the entire Democratic presidential convention to sleep with his keynote speech ; and the governor of Ohio , a vice presidential hopeful who looks like an unidentified passer-by
`` We have to start acting like Americans again , and roll up our sleeves and start solving our problems , '' Clinton said , launching one of the least-exciting discussions of economic development in memory
There she sat , one of the best-known human beings on the planet
The first woman ever to be a serious United States presidential contender ; the face that launched a thousand books ; a former first lady , current U.S. senator and survivor of the most famous sex scandal of the century
And yet she has managed to become the boring candidate in this primary
This is one of the great anti-glamour stories in history
How could Ohio not relate
If Hillary can win this one and if she does n't , she is as cooked as reheated risotto it will be because people here worry that Barack Obama is getting show-offy
It 's not his fault
Contrary to rumor , he is not planting those people who faint from excitement at his rallies
Nevertheless , they continue to topple , and by now Barack is so used to this particular crisis that it has become almost a part of the rally routine
`` If we have an E.M.T. in the house , I think somebody got faint , '' he said calmly when a woman keeled over in front of the stage in Cincinnati
`` They just need a little water and some juice .
At the debate on Tuesday , Clinton followed through on her promise to hit Obama hard on campaign fliers that she said mischaracterized her positions on trade and health care
She had been billing this confrontation in terms usually reserved for professional wrestling grudge matches
But earlier that day , a right-wing radio commentator at a John McCain rally denounced Obama in terms so over the top that McCain felt obliged to apologize
After that , a sloppy quotation mark in a Nafta pamphlet sounded pretty petty
What 's the Clinton campaign come to when she ca n't get equal denunciation time from a right-wing nut job
Back around Debate 10 lo those many debates ago Hillary routinely wiped the floor with Barack
He was reluctant and stumbling
She was confident and presidential
Then , as Adam Nagourney pointed out in The Times this week , he suddenly evolved
Now , he 's better than she is calm and witty at crucial junctures , always to the point , never obsessing on the small stuff
After this week 's Debate 20 , Hillary 's people gloated over the fact that Barack had said he agreed with her entirely on several key points , as if this was an admission of weakness rather than the key to his campaign the promise to find whatever consensus there is and build on it
If Hillary is stumbling , it may be because there just is n't any good path to take
Nobody wants a bloodbath , and fighting against the first possible African-American president can be as tricky as going after the first possible woman
Still , she might have been able to handle all that , and the fact that he is a product of Kansas and Hawaii and Kenya , of Christians and Muslims , of a single mom on food stamps and Harvard Law , if he did n't also turn out to have the best learning curve in political history
You do n't often see a candidate on a trajectory like Obama 's , and at some point it will inevitably head down again
But until it does , even the original Bill Clinton would have a hard time beating him
If things do n't go well for Hillary over the next few weeks , some of her consultants may need retraining for a promising new career in , say , motel management , but here 's what I hope she understands
She 's done fine
And she 'd probably have won the nomination walking away if Barack had n't picked this moment to mutate into BARACK
You do your best , and if things do n't work out , it just was n't your time
Life is n't always fair
All of which Ohio understands very well
Earlier this month , the ABC soap opera `` One Life to Live '' featured a scene in which Todd , the publisher of the local newspaper , and Tea , his lawyer , had a conversation about Todd 's legal problems , which ranged from being a murder suspect to being on trial for kidnapping
Tea : I warmed up some soup for you
I do n't want you to go to the police station on an empty stomach
-LRB- Already we are on new ground since characters in soap operas do not , as a rule , ever eat anything .
Todd : What kind of soup is this
Tea : It 's Campbell 's
It 's healthy , good for your heart
Todd : -LRB- spooning away -RRB- Yeah , it 's good
Before we go any further , let me just say that I understand soap operas are not high on your list of concerns , what with the economy flat-lining and all
However , the two things are somewhat related
... Which I will explain after pointing out that I do not actually spend my afternoons watching `` One Life to Live .
Do we have that clear
O.K. , let 's move forward
For some time now , characters in daytime dramas have been taking time from their normal activities , like having amnesia , to engage in animated discussions about the sponsors ' products
The ABC soap actors spent February talking about how Campbell 's soup and other assorted products are good for your heart
-LRB- And tasty , too !
Lynn Leahey , the editorial director of Soap Opera Digest , pointed to an episode of `` As the World Turns '' in which Margo needed to get her hair fixed before a date with her husband -LRB- do n't ask -RRB- and reached for a bottle of Nice 'n Easy Root Touch-Up
`` I feel like I took off 10 years in 10 minutes !
she exclaimed
And here 's the thing
Viewers do n't complain
`` Oh well ... To keep the soaps on the air
To keep the actors paid , '' wrote a philosophical e-mailer on a soap opera chat site
Daytime dramas are swimming in choppy waters these days
Ratings are down
Shows are getting canceled
`` They 're struggling to find a business model that works , '' said Leahey , in a remark I have heard a time or two lately in other contexts
So , the viewers acquiesce
In fact , for all the complaining about car bailouts and greedy bankers , people have become extremely tolerant of irritating behavior on the part of struggling corporations
Lines we never even bothered to think of as lines are being crossed
Last summer in Las Vegas , the anchors on the local Fox station started delivering the news with two prominently placed cups of McDonald 's iced coffee in front of them
A spokesperson called it a `` nontraditional revenue source .
It 's only a matter of time before TV reporters conclude interviews with disaster victims by asking if they would n't like a refreshing glass of V-8
We have long since gotten used to the idea that movies are awash with product placements , that the basketball game we 're watching is part of , say , the Doritos Home Classic at the Dunkin' Donuts Center
Reality shows on television exist in part to get ratings and in part to remind you that the `` Top Chef '' contestants are cooking on G.E. appliances
Now , you have to wonder if the postcrash networks are going to be taking things to a whole new level
That soon , the painkiller-addicted Dr. House will be telling the hospital that he does n't need morphine now that he 's found Advil
All those forensic experts on prime-time crime shows will interrupt their investigations to discuss how the lab smells so fresh now that the janitor 's using Pine-Sol
On `` 24 , '' Jack Bauer will not just drive a Hyundai sedan
After every chase he 'll turned to his terrified passenger and say : `` Are those antilock brakes terrific , or what ?
We 've been hearing about advertisers whose search for the missing customer led them to rent out space on people 's foreheads , or `` cranial billboards .
And people , of course , are turning their heads over without a second thought
Tough economic times require tough measures
Unions have to give back benefits ; investors have to forget about dividends
Anything that can be sold , will be
In New York City , the sides of subway cars are now being covered with ads the first touts a History Channel program with art and tag lines
Do you know how much blood and sweat the city dedicated to getting graffiti off the sides of the subways
But nobody 's complaining
The transit system is $ 1.4 billion in the hole
It 's the least of our worries
And to tell you the truth , if the time comes when the assembled publishers of America determine that the only way to keep newspapers in operation is to have their employees wear jackets that say `` I Kmart '' on the back , I 'm there
The Man With the Snow Job This week , 70 percent of the country was looking at snow
Florida is the only state that has not seen snow this winter
But Florida has gotten icicles in the orange groves plus a new governor whose claim to fame was running a corporation that cheated the federal government out of enormous amounts of money
Florida 's not feeling all that superior
Chicago 's snowfall was so huge that the news media ran out of things to attach to `` snow '' - thundersnow
The storm beat the world-famous blizzard of 1979
Really , if you 're going to be cold and miserable and inconvenienced , you might as well be setting a record
The blizzard of 1979 is world-famous because Chicago 's snow removal efforts went badly , causing everyone to turn on then-mayor Michael Bilandic , who was kicked out of office six weeks later in the Democratic primary
Coincidentally , there 's a Democratic primary coming up this month , and candidates have been shoveling snow off cars and sidewalks all around the city
Not content with snow removal photo-ops , Rahm -LRB- I Live Here !
Emanuel , a Chicago mayoral candidate , also wasted no time in sending off a storm-related e-mail , offering `` a few helpful tips '' on how to weather the weather
They included : `` Do n't make any unnecessary trips outside .
And : `` If you must go outside , wear several layers of warm , dry clothing
Keep your extremities covered
Wear hats , gloves , winter boots and warm socks .
People , if someone was preparing to walk off into 2 feet of snow without socks and boots , do you think an e-mail from Rahm Emanuel would make that person think twice
Let 's see a show of hands
But I digress
We are sick of bad weather and looking for a dumping place for all our bad vibrations
Ideally , we would like to blame one specific person - like the evil queen in the movie `` Red Sonja '' who used a magic orb to destroy entire civilizations with terrible storms until she was vanquished by Red Sonja and Arnold Schwarzenegger
But that was a long time ago when Schwarzenegger was still saying things like , `` If you yield only to a conqueror , then prepare to be conquered , Little Sonja .
Now , he is more likely to say , `` Let 's fix the pension problem , '' and California has been having terrible weather
Nevertheless , I do n't think we can pin this on Arnold
Al Gore , on the phone between plane flights Wednesday , of course , pointed to global warming
`` Here 's a basic fact , '' he said
`` There is about 4 percent more water vapor in the atmosphere today than there was in 1970 .
That extra water , he said , is because of warmer oceans and warmer air , and is returning to earth as extra-heavy rain and snow
Remind me again why we are n't fighting global warming
It 's win-win
Even if all the hordes of scientists are wrong in believing that human beings are causing climate change , the remedies would still be good for the environment and for energy independence
We could always blame George W. Bush - that never gets old
But Gore declined to be helpful when it came to fixing blame
`` I 'm sorely tempted to throw out three or four names , but it would n't be right , '' he said , showing a depressing level of prudence for someone who was spending the day trying to get cross-country by airplane
We could blame President Obama for doing health care reform instead of global warming , but Congress is even more afraid of the energy lobby than the insurance companies
The president seems to be planning to do what he can by regulation
That prospect makes Republicans so angry that they 're introducing legislation to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from using its powers under the Clean Air Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Obviously , there is nothing more nefarious than having the agency in charge of protecting the environment use the clean air law to keep harmful gases out of the atmosphere
The Senate sponsor is James Inhofe of Oklahoma , who recently claimed that the supercold winter proves that theories about global warming are `` an intellectual fraud .
We could blame Senator Inhofe , but he really is n't all that satisfactory a villain
It 'd sort of be like blaming nuclear proliferation on gophers
Another opponent of E.P.A. action , Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois , used to be aligned with the environmentalists - until he left his moderate House district to run in a Republican Senate primary and abruptly switched positions
Defending himself in a recent interview with Greenwire , Kirk claimed that there was no longer real support for a climate change bill because of `` the personal and political collapse of Vice President Gore .
In other words , environmental warrior Al Gore is responsible for the weather , as well as the pathetic wimpiness of Mark Kirk
Let 's just think of it as the Senator Kirk snowpocalypse
Still , how can you not be fascinated when the White House announces it wants to cancel plans to put an American on the moon by 2020
Were n't we already there
I have a distinct memory of watching a guy who looked a little like the Pillsbury Doughboy , planting an American flag in moon dirt back in 1969
The TV was black and white
Walter Cronkite was so excited
And did n't George W. Bush promise to get us to Mars
Well , the first step to Mars is apparently moon-visitation
NASA now admits the best-case scenario for that is actually 2030
After that , of course , things would move much faster , until a midflight technical malfunction puts Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon in mortal danger
But things will end happily
Before you know it , the Dow hits 1,000 , Richard Nixon resigns , and Mars , here we come
The White House wants to save $ 3.4 billion a year with a game-changing\/paradigm-shifting space program that does not require any moon landings
The new goal is a little hazy
But it involves , as a spokeswoman for the space agency put it , `` going farther , faster , to interesting destinations as we learn things .
Beyond that , all I can tell you for sure is that it will be bold
But bold in a less-expensive way
In Washington , this is always a time of innocent hope , when earnest budgeteers look for unnecessary programs to ax so they can prove to the country that government is efficient
This year , the Department of Education wins the fiscal tidiness award , having proposed to eliminate seven programs , consolidate 38 others and wipe out $ 123 million in earmarks
Good work , Department of Education
And good luck actually getting rid of them
Cutting a federal program is next to impossible because there 's usually somebody who cares much more about keeping it than the White House does about making it go away
Senator Bill Nelson of Florida is already making soft whimpering noises about the NASA budget cuts , which will , if necessary , eventually rise to guttural howls
Before the budget document even went out , Senator Chuck Schumer of New York had issued a scathing press release attacking plans to eliminate $ 5 million in grants to manufacturers of worsted wool
`` I will fight to make sure this proposal never sees the light of day , '' said Schumer , who claimed that dropping the grants could ruin `` Rochester 's iconic Hickey Freeman , '' a men 's clothing company
It turned out that Hickey Freeman gets a different wool-manufacturer break entirely
Rochester is saved
My own favorite target for extinction is a $ 9 million annual appropriation for museums and educational programs that highlight the `` shared culture and tradition '' of Alaskan Natives , Native Hawaiians and `` children and families of Massachusetts .
In other words , whaling
This was originally the idea of Ted Kennedy and two colleagues from Alaska and Hawaii
Perhaps they had all just finished rereading `` Moby-Dick '' in a Senate book club
Or maybe somebody bet them they could n't think of an earmark that would apply to only their three states
In 2006 , Congress did vote to add a fourth beneficiary of the whaling museum money the Choctaw Indians of Mississippi
No one seems to know why , but we 're pretty sure it has more to do with the state 's earmark-loving senior senator , Thad Cochran , than Mississippi 's rich whaling tradition
Cochran happens to be vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee , and I 'm betting he also has the answer to why the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation , which was established to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America , is still in business 18 years after the fact
I am only saying this because the vice chairman of the foundation 's board of trustees is the former leader of the Mississippi Republican Party
The chairwoman is a Republican realtor from Arizona
`` I feel so terrible , '' one budget maven told me
`` I always secretly imagined it had something to do with Nancy Pelosi .
The Columbus foundation gives out prizes to people who , um , discover things and runs a contest for middle school students who have ideas about community improvement
The winners go to Disney World and then to the Christopher Columbus Academy , which also happens to be in Disney World
Is that worth a million dollars a year in federal money
I 'm more jealous than angry
I 've always wanted to get something really neat and wasteful from Washington , like a pigeon museum
But , no , all we get are grants to look for explosives in the harbor
It does seem as if the people who spend all their time carping about the deficit should step up to the plate , though
We are looking at you , Scott Brown
Give back that whale money
The economy is in crisis , and we are so relieved that the Senate has finally gone to work debating the critical stimulus plan and ... Oh , dear Lord
John McCain is making a speech about earmarks .
... $ 188,000 for the Lobster Institute , which includes a lobster cam at the bottom of the ocean that so far we have n't been able to work !
Earmarks , you will remember , are those frequently porky little bits of appropriations for specific projects that legislators like to stick into budgets
During the presidential race , McCain gave the definite impression that earmarks were a threat to the nation 's well-being second only to radical Islamic fundamentalism
And although McCain lost the election -LRB- by a lot , really -RRB- , Barack Obama still made a point of saying that there would be no earmarks in the stimulus bill
Which there are not
Nor is there anything for the Lobster Institute
But the old stories are always the best stories
Anyway , we 're talking government spending , so there must be something nefarious somewhere
`` You do n't have to call it an earmark and it does n't have to be technically an earmark , but ... that 's certainly their effect , '' McCain said darkly
The Republicans have been doing an extremely thorough job of making this American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -LRB- stimulus bill to its friends -RRB- sound like a wasteful ball of lobster cameras
Even its authors now seem a little embarrassed
`` It may not be perfect , but it 's pretty good , '' said Max Baucus , the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee , defensively
Come on , people
Let 's give the stimulus some love
What 's not to like
That it 's messy
My desk is messy
Everything Congress ever touches is messy
It 's true that you could produce a much tidier stimulus plan with a few big , whopping tax cuts
But that could only conceivably work if people went right out and spent the money
Unfortunately , recent history suggests that they are more likely to stick it in a pillow that they can hug while lying in a fetal position and listening to the evening news
It is also true that some of the bill 's priorities , like increased aid to low-income college students , are more useful than stimulative
But who wants to rail against Pell Grants
You wind up sounding like Kay Bailey Hutchison on `` Meet the Press , '' complaining obliquely about `` nice spending , but not necessary right now .
So the opponents focus on things with names that sound frivolous or funny
This is an old game that works for almost any form of human communication
Let me explain with a story
When I was beginning my career as a reporter , I once covered a shooting in which the victim was gunned down while playing an arcade video game
This was so long ago that the game in question was Pong
It was not a very interesting crime , and under normal circumstances it would have vanished in the daily ebb and flow of New York City police reports
However , the shooter made the terrible mistake of including a colorful detail , and he became the Pong Slayer , whose every court appearance merited additional coverage
The Republicans ' real objection is that the Democrats want to grow the size of government
But they 're playing Pong
This bill has money to fix a school swimming pool in Meriden , Conn.
What kind of priority is that
There 's millions to re-seed the National Mall
By now , the public has gotten the idea that it 's all a big waste , something the Communicator in the Oval Office has not been very good at contradicting
It 's time for a presidential address to the nation , with charts and perhaps a little illustration of California dropping off into the ocean
Whenever the Republicans bring up anything in the stimulus bill that sounds a little weird , the Democrats have been pathetically eager to throw in the towel
Witness the Senate 's defeat of $ 246 million in tax breaks for Hollywood studios , which might not have sounded so silly if you were a college student whose father is a cameraman
At the insistence of the White House , the Democrats eliminated $ 200 million to expand federal assistance to states that want to provide family-planning services to poor women
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the money would eventually save about $ 400 million by cutting unwanted pregnancies
But it became a big rallying point for social conservatives
-LRB- `` Wo n't fewer people mean fewer taxpayers ?
demanded columnist Cal Thomas .
So goodbye family planning
The $ 200 million to fix up the National Mall was tossed out in the House
The much-decried money for disaster insurance for the honeybee industry , which is already the subject of snippy T-shirts , never existed , according to the Senate Appropriations Committee
Or if it did , it 's been whisked away and buried under the floorboards
If you 're walking around and happen to see a very large but very battered stimulus bill hobbling by , give it a pat on the back
It 's been Ponged within an inch of its life
The Siege of Planned Parenthood As if we did n't have enough wars , the House of Representatives has declared one against Planned Parenthood
Maybe it 's all part of a grand theme
Last month , they voted to repeal the health care law
This month , they 're going after an organization that provides millions of women with both family-planning services and basic health medical care , like pap smears and screening for diabetes , breast cancer , cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases
Our legislative slogan for 2011 : Let Them Use Leeches
`` What is more fiscally responsible than denying any and all funding to Planned Parenthood of America ?
demanded Representative Mike Pence of Indiana , the chief sponsor of a bill to bar the government from directing any money to any organization that provides abortion services
Planned Parenthood does n't use government money to provide abortions ; Congress already prohibits that , except in cases of rape , incest or to save the life of the mother
-LRB- Another anti-abortion bill that 's coming up for hearing originally proposed changing the wording to `` forcible rape , '' presumably under the theory that there was a problem with volunteer rape victims
On that matter at least , cooler heads prevailed .
Planned Parenthood does pay for its own abortion services , though , and that 's what makes them a target
Pence has 154 co-sponsors for his bill
He was helped this week by an anti-abortion group called Live Action , which conducted a sting operation at 12 Planned Parenthood clinics in six states , in an effort to connect the clinic staff to child prostitution
`` Planned Parenthood aids and abets the sexual abuse and prostitution of minors , '' announced Lila Rose , the beautiful anti-abortion activist who led the project
The right wing is currently chock-full of stunning women who want to end their gender 's right to control their own bodies
Homely middle-aged men are just going to have to find another sex to push around
Live Action hired an actor who posed as a pimp and told Planned Parenthood counselors that he might have contracted a sexually transmitted disease from `` one of the girls I manage .
He followed up with questions about how to obtain contraceptives and abortions , while indicating that some of his `` girls '' were under age and illegally in the country
One counselor , shockingly , gave the `` pimp '' advice on how to game the system and was summarily fired when the video came out
But the others seem to have answered his questions accurately and flatly
Planned Parenthood says that after the man left , all the counselors - including the one who was fired - reported the conversation to their supervisors , who called the authorities
-LRB- One Arizona police department , the organization said , refused to file a report .
Still , there is no way to look good while providing useful information to a self-proclaimed child molester , even if the cops get called
That , presumably , is why Live Action chose the scenario
`` We have a zero tolerance of nonreporting anything that would endanger a minor , '' said Cecile Richards , the president of Planned Parenthood
`` We do the same thing public hospitals do and public clinics do .
But here 's the most notable thing about this whole debate : The people trying to put Planned Parenthood out of business do not seem concerned about what would happen to the 1.85 million low-income women who get family-planning help and medical care at the clinics each year
It just does n't come up
There 's not even a vague contingency plan
`` I have n't seen that they want to propose an alternative , '' said Richards
There are tens of millions Americans who oppose abortion because of deeply held moral principles
But they 're attached to a political movement that sometimes seems to have come unmoored from any concern for life after birth
There is no comparable organization to Planned Parenthood , providing the same kind of services on a national basis
If there were , most of the women eligible for Medicaid-financed family-planning assistance would n't have to go without it
In Texas , which has one of the highest teenage birthrates in the country , only about 20 percent of low-income women get that kind of help
Yet Planned Parenthood is under attack , and the State Legislature has diverted some of its funding to crisis pregnancy centers , which provide no medical care and tend to be staffed by volunteers dedicated to dissuading women from having abortions
In Washington , the new Republican majority that promised to do great things about jobs , jobs , jobs is preparing for hearings on a bill to make it economically impossible for insurance companies to offer policies that cover abortions
And in Texas , Gov. Rick Perry , faced with an epic budget crisis that 's left the state 's schools and health care services in crisis , has brought out emergency legislation - requiring mandatory sonograms for women considering abortion
This time storm warnings came just as the Senate had hit a point of uncommon productivity
In a single week , it managed to not only confirm two U.S. marshals , but also to approve a couple of nominations to the Obama administration
Finally , we can sleep easy in the knowledge that the Labor Department has a No. 3 person
Then Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama put a hold on the 70-odd other administration nominations that are still pending
Everything came to whatever you call a screeching halt when the vehicle in question was moving at the speed of the Senate
This was a dramatic gesture , one Shelby must have felt was so important that he took time out from his normal duties blocking all progress on creating a consumer protection agency for financial products
Normally , a senator who 's feeling testy will just put a hold on one presidential nomination as Jim Bunning of Kentucky did last year when he stopped action on the confirmation of a deputy U.S. trade representative because he was upset that the Canadian Parliament was considering a bill to ban the sale of cigarettes with candy flavorings
I am not making that up
Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri had a hold on the nomination of Martha Johnson to be the leader of the General Services Administration since last summer because he was ticked off with the G.S.A. over construction of a new federal building in Kansas City
The agency kept saying it had responded to Bond 's questions , although perhaps the staff was slow in getting back to him since there was nobody in charge
But Bond held firm until the Democrats forced a vote this week
That naturally involved a great many delays , postponements , overrides and a passionate if incomprehensible speech by Bond , the highlight of which was : `` Please bear with me
I know this is confusing .
Then after many , many months of waiting and several days of total gridlock , Johnson was approved , 96 to 0
That was a normal Senate procedure
Now Shelby has upped the ante with a blanket hold on everybody
His incredibly grave reasons were the desire to see that a defense contract for a new tanker is awarded to a bidder who will do the assembly work in Alabama
Also , he feels that a new F.B.I. facility for testing explosive devices should be conveniently located in Huntsville
`` If this administration were as worried about hunting down terrorists as it is about the confirmation of low-level political nominations , America would be a safer place , '' said a spokesman for the senator
Yes , indeedy
We 're talking terrorism here , folks
A threat to the American way of life , which guarantees the right of every American senator , no matter how humble or dimwitted , to bring the democratic process to a standstill whenever he or she feels the mood
O.K. , getting a little testy here
People , ca n't we have a citizen revolt over this
It 's all about the filibuster rule
The Obama administration is hamstrung because the Senate now requires 60 votes to get anything done , from health care reform to the confirmation of the woman who 's going to oversee building maintenance
And , of course , in the one piece of business on which the minority party demanded swift action this week , Scott Brown was sworn in as the 41st Republican vote , making it highly unlikely that , in the near-future , even a General Services Administration official is ever going to see the light of day
`` It 's beyond the breaking point , '' said Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa , who plans to introduce a bill to eliminate the filibuster next week
There is a stupendous lack of real enthusiasm in the Senate for doing anything as dramatic as eliminating the senators ' right to stop things
Some experts think Joe Biden , as presiding officer , could get rid of the filibuster by issuing a ruling when a new Congress assembles next January
The vice president 's office indicated that Biden would be happy to get going on that project the very second hell freezes over
Which is about the same time the Senate is going to take up Harkin 's bill
`` But I 'm hoping we can get enough people interested in this that it becomes an election issue
In Senate races this year , people ought to be asked , '' Harkin said
Harkin has been introducing the same bill since 1995 , through lean years and fat for his own party
When his fellow Democrats were in the minority during the Bush years , they were , of course , a lot fonder of the filibuster than they are now
Back then , it was Republicans who demanded change
`` Far too many of the president 's nominees were never afforded an up or down vote because several Democrats chose to block the process for political gain , '' complained um Richard Shelby
But think of it this way the drama in the Senate drove Tom Daschle completely out of the news
In a week or so , nobody will even remember that he was nominated for anything
Perk up and feel free to ask questions : How could so many cabinet nominees get into trouble
The Obama transition team was supposed to be so organized
Did their seven-page questionnaire ask about Facebook pages but not tax liens
They did ask about tax liens , yet miraculously still wound up with two candidates who had them
It 's possible one or both of them did n't even know
Maybe this goes to show that there are tax liens lurking everywhere , like cold germs
No one is immune
There could be one in your closet at this very moment , just waiting for you to go to sleep so it can pounce
Was n't Tom Daschle crucial for health care reform
What are they going to do without him
We have to get past the idea that transformative change requires one great cabinet member to steer it
That 's the kind of thinking that got us Donald Rumsfeld
Tom Daschle always seemed like a lovely man , but the idea that only he could get a big , important , dramatic health care reform through the Senate seems a little flawed , given the fact that he never got any big , important , dramatic reforms through the Senate when he was the actual majority leader
I dropped out of school for a semester to campaign for Barack Obama
And now I 'm asking myself whether I spent four months living with my aunt and going door to door in Dayton , Ohio , just so we could have a stimulus plan written by a bunch of moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats in the Senate
I do n't know how many times we need to go over this , but this is actually a real-life version of what Obama promised during the campaign
Did n't you jump up and cheer when your guy promised that he 'd get Republicans and Democrats to work together
I wanted them to work together on global warming , not on cutting money for Head Start out of the stimulus
And Obama feels your pain
He always said the bipartisan path was going to be rocky , but this week the going was so rough that the great trailer-tractor of stimulus blew out several tires on the shoals of post-partisanism
It was embarrassing the President of the United States held White House negotiations with people who had already announced that they had no intention of voting for his bill
He let minority-party subleaders lecture him about what 's wrong with redistribution of wealth
He had a bipartisan Super Bowl party
But he still wound up cooling his heels , waiting for word from the newly hatched moderate caucus on what would happen next
This is the group that was led by Susan Collins of Maine
In November , we apparently elected Collins and her fellow Maine Republican , Olympia Snowe , to help run the country
And you wasted all that time thinking about Joe Biden
Why did Obama nominate Senator Judd Gregg to be commerce secretary
He 's not just a Republican ; he is n't even that moderate
And he voted to eliminate the Commerce Department
It 's not exactly a big gamble
Although the Commerce Department has many important duties , like supervising the patent office , it 's sort of like an old attic where people throw stuff that does n't fit anyplace else
And while there have been some sterling commerce secretaries , it has been run for lengthy periods of time by complete morons and the nation did n't seem to suffer appreciably
Even when I get irked with Obama , I still want to help him
Is n't there something people can do
This weekend the Obama army is going to rise again , creating a nation of stimulus house parties , made up of people who would like nothing more than to spend their days off talking about the administration 's economic plan
There 's a Mommies , Daddies and Wee Ones Gathering in Brighton , Colo. -LRB- `` We will have kid crafts , videos , juice , snacks and coffee . ''
And a gathering called `` What Happened to My Retirement Nest Egg ?
is scheduled for Watsonville , Calif. -LRB- `` We 'll break out the wine and cheese . ''
Or , for sterner spirits , there 's the Economic System Redesign Leadership Meeting in Manhattan , which is sponsored by the Corporate Social Responsibility Advocates for Obama , the Social Innovators for Obama and the Sustainability Activists for Obama
-LRB- `` Please bring your own lunch or eat before coming . ''
I still miss the way it was before the election , when everything seemed clearer
Face it , you miss George W. Bush
Ever since he slunk off the scene , things have gotten all vague and squishy
You want somebody to rally against and Mitch McConnell is not an adequate substitute , even if he does look a little bit like the groundhog that assaulted the mayor of New York City this week
Really , everybody 's getting so cranky
Losing Mitt Romney from the presidential race is not just a matter of another Republican biting the dust
It 's all those dozens and dozens of future incarnations that we may never have a chance to meet
I was hoping that someday we 'd get a Libertarian Mitt , or maybe a cowboy
Worst of all , I 'm going to have to get through the rest of the year without ever again referring to the fact that Romney once drove to Canada with the family dog , Seamus , strapped to the roof of the car
Mitt invested more than $ 40 million of his own money and $ 50 million of other people 's on his race , which comes down to about $ 8 million per state won -LRB- North Dakota says thank you !
or around $ 324,000 per delegate
It was an incredible bargain compared to the $ 60 million Rudy Giuliani spent on zero delegates , but still not exactly the kind of return on investment he was used to getting in the private sector
`` We 're going to keep on battling
We 're going to go all the way to the convention , '' he told his cheering supporters Tuesday night as his loyal wife , Ann , stood by looking somewhat unenthusiastic
Never Say Die Mitt made his way to Washington for the Conservative Political Action Committee 's annual convention on Thursday , where he was supposed to nail down his new identity as the standard-bearer for the right-wing talk-show brigade
Then somewhere backstage , he took on that eerie glow that precedes a personality change , and it was Cut Your Losses Romney who walked onstage
This was a pretty quick turnaround
Not so dramatic as the time Moderate Mitt -LRB- `` I 'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush '' -RRB- morphed into the guy who said : `` I take my inspiration from Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush .
But still
POP QUIZ : What reason did Mitt Romney give for dropping out of the presidential race
A -RRB- I 'm down to my last $ 40 million
B -RRB- I just discovered Tagg let another illegal immigrant mow the lawn
C -RRB- I simply can not let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror
Continuing his near-perfect record of referring to political opponents as sinister forces bent on undermining the nation , Romney said he was dropping out so the Republicans would n't lose the race to the Democratic terror-surrenderers
Can you see the next nine months stretching out before you , people
Envision the pages on the calendar flipping
Hear the incessant drone of terrorsurrenderterrorsurrenderterrorsurrender
Welcome to McCain vs. Yet-to-Be-Named-White-Flag-Waver
Other than repeatedly offering to give up any civil liberty the Bush administration felt it might need , Romney never talked all that much about the war on terror as a candidate
He was more interested in denouncing illegal immigration
Until he got to Michigan , where he became Friend of the Workers Mitt
If that primary had gone on any longer , he 'd have been picketing with the writers ' union
John McCain was the happy beneficiary of Romney 's sudden retreat on Thursday , yet he could barely bring himself to mumble something about his former opponent 's `` energetic and dedicated campaign '' which is a polite way of saying the guy would toss an old lady in front of a tractor-trailer to get what he wanted
Romney always seemed surprised , and a little hurt , by the very clear contempt the other Republican candidates had for him
He did n't see himself as a compulsive panderer with no central core
He was a businessman , solving problems
Running for president was no different from manufacturing kitchen flooring , only somewhat more tiring
If your sales department told you that the clients would like your tile better if it was green instead of blue , you changed the color
You were n't flip-flopping ; you were responding to the mandate of the marketplace
We 're going to miss him and Rudy and Fred , too
They came into the race to great fanfare , then turned out to be some of the least appealing candidates for high office this side of Ahmad Chalabi
Watching Mitt wander away , I thought about how at the end of every season of `` Survivor '' the finalists walk past memorials to departed contestants and try to come up with a pleasant anecdote about the woman who laughed at inappropriate moments or the guy who stole all the food
Oh , Fred , so ... tall
And that Rudy , always on that cellphone
And what will we remember about Mitt
His perfect grooming
His granola addiction
The day he equated his son 's campaign work in the Mittmobile to military service
That YouTube tape of him being asked to name his worst fault and telling a story about going to the hospital every Saturday to read to the sick children
All I know is somewhere in doggie heaven , an Irish setter is laughing
Whatever your politics , people , you have to admit this is one great presidential race
What next
Fred Thompson takes Florida on a sympathy vote from retirees
-LRB- They like a leader who 's really , really rested .
John Edwards finds a new emotion for South Carolina
-LRB- Anger is so cold weather .
I do n't think anyone can top Mike Gravel 's speech to the New Hampshire high school students when he told them to avoid alcohol and stick with marijuana
But really , we 're ready for anything
If you 're a fan of democracy , Hillary Clinton 's primary victory this week has to be a good thing
You do n't want the whole election decided on the basis of a strange ritual in Iowa that resembles Red Rover with votes , along with the considered opinion of a small state full of idiosyncratic New Englanders
We want a turn
South Dakota wants a turn
The Democratic contest is extremely unusual for an American election in that it contains more than one viable option
Barack Obama turns out to have a positive genius for making moderation sound exciting and is perhaps the only politician in American history who can get a crowd all worked up with a call to politeness
`` We can disagree without being disagreeable , '' he said in his New Hampshire farewell , drawing a roar of approval
In a country where the spoils go to the loudest shrieker , this is absolutely revolutionary and very important
Most Americans want a moderate government , but nobody has ever before been able to make moderate seem interesting , let alone sexy
-LRB- Remember Joseph Lieberman .
On the other side , there 's the new Hillary Clinton , who bears a distinct resemblance to the old Hillary Clinton
`` Over the last week I listened to you , and in the process I found my own voice , '' she told her victory party Tuesday night
She then went on to give an extremely boring speech that began : `` This campaign is about people .
Clinton actually seems most genuine when she 's being dull
She 's gone back to talking about policy with voters
That 's just the way she saved her first Senate campaign by disappearing into the depths of upstate New York for an endless listening tour that drove reporters mad with tedium but seemed to make the citizens very happy
`` Finding common ground and working to make change has been the cause of my life , '' she told a crowd in Hampton , N.H. , lifting Obama 's theme
She is a shameless borrower of other candidates ' good stuff
She 's even cribbed Barack 's signature `` fired up '' line on occasion , and it 's probably only a matter of time before she announces the sudden discovery of long-lost Kenyan relatives
But when she started answering questions , she got very Hillary talking about carbon neutrality and H.M.O. payments and procurement reform , ticking off her five-point plans and three-part explanations
The large crowd , which had been standing in a high school gym for nearly two hours before she arrived , seemed to enjoy it
Her bond with the people is n't a passionate one , but when it works , it 's a genuine connection that starts with the belief that she will work really , really hard on their behalf
Everybody is going to have a story about why the gender gap erupted in New Hampshire , why female voters rallied to Hillary 's side after the horrendous week when she lost Iowa , was cornered in the weekend debate , told that she was unlikable on national television , and then teared up when a sympathetic voter asked her how she held up under it all
Do women Obama 's age look at him and see the popular boy who never talked to them in high school
Did they relate to Clinton 's strategy of constantly reminding her audiences that she 's been working for reform for 35 years
Barack 's not going to be able to top that unless he can prove he was an agent of change in elementary school
My own favorite theory is that this week , Hillary was a stand-in for every woman who 's overdosed on multitasking
They grabbed at the opportunity to have kids\/go back to school\/start a business\/become a lawyer
But there are days when they ca n't meet everybody 's needs and the men in their lives loved ones and otherwise make them feel like failures or towers of self-involvement
And the deal is that they can either suck it up or look like a baby
The women whose heart went out to Hillary knew that it was n't rational
She asked for this race , and if she was exhausted , the other candidates were , too
-LRB- John McCain is 71 and tired and nobody felt sorry for him .
The front-runner always gets ganged up on in debates
If her campaign was in shambles , it was her job to fix it or take the consequences
But for one moment , women knew just how Hillary felt , and they gave her a sympathy vote
It was n't a long-term commitment , just a brief strike by the sisters against their overscheduled world
Or it could just have been a better get-out-the-vote operation
CAMPAIGN NOTEBOOK ; A Parade
A Circus
A Carnival
Or , the New Hampshire Primary -LRB- January 9 , 2008 -RRB- From a Big Boost for Obama to a Sharp Blow -LRB- January 9 , 2008 -RRB- Related Searches Presidential Election of 2008 Add Alert New Hampshire Add Alert Clinton , Hillary Rodham Add Alert Women Add
Members of the still-not-in-power administration traveled to the Capitol this week to allow Senate Democrats to complain about the upcoming stimulus package
The Obama-ites were extremely eager to listen
After all , senators have feelings , too
`` These folks are not potted plants , '' said the senior adviser David Axelrod
Already we have a big break with the past
The Bush White House so totally regarded senators as potted plants that it was a wonder that senior aides did n't attempt to water them
Democrats believed that Dick Cheney had a large chart in which legislators were identified by which type of household foliage they most resembled
-LRB- Harry Reid was a ficus .
But no more
Barack Obama is going to change the tone of Washington politics
He promised
Of course George W. Bush promised that , too
But once his administration ran into resistance in Congress , the Era of Good Feeling was out the door and the potted-plant index was in
-LRB- John Kerry was a begonia .
The endless transition period is giving us a little clearer picture of how the next president is going to govern
He is going to be civil , and if somebody forgets to tell the chairman of the intelligence committee who the next C.I.A. director is going to be , he will apologize
He does not want to let side issues get in the way of his big priorities , whether said issue is as large as the Gaza crisis -LRB- only one president at a time -RRB- or as small as Roland Burris , the successor to Obama 's Senate seat who was chosen by the eminently impeachable governor of Illinois
`` We have an economy on the ropes ; we need to move forward , '' said Dick Durbin , the senior senator from Illinois when after some pressure from the White House he and Reid , the majority leader , reversed course and appeared ready to eventually welcome Burris into the fold
We are rooting for Burris to make it into office , since any Roland who names his kids Roland II and Rolanda is bound to provide a welcome diversion in the gloomy months ahead
And if the Obama administration ever goes to the Dark Side , we have definitely got an early front-runner for their philodendron designation
But in all deference to Durbin , we 've got to put an end to people banning topics of conversation on the grounds that we are living in a time of financial peril
Last month , the artistic director of a Manhattan theater company suggested to The Times 's Patrick Healy that it was inappropriate to ask him to discuss sudden changes in the `` Pal Joey '' cast when `` the entire world economy is falling apart .
Next thing you know , we 'll be barred from saying anything negative about the Super Bowl in deference to the unemployment rate
We also really need to clarify the limits to proper political civility
Everyone agrees that even if Mitch McConnell does resemble a large , root-bound sansevieria trifasciata , the Democrats will keep it to themselves
But there 's such a thing as getting carried away with bipartisanship
Obama has made no secret that he wants whopping Republican support for his stimulus plan to send a message to the country that we are all on the same page when it comes to fixing the economy
That 's apparently the impetus for all the business tax cuts that appeared in the mix this week
And at a Senate confirmation hearing , Tom Daschle , the secretary of health and human services nominee , assured Republicans that they were right in believing the administration wanted to craft a health care policy that was not `` a 51-vote solution , but rather a 70 - , 80 - or a 90-vote solution .
There are some things on which parties can work together very nicely
For instance , it was very clear from the committee hearing that nobody in the Senate supports childhood obesity and that Daschle , a popular former majority leader , would be confirmed even if he had showed up to testify in the nude
Maybe , if everybody in the House tries very hard to get along , the chamber will not find it impossible to reach accord on a resolution commemorating Mother 's Day , as happened last year
But there are some things about which the two parties are supposed to disagree
During the presidential campaign , Obama talked constantly about creating a national health insurance program while John McCain said the government should just give people tax breaks for buying their own policies
Obama won , and the Democrats ' job now is to figure out how to make sure the current economic crisis is solved in a way that allows him to deliver on his promise to do something big and ambitious about health care and his other signature issue , energy\/global warming
The Republicans ' job is to try to limit the big spending to tax cuts and short-term building projects
If the final bill passes by 80 or 90 votes , it 's probably going to be because it 's a watered-down mess
Which is the sort of thing that nobody wants
Unless they live in a pot
A Right to Bear Glocks
In 2009 , Gabrielle Giffords was holding a `` Congress on Your Corner '' meeting at a Safeway supermarket in her district when a protester , who was waving a sign that said `` Do n't Tread on Me , '' waved a little too strenuously
The pistol he was carrying under his armpit fell out of his holster
`` It bounced
That concerned me , '' Rudy Ruiz , the father of one of Giffords 's college interns at the time , told me then
He had been at the event and had gotten a larger vision than he had anticipated of what a career in politics entailed
`` I just thought , ` What would happen if it had gone off
Could my daughter have gotten hurt ? '
Giffords brushed off the incident
`` When you represent a district - the home of the O.K. Corral and Tombstone , the town too tough to die - nothing 's a surprise , '' she said
At the time , it struck me as an interesting attempt to meld crisis control with a promotion of local tourist attractions
Now , of course , the district has lost more people in a shooting in a shopping center parking lot than died at the gunfight of the O.K. Corral , and the story of the dropped pistol has a tragically different cast
In soft-pedaling that 2009 encounter , Giffords was doing a balancing act that she 'd perfected during her political career as a rather progressive Democrat in a increasingly conservative state
She was the spunky Western girl with a populist agenda mixed with down-home values , one of which was opposition to gun control
But those protesters had been following her around for a while
Her staff members were clearly scared for her , and they put me in touch with Ruiz , who told me the story
Back then , the amazing thing about the incident in the supermarket parking lot was that the guy with a handgun in his armpit was not arrested
Since then , Arizona has completely eliminated the whole concept of requiring a concealed weapon permit
Last year , it got 2 points out of a possible 100 in the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence state score card , avoiding a zero only because its Legislature has not - so far - voted to force colleges to let people bring their guns on campuses
Today , the amazing thing about the reaction to the Giffords shooting is that virtually all the discussion about how to prevent a recurrence has been focusing on improving the tone of our political discourse
That would certainly be great
But you do not hear much about the fact that Jared Loughner came to Giffords 's sweet gathering with a semiautomatic weapon that he was able to buy legally because the law restricting their sale expired in 2004 and Congress did not have the guts to face up to the National Rifle Association and extend it
If Loughner had gone to the Safeway carrying a regular pistol , the kind most Americans think of when they think of the right to bear arms , Giffords would probably still have been shot and we would still be having that conversation about whether it was a sane idea to put her Congressional district in the cross hairs of a rifle on the Internet
But we might not have lost a federal judge , a 76-year-old church volunteer , two elderly women , Giffords 's 30-year-old constituent services director and a 9-year-old girl who had recently been elected to the student council at her school and went to the event because she wanted to see how democracy worked
Loughner 's gun , a 9-millimeter Glock , is extremely easy to fire over and over , and it can carry a 30-bullet clip
It is `` not suited for hunting or personal protection , '' said Paul Helmke , the president of the Brady Campaign
`` What it 's good for is killing and injuring a lot of people quickly .
America has a long , terrible history of political assassinations and attempts at political assassination
What we did not have until now is a history of attempted political assassination that took the lives of a large number of innocent bystanders
The difference is not about the Second Amendment
It 's about a technology the founding fathers could never have imagined
`` If this was the modern equivalent of what Sirhan Sirhan used to shoot Robert Kennedy or Arthur Bremer used to shoot George Wallace , you 'd be talking about one or two victims , '' said Helmke
Giffords represents a pragmatic , interest-balancing form of politics that 's out of fashion
But , in that spirit , we should be able to find a way to accommodate the strong desire in many parts of the country for easy access to firearms with sane regulation of the kinds of weapons that make it easiest for crazy people to create mass slaughter
Most politicians wo n't talk about it because they 're afraid of the N.R.A. , whose agenda is driven by the people who sell guns and want the right to sell as many as possible
Does n't it seem like the least we can do
Obama Brings It Home We 've been complaining for two years about the lack of music and passion in his big speeches
But if he 'd moved the country when he was talking about health care or bailing out the auto industry , perhaps his words would n't have been as powerful as they were when he was trying to lift the country up after the tragedy in Tucson
`` Our hearts are broken , and yet our hearts also have reason for fullness , '' he said , in a call to action that finally moved the nation 's focus forward
The days after the shootings had a depressing political rhythm
There was the call for civility , followed by the rapidly escalating rhetoric over whose fault the incivility was , which climbed ever upward until Wednesday when you had a congressman from Texas claiming that the F.B.I. was hiding information on the gunman 's political beliefs because the truth would embarrass the White House
For me , Obama 's best moment came when he warned that `` what we ca n't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another .
In his honor , I am not saying a word about Sarah Palin 's video
But , politically , there 's a challenge about where we go from here
You ca n't expect the Republican majority in Congress to give up on killing the health care reform law , although it might be a nice step if the leadership urged its members to stop saying that God wants to see repeal
The president , who was going for great , universal themes , did n't make any suggestions
Let me offer one really , really modest one
Congress should have an actual debate about Representative Carolyn McCarthy 's bill to reduce gun violence
You will notice I just said have a debate
And the bill does not even control guns
It simply bans the sale of the special bullet clip that allowed the Tucson gunman to shoot 20 people without reloading
McCarthy 's husband was killed and her son permanently injured when a gunman using a pistol with a similar - but less powerful - kind of clip opened fire on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993
`` That 's why I came to Congress , '' she said on Wednesday
But so far she has collected co-sponsors only from the same small band of members who always support this kind of legislation
Members of Congress are so terrified of the political power of the National Rifle Association that the Democrats , when they were in power , declined even to give McCarthy 's bill a hearing
This is the chance for the Republicans to prove that they 're braver
All John Boehner , the speaker of the House , has to do is say that in the wake of the Tucson tragedy he wants to demonstrate that Congress is open to a serious and mature discussion of ways that it might have been avoided , or mitigated
That might include proposals to better identify people with potentially violent mental illnesses
And it certainly would also have to involve a conversation over a technology that can turn a pistol into the equivalent of a somewhat slow-moving machine gun
McCarthy 's bill might not have saved Representative Gabrielle Giffords from being shot
But it has to be worth talking about whether it could have saved some of her constituents
So far , most of the proposals from members of Congress for practical action to reduce gun violence have been directed at protecting themselves
Representative Peter King of New York introduced a bill to ban anyone from carrying a gun in the vicinity of a federal official
Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois suggested reversing a recent cut in members ' office budgets and tacking on another 10 percent increase to pay for improved security
Representative Dan Burton of Indiana urged enclosing the House gallery in Plexiglas
And two members vowed to carry their pistols with them when they go about the people 's business back in their districts
Following the president 's lead , I would argue that Congress has the capacity for higher purpose
`` I believe we can be better , '' he said
`` Those who died here - those who saved lives here - they help me believe
We may not be able to stop all evil in the world , but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us .
In that light , I believe members of Congress can have a hearing and a civilized debate on a bill that is modest and relevant but that is opposed by a hyperpowerful lobbying group that scares the daylight out of them
Maybe they could do it just to prove it to themselves that they can
Just a thought
If Massachusetts was the Department of Homeland Security , the special election to fill Ted Kennedy 's senate seat would have the Democrats about four-fifths of the way up the terror alert code
Green : Everything is fine , and who cares if we spelled `` Massachusetts '' wrong in one of the ads
Blue : Do n't forget to vote
It 's next Tuesday
You 'll remember to vote , right
Yellow : Bill Clinton is coming for a rally
John Kerry has got to show up , too
I do n't care if he just had hip-replacement surgery
Orange : You know , it really does n't matter whether you win by a million votes or one vote , just so long as you win
The campaign has not hit red yet , although , for the Democrats , the whole world has begun to look orange with dark tints
Like a decaying pumpkin
It can not be a good sign when the Massachusetts secretary of state has to deny rumors that he plans to stall certification of the election results until after the health care bill is passed
Of course , it 's all about the health care bill
`` As the 41st senator , I can stop it , '' Scott Brown , the Republican nominee , says frequently
We will return to our discussion of the Massachusetts special election shortly , after the following special rant about the concept of the 41st senator
There are 100 members of the Senate
But as Brown is currently reminding us , because of the filibuster rule , it takes only 41 to stop any bill from passing
U.S. population : 307,006,550
Population for the 20 least-populated states : 31,434,822
That means that in the Senate , all it takes to stop legislation is one guy plus 40 senators representing 10.2 percent of the country
People , think about what we went through to elect a new president a year and a half of campaigning , three dozen debates , $ 1.6 billion in donations
Then the voters sent a clear , unmistakable message
Which can be totally ignored because of a parliamentary rule that allows the representatives of slightly more than 10 percent of the population to call the shots
Why is n't 90 percent of the country marching on the Capitol with teapots and funny hats , waving signs about the filibuster
Martha Coakley , the Democratic Senate nominee , is the kind of candidate who reminds you that the state that gave birth to John Kennedy also produced Michael Dukakis
She is the attorney general , and her speaking style has been compared to that of a prosecutor delivering a summation to the jury
In civil court
In a trial that involved , say , a dispute over widget tariffs
She is so tone deaf that she made fun of her opponent for standing outside Fenway Park shaking hands `` in the cold .
A week before the election , Coakley was off the campaign trail entirely in Washington for a fund-raiser that was packed with the usual suspects
But undoubtedly it was well heated
Brown , her opponent , is a conservative state senator who believes in waterboarding but not necessarily global warming
When he was 22 , he won an `` America 's Sexiest Man '' contest , the prize for which was $ 1,000 and a chance to pose naked in a Cosmopolitan magazine centerfold
One of his daughters this is perhaps the best-known factoid in the campaign came in somewhere between 13th and 16th on `` American Idol .
`` For our family , especially me being on ` Idol ' but my dad being in politics , there are always so many people who have something negative to say , '' Ayla Brown told The Boston Herald this week
Her talent was singing , not sentence construction
#NAME?
Brown 's hard-hitting response charged Coakley with running a negative ad
He is generally thought to have gotten the best of that round , especially given that little mishap with the spelling of the name of the state .
Some polls show Coakley with a 15 percent lead
However , others show the race narrowing toward a tie
-LRB- `` Dead heat , '' announced a fund-raising e-mail message from John Kerry that seemed intended to induce panic attacks on the part of recipients .
The surveys that show the race being too close to call do not seem as reliable as the ones that show Coakley winning handily , but the Democrats who watch these things say the absentee ballot requests are way up in traditionally Republican areas and down in the places that went hard for Obama in 2008
The tea-party types are euphoric , pouring money in Brown 's direction
The people who voted for Barack Obama , meanwhile , are sullen and dispirited
This is , of course , partly because of the economy , but also partly because of the sense that the president is not getting anything done
Which brings us back to the 10 percent rule
Do n't get me started again
The man has been saying goodbye for so long , he 's come to resemble one of those reconstituted rock bands that have been on a farewell tour since 1982
We had exit interviews by the carload and then a final press conference on Monday , in which he reminisced about his arrival on the national stage in 2000
`` Just seemed like yesterday , '' he said
I think I speak for the entire nation when I say that the way this transition has been dragging on , even yesterday does not seem like yesterday
And the last time George W. Bush did not factor into our lives feels like around 1066
So far , the Bush farewell appearances have not drawn a lot of rave reviews
-LRB- Most striking , perhaps , was a critique of that final press conference from Ted Anthony of The Associated Press : `` It all felt strangely intimate and , occasionally , uncomfortable , in the manner of seeing a plumber wearing jeans that ride too l
A Gallup poll did find that his approval rating had risen slightly since they began , but this was probably due to enthusiasm for the part about his going away
`` Sometimes you misunderestimated me , '' Bush told the Washington press corps
This is not the first time our president has worried about misunderestimation , so it 's fair to regard this not as a slip of the tongue , but as something the president of the United States thinks is a word
The rhetoric is the one part of the administration we 're surely going to miss.
We are about to enter a world in which our commander in chief speaks in full sentences , and I do not know what we 're going to do to divert ourselves on slow days
The White House has promised that in his final address , the president will be joined by a small group of everyday American heroes , which means that the only person on stage with a history of failing to perform well in moments of stress will be the main speaker
Bush is going to devote some of his time to defending his record , although there has been quite a bit of that already
Over the last few weeks we have learned that he thinks the Katrina response worked out rather well except for one unfortunate photo-op , and that he regards the fact that we invaded another country on the basis of false information as a `` disappointment .
Since Bush also referred to the disappointments of his White House tenure as `` a minor irritant '' it 's perhaps best to think of the weapons of mass destruction debacle as a pimple on the administration 's otherwise rosy complexion
If there 's any suspense about the speech it is how many times Bush will use the word `` freedom , '' which popped up 27 times in his relatively brief second inaugural
The man who gave us Operation Iraqi Freedom , the Freedom Agenda , the USA Freedom Corps and the President 's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has so thoroughly debased one of the most profound concepts in our national vocabulary that it 's getting hard to hear it used without remembering Janis Joplin 's line about how freedom 's just another word for nothing left to lose
There are a lot of ways to approach this farewell-speech business
Ronald Reagan started with winning folksiness , then lurched into a warning against big government and a plea to raise a new generation of patriots that knows `` who Jimmy Doolittle was .
Bill Clinton 's sounded very much like a bid for a third term
-LRB- `` Thirty-five million Americans have used the family leave law ... '' -RRB- On the other hand , anybody listening to it now would surely begin to tear up when Clinton got to the part about how he was leaving the country `` on track to be debt-free 
History does suggest that Bush performs best in venues like this one , in which he has a long lead time and virtually no actual role in preparing the words he is about to say
But still , what could he possibly tell the country that would change anybody 's opinion about the last eight years
`` My fellow Americans , before I leave you next week I want you to know that ... A -RRB- `` Although things have gone very wrong , I take comfort in the realization that Dick Cheney was actually in control from the get-go
Honest , I never even knew half the people in the cabinet .
B -RRB- `` Laura and I have come to realize that all things considered , retirement to a mansion in Texas is just totally inappropriate
And so we take our leave to begin a new life as missionaries at a small rescue station in the Gobi desert ... '' C -RRB- `` Surprise
This has all actually been a bad dream
It 's really still November of 2000 and tomorrow Al Gore is going to be elected president .
Otherwise , the best possible approach for a farewell address might be for Bush to follow his father 's lead and just not give one
Presidential Primary Book Club This is the time when presidential candidates start poking their little noses up through the snow , and making soft , trilling noises
I know you think it 's too soon , even though Mitt Romney made his intentions clear on the family Christmas card
But as a public service , I am going to start providing summaries of the latest books from the potential Republican nominees so we 'll all be well educated by the time the debates begin
We need to get going because there 's no way I 'm going to read more than one a month
Let 's begin today with the newest entry out of the chute : `` Courage to Stand : An American Story , '' by Tim Pawlenty
Pawlenty , the former governor of Minnesota , helps us to get to know his beloved home state
-LRB- `` There are a lot of differences from one region to the next
But there are a lot of similarities , too . ''
And although there are very serious sections about the deficit and the evils of Obamacare , he wants us to know that he 's a humorous guy , too
Examples of Tim Pawlenty 's Fun-Loving Side : Introduced to a man who had just been fitted for a new hearing aid , Pawlenty decided to josh him by `` moving my lips as if I were talking but without saying anything so he 'd think something was wrong .
Made fun of a North Dakota hockey team while wearing a Gophers jersey
While walking the family dog on the day McCain chose Sarah Palin to be his running mate , Pawlenty bent down to clean up after his pet and told himself : `` Well , this is the only No. 2 I 'll be picking up today .
Attempted to tell his `` No. 2 '' joke to Triumph , the Insult Comic Dog on the Conan O'Brien show
Dismayed when the joke never aired
On the very first page of his introduction , Pawlenty tells us : `` My family was eating breakfast one morning , discussing Greece and its financial trouble .
This is a pretty impressive start , and if you see the man known to his fans as `` T-Paw '' in a Republican debate this year , I want you to remember that he is the one who eats breakfast with his wife and two daughters , and that the meal does not consist of grunts , snorts and evasive replies to questions about finished homework
Chapter 1 depicts Pawlenty 's Inauguration Day , with a great deal of attention paid to the outgoing governor , Jesse `` The Body '' Ventura , a former professional wrestler
This is possibly because the guy who helped Pawlenty write `` Courage to Stand '' previously performed the same chores for Hulk Hogan
Anyway , Pawlenty asks Ventura if he has any advice for him , and Ventura says : `` Nope .
This is definitely a book highlight
One important theme of `` Courage to Stand '' is Pawlenty 's love of hockey
This may not be the best possible sport for a presidential aspirant , since , in my experience , a candidate for high office wearing a hockey helmet and those big shoulder pads looks kind of silly
But actually , I am only going on John Kerry
Things Tim Pawlenty likes besides hockey : `` U.S. News & World Report .
John McCain
Bruce Springsteen
Hockey fights
-LRB- `` Occasionally if I really need a good mental break ... I 'll sit at the computer when I 'm home at night and pop over to hockeyfights.com to watch a few of the latest videos . ''
Pawlenty met his wife , Mary , in law school
I was really looking forward to this part since he has taken to referring to her at public events as `` my red-hot smokin ' wife .
However , in the book she turns out to be a hard-working district judge who can always supply an appropriate Bible passage in times of crisis
Before you know it , they 're starting a family and he is campaigning door to door for state representative
`` One big dog actually lunged at me , and I defended myself by sticking my stack of brochures in his face
He ended up biting the stack and left teeth marks in the pamphlets !
Pawlenty writes
This is the second high point of the book
Pawlenty was elected and did well in the State Capitol
-LRB- `` I like people . ''
Then he decided to run for governor
We will skip over `` the longest endorsing convention in the state 's history '' and just point out that Pawlenty 's campaign theme was no new taxes
For sure
Really , none
Becoming governor , Pawlenty writes , was like being `` pushed into a high-speed turbowasher '' and also like `` a bullet-train ride on a roller-coaster track .
This is the critical nexus of the book where , despite a massive shortfall , he stands up to the big-tax Democrats and figures out how to balance the budget solely by making cuts
Which he says he did
But he actually does n't explain how , except to point out that the Democrats were really , really ticked off when he gloated
Also , that bridge that fell down in Minneapolis
Totally and completely not in any way his fault
This just in from the Christian Broadcasting Network : The Rev. Pat Robertson did not say that the earthquake in Haiti was the result of God 's wrath at the Haitians for making a pact with the devil to get out from under French colonial rule
A spokesman , Chris Roslan explained that all Mr. Robertson was saying is that Haiti is cursed
I hope that clears everything up
By the way , our topic for today is failure to communicate
This weekend , all eyes are on Massachusetts , where voters appear to be trying to send a message , although we 're not quite clear on what it is
President Obama is on his way , hoping to salvage the foundering campaign of Martha Coakley , the Democratic candidate in Tuesday 's special election for Ted Kennedy 's Senate seat
Looking on the bright side , Coakley said that all the bad poll numbers have `` energized a lot of people in the state .
This is certainly true
If the Democrats were any more energized , they would be jumping off a cliff
The best news for the Coakley campaign may have been the arrival of Rudy Giuliani to stump with her opponent , Scott Brown
Even back in the days when he was popular , Giuliani 's endorsement was the kiss of death
And the new decade is beginning badly in Rudyland
Howard Safir , his former police commissioner , is being investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney 's office for backing his Cadillac S.U.V. into a pregnant woman and then leaving the scene
-LRB- Safir says he did n't see her .
He is not to be confused with Bernie Kerik , the Giuliani police commissioner who is already in jail
And Giuliani is not so great on the message front these days
Lately , he 's busy trying to explain his recent appearance on television , when he became so engaged in trashing Obama that he said there were never any domestic terror attacks under former President George W. Bush
In Boston , the former New York City mayor predicted that if Brown is elected to the Senate , it `` will send a signal , and a very dramatic one , that we are going in the wrong direction on terrorism .
However , since Brown spent the day attacking Coakley for her opposition to Obama 's Afghanistan policy , the signal would seem to be that we are going in the right direction
Not so easy to send a message in these troubled times
There 's a third-party candidate in the race named Joseph Kennedy , or as he is referred to in shorthand , No Relation To
If Kennedy does well , perhaps it will send a message that Massachusetts residents nurture a hitherto undiscovered love affair with libertarianism
Or perhaps it will be a reminder that in the past , voters once inadvertently elected an assembly-line worker named John Kennedy to be state treasurer
We seem to be living in a time of intense but inchoate communication
What better symbol than the official joining of Sarah Palin and Fox News
This week , Fox 's new commentator got a typical welcome for a serious journalistic enterprise
Glenn Beck read her an entry from his diary that began : `` Tomorrow , I meet Sarah Palin and family for the first time
I 'm actually a little nervous , as she is one of the only people that I can see that can possibly lead us out of where we are .
When it comes to Palin 's own defining remark , the national consensus seems to have hit upon her initial response to Beck 's question about who was her favorite founding father
-LRB- `` Well , all of them . ''
We digress
About Massachusetts
The polls there are all over the place
Perhaps people are sending a message that they are getting tired of being polled
There are certainly a heck of a lot of surveyors out there trawling for opinions
Just this week I got a press release announcing that 74 percent of Americans polled felt that Brit Hume urging Tiger Woods to convert to Christianity probably would not work
It 's pretty clear that no matter what happens , the voters are sending a message that they are in a bad mood
You can not fail to notice that people are ticked off
The economy feels awful
The weather feels awful
Did you know that the cold snap in Florida hit the people who breed tropical fish so hard that there is a national guppy shortage
Things are bad , bad , bad
If Coakley loses , the inevitable conclusion will be that the message was a repudiation of Obama
My own theory is that the national angst is causing people to ignore the issues and just react to candidates ' personalities
If forced to choose a Senate candidate to be stranded with on a desert island , most voters would probably pick Brown over Coakley
Possibly even if the question was who they wanted to sit next to on a short bus ride
But did n't we get over the idea of voting for the person you 'd most like to have a beer with after George W. Bush
For a while this week , the Democratic presidential race seemed to have morphed into one of those movies like `` Singin ' in the Rain .
Two guys , a gal and an adventure
What a glorious feeling ; they 're happy again
`` It 's great that we have this young man from the South who grew up in a mill town , an African-American who has so much to give our country , and we have a woman
This is good news for our country , '' Hillary Clinton told a rally of her supporters after the good-vibrations Nevada debate
-LRB- John Edwards always gets the short end of these formulations the Donald O'Connor role
`` Son of a millworker '' does not offer quite the same scope as first woman or first African-American
Plus , the young man is 54 .
It did n't last
By yesterday Barack Obama was telling his supporters in Henderson , Nev. , that the Clintonites were misrepresenting his position with a flier that claimed his Social Security plan was `` a trillion-dollar tax hike for hard-working families .
Still , the amity was a nice interlude
Clinton and Obama both seemed a little chastened , or frightened , by the raw racial feelings they 'd inadvertently stirred up in the near-hysteria that surrounded the New Hampshire primary
The debate , a thoughtful and polite discussion of the issues , did n't make for political drama , but it did remind you that these three can be rather likable people
But not too likable
The election is `` not going to be an issue of , you know , who 's got the nicest smile or , you know , who 's going to be fun to have a beer with , '' said Obama , to general agreement
Likability has become another one of those qualities that used to be desirable in a candidate until it started reminding us of how we got George W. Bush
We 're not falling for that likable-guy trap again
No siree
From now on we want the kind of person you would try to avoid standing next to in a long line at the supermarket
Over in Michigan , the Republican voters clearly had the same thought on Tuesday when they went out and gave their primary win to a candidate absolutely no one would want to have a beer with
-LRB- Or in his case , a bracing lemonade .
Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney
Michigan voters are so frightened of falling into permanent economic collapse that they 'll grab onto almost anything
Romney , the native son who lived in Michigan in the Eisenhower era , played them for all they were worth
He was going to bring back the old-time auto industry and the rest of the 1950s with it
There was no lost job that could not be retrieved under Mitt 's skilled-businessman 's supervision
He 'd bring them all home
Human nature being what it is , you have to give politicians a pass for one pander per primary
-LRB- The Democrats have spent the last week in Nevada arguing about who is the most against a federal plan to store used nuclear fuel in Yucca Mountain as if it were a plot to tax air .
But in Michigan , Romney went way over quota
He told the auto executives that they were being picked on when Congress required fuel efficiency to reach 35 m.p.g. by 2020
-LRB- Washington told Detroit to improve mileage in 1975 , and just 32 years later , here 's Big Brother , harping again .
And he promised $ 20 billion in federally funded research and development to get the auto industry back on track
Let 's see , $ 20 billion for Michigan , and 46 states left to go
We 're looking at nearly a trillion dollars in potential pander just to get Mitt to the conventions
We wo n't have to worry about Congress doling out pork anymore Romney will give the entire store away himself
In his victory speech , Romney said his inspiration came from `` Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush .
I 'm not sure how Reagan would have felt about that $ 20 billion , but I 'm pretty sure this is the first time the words `` George Herbert Walker Bush '' and `` inspiration '' have appeared in the same sentence
John McCain , a disappointed runner-up , said : `` We did what we always try to do
We went to Michigan and we told people the truth .
He was making it pretty clear that he felt that somebody had gone to Michigan with a different game plan
-LRB- Mike Huckabee , who came in third , promised `` leadership that comes right from the earth , '' which made him sound a little like a weed .
How long can the Republicans avoid letting anybody win two primaries
Fred Thompson is said to be doing well in South Carolina , and Ron Paul has been campaigning in Nevada
True , the lean and hungry libertarian has been pursuing the unusual strategy of holding invitation-only rallies , but given the deep , deep weirdness of the Nevada caucus system , you never know
And Rudy Giuliani has been holding himself in reserve for Florida
-LRB- In Michigan , Rudy got 2.8 percent of the vote
When this man reserves , he reserves .
If the Republicans were a movie , they 'd be one like `` The Dirty Dozen '' in which a mismatched bunch of oddballs get thrown together to accomplish a dangerous mission
-LRB- Who will survive ?
Romney could play the irritating rich guy
You may , of course , have something else on your mind entirely
Like what the chances are that the next time you get on a plane , geese could fly into both engines
Or what the heck geese are doing in New York in the middle of winter when their relatives who worked hard and played by the rules had all gone south months ago
Or you may just be wondering how that rescue in the Hudson River would have gone if it had been led off by the Department of Homeland Security rather than New York Waterway 's director of ferry operations
I ca n't help you , people
Today I am on inauguration duty
While there is some debate about the best inaugural address in history , it 's pretty clear that the worst was the one delivered by William Henry Harrison , who went thwacking through a tangled thicket of classical allusions for an hour and 45 minutes
-LRB- Harrison 's editor , Daniel Webster , claimed it could have been worse , and that he had killed off `` seventeen Roman proconsuls , as dead as smelts . ''
The weather was terrible ; Harrison came down with a cold , then pneumonia and was dead within a month
Given current beaten-down expectations , our normal approach to Tuesday 's address would be to wander around muttering `` well as long as it 's better than William Henry Harrison 's ... '' But Barack Obama is a celebrated speaker , and our hopes are unusually high
So where are you going to be when it all happens
The options are many , including : 1
Go to Washington with the rest of the world
For the nonelite , seeing the inauguration in Washington involves standing on the Mall , shivering and staring at a JumboTron in the company of many , many , many brand-new new acquaintances
Not everyone thinks this is the perfect way to experience history
Obama himself has been delicately hinting that we all might want to consider staying home , mentioning `` long lines , a tough time getting around and most of all a lot of walking on what could be a very cold winter day .
Still , if you go , then you can always say you did
`` Actually having been there does give you some street cred , so to speak , '' said Jeremy Brooke Straughn , a sociologist at Purdue University , who has done research on generational memory
His own experiences go back to Jimmy Carter , whose inauguration he attended when he was 10
`` All I can remember is it was extremely far away and I was very cold , '' he said
This is not the kind of story that is going to leave them spellbound at your next dinner party
But I totally sympathize
The first inauguration I went to was Bill Clinton 's in 1993 and the only thing I can remember is watching Barney the purple dinosaur vamp down Pennsylvania Avenue during the parade
Join other Obama supporters for an inauguration party
To find the nearest one , you can check my.barackobama.com
Or just close your eyes , click your heels and say `` President Barack Obama '' four times
This will trigger chips implanted in the heads of former campaign volunteers and someone will call you soon with an invitation to a Change Is Coming house meeting and a special offer on an Inaugural Seal fleece jacket
`` Total Recall .
Watch the inauguration on television and hope that as time passes , you 'll come to believe that you were actually there
Memory experts say that this sort of thing happens all the time , and the number of Americans who think they were at Woodstock , or watched the Red Sox win the World Series or marched on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. is far , far greater than the number of actual attendees
`` I almost feel like I was there for the ' I Have a Dream ' speech , given how many times I 've seen it on TV , '' said John Mueller of Ohio State University
`` And the number of people who saw that plane floating in the Hudson is probably already a lot higher than is possible .
Virtual attendance : a great way to experience history without leaving the comfort of your own home
#NAME?
And there may have been a moment after the inauguration in 1993 when Barney and I went clubbing .
All this is good news for people who did not vote for Obama but now yearn to have a part in the inaugural events
If you go to Washington , you will be welcomed by happy Obamites wearing name tags and fleece jackets
Even if you do n't , you may gradually begin to remember that when you went to the polls , you pulled the Democratic lever
And if the new president does well and manages to resurrect the economy , by 2011 you will clearly recall doing door-to-door canvassing last September in a Yes We Can T-shirt
Today , Nevadans go to the polls to take part in their presidential caucuses , a political tradition so historic that nobody had ever heard of it before
As a headline in The Las Vegas Review-Journal understated : `` Format creates state of confusion .
You will remember these caucuses from Iowa
People gather at a local meeting place , where Republicans take a straw poll and Democrats divide into groups according to their candidate of choice
The only difference is that in Nevada : 1
Workers on the Las Vegas Strip can vote in the casinos
This is a boon to the powerful Culinary Workers Union , which supports Barack Obama , and Bill Clinton blew up at a television reporter over the unfairness of it all
-LRB- The former president appears to be on a schedule of one meltdown per state .
The caucuses have been conveniently scheduled to take place on the Saturday morning of a three-day weekend
The number of people in the state who have ever attended a caucus before is probably smaller than the number of people in the state who make their living as Elvis impersonators
Despite all this , the Democratic contest is being billed as the great tiebreaker between Obama -LRB- Iowa 's Choice -RRB- and Hillary Clinton -LRB- Saved by New Hampshire .
It would have made as much sense to decide who gets the delegates by a roll of the dice and think of the great publicity for the state 's premier industry
-LRB- Wayne Newton could emcee !
Under normal circumstances , Nevada goes out of its way to make it easy for people to vote
You can do it anytime within two weeks of the election , at the local mall or the corner store
Voting locations are as ubiquitous as slot machines
Very few people seem to be able to get their minds around the idea of showing up at one specific place at exactly 11 a.m. on a Saturday
`` I 've tried to get my friends involved , '' said Andrea Hinojosa , a 33-year-old mother of three , who admitted that she has n't had any luck
`` They want to know why they ca n't vote at the grocery store .
Why , you may be asking yourself , ca n't the state just organize a normal primary
Excellent question , and here 's Shelley Berkley , a Congresswoman from Las Vegas , with the answer : `` If you have a primary , the state pays
If you have a caucus , the party pays .
Last time around , 9,000 people went to the Democratic caucuses , and spent most of their time trying to dragoon each other into being delegates to the state convention
Then , in deference to Nevada 's Harry Reid , the semipowerful Senate majority leader , the caucuses were moved to January , creating a sense of excitement and New Hampshire-like entitlement on the part of the local population
`` You wo n't even be here on the day of the caucus , '' complained a radio reporter to John Edwards
`` Should we read anything into that ?
Poor Edwards has been trudging around here for weeks , giving the same speech over and over , answering the same questions and assuring his audiences that that unlike some people who he could name , he cares about their needs in his gut
Little did he know that they were also going to expect him to stick around for the weekend
The Republican caucuses have been overshadowed by the weirdness in the South Carolina G.O.P. primary
Remember John McCain 's joke about playing Will Smith in the movie where everybody else turns into a zombie
Even McCain probably did not envision an empty-eyed Mike Huckabee lurching around South Carolina , yowling about telling people who do n't like the Confederate flag where they can stick their flagpole
`` I care very much about the people of Nevada , and I care very much about those delegates , '' said Mitt Romney as he arrived in Las Vegas , looking a little like an evacuee from a civil war
Mitt has figured out that , given the unpredictability of this election season , he can be the least popular guy in the class and still amass enough delegates to win the nomination
This clearly makes him sad
`` I 'm not looking for gold stars on my forehead , '' he says over and over , in a tone that makes it clear he is exactly the kind of person who obsesses over gold stars
Romney is probably going to do well in Nevada
One of his sons has been organizing here the Romneys have scattered their progeny around the country like Hansel and Gretel , dropping bread crumbs
And this may finally be a state where his religion will be a help rather than an invitation for the religious right to mutter about the anti-Christ
While Mormons make up only 6 percent of the Nevada population , they do seem like the kind of folks who would be willing to participate in a political ritual that takes place at 9 a.m. on a Saturday
#NAME?
It figures the Republicans would take the early bird special .
Really , there 's got to be a better way
It 's only a matter of time before some state party decides to pick its presidential delegates by counting the number of voters who paint themselves blue and howl at the full moon
The End-of-the-Year Quiz I. Happy New Year
Besides the Times Square ball , the glorious American mosaic of things scheduled to be dropped around the nation on New Year 's Eve also included all but which one of the following : 1 -RRB- After the lame-duck session , Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said : `` When it 's all going to be said and done , Harry Reid has A -RRB- brought us together .
B -RRB- eaten our lunch .
C -RRB- eaten a lot of late-night pizza .
2 -RRB- John Boehner , the incoming House speaker , broke into tears on election night and weepily announced : `` I 've spent my whole life chasing 3 -RRB- `` Oh , my gosh
It 's so important , '' Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts said sarcastically during a recent debate
`` I 'm glad I rushed back from our break to work on : A -RRB- Senator James Risch of Idaho , speaking in opposition to a nuclear arms treaty with Russia
B -RRB- Cuckolded former aide to Senator John Ensign of Nevada , on the Republican caucus
C -RRB- Tiger Woods , on the golf tour
D -RRB- Unsuccessful `` Dancing With the Stars '' finalist , on Bristol Palin 's family
D -RRB- Andrew Cuomo , the new governor of New York , on his plans for a `` new austerity '' swearing-in
C -RRB- Tony Hayward , the former chief executive of BP , on the oil spill
D -RRB- Sarah Palin on filming the last episode of her reality show
A -RRB- U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina of California after making fun of Senator Barbara Boxer 's hair
B -RRB- Rod Blagojevich for saying he was blacker than Obama
C -RRB- Christine O'Donnell for the `` I am not a witch '' ad
D -RRB- Kate Middleton for announcing she and Prince William do not want any household help
1 -RRB- The Wall Street Journal reported that at least 15 percent of the incoming House freshman plan to : A -RRB- Sleep in their offices
B -RRB- Use the word `` refudiate '' in their official correspondence
C -RRB- Twitter 24\/7
D -RRB- Try to get invited to Prince William 's wedding
2 -RRB- John Boehner told Lesley Stahl that he can no longer visit public schools in his district because : A -RRB- They 've all been closed
B -RRB- He hates that cloakroom smell
C -RRB- He cries when he thinks of the importance of giving them a shot at the American dream
D -RRB- He 's afraid he 'll be asked to spell `` potato .
V. Match Republican presidential hopefuls with their 2010 achievements
-LRB- One hopeful gets two -RRB- : 1
Sarah Palin 2
Haley Barbour 3
Tim Pawlenty 4
Mike Huckabee 5
Mitt Romney 6
Newt Gingrich A -RRB- On a visit to Iowa , introduced his spouse to the audience as `` my red-hot , smoking wife .
B -RRB- Took six shots to kill a caribou that was , really , just standing there
C -RRB- Continued to fail to explain why he drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car
D -RRB- Said he does n't remember what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said during a 1962 civil rights speech at his hometown because he was `` watching the girls .
E -RRB- Compared Democrats to Nazis ; compared lower Manhattan mosque supporters to Nazis
F -RRB- Family Christmas card said : `` Guess which grandchild heard that Papa might run again ?
G -RRB- Demonstrated how to deep-fry a turkey on TV
\*\*\*\*\* ANSWERS : I : C -LRB- the Sausage Drop was canceled because of a lack of volunteers -RRB- ; II : 1-B , 2-A , 3-B ; III : 1-A , 2-C , 3-C , 4-B ; IV : 1-A , 2-C ; V : 1-B , 2-D , 3-A , 4-G , 5-C and F , 6-E
Goodbye to a Guy Named Joe On Wednesday , Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut announced that he wo n't be a candidate for re-election in 2012
Normally people look particularly appealing when they 're promising to go away
This time , not so much
`` I ca n't help but also think about my four grandparents and the journey they traveled more than a century ago , '' he said in his speech
`` Even they could not have dreamed that their grandson would end up a United States senator and , incidentally , a barrier-breaking candidate for vice president .
Lieberman has reached a point in his public career when every single thing he does , including talking about his grandparents , is irritating
Last month , when he helped lead the fight for the repeal of `` do n't ask , do n't tell , '' some people seemed more than a tad resentful at having to give up complaining about him for the duration of the debate
`` Of course , he wants gay people in the military , '' wrote Alex Pareene at Salon.com , `` He wants everyone in the military .
Plus , he is n't really leaving
He 's got two years of his term left , during which he will be looking for `` new opportunities that will allow me to serve my country .
Do you think that means something involving a large salary and a chance to make multitudinous TV appearances , or a Peace Corps stint in Burkina Faso
Let me see hands
When he was not busy comparing himself to John Kennedy on Wednesday , Lieberman denounced partisanship
`` I have not always fit comfortably into conventional political boxes , '' he said proudly
This is , of course , an old theme for him , but it 's also a cautionary tale
The reason we have political parties is that the best way to get things done is by working together
Obviously , sometimes people with principles have to take an independent stand
But Lieberman 's career has taught us how important it is to do that with a sense of humility
If you 're continually admiring yourself as you walk away from your group , eventually people are going to feel an irresistible desire to trip you
When he started in politics in Connecticut , Lieberman was a careful politician whom everybody regarded as an up-and-comer , even though he was extremely boring
But nobody realized how far he might up and come
`` He 's the kind of guy who , when you see him in line at the supermarket , you go and get in a different line so you wo n't have to make conversation , '' a friend from Connecticut protested , when Al Gore announced that he had chosen Lieberman to be his running mate
Well , that was true of so very many vice presidents
The vice presidential race was the high point of the Joe Lieberman story , even though he allowed Dick Cheney to eviscerate him in the debate
But he left it with the idea that he should be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004
Nobody else had gotten that message
Lieberman , a big supporter of the war in Iraq , expected the party 's base to nominate a candidate who disagreed with them about the critical issue of the day , had failed at the most crucial task delegated to him during the previous presidential election and was one of the most sluggish and clich - ridden public speakers in the history of oratory
He was shocked when they decided not to
`` It was n't a personal rejection , but I never saw anybody take anything so personally
He became so bitter about Democratic liberals , '' said Bill Curry , a former Connecticut comptroller and gubernatorial candidate
In his re-election campaign in 2006 , Lieberman , having learned nothing whatsoever , suggested that anyone who disagreed with him about the war was endangering the country
-LRB- `` We undermine the president 's credibility at our nation 's peril . ''
He lost the Democratic nomination
More shock and outrage
When he won running as an independent , it cemented his sense of exceptionalism
However , this did not seem like a trick he could pull off twice , unless both of the major parties cooperated in 2012 by once again nominating terrible candidates
-LRB- The Republican nominee in 2006 was in trouble for , among other things , using a phony name while betting at the local casinos and failing to pay his gambling debts in New Jersey .
However , on Wednesday , Lieberman assured everyone that he was not stepping down because the odds of his losing the next race were astronomically high but rather because he had been reading the Old Testament and decided that to everything there is a season
He will leave behind a long list of achievements , from helping to consolidate the nation 's intelligence gathering services in a way that appears to make it more difficult to gather intelligence , to threatening to filibuster the health care reform act until it had been watered down to suit his own high principles
You will find it all in my upcoming book , `` Everything Bad Is Joe Lieberman 's Fault .
On the one hand , the Republicans have a new superstar , Scott Brown , the senator-elect from Massachusetts
On the other , he 's already beginning to come off as a little strange
During Tuesday night 's victory speech , Brown veered off-script and offered up his college-student daughters to the crowd
-LRB- `` Yes , they 're both available ! ''
As his girls laughed with embarrassment and his wife yelled at him to stop , Brown just dug deeper
-LRB- `` Arianna 's definitely not available , but Ayla is . ''
By the end , even Glenn Beck was weirded out
However , in a spirit of even-handedness , let us say that Beck may have gone overboard when urged that Brown be equipped with a chastity belt and announced : `` This one could end with a dead intern .
For some Democrats , particularly the ones in Washington , looking on the bright side came down to blaming the Massachusetts Massacre on the party nominee , Martha Coakley
-LRB- `` Political malpractice , '' sniped one Obamaite .
True , she seemed to have the public persona of a flounder
But if warmth and charisma were a requisite for being in the Senate , three-quarters of the members would have to go home immediately
A body where Arlen Specter can be courted by both parties is not a place that puts much premium on personal charm
The White House would really rather not see the vote as a commentary on Obama
In this they are in accord with Scott Brown , who when asked whether his victory was a referendum on the president , said cheerfully : `` It 's much bigger than that .
Gradually , we are reaching a consensus that Coakley lost because the irritable voters wanted to send a message
Which was : change
Change all over the place
Except apparently not in beating up the bankers , since the Democrat favored a tax on big banks to pay for the bailout and the Republican opposed it
And not change that involves getting out of Afghanistan
That was Coakley 's idea
Brown wants to stay the course
Stay the course , for sure
But stop spending so much money on the course
Cut the budget
Except when it comes to the troops , who need all the support we can give them
As Scott Brown kept pointing out
Scott Brown has a truck
Maybe there could be more trucks
Health care
The voters were definitely sending a message , which was that Obama should have pushed harder , or else been more bipartisan
Many of the morning-after advocates of bipartisanship said Obama 's big error was failing to appease the Republican desire for doing something about malpractice insurance and torts
The people hate torts
Except the creamy chocolate kind
The voters of Massachusetts were definitely angry about taxes , although the ones they seemed most ticked off about were in the state
Everyone was really , really angry about the state government
This is a national theme
Vitriol also abounded last November in New Jersey and Virginia
And payback is coming soon in Illinois , which is going to have its primaries in a couple of weeks
So many states are knee-deep in debt , and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it since no matter how hard the various governors try to change things , the recalcitrant , entrenched state legislators always resist
That drives people crazy , causing them to express their ire by voting out the governors
Or Martha Coakley
The only officials who never get voted out are the legislators
Because they are entrenched
Back in 2008 , the public swung around to Barack Obama in a big way when the economy suddenly collapsed and John McCain responded by sounding impulsive to the point of flakiness
Things looked scary , and we liked the cool , calm , cerebral guy
Now people are less scared than irate because the stock market seems to have come back while they 're left behind
The angrier they get , the crazier their political objects of affection become
You ca n't drive home the point that you 're hopping mad by voting for some sensible centrist
Really , the scarier the better
Sarah Palin , be my valentine
Meanwhile , about that bright side : Some commentators have been arguing that having 60 votes in the Senate was really more trouble than it was worth
That once the Democrats hit a filibuster-proof majority , they were saddled with unrealistic hopes
Now that they 're down to 59 votes , the theory is that we 'll have such modest expectations that we 'll fall down with admiration if the senators manage to get their shoe laces tied in the morning
My positive thought is that we should appreciate what a good outlet democracy can be for public dissatisfaction
There was a time when , if people got worried about the way things were going , they would throw a virgin off the side of a cliff
Now they just kill a politician
And only metaphorically
Is this a great country , or what
Having been lucky enough to attend two of the most memorable events in modern American history , I am able to report that Inauguration Day in Washington was very much like a cold-weather Woodstock
At both , there was a wonderful feeling of community
Along , of course , with the sense that at any moment , you could be trampled to death by thousands of very friendly people who were being moved around like the world 's most mellow herd of cattle
The big difference was in the national reaction
The only people who felt unified during Woodstock were those who were there everybody else was horrified or jealous
But the inauguration left the whole country glued together emotionally , one big American ball of hope
President Obama has made it clear that each of us has a role to perform , sacrifices to make in the great task of rebuilding the country
But his inaugural speech did not actually make those new duties look all that daunting
He mentioned firefighters running into burning buildings and parents nurturing their children , both of which have been going on for some time
He expressed hope that if a levee broke , we would help the refugees , and I have a feeling that in the event of another such crisis we will not disappoint
On Wednesday in the Capitol , our elected officials seemed to be making at least a modest effort to respond to Obama 's call to give up `` the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics .
The Senate confirmed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state 94 to 2 , with Obama 's newest BFF , John McCain , urging his colleagues to work together while other Republicans hopped up to sing Clinton 's praises
`` A very ethical person and a wise person , '' chimed in Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania
Can you remember back when Hillary was first elected to the Senate eight years ago , and the Republican majority leader made the wistful suggestion that she might be hit by lightning before she was sworn in
Do you remember that just last year she was supposed to be the most divisive figure in American politics
Now , the Republicans can find only two people cranky enough to vote against putting her fourth in line of succession to the presidency
Meanwhile , over in the Finance Committee , most of the senators seemed reluctant to poke too hard at Obama 's Treasury secretary nominee , Timothy Geithner , even though Geithner has a record of not having paid all his taxes
The Republicans left most of the real complaining to people like Jim Bunning of Kentucky
Given the fact that Bunning claimed his last opponent looked `` like one of Saddam Hussein 's sons , '' we were not expecting him to be an early harbinger of the new era
`` Tim has made some mistakes , which he has freely admitted and corrected , '' said Charles Schumer of New York
This is what Geithner 's supporters always say
It 's their defenses that make him sound really indefensible
Despite the aid of a spiffy TurboTax program , Geithner neglected to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for the years he was employed by the International Monetary Fund
When the Internal Revenue Service audited his 2003 and 2004 returns and told him to hand over the money , it apparently did not occur to him that he had been working at the same job and paying taxes the same way in 2001 and 2002
It took a cabinet nomination to jog his memory
Nevertheless , most of the senators seem to feel that Geithner is , in the words of Charles Grassley , the Finance Committee 's ranking Republican , `` not only the best choice , '' but the only choice
The idea that there 's only one man who can save the day in a time of great economic crisis is worrisome , given the number of indispensable financial giants who 've turned out to be deeply dispensable on second look
-LRB- Let us pause to remember a presidential campaign past , in which McCain said that if Alan Greenspan , then the Federal Reserve chairman , were to die , he should be propped up and kept on the job anyway .
Perhaps there 's no time to start digging up a new Treasury secretary at this point
But we are starting the new era with the bar set surprisingly low
In the House , Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to leave Charles Rangel in charge of the tax-setting Ways and Means Committee during an ethics investigation of his incredibly sloppy personal finances
In defense , she points out that the House leadership does have standards , and that she kicked former Representative William Jefferson off Ways and Means after investigators found $ 90,000 in marked bills hidden inside his freezer
In the Senate , Schumer argues that Geithner 's errors `` pale before the myriad mistakes made by the operators of financial institutions .
Maybe we should have higher standards for our Treasury secretary than being better organized than Lehman Brothers
Really , we 're ready for a new era that looks a little ... newer
The Week of Speaking Pleasantly Congress really has been looking a little more civil
Not quite Athens in the age of Pericles , but it 's very possible that this year we 'll get through the State of the Union address without anybody jumping up to scream insults at the president
The Senate has had no comity issues whatsoever because everybody went home after a single meeting early this month under rules that require time to come to a halt
It 's officially still the first day of the year in Harry Reid Land , demonstrating once again how closely the United States Senate resembles the second season of the original `` Star Trek .
But the House has been busy
First , the members read the Constitution out loud , which gave us a welcome opportunity to recall the time last fall that John Boehner gave a speech in which he bragged that he carried the document everywhere , pulled it out of his pocket , waved it around , and then started to recite passages from the Declaration of Independence
Then came the first bill of the year , which directed the Government Printing Office to stop producing hundreds of copies of bills and resolutions that people can just look up online
It passed unanimously
Who says Republicans and Democrats ca n't work together
True , since the entire House printing budget is only about $ 7 million a year , this is not going to make much of an impact on the deficit
But trees will be saved , waste paper reduced and Washington parks will no longer be littered with fluttering resolutions commemorating National Frozen Food Day
Good start , guys
Then , of course , the new Republican majority took their symbolic vote to repeal the health care reform law
The debate really was n't that bad
In a welcome break from the past , the Republicans refrained from claiming that God was personally rooting for the collapse of Obamacare
And while the Democrats said that people would die if the law was repealed , they did not suggest that this would make the Republicans happy
I 'm picking up good vibrations ... ... `` I look forward to working with my friends not only on the right but also my colleagues on the left to craft a bill that 's going to work for the American people , '' said Sean Duffy , a new Republican from Wisconsin
He is the one who used to be in the reality show `` The Real World .
He met his wife on another reality show , `` Road Rules All-Stars , '' and they now have six children
I believe Sean Duffy is the progenitor of a new breed of American politicians who will begin their careers by being chosen to live , on camera , with a bunch of strangers in a large apartment , or competing for valuable prizes on a remote island , or losing enormous amounts of weight on national television
Then they can announce their candidacy for Congress
No longer will it be necessary to go to law school
Actually , Duffy did both , but he is like one of those cross-species babies in science-fiction movies who pave the way for a whole new life form
When they were n't being polite to one another , the Democrats spent much of the debate time holding up pictures of seriously ill constituents who would lose their health coverage if the law went away , while Republicans made their victims out of small business
`` I want to tell you about the owner of the Pizza Hut in Headland , Ala. , who will be forced to close his doors due to the costs associated with this law , '' warned Martha Roby , one of the freshmen who defeated an incumbent Democrat and , therefore , got special first-day positioning
The new law 's opponents do n't generally say in so many words that they 're fighting for employers ' God-given right to refuse to provide health insurance for their workers
But that seems to be the bottom line
The worst moment for the Democrats came when one of their own , Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee , broke the march toward civil discourse by comparing the Republican talking points to Nazi propaganda
This was during a brief speech in which he also managed to work in the term `` blood libel .
The only possible consolation for his fellow party members was that in this week 's competition for worst remark by a politician , Cohen was pitted against the new governor of Alabama , who announced in his Martin Luther King Day speech that any constituent who had not accepted Jesus Christ as his savior was `` not my brother .
That would be worse , particularly if you were a Jew or a Muslim living in Birmingham
But , all in all , not a bad record
Maybe civility will become a serious trend
Everything would be better
All the screaming heads would lose their cable TV shows to be replaced by a bunch of pleasant House members who can talk both about the issues , and their plans to appear on `` Survivor CCLV .
On MSNBC , Keith Olbermann called Scott Brown , the senator-elect from Massachusetts , `` an irresponsible , homophobic , racist , reactionary , ex-nude model , teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees .
It was a Senate race , not the Battle of Hastings
`` In the personal scheme of things , I went too far
In the broad scheme of things , this was a blip on the radar , '' said Olbermann , in a telephone interview , citing the multitudinous cases when right-wing talk-show hosts have said much worse
Given the fact that Glenn Beck has already claimed that Brown could wind up `` with a dead intern , '' I believe he may have a point
Meanwhile , on a radio show in Pennsylvania , Senator Arlen Specter lost it completely and told Representative Michele Bachmann , the irrepressible heroine of the Tea Party movement , to `` act like a lady .
Specter , you will remember , switched parties last year
Democrats must be asking themselves why they wanted him
Oh , yes , the 60th vote
Well , that 's all over
The good news is that Joseph Lieberman is only about one-tenth as important as he was on Monday
The bad news is the remaining 59 includes a self-important 79-year-old who makes wildly patronizing remarks about his female opponent during a radio debate
To be fair , Bachmann does have a terrific talent for driving people nuts
When you ask a person what legislation she 's supported and the answer is `` prosperity , '' you can assume this is not going to be a day for meaningful dialogue
`` Prosperity was n't a bill , '' snapped Specter
`` Then why do n't we make it one ?
Bachmann responded , in a tone of extreme reason
Sputtering , Specter said : `` I 'll treat you like a lady
So act like one .
Not once , but twice
This is about as inept as you can get
When Bachmann started lecturing him about how Americans want less government , the correct response was : `` Yeah , unless it 's $ 250,000 in subsidies for the Bachmann family farm .
Instead , Specter kept complaining and calling for ladylike deportment until the host mercifully intervened and ended the show
He has to run for re-election this year
If the Democrats are looking for a wake-up call from Massachusetts , the big rooster in the room is the plethora of underwhelming candidates they are fielding
In Illinois , where Barack Obama 's former Senate seat is on the line , the leading Democratic contender is a 33-year-old who spent almost all of his adult life working for the bank that his family owns
Perhaps the president forgot that last week when he told Massachusetts voters that `` bankers do n't need another vote in the Senate .
Maybe John Edwards was sniffing desperation in the air when , in the same week that he admitted that the campaign love child was indeed his daughter , he called the White House and said he was going to Haiti to help in the relief efforts
The White House pretended it was a wrong number
A spokeswoman said Edwards also had been doing charitable work in El Salvador
If this was the plan of his wife , Elizabeth , to get him out of the house , it seems reasonable
But is it a road to rehabilitation
Sure as long as he stays in disaster zones
It would be great if all our disgraced politicians decided to devote themselves to helping the poor , providing they understand that this is not a second act but the thing they get to do after the curtain has dropped and the audience has gone home
Eliot Spitzer was going to devote himself to good works , too
But now , every time you turn around , there he is talking on TV or blogging about current events
He 's trying to warn the country about evil robber barons
But I was thinking more along the line of distributing mosquito nets in Chad
Meanwhile , a lot of Democrats who ought to be preparing to take the field in November seem to be running for shelter
In Illinois and Connecticut , the best candidates available have announced that they 're running to be the state attorney general
These days , everybody wants to be an attorney general and cuddle up and sue dairies that sell curdled milk until the political weather improves
It is very hard to be unpopular when you 're an attorney general
Even Martha Coakley was a popular attorney general
This would not have happened if Senator Charles Schumer of New York was still in charge of recruiting candidates
Schumer was completely manic
Promising Democrats would open the door to get the newspaper in the morning and they 'd find him curled up on the front porch with a dead squirrel he had brought them as a token of love
Bring back Schumer
Maybe he could get Conan O'Brien to run in North Dakota
Just before she was confirmed as secretary of state , Hillary Clinton bid adieu to her New York constituents and her eight-year career as a U.S. senator
`` I 've had a lot of fun , '' she said in a farewell speech
`` Eight state fairs , 45 parades , 62 counties , more than 4,600 events across the state .
The Conversation : Looking for Change in All the Wrong Places -LRB- January 22 , 2009 -RRB- A short list , yet the answer to many questions
Like why , in a state chock-full of distinguished residents , it was so hard to scrounge up Hillary 's replacement
Caroline Kennedy , who seemed to have pretty much locked up the seat , told Gov. David Paterson this week that she wanted out , citing mysterious personal reasons
New York Democrats were a little resentful , particularly since for most of them there were few reasons up to and including having been deceased for several weeks that are grave enough to warrant passing up a free Senate seat
Respectful of the longstanding state tradition that there is no situation so bad that it ca n't be made worse , Paterson 's office followed up by sliming Kennedy
Even before the messy denouement , there were worrisome signs that Kennedy was just not the kind of person who would have fun doing 4,600 events across the state
A well-adjusted U.S. senator needs to combine a sincere interest in public policy with a joyful acceptance of the need to demean oneself while begging for votes and donations
But Caroline only seemed really enthusiastic about the first bit
The state 's senior senator , Chuck Schumer , on the other hand , believes that doing something silly is a way to reassure voters that he does n't think he 's better than they are
One of his fondest memories is competing in a sausage-eating contest in Cheektowaga
His staff has a rule requiring aides to intervene if it looks as if their man is about to sing , dance or put on a strange hat
Clinton had a zest for the endless campaign , too , although the fact that she was keeping count of the number of appearances suggests that even she perceived a very deep downside to the job
On Friday in Albany , Governor Paterson introduced Kirsten Gillibrand , a 42-year-old second-term member of Congress , as the new junior senator from New York
One look and you could see that this was a woman who would like nothing more than to march in 45 parades
She thanked everybody on the planet and introduced her 8-month-old son who was , she explained happily , `` a good eater and a good sleeper .
Little Henry , we have since learned , was born shortly after Gillibrand spent 13 hours in the House of Representatives , voting on the farm bill and sitting through an endless hearing of the Armed Services Committee , where she successfully offered an amendment before moving on to the delivery room
Despite Gillibrand 's giddy good cheer , there was a sense of uneasiness in the air at the press conference
And it had nothing to do with the fact that while the new senator was being unveiled , the New York State Senate 's recently retired majority leader was being indicted for political corruption
Really , Albany takes stuff like that in stride
Gillibrand is conservative by New York Democratic standards , and there were rumblings of revolt in the party 's extremely large liberal wing
`` A very bad choice , '' said Representative Carolyn McCarthy of Long Island , a gun control advocate who was incensed by Gillibrand 's perfect N.R.A. voting record
The way a legislator votes is sort of , um , significant
Gillibrand 's current House district is conservative , but the state is n't particularly the Democratic part
However , it seems as if the new senator 's politics are evolving at a rate previously seen only in science-fiction movies
She 's developed a hitherto unnoticed belief in gay marriage
At her press conference , she expressed an interest in working on one of McCarthy 's gun control bills
She has an appointment to meet in Harlem with Al Sharpton
It feels as if it 's time for the Senate to finish swearing-in new faces and move on to ... bills
Let 's take what we 've got and wait and see
While the governor of Illinois is having his impeachment trial , his selection for the Senate , Roland Burris , is now happily ensconced in Fred Thompson 's old office
You will remember that in the presidential race , Thompson entered in a blaze of glory but wound up looking extremely silly
Perhaps Burris , who entered Washington on a wave of hilarity , will turn out to be a statesman
Stranger things have happened
After all , we live in a world in which the former president of France was hospitalized this week after an attack by his `` clinically depressed '' Maltese
We 're in for the long haul
If you 're a New Yorker with a parade or sausage-eating contest coming up , be sure to invite Senator Gillibrand
Meanwhile , hope for the best
And watch out for small , bipolar dogs
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction : Correction : January 27 , 2009 Saturday 's column by Gail Collins misidentified the French official hospitalized after being attacked by his dog
He is the former president , Jacques Chirac , not the current one
`` As I 've pointed out over and over again ... '' Rudy Giuliani said this week at a press conference in a South Florida suburb
The great Russell Baker once observed that when a reporter finds himself writing `` Once again this year ... '' it 's time to look for a new beat
When a presidential candidate starts confiding to his audience that he could give his speech in his sleep , as Rudy has been doing , it may be time to consider another line of work
Tuesday 's Florida primary is supposed to be the Giuliani firewall , his explanation for why he kept coming in third or fourth or fifth everywhere else
Of course he did n't get any votes in Michigan
How could anybody expect him to do well in Iowa
He had to campaign in Florida
After a while , it began to take on the eerie quality of `` The Shining .
He 's only at 15 percent in some of the polls could he really have been campaigning here for a month and a half
Cue a picture of the candidate sitting in a basement somewhere , writing `` All work and no play makes Rudy a dull boy '' on the walls
At first , Giuliani 's unusual strategy seemed unusual but not entirely irrational
He would win over Florida by proving that he loved it more than any other state , the way John McCain loved New Hampshire and Mitt Romney loved Michigan
But many commentators have pointed out really very unkindly that the longer Giuliani stayed in Florida , the lower his standing in the state polls
Perhaps it would have been wiser for him to make his stand in a place where people had barely heard of him
They say Guam is quite lovely this time of year
`` The reality is we are getting support , '' said the candidate in answer to the inevitable question
He says `` the reality is ... '' very , very often
Almost as often as he says `` very , very .
Those of us who live in New York found it rather peculiar that Giuliani was a front-runner at all , given his deeply mixed record running the city
Now , the idea that Florida might take him out of the race is somewhat disappointing
There 's still so much about him we have n't yet had a chance to share with the national electorate
Did we ever mention the time he tried to stop the city elections because he did n't think that New York could get along without him
Rudy was thrown off his game by the public 's shift from worrying about terrorism to worrying about the economy , and a dwindling interest in hearing him talk about where he was when the terrorists attacked New York
He 's tried to rebound by vigorously promoting a national catastrophe fund to reduce the cost of home insurance in hurricane-prone Florida
This is not , in general , an idea that fiscal conservatives cotton to
It 's so dicey , in fact , that even Mitt Romney has been hesitant about adopting it as a pander-point
Giuliani has turned hurricanes into nature 's way of saying Al Qaeda
-LRB- `` All of us are subject to the impact of natural disasters ... and of course acts of terrorism , which I remember living through . ''
Perhaps he can pull it off
Florida is one of those places that makes participating in elections as easy as ordering a drive-thru hamburger
People have been casting their votes for almost two weeks now
Maybe a lot of them voted for Rudy and then were embarrassed to admit it to the pollsters , once they discovered he was n't really very popular after all
Still , his campaign has a definite pall over it , and his many hangers-on have to be wondering whether another pathetic showing here would damage the Rudy brand
Are corporations still going to pay him $ 100,000 for lecturing about leadership and 9\/11 now that they know he 's done it for free on the pool deck at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando and Paisano 's Gourmet Pizza in Port St. Lucie
-LRB- More critically from the minions ' perspective , are they still going to provide , as the speaking contract requires , `` first-class travel expenses for up to five people ? ''
Are they still going to hire his firm , Giuliani Partners , to do whatever it is Giuliani Partners is supposed to do , now that the glow of hanging out with America 's Mayor has faded
Before the terrorist attack , after all , Rudy Giuliani was just a lame-duck mayor with abysmal approval ratings , a tabloidy personal life and uncertain job prospects
What 9\/11 has given , 1\/29 could taketh away
Perhaps that 's why he 's refrained from saying anything unpleasant about any of his competitors in Florida
Mitt Romney and John McCain are torn between trying to go in for the kill and their desire to avoid looking like Barack and Hillary
The best Rudy can do , on the other hand , might be to avoid looking like a future contender on `` The Celebrity Apprentice .
Utah s Gun Appreciation Day This week in Washington , Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey introduced three very modest gun regulation bills , including one making it more difficult to sell guns to people on the terror watch list
Meanwhile , in Salt Lake City , the State Legislature is considering a bill to honor the Browning M1911 pistol by making it the official state firearm
Guess which idea has the better chance of passage
Can I see a show of hands
Oh , you cynics , you
Yes , a committee in the Utah House of Representatives voted 9 to 2 this week to approve a bill that would add the Browning pistol to the pantheon of official state things , along with the bird -LRB- seagull -RRB- , rock -LRB- coal -RRB- and dance -LRB- square -RRB-
Also , although it really has nothing to do with this discussion , I have to mention that the Utah Legislature has provided its citizens with an official state cooking pot , and it is the Dutch oven
`` This firearm is Utah , '' Representative Carl Wimmer , the Browning bill 's sponsor , told The Salt Lake Tribune
He is an energetic-looking guy with a huge forehead who has only been in office four years yet has , according to one of his videos , `` sponsored and passed some of the most significant pieces of legislation in Utah history .
Capitol observers say the Browning bill has an excellent chance of becoming law
Meanwhile , Lautenberg will be lucky to get a hearing
The terror of the National Rifle Association is so pervasive that President Obama did not want to poison the mood of his State of the Union address by suggesting that when somebody on the terror watch list tries to buy a gun , maybe we should do an extra check
`` But people are now commenting on the fact that the president did n't talk about it in his speech
That has n't happened for years , '' said Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence , whose job really does require an inordinate amount of optimism
Lautenberg 's bills are extremely mild , and no one seems eager to argue in public against the one that would end easy access to 30-bullet magazines that allow someone with a semiautomatic pistol to mow down a parking lot full of people in a matter of seconds
Instead , they just refuse to come to the phone or toss out platitudes
`` The people that are going to commit a crime or are going to do something crazy are n't going to pay attention to the laws in the first place
Let 's fix the real problem
Here 's a mentally deranged person who had access to a gun that should not have had access to a gun , '' said Senator Tom Coburn on `` Meet the Press .
Another of Lautenberg 's bills would tighten a loophole in current law so a mentally deranged person who should not have access to guns could not go to a gun show and buy one without the regular security check
But never mind
On Monday , the Utah State Capitol celebrated Browning Day , honoring John Moses Browning , native son and maker of the nominee for Official State Firearm
There were speeches , a proclamation , a flyover by a National Guard helicopter , and , of course , a rotunda full of guns
`` We recognize his efforts to preserve the Constitution , '' Gov. Gary Herbert said , in keeping with what appears to be a new Republican regulation requiring all party members to mention the Constitution at least once in every three sentences
It is generally not a good policy to dwell on the strange behavior of state legislators since it leads to bottomless despair
If I wanted to go down that road , I 'd give you Mark Madsen , a Utah state senator who tried to improve upon the Browning Day celebrations by suggesting they be scheduled to coincide with Martin Luther King Day since `` both made tremendous contributions to individual freedom and individual liberty .
But it 's a symptom of a new streak of craziness abroad in the land , which has politicians scrambling to prove not just that they are against gun regulation , but also that they are proactively in favor of introducing guns into every conceivable part of American life
National parks
`` There is abundant research suggesting in cities where more people own guns , the crime rate , especially the murder rate , goes down , '' Utah 's new United States senator , Mike Lee , told CNN
Actually , there 's a ton of debate about this , which is hard to resolve given the fact that , as Michael Luo reported in The Times , the N.R.A. 's crack lobbyists have managed to stop almost all federal financing for scientific research on gun-related questions
But Lee has definitely made the list of most creative commentators on these matters , ever since he dismissed calls for a calmer political rhetoric after the Tucson massacre by arguing that `` the shooter wins if we , who 've been elected , change what we do just because of what he did .
Feel free to say whatever you like about the senator 's thinking
Be frank
Otherwise , the shooter wins
My fellow Americans , the state of the union is angry
Also strong
Presidents usually say the state of the union is strong
But this year you would have to go with strongly angry
In his speech on Wednesday night , President Obama actually dropped that traditional state-of-the-union-is rhetoric completely in honor of the new irascibility
`` We all hated the bank bailout , '' he said in one of his first big applause lines
Yes , the one good thing you can say about our highest elected officials is that they are ticked off at so many people that sooner or later they 've got to climb up on some common ground
The House hates the Senate
The liberal Democrats hate the moderate Democrats
The normal conservative Republicans hate the hyper Tea Party-types
The Tea Party-ists are having so many internal fights that there 's a definite danger of broken crockery
And , of course , everybody hates the bankers , except the Republicans who sat on their hands when the president called for taxing them
Obama does not really do angry
Peeved , yes
He looked pretty peeved when he was being interviewed by Diane Sawyer of ABC News the other night
If he ca n't manage mellow with Diane Sawyer , what 's he going to do on Friday when he has scheduled a meeting with the House Republicans
Have you ever seen all the House Republicans in one place
It 's like a herd of rabid otters
Looking out at the motley crew seated before him for the big speech , the president seemed at times to be pretending that he had never seen these people before in his life
`` Washington has been telling us to wait for decades , '' he complained at one point , as if he was a visitor from the heartland with a petition that he wanted to deliver if only he could get an appointment with someone on the appropriations committee
Obama Year One began with euphoria
At the start of Year Two , crankiness rules
The House Democrats jumped up in triumph whenever the president dissed the Senate for holding things up
The Senate majority leader , Harry Reid has Harry Reid had a single sunny moment in the last year
got caught yawning by the cameras
There were occasionally scattered Republican jeers , although it probably counts as an improvement that nobody shouted a full insult at the president this time around
When Justice Samuel Alito took exception to the president 's assault on the Supreme Court 's recent campaign finance decision , he shook his head and mouthed `` not true .
Justice John Paul Stevens , who hated that decision more than anyone , was absent for the speech
There are rumors that he 's planning to retire
And can you imagine how Congress is going to behave if Obama has to try to name a successor
There is n't a single jurist in the United States who does n't hold some opinion that 41 members of the Senate would find outrageous
Maybe they can locate a nice 50-year-old lawyer who was plunged into a coma on the day he or she passed the bar , and emerged only last week
On Wednesday , the things that seemed to elicit the most bipartisan reactions were : hope -LRB- standing ovation -RRB- , cutting the capital gains tax for small businesses -LRB- ditto -RRB- and Obama 's plan for deficit control , which caused a cold breeze to blow from both the Republican and Democratic camps
Democrats hate the proposed freeze on discretionary spending because they like discretionary spending
Republicans say it 's too little too late , and , besides , it 's their issue
Hands off
While the reaction certainly suggested this idea is a goner , it 's likely that Obama 's most conservative proposals are still the ones with the best odds of survival
The last few presidents had their best and often only luck getting big domestic bills passed when they were the other party 's programs
Bill Clinton got welfare reform
George W. Bush got No Child Left Behind and the Medicare drug plan
Both of those were basically Democratic ideas , although Bush added his own personal twist of not paying for them
But Obama insisted he was going to hang in there and fight the good fight for health care reform and energy and good for him getting rid of the military 's do n't - ask-don ` t-tell rule
Plus , he urged Congress to reform itself and regulate lobbyists and campaign donations
-LRB- Silence ruled .
He also threw in a call for earmark reform
Although those porky earmarks are certainly an undesirable thing , ever since John McCain 's presidential campaign I have regarded calls for their reform as a small sign of desperation
On Wednesday , earmark reform got more time than immigration reform
Obama has been saying that he 'd rather be `` a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president .
Being a good one-term president probably sounds great to him right now
Run the Obama Foundation and never have to deal with Joe Lieberman again
But he 's definitely going for the double
For one thing , there is no such thing as a really good president who walked away after one term
James Polk
Barack Obama did not leave Hawaii to wind up remembered as the James Polk of the 21st century
`` I 'm so excited I can hardly stand it , '' Ledbetter said recently after the bill passed the Senate
Obama told her story over and over when he campaigned for president : How Ledbetter , now 70 , spent years working as a plant supervisor at a tire factory in Alabama
How , when she neared retirement , someone slipped her a pay schedule that showed her male colleagues were making much more money than she was
A jury found her employer , the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company , to be really , really guilty of pay discrimination
But the Supreme Court , in a 5-to-4 decision led by the Bush appointees , threw out Ledbetter 's case , ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the first time Goodyear paid her less than her peers
-LRB- Let us pause briefly to contemplate the chances of figuring out your co-workers ' salaries within the first six months on the job .
Until the Supreme Court stepped in , courts generally presumed that the 180-day time limit began the last time an employee got a discriminatory pay check , not the first
In an attempt at bipartisan comity , the Senate decided to simply restore the status quo , rejecting House efforts to make the law tougher
Even then , only five Republican senators voted for it four women and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania , who is currently the most threatened of the deeply endangered species known as moderate Republicans
Ledbetter , who was widowed in December , wo n't get any restitution of her lost wages ; her case ca n't be retried
She 's now part of a long line of working women who went to court and changed a little bit of the world in fights that often brought them minimal personal benefit
Another was Eulalie Cooper , a flight attendant who sued Delta Air Lines in the mid - '60s when she was fired for being married
Not only did a Louisiana judge uphold the airline industry 's bizarre rules requiring stewardesses to be young and single , Cooper was denied unemployment benefits on the grounds that by getting married she left her job `` voluntarily .
But she began a pattern of litigation that eventually ended the industry 's insistence that women needed to look like sex objects in order to properly care for passengers on airplanes
Next time you talk about US Airways Flight 1549 's spectacular landing on the Hudson River , remember that the three flight attendants who kept calm in the ditched plane were all women in their 50s and give a nod to people like Eulalie Cooper
Patricia Lorance , an Illinois factory worker , went to court after her union and employer secretly agreed to new seniority rules that discriminated against the women who had been promoted in the post-Civil Rights Act era of the 1970s
Like Ledbetter , she lost her court fight because of a ridiculous ruling about timing , which had to be fixed by Congress
Working at a series of lower-paying jobs after the factory closed , and then disabled by physical ailments , Lorance lost track of her case long before it finally wound its way through the Supreme Court
`` But to this day , I am rather proud of myself because I was not a dumb person
I believe in just standing up and fighting for your own rights , '' she said in a phone interview
Ledbetter 's real soul sister is Lorena Weeks of Wadley , Ga.
Weeks , now 80 , had worked two jobs to support her orphaned siblings , then struggled with her husband to set enough money aside to assure their children would be able to go to college
A longtime telephone employee , she applied for a higher-paying job overseeing equipment at the central office
Both her union and the management said the job was unsuitable for a woman because it involved pushing 30-pound equipment on a dolly , even though Weeks regularly toted around a 34-pound typewriter at her clerical job
Weeks v. Southern Bell helped smash employers ' old dodge of keeping women out of higher-paying positions by claiming that they required qualifications only men could fulfill
But it was a long , painful fight during which Weeks was terrified that she might lose her job entirely
`` I felt like I was so alone , and yet I knew I was doing what God wanted me to do
Going back to the fact my momma had died working so hard
And I knew women worked and needed a place in the world , '' she said
It 's a good day for the feisty working women who went to court to demand their rights and the frequently underpaid lawyers who championed them
They 're strangers to one another ; most of them made their stands and then returned to their ordinary lives
But they 're a special sorority all the same
And Lilly Ledbetter got to go to the inauguration and dance with the new president
`` Tell her congratulations , '' said Lorena Weeks
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction : Correction : January 30 , 2009 An article on Wednesday about final passage by Congress of pay-discrimination legislation misstated the number of bills signed by President Obama
Until he signed the pay-discrimination measure on Thursday , Mr. Obama had signed no bills not one
-LRB- The one bill signing attributed to Mr. Obama , a measure affecting the salary of the secretary of the interior , was signed by then-President Bush , days before he left office .
The error was repeated on Thursday in an Op-Ed page column by Gail Collins about the pay-discrimination bill
Don t Know Much About History And do we really need a new Sarah Palin
Should n't the first one be made to go away before we start considering replacements
Bachmann , the superconservative member of Congress from Minnesota , made a big splash on Tuesday night with her Tea Party response to the State of the Union address
True , the placement of the cameras made her look as if she was talking to an invisible friend , and her eye makeup had a peculiar zombie aspect to it
But the next day all the attention was on her and not the official Republican response by Paul Ryan , the House Budget Committee chairman
And the Republicans were afraid to complain
One congressman from Utah told Politico that he thought `` to try to upend Paul Ryan was just wrong .
Hours later he issued a retraction - through Bachmann 's office
On one level , Bachmann is just a third-term representative who only gets attention whenever she does something newsworthy , like claiming the Constitution says she does n't have to tell a census taker anything but how many people live in her home
She was passed over in a try for a minor post in House leadership
Yet , at her invitation , Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court came trotting over to the Capitol to lecture the House freshmen this week about the true meaning of the Constitution
And she makes the leaders who snubbed her quake with terror
What if she rallies her fellow Tea Partiers into a rebellion over , say , raising the debt limit , and the economy collapses
She does have a history of single-mindedness
Back when Bachmann was a state senator in Minnesota , her colleagues complained that they could n't get a budget done because she insisted on bringing everything to a screeching halt to argue about same-sex marriage
It was a controversy marked by her usual flair
`` In 2005 , she claimed to have been held against her will in a restaurant bathroom by two critics of an amendment banning same-sex marriage ; they said they 'd merely buttonholed her to talk , '' reported The Minneapolis Star Tribune in a profile
`` Then foes claimed that Bachmann hid behind some bushes to spy on a gay-rights rally ; she said she was merely checking the turnout .
Bushes aside , Bachmann is a much more serious person than Palin , whose response to the State of the Union address was to focus on the title , `` Winning the Future .
-LRB- `` There were a lot of W.T.F. moments throughout that speech . ''
If Palin and Bachmann were your co-workers , Palin would be the one sneaking out early to go bowling , while Bachmann would stay late to reorganize the office seating chart to reflect her own personal opinion of who most deserves to be near the water cooler
History is superimportant to Bachmann , who claims that she left the Democratic Party when she was a college senior , after reading `` Burr , '' Gore Vidal 's caustic historical novel
`` He was kind of mocking the founding fathers , and I just thought ` what a snot , ' '' Bachmann told The Star Tribune
It was , she said , a transformational moment so critical to her worldview that she can still remember what she was wearing
-LRB- `` A tan trench coat , blue pin-striped shirt , like a tailored shirt , and dress slacks . ''
It 's not everybody who switches political parties over a historical novel , but Bachmann 's vision of the past is the core to her ideology
The men who created the Constitution were perfect heroes , so infallible that they fully understood the right to bear arms would someday include semiautomatic pistols capable of firing 30 bullets in 10 seconds
Last week , Bachmann was in Iowa , setting off alarm bells about her possible presidential ambitions and delivering a speech in which she claimed that the founding fathers had `` worked tirelessly '' to eradicate slavery
She then cited John Quincy Adams , who was not a founding father
Bachmann is not a zealous fact-checker , as we learned when she claimed the president 's trip to India would cost the taxpayers $ 200 million a day , based on an Indian newspaper report quoting an unnamed provincial official
In the real world , many founders , like Thomas Jefferson , expressed reservations about slavery but still kept hundreds of slaves , who were the basis of their personal wealth
Others , like John Adams , never owned slaves and opposed the institution but compromised on the matter of all men actually being created equal in order to bring the southern states into the union
And not a single one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence envisioned in any way , shape or form a democracy in which people of Michele Bachmann 's gender would sit in the halls of Congress
But Bachmann was speaking to the lore of the far right , which strips the founding fathers of their raw , fallible humanity and ignores the fact that , in some ways , we 're wiser
Maybe she 'll make Sarah Palin look good
As I was saying , last November , the Justice Department announced that the terror trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be held in Manhattan
Almost everyone in New York rallied around
This was seen as standing up to terrorism
`` It is fitting that 9\/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center , where so many New Yorkers were murdered , '' said Mayor Michael Bloomberg
Now everything 's flipped
The politicians are running for the hills , and the issue has been repackaged as standing up to traffic jams
`` There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive , '' said Bloomberg
And the Justice Department is backing down
The trial will happen somewhere else
People in Lower Manhattan will breathe a sigh of relief
But this feels very wrong
The Bloomberg rebellion fits right into the sour , us-first mood that 's settled over the country
It 's part of the same impulse that caused Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska to decree that a historic overhaul of the country 's messed-up health care system was not going to happen unless his home state got a special exemption from sharing the costs
Or the Not-in-My-Backyard uprising that followed President Obama 's attempt to move the Guant namo prisoners into American maximum-security lockups
No matter how remote the prison , local politicians said that the danger was too great to bear
Both of Montana 's Democratic senators immediately decreed that their entire state was a no-go zone
Or the Republican race to the other side of the room any time the Obama administration proposes anything
Rudy Giuliani , who watched `` in awe of our system '' when terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted in a civilian court in Virginia , instantly attacked the plans for the Manhattan trial
Giuliani kept finding everything Obama did worse and worse until he finally flipped completely over the edge and claimed that there had been no terrorist attacks in the United States during the Bush administration
It 's all part of a cult of selfishness that decrees it 's fine to throw your body in front of any initiative , no matter how important , if resistance looks more profitable
The economy has a lot to do with this
So does Washington 's increasing confidence that Barack Obama can be rolled
We 're currently stuck in a place where people no longer feel as though they need to be part of the solution
Democrats are starting to join the Republicans ' call to toss out the Constitution and try suspected terrorists in military courts
Some of the same senators who gave you the endless health care bill obstructions have already signed on , saying federal trials are too expensive and too dangerous
Safety is always a concern , but Al Qaeda does n't operate like a season of `` 24 .
Terrorists do n't generally strike when it 's most symbolic or best serves a story line
They do the things that happen to work out
So Barack Obama is inaugurated and the 9\/11 anniversary passes in peace and quiet
Then a guy tries to explode his underwear while heading for the Detroit airport
New York 's sudden resistance certainly was n't about safety , even though Dianne Feinstein , chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee , sent a whiny letter to the White House saying a trial in Manhattan could `` add to the threat .
The problem was inconvenience
People were fine with having the trial here until the police commissioner , Raymond Kelly , started describing his plans for permanently cordoning off a goodly chunk of Lower Manhattan
Businesses and residents had n't appreciated what a huge , life-disrupting inconvenience standing up to terror could be
And no one was applauding them for their potential sacrifice
If anything , they were regarded as saps for agreeing to go along with something that Montana found to be unacceptable risk
This is a change
The city experienced the worst of terrorism on 9\/11 , but we also saw the best of the country in the weeks that followed
People rushed in from everywhere often at great inconvenience to help
And for months afterward , you could not travel anywhere outside the state without having other Americans come up to you and ask if there was anything they could do
They wanted a task
A whole nation was hungering to be inconvenienced for the common good
And President Bush 's response was to give them a tax cut
Whatever muscles we used in cooperating have atrophied
Barack Obama ran for president promising to change that , and he has n't
Part of the fault is his
Sometimes at crucial moments , there seems to be no hands on the tiller
The Republicans are impossible
Many Democrats are both frightened and greedy
But figuring out how we got here is irrelevant
We need to get out
Wendy Wasserstein and I had a running e-mail joke in which we took turns taking responsibility for everything bad that happened
`` I 'll bring the Iraqi constitution and we can work on it in the bar , '' she wrote last year before a theater date
I congratulated her for getting Michael Brown the FEMA job
We both claimed to be in charge of the Middle East peace process
We were making fun of Wendy 's reputation for good-heartedness
Her outrageously premature death yesterday deprived the nation of a beloved playwright , but it also stripped the city of one of its best people
The first time I met her , she was rushing to a speaking engagement at a small library in a faraway section of Brooklyn
I assumed that either this was the historic spot where she had learned to read or that she was related to the librarian
But no , it was simply a place that had the moxie to ask a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright to come and do its event
`` Last month I was voted Miss Colitis , '' Wendy once wrote
`` I was honored at the Waldorf-Astoria and presented with a Steuben glass bowl by Mary Ann Mobley Collins , a former Miss America
It 's not that the treatment of colitis is an unworthy mission , but I have no connection to the cause except that I received a letter from the Colitis Committee asking me to show up
In other words , I became Miss Colitis because I am very nice .
Sometimes it was almost impossible to resist taking advantage
Wendy and I once jointly agreed to give talks at a convention of women journalists being held in Montana , under the theory that it would be an excellent opportunity to see one another
-LRB- We had reached that circle of scheduling hell in which two people who live less than a mile apart have to traverse the continent in order to have coffee .
After I arrived , I got a call from Wendy , who had missed the plane
Her only alternatives were to cancel or fly in at midnight , give her address at breakfast and then immediately return to the airport
`` You should do whatever you think best , '' I said cruelly
`` The only thing I can tell you is that these women are really nice and they 're looking forward to meeting you .
I picked her up at midnight
`` You were right , '' she said , as we drove back to the airport 10 hours later
`` They were awfully nice women .
Wendy was a charter member of the company of nice women , a river of accommodating humanity that flows through Manhattan just as it flows through Des Moines and Oneonta , N.Y. , organizing library fund-raisers , running day care centers , ordering prescriptions for elderly parents , buying all the birthday presents and giving career counseling to the nephew of a very remote acquaintance who is trying to decide between making it big on Broadway and dentistry
In the essay that began with the Miss Colitis story , she noted that niceness had become unfashionable , and promised to be crankier in the future
It was just a literary device
Wendy understood that being considerate in a society of self-involved strivers was not for wimps
It required a steely inner toughness that was the hallmark of many of her heroines
She also knew her own nature
`` Frankly , I never want to leave a room and be thought of as a horrible person , '' she admitted
But Wendy never explained what the rest of us were supposed to do when she left the room before us
`` Yesterday , Wendy Wasserstein left us
Just 55 , she had quietly battled lymphoma , and quiet is a word rarely used to describe the vibrant , radiant Wendy Wasserstein .
Related Searches Wasserstein ,
The presidential campaign is kind of lonely we 'd gotten used to having a big crowd
The parents of extremely large families must feel this way when their children start going off to college
Mike Huckabee is still in the Republican race , possibly due to a belief in miracles or a lack of any other specific occupation
Ron Paul pops up for the Republican debates , and Mike Gravel is rumored to have been seen wandering down a Florida highway recently
But we 're really down to four , and tonight the Democrats have a debate involving only two people
Has anybody ever tried this before
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been extremely testy toward one another , but so far the rancor at the top has not trickled down
The Democratic voters have n't seemed angry at all
In fact , it 's been a long time since we 've seen such a chipper group
Racing to the polls in droves
Not a single reference to holding one 's nose or the lesser of two evils
`` I want the Republicans to feel the way I did in 2004 , '' said Mike Sherzan , an Iowan who was for Edwards in the caucus while his wife was for Clinton and his son was with Obama
-LRB- Basically , everybody 's son is with Obama .
It would be nice if the two survivors could work a little harder on encouraging that mood
Anger is out
So 2006
So ... Tom DeLay
Hillary could start by purging her campaign of the lingering sense that the presidency is her due and anyone who stands in her way is a particularly mean chauvinist
You can not run a campaign with the slogan : `` Vote for Hillary Think of All She 's Been Through .
And while it seems unlikely , Barack might consider admitting once in a while that it 's possible for a person to reach for a greater tomorrow while voting for somebody else
`` It 's about the past versus the future , '' he said yesterday , railing at some people -LRB- no names were mentioned , but we 're really running out of alternatives -RRB- who are willing to settle for small change , who `` look backwards and try to build a bridge back to the 20th century .
See , that is the sort of thing that makes Hillary voters depressed
Everybody wants to be a change agent
But Barack is making Clintonites feel like an elderly aunt who wo n't let the kids play their newfangled music in the talent show
In Colorado yesterday , Caroline Kennedy once again passed the torch to a new generation at an Obama rally that drew an estimated 18,000 people to the University of Denver arena , an overflow room and an overflow overflow room
`` Let 's give a shout-out to all the folks who are still outside on the lacrosse field , '' Barack urged the early birds who made it into the actual event
The Kennedy-Obama connection is central to the campaign 's message , which is that the American people have been wandering in the desert for more than a generation , waiting for another leader who could show them how to reach for the stars
But J.F.K. 's grand achievement was the raising of expectations , not the follow-through
His administration was a decidedly mixed bag , during which people spent a great deal of time building nuclear fallout shelters
Some of the Democratic resistance to Obama 's magic comes from people who are wary of politicians who want to win their hearts
Every great candidate has golden moments when the campaign merges perfectly into the zeitgeist of the people
But sooner or later it passes , and you 're left with a tired , flawed human being making a pitch to crowds of slightly deflated citizens
One of Hillary 's selling points is that we 're pre-deflated
We 've known her so well for so long
The Obama let-down would be way harder to handle
Earlier this week , his campaign visited Barack 's sort-of ancestral home in El Dorado , Kan. , a small town outside Wichita where the community college gym was rocking
`` An hour-and-a-half wait
It was well worth it , '' said Hardy Stegall of nearby Pretty Prairie
It was Obama 's first visit
His grandparents , the Dunhams , kept chasing the American dream west until they wound up in Hawaii
Stanley Dunham started out in El Dorado , where he managed a furniture store and , family legend has it , once decked the high school principal
At the rally , Obama told the story of how Stanley married a young woman from the right side of the tracks and how their daughter married a man from Kenya , who left her a young single mother whose son is running for president
`` Their journey , like so many others , speaks to a simple truth ... the future is what we decide it is going to be , '' he said
`` I never thought he 'd come here , '' said Stegall , almost beside himself with pleasure
And to tell the truth , I never imagined sitting in a gym in small-town Kansas , watching people whoop for a black , Hawaii-born , grandson-of-a-son of the Kansas soil who promised to bring their hometown values with him to the White House
We may remember this as a great campaign , people
Presuming they do n't screw it up
On Feb. 17 , the nation 's TV broadcasters are scheduled to go all-digital , and Americans with unconverted analog televisions will get their reception cut off
Perhaps you are one of them
Perhaps you are in such a pathetic state of denial that you are not actually sure if you 're an analog person or not
Perhaps you think an analog is a rare burrowing creature found mainly in Australia
All I can say is , shape up people
We are post-inauguration now
It 's all about the issues
You ca n't palm yourself off as an informed citizen just because you know how many electoral votes Montana has
In 2005 , Congress voted to end analog broadcasting
The impetus was to raise money for the Bush tax cuts by selling off the emptied space
#NAME?
#NAME?
The Netherlands and Finland have already gone all-digital
In fact , the most unnerving thing about our Feb. 17 deadline is that the United States would be clocking in third
What are the odds that the Bush administration could pull off a complicated public initiative more efficiently than anybody but the Dutch and the Finns
Everybody agrees that consumers should n't suffer from the transition
So people who get analog reception mainly those who use a rooftop antenna or indoor rabbit ears are supposed to get converter boxes that allow them to get digital signals
In places like Britain , the government figures out which households are affected and then sends somebody to install the needed equipment
Needless to say , the Republican-controlled Congress did not consider anything that socialistic in 2005
No , our plan was so deeply privatized that one DTV converter box retailer hired Joe the Plumber as a spokesman
People who needed a converter box were supposed to request a $ 40 coupon , which could be used toward the purchase
The coupon was then sent to them by third-class mail an interesting choice which sometimes meant the coupons , which expire in three months , did not arrive for four to eight weeks
The lucky recipient could then go to an electronics store , find the right kind of box , take it home and install it
-LRB- Just for fun , imagine the oldest member of your family doing this .
Meanwhile , a public awareness campaign was under way
The Federal Communications Commission decided to spend $ 350,000 sponsoring a race car named `` The Digital TV Transition .
Government officials no doubt imagined the golden moment when a Nascar announcer cried : `` It 's the Digital TV Transition over the finish line in record time .
In the first race , the car hit a wall
In the second , it crashed and burned
Fans got to hear commentary along the line of : `` Well , it looks like the Digital TV Transition is going to have to be towed off the track .
Still , thanks to public service announcements on TV , an estimated 90 percent of TV owners now know something is up
Unfortunately , the announcements created a deep unease among people who were not affected by the transition at all , like cable or satellite subscribers
Attention must be paid
The TV is in danger
Some folks thought they needed to buy a new set
Others may have been digging shelters in their backyards
Quite a few applied for those coupons even though they did n't need them , creating a shortage
Did I mention that once the government ran out of coupons , no new ones could be issued until the old ones expired
Or that people who did n't manage to cash their coupons in before the expiration date could n't ask for a replacement
At this point there are an estimated 6.5 million families still relying on unconverted televisions , and a waiting list for coupons
The Obama administration has asked for more time to straighten things out , and the Senate voted unanimously to postpone the deadline for four months
This shows that legislators of good will -LRB- Democrat Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas -RRB- can work in a bipartisan manner when the issue at hand is every American 's God-given right to television reception
Then the bill moved to the House , where quick action required permission of a two-thirds majority
For once , the Republicans got a chance to make their presence felt , and they instantly sprang into action and refused to allow anybody to do anything
This shows you why Nancy Pelosi always seems a little irritable
How could the Republicans not be worried about this
A disproportionate number of the endangered TV viewers are senior citizens
Bill O'Reilly 's entire audience is in danger
The House is going to take another crack at the delay proposal soon
If they act , Obama officials will have another four months to resolve all the problems
As if they did n't have enough to do
As the presidential candidates tell them every single day , Iowans deserve to be the nation 's kingmakers because they are exceptional citizens who take their responsibilities very , very seriously
So tonight , even though it 's very cold even though it 's Hokies vs. Jayhawks in the Orange Bowl the sturdy Iowa voters will pull on their parkas and go out to fulfill their historic destiny
Perhaps as many as 15 percent of them
`` Money will become irrelevant once somebody wins the Iowa caucus , '' said John -LRB- I Currently Have No Money -RRB- Edwards
`` The winner of the Iowa caucus is going to have huge amounts of money pouring in .
Edwards , the Democratic third-runner , has spent more time in Iowa than many Iowans , who have a tendency to flee to Florida in the winter
People , ignore whatever happens here
The identity of the next leader of the most powerful nation in the world is not supposed to depend on the opinion of one small state
Let alone the sliver of that state with the leisure and physical capacity to make a personal appearance tonight at a local caucus that begins at precisely 7 o'clock
Let alone the tiny slice of the small sliver willing to take part in a process that involves standing up in public to show a political preference , while being lobbied and nagged by neighbors
Ah yes , good work fighting for democracy around the globe , American troops , Pakistani lawyers , international election observers
The tiny slice of the sliver of the small state approves
Tonight , the Iowa Deciders will divide into 1,781 local caucuses
Past history suggests that a few of these gatherings may not draw any attendees whatsoever and that several others will consist entirely of a guy named Carl
Attendance has no effect on the number of delegates involved , and we hardly need mention that the whole thing is weighted to give rural residents an advantage
Iowans in politically active neighborhoods where 100 people show up may find their vote is worth only 1 percent as much as , say , Carl 's
This gives them the opportunity to experience what it is like to be a New Yorker or Californian all year round
Iowa Republican caucuses , which involve writing a name on a piece of paper and going home , are like Athens in the Age of Pericles compared with the Democrats , who are closer to Turkmenistan in the age of Saparmurat Niyazov
Tonight the Democratic caucus-goers -LRB- We are expecting way more than 100,000 !
will divide up into groups supporting each of the different candidates
-LRB- Secret ballots are for sissies .
Then some of the smaller groups will be dissolved under rules so complicated they are known only to the local insiders and experts hired by the candidates to decipher them
-LRB- Sometimes these turn out to be the exact same people !
`` What if the largest groups are not immediately apparent because more than one nonviable Presidential Preference group contains the same number of eligible attendees and will not realign ?
the party guide asks rhetorically
This is the simplified version of the rules prepared for the benefit of the media , but the answer , obviously , is that you flip a coin
-LRB- `` A game of chance is used to determine which groups may remain . ''
On the Republican side , John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are at a grave disadvantage because of a failure to campaign enough in Iowa
-LRB- You 'd think Florida was a state or something .
Fred Thompson is so desperate to go home that he 's practically begging people to vote for somebody else
Mitt Romney is by far the best organized
His victory in the important Iowa straw poll last summer demonstrated that he would really be a president who knows how to rent a bus
Meanwhile , the very enthusiastic evangelicals are going to try to prove that if a commander in chief has a heart like Mike Huckabee 's , it wo n't matter whether he knows where Pakistan is
Obama backers believe Barack will win on a record-breaking turnout of new participants , some of them being actual Iowa residents
-LRB- Checking is for babies .
Or everything could come down to the minor candidates ' supporters rule by the tiny piece of the slice of the sliver
In the Democratic caucuses , if your group is the smallest in the room you might have to : A -RRB- Relive the moment in ninth grade when you were the last one chosen for volleyball and then B -RRB- Walk over and join a different team
Dennis Kucinich has told his followers that if by some wild chance they find that they are not one of the most popular groups , they should switch to Barack Obama
Kucinich 's positions on most issues actually seem closer to John Edwards 's , but last summer Edwards was caught on tape whispering to Hillary Clinton that Dennis was really not a serious contender
Petty , perhaps , but in a contest that begins with the presumption that nobody is qualified to lead the most powerful nation on earth without making at least two visits to Pottawattamie County , it resonates
Related Searches Presidential Election of 2008 Add
Despite all the carping , there 's a lot that is good to say about 2008
The presidential election was great
Britney seems to be improving
George W. Bush is leaving
That collider in Switzerland did n't create a universe-gobbling black hole
So far
Before we move on , one last blast from the past
See how much you 've failed to repress about the year : 1
During his farewell interview with Charles Gibson , President Bush said : A -RRB- `` The economy thing sure took me by surprise .
B -RRB- `` I think I was unprepared for war .
C -RRB- `` Obviously , Katrina caught my guys off-guard .
D -RRB- `` In retrospect , I totally did n't know what I was doing .
When asked whether he would have invaded Iraq if he had known there were no weapons of mass destruction , the president said : B -RRB- `` Yes , because as I have said many , many times we liberated that country from a tyrant .
C -RRB- `` That guy tried to shoot my dad .
A -RRB- Urged an auditorium full of high school students to avoid alcohol and stick with marijuana
B -RRB- Hired a campaign videographer who filmed him vowing not to behave like a Ken doll
C -RRB- Took a cellphone call from his wife in the middle of a speech
D -RRB- Carried a copy of the Constitution and a bag of organic tea in his pocket
E -RRB- Drove to Canada with the family dog strapped on the roof of the car
F -RRB- In a single year as governor , accepted gifts that included a discount card from Wendy 's , $ 48,000 in clothing and a chain saw
G -RRB- Campaign ad said : `` I was raised on pinochle and the American dream .
H -RRB- Moved entire family to Iowa and enrolled the kids in school in an attempt to win the caucuses
Came in seventh , behind uncommitted
I -RRB- Told a convention of bikers that he wished his wife would enter the Miss Buffalo Chip beauty contest
J -RRB- Taking over Bill O'Reilly 's radio slot
Who said : `` Whatever one might want to label it , I screwed up .
A -RRB- Governor who was caught discussing the financial advantages of selling a U.S. Senate seat
B -RRB- President discussing his failure to realize Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction
C -RRB- Presidential candidate admitting he had an affair with the campaign videographer
D -RRB- Professional football star who accidentally shot himself with a gun that he concealed in his sweat pants band
E -RRB- Jersey City councilman who was caught urinating from a nightclub balcony
F -RRB- Chairman of House tax-writing committee who failed to pay his taxes
Which of the following has Obama for America NOT urged the president-elect 's supporters to do over the last month : A -RRB- `` Order your limited edition Obama coffee mug '' in time for Christmas
B -RRB- `` Make a donation of $ 25 and get an official Obama winter hat .
C -RRB- `` Treat yourself or a loved one to a limited edition four-year calendar .
D -RRB- `` Call now for this special Change is Coming Vegetable Peeler and get a Yes We Can Garlic Press at no additional charge .
\*\*\*\*\* ANSWERS : 1-B ; 2-D ; 3-B ; 4 : 1-B , 2-C , 3-A ; 5 : 1-I , 2-B , 3-D , 4-E , 5-C , 6-J , 7-F , 8-G , 9-A , 10-H ; 6-E ; 7-A ;
There she was , taking leave of Iowa at a deeply , deeply depressing post-caucus party Thursday night
On stage , her posse was looking determinedly cheerful , like heroic musketeers before the firing squad : the Los Angeles mayor -LRB- Latino -RRB- , the New York lieutenant governor -LRB- black -RRB- , Madeleine Albright -LRB- female -RRB- and Terry McAuliffe -LRB- white-man money -RRB- , along with two extremely photogenic little girls and a huge mass of union officials
Hillary , looking remarkably perky , and Bill , looking remarkably pink , turned their game faces to the cameras
`` This is a great night for Democrats , '' the front-runner who came in third announced firmly
`` Together , we have presented the case for change and have made it absolutely clear that America needs a new beginning .
Meanwhile , over on the happy side of town , Barack Obama was telling his ecstatic supporters that they would `` be able to look back with pride and say this was the moment when it all began .
The critical `` it '' is not really about reforming health care or getting out of Iraq or stopping global warming
We all know there 's only the thinnest of lines between Obama and Clinton on these matters a line that would instantly be obliterated by the mangle that is known as the United States Congress
`` It '' is about Barack 's promise to sweep away the old , unlovable red-meat politics and create a nonpartisan `` coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states .
Which Hillary , veteran of the right-wing-conspiracy wars , regards as a fairy tale
If Clinton wants to be Franklin -LRB- and Eleanor -RRB- Roosevelt in this campaign , and John Edwards is channeling William Jennings Bryan , Obama is , for all his early opposition to Iraq , the most conservative visionary in the group
Big change is hardly ever accomplished without political warfare
When the red and blue states join together and all Americans of good will march hand-in-hand to a mutually agreed upon destiny , the place they 're going to end up would probably look pretty much like now with more health insurance
It 's a mistake to read too much into the Iowa caucuses , in which public-spirited citizens gather together to produce utterly unreliable messages
-LRB- At the one I went to , Obama got 129 of 228 voters while Bill Richardson got 45
That translated into one delegate each .
In a small state where newcomers on the honor system can register as local voters on the spot , it could be easy to turn a mass of out-of-state college students and volunteers into what looks like an uprising of Iowa Youth
Nevertheless , you ca n't ignore the fact that Hillary Clinton is now the candidate of the aging Democratic establishment whose supporters pray for a low turnout on Election Day
That might get her nominated in the long run , but it is not really the kind of image that makes you go whistling into the election booth
Somewhere , Senator Edward Brooke must be chortling
You will remember that in 1969 Brooke , a moderate Republican , had the bad luck to be commencement speaker at Wellesley College on the day Hillary Rodham made a name for herself as a voice of her generation
She politely gave the first black American to be elected to the Senate since Reconstruction the back of her hand
`` For too long our leaders have used politics as the art of the possible , '' she said
-LRB- `` This is bad ?
Brooke must have been thinking .
It was not actually anything in particular that Brooke and his ilk had done that earned Hillary 's lightly disguised contempt
It was just that they were tired and old and always looking for some way to cut a grubby deal instead of setting their sights on the impossible dream
She and her generation , she said , were `` searching for a more immediate , ecstatic and penetrating mode of living .
Nearly 40 years later , here she is , forged into an architect of the possible by every conceivable kind of political and personal disaster
Campaigning in New Hampshire , she 's warning voters that the guy who is promising to turn the whole process into something that people could actually feel good about is peddling `` false hopes .
Meanwhile Barack Obama gives his folks the ecstatic experience
`` They said this day would never come
They said our sights were set too high
They said this country was too divided , disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose , '' he told them Thursday night , creating a patriotic lump in every throat in the room
How could you be 21 and not be for Barack Obama
How could you be 53 and not wonder how this relative stranger will hold up when the disasters arrive , when things get truly nasty and the crowd starts seeing him as mortal
But if she were around right now , Hillary Rodham the commencement speaker would probably be an Obama girl
Dear Old Golden Rule Days They 're back
As has been frequently noted , the first day of a new Congress is very much like the first day of school
Except for the part where it 's on TV and the fate of the largest economy on the planet hangs in the balance
But when the 112th Congress opened on Wednesday , you definitely had a lot of excited new faces
The House of Representatives is flooded with freshmen , some of whom will embark upon a career of service that will allow them to remain in office for the next 20 years without ever impinging on our consciousness a single time
Others are pretty clearly gunning to become household names , like Representative Allen West , a Republican from Florida , who began his Congressional career by picking , for his top aide , a radio talk show host known for her colorful gift of gab
-LRB- `` If ballots do n't work , bullets will . ''
Her employment was very brief , very stormy , and filled with questions about whether it was really a good idea to suggest that illegal immigrants be hanged and sent home in a box
Looking back on the episode , West assured a Fox interviewer , `` I did n't learn anything from it .
The House on Wednesday was all about change , change , change , beginning , of course , with the new speaker
`` Be it providence or destiny , a man of uniquely American values has been called , '' intoned Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas in a nominating speech for John Boehner
`` He has lived the American dream and will protect it for our posterity .
Nononono , Representative Hensarling
You do not want to talk about John Boehner and the American dream , because he will start to cry and we 'll never get through this
Sure enough , Boehner pulled out a handkerchief
But decorum was maintained
Boehner began his tenure by promising more transparency , `` a free exchange of ideas , '' the chance to offer amendments on the floor and `` open debate .
Also , of course , there would be lots of budget-cutting , and sponsors of bills are going to have to show how to pay for them
His speech was noninflammatory , in keeping with his new role as a guy who everyone is beginning , in desperation , to tag as a potential bridge-builder
As Politico recently reported , Boehner hopes to model himself after Nicholas Longworth , a powerful speaker from the 1920s who also came from Ohio
Longworth is best remembered for having an office building named after him , and definitely not at all remembered for allowing a free exchange of ideas and open debate
But at least Boehner 's not promising to be like Ronald Reagan
After the reform rules are approved , the House will move on to the Republicans ' first order of business , repeal of the health care reform law
The new rules would , in theory , require that the sponsors explain how to replace the $ 100 billion that the Congressional Budget Office says the law will save over the next 10 years
But this one does not have to be paid for , because the new majority feels the Congressional Budget Office is wrong
Anyhow , they won the election
Also , there will be no amendments
I 'm willing to cut the new leadership a little slack
If you 're going to bring up a wildly partisan and totally symbolic bill , there really is n't any point in fooling around with cost estimates and opposition amendments
It would be like putting up warning signs for the wolves before you shoot them from a small plane
Let 's wait to see what the new House majority does on its much-vaunted promise to immediately cut $ 100 billion - or up to 30 percent - of discretionary domestic spending this very year
Although , House aides told The Times 's Jackie Calmes , maybe you should make that $ 50 billion
Boehner has definitely gotten the ball rolling by cutting Congress 's own budget by 2.6 percent
Meanwhile , over in the Senate , the thought of change was also in the air
`` They say you can never step in the same river twice , '' said Majority Leader Harry Reid , who went on to assure his listeners that it was also not possible to step in the same Senate twice
There was lots of discussion of reform in the Senate , too , and the chamber jumped into a vigorous debate on Democratic proposals to change the rules
The plan would decimate several venerable traditions , like the one that allows one senator to bring all progress on a bill or a nomination to a screeching halt without having to reveal his or her identity
Everybody is now going home for two weeks to think about it
This sort of change can only be made on the first day of business , but fortunately , Reid has invoked a special rule that allows him to keep the chamber at opening day until the end of the month
This is something that happens only in the United States Senate and early episodes of `` Star Trek .
We are waiting to see if the senators continue to age while time stands still
Senator Byron Dorgan is retiring
I know this comes as a shock to you , people
Also Senator Chris Dodd
We are only one week into the new year , and the political world is in turmoil
It 's a wonder we can continue on with our regular duties
Two Democratic senators quitting is seen as a terrible portent for 2010
-LRB- `` Democrats ' Black Tuesday , '' said a headline on MSNBC .
That seems a tad overblown given the fact that six Republican senators already have announced their retirements
Plus , Dodd has been in terrible trouble back home ever since he ran for president and tried to get a jump on the competition by moving his family to Iowa
Connecticut has feelings , too
When your senator registers his daughter in kindergarten in Des Moines , the voters in Bridgeport do n't feel the love
It 's really all good for the Nutmeg State Democrats
Dodd can leave with dignity
He has an overall record to be proud of , including a major role in health care reform
He also worked very hard on issues that have no political payoff whatsoever , like early childhood education
In his place , the Democrats can nominate the popular attorney general , Richard Blumenthal , who has been waiting in the wings since Cyndi Lauper was at the top of the charts
He was the Democrats ' young man on the rise in the '70s , and he 's been attorney general for nearly 20 years
It 's a good thing Dodd decided to get out of the way now or when Blumenthal 's turn came , Connecticut would have wound up electing a new senator who looked like Robert Byrd without seniority
Blumenthal 's opponent might turn out to be Linda McMahon , who formerly ran World Wrestling Entertainment with her husband , Vince
There are other , perhaps better , Republican candidates in the race , but I am rooting for McMahon for entertainment value
She used to be a central character in cable wrestling shows whose scripts had family members shrieking , betraying and , occasionally , slugging one another
One episode featured a villain who broke into the `` palatial McMahon headquarters '' while Linda was recovering from a neck injury that she had received when an aggrieved wrestler flipped her upside down and slammed her head onto the floor
`` You are a rather aggressive beauty , are n't you ?
he breathed , before forcing a kiss upon her resistant lips and promising to break both her son 's legs
Lately , there have not been all that many good times on the political front
In Washington , the Democrats are sulky about Obama spending all his political capital on health care while the sane people in both parties are completely freaked out by the tea partiers
Meanwhile , interested civilians are being required to spend an excessive amount of time worrying about cloture votes and yearning for the good old days when the only senators you had to know anything about were your own
Until recently , all I knew about Byron Dorgan was that he was a populist from North Dakota who had once been named Person of the Year by the durum wheat growers
Now he is the center of the universe
In North Dakota , Democrats are petitioning him to change his mind and run again
The 60th vote could hang on it
Nobody seemed to have expected Dorgan to call it quits even though he has been a professional politician since he was 26 and made history as the most youthful person ever appointed to the North Dakota Tax Commission
Now the guy is 67 years old , and he says he wants to write books and teach
I think we should give him a thumbs up on his new life plan , except for the part about how he might `` also like to work on energy policy in the private sector .
That sure does sound like a lobbyist , but perhaps it just means investing in a gas station
I 'm beginning to suspect that he does n't expect to go back to North Dakota at all
I am basing this mainly on the fact that the `` Notable North Dakotans '' page on the Byron Dorgan Web site lists 19 people , none of whom seem to actually live there
In fact , seven of them are dead and one of the others is the guy who is married to the pop star Fergie
No wonder that when Dorgan bolted , a top North Dakota Democrat instantly called Ed Schultz , the former Fargo native turned MSNBC talk-show host , and asked him if he had ever thought about running for the Senate
Even the people in North Dakota do n't seem to think there are any actual residents left in the state
You 're giving yourself too little credit , North Dakota Democrats
There 's got to be a potential junior senator somewhere in your 641,000 fine residents
Who , of course , get exactly the same number of Senate votes as the 36.8 million people in California
But that 's a complaint for another day
`` My state , the state of Illinois , has gone through quite a beating since our governor was arrested , '' said Senator Dick Durbin on Wednesday
Given the long roll call of gubernatorial incarcerations there , this could well be the unofficial state motto
The topic was the endlessly developing story of who is going to sit in Barack Obama 's former Senate seat
Was the selection of Roland Burris by the Rogue Governor Rod Blagojevich `` tainted , '' in the words of the Senate majority leader , Harry Reid , or `` what the Lord has ordained , '' in the words of Burris
Reid was heavy of heart
A new Democratic president from Illinois
was about to be sworn in
But instead of celebrations , the days were devoted to Burris developments
It was ruining everything
Durbin could not even hold a party without worrying about what he would do if Burris crashed it
On Tuesday , when Obama was warning about `` trillion-dollar deficits , '' it was Burris , standing in a puddle outside the Capitol , who created an absolute media riot , a collision of cameras of Anna-Nicole-Smith-autopsy proportions
He then made his way to the office of the secretary of the Senate , a veritable walking clog of tape recorders
There , as Reid explained later , Burris had `` an extremely gracious meeting '' that ended with a gracious eviction
Last week , the majority leader had sternly decreed that nobody selected by Blagojevich was ever going to be seated in the Senate
But his spirit seems broken
Clearly , he had underestimated Burris 's determination
And the entire debate has been complicated by arguments that the seat should go to someone who , like Burris , is an African-American
You know you 're having a bad week when you 're being called a racist by Rush Limbaugh
-LRB- `` Remember , all these great segregationists of the past are Democrats . ''
By midweek , Reid was restricting himself to arguing that at least for the time being , Burris can not be seated because the Illinois secretary of state has refused to sign off on the paperwork
That signature was a tradition since 1884
`` People ask a lot of times why we have to do things procedurally in the Senate , '' he said , arguing for Rules Committee hearings
`` It 's because we 're the Senate .
And how do we feel about this matter , people
According to federal prosecutors , Blagojevich only decided to appoint Burris after the governor failed in earlier attempts to auction the seat off
But nobody has accused Burris of being one of the bidders
In fact , if we were making a list of the pros and cons of putting this guy in the Senate , `` noncorrupt '' would be No. 1 on the plus side
On the negative side , you might want to include the fact that Burris has already constructed a mausoleum for himself that is topped by Illinois 's state seal and the legend `` Trail Blazer .
Those are followed by a list of his historic firsts , ranging from the impressive -LRB- first African-American elected to a statewide office in Illinois -RRB- to some stuff you would really try to refrain from bragging about except at parties in which there had been a great deal of drinking -LRB- first African-American exchange student from Southern Illinois University to Hamburg -RRB-
There also is a sidebar granite slab for `` Other Major Accomplishments .
As the mausoleum illustrates , even in an occupation in which oversized egos are practically a career requirement , Burris can be a little alarming
The fact that he made Illinois history by being elected state comptroller in 1979 is something you would feel like admiring a lot more if Burris had not told The Associated Press in 2008 : `` I 'd say if there had n't been a Roland Burris , that there would not have been a Carol Braun or a Barack Obama .
Legally , the secretary-of-state-signature argument seems kind of shaky
You may be stunned to learn that it does not appear to be the true basis of Democrats ' objections
The party wants somebody who can win election to a full term in 2010
At 71 , Burris has been out of office for 14 years , and although he had successful races for comptroller and attorney general , he lost bids to become a senator , the mayor of Chicago and governor -LRB- three times -RRB-
Burris told CNN that he had originally been open to the idea of agreeing to serve the two years and retire but that his `` friends and supporters '' had protested
So where does that leave us
To summarize Pros : 1 -RRB- Not corrupt
2 -RRB- Rod Blagojevich is smarter than he looks
3 -RRB- Make Rush Limbaugh stop calling Harry Reid a racist
Personally , I say give the guy the seat
Worst-case scenario , Illinois gets an overly self-involved lawmaker who seems , at this point in his life , to have a tendency to say things that sound somewhat silly
If that was a disqualification , the Senate could never meet a quorum call again
God Save the Debate Next week the House Republicans are going to vote to repeal the health care reform law
It 's a symbolic gesture they got the right to make when they won the majority , but it would be nice if they could leave God out of it
I am thinking about you , Representative Steve King of Iowa
On Friday , King gave a 58-minute-and-20-second speech on the floor of the House in which he made it abundantly clear that God did not want more federal regulation of health insurance companies
`` We will carry on this struggle until in God 's good time , with all his power and might , he steps forth to the rescue and liberation of our God-given American liberty , '' King declared
The Republicans have set aside seven hours for debating the repeal , but once one side has announced that God is their co-signer , there 's really not a whole lot more to say
We are going to be hearing a lot about Representative King in the coming year
`` I have more words in the Congressional Record than anyone else , '' he bragged during an interview with a newspaper in his district
And he is one quotable fella
Just the other day he jumped into the health care fray to defend his party 's leadership against a Democratic attack , declaring that Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor had `` established their integrity and their mendacity for years in this Congress .
King also got into an argument about whether insurance could be regulated as interstate commerce , claiming that some people are born , live their lives and die in one state without ever having one single encounter with health care
When a Democrat demanded to know where you could find a baby born outside a hospital without a midwife 's assistance and with no inoculations , King retorted : `` I hate to tell you , but they show up in garbage cans around this country , sir .
King was in line to be chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration this year , but the Judiciary chairman , Lamar Smith , decided he 'd rather go for someone who did not walk into the Capitol on Day 1 waving a bill to eliminate citizenship rights for children born in this country to parents who are illegal immigrants
Score one for the new civility
And kudos to Representative Darrell Issa , the incoming head of the powerful House Oversight Committee
This week Issa turned over a new , more collegial leaf by taking back , sort of , his recent claim that Barack Obama is `` one of the most corrupt presidents of modern times .
Which was certainly not charitable
Particularly from the party that gave us Watergate , the Iran-Contra Affair and Warren Harding
What he actually meant to say , Issa explained , was not that Obama was on the take , but that `` when you hand out $ 1 trillion in TARP just before this president came in , most of it unspent , $ 1 trillion nearly in stimulus that this president asked for , plus this huge expansion in health care and government , it has a corrupting effect .
So it was all about big government
Much less appalling
Although , did you notice that the first trillion came while somebody else was in office
Issa could at least have added , `` and obviously , when you look at it that way , George W. Bush and Barack Obama were two of the most corrupt presidents in modern times .
Kudos to the Democrats for their spirit of charity in the matter of the two House Republicans who missed the swearing-in ceremony because they were at a celebration elsewhere
Which they insisted was not a fund-raiser , but simply a gathering of 500 constituents who paid $ 30 apiece to get there
The lawmakers , Pete Sessions of Texas and Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania , did raise their hands and recite the oath of office in front of the televised version of the event
But really , what if we 'd all done that
If I 'd known it was an option , I would definitely have sworn myself in and then gotten my picture taken with John Boehner
Plus , Sessions and Fitzpatrick violated the parliamentary rules set down by Thomas Jefferson
If Jefferson had wanted representatives swearing in front of a flat-screened TV , he would have said so
Those founding fathers knew what they were doing
Things got more complicated when it turned out that Sessions , unsworn , had gone to a committee hearing and voted to set rules for the debate on repealing the health care law
-LRB- Fitzpatrick went to the House and took part in the reading of the Constitution .
To make sure the rules were still legal , the House had to vote to straighten everything out , which it did very speedily and - this is the important part - without all that much Democratic sniping about what had come to be called `` the undocumented members .
This was obviously because people have decided that in times of great conflict and stress , it is better to be collegial
Also , the Republicans permitted only four minutes of debate
In our search for comity and common ground this year , perhaps we can all agree that professional athletes should try to reduce the use of firearms to resolve personal disputes in 2010
You may have heard that the Washington Wizards are engulfed in a crisis over Gilbert Arenas , one of the team 's star players
His fight with a teammate over a gambling debt led to a display of handguns in the Wizards locker room
Seldom have we seen so many words that do not belong in the same sentence
Perhaps not since Plaxico Burress of the New York Giants managed to string together pistol , nightclub , `` tucked in his sweatpants waistband '' and `` went off .
We 'll get back to Arenas in a minute
Actually , he was only up there in the beginning because in these distracted times you do need a good celebrity connection if you want to make a serious policy point
Gun control is one of those issues where deep political division hides a general national consensus
A vast majority of Americans believe people should be able to keep guns for reasonable purposes , like defending their homes or hunting
But they also approve of background checks and other regulations aimed at keeping weapons out of the hands of criminals and the mentally disturbed
Mayors Against Illegal Guns recently hired the pollster Frank Luntz to ask gun owners whether they approved of closing one of the big loopholes in current regulation the fact that people who buy weapons at gun shows do n't have to undergo background checks
Close to 70 percent of National Rifle Association members said yes , and 85 percent of gun owners who were not N.R.A. members said they approved
Also , 82 percent of N.R.A. members said they felt that the F.B.I. should be able to block people under investigation for being suspected terrorists from buying guns
Let us pause for a moment to consider the 9 percent of respondents who said they thought this was a bad idea
Perhaps they live in the same compound with the 1 out of 10 dentists who did not think patients who chewed gum should go for the sugarless kind
Or maybe they are all serving in the United States Senate
In 2007 , Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey introduced a bill that would give the attorney general the authority to prohibit the sale of guns or explosives to known or suspected terrorists
It is still sitting somewhere in the Senate Judiciary Committee
There is , of course , a cultural divide between the crowded parts of the country and the nearly empty parts when it comes to guns
Residents of rural areas see them as a natural part of daily life
Those of us who live in the crowded places tend to regard them as a problem
The District of Columbia suffered so terribly from gun violence that it passed the most stringent gun control laws in the country
And the owner of the local basketball team changed its name from the Bullets to the Wizards to reinforce the fact that in the crowded places , guns are a serious , serious matter
The star guard of the Wizards , Gilbert Arenas , missed this point completely
Perhaps he thought the name change had something to do with Harry Potter
Arenas is a terrific basketball player who has now created a moment of national consensus over the fact that everything about his gun story represents a bad idea
The details are still murky , but Arenas apparently brought four unloaded handguns for which he had no permit into the Wizards locker room , put them on a chair and indicated to the teammate with whom he had been fighting that he should pick one
The Washington Post has reported that said teammate then grabbed his own pistol , loaded it and chambered a bullet
At this moment , Arenas has been suspended without pay and the teammate is undoubtedly having a really , really bad day
Even when his $ 111 million contract appeared to be hanging in the balance , Arenas seemed to regard the whole situation as hilarious
`` I wake up this morning and seen I was the new JOHN WAYNE
... media is too funny , '' he Twittered
Then : `` I guess nobody thought that last text was funny welll I hav 2 change subjects ... what about that TIGER WOODS .
I would like to offer two comments about this
One is that professional athletes should not Twitter
I got this thought from Ashley Mayo , a student at the Columbia Journalism School , who showed me an essay that she had written on the subject , which included a tweet from one of the Indiana Pacers containing the good news that he had begun the day with a triumph over irregularity
The second thought is that the average Tiger Woods fan is a middle-aged guy who is frequently too tired at night to behave badly if he wanted to , and that we have spent the last month worrying about the wrong role model
I know , I know
You 're upset
You think the guy you fell in love with last spring is spending the summer flip-flopping his way to the right
Drifting to the center
Going all moderate on you
So you 're withholding the love
Also possibly the money
I feel your pain
I just do n't know what candidate you 're talking about
Think back
Why , exactly , did you prefer Obama over Hillary Clinton in the first place
Their policies were almost identical except his health care proposal was more conservative
You liked Barack because you thought he could get us past the old brain-dead politics , right
He talked and talked and talked about how there were going to be no more red states and blue states , how he was going to bring Americans together , including Republicans and Democrats
Exactly where did everybody think this gathering was going to take place
Left field
When an extremely intelligent politician tells you over and over and over that he is tired of the take-no-prisoners politics of the last several decades , that he is going to get things done and build a `` new consensus , '' he is trying to explain that he is all about compromise
Even if he says it in that great Baracky way
Here 's a helpful story : Once upon a time , there was a woman searching for a guy who was ready to commit
One day , she met an attractive young man
`` My name is Chuck , '' he said , grinning an infectious grin
`` I 'm planning to devote my entire life to saving endangered wildlife in the Antarctic
In five weeks I leave for the South Pole , where I will live alone in a tent , trying to convince the penguins that I am part of their flock
In the meantime , would you like to go out ?
`` I have just met the man I 'm going to marry , '' she told her friends
She had been betrayed by poor listening skills , which skipped right over the South Pole and the tent
Of course , after five weeks of heavy dating , Chuck flew away and was never heard from again
A year and a half of campaigning and we still have n't heard Obama 's penguins , either
It 's not his fault that we missed the message although to be fair , he did make it sound as if getting rid of the `` old politics '' involved driving out the oil and pharmaceutical lobbyists rather than splitting the difference on federal wiretapping legislation
But if you look at the political fights he 's picked throughout his political career , the main theme is not any ideology
It 's that he hates stupidity
`` I do n't oppose all wars
What I am opposed to is a dumb war , '' he said in 2002 in his big speech against the invasion of Iraq
He did not , you will notice , say he was against unilateral military action or pre-emptive attacks or nation-building
He was antidumb
Most of the things Obama 's taken heat for saying this summer fall into these two familiar patterns attempts to find a rational common ground on controversial issues and dumb-avoidance
On the common-ground front , he 's called for giving more federal money to religious groups that run social programs , but only if the services they offer are secular
People can have guns for hunting and protection , but we should crack down on unscrupulous gun sellers
Putting some restrictions on the government 's ability to wiretap is better than nothing , even though he would rather have gone further
Dumb-avoidance would include his opposing the gas-tax holiday , backtracking on the anti-Nafta pandering he did during the primary and acknowledging that if one is planning to go all the way to Iraq to talk to the generals , one should actually pay attention to what the generals say
Touching both bases are Obama 's positions that 1 -RRB- if people are going to ask him every day why he 's not wearing a flag pin , it 's easier to just wear the pin , for heaven 's sake , and 2 -RRB- there 's nothing to be gained by getting into a fight over whether the death penalty can be imposed on child rapists
His decision to ditch public campaign financing , on the other hand , was nothing but a complete , total , purebred flip-flop
If you are a person who feels campaign finance reform is the most important issue facing America right now , you should either vote for John McCain or go home and put a pillow over your head
However , I believe I have met every single person in the country for whom campaign finance reform is the tiptop priority , and their numbers are not legion
Meanwhile , Obama has made it clear what issues he thinks all this cleverness and compromising are supposed to serve : national health care , a smart energy policy and getting American troops out of Iraq
He has tons of other concerns , but those seem to be the top three
There 's definitely a penguin in there somewhere
There are certain points in the year - like summer - when the country does not seem to be in the mood to think about politics or public policy
Nevertheless , we know where our duty lies , and it is not in celebrity name-dropping
So let 's talk about something serious , like the rapidly escalating trend of extremely rich people running for high office
In Connecticut , it looks as if both parties are going to nominate candidates for governor and senator who live in the superupscale town of Greenwich
Which is , of course , the place where LeBron James made his big basketball announcement
What was that all about , anyway
He lives in Akron , Ohio
He played in Cleveland
He 's moving to Miami
But ESPN said that James wanted to reveal his life plans in Greenwich
Apparently , the site selection had something to do with James 's desire to attend the wedding of the Denver Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony to the television personality LaLa Vazquez
They 're getting married in New York City , and Greenwich is the place where very rich people go when they want to be in New York City but not actually
`` Greenwich amenities include great schools , country clubs , parks , beaches , shopping , restaurant , convenient access to airports and only 40 minutes to the center of the universe ... Manhattan , '' says a Web site for a local realtor , who promises that you can be neighbors with `` Ron Howard , Mary Tyler Moore , Mel Gibson , Diana Ross ... '' Not sure how many people are dying to hang with Mel Gibson right now
But if the primaries work out as most polls project , the next governor and junior senator from Connecticut will be neighbors , too
For the United States Senate , the Republicans seem bent on nominating Linda McMahon , the Greenwich-based wrestling czarina who has promised to spend $ 30 million of her own money on the campaign
For governor , it 's probably going to be Tom Foley , the former ambassador to Ireland whose name can never be mentioned without pointing out that he owns a mansion in Greenwich and a 100-foot yacht
The current leader in the Democratic primary for governor is Greenwich resident Ned Lamont
When we last saw Ned , he was spending $ 17 million of his own money in an unsuccessful attempt to win a Senate seat
The Democratic Senate nominee , Richard Blumenthal , is the poorest of the bunch , having spent virtually his entire adult life being the state attorney general , which pays $ 110,000 a year
However , his wife 's family owns the Empire State Building
We hear a lot about how elected officials are afraid of being primaried by someone from the extreme right or left
But , lately , there 's been just as much danger of a superrich challenger dropping down from nowhere , like Paul the Octopus grabbing for the box of mussels covered with the Spanish flag
In California , Democrats are in despair over how their gubernatorial candidate , Jerry Brown , is going to compete against Meg Whitman , a billionaire who spent $ 91 million just to win her primary
Brown is not personally wealthy , although he did once date Linda Ronstadt
Florida , where LeBron James is going to be playing , is Rich Candidate Central
The presumed Democratic candidate for the Senate , Representative Kendrick Meek , now appears to be in danger of losing the nomination to a hitherto unknown billionaire named Jeff Greene
Greene is moving up in the polls even though he made most of his money betting that the housing market would tank and suck hundreds of thousands Floridians into the maw of foreclosure
And Mike Tyson was best man at his wedding
And , we learned this week , he had Lindsay Lohan on his 145-foot yacht last New Year 's Eve
`` This is not what 's important , '' Greene said about the Lohan connection
`` Floridians are worried about jobs , getting results .
This is an extremely common rejoinder these days
Try it in your own life
If your neighbor points out that your car is wrapped around her front porch , tell her that a lot of Americans do n't even have porches anymore
Because what they care about is not trivial traffic mishaps but jobs , jobs , jobs
Meanwhile , in the Florida governor 's race , Bill McCollum , a Republican , is having a tough time dealing with his extremely rich guy , Rick Scott
Scott is the former chief of Columbia\/HCA , a chain of for-profit hospitals
He has spent more than $ 20 million on campaign ads so far while McCollum has managed to come up with only about $ 6 million
Scott 's argument is that the state needs a good businessman to run things
While he was C.E.O. of Columbia\/HCA , the company paid fines , penalties and damages of more than $ 1.7 billion for Medicare and Medicaid fraud
But maybe Florida voters wo n't notice , what with all the excitement over LeBron James
Charles M. Blow is off today
The reason the Republicans lost so many Senate seats last November is now becoming clear
No one had any time to think about the campaign
They were too busy worrying about Senator John Ensign 's sex life
Last month Ensign , a Nevada Republican , called a press conference to confess that he had had an affair with a former staff member
That was when we learned , to general surprise , that Ensign had been widely regarded as a possible future presidential candidate
Also , that he is currently the only veterinarian in the U.S. Senate
Nobody paid a great deal of attention
Really , there are only so many randy Republicans we can keep track of at once
But lately , the Ensign saga has become more and more fascinating
Every social conservative in Washington seems to have been involved
Most of the juicy details have been supplied by Doug Hampton , Ensign 's former chief of staff , who says his wife , Cindy , a bookkeeper for Ensign 's political action committees , was seduced by the senator while they were guests at the Ensign home over the Christmas holidays in 2007
Hampton , 47 , gave a long TV interview in Las Vegas this week a disjointed account of betrayal in which he concluded at one point : `` All of those tentacles were birthed because John needed things to go down like this .
It 's actually a good thing that adultery knocked Ensign out of the presidential contest because it appears that he would not be the kind of leader who surrounds himself with the best and the brightest
The senator says the affair went on until August 2008
Doug Hampton 's version is that it lasted only a few months , followed by a long period of complicated drama in which the remorseful Cindy was pursued by the Love Veterinarian
Ensign was , at the time , chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee , which was supposed to be working to elect candidates in 2008
In Washington , he lived with some other conservative Christian lawmakers in a building known as the `` Prayer House .
Both members of the N.R.S.C. and residents of the Prayer House were brought into the drama
Hampton , in his version of events , seems to remember Ensign 's friends as being particularly concerned with making sure that the cuckolded aide got generous compensation for his suffering
One of Ensign 's roommates , Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma , was described by Hampton as being particularly vocal about the importance of cash contributions to `` make these folks whole .
Coburn denies this , although he wo n't say exactly what advice he gave to his erring colleague
Coburn told Roll Call that he talked to Ensign as a `` physician and as an ordained deacon '' and that he will therefore have the right to keep mum even if he 's dragged into court or a Senate committee hearing
This makes me sort of hope that some kind of investigation takes place just so Coburn , who 's an obstetrician , can explain how exactly doctor-patient confidentiality figures into this
Hampton says Ensign 's friends convinced the senator to write Cindy a good-bye letter , then bundled him off to the FedEx office to make sure it got mailed
Then , he claimed , Ensign called Cindy and said : `` The letter 's coming
` Doug 's ratted me out
Do n't pay attention to the letter . '
Let 's hope this part of the story is n't true
I 'd hate to think that a person who says things like `` Doug 's ratted me out '' is in the U.S. Senate
Or even giving rabies shots to beagles in Las Vegas
We hardly need to point out that Ensign was one of the people who demanded that President Bill Clinton resign over the Lewinsky affair , that he votes against financing for education and contraception services to combat teenage pregnancy and that he supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage
In the world of politics , hypocrisy is a hard market to corner , but lately the Republicans have been making a Microsoft-like effort to do it
Both of the Hamptons lost their jobs , and Doug was shuttled off to a Las Vegas-based airline , run by a friend of Ensign 's , where he is now vice president of government affairs
Unappeased , he hired a lawyer to demand that Ensign make financial amends for `` evil and completely unjustifiable acts by one of our country 's top leaders .
He also tried to leak the story of the affair to Fox News , apparently under the theory that out of all the media , Fox would be most excited by the opportunity to humiliate a powerful conservative Republican senator
While Ensign refused to respond to what small and negative minds might regard as blackmail , the senator 's parents gave the Hamptons $ 96,000
Ensign 's father is a retired casino mogul , and the senator 's lawyer said the money was given `` out of concern for the well-being of longtime family friends during a difficult time
The gifts are consistent with a pattern of generosity by the Ensign family to the Hamptons and others .
Truly , this puts a whole new spin on the term `` family values .
Let me go out on a limb and say that Sarah Palin was probably not happy to learn about her oldest daughter 's re-engagement to her baby-daddy via an eight-page cover spread in Us Weekly
`` It is intimidating and scary just to think about what her reaction is going to be , '' Bristol confided
`` Hopefully , she will jump on board .
Not right this very moment
Continuing the family tradition of communicating via press release , Sarah and Todd icily noted that at 19 , Bristol is an adult
And , in this case , an adult who `` believes in redemption and forgiveness to a degree most of us struggle to put in practice in our daily lives .
The story of how Bristol went from suing Levi Johnston for child support to accepting a new engagement ring is , like everything about this couple , stupendously unremarkable
They met to discuss custody arrangements
They took baby Tripp out for a walk
Bristol made fun of Levi 's hair
`` It was nice , '' he recalled
Levi went home
And texted words of love
`` The next day we started hanging out and , literally , we have hung out every day since , '' Bristol concluded
Not exactly `` Wuthering Heights '' or `` Jane Eyre .
-LRB- `` Reader , I hung out with him . ''
Not even `` Twilight , '' although , like Levi , the perpetually teenaged Edward Cullen never managed to get through 12th grade
Johnston has proved to be the only person in the world who can make me feel sympathy for Sarah Palin
He told Us Weekly that he broached the subject of marrying Bristol at the same family meeting where he apologized to Sarah for telling the national news media that she was money-hungry , insensitive , a bad housekeeper , an indifferent mother and a bad shot
Astonishingly , the Palins did n't immediately welcome him back into the clan
`` They want me to get a career and an education and prove I can take care of Bristol before we can even think about getting back together , '' he recounted
Finally , an issue on which the entire nation can unite
We ca n't agree on how to fix the economy , but we are as one when it comes to fixing Levi
Get thee to a G.E.D. tutor
Bristol , who followed up her Us Weekly appearance with a People interview , agreed that before her mother will come around Levi would `` have to get his education and a job and be willing to support Tripp the right way .
The wrong way was presumably Levi 's previous attempts to earn a living by posing for Playgirl
This can not be a welcome change of subject for the former Republican vice presidential nominee
She 's been on a political roll - raising money , making some prescient picks in the Republican primaries
She 's got a hot `` mama grizzlies '' video out , in which she touts a new wave of conservative women , rising up to protest ... the bad thing
Palin is really , really vague about exactly what the threat is
-LRB- The closest she gets is `` the fundamental transformation of America . ''
But there 's really no need to be specific because , as she says in the video , `` Moms kinda just know when something 's wrong .
The Bristol-Levi debacle , which might be a minor sideshow for another politician , looms larger for a Mama Grizzly
Inquiring minds might want to know why she did n't sniff trouble , rise up on her hind legs and eviscerate that hockey-playing thug the first time he followed her daughter through the kitchen door
Since Sarah Palin 's own fame seems grounded on little but a look and an attitude , you ca n't blame the kids for thinking the same kind of thing would work for them
Bristol tried to become a celebrity unwed mother , the anti-teen-pregnancy spokeswoman for a sexy clothing line
Levi tried to make a name for himself as the celebrity unwed mother 's ex-boyfriend
It might have worked out , except that as a spokeswoman , Bristol turned out to have nothing to say
And Levi , who kept showing up on TV promising to tell `` my side of the story '' was close to sub-verbal
But the conviction that celebrity is transferable , like chicken pox , is still going strong in Wasilla
Levi has broken relations with his sister , Mercede , over her insistence on telling `` my side of the story '' on The Official Blog of Mercede Johnston
The home page includes a request for donations and a list of recent posts , including , `` Time to set the record straight , '' and `` No I will NOT sit down and shut up !
Her grievances seem to center on Bristol , who she claims got pregnant on purpose and then tried to turn her brother against his family
Tune in tomorrow when ... What next
My money 's on an all-Palin-Johnston edition of `` Dancing With the Stars .
JUDICIARY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN PATRICK LEAHY : Judge Sotomayor , welcome to you and your large and lovely family , including your mother , who I believe saved up to buy your first encyclopedia when she was a hard-working widow
Let me begin the opening statements by noting that you have more federal court judicial experience than any nominee to the United States Supreme Court in nearly a hundred years
And the Constitution is that a great document or what
And now , the ranking Republican from Alabama
SENATOR JEFF SESSIONS : Thank you , Chairman
Judge Sotomayor , let 's talk about empathy
I find it shocking that President Obama said that judges should have empathy
I hate empathy
My Republican colleagues hate empathy
In fact , I am proud to say that we 've reached an all-time low in the `` understands the problems of ordinary people '' category
SENATOR RUSS FEINGOLD : Judge Sotomayor , if confirmed , you will join the Supreme Court with more federal judicial experience than any justice in the past 100 years
And , therefore , I will devote my time to complaining about the way the Bush administration pummeled our civil liberties
SENATOR ORRIN HATCH : Mr. Chairman , thank you for the opportunity to point out that we once had a Hispanic nominee for something , and the Democrats filibustered him
SENATOR KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND : Mr. Chairman , as the newly appointed junior senator from New York , I want to thank you for the opportunity to introduce Judge Sotomayor
Normally I speak really , really fast , but due to the importance of this occasion I am going to go really , really slow
Which will mean that my five minutes will be over before I get anywhere near ... JUDGE SOTOMAYOR : Thank you , committee members
In recent weeks , I have had the pleasure and privilege of meeting with 89 senators
Thank God Senator Inhofe said he did n't need to talk to me because he 'd already made up his mind to vote No.
CHAIRMAN LEAHY : We 're now going to start with the question period
I would like to begin by asking how it feels to have more federal court judicial experience than any nominee to the United States Supreme Court in nearly a hundred years
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR : Thank you for that interesting question
What my 17-year record on two courts has taught me is the importance of keeping an open mind
And following precedent
And not answering any hypothetical questions about abortion or gun control
SENATOR SESSIONS : Judge , to get back to that `` wise Latina '' speech , I want to know if you think judges should allow their prejudices to impact decision-making
For instance , if I were a plaintiff before your court , would you be less inclined to rule in my favor because my middle name is Beauregard
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR : Senator , I do not permit my sympathies , personal views or prejudices to influence the outcome of my cases
But thank you for sharing
SENATOR HERB KOHL : I believe I heard somewhere that you would join the Supreme Court with more federal judicial experience than any justice in the past 100 years
Does n't your very , very low reversal rate show how exceptionally well you have performed
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR : Senator , thank you for that softball question
Which reminds me to point out that in 1995 I ended the baseball strike
SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM : Judge , before I read a string of anonymous comments about your temperament problem , I 'd like to make you repeat that wise Latina remark again just for the heck of it
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR : Thank you , Senator , for the opportunity to revisit that matter
I appreciate that the man who once said he 'd drown himself if North Carolina went for Obama has a special contribution to make when it comes to the importance of thinking before you speak
SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER : Before we get to my questions , I would like to tell you several anecdotes about my own interesting history
Did I mention that I used to be chairman of this committee
SENATOR JOHN CORNYN : I have here a newspaper story quoting a corporate lawyer who worked with you 17 years ago as saying that you would vote for abortion rights
What does he know that we do n't
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR : That was sometime between my graduating summa cum laude from Princeton and the year I ended the baseball strike
While I ca n't answer your question , perhaps it would help if I said that I am bound by precedent and my mind is always open
SENATOR TOM COBURN : Judge , I 'd like to ask you a number of hypothetical questions about abortion and gun control
A lot of Americans are watching these hearings
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR : Hardly likely at this point , Senator
This has been a bad summer for almost everybody - celebrities , shrimpers , Washington insiders , Tea Party outsiders , people who prefer pleasant weather
So far , my list of who did well only includes the Spanish soccer team and Paul the prophetic octopus
Plus , according to Senator Jim Bunning , George Steinbrenner
The Kentucky Republican praised the Yankee owner in the Senate Finance Committee for being `` smart enough to die in 2010 , '' when the estate tax is temporarily suspended
Oh , that Jim Bunning - always looking on the bright side
Why are n't there more people like that in government
This week , Congress passed the huge reform of the financial industry that it had been working on for nearly two years
You 'd think there would have been cheering from coast to coast , but the left was disheartened to discover that contrary to all previous precedent , Congress had passed a bill that was imperfect
`` Ending debate on the bill is finishing before the job is done , '' said Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin , the only Democrat to vote no.
Great idea
I think I speak for us all when I say that there is absolutely nothing I would like better than additional talking in the Senate
It always seems to make things better
Meanwhile , down in the House , John Boehner , the Republican leader , raised the ante , calling for repeal
Who says that Boehner just hangs out at bars and tanning parlors and does n't work hard
The man is tireless
Everybody else was exhausted , but he wanted to start over
`` There are common sense things we should do to plug the holes in the regulatory system ... and to bring more transparency to financial transactions
Because transparency is like sunlight and sunlight is the best disinfectant , '' he said
This is an exciting new analogy for Boehner
Just a couple of weeks ago he was leading the opposition to a bill that would require groups that pay for political attack ads to reveal their true identities
Boehner called it a `` back-room deal to shred our Constitution .
In this case , transparency was a dangerous concept that would strip away all protective covering and allow vicious ultraviolet rays to stream through the window and burn away our precious freedoms
Most Republicans are not joining Boehner in his call to repeal the financial reform bill because they are too busy calling for the repeal of health care reform
`` The bill should be scrapped and replaced with much better ideas , '' said Marco Rubio , the Republican Senate candidate in Florida
Rubio 's own idea is to eliminate the requirement that healthy people have insurance , but keep the part that says insurance companies have to cover people with pre-existing conditions
This sounds like the ideal solution - no one would have to buy insurance until they got sick , and then they could make the companies sell them a whole bunch of coverage
I do n't know why nobody thought of this before
With all these great ideas around - debate more , start over , do n't clean the windows - it 's a wonder that Washington has n't become the image of Athens in the age of Pericles
But instead , all Barack Obama 's critics have been able to do is make the country feel gloomy about Barack Obama
He 's passed more major legislation than anybody since Franklin Roosevelt and he 's got popularity ratings that look more like Martin Van Buren 's
This week , there was an enormous outcry at the news that the president was going to take his wife and children to Maine for the weekend
This is the third time he and his family went away for a weekend since the gulf oil crisis
Three weekends in three months
`` Presidents are certainly entitled to vacation , just like everybody else , but there is a fine line as to when presidents should do it , what they should and where they should do it , '' a former member of George W. Bush 's staff told CNN
The staff member in question , Brad Blakeman , was in charge of appointments and scheduling
Surely there is nobody better qualified to discuss this important subject than the man who helped the previous president get out of town for a third of his entire time in office
The Republicans have now set up a site called `` Golf or Gulf '' that lists all the things Obama has been doing for the last three months when he could have been sitting around worrying about the oil spill
He had Paul McCartney over to the White House
And he played golf 10 times
Let 's repeal the oil spill and start all over
The right way to handle the disaster , it appears from the many , many critiques , would have been to : - Call all the oil company executives together to come up with a plan
#NAME?
#NAME?
#NAME?
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction : Correction : July 20 , 2010 An earlier version of this column referred incorrectly to the Republican Senate candidate in Florida
It is Marco Rubio , not Mario Rubio
Lately , every day brings a surprise
You 're hanging out , waiting for the Independence Day fireworks to start , and suddenly there is Sarah Palin on TV , announcing that she 's quitting her job because she 's not a dead fish
And now we 're hearing that San Diego is under attack from giant flying squid with razor-sharp beaks
And then there 's the string of weird political sex scandals
Illicit lust is not , in and of itself , a novelty in our nation 's capital
But over the past few weeks we 've gotten one story after another about politicians whose extramarital affairs turned into public displays of strange behavior , conflict and hysteria
For instance , the estranged wife of Chip Pickering , a very conservative , toothy ex-congressman from Mississippi , has filed a lawsuit against Pickering 's alleged mistress
Leisha Pickering blames the woman , Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd , for ruining her family and forcing Pickering to turn down an offer to succeed the departing Trent Lott in the Senate
If it were n't for Creekmore Byrd , Mrs. Pickering contends , her husband would have been promoted and she would still be happily married
See what I mean
The story starts out with a humdrum married-boy-meets-married-girl , and then suddenly arcs into a lawsuit over alienation of a Senate seat
Strange times
Let 's see how closely you 've been paying attention : Take the interactive version of the quiz Take the text version of the
Suffice it to say that he intends to check out the big Middle Eastern trouble spots , to meet with officials and generals , and to speak with ordinary citizens to the degree possible for a man surrounded by more armor than a Transformer movie
`` I think he wants to get out and do as much as he can ... I do n't think he 'll be strolling around the market in a flak jacket , '' said Susan Rice , a senior Obama foreign policy adviser , speaking from a plane en route to ... someplace
That was , of course , a reference to John McCain 's visit to Baghdad last year when he strolled through a market , swaddled in a flak jacket and protected by so many soldiers , helicopters and sharpshooters that it looked like a new invasion
The entire expedition provided as much information on real-life conditions in Iraq as a walk down the old `` Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves '' set at Universal Studios
Nevertheless , McCain declared that he was witnessing evidence that the country was returning to normal
The next day , a number of Shiite workers from the market were murdered
McCain , who had been demanding that Obama visit Iraq , is now denouncing him for not having gone sooner , more often and before making policy speeches on the Middle East
`` He 's never been to Afghanistan and I 'm astonished , '' he added
You could pose the question in the opposite direction
Why is Obama going at all
Given the constraints under which he has to operate , the chance that he 'll see something enlightening seem to be lower than the chance of being shown something misleading
-LRB- See above : McCain\/marketplace .
Really , anybody he needs to talk to would be happy to pick up a phone
On the other hand , it 's always useful to get out and about
President Bush has been traveling around the world like crazy recently
A friend of mine refers to this late-breaking interest in globe-trotting as `` a taxpayer-funded junior year abroad .
But let us try not to be bitter
Bush has been touching all the bases April with NATO , the Middle East in May , Europe in June , Asia in July
And look at all the progress we 've seen since
The United States and Iraq have suddenly agreed to a `` general time horizon '' for future troop reductions
#NAME?
Everybody knows that timetables are playing into the hands of the enemy
This is an `` aspirational goal .
Totally , totally different .
And we 're talking to Iran about its nuclear weapons
This also is not a change of policy
Just ask the administration
`` The United States is determined to have negotiations only when Iran has suspended its enrichment and reprocessing , '' said Condoleezza Rice firmly
Talking with the top Iranian nuclear negotiator is not a negotiation
It 's talk
A get-to-know-you thing
Like speed dating
Americans seem confused about how Iraq fits into the presidential race
Polls tell us they want the troops out , but when it comes to judgment in foreign affairs , they have more faith in McCain , who wants to stay in
There 's a kind of strange symmetry in Iraq
Earlier this week , The Times 's Sabrina Tavernise and Richard Oppel talked to Iraqis in various parts of the country and reported that most seem to have a very high opinion of Obama for reasons that include : 1 -RRB- his name ; 2 -RRB- the fact that although he is not and never has been Muslim , there 's a connection there somewhere ; and 3 -RRB- in the words of one Baghdad businessman : `` He seems like a nice guy .
If you feel as though these explanations lack a depth of political sophistication , try asking American voters how they feel about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki
The Iraqis who talked to The Times were less enthusiastic about Obama 's position on well , Iraq
Although most of the people interviewed wanted the Americans gone , they also wanted assurance they would still have the pathetic modicum of security and stability they have now
Which requires the American troops
That seems to put them closer to John McCain 's position
But they like Barack better
Once again , we see citizens of our two very different nations united by love of democracy and voter irrationality
The confusion about who to trust on Iraq may go back to the fact that both candidates were right about the war , in different ways
Obama opposed the whole thing
-LRB- `` Dumb '' was the operative word .
McCain thought it was being badly executed
Recently , his passion to demonstrate knowledge of military tactics has been so intense that he appears to be running for secretary of defense
Obama underestimated the potential of the surge , but was way ahead of McCain in recognizing that the big problem in the region was Afghanistan , not Iraq
Yes , even though he had never been there , Obama was able to figure out that the region where Al Qaeda was actually located posed more of a danger to American security than a benighted country where it was n't
Until , of course , George Bush invaded and Al Qaeda moved in
But he was much less experienced then
It was before the junior year abroad
I know this is a bit of a surprise since the award almost always goes to the Senate majority leader , Harry Reid , whose job is frequently compared to herding cats
Although cats are much more sympathetic than senators
I 'd go for squirrels
Rabid squirrels
Rabid squirrels that are running for re-election
Even this week , Reid 's life looked pretty miserable because he is trying to get a commitment on finance reform from the newest Republican senator , Scott Brown of Massachusetts
Brown ran as a sort of populist man of the people , but in April , he told The Boston Globe that he could n't support the then-current version of the bill
When asked what he wanted changed , Brown said : `` Well , what areas do you think should be fixed
I mean , you know , tell me
And then I 'll get a team and go fix it .
It was at this point that we began to suspect that Massachusetts 's junior senator is not a deep thinker
Brown came around and voted for the bill when it passed the Senate
Then he backed away when it came out of conference committee because the conferees had added a tax on big banks
Which Brown claimed he could not support
This was at the same time that he was refusing to give the Democrats a final critical vote on extending unemployment benefits
We have here a populist man of the people playing the role of friend to the big banks while not being particularly helpful to the long-term unemployed
What can I tell you
The guy is extremely popular in Massachusetts
Maybe it 's because he drives a truck
The Democrats dove back into conference and got rid of a $ 19 billion tax just to make Brown happy
Now he says he 's going to spend the upcoming holiday recess pondering the bill 's implications
This must be very frustrating for Reid , but it 's the sort of thing that happens so often that he must think of it as normal life
Boehner , the House Republican leader , seems to be in a more pathetic state , which began with an interview he did with The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
This is the paper owned by Richard Mellon Scaife , the wealthy patron of right-wing causes , but all I can say is , you go , Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Boehner dismissed the financial reform package as `` killing an ant with a nuclear weapon .
Once again , Democrats did the happy dance
`` That 's right , '' said President Obama at his town-hall meeting on the economy in Wisconsin
`` He compared the financial crisis to an ant
The same financial crisis that led to the loss of nearly eight million jobs .
It really was a ridiculous metaphor
The financial reform package is actually more like killing a mastodon with a small spear
Could work , but not the sort of weapon you 'd want to count on for every occasion
Boehner also called for means-testing Social Security so that retirees with `` substantial non-Social Security income '' do n't get payments
This should be popular with upper-middle-class Republican voters , whose great complaint has always been that the government insists on giving them too much money
Perhaps most interesting was his attack on the Obama administration 's attempts to impose a moratorium on deep-sea drilling
`` The deep-water drilling - maybe there 's a reason there to pause till we know what happened and we can make sure we can prevent it from happening again , '' Boehner said
`` But all of this other drilling that 's going on down there in the more shallow waters - there 's no reason to have a moratorium .
This is actually a perfect description of the Obama policy
It was as if Boehner had denounced the health care reform law by saying that it would probably be a good idea to require people to have insurance and subsidize it for the poor , but that there was absolutely no reason to nationalize all the hospitals and have them run by the Army
Boehner looked burned-out in the interview , like a sullen college student sitting through a boring seminar
A very tanned , puffy-eyed , 60-year-old college student
What was his problem
Joe Scarborough , the MSNBC talk-show host and former Republican congressman , volunteered an answer : Boehner had the work ethic of a sullen college student as well
`` Every Republican I talk to says John Boehner , by 5 or 6 o'clock at night , you can see him at bars
He is not a hard worker , '' said Scarborough
Defending his boss to Politico.com , a Boehner spokesman said that the Republican leader has spent all his spare time raising money for the party
`` Thus far this year , he 's headlined more than 230 events and raised about $ 27 million
And that 's just the beginning .
Think about that
The year is only half over , so that means Boehner is averaging about 1.25 fund-raising events per day
No wonder he looks tired
No wonder he does n't know that the deep-water drilling moratorium only involves deep-water drilling
Watching Barack Obama trying to push members of Congress toward some kind of agreement on a health care bill gives you a new appreciation for why Hillary Clinton decided to just write the whole thing herself and dump it on them
The Conversation : In Praise of Partisanship -LRB- July 22 , 2009 -RRB- Every inch has been torture
The president spent an hour the other day with seven fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee who were n't happy with their leadership 's legislation
Then he turned them over to the entire White House health care team , which sat down with the Dogs and negotiated a plan to create an independent commission to set Medicare rates
This cost-containment commission now appears to be a centerpiece of the administration 's health care goals
I am a positive person , so I like to believe that this was not sheer desperation but rather the slow rolling out of an incredibly subtle plan to trick Congress into thinking it 's calling the shots
Meanwhile in the Senate , everyone is waiting on Max Baucus of Montana
Nothing is going to happen on health care without the approval of Baucus , whose vast authority stems from the fact that he speaks for both the Senate Finance Committee and a state that contains three-tenths of one percent of the country 's population
Baucus wants a bill that has bipartisan appeal
The Republicans who are eager to work with him on this include the Finance Committee 's minority leader and every single senator from Maine
The rest appear closer to Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina , who recently urged his fellow party members to dig in their heels and create a Waterloo for the president
`` It would break him , '' DeMint added appealingly
DeMint is an increasingly influential voice in the Republican Party , and he is now regarded as a potential Republican presidential nominee in 2012
This is partly because of his new book , `` Saving Freedom : We Can Stop America 's Slide Into Socialism , '' and partly because almost all the other potential Republican presidential nominees have been sidetracked by lively sex scandals
At present , DeMint does not seem to have a sex scandal , although if he ever comes up with one , I promise to remind you that in his last campaign he said that openly gay people and unwed pregnant women should not be allowed to teach in public schools
But we digress
The point here is that neither rain nor snow nor Jim DeMint will deter Obama from delivering on health care
Not even if he has to meet with every member of Congress one by one , give an interview to every television reporter in the Northern Hemisphere and hold a press conference every single day for the rest of the year
Earlier this week , the White House 's hopes for success were lifted when the Senate voted 58 to 40 to stop financing the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet
Not only did this create a savings of $ 1.75 billion , it demonstrated , the administration felt , that Congress really could step up to the plate
This was a huge , huge victory
Everybody pulled out all the stops to give wavering senators the spine to take a stand
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made a big we-are-at-the-crossroads speech in Chicago , telling the nation that if the F-22 stayed in the budget , all hope of sane procurement practices was lost forever
The president threatened to veto the entire $ 664 billion defense appropriations bill if there were F-22s in it
Vice President Joe Biden was on the phone talking and talking and talking
Rahm Emanuel was threatening to bite people on the leg it was terrible , seeing those swing votes limping down the halls with the White House chief of staff gnawing at their ankles
And they won
Who says the Senate ca n't make the hard choices
Of course , the F-22 had been totally outmoded since the collapse of the Soviet empire
We 've been through two wars without ever finding any use for it
We 've already got 187 of them sitting around , available should the Soviet Union reconstitute itself tomorrow and send its pilots into our airspace for a stealthy dogfight
The last two presidents , the last two joint chiefs of staff , and apparently every secretary of defense going back to John C. Calhoun have decried the F-22 as a stupendous waste of money
And , of course , the Pentagon has already come up with another fighter plane , the F-35 Lightning , that it vows to spend a quadrillion dollars on instead , even though its nickname is not nearly so cool as the Raptor 's
Today a 30-year-old piece of $ 1.75 billion pork
Tomorrow the world
Meanwhile , the leader of the Blue Dog rebels in the House called the big cost-containment victory a `` small breakthrough '' and noted that he and his six fellow Dogs had nine more big problems they wanted to discuss with the White House
Rand Paul , the most famous of the Tea Party-backed Republican Senate nominees , is a small , curly-haired man with cheeks like a chipmunk
He speaks in a tone of extreme reason that nevertheless suggests he is way smarter than anybody else in the room
In a teen horror movie , he would be the kid who invents the potion that turns the sophomore class into zombies
Jack Conway , his Democratic opponent , would be the handsome football quarterback
The football quarterback who is not the hero of the film but rather the first person to have his brain eaten
The hero would be played by Zac Efron , who would never be caught dead in the Senate
`` I 'm always going to put Kentucky first , '' Conway , the state attorney general , told the Kentucky Farm Bureau in a candidate forum this week
He said this so often it appeared to be a verbal tic
Paul kept reminding the audience that as a Democrat , Conway would vote for Harry Reid to be the Senate majority leader
Eventually , the forum degenerated into a contest over whether Paul could mention Reid more times than Conway could promise to put Kentucky first
The Republican edged into the lead
When the candidates were invited to give brief closing summations , Conway only shoehorned in three vows to put Kentucky at the tiptop of his priority list , while Paul got in four Harry Reids plus one `` Harry leader , '' with a `` Nancy Pelosi '' thrown in for good measure
The two are running to replace the retiring Senator Jim Bunning , who we all remember from the glorious time he got caught using a teleprompter in a debate
The race is getting unusual attention this year because it 's one of a handful that will decide whether the Tea Party phenomenon will cost the Republicans seats they might otherwise have won , or simply make the 2011 Senate really , really loopy
Paul is a socially conservative libertarian like his father , Representative Ron Paul of Texas
Rand Paul is against allowing a pregnant woman to choose abortion or a gay couple to choose marriage
But ask him about almost anything else - from the minimum wage to illegal traffic in prescription drugs - and his answer will be a harangue about the federal government
Mitch McConnell , the Senate minority leader and the state 's most prominent politician , labored mightily to get the Senate nomination for a run-of-the-mill Republican : Secretary of State Trey Grayson , a young , large , stolid guy who wanted nothing more than to spend the fall promising to put Kentucky first
But Paul won , and he is currently ahead of Conway in the polls
However , nobody is paying much attention
In Kentucky , the political season traditionally begins next month at the Fancy Farm picnic
This is a gathering where , in 1982 , Kentuckians consumed a historic 15,000 pounds of mutton , pork and chicken , thus cementing a Guinness `` World 's Largest Picnic '' citation
It is also where , in 2009 , Conway responded to hecklers by bragging that he was `` one tough son of a bitch .
And where , in 2010 , organizers have announced a new rule banning all profanity
If you happen to live in Kentucky , Conway 's message to you is that he is going to put the state you-know-where
If you do not live in Kentucky and you are an Obama Democrat , the message is that he is planning to drive you crazy
When asked about the Bush tax cuts , he vaguely suggested that Congress `` extend them some period of time .
On the administration 's attempts to reduce global warming\/carbon emissions , Conway is opposed since it does n't `` put Kentucky coal first .
Thanks to the state 's local soft coal supply , he reminded farmers , Kentucky now has `` the lowest electricity rates east of the Rocky Mountains , '' and he is not planning on letting that change just to accommodate a few drowning polar bears
Rand Paul 's obsession is slashing the federal deficit -LRB- `` our national nightmare '' -RRB-
Most of the voters who will be deciding the race would probably like to slash the deficit while also putting Kentucky first , but good luck on that one
Kentucky has more than its fair share of poor people , who are dependent on federal programs like food stamps , school lunches , and Medicaid
At a postforum press conference , a local reporter noted that the state sends less money to Washington than it gets back and asked Paul if he wanted to `` sacrifice our take .
`` I do n't think anything coming from the federal government is a net-plus , '' he replied
You have to give this to Rand Paul
It 's generally clear where his heart lies , even if he was a little weaselly on his well-established opposition to farm subsidies when addressing a roomful of farmers
On that point , I would like to say : Go for it , Rand Paul
Not sure we urbanites share your antipathy toward the minimum-wage laws , but when it comes to crop supports , we 're there for you
The health care bill is a mess in Congress
But at least the Senate voted to stop constructing the stupid F-22 fighter and they did it before the plane contract 's 30th anniversary
California is about to whack the heck out of funding for its school system
But on the plus side , the Legislature rescued the money that localities needed to continue identifying dead bodies in their morgues
We hate it when they balance the budget on the back of the corpses
In New York -LRB- Most Dysfunctional State in the Union
Thanks , National Journal !
, Albany is being run mainly by thugs and people who were appointed to fill sudden vacancies
But I 'm happy to report that we do have a lieutenant governor for the moment , thanks to an emergency swearing-in ceremony at a steakhouse in Brooklyn , two minutes ahead of Republicans waving court orders
The governor of Nevada is being sued by a cocktail waitress , who claims he assaulted her outside a nightclub , and his wife , who wants a divorce
But at least he is doing better than the state 's lieutenant governor , who is facing felony charges for misusing funds when he was the state treasurer
And not all that much worse than Nevada 's U.S. senator , who had that affair with the campaign bookkeeper who was married to his chief of staff
No matter what dreadful embarrassment your state is facing , you can always console yourself by remembering that you do not live in New Jersey
On Thursday , a vast corruption sweep there netted three mayors , two state assemblymen , five rabbis and a guy who had allegedly been running an organ-trafficking business that has left swathes of the population of Moldova walking around with only one kidney
If you do live in New Jersey , console yourself by remembering that the organ-trafficking business was actually run by a guy in Brooklyn
Among the indicted mayors was Peter Cammarano III , Hoboken 's 32-year-old `` thoughtful fighter '' whose reform agenda had raised hopes in a city so beleaguered that it had been under control of a state monitor
`` Though we campaigned with fists raised , I now extend my hand , '' Cammarano said after taking the oath of office
This was three weeks ago
At the time , no one understood it was a double-entendre
I hate it when reform mayors get indicted
Although it does make me feel better about the fact that in New York , the reform governor was not actually indicted but only forced to resign because of a hugely humiliating sex scandal
The New Jersey story is particularly dispiriting because it appears that the original federal investigation was not aimed at government corruption at all , but a money-laundering scheme centered in a town appropriately named Deal
This case involved Israel , Switzerland and an Apple Jacks cereal box stuffed with $ 97,000 all of which was very regrettable , but not the sort of thing likely to give nightmares to lovers of democracy around the globe
However , it turned out that once the informant began driving around with a trunk filled with laundered money , government officials popped up like so many beagles sniffing an unsupervised hot dog
And these public servants were depressingly inexpensive
Five-thousand dollars appeared to be the going rate for pretty much everything in the political favor department
Although there was a reform assemblyman who allegedly got $ 15,000
And , of course , the kidney would set you back a bundle
According to the indictments , one employee of the Hudson County Board of Elections did complain that he was being shortchanged when he was paid $ 2,500
And although his name is now linked to a scandal that is roiling New Jersey with shame , he is probably comforted in the knowledge that he was absolutely right
Hard to come up with any consolation for the people of Hoboken , who turned on the TV Thursday night and saw their brand-new mayor being hauled off in handcuffs
While Cammarano was campaigning to `` build a better , stronger , more-affordable Hoboken '' he was also allegedly sitting down at a diner with a federal informant , who promised to give him two $ 5,000 payments in return for help with various development projects
And , oh , bitter pill the prosecutors say he lightheartedly told the informant that he was so popular that he could win the election even if he was `` uh , indicted .
The voters can tell themselves that at least they tried
Cammarano 's official biography boasts that he championed ethics and open government and sponsored a law requiring `` that all wood products purchased for municipal projects are certified as non-rain forest in origin .
Whoever told us to beware of politicians bearing rain forest resolutions
And it could have been worse
At least Hoboken 's indicted mayor is n't the cut-rate $ 2,500 kind
And at last report , everybody was still hanging on to their kidneys
While conducting my never-ending search for cheerful news , I noticed that one of New York 's senators made the Top 10 in a list of the 50 most beautiful people on Capitol Hill
The second piece of good news is that it was not Chuck Schumer
Congratulations , Kirsten Gillibrand
Additional happy tidings : The gulf oil spill does n't look as bad as we thought
Although you never can tell what 's going on deep down below
Surface appearance is not everything
Do you hear that , Senator Gillibrand
Finally , I am happy to report that Chelsea Clinton is getting married on Saturday
Perhaps you had n't heard
`` This is hard , let me tell you , '' said Hillary Clinton
She was referring to preparations for her daughter 's big day , not high-stakes diplomacy
Although the two might be connected
Maybe the North Koreans threatened to nuke the American-South Korean war games because they thought our country would be easy to bulldoze while the secretary of state was laboring under the stress of wedding planning
`` I was one of those brides of our vintage , '' Clinton told me a while back
We are of the same generation , and during her presidential campaign she once said that she was always happy to see me because at least there would be somebody her age on the press plane
`` We agreed to get married one weekend , got married the next weekend , '' Clinton reminisced
Chelsea is definitely going in a different direction
The estimates of the cost of her wedding have all been coming from people who are n't actually involved in it , but if they get any more grandiose , we will have stories on Fox News about how the ceremony cost more than the national budget of Burundi
Let her have her day
She 's due
Chelsea has been a national public figure against her will since she was 12 , and in all that time she has never embarrassed her family - or us
Before she went off to Columbia to study public health policy , she worked for a New York management consulting firm and a hedge fund where her colleagues unanimously -LRB- and off-the-recordly -RRB- reported that she was a stupendously hard worker
She recognized early on that when celebrity is thrust on you , the trick is to learn to do something besides being famous
-LRB- Talking to you , Bristol .
In days of yore , presidential offspring frequently came to grief
Early on , there were quite a few suicidal alcoholics
F.D.R. 's five children managed to produce 19 marriages
I always had a feeling that Amy Carter , who was sent to public school in Washington amid a crush of publicity , did not love the experience
But she seemed to be happy at her own wedding in 1996 in the yard of her late grandmother 's house , cutting a wedding cake she had baked herself
The bride wore an embroidered dress from the 1920s
The groom , a computer consultant , wore a ponytail
Her father did not give her away because , as Jimmy Carter told the press , `` Amy said she did n't belong to anyone .
Jenna Bush had a few unfortunate brushes with the law during her White House years
But it was nothing that could n't have been avoided if the legal drinking age in Texas had been 18
Anyway , she seems to have turned out great
After graduation , she worked for Unicef , taught at an inner-city public school in Washington and wrote a book about a young woman with AIDS in Latin America
She is now a reading coordinator at a school in Baltimore and makes occasional reports on education for `` Today .
Her sister , Barbara , worked at a hospital in South Africa , did educational programming for a museum and now leads a Peace Corps-type organization called Global Health Corps
The twins are only 28 , but they already seem to have racked up more good works than Mother Teresa
Virtually everyone in America loathes either George W. Bush or Bill and Hillary
Yet every sensible person , no matter what political stripe , would have to admit that both families produced really good kids
And they 're not untypical
Although no generation lacks warts , our 20-somethings are terrific
We worry about the youth of America turning into distracted Twitterers with superficial values who will never find jobs , but every single day I trip over recent college graduates who are amazing - funny and smart with an astonishing work ethic
They all seem to be working on 14 different useful projects , most of them unpaid
If I had had to compete against them when I was 21 , I 'd still be working on my graduate school application
Happy wedding , Chelsea
Excellent job , Bush twins
Good luck , Amy Carter , wherever you are
We are pleased to be a country that produced such nice young adults out of such a lunatic political environment
`` I 'm having a vicarious experience , '' said Hillary Clinton happily
As are we all
Before everyone finishes piling on Gov. Mark Sanford , let me say that all of us in New York were happy to learn that he has been scheduling his assignations in our state
Really , times are tough , and we need all the business we can get
Although it is true that our hotels can be somewhat pricey , there are lots of discounts , and the airfare to New York is way , way cheaper than it is to Argentina
Sanford , as the whole world now knows , went missing in action when he secretly snuck off to Buenos Aires to see his lover
Ever since he got caught at the airport coming home , he has been confessing and apologizing and talking and talking and talking
Some of his allies back in South Carolina have made a commendable , if self-interested , attempt to draw a line between Sanford 's private sins and his public role as chief executive
But the governor himself , in an interview with The Associated Press , seemed more interested in what he called `` the sex line , '' which apparently exists to divide his `` soul mate , '' Mar a Bel n Chapur , from other women whom he 's lusted after in his heart and possibly with his hands
The whole `` sex line '' business called up memories of my Catholic girlhood , where the nuns could delineate the exact moment at which making out with your boyfriend advanced from venial to mortal sin territory
If Sanford has been reading from the same guidebook , it 's possible that he was listing every female he had ever bumped into in the hallway
But we digress
In South Carolina , the debate started with the question of whether the real issue was the governor 's romantic life or his failure to leave anybody in charge when he vanished without so much as call-forwarding
But Sanford was so clearly in the wrong on that count that his supporters quickly turned to matters of finance and whether he had traveled to Argentina on his own dime
He said he had although he backtracked on a promise to prove it
And he agreed to reimburse the state for an earlier economic development trip to South America that he re-routed to Buenos Aires in the name of love
Talking about money was familiar ground for South Carolina conservatives , and for a while it looked as if they might settle on a rule that sex is irrelevant unless it leads to a tax increase
Then Sanford , who has been in an extremely peculiar mode ever since his return , gave that interview in which he described his trips to New York with Chapur
He said the most recent one occurred earlier this year and was approved by his wife , Jenny -LRB- Not the Soul Mate -RRB- Sanford under the theory that her husband only wanted to see his lover in order to break up with her
Serving as chaperone was a `` spiritual adviser , '' who I hope was given enough downtime to enjoy a nice dinner and take in some sights
Chinatown is fun
The revelations about that New York trip throw a new and interesting light on Sanford 's jaunt to Buenos Aires , for which he apparently also sought his wife 's blessing
I think I speak for us all when I say that no spouse is allowed more than one officially sanctioned goodbye visit to his mistress
Especially since there was apparently no spiritual counselor invited on the Argentina leg , an oversight that I 'm sure was because of the expense
Yet another reason why it is better to schedule all these get-togethers in the Big Apple
-LRB- Broadway tickets sold at a discount near Times Square !
Having affairs in New York is a longtime American political tradition
The late , great R.W. Apple Jr. once told me that when he was a metro reporter for The Times in 1963 , he was assigned to stake out the lobby of a hotel in Manhattan where President John F. Kennedy was spending the night
While on the lookout for official visitors , Apple said he saw `` a young woman of a Hollywood nature '' heading for the presidential suite
He quickly called his editor , who informed him `` I was there to report the comings and goings of statesmen , not starlets .
If that happened now , of course , the only question would be whether Apple could avoid being run over by a crew from TMZ
Meanwhile , back in South Carolina , Sanford 's continued yammering started to weird out his fellow Republicans
State Senator John Courson , who had been in the vanguard of the just-show-me-the-money cadre , called Sanford 's crossing-the-line remark `` troubling .
`` I would need further explanation of that from him , '' the senator said
Although one would think the last thing Sanford 's career needs is further explanation
The state party chair delicately suggested that the governor might want to free up his schedule so he could `` devote his efforts full time to repairing the damage in his personal life .
Perhaps with a reconciliation weekend
We could offer some excellent deals on the honeymoon suite at the Plaza
At the beginning of his much , much , much discussed visit to `` The View , '' Barack Obama squished himself into a long , low banquette where the five women who converse on the program were seated
I can not tell you how happy this moment made me
During the presidential campaign , whenever Obama was sharing a stage with Hillary Clinton , the seating arrangement always seemed to involve high stools
He draped his tall , lanky frame over his stool gracefully
Clinton , who would have looked like a middle-aged schoolgirl doing detention if she perched up there , opted to stand and be uncomfortable
On behalf of all the short women of America I say - go for it , women of `` The View .
I 'm sure you did not want to cause the president of the United States any distress , but he was so totally due
`` For the first time in American history , a sitting president is visiting a daytime talk show - us , '' Whoopi Goldberg said proudly
The only real innovation was the hour of the day
`` The View '' is n't any less serious than `` The David Letterman Show , '' where the president has already guested
It 's not as if he volunteered to have himself shut up in the `` Big Brother '' house , or sent Joe Biden to play wooden spoons on `` America 's Got Talent .
The dissolution of the boundary between entertainment and politics is old news
Now we 're dissolving the boundary between reality and entertainment
Or perhaps reality and reality
I was reminded of this when Obama was gently grilled by the lone Republican on `` The View , '' Elisabeth Hasselbeck , who came to the show after a stint on `` Survivor , '' where she lasted 39 days in the Australian Outback despite a crippling inability to catch fish
`` Survivor '' is a first-generation reality show , in which everything is actually supposed to be real , except for the unseen production crew and copious editing
Now , some of the most talked-about shows on television are programs like `` Real Housewives '' and `` Jersey Shore '' that capture real people going about their real lives - except the producers arrange things so that the real lives are much more interesting than they are in reality
`` Jersey Shore '' is basically Mario Cuomo 's nightmare
It stars a bunch of young people who call themselves `` guidos '' and `` guidettes '' and live out every dreadful Italian-American stereotype in beach houses provided by the producers
On `` The View , '' Obama claimed he had never heard of the show 's breakout star , Nicole -LRB- Snooki -RRB- Polizzi
But it turned out that he once made a joke about Snooki , listing her and John Boehner , the House minority leader , as the top victims of the administration 's plan to help pay for the health bill with a tanning salon tax
Snooki , whose hard-partying got her hauled off to the pokey on Friday , has added the president 's line to her own repertoire
`` I do n't go tanning-tanning anymore because Obama put a 10 percent tax on tanning , '' she said in this week 's episode
`` McCain would never put a 10 percent tax on tanning
Because he 's pale and would probably want to be tan .
She was interviewed recently on the Web site The Daily Beast by Meghan McCain , daughter of John , who asked her how she felt when she received a Twitter message from the Arizona senator , confirming his strong opposition to taxing tanning beds
`` So that was pretty awesome and I 'm really happy that he actually knows who I am , '' Snooki said
We may be moving beyond actors running for office , into a new era with candidates who became TV stars by playing artificially enhanced versions of themselves
In Wisconsin , the seat of David Obey , the retiring House appropriations chairman , could be taken by a local Republican district attorney named Sean Duffy
His prior claims to fame include a stint on the reality show `` Real World Boston .
His wife , Rachel , was a star of `` Real World San Francisco .
They found love in the spinoff
Now , Rachel sometimes sits in for Elisabeth Hasselbeck on `` The View .
In his pre-presidency , Obama made a guest appearance on the wrestling show `` Raw '' during the 2008 primaries and mimicked one of the stars , Dwayne -LRB- The Rock -RRB- Johnson
Like everybody in the pseudosport , Johnson was part of a scripted soap opera in which he played a wrestler named Dwayne -LRB- The Rock -RRB- Johnson
Among the other characters were the philandering league owner , Vince McMahon , played by owner Vince McMahon , and his long-suffering wife , Linda
Linda McMahon is now running for the United States Senate
Dwayne Johnson is an actor who recently starred as the tooth fairy
And , of course , Barack Obama became president and appeared this week on `` The View .
There , he denied knowing the identity of Snooki , who plays a woman named Snooki on `` Jersey Shore , '' where she recently criticized his revenue sources for health care reform
Compared to this , `` Inception '' is a simple tale of people who enjoy napping
Winner of Democratic Senate primary turned out to be an unemployed man facing felony charges who had never campaigned
Know your Congress : A -RRB- Which of the following did NOT happen in the Senate this year
Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama held up confirmation votes on more than 70 Obama administration appointees because he wanted two defense contracts for his home state
Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky held up the confirmation of the deputy U.S. trade representative out of pique over a Canadian law banning the sale of flavored tobacco
Harry Reid , the majority leader , accidentally voted No on health care bill
Senate dining room had all-shrimp menu in support of gulf fishermen
Republicans invoked a rule prohibiting committee meetings from running past 2 p.m. A -RRB- `` We had several drinks
We went to dinner
We went to a couple of bars
... It just happened .
B -RRB- `` Nobody likes that , but it may be one of the tough-love things that has to happen .
C -RRB- `` Not only did I grope him , I tickled him until he could n't breathe and four guys jumped on top of me .
Newly elected Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts , introducing his unmarried daughters to the crowd
Glenn Beck on his first meeting with new Fox commentator , Sarah Palin
Rand Paul , the Kentucky gubernatorial candidate , on why he opposes extending unemployment benefits
South Carolina Republican political consultant , claiming he had a one-night stand with a candidate for governor
\*\*\*\*\* IV
Match the apologies : A -RRB- `` I simply misremembered it wrong .
B -RRB- `` I have made mistakes , and I am sorry .
C -RRB- `` If anything I said this morning has been misconstrued ... I want to apologize for that misconstruction .
D -RRB- `` I made an insensitive comment .
Representative Joe Barton , a Texas Republican , on his apology to BP for President Obama 's `` shakedown .
Mark Kirk , a Senate candidate in Illinois , on war record
Richard Blumenthal , a Senate candidate in Connecticut , on war record
Louisiana state representative who called a black campaign volunteer `` Buckwheat .
\*\*\*\*\* V. Who said the following
A. `` That 's gonna leave a mark .
Representative Anthony Weiner after being gored in the hand by a goat at a press conference opposing mohair goat subsidies
BP executive , examining oil-soaked pelicans
The House minority leader , John Boehner , describing a recent tanning bed accident
B. `` We care about the small people .
BP chairman stressing his company 's commitment to oil spill victims
Basketball star LeBron James , on his attachment to the fans in Cleveland
Vice President Joe Biden , announcing a new jobs program for short unemployed workers
C. `` So yesterday .
John McCain on his previous opposition to fence-building as a solution to the illegal immigration problem
Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina , urging reporters to get over the whole Appalachian Trail business 3
Carly Fiorina , Senate candidate in California , on Barbara Boxer 's hair
D. `` I am an outsider .
Jeff Greene , a Florida billionaire and Senate candidate
Linda McMahon , a multimillionaire yacht-owner and Senate candidate in Connecticut
Tom Foley , a multimillionaire yacht-owner and former ambassador who is the Republican candidate for governor of Connecticut
All of the above
ANSWERS : I : A-4 , B-2 ; II : A-4 ; III : A-5 , B-4 , C-1 , D-2 , E-3 ; IV : A-2 , B-3 , C-1 , D-4 ; V : A-1 , B-1 , C-3 , D-4
Truly , Sarah Palin has come a long way
When she ran for vice president , she frequently became disjointed and garbled when she departed from her prepared remarks
Now the prepared remarks are incoherent , too
In order to view this feature , you must download the latest version of flash player here
`` And a problem in our country today is apathy , '' she said on Friday as she announced that she would resign as governor of Alaska at the end of the month
`` It would be apathetic to just hunker down and ` go with the flow .
Nah , only dead fish ` go with the flow .
Productive , fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts , choosing to wisely utilize precious time ... to BUILD UP .
Basically , the point was that Palin is quitting as governor because she 's not a quitter
Or a deceased salmon
Sarah Barracuda made her big announcement Friday afternoon on the lawn of her home to an audience that appeared to include only Todd , the kids and the next-door neighbors
Smiling manically , she looked like a parody of the woman who knocked the Republicans dead at their convention
She babbled about her parents ' refrigerator magnet , which apparently had a lot of wise advice
And she recalled her visit with the troops in Kosovo , whose dedication and determination inspired her to ... resign
`` Life is about choices !
declared the nation 's most anti-choice politician
People , what is going on with governors in this country
Are we doomed to see them go bonkers one by one , state by state
The timing of Palin 's announcement was extremely peculiar
Not only did she interrupt the plans of TV newscasters to spend the entire weekend pointing out that Michael Jackson is still dead , she delivered her big news just as the nation was settling into Fourth of July celebrations
You 'd have thought she did n't want us to notice
`` I choose to work very hard on a path for fruitfulness and productivity , '' she said in a fairly typical moment
`` I choose not to tear down and waste precious time , but to build up this state and our country , and her industrious , generous , patriotic free people !
Palin has a year and a half left to go in her term of office
The political world had been wondering whether she 'd run for re-election
The answer is no.
And furthermore , it turns out that Palin believes that the only way her administration can `` continue without interruption '' is for her to end it
Anyhow , no point in wasting precious time
One underlying theme in Palin 's remarks was that many ethics complaints have been filed against her on issues ranging from her alleged attempts to get her former brother-in-law fired from the state troopers to charging Alaska for her children 's travel expenses
According to the about-to-be-ex governor , fighting all this negativity has cost the state `` thousands of hours of your time '' and $ 2 million `` to respond to ` opposition research . '
But now this is all water under the bridge
Every single unfair charge has been dismissed
-LRB- `` We 've won ! ''
And now that the battle is over and the time\/money has been wasted , Palin is going to leave her job in the name of `` efficiencies and effectiveness .
`` I can not stand here as your governor and allow millions upon millions of our dollars go to waste just so I can hold the title of governor , '' she said
Perhaps there is some new and interesting scandal that Palin has yet to let us in on
-LRB- If so , I hope it involves a soul mate .
Otherwise , it would appear that this is all about her desire to start raising money and setting up operations for a presidential run in 2012
Her fans immediately interpreted the resignation as a canny move to get her back down to the lower 48 , with as much time on her hands as Mitt Romney
-LRB- Mary Matalin called it `` brilliant . ''
Palin was the subject of a devastating article in this month 's Vanity Fair by Todd Purdum , who wrote that McCain campaign aides found it almost impossible to get Palin to prepare for her disastrous interview with Katie Couric
And there is no sign , Purdum reported , that Palin has made any attempt to bone up on the issues so that next time around , she could run as a candidate who actually had some grasp of the intricacies of foreign and domestic policy
So if she 's starting to run , it will be as the same reporter-avoiding , generalization-spouting underachiever that she was last time around
Now we know she not only does n't have the concentration to read a policy paper , she ca n't focus long enough to finish the job she was hired to do
On Friday , Palin said that finishing out her term would be just too easy
`` Many just accept that lame-duck status , hit the road , draw the paycheck and ` milk it .
I 'm not putting Alaska through that , '' she said
Apparently , she 's going to put the rest of us through it instead
Charles M. Blow is off today
Back in the days of yore , hundreds of thousands of people would turn out just to see a marching band and a couple of political banners
Throw in a caged eagle , and you had a riot on your hands
`` Again and again , the hosts overflowed into the avenues and had to be actually mashed by the scores of police that quickly rushed into the breach , '' The Times wrote of a parade in 1888
It was in honor of James Blaine , a Republican senator from Maine who was n't there , and in fact was n't even running for anything that particular year
Ah , but those were the days , my friends
Politics was fun , if somewhat raucous and alcohol-fueled
People would flock to listen to a two-hour speech from a state senator whose oratory was undoubtedly improved by the fact that , in an unamplified era , he could only actually be heard by the front quarter of the audience
Politicians had neat nicknames , like Old Hickory and Old Tippecanoe and Old Rough and Ready
Now we have become so disconnected from our candidates that even John McCain does not have a single nickname to call his own , despite his campaign 's desperate attempts to convince the nation 's voters that they should think of him as `` Mac .
In yore , anything related to democracy and patriotism from Fourth of July parades to election night was huge
`` Your identity was really defined in the streets , '' said Sarah Henry , the chief curator of the Museum of the City of New York , which currently has a wonderful display of artifacts from political campaigns of the past
Henry was speaking on her cellphone from a traffic jam , en route to Cape Cod and the Wellfleet Fourth of July Parade
It is , she said , always a decorous affair , except for the tradition of throwing candy to the crowds along the sidewalks : `` The lemon drops can be kind of painful .
That would have been nothing in the good old days
When political celebrations were at the peak of their popularity , torchlight parades tended to lead to things being set on fire
Women 's enthusiasm for getting the vote was somewhat diminished by the fact that they connected elections with drunken fistfights
Independence Day in New York City was much like Baghdad after a big soccer game , with men racing outside to fire their guns into the air or into another person if the casualty lists in the newspaper were any indication
Still , you ca n't help feeling wistful about the idea that at one time people would turn out to watch their neighbors raise a giant flagpole or push a large ball plastered with political slogans from town to town
During the current Fourth of July weekend which has been going on , for all practical purposes , since the latter part of June communities have had to continue to up the ante , trying to lure people out of their backyards with everything from speedboat races to enormous fireworks displays to concerts clogged with former `` American Idol '' contestants
It 's not that we 're less patriotic , just more diverted
If Grand Theft Auto IV had been around in 1888 , you can bet there would have been a sharp drop in the number of adolescent boys waiting to see a portrait of James Blaine being toted down Madison Avenue
People are also less enthusiastic about politics because they no longer think of their political affiliation as being central to their identity
Once reformers arrived with the 20th century , Americans were taught to prove they were good citizens by studying the party platforms , not by getting in a fistfight at a bar
Since nobody actually did study the party platforms , folks simply slunk home and waited for the invention of radio and professional sports teams
The reformers also tried to tackle political rowdiness with a movement called Safe and Sane Fourth of July
But the real key to nonviolent politics was bringing women into the picture
As we seem condemned to keep relearning throughout history , men are much less inclined to blow things up or knock each other down when they 're in mixed company
When American women first got the right to vote , in Wyoming in 1869 , a local paper noted that things had quieted down so fast `` it seemed more like Sunday than election day .
Residents were so proud of what they 'd accomplished that when Wyoming became a state in 1890 , the first speech after the celebratory parade was dedicated to the subject of suffrage
Theresa Jenkins , who gave the address , got particular commendation for her delivery , which was so forceful she could be heard at the far reaches of a crowd that stretched back for four blocks
It turned out she had been practicing by standing out in the open prairie , giving her speech while her husband sat in a buggy , backing farther and farther away and yelling `` Louder !
Here 's to you , Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins
Happy holidays
When we last left Levi , he was fighting with his ex-girlfriend , Bristol Palin , over the custody of his son , Tripp
Also , he was talking trash about Tripp 's grandmother , the former Republican vice presidential nominee
This was last summer , when he was showing up everywhere from Vanity Fair to Playgirl , complaining about how Sarah Palin made him cut off his mullet before the Republican convention and how on the day Tripp was born `` I did n't think Sarah wanted my mom around all the cameras because she had been arrested for selling prescription medication a week and a half earlier .
But this week Johnston sent out an olive branch , via People magazine
`` Last year , after Bristol and I broke up , I was unhappy and a little angry
Unfortunately , against my better judgment , I publicly said things about the Palins that were not completely true , '' he said
We have been dealing with a lot of imperfect apologies recently , but this one hits a new level of unsatisfactory
At the very least , we need to know which of the gossip he was dishing was true , and which not completely
The part about how Sarah fights a lot with Todd
Or that she never cooks
Personally , all I want to know is whether Levi was being straight when he said that the former governor of Alaska does n't really know how to shoot a gun
Johnston also told People that he hoped that the Palins would `` forgive my youthful indiscretion .
This does not really sound like something that would come from a high-school dropout who gave his son the middle name of Easton because that is his favorite hockey equipment company
In fact , the last time I heard anyone refer to a `` youthful indiscretion '' was in 1998 , when 74-year-old Henry Hyde , the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee , was confessing to an adulterous affair he had conducted when he was 41
Bristol responded to her ex-boyfriend 's statement with one of her own , saying that `` part of co-parenting is creating healthy and honest relationships between the parents .
Also not the kind of word choice you normally hear from a 19-year-old
Last year , when his illegitimate fatherdom fame was at its height , Levi had acquired management and was talking about writing his memoirs or pursuing an acting career
But it appears that he has not actually been able to turn his failure to use a condom into a permanent job
Bristol has been far more successful
She is currently the teen ambassador for the Candie 's Foundation to prevent teen pregnancy
She is also available to speak about her experiences - for fees of $ 15,000 and up
Earlier this year , Rachel Maddow reported on MSNBC that Bristol had filed paperwork to establish her own company to provide `` lobbying , public relations and political consulting services .
This may have been done for tax purposes , but the fact is that for a foe of teenage pregnancy , Bristol has been making unwed motherhood look like a pretty attractive gig
This week , she made her acting debut on the series `` The Secret Life of the American Teenager , '' where she had been cast in the role of an unmarried teen mom named Bristol
`` The Secret Life of the American Teenager '' is a product of the ABC Family network , and it consists mainly of attractive kids hanging around talking about their feelings
The show is so utterly detached from reality that the teenage boys talk about their feelings even when there are no teenage girls around to appreciate the effort
The plots all seem to revolve around who is pregnant , formerly pregnant or worried about being pregnant
In the Bristol episode , there was a great deal of speculation about whether the main character , Amy , was `` pregnant again .
Amy plays the French horn - this comes up quite a bit - and she had actually gone off to a camp for young musicians in New York City in hopes of furthering her ambition to get into Juilliard
It was possibly the coolest music camp in the history of band instruments , since every camper got her own personal apartment in Manhattan
Then Bristol appeared at Amy 's door to offer to show her how the subway works and let her in on the camp 's secret theme : `` We 're all teen moms
And musicians .
To summarize : Bristol Palin is a teenager whose out-of-wedlock baby has turned her into a national celebrity and gotten her a cameo role on a popular TV show
Where she explains to the lead character that her status as an unwed mother wins her a slot in the world 's greatest music camp
The only person who 's actually been doing anything for the battle against teen pregnancy is Levi Johnston
Do n't have unprotected sex with your boyfriend , girls
Look what he might turn into
Yes , pictures of a casket being lifted into a hearse and driven away will do that for you
Yet the beat goes on
On Wednesday , there was Jackson 's skin doctor on ABC , announcing that he was not , `` to the best of my knowledge , '' the biological father of Jackson 's two oldest children
-LRB- Is n't that the sort of question a person 's dermatologist should be able to answer without hedging ?
The mayor of Los Angeles wondered if fans would n't like to chip in to help the city pay for the cost of crowd control
And the coroner 's office is still working on the autopsy
-LRB- `` They Saved Michael Jackson 's Brain !
announced E
Online .
Meanwhile , in Washington the House Foreign Affairs Committee is weighing a 1,500-word resolution in Jackson 's honor
Why , you may ask , is this the job of the Foreign Affairs Committee
Exactly the same question the committee members were undoubtedly asking , although on Wednesday they were too busy holding a hearing on nuclear cooperation with the United Arab Emirates to have much comment
Perhaps because the resolution calls Jackson a `` global '' humanitarian
Perhaps because the House has not yet created a Committee on Controversial Musical Icons
Anyhow , it 's there
The resolution was introduced by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas
It praises the entertainer 's charitable activities , perhaps in more detail than is absolutely necessary
-LRB- `` Whereas in December 1991 , Michael 's office MJJ Productions donated more than 200 turkey dinners to needy families in Los Angeles
... '' -RRB- Jackson Lee gave a long and emotional speech at the memorial , in which she claimed to be appearing on behalf of the entire House of Representatives
All of whom , she seemed to suggest , owed their careers to the singer
-LRB- `` He called us into public service
... '' -RRB- People tend to get carried away when someone famous dies , so it 's best not to be hypercritical about the eulogies
Still , it was a little peculiar hearing Brooke Shields 's weepy testimony about her deep friendship with Jackson given the fact that she told reporters that the last time she saw him was at Elizabeth Taylor 's eighth wedding in 1991
And while Representative Jackson Lee correctly pointed out that Jackson was acquitted of all charges in that child molestation trial , nobody really wants their memorial service dotted with comments like `` People are innocent until proven otherwise !
The media , for its part , plans to continue talking about Michael Jackson for quite a while this is the first time since the election that we feel we have everyone 's attention
The practice of churning out stories about a deceased celebrity for as long as possible is an old tradition
It used to be known as the `` John Garfield Still Dead '' syndrome , after the extensive postfuneral coverage of a movie star who had a fatal heart attack in 1952 in the bed of a woman other than his wife
When I worked as a wire service reporter , there was a legendary tale about funeral overkill involving Daniel Patrick O'Connell , the political boss of Albany who died in 1977
Since O'Connell had run the town since 1919 , this was a huge local story
There were many headlines about the death , the wake , the burial
Then ... what next
A beleaguered editor at U.P.I. finally solved the problem by filing an update that said : `` Today , God said hello as thousands said goodbye to Daniel Patrick O'Connell .
It became a cautionary story about how not to freshen a lead
The government , at least , can let Michael Jackson go
Jackson Lee 's Resolution No. 600 `` honoring an American legend and musical icon '' is not going to make it through the House without a fight , given the fact that Representative Peter King , a Long Island Republican , discovered over the Fourth of July weekend that he could get several hundred thousand hits on YouTube with a home video in which he called Jackson a `` pervert '' and unfavorably compared the singer to fallen firefighters
If I were running the world , I 'd find a way to misplace the paperwork or change the subject
`` We 're running out of dead people to name post offices after , '' suggested the committee 's vice chairman , Gary Ackerman of Queens , thoughtfully
America is a sea of woe these days , and we want to believe our elected representatives are spending every waking minute trying to help
Deep in our hearts , we know that many of them would n't know what to do with a problem if they had it captured in a glass jar with no air holes
But we prefer not to be reminded of their uselessness by hearing that they spent their time arguing about whether the King of Pop deserves a posthumous ceremonial commendation
If you ca n't do anything serious , guys , it 's really better not to do anything at all
Spend your free time in prayer and contemplation
`` Career politicians in Sacramento and Washington , D.C. , be warned ; you now face your worst nightmare !
said Meg Whitman , at her victory speech in California this week
Whitman , as the world now knows , is the former chief executive of eBay who won the Republican gubernatorial nomination by spending $ 71 million of her own money
She has said that she is prepared to spend $ 150 million to win the general election and the right to run a semibankrupt state with an intransigent Legislature
The people of California may be hoping that if she wins , she 'll just pay off their deficit
As a resident of New York City , which has had a billionaire chief executive for some time , I would like to say : Do n't hold your breath
Meanwhile , Carly Fiorina , a fellow former C.E.O. , snagged the party 's Senate nomination by spending several million dollars of her fortune on last-minute ads
She was running against a well-thought-of former elected official who was n't particularly wealthy and was crushed , crushed , crushed
-LRB- Whitman , on the other hand , was running against another richie , who simply made the mistake of thinking $ 25 million would be enough to seal the deal .
As the crowd celebrated the dual victories , while Twittering mercilessly about Whitman 's cash bar , the gubernatorial nominee explained that the worst nightmare for status quo lawmakers was of `` two businesswomen from the real world who know how to create jobs , balance budgets and get things done .
This is not actually the case
For career politicians , the worst nightmare would be a businessperson from the real world with a billion dollars and an open checkbook
Freddy Krueger is Michael Bloomberg
We have been entertaining ourselves with theories about how this election year is going to be all about voter anger
Or Washington insiders
Or health care
Or TARP
But , really , it 's going to be about money
Gobs of cash falling on campaigns like tar balls on a beach
Besides the rich `` self-funders , '' we have loony attack ads from mysterious well-heeled groups with names like Friends of Puppies
-LRB- A recent ad in Alabama attacking a gubernatorial candidate for supporting the teaching of evolution was financed by the True Republican PAC , whose big donor was actually the state teachers ' union .
The fear of a billion-dollar Freddy Krueger or Friends of Puppies terrifies normal elected officials into compulsively piling up campaign donations to protect them from a big-money tornado
Whenever we try to come up with a system that will even the playing field , the Supreme Court calls foul
Arizona has a clean elections law that rewards candidates who promise not to take money from special interests
Just this week , the court told Arizona that the state could n't distribute matching funds under the program because it might violate the First Amendment rights of one fringe candidate named Buz who refused to take part in the system
Back in the days of the Good John McCain , Congress prohibited corporations from running ad campaigns during the election season that were aimed at influencing a race
#NAME?
Always wandering around New Hampshire talking about campaign finance reform
The only person who ever made it interesting
Whatever happened to him ?
In January , the Roberts court , in a burst of creative overreaching , ruled 5 to 4 that corporations have the same free speech rights as people and knocked out Good John McCain 's law
Right now , people in Congress are trying to find a fix for that one
They 're focusing on transparency , which is something people always claim to like
`` If you want to run a nasty negative ad , the public should have the right to know who you really are , '' said Chuck Schumer , the Senate sponsor of the painfully named Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act
Under the bill , a theoretical ad would not only say it was paid for by Friends of Puppies but also that the top Friends of Puppies donors were BP , Goldman Sachs , A.I.G. , Halliburton and Blackwater
The bill is scheduled to go to the floor of the House soon , but it has gotten heavy artillery from the Republican leadership , as well as groups of all stripes that do n't want to reveal their big donors
`` When someone like Schumer wants to know who 's paying for an ad - let 's be honest
They 're taking names , '' said R. Bruce Josten of the United States Chamber of Commerce
Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland , one of the House sponsors , expects the bill to pass his chamber with at least scattered Republican support
But the Senate is another matter
Schumer says some Republicans have expressed sympathy for the idea , but no one has volunteered to come on board
`` All we need is one or two , '' he said
None of the John McCains have been heard from on this one
Maybe they 're in Arizona , communing with Buz
I am deeply depressed about my state 's Legislature
This is an embarrassing thing to have to admit , since it obviously suggests the lack of a full and meaningful inner life
Still , it 's bad
You may have heard that New York is currently in crisis because two Democrats in the State Senate defected , giving Republicans control
The remaining Democrats turned out the lights and locked the doors
Ever the optimist , Gov. David Paterson suggested that the whole mess might turn into a `` great opportunity '' to create a new kind of Senate where every important issue is brought on the floor for a free and open vote
That apparently terrorized everybody , since within hours word leaked out that one of the defectors , Hiram Monserrate , was wavering
This is a guy from Queens who is about to go on trial for domestic violence
I can not tell you how inspiring it is to see the fate of the legislative agenda hinging on a person who is under indictment for stabbing his girlfriend with a broken glass
As the sun sank in Albany , the senators were fighting about which side had the key to the door
Lawsuits were threatened
Nobody was happy except the reporters , who had not seen anything this interesting since Gov. Eliot Spitzer was driven out of office in that sex scandal and Paterson marked his succession by calling a press conference to confess that he had cheated on his wife
This is why New Yorkers believe they have the worst state government in the nation
We could be wrong
I keep reminding people that unlike Illinois , none of our governors have been indicted for trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat
And unlike Illinois , none of our governors ' wives have tried to raise money for her husband 's legal defense team by eating a tarantula on a reality TV show
`` Every state thinks they have the worst , '' said Ed Anderson of The Times-Picayune of New Orleans
He was reminiscing about a night in Baton Rouge when the State House dispatched troopers to drag absent legislators back to their seats , some in bathing suits from their hotel pools and others in various stages of inebriation
New York is doing its best to nail down the distinction
The Republicans plan to install Pedro Espada Jr. , a much-investigated Democratic state senator who has turned breaking campaign laws into a second career , as the new president of the Senate
Also , next in line for governor
Espada represents a poor district in the Bronx , and his sympathy for his impoverished constituents ' hopes and dreams is so great that he sets an example of upward mobility by living in the suburbs
The coup was engineered , at least in part , by Tom Golisano , a billionaire who has failed in repeated attempts to become governor , even after underwriting his own political party to provide the nominations
Golisano spent several million dollars helping the Democrats get their precious two-vote majority
In triumph , he traveled down from Buffalo to share his insights on how to resolve the state fiscal crisis with the new majority leader , Malcolm Smith
To Golisano 's outrage , Smith kept checking his BlackBerry while his patron was talking
This is a truly shocking story
In this country , even presidential candidates nod thoughtfully while their deep-pocketed donors explain how all the nation 's problems can be traced back to the devaluation of the zloty
A six-term senator with an ego the size of a brontosaurus will sit mute , in apparent fascination , while the heir to an oil fortune reveals his plan to reduce crime by chopping off the fingers of shoplifters
Anybody who has been in politics for more than six minutes knows that the cardinal rule is to look interested when a rich guy is telling you his thoughts
As awful as the whole saga has been , it is not quite as spectacularly bad as what happened in 2005 in Pennsylvania when that state 's dreadful Legislature voted at 2 a.m. to give themselves an enormous pay raise and promptly left for vacation
The constituents actually took note , tossing out 50 of the 253 lawmakers at the next election
The survivors were so terrified that they passed some serious reforms , including an 11 p.m. curfew
`` Before , at budget time , it 'd be horrible
We 'd be following these guys around all night long , '' said Jan Murphy of Harrisburg 's The Patriot-News
Instead of a quick resolution , I 'm hoping for a bigger disaster in Albany , something so outrageously bad that the whole state will rise up the way Pennsylvania did
I want to see legislators raising their own pay in bathing suits while de-funding parks in the middle of the night during a sex scandal
If we want to make it better , we may have to be prepared to watch it get worse
Democrats Plot Strategy as G.O.P. Seeks More Defectors -LRB- June 10 , 2009 -RRB- Senate Democrats Try to Reverse G.O.P. Coup -LRB- June 10 , 2009 -RRB- ABOUT NEW YORK ; Albany Drama Is Tragedy and Farce -LRB- June 10 , 2009 -RRB- Related Searches New York State Get E-Mail Alerts State Legislatures Get E-Mail Alerts Paterson , David A Get E-Mail Alerts Espada , Pedro Jr Get E-Mail
Greene , an unemployed 32-year-old , is currently the most famous Democratic candidate in South Carolina
He just won the nomination to run against Senator Jim DeMint in November , overcoming major obstacles such as not having campaign staff , campaign funds , a campaign Web site , cellphone or personal computer
And then there 's the felony charge pending for allegedly showing a University of South Carolina student a pornographic picture
I 'm sorry we have to keep coming back to South Carolina
There are 50 states , and I 'm sure every single one has some really peculiar political phenomena that we could make fun of if time allowed
But South Carolina has definitely been on a roll
Earlier this week , it looked as if the big primary story was the two Republican political consultants who claimed to have had sexual encounters with Nikki Haley , a candidate for governor
Haley went on to finish 27 percentage points ahead of her closest rival
Having endured so many sex scandals with male candidates , we have long wondered what would happen when women running for high office started to get hit with adultery charges
Apparently , it makes them more popular
Now there 's Alvin Greene
To get on the ballot in South Carolina , a candidate for Senate has to pay a $ 10,440 filing fee
By now , there are political junkies in every part of the United States who could make a list of things that Greene needed to spend money on more than he needed to be on an election ballot
The cellphone and computer would be nice
His own apartment
-LRB- He lives with his dad .
And a lawyer , since he 's currently being represented by a public defender in the obscenity case
`` That I 'm not commenting on , '' he said on MSNBC
Normally , hopeless candidates for high office are either dedicated to a cause or drenched in ego
Either way , they bloom under TV camera lights
Greene wilts
He haltingly ascribed his win to `` simple old-fashioned campaigning , '' which did not seem to involve any gathering featuring other people
Suspicious minds wondered if this was a plot
`` I do n't know if he was a Republican plant ; he was somebody 's plant , '' said Representative James Clyburn
At any rate , Senator DeMint , a darling of the Tea Party set , is now getting a free ride to re-election
He 's the guy who compared the United States in the age of Obama to `` where Germany was before World War II .
He appears to be positioning himself as a future Senate Republican leader , and South Carolina Democrats have now given lots of additional free time to a person who makes Mitch McConnell look like a good idea
The candidate who was supposed to win the nomination was Vic Rawl , a well-spoken former judge who vastly overestimated the number of people around the state who recognized his name
`` Voters seem less and less well informed , '' said Carol Fowler , the Democratic state party chairwoman
Or at least we 're demanding more and more of them
When Greene came in to file his candidacy papers , Fowler recognized that there was something wrong
But she did n't feel it was her responsibility to get the word out
`` We did research him to the extent we could , '' she said
`` For whatever reason , this business of his indictment did not come to the top .
She pointed out that in another race the party successfully unearthed the fact that a Congressional candidate `` had served time in the pen , '' thus reinforcing my conviction that South Carolina is the best place in the world to be a political reporter
The state has open primaries , and it 's possible that thousands of Republicans cannily crossed over to give DeMint a pathetic opponent
But voters generally are n't that sneaky
It 's more likely that Democrats drew a blank , then flipped a mental coin
The exception was in neighborhoods where local party leaders passed out sample ballots with their recommended candidates , and helped people avoid voting to turn a clearly troubled guy with large legal problems into a U.S. Senate nominee
We 've spent decades now working on the assumption that the problem with American politics is the strength of political parties
This week , California eliminated party primaries entirely in favor of a system where all the candidates run on one ballot and the two top finishers move on to the November election
We 'll have to see how that works , although it 's a good rule of thumb to figure that anything approved in a California referendum will make things worse
The alternative to parties is an every-voter-for-herself system that would inevitably leave people staring at endless choices among candidates they 've never heard of
The polling places become casinos where you pull the lever and pray
Maybe the real answer is not to make the parties weaker but to make them better
Congress has really been on a roll
Remember how they passed that consumer credit card bill under the leadership of Senator Christopher Dodd and the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act sp onsored by Senator Christopher Dodd
There is , of course , still so much to do
We 're hoping for a strong health care bill like the one co-written by Ted Kennedy and Senator Christopher Dodd
And the Obama plan to create a new agency to protect consumers of financial products
It got a big boost Friday when it received the strong support of the banking committee chairman , Senator Christopher Dodd
What is it with this guy
Are they running out of senators or something
I first met Dodd long ago , when he was in the House of Representatives
He was very funny , and seemed exceptionally normal for a member of Congress
Then I left Connecticut , and the next time I saw him he had moved to the upper chamber , acquired a mane of gray hair , a deep , senatorial voice and a demeanor so old school that I felt like apologizing for failing to bring along a baby for him to kiss
Ironically , at this rather remarkable moment of legislative overachievement , Dodd is in political hot water back home in Connecticut
He 's running for a seventh term , behind in the polls and facing a possible primary
The trouble began with Dodd 's presidential campaign when he famously attempted to win over the voters in the Iowa caucus by moving his entire family to the state and enrolling his daughter in an Iowa kindergarten
Iowa , you may remember , responded enthusiastically and awarded him nearly 1 percent of the vote
Connecticut was mortified
Dodd has also had a string of ethical issues an allegation that he got favorable treatment on a mortgage , questions about a vacation house in Ireland
Even as we speak , there is a new report on the wires pointing out that his wife sits on the board of directors of several health companies
These are all regrettable , but given the fact that after nearly 25 years , he is still one of the poorest members of the Senate , I think we can work under the assumption that he is not in it for the money
During the bank bailouts , he was blamed for protecting the A.I.G. executives from bonus payment caps
This is deeply ironic since Dodd was one of the very few people in the Senate to show any interest whatsoever in salary caps until the cameras came on and our elected representatives began frothing with rage and demanding to be allowed to beat leaders of the financial industry with brooms and sticks
Dodd 's role was complicated , but at bottom , the A.I.G. charge was so unfair that we can only hope he did something really , really bad at some previous point in his career and got away with it , thus balancing the scales of justice
The more serious complaints involve the Senate banking committee
Being chairman is pretty much like putting up a billboard saying `` I intend to raise massive amounts of political contributions from the financial services industry .
Also , Dodd fell into the deregulation love affair that Washington was conducting in the 1990s
And whether or not he could have done much to forestall the financial industry 's skid into disaster , his critics note that it would have been nice if he had been in Washington thinking about it rather checking out preschools in Iowa
On the other hand
... While Dodd was busy watering down bankruptcy laws , he was also establishing himself as a leading progressive voice on a raft of other issues
He resisted the siren call of Republican tax cuts in the Reagan and Bush administration
He was a persistent champion of quality early child care an issue whose importance is matched only by its complete and total lack of vote-getting or donation-collecting potential
He authored the Family and Medical Leave Act
And he developed a close working relationship with his ailing friend Ted Kennedy , who designated Dodd as his surrogate on the health care legislation
In Kennedy 's absence , there is really no other Democrat in the Senate with so much ability to reach across the aisle and negotiate with Republicans while still keeping his eyes on the prize
Like most seasoned political animals , Dodd 's response to his plummeting polls is to Do Stuff
Run around your home state
-LRB- He had a listening tour !
Make a splash in Washington
-LRB- Four bill-signing ceremonies in four months !
Find new ways to reach out to the masses
#NAME?
He 's Twittering .
Meanwhile , by his estimate , he spent 30 hours this week alone talking with Republican senators about the health care bill
On the phone , he sounded exhausted , but you can tell he sort of loves it
`` It 's what I do , '' he said
I am bringing this up because we have just embarked on a presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain that will continue for almost five more months
The next time you see a ladybug , remember that by the time the returns come in , its great-great-grandchildren will be old enough to date
Five months
The youngest bee buzzing around your garden is n't going to be around long enough to find out who wins
Neither are any of the world 's current generation of coral reef pygmy gobies , although it probably does n't bother the fish
If you want to get a pygmy goby really depressed , start talking about the life expectancy of coral reefs
To summarize , five months is a long time
The primaries were different
They went on forever , but they were almost always absorbing
For a long time , you had a crowded field and that helped a lot
Watching the Fred Thompson candidacy alone was worth the price of admission sort of like a version of `` Waiting for Godot '' in which Godot actually shows up and turns out to be a mailman who enjoys recounting the plots of `` Law & Order '' episodes in great detail
Now we 're down to a couple of reformers who do n't like each other
It feels as if we 're embarking on a very long cruise with two neighbors in the last throes of a troubled marriage
Give John McCain credit for at least trying to make things a little more interesting
He proposed that he and Barack Obama hold joint town-hall meetings every week throughout the summer , beginning with one in New York City
Obama counteroffered one town hall and an extra debate , which McCain waved away
He showed up alone Thursday night at Federal Hall on Wall Street , acting aggrieved
`` This would have been a little more interesting tonight if Senator Obama had accepted my request , '' he said
For sure
This particular event , in which the audience was made up of Republicans waving invitations , was possibly the best-dressed town-hall meeting in history , and certainly one of the most boring
The questions ranged from whether McCain should n't talk more about being a war hero to how he would overcome partisan gridlock in Washington : `` You put your finger on what needs to be done !
the candidate said happily
-LRB- The answer , like virtually everything in McCain 's repertoire these days , involved vetoing pork-barrel spending .
His campaign considered , then rejected , the idea of putting an empty chair on stage to symbolize Obama 's failure to show up
Empty chairs are , of course , a venerable tradition in American political campaigns , and frequently more welcome than the candidate who was supposed to fill them
There are , however , standards
As McCain must have realized , you ca n't give somebody the empty-chair treatment because he rejected an opponent 's suggestion of holding 10 joint events in the middle of the summer
If I invited you to come over for dinner every night for the next two weeks and you proposed we just do Sunday , it would not be fair for me to complain that you never come to my parties
Thursday night at the one-man town hall , I did fantasize about how great it would be if Obama suddenly showed up
I saw the whole thing in terms of a professional wrestling match : a masked Mystery Candidate swings down from the ceiling and assaults his opponent with an empty chair
In the finale , McCain gets disqualified for attempting to hit Obama over the head with Joe Lieberman
Now that 's entertainment
For their part , the Obama campaign has been talking up their own plan in terms of the Lincoln-Douglas debate
The resemblance is pretty much limited to the presence of a tall guy from Chicago
If average citizens want a break from the campaign , they can just award themselves one and ignore the race until the home stretch
The professional basketball season goes on forever , yet I find it remains utterly compelling as long as you make it a point to pay no attention until the second game of the final round of the playoffs
However , this strategy would not be viable if the winner of the Celtics-Lakers series got to pick the next members of the Supreme Court
We 're too invested in the results to tune out
But I ca n't get over the feeling that everybody needs a break
McCain is babbling a lot these days , and , of course , Obama managed to screw up the selection of the head of his vice-presidential selection committee
Take those little girls to the beach , Barack
Five months
Longer than the lifespan of : Fleas
Fred Thompson , presidential candidate
Related Searches Presidential Election of 2008 Add Alert Obama , Barack Add Alert McCain , John Add
On Monday night in Ohio , a 62-foot-tall statue of Jesus got hit by lightning and burned to the ground
-LRB- The adult bookstore across the street was unscathed .
Less than 12 hours later , Gen. David Petraeus - who is not God , although certain members of Congress have been known to worship at his altar - semifainted at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing
Then Bravo announced that the White House gate-crashers were getting a TV show
Al and Tipper remained in Splitsville
And the oil kept on spilling
So you sort of knew from the portents that President Obama 's big Oval Office speech was not going to be a terrific game-changer
The way things had been going , the president was lucky that a man-eating pterodactyl did n't come crashing through the window during his opening remarks
Still , it was a disappointment
I was hoping for a call to arms , a national mission as great as the environmental disaster that inspired it
After the terrorist attack , George W. Bush could have called the country to a grand , important new undertaking in which everyone sacrificed personal or regional advantage for the common good
The fact that he only told us to go shopping was the one unforgivable sin of his administration
O.K. , also attacking the wrong country
And creating the deficit
But I digress
All we got from President Obama was a vague call for some sort of new energy policy
Plus a Gulf Coast Restoration Plan , an oil spill study commission , a reminder that the secretary of energy won a Nobel Prize in physics and 17 references to God , prayer , blessings or faith
We wanted him to declare war on the oil companies
Every day it becomes clearer that these guys are even more feckless than we imagined
At the ritual Congressional lashing of C.E.O. 's this week , we learned that none of the major oil companies have any idea how to control a spill like this , and that their faux plans for handling one in the gulf were made up of boilerplate so undigested that several had sections on protecting walruses - mammals that have not been seen in the area since the Ice Age
`` It 's unfortunate that walruses were included , '' admitted Exxon Mobil 's chief
The way things have been going , you ca n't be too careful
If the portents keep piling up , it 's easy to envision a headline like : `` Lone Tourist in Pensacola Eaten by Visiting Walrus Herd .
Obama held back on Tuesday
Then , on Wednesday , he and the BP chairman announced that the company - which is , in theory , only liable for $ 75 million in economic damage payments - was forgoing its dividend and setting up a $ 20 billion fund to compensate the workers and businesses who have been harmed by the spill
In the negotiations , Obama said , he had stressed that for many of the small business owners , families and fishing crews `` this is not a matter of dollars and cents , that a lot of these folks do n't have a cushion .
His brief remarks were more effective than his 18-minute effort the night before , particularly when coupled with all that cash
`` He is frustrated because he cares about the small people , '' said the chairman of BP , who is Swedish
The word choice made the president sound as if he was working on an environmental disaster in Munchkinland
We are frustrated , too , and it 's possible that Obama may never be able to give the speech that will make us feel better
He may never really lace into the oil companies or issue the kind of call to arms on energy that the environmentalists are yearning for
That 's because it wo n't get him anywhere
Unlike Bush , he has no national consensus to build upon
He 'd barely finished his muted remarks on Tuesday before the House minority leader , John Boehner , accused him of exploiting the crisis `` to impose a job-killing national energy tax on struggling families and small business .
Michael Steele , the Republican Party chairman , claimed that the president was `` manipulating this tragic national crisis for selfish political gain .
And the ever-popular Representative Michele Bachmann denounced the BP restitution fund as `` redistribution of wealth '' and `` one more gateway for government control .
As a political leader , Barack Obama seems to know what he 's doing
His unsatisfying call for a new energy policy sounded very much like the rhetoric on health care reform that used to drive Democrats nuts : open to all ideas , ca n't afford inaction , if we can put a man on the moon
... But at the end of that health care slog , he wound up with the groundbreaking law that had eluded his predecessors for decades
The process of wringing it out of Congress was so slow and oblique that even when it was over it was hard to appreciate what he 'd won
But win he did
The man we elected because we hoped his feel-good campaign speeches might translate into achievement is actually a guy who is going to achieve , even if his presidential speeches leave us feeling blah
Maloney , a New York City Democrat , is thinking about making a try for the Senate seat now held by Kirsten Gillibrand
Generally , people who are contemplating a race for higher office try to convey the impression that they 're bowing to popular demand so intense that the drumbeat has become all but deafening
Let 's give Maloney props for originality for making it clear that people are beating a path to her door , begging her to cease and desist
This is a story whose interest extends beyond the confines of New York , since it involves questions all beleaguered citizens have to ask themselves when they vote
Do we want legislators who have strong principles , or just our principles
Do hard-working veterans deserve to be rewarded , like faithful family retainers who get remembered in the will
Should Barack Obama keep his nose out of local politics
Gillibrand , 42 , was barely in her second term in the House last winter when she was appointed to Hillary Clinton 's Senate seat by Gov. David Paterson
The process was so messy that at the time , people predicted it would be seen as the low point of Paterson 's administration
That , of course , turned out to be wildly optimistic
So far , Gillibrand has all the endorsements , and Maloney seems to have cornered the market on rancor
On some points , they 're surprisingly similar
Both are hard-working , committed to women 's issues and diligent in collecting federal aid for the home base
The term `` sharp elbowed '' has been applied to each , but I think it is kinder to say that given the proper encouragement , either one would pander to a doorknob
The national Democratic establishment , however , looks at the two of them and sees one who is a prodigious fund-raiser with a proven ability to run in conservative parts of the state and another who is a Manhattan liberal whose last serious race was in 1992
The White House would like to give Gillibrand a clear field to the nomination so she can save her money to fight the Republican competition , which might be former Gov. George Pataki
-LRB- He 's back !
The president himself called one Democrat , Representative Steve Israel of Long Island , and urged him not to get into the race
Maloney is bitter about this interference
And that brings us to Question 1 : Do we care that Barack Obama has been inserting himself in a state election
My personal answer is no.
However , I do think Maloney has a right to feel dissed considering that the guy in Long Island was personally pressured by the president while she just got a call from Joe Biden
`` I think some people run to get elected , and others run to get a job done , to help people , '' Maloney said in a TV interview
In fact , she said it twice
Perhaps this is going to be a campaign theme , although frankly , getting elected seems to be a critical step between the running and the getting the job done part
Maloney , who has been in the House for almost 18 years and is the chairwoman of a subcommittee on financial institutions and consumer credit , has certainly accomplished more legislatively than Gillibrand , who has been in Washington for three years , during which she had a baby and ran for re-election against a well-financed opponent
Depending on your attitude , this could lead you either to feel as though Maloney deserves a promotion or that she ought to stay where she is and make use of all that seniority
You can understand why Maloney was distressed at being passed over for a Senate appointment that she really , really , really wanted , but voters do n't owe their elected legislators promotions , or even retention
-LRB- I 'm very sensitive on this issue after years of sitting in endorsement meetings listening to arguments about how it 's not fair to deprive a person of their seat in the Assembly when the indictment has n't even been handed down yet .
Gillibrand , who had represented a rather conservative district upstate , leapt to the left when she got the Senate appointment , particularly on the issues of guns and immigration
She has been mending fences with the speed of an overcaffeinated Future Farmer of America
Her effort to make amends for her previous allegiance to the National Rifle Association has been so intense that it is possible Gillibrand is now the only member of the U.S. Senate for whom gun control is actually a priority
And if you 're an illegal immigrant , she feels your pain
In fact , she may volunteer to adopt you
Maloney regards this as another example of lack of character and warns that if Gillibrand switched once , she might switch back
This seems unlikely , except in the event that she relocates to Utah
`` Darwin taught us to be suspicious of anyone who evolved overnight , '' sniffed Maloney
Although if Darwin had studied politicians instead of turtles , his conclusion would undoubtedly have been different
Americans have always raised their children to believe in the power of the dream
This is probably why hundreds of thousands of young people are certain they are destined to become the American Idol
Or Next Top Model
Or marry a Jonas Brother
A few of these dreamers grew up to run oil companies
They believed with all the power of their fierce , tiny hearts that they could drill farther and farther down into the ocean without ever having a really big accident
We learned that from the oil C.E.O. 's who trotted over to the Capitol recently and testified that their plan for handling a huge deep-water spill is not to have a huge deep-water spill
Their official , on-paper contingency plans were completely impractical
Yet the dreaded Minerals Management Service , which oversees oil drilling , rubber-stamped them
This is because the M.M.S. is bad and we hate it
Also possibly because of a Congress-passed rule that gives the agency , which has 60 inspectors overseeing nearly 4,000 drilling platforms , only 30 days review time
We now know that as things stand , no amount of will and work can contain a deep-water spill once it happens
So President Obama suspended drilling for up to six months so we can get a handle on this stupendous , terrifying problem
Politicians were outraged
Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi came out foursquare against the suspension because , as he argued succinctly : `` This is the first time anything vaguely like this has ever happened .
Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana said the moratorium could cause `` even more economic damage than the spill itself , '' although she did add that `` we have to make sure that these 33 floating rigs that drill in deep water ... are safe .
Which they will be
If you believe hard enough , things will work out
Also , Justin Bieber may ask you to the prom
Right now , the legal limit on an oil company 's responsibility for economic damage done by a spill is $ 75 million , which is obviously not remotely enough
But a bill to eliminate the cap is being stalled in the Senate by members who argue that it will hurt smaller oil companies who can not afford to cover that kind of cost
`` If you have it too high , you are going to be singling out BP and the other four largest majors and the nationalized companies , such as China and Venezuela , and shutting out the independent producers , '' said Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma
In other words , it is wrong to limit deep-water drilling opportunities to companies that can afford to pay restitution if they screw up
Because there will be no more screwing up
We have decided
Representative Joe Barton , a Republican of Texas , has a crush on the oil industry of a size that 's seldom been equaled outside of `` High School Musical .
Last year in a committee hearing , Barton attempted to show up Energy Secretary Steven Chu by suddenly asking him to explain , as briefly as possible , `` How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic ocean ?
While the startled Chu started to talk about shifting tectonic plates , Barton beamed smugly
`` I seem to have baffled the Energy Sec with basic question : where does oil come from ?
he twittered
This week , Barton became the star of another hearing , which was convened to grill Tony Hayward , the chief executive of BP
The rosy-cheeked Englishman had the kind of dopey sullenness you might find in an underachieving student at the Hogwarts detention room
But Barton seemed smitten , and he apologized to BP for the president 's `` shakedown '' of the company for a $ 20 billion fund to compensate the people of the gulf for the effects of the spill
This is perhaps not the stupidest remark any elected official has ever blurted out , but possibly the dumbest that ever came in the form of a prepared statement
Every Democrat in Washington did the happy dance
The party could not point out too often that if the Republicans took control of the House , Barton would be leader of the House energy committee
The House Republican leadership was terrified that people would sense Barton was n't the only member of the party who loathed the president 's BP coup
Using all the strong-arm tactics they failed to employ with the congressman who yelled `` You lie !
during the State of the Union address , they pried a sort of retraction out of Barton
The first effort fell short
But , finally , the office of the minority leader , John Boehner , sent forth a version in which Barton apologized for the apology , as well as for the use of the term `` shakedown .
Which is kind of funny because `` shakedown '' is exactly the word that the Republican Study Committee used to denounce Obama 's deal right after it was announced
But the Republican leadership has a dream that they never agreed with anything that Barton said
They hatehatehate BP
Also , they are hoping that Miley Cyrus moves to their hometown and becomes their best friend
The saga of Senator John Ensign of Nevada , who resigned from a party leadership position this week because of a sex scandal , contained one surprising piece of information
Obviously , it was something other than the fact that a U.S. senator , who is extremely vocal about family values , had a messy affair with a former campaign staff member
What struck me was that virtually every story about Ensign 's fall from grace included a reference to his having been considered a possible contender for his party 's presidential nomination in 2012
Who knew
I have to admit , I had trouble even putting a face to Ensign 's name
Since then I have learned , however , that he is the only veterinarian in the Senate
The Republican Party has finally turned into a big tent
Everybody 's a presidential contender
Being a Republican senator is pretty much an automatic qualification
After all , there are only 40 of them
Once you 've eliminated the ones with sex scandals and the guy from Kentucky who uses a teleprompter in debates , there 's hardly enough left to fill up a stage at the Iowa State Fair
One of the reasons that Republican presidential hopefuls are proliferating like rabbits is that the usual suspects the names that come to mind when you ask people who they think will run against Barack Obama in 2012 are such an underwhelming crew
Mitt Romney is pushing himself as the party 's lead attack dog on the Obama health care plan
But every time he shows up on television , we are reminded of a truth we learned during the last presidential campaign : There is something about Romney that causes people to want to change the channel ; or , if they are in a senior center in Florida listening to a candidate forum , wander off in search of a second helping of Jell-O
Bobby Jindal of Louisiana was supposed to be the next G.O.P. hope until he made that one big speech on TV
Instantly , he turned into the Fred Thompson of the new election cycle
#NAME?
He 's the one
He 's coming
He 's here
... That 's it ?
Mike Huckabee now has a TV show where he discusses current events , plays with a rock band , sings with the new `` American Idol '' -LRB- `` The Huckabee household has been rooting for this guy all season ! ''
and talks to a `` Biggest Loser '' trainer on his special feature , `` Get Healthy With Huck .
I know Huckabee is pretending to be a candidate for the presidential nomination , but really , I think he 's found his permanent niche
The two biggest names are Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin , one of whom has too many ideas while the other has no ideas whatsoever
But they are bound by the fact that neither one of them is actually ever going to be nominated for president even if we have another Ice Age and the only Americans left alive are them , Dennis Kucinich and that woman who was Miss California until Donald Trump fired her
Gingrich 's romantic history makes Senator Ensign look like a monk
-LRB- Last time around , we were so hoping that he and Rudy Giuliani would survive till the end of the primaries so we could say the three major Republican contenders had had a total of eight wives .
And he 's basically spent the last decade as a talking head
When it comes to career preparation for a presidential race , the worst two options are mayor of New York City and Fox News guest commentator
The Palin family , meanwhile , seems less likely to replace the Obamas in the White House than to replace the Gosselins on `` Jon & Kate Plus Eight .
-LRB- Have we mentioned that Sarah 's new grandson is naked in GQ this month ?
Recently , during a dust-up with David Letterman , Palin once again violated the cardinal rule for famous parents who want to shield their children from the media , which is , of course , do n't talk about your children to the media
She is perhaps the only celebrity in America who does not understand that if a late show host makes a tasteless joke about your daughter , the worst possible response is to complain loudly until it 's certain the entire universe knows your child was insulted , all the while making the joke sound even more offensive than it was
It might also have helped if your husband had refrained from volunteering your 18-year-old daughter , the mother of the GQ baby , to be the anti-teen-pregnancy ambassador for a clothing manufacturer
We would worry that all this was a bad signal about how much restraint and judgment Palin might use in the White House
But fortunately , there 's that Ice Age rule
Maybe the Republicans were too hasty in wiping Ensign off the list
It 's possible that in 2012 the party will feel as though it needs a standard-bearer who knows how to deworm a poodle
Lord knows there are worse possibilities
Charles M. Blow is off today
Who are Barack Obama and John McCain going to choose for their running mates
I 'm praying that McCain selects Mitt Romney so I can repeatedly revisit the time Mitt drove to Canada with the family dog on the station-wagon roof
Or perhaps they could both pick Michael Bloomberg
If you 're planning on discussing vice presidential hopefuls at an upcoming dinner party , the best bet is to propose a swing-state governor no one 's heard of
-LRB- `` When it comes to a combination of experience and youth , I 've got to go with Tim Pawlenty . ''
Even if you 're wrong , it will impress the heck out of people
Vice presidents provide more interesting material for conversation than you might think , although most are best appreciated as random anecdotes
For instance , did you know that William King , Franklin Pierce 's running mate , was the only bachelor vice president , and that he lived for years with James Buchanan , the only bachelor president
And then there was Charles Dawes , Calvin Coolidge 's veep , who wrote the melody to the song `` It 's All in the Game '' and got a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on stabilizing the German economy after World War I. Yes , I know
That last one did n't work out too well
The song is nice , though
It 's only fairly recently that the top of the ticket had a say in selecting a running mate
Presidential candidates used to stay home during the party convention , reacting with delighted surprise when word of their nomination arrived
The second spot was like one of those Secret Santa gifts you receive from a fellow employee who does n't know you very well
When Rutherford B. Hayes first got word that he was going to be hooked up with Representative William Wheeler of New York , Hayes enthusiastically responded : `` Who is Wheeler ?
But you never know how these arranged marriages will work out
Hayes and his wife took Wheeler , a retiring widower who suffered from hypochondria , under their wings
He wound up spending many a happy night sitting quietly in the corner of the White House parlor
Vice presidential handicappers have always given a lot of attention to geography , although this makes no sense whatsoever
Americans are n't dumb enough to vote on the basis of which running mate is from their state
-LRB- `` I may disagree with John McCain on every single point of policy , but he 's got Tim Pawlenty on the ticket and we both live in Minnesota
How cool is that ? ''
Sometimes a vice presidential selection will tell you what qualities the presidential nominee feels he lacks
George W. Bush , for instance , picked Dick Cheney because Cheney had experience while Bush ... enjoyed baseball
Martin Van Buren -LRB- New Yorker , sort of chubby , career politician -RRB- was the Democratic candidate when the party was looking for balance and picked Richard Johnson , a colorful former Indian fighter from Kentucky
In 1840 , Van Buren was pitted against William Henry Harrison , whose claim to fame was defeating Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe
Johnson had actually or at least allegedly , reputedly and possibly killed Tecumseh in a later encounter
When a Whig said `` Tippecanoe and Tyler , too '' Van Buren 's backers were supposed to say : `` Rumpsey , dumpsey
Colonel Johnson shot Tecumpsey .
This did not work out all that well
Meanwhile , that Harrison-Tyler combo was the ultimate do n't - ask-don ` t-tell ticket , since Harrison never said what he thought about anything , and no one ever asked Tyler his opinions
All the Whig leaders knew was that it was a wonderful balancing act , since Tyler was a Virginia slave owner and Harrison was a northerner who was maybe possibly perhaps opposed to slavery
Imagine the Whigs ' surprise when Harrison died a few weeks after the inauguration , and it turned out that Tyler disagreed with virtually the entire party program , public works plan included
As voters , all we need in a vice presidential nominee is a man or woman qualified to run the store in the event of a crisis , on more or less the same lines as the person at the top of the ticket
Other than that , picking a running mate is no disrespect intended like picking a pet
How much time are you planning to spend with the little fellow
How much exercise will he be getting on an average day
On one extreme , you have the William Wheeler model -LRB- `` There 's the living room
Go find a corner and sleep in it . ''
On the other end , there 's the Cheney version in which the pet takes over the checkbook , diversifies the family investment portfolio and starts strafing at the neighbor 's cat
I think I speak for us all when I say that something in the middle would be nice
The Al Gore model
Unfortunately , Gore 's vehement insistence that he 's not interested in being on the Obama ticket suggests that he did n't enjoy the vice presidency all that much
Maybe the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to his head
I wonder if he 's ever heard of Charles Dawes
Three hours of shuteye and back to work
Have to read every report - check the details
Like I told Scribbles
The little fellow 's a fan
: -RRB- Stuck going to dinner w \/ some damned French minister
Gang riding me big
Bluto says they will make me eat snails
Hell of a funny guy , Bluto
Minister yammering diplomatic bull
I 'd rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people
As if they could
LOL Still talking
Better at this diplomatic stuff than I used to be
Learned a lot in last few years
Like , do n't mention `` mission failure .
Wife wants the gang out of the hotel room
Ca n't live with them , ca n't live without them for more than 11 months at a time
Comeback kids found a bar next to the hotel
Wiped the Gucci drink specials off the chalkboard and we are diagramming up a storm
: -RRB- Team America is partying
Bluto 's doing his impression of Joe Biden
Scribbles taped whole thing - get ready for laughs when we get home
Spent the morning e-mailing back and forth with Kabul
They ca n't get Karzai to come out of his room again
Pinto reminds me how intimidated Obama looked around the generals
Yeah , but the guy really trusts my judgment
Sanford , as we all now know , went AWOL from his state last week , then re-emerged to admit that he had not been on the Appalachian Trail writing a book , as the chaotic explanations from his family and his staff had suggested , but in South America where he had gone to break up with his lover
`` I spent the last five days crying in Argentina , '' he said , completely ignoring all we have learned from Andrew Lloyd Webber
Sanford was widely regarded as a Republican presidential contender
Many of you may have forgotten this , but for a while in 2008 he was a serious candidate to be John McCain 's running mate
-LRB- We now stop briefly to contemplate the possibility that there were even worse options than Sarah Palin .
Now , he 's become the second GOP hopeful in a week to do a swan dive off the adultery cliff
Perhaps the party has been too strict about the no-girlfriends-while-running-for-president rule
If they do n't drop it , pretty soon the youngest contender will be 75
Until Wednesday 's unpleasantness , Sanford was chairman of the Republican Governors Association , otherwise known as the Association of Possible Presidential Contenders Plus Arnold
Over the past few years , he has tried to woo the party 's base with antics like bringing two piglets into the Capitol to protest political pork and refusing to accept $ 700 million in federal stimulus money aimed at preventing massive layoffs of public school teachers
For a state with an unemployment rate above 12 percent , that ranks 39th in public school performance , that last caper might not seem all that entertaining
But it did draw the attention and affection of right-wing commentators , who nudged Sanford right up the potential-contender ladder
However , all that is in the past
Although his wife issued a statement holding out the possibility of reconciliation , the press conference made it clear that sexual indiscretion is less the big problem here than the fact that Mark Sanford is a complete loony
`` I wo n't begin in any particular spot , '' he said , rambling on about his `` love for the Appalachian Trail '' -LRB- where he did n't go -RRB- and his fondness for `` adventure trips '' -LRB- clearly a personal specialty -RRB-
Then Sanford apologized to his wife , his sons , his friends , his staff , his in-laws , `` anybody who lives in South Carolina '' and people of faith `` across the nation .
At this point , I had the terrible feeling that I was the only person in the entire country to whom Sanford was not conveying his personal regrets
The peculiar thing about the apologies was that Sanford seemed to be under the impression that his worst dereliction of duty involved womanizing
I think I speak for us all when I say that if a governor wants to fly off for a rendezvous with his mistress , the first rule should be : leave a phone number
If you must flee to a love nest , make sure it 's one with an Internet connection
`` It was interesting how this thing has gone down , '' Sanford told the assembled reporters , launching , with occasional teary asides , into an extremely boring story about how he and the unnamed Argentine had been good friends and then he tried to help her keep her marriage together , and then they started e-mailing and yadda yadda yadda
-LRB- When the governor said `` I 'll tell you more detail than you 'll ever want '' it was actually easy to believe him .
The whole confessional began to sound like an episode of one of those Finding Love reality shows , when the Bachelorette demands to know if her 25 suitors are all there for the right reasons
There are some larger lessons here
I know you 're relieved to hear that , since it is highly unlikely that anybody actually gives a fig about Mark Sanford
-LRB- Including , perhaps , his beleaguered staff , which spent the last week fending off calls from the lieutenant governor and diligently filing Sanford 's daily Twitter .
First of all , we may want to consider the possibility that the governor 's decision to reject the federal stimulus money was not a mighty stand against government spending but instead an early sign of total nuttiness
Second , perhaps it is time to rethink the idea of constantly electing middle-aged heterosexual men to positions of high importance
Third , although the governor-run-amok thing is worrisome , South Carolinians can take comfort in the fact their state gives its chief executive slightly less power than a game warden
Fourth , before this search for a presidential nominee goes any further , I 'm thinking it 's time for the Republicans to apologize for putting us through the Clinton impeachment
We seem to have pretty well established that sexual stone-throwing is a dangerous sport
`` I 'm just trying to move people to where they need to be , '' she says repeatedly
Her enraged supporters call , bearing reports of new perceived slights or betrayals on the part of the Obama forces
`` It 's all going to be fine
We have to take a deep breath , '' she tells them
`` This will all work out
Have a good summer
Go to the beach .
It 's Democratic unity week
Thursday night in Washington , Hillary will be introducing her party 's future presidential nominee to a couple hundred of her gold-standard donors , who will arrive at the festivities bearing large checks , the political equivalent of flowers or a nice bottle of wine
Then Clinton and Obama are scheduled to hop on a jet on Friday morning and fly together to Unity , N.H. , for their first postprimary joint appearance
`` Everything will work itself out , '' one of her aides says cheerfully
Unity has spread throughout the Clinton offices , where formerly fierce political operatives have taken on the aura of a particularly mellow religious cult
Hillary has been saying that her supporters are moving through the five stages of grief
But she herself seems to have invented some brand-new sixth stage of chipper serenity
Maybe it 's just that she 's been getting some sleep
Maybe it has n't really sunk in yet that instead of spending the next four years negotiating with world leaders , she 'll be fighting to save the Niagara Falls airport
But really , she ought to market her current mind-set as a brand of new age meditation or yoga
Cross your legs , close your eyes and feel yourself unifying from the base of your spine to the top of your head
Bill may not be there yet
The former president was regarded as insufficiently enthusiastic when he issued a statement that he is `` obviously committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do '' to get Obama elected
However , it was an absolute howl of support compared with the comments of Elizabeth Edwards , which so far add up to dead silence
And let us be fair
For almost a year , people have been complaining about Bill 's failure to shut up and behave like a proper presidential spouse
Now he 's getting out of the way so Hillary and Barack can have the stage , and everyone has decided he 's sulking
`` Are you worried you need to hear more from the former president ?
Obama was asked this week at a press conference
This may be the first time in modern history when someone complained about not hearing enough from Bill Clinton
The hard-core Hillary supporters have certainly not yet achieved total unification bliss
Perhaps it 's just that their heroine has n't had a chance yet to reprogram each one individually
-LRB- `` Repeat after me : ` This will all work out .
And let me hear that ocean breath . ''
A breakfast for staunch Clinton backers in Manhattan this week was said to have ended in less than total success
`` It just felt like old politics , '' one of the attendees said
`` Would you sign up to volunteer
What committee would you work on
It sounded like the old churchwoman 's auxiliary .
This brings us to one of the critical problems in political rapprochements
The defeated side would like to have a meeting so it can offer the winning side insights into the issues it needs to address and policies it really ought to tweak
The winning side would like to get back to their campaign and reward the losing side by welcoming them into the ranks of willing workers
No hard feelings
One matter that particularly upsets some of the unregenerate Hillary backers is the Democratic convention
The Obama campaign has already asked Clinton to make a speech , but it seems pretty clear that they 'd also like her to release her delegates before the voting starts so that Barack could be nominated unanimously , cleanly and quickly
-LRB- Clean and quick is admirable if you are talking suturing a wound or waxing a floor , but a bit much to expect in a gathering of thousands of politicians .
Electing a woman president has always been the marker for success in the American women 's movement
Clinton failed to hit the home run , but she certainly scored a triple , and some of her backers feel as if it deserves to be officially tallied , before Hillary releases everyone to support the inevitable nominee
`` Many of us feel this needs to be recorded for history , '' said Rosina Rubin , a New York delegate who will be attending the Washington fund-raiser
Everybody does not agree with this theory
`` A lot of people would see that as being counterproductive , '' said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida , a former Clinton supporter who has become very , very unified
It 's Hillary 's call
All the drama of the past few weeks was built around the fear that Clinton did not know what the politically smart thing to do was , or that she did not have the self-control to do it
But , in the end , she always does
And whatever she decides , this will work out
What a run she 's been on
This week - with the big financial reform package edging toward completion , and the House approving a major campaign finance reform bill - was a reminder of what an incredibly productive speaker she 's become
Last winter , when Washington was backing away from the whole health care deal after the Republicans won Ted Kennedy 's Senate seat , Pelosi was uncowed
`` We 'll go through the gate
If the gate 's closed , we 'll go over the fence
If the fence is too high , we 'll pole vault in , '' she said
`` If that does n't work , we 'll parachute in
But we 're going to get health care reform passed for the American people .
I sort of like the image of Nancy Pelosi parachuting in
Would she wear her high heels
Probably not , but her hair would still look as if it had been blow-dried by a stylist on the way out of the airplane
She 's a 70-year-old perpetual motion machine who seems , in her public appearances , both ultra-programmed and ultra-intense
Many Americans were first introduced to her when the new speaker sat behind President Bush at his State of the Union speech in 2007 , blinking so ferociously that she seemed to be sending out Morse code distress calls from the back of the podium
In conversation , she 's a runaway train
Talking about global warming in an interview last week , she warned : `` You do n't want me to go into the melting of the polar cap and the glaciers and the great rivers of Southeast Asia and the water supply in Tibet and the encroachment of the Gobi Desert and the sandstorms in Beijing and the rise of sea level in all of our maritime areas in the world and
... I would just recommend you go to Alaska to see what is happening .
The Republicans have turned Pelosi into the Demon Grandmother - in ads , a satanic figure in the flames of deficit spending , or a 50-foot monster smashing houses with her big-government feet
-LRB- She seems utterly indifferent to the endless public pummeling - although she did express some dismay , in an interview with The Times 's Mark Leibovich , that people had been speculating that she might have had a face-lift .
But even the public that likes the legislation she 's been churning out tends to underestimate her
Maybe that 's because she came up through the ranks of the California Democratic Party , and then the House , with a reputation as a prodigious fund-raiser
It 's an idea Pelosi herself is n't comfortable with
She rejects the description of her early party-building activities as being about raising money
`` I was n't a fund-raiser
I was like a small businesswoman , '' she protested
She is , at any rate , a person who combines the high ideals of politics with a sure grasp of the very practical realities
Some progressives will never forgive Pelosi for caving in to the anti-abortion forces during the health care negotiations or for giving the National Rifle Association an exemption in the new campaign finance legislation
But the real world has limits , and one of them is that there will never be a major bill to emerge from the House of Representatives that does n't have something regrettable in it
Pelosi has actually been very good on ethics
Under her watch in the House , earmarks are fewer and more transparent
Travel rules are tighter
She fought for the creation of a new in-house watchdog , the Office of Congressional Ethics , pushing it over the wire by one vote
Since then , the aggressive ethics office has won the rancor of investigated members of Congress and the hearts of good-government groups
`` She bit the bullet , '' said Sarah Dufendach , the vice president for legislative affairs at Common Cause
`` That was a very heavy lift , to get the House to do that
I give her really high marks for that .
Of all the good deeds for which people get punished in Washington , pushing ethics has to be at the top of the list
Your own members resent it , and the public does n't really give you any credit
It 's not likely that people will go to the polls in November and vote Democratic because the House , although still deeply , deeply imperfect , is run with a higher ethical standard than it was before Pelosi got control
She has been around a long time and must have known that from the start
But she pushed anyway
Pelosi is an idealist working in the practical now
She genuinely sees her party as a vehicle for good and her pragmatism is not the least bit cynical
She is the most powerful woman in the country , the most fearless person on Capitol Hill and on track to be one of the most productive speakers in history
I do n't know about you , but that kind of knocks me out
The only good news this week for Gov. Mark -LRB- `` I love your tan lines '' -RRB- Sanford is that all those celebrity deaths have knocked him off the top of the news cycle
For the rest of us , the whole vanishing-governor-sneaks-off-to-visit-Argentine-squeeze has had a number of side benefits
The Appalachian Trail has certainly gotten a well-deserved shot of publicity
And I have to believe that business is booming for call-forwarding services
Another big plus is that Governor Sanford has provided us with a chance to revisit little-remembered historical precedents for scandals involving American politicians and Argentine women
O.K. , I can only think of one
It was , of course , the evening in 1974 when Fanne Foxe , `` The Argentine Firecracker , '' took a hysterical leap into the Tidal Basin after a fight with her inebriated escort , the House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills of Arkansas
Foxe was a stripper at the Silver Slipper nightclub in Washington , and the married Mills began escorting her around during a period of major-league alcoholism
They were speeding past the Jefferson Memorial when they were stopped by police
Foxe jumped out , took a dive into the Tidal Basin , and pretty soon Mills was in the headlines and in disgrace
Years later , after he had retired , dried out and returned to Washington as a tax lawyer , Mills told a Times reporter that during his Firecracker days , he was drinking a half-gallon of vodka a night and had hallucinations that buzzards were chasing him
As a result , he said , he lost control of his committee and failed to report out a bill in which he had a great interest
`` I had President Ford convinced on national health , '' Mills said
`` I could have passed it on the floor
But hell , I could n't get the damned committee to go with me
They had never failed to do that before , and I know now it was because of my drinking that they did n't .
Whether or not Mills was overestimating his pre-buzzard ability to move legislation , this story brings up two important points , only one of which is that we were already failing to pass national health care in 1974
The other is that sex was the least of his problems
The public will almost always look past a politician 's plain-vanilla affair
The problem comes when he piles on icing and sprinkles and coconut and then kumquats and zucchini and sardines until what started out as a little treat begins to look really unnerving
New Jersey would have been ready to accept the news that its married governor , James McGreevey , was in love with a male Israeli poet
But not a male Israeli poet whom he had convinced to hang around with a job as head of state homeland security
New York could definitely have handled the fact that Gov. Eliot Spitzer cheated on his wife if it had not been for all that detail about Client 9 at Emperor 's Club V.I.P. escort service
And even Mills 's fellow House members , many of whom were undoubtedly sexual sinners themselves , decided it was probably not a good idea to have the nation 's tax policy being written by a guy who thinks there 's a buzzard on his desk
Now South Carolinians will have to decide if they want their state run by a man who ca n't remember to leave a forwarding number when he scampers off to make whoopee in a different hemisphere
While most people in the state seem to feel as if it would be swell if Sanford just resigned , the governor is n't showing any signs that he intends to quit
It is n't entirely clear why he wants to hang on
He 's term limited
And whatever presidential ambitions he harbored were pretty much quashed when he vanished and aides started explaining that he took a hike -LRB- well , not really -RRB- because he was emotionally exhausted from his fight over the state budget
You had to ask what he 'd have to do to get over North Korea
So far , it appears that Sanford is going to devote his career to apologizing
On Wednesday , he held a press conference and apologized to everyone from his father-in-law to American Christianity
On Thursday , he was closeted with his wife , which undoubtedly involved heavy-duty apology time
Friday , he called his staff together for more apologies , including one to the leader of the Commerce Department , to whom the governor conveyed his regrets for having undermined the dignity of a state trade mission by having sex on the Buenos Aires stop
It was right about then that Sanford compared himself to King David , who `` fell mightily , he fell in very significant ways , but was able to pick up the pieces .
I will end here so we can all ask ourselves whether the entire course of the Old Testament would have been different if David and Bathsheba had had access to e-mail
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton held their political bonding ceremony in the middle of a field since the tiny town where they did the deed had no buildings big enough to host such a momentous occasion
The symbolism was obviously supposed to stretch way , way beyond mere unity
Think the signing of the Magna Carta
Or that baseball movie with Kevin Costner
If you concede it , they will come
`` Today I could not be happier and more honored and more moved , '' said Obama , as Clinton stood next to him , nodding intently
She looked very cheerful , considering that she was living out the nightmare that haunted her toward the end of the race standing on the side of the stage and bobbing her head earnestly , while the guy made his speech
Oh , the ironies
Hillary lost the nomination because many Democrats looked at her and saw a candidate who lacked a principled core , who was prepared to do almost anything to get elected president
They liked Barack better because he was a change agent
Then just as she was engrossed in her multiple concessions , his campaign started using the same political shape-shifting that Obama had decried in the Clintons
He attacked the Supreme Court 's anti-death-penalty ruling so that he would n't look soft on sexual assailants the way that Michael Dukakis did
He welcomed the court 's anti-gun-control ruling so that he would n't lose the hunters ' vote like Al Gore
Public-campaign financing is for losers
The Democrats could not care less
They want a winner , and most of them are prepared to forgive quite a lot of inconsistency in order to get one
A liberal opponent of the Senate wiretapping bill virtually wept with joy when Barack deserted the cause and voted with the law-and-order folk
`` Do you want a president ... '' began one of the speakers at Unity , preparing to run off a laundry list of things Obama would do
`` Yes !
the people interrupted
Still , it 's worrisome
You 'd like to think that after 17 months of angst over its presidential nomination , the Democrats would not wind up with the exact same candidate they started out with , except for a different gender and a higher quotient of panache
In Unity , the two stars arrived a little late , to swelling music , giving us a chance to recall that throughout the primaries he was the candidate who made a dramatic entrance , while she was often the third person from the right in a lineup of pols onstage
His powder-blue tie perfectly matched her pantsuit , a color-coordination we deeply hope was a coincidence
Everybody watched them whispering in each other 's ear , the entwined arms
Do they really like each other
I think I speak for most of the nation when I say that on the list of things that keep us up at night , it does not make the top 1,000
It is , in fact , right down there with the fate of the Clinton campaign debt
The citizens of Unity or at least the ones who were n't home with their doors locked for the day seemed pleased with their central role in modern political history
The mayor bought a new pair of sneakers for the event , and expressed appreciation for this unanticipated `` shot in the arm '' for the local economy
Unity not only has a cool name for coming-together purposes , its population had split right down the middle in the New Hampshire Democratic primary , giving 107 votes to Clinton and 107 to Obama
-LRB- As always , the John Edwards voters have faded away , unnoted .
Even the Unity residents who were too lazy to show up at the polls were crucial
If just one of them had gotten out of bed and shambled in to vote , the outcome might have been 108-107 , and on Friday half the news media in the world would have been on its way to Friendly , W. Va. ; Success , Mo. ; or Smileyberg , Kan.
Or Celebration , Fla. ; Ideal , Ga. ; or Relief , Ky.
We could keep this going forever , really
The crowd here stood for hours under the hot sun , so useful for melding purposes
A few Hillary die-hards skulked around the edges
`` You have to give them space , '' the Obama campaign 's chief strategist , David Axelrod , consoled a supporter who had been grievously offended by the ununified behavior of the holdouts
Take a lesson from the residents of Unity , Hillary fans
Everybody has to do their part
Sometimes it 's sleeping through Election Day so the final vote tally comes out even and your town gets to be on the evening news
Sometimes it 's trying to figure out how to get through a killer presidential campaign without losing every single quality that made people want to vote for you in the first place
And sometimes , it simply involves a lot of nodding
The political sex scandal spotlight is on South Carolina , which has hogged that stage so much lately you 'd think it would be willing to give somebody else a turn
Maybe there 's something in the water
Or perhaps it 's difficult to maintain marital unions in the state that invented nullification
Nikki Haley , a 38-year-old candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination , has had an action-packed month
Sarah Palin endorsed her candidacy on the steps of the State House
She rocketed ahead in the polls
Then a blogger and former political consultant , Will Folks , claimed he 'd had some sort of sexual relationship with her
`` If you were elected governor , do you think questions raised about your personal life would affect your ability to recruit jobs to South Carolina ?
Haley was asked in a debate on Tuesday
This may have marked the first time in history that a candidate for governor was asked whether allegations that she committed adultery might be harmful to state economic development
By Wednesday , Haley , a third-term state representative , went up with a new ad in which she appears with her husband and says , `` I 've seen the dark side of our state 's politics .
A few hours later , another political consultant surfaced with a story about a one-night stand in Utah
`` But this is the second allegation in two weeks , '' said the moderator of another debate on Wednesday night , which was supposed to be about oil drilling
`` I 've been absolutely faithful to my husband for 13 years , '' said Haley , who attributed the charges to plots by an `` establishment '' that feared her fight for term limits and on-the-record voting
The American public has historically been pretty indifferent to allegations of sexual misbehavior by its elected officials , but you could understand why South Carolinians might be a little touchy on the subject
The governor they 're trying to replace , Mark Sanford , not only sneaked off to Argentina to visit his lover , he failed to leave a contact number , triggering a mini-missing-person alert followed by a weepy press conference about his South American `` soul mate .
Haley 's problems began when Folks , who had once been Sanford 's press secretary , announced on his Web site that he and she had had an `` inappropriate physical relationship .
Questions abounded , not the least of which was : what exactly is an inappropriate physical relationship
Not as obvious as you might think in South Carolina
When Sanford held his post-adultery press conference he claimed that while he had `` crossed lines '' with a number of other women during his 20-year marriage , he had refrained from jumping over `` the ultimate line '' until he met the aforementioned soul mate
Clearly , this is a state that does a lot of sexual parsing
Folks , who was also briefly Haley 's political consultant , claimed that he was forced to go public because other reporters were working on a story about the relationship
That is the second most popular excuse for this sort of tattling , right behind , `` I thought we were going to get married .
Since then Folks seems to have gone underground , although he released phone records showing that he and Haley spoke about 700 times over a three-year period , occasionally for more than two hours late at night
The jury was out on who was telling the truth , but voters had definitely learned that Haley is a person with a lot of time on her hands
The new player in this drama , Larry Marchant , worked until this week for another gubernatorial candidate , Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer
-LRB- Bauer , who once compared the school lunch program to feeding stray animals , is pretty much a walking explanation for why Governor Sanford was never tossed out of office .
`` You paid him , '' Haley said accusingly
Bauer , who looked as though someone had just hit him over the head with a mallet , demanded that everyone discuss the issues
The issues in the primary have basically been which Republican dislikes government most
During the Tuesday debate , Bauer claimed that illegal immigration was caused by lavish government welfare payments , which caused poor people to refuse to do manual labor
Haley bragged that she had opposed the federal stimulus program
The attorney general , Henry McMaster , who is currently suing to try to stop the federal government from bringing health care reform to South Carolina , attributed the failures of the state 's public schools to teachers ' being so busy `` filling out federal forms that they ca n't teach .
`` Here we are in this very poor state that needs help very much , '' said Mark Tompkins , a professor of political science at the University of South Carolina
`` We 're sixth in the nation in unemployment , and we 're fighting about whether the federal government can help us with health care .
Government may not be the problem , but the people doing the governing could definitely use some work
Americans believe that the world works best when consumers have unlimited choice
This is why my corner drugstore offers , by my last count , 103 different kinds of body moisturizers
These are not , of course , to be confused with moisturizers for the face , hand , elbow or foot
We , the informed shoppers , are supposed to scan the crowded shelves and decide whether our needs will best be met by body oil , body butter or firming emulsion
We will , perhaps , mull the `` udder cream '' whose big selling point is that it was originally developed for use on dairy cows
Then we select the products that will survive and thrive by voting with our pocketbooks
This is way too much responsibility
I have been thinking a lot about choices lately , because I have gotten interested in college loans
The Obama administration is trying to reform the current loopy system in which the government pays private companies to do the lending
The loans are then guaranteed by the government so the private companies are sheltered from loss
Then the government buys the loans back so the private companies can go out and do it all over again
The White House believes that if it cuts out the middlemen , and just gives the loans to the students directly , it can save $ 94 billion over 10 years
Hell hath no fury like a middleman scorned
The lenders have been rallying the troops , waving the banner of choice
Citigroup sent a call to arms to its student borrowers , which is currently posted on Talking Points Memo
It warns darkly that if the Obama Armageddon comes to pass , `` students and their families will not enjoy the benefits that competition has made possible for more than 40 years .
There is , indeed , currently an army of different providers vying to supply students with financing for their higher education
I 'm not entirely sure if the borrowing-money choices are as numerous as the body-hydrating ones , but they 're right up there
This brings us to the critical question of whether endless options actually do any good
`` We do n't hear students clamoring for choice in lenders
If anything , students and families need simplicity to understand the process and know how to navigate it , '' said Edie Irons , communications director for the Project on Student Debt , a nonprofit dedicated to making college more affordable
Since the government-guaranteed loans are regulated by Congress , they have virtually identical terms
The main variation comes in customer service : who has the best Web site or staff
Most current and former students do not seem to find this as being all that big a deal
What they need to know is exactly how much it will cost to pay back the loan after graduation , information about which they tend to hear less than the Web-site-quality matter
Besides , the loans often come in pieces , cobbled together from an array of different programs
It would be hard for an accountant to figure out what it all meant , and 19-year-olds are not at the point in life that maximizes attention to detail
Some students receive financial counseling , but it 's usually cursory , and it is only mandatory for government-backed loans
`` It 's not required for private loans , and a lot of students in the worst situation have both , '' said Robert Shireman of the Department of Education
Shireman was just back from a panel where he met an officer in the United States Student Association , who told him that some of her loans had an interest rate of 19 percent
The real competition among the lenders is not to win over students so much as the school financial aid officers
This has led to unfortunate but deeply unsurprising instances of thinly disguised bribes and kickbacks
But even the most honorable officials do n't have much time for discussion when several hundred students are clamoring outside their doors
`` You walk in and it 's like an assembly line in the bursar 's office , '' said Stephen Marston , who graduated from New York University in 2006 with a degree in psychology
`` They fill out everything for you
Here 's Sallie Mae go ahead and sign
Payments were n't even discussed .
At the time , Marston was a thousand miles from his home in Texas with an education in finance that began and ended with a $ 500 limit credit card
He took out two $ 16,000 Sallie Mae loans to get through school
Thanks to accumulated interest , which began ticking as soon as he signed the papers , his total debt has now ballooned to about $ 50,000
He would be the first to admit that no one twisted his arm
He could have gone to a state school in Texas for very little money
But Marston wanted New York
`` I thought , ` You only get one chance to experience this .
I got caught up in the adventure .
Walking down the drugstore aisle , he passed up the Jergen 's lotion and grabbed for the Bliss Vanilla Plus Bergamot Body Butter
As so many of us do
But at least we get a good look at the price tag
Loads of exciting primaries next week
Although it 'll be hard to top the one in South Carolina , where two Tea Party candidates are fighting about a lie detector test and a state senator has argued that racist comments he made over the radio do n't really count since the interview occurred in a bar
I 've been paying a disproportionate amount of attention to Republicans this election cycle , but it 's not my fault
Most of the Democratic primaries are incredibly boring
There are a couple of bitter battles , like the one Tuesday that will determine the fate of Senator Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas
But it 's hard to combine the phrases `` Senator Blanche Lincoln '' and `` really exciting story '' in the same sentence
Meanwhile , the Republicans sniff blood , and the smell has gotten them so excited that they are all jumping into the ring and hitting each other over the head with mallets
In Nevada , voters seemed to be suffering from Harry Reid exhaustion - a sentiment not improved by the fact that while the Senate majority leader is up for re-election , his son is running for governor
But the Reid camp has come up with a canny campaign strategy that involves hoping the Republicans kill one another
The early front-runner , Sue Lowden , has n't really recovered from the day she suggested that the solution to health care costs might be to return to the barter system so people could pay their doctor bills with livestock or produce
Now one of her opponents , the Tea Party candidate Sharron -LRB- I Have an Extra R -RRB- Angle , seems to have surged into the lead with an innovative media strategy that involves refusing to tell reporters where she will be campaigning
Lowden has been savaging Angle with wildly overblown ads that claim she once introduced a bill to provide massage therapy to prison inmates
The squabbles are so fierce that they are at least temporarily overshadowing anti-Reid commercials that feature his unfortunate choice of words about visitors to our nation 's halls of government
-LRB- `` You can literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol . ''
Over in California , voters are deciding whether the $ 81 million spent by Meg Whitman , the ex-eBay chief , on her campaign will be enough to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination
Really , for somebody who made her fortune creating bargain-hunting opportunities , this seems wrong
You could buy entire states for $ 80 million
Whitman could probably have snapped up North Dakota for half that amount , and it does n't even have a deficit
The winner of the primary will take on Jerry Brown , who has already been governor twice but is running as an outsider because all that happened before most Californians were born
Yet everything else pales next to South Carolina , where State Representative Nikki Haley and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer are fighting over who is the true Tea Party candidate
Recently , two political consultants came forward and claimed that they had had sexual encounters with Haley , whose campaign puts quite a bit of stress on God and her happy marriage
Haley says she smells a Bauer plot
Indeed , one of the consultants , Larry Marchant Jr. , was working for Bauer until this week when he announced that he and Haley had hooked up during a school choice conference in Utah in 2008
Marchant spun his saga of vouchers and lust
-LRB- `` We 'd gone to dinner
I had some drinks
Things happened . ''
Much harder to believe was the part where he kept the story secret until the last week of the gubernatorial primary when he suddenly felt compelled to confess to his pregnant wife , his employer and the world
I am a very credulous person
There was a minute there when I believed that John Edwards 's married gofer was the father of the lusty videographer 's love child
But this one is a reach
One of Bauer 's other supporters , State Senator Jake Knotts , managed to unite the state in a moment of mass revulsion when he went on the radio to say he opposed Haley , who is Indian-American , because `` we already got one raghead in the White House
We do n't need another in the governor 's mansion .
Knotts seemed to feel as if it was unfair for anyone to quote him since he made his remarks on `` a freewheeling , anything-goes Internet radio show that is broadcast from a pub
It 's like local political version of ` Saturday Night Live . '
He is possibly the only person in America who is unaware that 1 -RRB- `` Saturday Night Live '' has a script , and 2 -RRB- it is never a good plan to appear on a talk show that takes place inside a saloon
When Bauer was last heard from , he was demanding that Haley take a lie detector test about her sex life , while Haley was vowing that if elected , she would resign from office if it was ever proved that she had had extracurricular sex
This seems like a terrible idea
South Carolina has big economic problems , and you do not want the next governor fending off adultery challenges 24-7
Been there
Done that
They vowed to write in Hillary 's name on their ballots in November ; to wear `` NObama '' T-shirts all summer ; to `` de-register '' as Democrats
One much-circulated e-mail proposed turning June 3 , the day Barack Obama claimed the nomination , as a permanent day of mournful remembrance `` like the people in Ireland remember the Famine .
`` The passion is very intense , '' said Muriel Fox , a retired public relations executive in New York who was one of the founding members of the National Organization for Women
`` It 's very much a feeling that Hillary has not been respected .
Feel free to make fun of them
The women of Fox 's generation ought to be used to it by now
The movement they started was the first fight for equality in which the opposition deployed ridicule as its most lethal weapon
They won the ban on sex discrimination in employment by letting a conservative congressman propose it as a joke
When they staged their historic march in New York in 1970 , they heard themselves described as `` braless bubble-heads '' by a U.S. senator and were laughed at on the evening news
They had always seen a woman in the White House as the holy grail
Now their disappointment is compounded by the feeling that Clinton 's candidacy was not even appreciated as a noble try
`` She stayed in and showed she could take it
I feel she 's taken this beating for us the abuse and the battering and the insults , '' said Fox
I get asked all the time whether I think Hillary lost because sexism is worse than racism in this country
The answer is no.
She lost because Obama ran a smarter , better-organized campaign
It 's possible that she would have won if the Democratic Party had more rational primary rules
But Obama did n't make up the rules , and Clinton had no problem with them until she began to lose
Here 's where the sexism does come in
If Barack had failed in his attempt to make history by becoming the first African-American presidential nominee , you can bet we 'd have treated his defeat with the dignity it deserved
Even if he went over the deep end at the finale and found it hard to get around to a graceful concession
For a long time , Obama supporters have seen party unity as something that Hillary could provide by capitulating
It also requires the Democrats to acknowledge what she 's achieved
If that makes them feel like wimps , let them take it out on John McCain
Clinton is very much a product of the generation that accepted a certain amount of humiliation as the price of progress
She wrote in her autobiography that when she ran for president of her high-school class against several boys , one of them told her she was `` really stupid '' if she thought a girl could be elected president
She lost , and later , the winner asked her to head a committee `` which as far as I could tell was expected to do most of the work .
She swallowed hard , accepted and , she admitted , really liked organizing all the school parades and dances and pep rallies
This is one of the things you have to admire about Hillary Clinton
She still enjoys the work
Over the past months , Clinton has seemed haunted by the image of the `` nice girl '' who gives up the fight because she 's afraid the boys will be angry if they do n't get their way
She told people she would never , ever say : `` I 'm the girl , I give up .
She would never let her daughter , or anybody else 's daughter , think that she quit because things got too tough
And she never did
Nobody is ever again going to question whether it 's possible for a woman to go toe-to-toe with the toughest male candidate in a race for president of the United States
Or whether a woman could be strong enough to serve as commander in chief
Her campaign did n't resolve whether a woman who seems tough enough to run the military can also seem likable enough to get elected
But she helped pave the way
So many battles against prejudice are won when people get used to seeing women and minorities in roles that only white men had held before
By the end of those 54 primaries and caucuses , Hillary had made a woman running for president seem normal
Her campaign was messy , and it made some fatal tactical errors
But nobody who sent her a donation could accuse her of not giving them their money 's worth
For all her vaunting ambition , she was never a candidate who ran for president just because it 's the presidency
She thought about winning in terms of the things she could accomplish , and she never forgot the women 's issues she had championed all her life repair of the social safety net , children 's rights , support for working mothers
It 's not the same as winning the White House
But it 's a lot
Let 's consider the story of Representative Eric Massa , a freshman Democrat from upstate New York who made headlines recently when he resigned from office amid talk about sexual harassment of male staffers
Massa 's defense was that the questionable conduct was boisterous horseplay by an old ex-Navy officer and five of his single male aides , who roomed together in one small Washington townhouse
`` Not only did I grope him , '' he said of one of his roommates , `` I tickled him until he could n't breathe and four guys jumped on top of me
It was my 50th birthday , and it was : ` Kill the old guy . '
Already we have extracted our first important lesson from this scandal , which is that voters are going to have to pay more attention to where their elected officials bunk while they 're in the nation 's capital
Remember that last year we had the Prayer House , a much larger and nicer townhouse full of conservative Christian congressmen
They were supposed to be engaged in discussions of the Bible , but , in fact , seemed to spend most of their time trying to bail each other out of adultery crises
The extremely overworked House ethics committee is looking into charges that the Democratic leadership should have done something about Massa sooner
It might have been a warning signal when he told a reporter that rather than pay substantial salaries to a handful of aides like most members do , he preferred to hire lots and lots of people who made so little that several of them were forced to economize by living with their boss
Massa has offered a raft of explanations for his sudden resignation , ranging from a possible cancer recurrence to a plot by the Democrats to drive him out of office because he opposed the health care reform bill
This last one instantly excited Glenn Beck , who invited Massa on his program in hopes of hearing more about the claim that a naked Rahm Emanuel poked an angry finger at him in the Congressional gym
The Beck interview was mesmerizing
Whatever Massa did or did n't do with his aides , it was obvious that as a legislator , he is utterly loopy
His examples of political corruption consisted of Democratic leaders begging him to support the president and donors telling him that they would n't give him more money if he voted against the programs they care about
To clean up the mess in Washington , Massa told Beck , voters should call their representatives and urge them to forget about the party or the president or even said voters ' own personal convictions and just `` do what you think is right .
Now , people , here is the problem exactly
There are quite a few members of Congress who are as out to lunch as Eric Massa , although we hope the rest of them are not career ticklers
Do we really want to see them all follow their own private drummers and go careening around from one position to another like a bunch of Frisbees
Here we are , looking at the upcoming health care vote and mulling the virtues of bipartisan political independence
You think George Washington ; I think Eric Massa
Another star of this week 's political sex scandal headlines was Rielle Hunter , the John Edwards mistress
This particular saga is less interesting than it would have been if Edwards was actually an elected official rather than a man who has spent the past six years being consistently rejected by the American voters , state by state , primary by primary
Plus we have already learned the most important tip the story had to teach us , which is to avoid any candidate who makes his or her marriage the centerpiece of a campaign
Nevertheless , Hunter was eager to tell her version of the affair
As soon as Edwards told a national TV audience that the only woman he had ever loved was his wife , she reported , he called to assure her that he did n't mean it
Which , she says , she believes , since she knows he will love her `` till death do us part .
If Hunter was a more credulous soul , I would have taken all this as a terrible failure on the part of the national news media
Really , the whole point of writing about one straying , lying political alpha dog after another is to alert the next generation that when a powerful pol invites you to come to his hotel room for a date , and suggests you arrive disguised as the turn-down maid , he is not going to stick with you through thick and thin
But Hunter is 45 and has been around the block a time or three
So I think it 's safe to say that she is not deluded so much as a woman intent on rearranging reality to suit her convenience
`` Before I met Johnny , I had a lot of judgment about infidelity
Now I have a deeper and greater understanding and acceptance of people 's processes , '' she told an interviewer for GQ
This was in happier times , before Hunter professed herself to be shocked by the magazine 's pictures of her lying on a bed wearing pearls and no pants , since she was sure the photographer would be interested only in face shots
So very , very angry
Unable to speak due to mega-anger washing over every pore and fiber of my being
Anger is in
-LRB- Hope 's so ... January .
Times Topics : Timothy F. Geithner Charles E. Grassley Edward M. Liddy American International Group Inc.
I am extremely angry at Tim Geithner for being such a baby that he could n't scare a bunch of American International Group quants into forgoing their bonuses
We need a Treasury secretary so terrifying that if you were stuck in an elevator alone with him , you would just automatically hand over your wallet and credit cards
Somebody as weird and tirade-prone as Hank Paulson
Although when he had Geithner 's job we hated Hank Paulson
Hated , hated , hated
Many people thought he was the worst Treasury secretary ever , although at this moment I am hard pressed to remember the name of any of the other ones since Alexander Hamilton
Except for Robert Rubin , who we used to like but now we do n't because he was a banker
Hate those bankers
However , Jimmy Stewart seemed nice in that movie about Christmas
Geithner claims nobody warned him that this bonus scandal was coming down the pike
Is it because he does n't have any assistants
It appears there 's nobody in the world of finance who wants to accept a top-level Treasury job if it means letting the White House accountants go over their tax returns
Geithner is walking around listening to the hallways echo , like the only kid at boarding school who did n't get invited home for Christmas
I hate everybody in the world of finance
Also accountants , since it 's tax time
And I 'm totally angry at everybody in Congress for trying to pretend that they 're angrier than I am
Like Senator Chuck Grassley saying the A.I.G. execs should follow the Japanese model and `` resign or go commit suicide .
Took him about three seconds to backtrack
`` Inteligent journalist ca n't recgnize rhetoric , '' Grassley twittered
The senator from Iowa is a big twitterer
On Monday , he shared the details of his day : `` Red previous Twitter
Did get DsM Eastern Star EastGate Lodge Swiss Steak Dinner
Great food price of tip at any Sun dinner I recomend .
If Grassley was truly outraged at the seppuku-demanding level , would n't he have reported that although the Swiss steak dinner smelled tasty , he was unable to partake because his digestive system was overflowing with bile
And do you think he knows how to spell `` intelligent ''
I hate senators who Twitter
On Wednesday , Edward Liddy , the head of A.I.G. , was hauled in front of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets , Insurance , and Government Sponsored Enterprises where everybody was extremely eager to express their outrage about the $ 165 million in bonuses for employees in A.I.G. 's financial -LRB- Credit Swaps Derivatives R Us -RRB- products division
This is the same subcommittee that came to our attention a year ago when then-Gov
Eliot Spitzer of New York wheedled an invitation to testify about bond insurance so he could go to Washington for a night of hanky-panky at the Mayflower Hotel
I really hate the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets , Insurance , and Government Sponsored Enterprises
Liddy , a retired insurance executive who took over A.I.G. six months ago at the behest of the Treasury Department , said he had asked most of those who got a bonus to give at least half back
This did not seem to calm the subcommittee members down very much , although the fact that Liddy is working without pay while getting mail from people who want to garrote him with piano wire seemed to have a slight dampening effect
It is not particularly satisfying to complain about businessmen who answer their country 's call for $ 1 a year
However , Liddy does have three houses , which is one above the new quota
Let 's complain about Barack Obama
Why does n't he sound angrier
Does n't he understand that his job right now is to be the Great Venter
Sure he keeps saying he 's mad
But you can tell that he secretly thinks it 's crazy to obsess about $ 165 million in bonuses in a company that 's still got $ 1.6 trillion in toxic assets to unravel
`` I do n't want to quell that anger
I want to channel our anger in a constructive way , '' he said on Wednesday
Everybody knows constructively channeled anger does n't really count
It 's like diet pizza
If John McCain were president , you can bet that we 'd be getting outrage 24-7
McCain would be so angry that we 'd be scared that he 'd have a coronary or invade a new country
The New York Post would be running `` Calm Down , Mr. President '' headlines
Except , of course , the whole reason we elected Barack Obama was because when the economy started melting down , Obama seemed sane and calm while McCain appeared to be a loopy visitor from the Planet of the Overwrought
I hate it when we make irrational , contradictory demands of our president
But , it seems as if that 's what he 's there for
Everything the Democratic nomination , the fate of the presidency , the solution to global warming , the next American Idol hinges on Tuesday 's primaries
Texas and Ohio rule
O.K. , and Rhode Island and Vermont
You must have lots of questions about all the exciting things going on in places where you are n't voting
Feel free to ask
Why Ohio
Is n't it going to be all up to Ohio in November
This seems kind of greedy
Yes , and your state should have thought of that before it joined the unseemly race to the front of the pack while Ohio just sat back and politely said : `` Oh , no.
We 'll wait our turn .
Anyway , if Hillary Clinton manages to pull this off , it 'll all be up to Pennsylvania
Do Texas and Ohio appreciate how lucky they are
There was a schoolteacher going into the debate audience in Cleveland on Tuesday this would be the 20th Clinton-Obama confrontation this season who told the TV cameras that she learned last week that she was getting a ticket `` and I have n't breathed since .
We have not seen this sort of anticipation at a political event since they held one of the Maine caucuses in the same building where `` High School Musical '' was being performed
Is it true that Hillary Clinton 's campaign is in shambles , awash with second-guessing and back-stabbing
Well , let 's hope so
If they were chipper and confident at this point , you 'd worry that they 'd turned into some kind of cult
Do the problems in the campaign reflect badly on the candidate
I mean , if you ca n't run a campaign ... Do n't blame Hillary for hiring the wrong consultants
As far as I can tell , there are n't any geniuses or villains in this business , just people who guess right and people who charge too much
That said , I can not completely get past the fact that the Clinton campaign spent $ 100,000 on food for the night of the Iowa caucuses
My memory of the post-defeat party in Des Moines is Fritos and the kind of dip you make with dried onion soup mix
Why do people keep fainting at Obama rallies
Are you sure this is n't some kind of a setup
They 're swooning on their own
Possibly helped along by the fact that the fans closest to the stage have to stand there for several hours before the event begins
I just learned that John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone while his father was stationed there and that it might make him ineligible to become president
Is that true
Only if you presume that a court would inform our men and women in the military that their children are lesser citizens because they 're born on an overseas rotation
However , this does seem like something Congress ought to clean up
And it may explain why Mitt Romney 's family has been mentioning that Dad is still ready to serve
Is Ohio going to be able to count the votes this time without triggering any conspiracy theories
Ohio , like the rest of the country , has been working hard to end the Election Day delays and errors that have done so much to undermine confidence in our democracy
Authorities here have spent well over $ 100 million on new voting machines , none of which the secretary of state regards as reliable
While we 're at it , would you please explain the Texas primaucus
The primaucus is a large , featherless bird that feeds on roadkill and ethanol
While Texas Republicans have a rather straight winner-take-all primary system , the Texas Democrats have added a few curlicues here , a bunch of furbelows there and wound up with something that resembles one of the more unfortunate dresses at the Academy Awards
Tuesday there will be a primary
Then as soon as the polls close there will be caucuses
Then there will be some conventions and an apportioning of delegates that will be understood only by people with doctorates in physics
Finally , there will come the terrible moment when the public asks itself what a Democratic-constructed national health care plan would look like if this is the way they build a simple election
Obama says he 's the bridge-builder
But I keep hearing right-wing radio types say they 'd vote for Hillary Clinton before John McCain
None of them ever say they 'd vote for Obama
Should Hillary be highlighting that
I do n't know if `` Bridge-Builder to the Lunatic Right '' is the kind of nickname you want at this point in the campaign
Is there any chance Hillary can pull this out
It looks hopeless , which was exactly the way it looked in New Hampshire right before she won
So , sure
On Friday , as Democrats were flopping around madly over the upcoming vote on health care , Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted brightly that it was the feast of St. Joseph the Worker , `` where we remember and pray to St. Joseph to benefit the workers of America
And that 's exactly what our health care bill will do .
A blogger instantly retorted that it was actually the feast of St. Joseph , Husband of Mary
`` The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker is May 1 , '' Scott Richert wrote on About.com
`` The way she sees it is this is the same St. Joseph , '' said a spokesman for the speaker of the House
The moral here is that nothing about health care reform is easy
Nothing , nothing , nothing , nothing , nothing
As the House prepared for its big , historic , achingly close vote on Sunday , the joys of being undecided seemed so great that legislators kept jumping on the fence , just to feel the love
After all , Representative Dennis Kucinich got four meetings with the president and a trip on Air Force One
Dennis Kucinich
A congressman from South Boston , who supported the bill but opposed including a public option last time around , announced that he was now voting against the bill because it lacks a public option
Others suddenly discovered that their states had unmet needs
President Obama made yet another postponement of his Asia trip and invited the entire House Democratic caucus to the White House Saturday , which qualifies as possibly the worst way to spend your weekend in the history of the world
On Sunday , the House is expected to finally vote on the bill that the Senate approved on Christmas Eve after a debate so endless that the wiped-out majority leader , Harry Reid , initially voted `` no '' by mistake
If it passes , it theoretically goes to the president
In the real Congressional world , there are still major complications involving a second bill making changes in the first one , under parliamentary procedures so abstract that they verge on the metaphysical
That would bounce back to the Senate , where the Republicans are vowing to find some way to stretch the process out even longer
-LRB- Friday was also the feast of St. Pancharius , a Roman senator who was beheaded by the emperor in 303
No matter how bad it gets , this is not the sort of thing we want to encourage .
Nevertheless , Sunday feels as if it 's going to be the critical moment , and if the House votes yes , it will be kind of incredible
We live in an era in which the power of the new hypermedia is so intense and politics so rabid that it 's almost impossible for Congress to do anything more difficult than tax cuts or highway construction
Yet , here 's this huge , complicated , controversial reform bigger than any domestic program in decades
If it passes , the short-term political consequences are unknowable
But in 10 years , people will look back in amazement that we once lived in a time when Americans could n't get health care coverage if they were sick , when insurance companies could cut off your benefits for being sick , and when run-of-the-mill serious illnesses routinely destroyed families ' financial security
And if it passes , Barack Obama will have validated his presidency
He came into office on the wave of hope so enormous there was no way he was not going to disappoint
He broke promises we still remember that one about holding health care negotiations on C-Span
He sure failed to deliver on that more respectful , bipartisan spirit in Washington
He seemed , day to day , so much less Obama-like than the guy who made people faint at campaign rallies
But the core qualities that got him elected were his coolness under pressure and the sense that he would never stop fighting for change
No matter what you think of it , this health care bill is one heck of a change
And no matter what you think of the White House strategy , Obama has been incredibly tenacious in pushing for it
All year , his party has been begging him to drop health care and do something about jobs or more specifically , give the impression of doing something about jobs
The government has only so much power to stimulate the economy
And even at the height of his postelection power , Obama could only get a medium-size stimulus bill through the Senate
What many Democrats really wanted was just a change of conversation away from the complicated , frustrating subject of health care to rewarding fights for proposals that would embarrass the Republicans even if they did n't pass , and small , symbolic programs that would be the 2010 equivalent of supporting public school uniforms
Plus lots of photo-ops at construction sites
He stuck to his guns
Speech after speech , phone call after phone call , sit-down with one frightened or greedy or confused legislator after another , he kept on the case
`` Do not quit
Do not give up , '' he told yet another rally on Friday
`` We are going to get this done .
This weekend , we 'll see
But the man gets points for trying
I am doing this as a public service
Our howling about government bailouts has sent Congress into a panic attack that 's getting out of hand
The White House economic team may not be all we hoped for , but let them work in peace for a few days without having to worry that some legislator in search of outrage creds is going to crash through the window and bite Tim Geithner on the ankle
President Obama has asked us to direct our anger into constructive channels , and his loyal supporters are planning to get together over the weekend to collect signatures on petitions asking Congress to pass his budget
That certainly sounds like fun , but not really what I envision when I think of a rage channel
A change of topic is required
We have tried to divert you with the story about the former `` Project Runway '' contestant who was arrested for assaulting her ex-boyfriend with a cat and Michelle Obama 's plan to plant rutabagas on the White House lawn
The president is even playing the dog card again
But nothing seems to work
So let 's contemplate that library , which is more properly called the George W. Bush Presidential Center
A nonprofit foundation is trying to raise $ 300 million in tax-deductible donations for a huge complex on 25 acres at Southern Methodist University in Dallas
Groundbreaking is scheduled for this fall
Feeling a little irked
The center has several different functions , one of which is to showcase a collection of presidential memorabilia
Texas already has a museum for Lyndon Johnson and one for George H.W. Bush
You do have to wonder how many replicas of the Oval Office any one state needs
The original Bush Presidential Library and Museum is at Texas A&M University , where visitors can see a `` stunning replica of Barbara 's wedding gown , '' a restored 1947 Studebaker , samples from the museum 's collection of more than 1,200 elephants and the family speedboat , Fidelity
Why ca n't George W. just stick his knickknacks in there , too
They would n't even have to change the name
True , it might be tough to make room for the foundation 's planned `` interactive decision theater , '' where visitors `` will have the opportunity to make their own presidential decisions .
Do you think we could uninvade Iraq
The George W. Bush Presidential Center is , of course , planning to have a library
That 's a given for these kinds of monuments to ex-presidents , even if the one in question has done more than any chief executive in modern history to keep public records out of the hands of the public
This is the guy who told federal agencies that whenever a citizen asked to see a document , the government should presume it was secret unless the petitioner could prove otherwise
Really , the best thing you could do for the Bush administration papers would be to put them someplace where George W. can not get within 10 miles of them
The final part of the center is going to be a think tank that was originally called the Freedom Institute
However , the Bush White House did such a thorough job in ruining the word `` freedom '' that the organizers seem to be rethinking that
Its mission is to `` further the domestic and international goals of the Bush administration .
As James Traub wrote in The Times Magazine , the institute will be somewhat unique in that , while part of the university , it has no obligation whatsoever to report to the S.M.U. president or provost
It will instead report to the president of the Bush foundation , a former hotel executive who Bush once made ambassador to Costa Rica
Thanks to that tax deduction , money donated to this enterprise is money that will not be going to help balance the federal budget
Anger channeled yet
It 's hard to believe that there are rich people , even in Dallas , who think the George W. Bush Presidential Center is the best possible use for excess cash at this particular point in history
We 're going to devote the next couple of months to torturing any employee of a bailed-out financial company who took a bonus
There ought to be a few minutes to spare for people who weigh all the nation 's competing needs , then decide that what the world needs most is a really good repository for W. 's White House treadmill
Why does the Bush center need donations anyway
His administration believed the profit motive makes everything efficient derivatives markets , health care , invasions
If he wants a monument , let him build an amusement park
Kids could compete in brush-clearing contests or slam-dunk at the George Tenet Basketball Court
And rides
There would , of course , be lots of rides
After all , he took us for one
There we were , minding our own business , when all of a sudden , whammo , health care got reformed
Really , it was quite a shock
I guess it was because of the new president , Barack Obama , who is so much more decisive and take-chargey than the old president , Barack Obama
And , of course , he was helped by the speaker of the House , Nancy Pelosi , who is strong and brave and pure of heart
As opposed to that party hack , whatshername
Hated her
The American people certainly seemed impressed , giving thumbs up to the new law in public opinion polls
Since the polls had been showing that they were strongly opposed to that very same plan last week , we can only presume that we have also acquired a whole new set of Americans
Really , there is just so much transformation a person can handle
One day you go to bed worrying about death panels
Next day you wake up and health care reform is so trendy that the coolest spring accessory is a pre-existing condition
We can only handle so much newness at once
So it 's been comforting to return to the U.S. Senate and find that it 's exactly as insane as it was last month and the month before that
The Republicans are continuing their ongoing search for new ways that any one single senator can bring all activity to a standstill
You will remember that their dedication to this cause allowed Jim Bunning a senator who is recognized even by members of his own party as being completely loopy to put a perpetual hold on the confirmation of a deputy trade representative because he is angry with the Canadian Parliament for banning the sale of cigarettes with candy flavoring
Now , in celebration of the passage of the health care reform bill , the minority party has begun invoking a rule that allows any one senator to block all committee hearings scheduled to run later than 2 p.m. Quite a bit of activity has already been canceled , beginning with a hearing on bark beetle infestation
O.K. , I know some of you are sitting there chortling about bark beetles , but you 'd feel differently if you were a tree
Or a state senator from Colorado who 'd paid $ 600 of his own money to fly to Washington to testify
And irony of ironies , at another hearing , a witness had just gotten to the part of her statement about `` improving access to government information '' when the chairman told her that the 2 o'clock buzzer had gone off and they were compelled to close up shop and go home
Patrick Leahy , the Judiciary Committee chairman , was enraged because his hearing on judicial nominations could n't go forward
Although really , Leahy should count his blessings
At least Jim Bunning did n't put a hold on the nominations because of some antismoking initiative in Finland
Carl Levin , the chairman of the Armed Services Committee , begged the Senate to allow him to go ahead and hear testimony from military commanders who had come from as far as South Korea to talk about the defense budget
Even the new , unimproved version of John McCain the one who vowed there would be `` no cooperation for the rest of the year '' was willing to allow an exemption for that one
But another Republican gave a thumbs down , and the officers were dismissed for the day
`` Disappointed , '' tweeted Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri , who had to cancel a hearing on police training contracts in Afghanistan
Bad as we think the Republicans ' behavior has been , it should not be taken as an excuse for senators to take out their frustrations on Twitter
No good can come of political tweets
Over on the Senate floor , everyone was debating the caboose to the health care train , a bill full of fixes that unfortunately was not entitled `` Act to Eliminate Embarrassing Things Feckless Senators Stuck in the Health Care Reform Act .
The Senate Democrats wanted to approve the exact same version that the House has passed so this debate will be over and everyone can move on to congratulating victorious college basketball teams and discussing why Republicans are opposed to a consumer protection agency for financial products
But the Republicans drew up a slew of amendments , many of which made no sense but offered opportunities for spectacular election-year attack ads
The most instantly famous , from Tom Coburn of Oklahoma , was the classic `` No Erectile Dysfunction Drugs to Sex Offenders .
This could go on for some time
Meanwhile , feel free to remind Rush Limbaugh that he promised to move to Costa Rica if health care reform gets implemented
Once you 're done , you can go back and remind him that Costa Rica has national health care
Tim Geithner Really cool guy
Super job on that bank bailout thing
Look at the way the stock market jumped
Way better Treasury secretary than last week 's Tim Geithner , who seemed a lot ... shorter
Barack Obama Kinda boring
Did you see the news conference
Same thing over and over again
Not that we mind
In these troubled times , we like stability
Thank God we did n't elect somebody who was all charisma and exciting speeches
Eliot Spitzer He was the only one who got it , really got it , about A.I.G. before the big collapse
Great New York attorney general
What ever happened to him
TALF -LRB- Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility -RRB- This is the thing Tim Geithner is doing , and , you know , whatever Tim wants ... We like TALF much , much better than TARP , which was the brainchild of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson , who had that dumb idea about buying up all the bank 's toxic assets
Which is what Tim is going to do , except it 's going to be way cooler
Financial industry We still hate Wall Street
Although when it sends the stock market up , it makes us like Tim Geithner even more
In summary , there appear to be only two constants in our ever-changing world
One is that Barack Obama is going to be on television every day forever
No venue is too strange
Soon , he 'll be on `` Dancing With the Stars '' -LRB- `` And now , doing the Health Care , Energy and Education tango ... '' -RRB- or delivering the weather report
-LRB- `` Here we see a wave of systemic change , moving across the nation ... '' -RRB- The other immutable truth is that we always need to have somebody we can be really , really angry at
The A.I.G. bonus-takers have pretty much worn out their 15 minutes
In an Op-Ed article in The Times on Wednesday , Jake DeSantis , one of the executive vice presidents of the company 's dreaded financial-products unit , offered up his side of the story about how even though he had never met a credit default swap in his life , he had promised to stay around to help clean up the mess for $ 1 a year and a bonus at the end of the tunnel
And then , suddenly , there was the head of the company throwing him to the wolves , or at least to the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets , Insurance , and Government Sponsored Enterprises
It reminded me of a time when I was in college and got a summer temp job at the purchasing department of a widget factory in Brooklyn
The office manager , who stayed hidden away in his office , had given all the power to one assistant manager , the golden Colin from England , while Colin 's two co-workers , Bernie and Frank , had nothing to do but sit around grinding their teeth
Colin was on vacation when I arrived , and as time went on , it became increasingly clear that he was never coming back
The manager stayed in his office and in denial
The factory started running out of everything , including toilet paper
I invented a new filing system in which all incoming letters and phone messages were divided by the number of times the petitioner had previously attempted to contact Colin
It was a big hit
The next time I came through Brooklyn , the widget factory was gone
But suppose that instead of a small manufacturing firm , it had been an international insurance giant and Colin was selling complicated financial products based on risky mortgages
Trust me , Bernie and Frank would have expected to be paid really big bucks for cleaning up after him
The country needs a new , improved villain
This is not a problem in New York , since we have a state government so awful that we barely noticed this week when prosecutors revealed that the state pension fund scandal is intertwined with a deal to sell DVDs of a movie called `` Chooch .
The governor is terrible , and the Legislature is terrible and we need Eliot Spitzer
Whatever happened to him , anyway
In Congress , the person currently giving the Obama administration heartburn is Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota , the chairman of the Budget Committee
But this is a guy whose biggest claim to fame is that when making a budget speech , he uses so many charts that the Senate gave him his own printing equipment
I am not seeing a great target for pitchfork-waving
Something will turn up
If Tim -LRB- Great Guy !
Geithner 's bank bailout plan works , it will mean quadrillions of dollars in profits for hedge fund managers who are already billionaires , and I can absolutely guarantee you that we are not going to be pleased
Then we can turn on him again
And Eliot Spitzer can become the next secretary of the Treasury
Now that the health care bill is passed , what are we going to do with our time
Lots of other exciting stuff is going on
For instance , on Saturday , all eyes well , some eyes will turn to Springfield , Ill. , where Democrats are going to decide whom to nominate for lieutenant governor
Illinois is a reminder of how important this post is
True , in most states the lieutenant governor has nothing whatsoever to do except hang around in case No. 1 dies or has to resign because of scandal
However , this resigning thing has been happening quite a bit
As in the case of Rod Blagojevich , the former governor of Illinois who goes on trial in June for allegedly trying to sell Barack Obama 's Senate seat
In the meantime , he 's appearing in `` The Celebrity Apprentice .
What do you think would make the residents of Illinois feel worse
If their disgraced former governor failed to impress Donald Trump in a series of fun challenges
Or if he actually seemed to have an aptitude for that kind of thing
In the first episode , Blagojevich carved out a worst-case scenario by letting the food get cold in a hamburger-selling contest while he attempted to convince the customers that he was innocent of all pending corruption charges
But about the lieutenant governor
I have always been particularly interested in this office since I nurture a secret ambition to become a lieutenant governor one day myself
I am really pretty well qualified since I am extremely good at waiting around for something to happen
Gov. David Paterson of New York , a former lieutenant governor who moved up after another scandal-resignation , is now engulfed in all sorts of scandals himself
If he decided to resign , it might open up a window to my long-cherished dream , while also allowing my state to finally beat Illinois in the race for the most dreadful political culture in the country
However , Illinois has not been standing still
It held the primary for state offices at the beginning of February , which is not a time when people are in the optimal mood to go to the polls
The Republicans wound up with a gubernatorial candidate who once called the minimum wage `` government intrusion .
For the Senate , Democrats got the son of a Chicago banking family whose bank seems about to fail
Then there was the No. 2 slot
In Illinois , the candidates for lieutenant governor run all by themselves in the primary
Then the winner is yoked to the gubernatorial nominee on the ticket in November
Would-be lieutenant governors tend not to be household names , so the results of these primaries can be peculiar
-LRB- In 1986 , Democratic voters nominated a 28-year-old follower of the extremely strange Lyndon LaRouche
This happened on a night that the Chicago LaRouchians were busy holding a mock exorcism in front of the home of a religion professor they had decided was a warlock
The gubernatorial nominee , Adlai Stevenson III , was so horrified that he bolted the ticket and ran as a third-party candidate
Everybody lost .
This year , on the Republican side , the lieutenant governor winner was one Jason Plummer , a 27-year-old heir to a lumber fortune
He had virtually no prior political experience but stressed his leadership training as an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserves
Postelection scrutiny showed that Plummer had received his commission three days after announcing his candidacy last September
Democratic voters , meanwhile , picked Scott Lee Cohen , who turned out to be a pawnbroker with a former steroids abuse problem whose ex-wife charged him with failure to pay child support and whose ex-girlfriend once claimed he threatened her by holding a knife to her neck
On the plus-side , the results inspired the Legislature to move the primary to March
Eventually , Cohen was pushed out
The chastened Democrats then announced that the search for a new lieutenant governor would be all about `` transparency , '' and around 250 people applied for the job via a Web site
The party then reduced that number to 116 , then 17 , by a mysterious process that no one seemed prepared to explain
On Saturday , the State Central Committee will make the final choice
Gov. Pat Quinn , who will be on top of the ticket , wants Sheila Simon , a downstate law professor
She is the daughter of Paul Simon , the late , revered United States senator a very big plus in a state with a crying shortage of revered politicians
On the other hand , her biggest previous foray into politics was losing a race for mayor of Carbondale to the guy who just came in fourth place in the race for lieutenant governor , which was won by Jason Plummer
Her main opponent , State Representative Art Turner of Chicago , argues he should be the choice because he came in second to Scott Lee Cohen
I 'm sure whoever wins will be a big improvement
Who says that in American politics , things only get worse
That 's amazing
As George Bush has demonstrated , you can pretty much destroy an entire country and more than a quarter of the public will still insist you did an O.K. job
Even more impressive was the fact that Paterson got a 51 percent positive performance rating in a Siena poll just eight weeks ago , then went careening downward in a trajectory that 's been reflected by other public opinion surveys
On the plus side , he 's now got a rejoinder for critics who claim he ca n't accomplish anything quickly
The most remarkable thing of all is that while Paterson certainly did mess up on that Caroline Kennedy-Senate thing , he achieved this political free fall without help from any big personal scandal
In a state capital where anybody who is anybody is under indictment , he managed to completely alienate the public just by being terrible at his job
Who knew people were paying that much attention
Old-timers in Albany say this is the worst legislative session they have ever seen , which like a prisoner on a chain gang saying he really hates Mondays
Still , things are a mess
Paterson 's aides come and go , his commitments ebb and flow
He has n't been able to rescue the downstate mass transit system , and the budget is being put together in darkened rooms by people you would not trust to do your mortgage closing
Meanwhile , the 32 Democrats who control the State Senate by one vote have discovered that a party with a one-vote majority is exactly as good as its weakest , dumbest and most venal member
This in a group where one guy is about to stand trial for beating up his girlfriend and several others give the impression of being willing to trade their vote for a television someone handed them from the back of a stolen truck
There are lots of reasons for all this chaos , one of course , being overall economic collapse
But another offers , as we like to say , some larger lessons
New York has always been a place where legislative leaders held their power very close
Committees do n't really function , especially in the Senate
The rank-and-file are rather superfluous and the minority party has no reason for existence whatsoever
Truly , they could send up a bunch of ferrets wearing politician masks to sit in their seats and it would be absolutely the same
Until 2008 , Democrats were the perpetual minority party in the Senate
And what kind of people do you think run for a job that involves collecting a paycheck and staring at the ceiling
A handful of sterling characters bent on change and a large bunch of slugs who spend their entire legislative careers trying to raise enough money to build a new softball field or a Cucumber Museum back in the home district
Last year , miracle of miracles , the Democrats won control
Now reformers we are counting here on one hand are engaged in a struggle that bears a remarkable resemblance to nation-building in Afghanistan
Committees are being tutored in how to write actual reports and the other day , to everyone 's great excitement , a committee chair actually held a public hearing during which people were allowed to express negative sentiments
Meanwhile , of course , the economy is falling apart , the New York City subway system is reeling , teachers are facing layoffs
It is not the best possible time for on-the-job training
There 's a moral in there somewhere
Right now in Washington , a great many people would love to lock the Republicans in a closet and keep them there until they promise to behave or hell freezes over
The Democrats are being restrained by their innate belief in the democratic process and the fact that they ca n't figure out how to get away with it
But maybe the lesson of Albany is that it 's just as well they ca n't
Keeping the minority so weak it atrophies is n't really good for anybody
Look at David Paterson
He was first elected to the State Senate in 1985 the same year Mike Tyson went to Albany to score a knockout in his debut as a professional fighter
Paterson is an intelligent guy , but the only way you could have a worse preparation for being governor than 20-plus years in the New York Senate minority would be to spend your entire adult life entombed in a catacomb
The good-government mantra about open process , public hearings , transparent committees , etc. has a point beyond civic virtue
The minority party you 're emasculating today may be the majority tomorrow , and it 's better they not be totally unhousebroken
Particularly if there 's any chance your hero-prosecutor chief executive will have to resign in disgrace after getting caught making dates with a hooker
Really , the way things are going , it 's always better to be prepared
Girls and Boys Together In honor of Women 's History Month , President Obama ordered up the first report on the status of American women since the one Eleanor Roosevelt prepared for John F. Kennedy
It 's chock full of interesting bits of information
For instance , did you know that the median marriage age for college-educated women is 30
I should have figured that out because I can barely think of a single college-educated woman under the age of 30 who is married
But somehow it still came as a surprise
I got married when I was 25 , and I felt as if that was extremely late in the game
Of course , that was in the Mesozoic era , and we had no end of trouble keeping the stegosaurus away from the wedding cake
Additional reports from `` Women in America : Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being '' include information on everything from volunteering -LRB- women do more -RRB- to housework -LRB- go ahead and guess -RRB-
It has some findings I do n't quite know what to do with , like : `` While male students are more likely to be victimized with weapons , female students are more likely to experience electronic bullying .
Electronic bullying is definitely a bad thing , but I ca n't help feeling as though we 're getting the better end of that deal
We 're a long way from the Eleanor Roosevelt Commission on the Status of Women , which was formed when there were no women on the White House staff doing anything more impressive than typing or cake decoration
`` Men have to be reminded that women exist , '' Mrs. Roosevelt tartly told reporters when the all-male list of top Kennedy administration appointees was released
At the time , there were 454 federal civil service job categories for college graduates , and more than 200 were restricted to male applicants
It was perfectly legal to refuse to hire a woman for a job because of her failure to be a man , or to refuse her credit unless she had a husband to co-sign her loan
The median age for marriage for a woman was 20 , and the only job open to most women that involved a chance to travel was flight attendant
We 're in a different world , but this latest report highlights the one glaring gap : working women still make , on average , much less than men
Among people who work full time , women make an average 80 cents for every $ 1 that men take home
There has always been a big difference : in 1979 , women made only 62 percent of what men did
And the report suggests that part of the problem is because of the fact that women tend to pursue the lowest-paying professional careers , notably teaching
Perhaps part of the answer is just to increase compensation for people who devote their careers to education
Perhaps the governors could take that up next time they get together to discuss public employee unions
I 've always believed the other big factor is the strain of balancing work and family
Women do better in school - now all the way to graduate school where they get the majority of doctoral degrees
And young single women tend to make higher wages than young single men
The change comes at the point when many women have to consider their children
Perhaps the House of Representatives could take that up next time they get together to discuss whether they really want to eliminate federally financed child care programs
`` The thing that we 're hoping men will focus on : This is not a woman 's issue ; it 's a family issue , '' said Valerie Jarrett , who leads the White House Council on Women and Girls
That 's really the big story for today
Americans are so used to the fact that women are capable of doing anything that we hardly ever discuss it
It 's been a long time since the leader of NASA said `` talk of an American spacewoman makes me sick to my stomach .
A change that happened later , and the one that 's going to be driving the future , is that women 's ability to succeed in their work life is now a matter of concern for both sexes
The turning point for American women really came on the unknown day when the average American couple started planning their futures with the presumption that there would be two paychecks
In a country where no one has real power without a serious economic role , we entered a time when , whether we liked it or not , all hands were needed to keep the economic ship afloat
Even women who get the opportunity to stay home when their children are young have to be ready to jump back into the work force if their partner is suddenly laid off
A while back , I was visiting a college in Connecticut where most of the students were the first in their families ever to go beyond high school
I was talking with a group of young men and women , and I asked the men how many of them felt it was very important that their future wife be a good earner
All of them raised their hands
Poison Pen Politics We may be embarking on a new era in politics , in which candidates and officials are just as likely to be brought down by bad writing as adultery
Haridopolos is of interest to us non-Floridians for several reasons
One is his wavy blond hair , which curves around his 40-year-old forehead in a perfect dip and may be setting a whole new post-John-Edwards political hair standard
Second , he is an early favorite to win the Republican nomination to take on United States Senator Bill Nelson , one of the Democratic incumbents expected to face a tough re-election battle in 2012
`` We 're only four seats short of a majority , '' Haridopolos told a TV interviewer this week
`` I can be one of those four seats ... and join Marco Rubio as a Florida U.S. senator .
Rubio , who was just elected in November , is a young man with great hair himself
If Haridopolos were to join him in Washington , they would definitely wrest the hottest-Senate-delegation title away from New York 's Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer
But first Haridopolos is going to have to get past some current political unpleasantness about the fact that , a few years back , he got a community college in his district to pay him $ 152,000 to write a book on Florida government
Which , The Associated Press pointed out recently , was supposed to become a textbook but wound up being a single 175-page , double-spaced manuscript stashed away in the Brevard Community College administration office
Furor ensued
Florida journalists pointed out that on a per-copy basis , Haridopolos made 61,000 times more than J.K. Rowling did for the Harry Potter series
I am hoping that the next defining series of political scandals will be about illegitimate prose
You will remember that last year , the leading candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Colorado was torpedoed by charges that he had plagiarized chunks of `` Musings on Water , '' a manuscript that a conservative foundation had paid him $ 300,000 to write
Many of us were most fascinated by the idea that you could get $ 300,000 for musing about water
But the voters were upset about the plagiarism part
The candidate , Scott McInnis , lost the nomination to Dan Maes , a dark horse who arguably turned out to be the worst candidate for a major post in a year when his competition included Alvin Greene , the guy running for the Senate in South Carolina whose economic development program involved getting the unemployed to build action figures of Alvin Greene
Haridopolos 's tome , `` Florida Legislative History and Process , '' is Literary Scandal Two , and if we get just one more we will have an official trend , suggesting that politicians can now get in more trouble with a laptop than a lap dance
This just in
The director of the London School of Economics has resigned following charges that Seif Qaddafi , son of you-know-who , plagiarized chunks of his Ph.D. dissertation
Seif was awarded a doctorate from the London School of Economics shortly after Libya made a huge donation to the school
#NAME?
That was Hannibal , and he is not a big writer
Seif is the one you see on TV telling reporters that his father is in high spirits .
But back to State Senator Haridopolos
He is a dedicated fiscal conservative , and when a reporter asked him whether the taxpayers got their money 's worth from his book , he replied : `` I do n't know
How much are you worth ?
We take this as a sign of incipient testiness
One thing about crimes against writing is that journalists tend to take them more personally than crimes against marriage
But , generally , politicians are protected from their worst literary sins by the fact that nobody actually ever reads the books they produce
Now the community college has agreed to make `` Florida Legislative History and Process '' available on Kindle , and both voters and writers will be able to judge for themselves whether Haridopolos is right when he blames the whole controversy on the fact that he is `` running for office , trying to change America .
Frank Cerabino of The Palm Beach Post gave the manuscript a quick read and reported that Haridopolos `` somehow managed to write a political history of Florida that completely skips over the Florida recount of the 2000 election .
But he was most taken by the section entitled `` Running for Office , '' in which Haridopolos advised : `` It is essential to study the issues before deciding to run .
Other reviewers fixated on another insider tip : `` A cellphone will be essential .
Although I am kind of partial to : `` Most importantly , a candidate should avoid wasting money on useless novelty items such as wooden nickels .
Or wooden prose
I am having a tough time dealing with news that the former president of Countrywide Financial , the mortgage company that did so much to dig the hole in which we all now reside , is making a killing buying up delinquent mortgage loans from the government at bargain basement rates
`` It 's like Jeffrey Dahmer selling body parts to a clinic , '' sniped one of my friends
As Eric Lipton reported in The Times , Stanford Kurland , who was president of Countrywide during the years when it was selling mortgages with temporary low `` teaser '' rates that later turned into permanent unaffordable ones , now leads Private National Mortgage Acceptance Company , known to its friends as PennyMac
In what one company official said was `` off-the-charts good '' business , PennyMac buys troubled mortgages from the government -LRB- which got them from failed banks -RRB- at rates like 38 cents on the dollar
Then it offers the beleaguered homeowners a chance to refinance at far more favorable terms
PennyMac makes money , the homeowner gets an affordable mortgage and the government gets a share of the profit
Everybody 's happy
Except , of course , those of us who helped come up with the other 62 cents on the dollar
Once again , we are reminded that life is not fair
Lately these unfairness bulletins have been coming so fast and furious that there is n't time to get upset about all of them
Prioritization is essential
Given the competition , I ca n't get all that worked up about defaulting homeowners who are looking to the government for a rescue
True , a lot of them got in over their heads betting that housing prices would rise forever
But when it comes to stupid financial decisions to vent about , I 'm sticking with Alan Greenspan
Clearly , not everybody agrees
In Congress , warnings about `` rewarding those who acted irresponsibly '' have bogged down a bill that would allow federal judges to reduce mortgage debt as part of a bankruptcy settlement
A watered-down version is finally coming up for a vote on Thursday in the House
From there it goes to the Senate , whose capacity for watering things down is second only to Category 5 hurricanes
Earlier efforts by the White House to come to the aid of the hopelessly indebted homeowners sparked the now world-famous unfairness explosion by the CNBC reporter Rick Santelli
`` How many of you people want to pay for your neighbors ' mortgage that has an extra bathroom and ca n't pay their bills ?
howled Santelli , in one really impressive display of righteous wrath and misplaced modifiers
He got a ton of publicity for his tirade , a reward that was pretty unfair in and of itself
As a Chicagoan , he was even mentioned very , very briefly as a possible replacement for Senator Roland Burris of Illinois
Although Burris is n't leaving
While we 're talking unfair , can we point out that Burris , who clearly misled people about what he did to pry the Senate seat out of Rod Blagojevich 's hot little hands , is never going to give it back
Illinois officials can yell all they want
A guy who has already erected his own mausoleum with a list of achievements running down two sides of it is not going to let anybody add `` resigned from the U.S. Senate in disgrace '' after `` President of the National Association of State Auditors , Comptrollers and Treasurers .
And can we also mention that Blagojevich has gotten a book deal
True , only six figures , but much better than his other offer , an $ 800-a-month contract to play baseball for the Joliet JackHammers
Have you ever listened to Blagojevich talk
Do you think anybody 's going to want to read a whole book
Phoenix Books , why are you encouraging this person
When I walked into work on Wednesday , the big unfairness issue people were talking about was not Countrywide , or Illinois pols , but the finale of `` The Bachelor , '' when the guy who had just picked his lifetime love on national television returned to the airwaves to dump her for the woman who came in second
`` I had to hurt people in a way , but I feel I did it with integrity , '' said the bachelor in question , whose name is Jason Mesnick
The big objection to Mesnick 's behavior is not the dumping but the fact that he waited until everybody had gathered together for a follow-up special to break the news to his about-to-be-ex fianc e. Mesnick told People magazine that he would have preferred to spare the poor woman the humiliation of being rejected in prime time , but the producers would n't allow it
`` That was part of the deal , '' he said
Unfair , but not making my Top 10
A woman who volunteers to find true love on a reality TV show is really uniquely qualified to get past this sort of trauma
Plus , at least Mesnick made good on his contract
Not enough of that going around these days
Yes folks , over the next seven weeks the amount of time it takes a normal country to conduct an entire national election we will be obsessing about the critical upcoming Pennsylvania primary
The Poconos
Did you know that in the Poconos , some hotels have bathtubs shaped like hearts or Champagne glasses
We actually plan on bringing that up a lot
Of all the things that went right for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday , the Ohio primary win was most impressive
Although Ohioans politely tiptoed out of Hillary 's more boring round-table discussions , they came to believe she could be a president who would fix things , no matter how complicated or frustrating
The mere fact that she had the staying power to keep her eyes open , they felt , was a good sign
In response , the Obama campaign has reportedly decided to do far fewer exciting rallies and lots more mind-numbing round-table discussions in Pennsylvania
I 'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we are all really looking forward to that
Ohio was great
I do n't know how anybody could not love a primary where the big scandal involves gossip about Nafta among Canadian diplomats
And where , in a critical strategic move , Bill Clinton seemed to have been permanently reassigned to a lecture circuit in Chillicothe
The Texas primary results were much closer
The white male vote , which keeps shifting , was split
I 'm beginning to suspect that the white males have realized that they 're either going to be accused of racism or sexism and have therefore made a secret pact to take turns
Once the primary voting ended , there were caucuses to choose a third of the Texas delegates
Given the way the counting is going , we should have the results sometime in 2009
But the Clinton campaign instantly issued complaints about rule-breaking
-LRB- `` Numerous calls have shown that Obama supporters prematurely removed convention packets from polling places ... '' -RRB-
`` The secretary is the first precinct captain who manages to take a leadership role
It 's a little ambiguous to be totally honest , '' said Alexander Baugh , a graduate student and an Obama captain at Mathews Elementary School in Austin
Inside , hundreds and hundreds of voters were trying to squeeze into the caucus , which was held in a child-size cafeteria
There was a great deal of time to contemplate a poster listing CAFETERIA EXPECTATIONS , which were so wise I feel compelled to share a couple with you
Should the Republicans get rid of Michael Steele , their national committee chairman
Truly , this is not a debate that we ever expected to be having
In fact , we never expected to have to remember who the chairman of the Republican National Committee is
The Conversation : Let Them Eat a Little Bit of Cake -LRB- March 3 , 2009 -RRB- Times Topics : Michael Steele Does somebody else want to be chairman of the Republican National Committee
When it comes to good jobs , you 'd think it would come in somewhere around being elected office fire safety warden
The fact that the Republicans , who just picked Steele last month , are having this debate underlines the fact that this is a party with more woes than Job
The still-undecided Minnesota Senate race is almost certainly going to go to the Democrat , Al Franken , although the Republicans are trying to postpone that dreaded day as long as possible
Some are calling for a new election , which requires them to say , with a straight face , that you ca n't let something as important as a Senate seat be decided by just a few hundred ballots
Once Franken does get to Washington , the Senate Republicans will have 41 votes to the Democrats ' 59 , which means the Republicans sole hold on national power will involve getting every single party member to vote together to stop progress on whatever it is the Democrats are trying to do
This will certainly require all the moral suasion available to the minority leader , Mitch McConnell , a man with the natural charisma of an oyster
He 's currently trapped in a feud with Jim Bunning , one of the 41 and a fellow Kentuckian
Bunning , a man with all the natural charisma of an arthritic pit bull , has grown increasingly eccentric even by Senate standards , and McConnell would like him to retire at the end of his term before he does something really strange
Stranger than announcing that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will die within nine months , which Bunning has already done
Bunning is one of a number of Republicans who have shown remarkable capacity for alienating voters even in red states
Meanwhile , there are currently only about three who have demonstrated any ability to get elected in the blue ones
They 're the same people who voted for the stimulus , and Steele has said that he 's open to denying them support in re-election campaigns
Actually what Steele said was : `` I 'm always open to everything , baby , absolutely .
This came shortly after his vow to The Washington Times that the party would stand for conservative principles applied `` to urban-suburban hip-hop settings .
It suggests that one of Steele 's most profound problems is a conviction that the Republican Party can become cool
The Republican Party is not going to be cool
The Democratic Party is barely cool , and it has Barack Obama
The Republicans have Rush Limbaugh , a man whose popularity among Americans under the age of 60 is lower than a share of Citigroup stock
The party was so desperate for a youth patina that it shoved Bobby Jindal into the spotlight when the governor of Louisiana was still a political newbie like a tiny bud that can one day become a peach or an apple
Unless some desperate person yanks it off the tree and stuffs the bud on national television where the whole nation can watch it shrivel , leaving nothing behind but an interesting dispute on how much of Jindal 's story about pointy-headed bureaucrats interfering with Katrina rescues was pure fiction
When the Republicans are n't arguing about Steele they are arguing about Limbaugh
Steele helpfully made it possible to argue about both simultaneously when he went on TV and called Limbaugh 's show incendiary and ugly
-LRB- The content of the debate over this remark seems to center less on whether Steele 's statement was wrong than on whether making it was a good plan .
Then Steele apologized , which made the entire party leadership look like a bunch of wimps
However , this sort of thing happens so frequently these days that it 's possible that apologizing to Rush Limbaugh is a kind of initiation rite for the highest reaches of Republicanism , the way chugging a bottle of vodka will get you into certain fraternities
So is Steele the de facto leader of the Republican Party
Anybody who announces `` I 'm the de facto leader '' probably is n't
Then who is
Rush Limbaugh
He sure is enjoying the attention
`` The administration is enabling me , '' he told Politico
Honestly , `` enabling '' is not the perfect choice of words for a guy with Rush 's background
Let 's float the rumor that it 's George W. Bush
Given the number of secret legal opinions about presidential powers that the Justice Department shoved out during his administration , it 's perfectly possible that one of them established the right of an outgoing Republican president to continue to control his party until a new Republican president is elected
Or until radical Islam is erased from the face of the Earth
Whichever comes first
`` I love you , and I love Arlen Specter , '' Barack Obama told a crowd in Philadelphia last fall
If you happen to be in Pennsylvania , you can relive this incident many times a day , thanks to campaign ads that Senator Specter hopes will save his hide in next week 's Democratic primary
Was the president sincere
If he loves the guy , maybe the voters should take it into consideration
However , I suspect that Barack loves Arlen in the same sense that he loved that crowd , which was in Philadelphia at a Specter fund-raiser
Definitely , he was grateful to them for showing up
And raising funds
But everybody understood that he was not , you know , planning to invite them all home for dinner
The president appreciated Specter 's help in shoving the stimulus bill over the finish line last year , when the senator was still a Republican
And he really did love the fact that Specter 's party switch gave the Democrats what would turn out to be a very temporary 60th vote in the Senate
But he is not so grateful that he is going to go to Pennsylvania to campaign for him and risk adding yet another political carcass to the list of uncharming Democrats who went down the drain while clinging to his coattails
#NAME?
What 's with all these unpleasant people running for office
I have a very clear memory of politicians as lovable rogues
Or at least reasonably affable rogues .
You may have heard that this is not a good year for insiders and incumbents
Last week , Senator Robert Bennett , an extremely conservative 76-year-old Republican from Utah , got dumped by his party
And on Tuesday , Representative Alan Mollohan , who has represented West Virginia for 28 years despite the fact that none of us have ever heard of him , got trounced in the Democratic primary by a state senator
A state senator
West Virginia should pat itself on the back for having state senators who can get nominated for higher office
In New York , nobody would trust a state senator to sign for a video rental
The war on insiders does not seem like all that bad a development
The problem with American politics is less that incumbents are being upset than that they usually can not be dislodged with a crowbar
Senator Bennett won election to a third term in 2004 with 69 percent of the vote despite having promised never to run for , um , a third term
The fabled Tea Party Movement , which is spreading terror in the hearts of trembling incumbents throughout the land , does not seem to be nearly as effective as advertised
It keeps being undone by its own candidates ' tendency to cluster like moths , beating against a targeted insider in groups of four , five or six
Dan Burton , the longtime Indiana representative , just won renomination with 30 percent of the vote in a seven-way primary
You may remember Burton from the Clinton administration when he used his chairmanship of the House oversight committee to attempt to prove his theory that the late deputy White House counsel , Vince Foster , had been murdered
Or from the sex scandal or the missing-votes-to-go-golfing controversy
One less Tea Partier in that primary and Burton would have been forced to return home , where he once staged a backyard demonstration of his conspiracy theory , personally shooting a watermelon that was playing the role of Foster
Still , definitely a bad year for insiders , and there is no question that Arlen Specter is an insider
Do you think there are any 80-year-old , 30-year-incumbent Senate outsiders
That seems almost cruel to think about
The man is old enough to be your great-grandfather
He 's been sitting there for three decades
Let him inside , for heaven 's sake
Joe Sestak , his opponent , is not exactly an outsider himself , being not only a member of Congress but also a former admiral in the Navy
He is also apparently not one of the more cuddly personalities you would ever want to deal with
But we are talking about a race against Arlen Specter , the ego that ate Philadelphia
Sestak has been running smart , nasty ads with the tagline : `` Arlen Specter switched parties to save one job : his , not yours .
Meanwhile , Specter has been implying that Sestak was pushed into retiring from his Navy job at the Pentagon for something more serious than what Sestak claims was resistance to his efficiency reforms
There is no evidence that Sestak 's problems were anything larger than being irritating
But the way the Democrats ' luck has been running lately , if he 's nominated , someone will come up with pictures of him conspiring with space aliens
The helicopter the president has now does not seem perfectly adequate to me
It was built in 1975
It costs a fortune to operate because of the stupendous maintenance required for its aging innards
Really , it 's kind of like sending your commander in chief whipping around in an airborne Plymouth
New presidential helicopters are being built even as we speak
But Obama wants nothing to do with them , even though we the taxpayers have already spent $ 3.2 billion on them
This is because he does not want to appear wasteful
Let 's follow this story
After 9\/11 , the Bush administration ordered up a new generation of presidential helicopters that would be able to whisk the chief executive away from the White House in a crisis
The new choppers were supposed to be less vulnerable to attack , carry more people and have efficient communications with the outside world
All of which seemed supremely reasonable
Lockheed Martin won a $ 6.8 billion contract to build 23 helicopters , which are known as the VH-71
But as so often happens in these matters , things went badly
There were overruns
Specification changes
The Bush administration wanted a helicopter capable of delivering the president to an unspecified safe retreat a little less than 300 miles from the White House
The ability to fly that far without refueling came in conflict with the need to have a helicopter that 's small enough to land on the White House lawn without knocking down trees
-LRB- There had been an experiment with a larger helicopter during the 1970s , with unfortunate consequences to the nation 's First Foliage .
Fast forward to that frugality summit last February
Obama invited questions from members of Congress , and first up was John McCain , who wanted to talk about waste in the Defense Department like the fact that `` your helicopter is now going to cost as much as Air Force One .
McCain complains about Defense procurement no matter who is president
However , that `` your helicopter '' did seem a tad personal
There 's no easier way to get under the president 's skin than to suggest that he 's a wasteful spender
When you 're setting new records for budget deficits on an hourly basis , you do n't want anybody thinking you 're the kind of guy who demands a frilly mode of transportation
So Obama denounced the new helicopters as `` the procurement process gone amok '' and vowed reform
In April , Secretary of Defense Robert Gates helpfully followed through by recommending that the contract be terminated
At this point , we 're in for nearly $ 4 billion if the contract is shelved , and we already have five helicopters complete and undergoing testing
Under the original plan , Lockheed is now supposed to start building a second-stage super-duper model that would allow the president to do in-air teleconferencing and have lots of other nifty features
Representative Maurice Hinchey , a Democrat of New York and a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense , thinks the administration should just build the other helicopters on the simpler first-stage model
Both he and the manufacturer say this would bring the entire project in at the original budget
-LRB- Hinchey would be the first to admit that he is not totally objective on this matter , since his district includes a Lockheed plant that would lose 800 jobs if the contract is canceled
He gets letters from the children of plant employees with pictures of helicopters making sad faces .
The Defense Department wants to deep-six the whole plan and put a new contract out in 2011
This is what has always bothered me about wasteful procurement stories
They end with the Pentagon scrapping a troubled contract and starting over from scratch
We do n't wind up actually saving money
We lose our original investment and spend vast new sums on something that 's theoretically going to be better
The Obama administration completely , totally rejects the theory that the contract is being canceled just because the president does n't want to be caught riding in a helicopter that John McCain says is too expensive
But if there 's something deeply wrong with the VH-71s besides their capacity to embarrass the administration , it is n't immediately apparent
Gates claimed they were `` estimated to have only a 5 - to 10-year useful life .
But the Federal Aviation Administration rates a commercial version of the helicopters as good for 30 years
My vote is for the president to take the tougher political route , and the bigger , safer helicopters that are already online
But maybe he could reduce the order , and let other people who have helicopter privileges take their chances with the current fleet or take the train
And if you ca n't bear to think that the president is doing something stupid , blame it on John McCain
Ever since the North Carolina primary -LRB- which was only last week , although it does feel as though it happened around 1947 -RRB- the Democratic establishment has been sending out word that Clinton has a perfect right to run out the rest of the election schedule as long as she does n't say anything mean about the Chosen One
So she has to campaign on the theme of Barack is terrific and he must be stopped
Not the easiest message in the world , but it 's been working out , more or less
Hillary and Bill and the rest of the gang have been behaving so beautifully in recent days that the party 's leaders have been tiptoeing around as if it was quiet time at the nursery
-LRB- The correct response to her 67-to-26-percent victory in West Virginia , by the way , is supposed to be : `` Well , is n't it nice she 's having a good moment
And so close to Mother 's Day . ''
If she 's only going through the motions , it 's hard to tell
`` I can win this nomination if you decide I should , '' Hillary told her rapturous supporters at her victory party
She went on to congratulate Barack for `` a hard-fought race '' in West Virginia , even though Obama 's strategy seemed to involve pretending it was not actually a state
By primary night his campaign had been lowering expectations so energetically that coming in ahead of John Edwards might have been regarded as an exceptional achievement
If Clinton wants to continue , there 's $ 11 million that says she has paid for the right to go the distance
But is it hopeless
Not entirely
Given the Democratic Party 's innovative method of doling out delegates , all that 's necessary for her to snatch the nomination is : 1 -RRB- A big , big win in Kentucky next Tuesday
Ideally , Obama should be limited to no more than 100 votes
2 -RRB- Oregon , scheduled for the same day , inexplicably breaks off and sinks into the Pacific Ocean
3 -RRB- Puerto Rico , clocking in on June 1 , not only gives Clinton a huge majority , but also manages to become a state in advance of the vote
4 -RRB- Finally , on June 3 as the South Dakota polls open , Thomas Jefferson 's head on Mount Rushmore comes to life and starts shouting , `` You go , girl .
An ambitious scenario , true
But nothing less than we 've come to expect from the most hard-working political family in American history
`` Now , there are some who have wanted to cut this race short
They say , ` Give up
It 's too hard , ' '' Hillary said Tuesday night
This is obviously a fiction
Nobody who wanted her to stop running would ever say , `` It 's too hard .
Hillary loves impossible obstacles
If you were trying to be genuinely persuasive , you 'd go with something like : `` Look , keep spending like this and you and Bill will be down to your last 401 -LRB- k -RRB- by July .
Hillary 's tendency to describe herself and her supporters as `` hard-working '' is getting a little irritating
True , we are all in awe of her energy
True , Barack talks about how he 's been running for president for nearly a year and a half as if that was somehow an undesirable way to spend a considerable chunk of the human life span
But she 's making it sound as if the mere effort of pulling the lever for her instead of him is a demonstration of a superior work ethic
Her voters are `` all of the hard-working men and women who defy the odds to build a better life for themselves and their children .
His , presumably , are living off their grandfathers ' trust funds and refusing to commit to their girlfriends
If , as is projected , Hillary wins Kentucky and loses Oregon next week , are we supposed to think that it 's because people in Portland do n't work as hard as people in Louisville
Oregonians do have a reputation for being kind of laid back , but they do not put billboards on the highway saying , `` Welcome to the State that Likes a Good Nap .
On West Virginia primary night , Hillary listed the folks who need her to fight hard for them because `` they 're fighting so hard every single day , '' and she ticked off everybody from waitresses to coal miners to `` the trucker , the soldier , the vet , the college student ... '' While there are certainly college students working three jobs to get themselves through school , I guarantee you that when it comes to intensive labor , undergraduates as a group do not rank in the top 20
Politicians , unless they are very cynical , tend to believe that their supporters are a lot like them
Barack probably feels his are sort of cool , and unusually smart
Hillary 's folk , then , would be really , really , really driven
`` We know people have to work hard , '' she noted , somewhat unnecessarily
`` Do you support allowing people to carry loaded guns into an American airport ?
Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey asked the attorney general at a recent Appropriations Committee hearing
The proper answer to this question would seem to be : `` Huh ?
However , Eric Holder is a dignified guy , so he settled for `` very worrisome .
Lautenberg has a knack for proposing laws against things that most people would presume were illegal already
You may remember him from such past hits as `` Let 's Not Let Convicted Felons Buy Weapons at Gun Shows '' and `` Do n't Sell Assault Rifles to People on the Terrorist Watch List .
Neither is anywhere near being passed
Or even coming up for a vote
Now he 's got a bill making it illegal to carry a firearm into an airport
It was inspired by the Georgia State Legislature , which recently passed a bill requiring the Atlanta airport to let people with gun permits take their weapons into the lobby , baggage claim , food courts - everywhere short of the point where you take off your shoes
This seems to have begun with complaints from Georgians who keep a licensed pistol or rifle in their cars
`` The greatest concern is when you 're taking someone to the airport , that you not have to roll down your window and throw out your gun when you get close , '' said Representative Katie Dempsey
This is an issue we can all rally around
You do not want people tossing weapons out of their cars willy-nilly
Although another possibility might be to leave the gun at home when you go to catch a flight
Enthusiasm for finding new places to carry guns swelled among Georgia lawmakers , and by the time they adjourned they had also voted to eliminate the no-gun safety zone around schools and to allow concealed weapons in bars if the owner says it 's O.K. The bills now go to Gov. Sonny Perdue , who in the past has expressed concern about the perils of the airport status quo
`` If my wife wanted to carry a gun , if she was going from the parking lot , walking from one of those far parking lots to pick up a grandchild or something like that , I think that 's a good idea , yes , '' he said
Perdue is an excellent example of the bleak worldview of the National Rifle Association and its champions
No place is safe
Particularly parking lots
And everybody is trying to take away your guns
`` President Obama and his allies like Nancy Pelosi ... if they thought they could get away with it , they would ban guns and ban ammunition , '' Sarah Palin told the N.R.A. convention in Charlotte , N.C. , on Friday
It was one of her stream-of-consciousness speeches , dividing the nation into Us -LRB- mothers , hunters , the Tea Party Movement , people who love America -RRB- and Them -LRB- Hollywood hypocrites , animal rightists who are opposed to the swatting of flies , dumb elitist fashion editors , liberals -RRB-
Mostly , Palin complained about antihunting groups , which she portrayed as a major threat to `` our lifestyle '' even though they have about as much political power as the nudist rights movement
Practically everybody in Congress claims to be an avid hunter
Really , I can show you pictures of Chuck Schumer holding a bunch of dead pheasants
Surveys show that most Americans ' attitude toward guns is in the moderate department
O.K. with keeping a weapon in one 's home to protect against burglars
Very not O.K. with that thing about the terrorist watch list
I 've never seen a survey on loaded weapons in bars , but I have a feeling the response would not be enthusiastic
Even in the Old West , saloons made patrons check their guns at the door , but Georgia is not the only state legislature struggling to expand the right to bear arms in the company of the inebriated
`` Essentially the N.R.A. is saying to us , if you do n't support and vote for carrying guns in bars , we will not endorse you
This line of reason borders on lunacy , '' said Joe McCord , a Republican in the Tennessee House
He was arguing for an amendment that would have restricted gun-carrying to establishments that got most of their income from serving food rather than alcohol
The amendment lost
McCord is not running for re-election
To be honest , these days I 'm mainly worried about protecting gun control laws in states that want them
If Tennessee likes the idea of bars full of men bristling with weaponry , and if Georgia thinks it 's important to allow people with guns to lurk around school playgrounds , so be it
Just leave the rest of us alone
However , sooner or later almost everybody has to fly through the Atlanta airport
Can I see a show of hands on how many would prefer that there not be folks prowling around with loaded guns on their person
Perhaps the governor 's wife could take a cab when she goes to pick up her grandson
Whenever life feels dark and difficult , it 's always helpful to think about people who have it worse
Be thankful , for instance , that you 're not one of those co-pilots for regional airlines who make $ 16,000 a year and have to commute from Seattle to Newark
Or a person currently riding in a plane with a $ 16,000 co-pilot in the cockpit
Be thankful you are n't a Chrysler dealer
Or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
Nothing is simple if you 're Harry Reid
This week the Senate was working on a consumer rights bill for credit card holders when Tom Coburn , an Oklahoma Republican , suddenly proposed an amendment to allow people to carry loaded guns in national parks
This would seem relevant only if consumers are worried that they will not be able to use their American Express at a souvenir stand in Yellowstone , and will need to hold up the cashier in order to bring home a much-anticipated geyser refrigerator magnet
Coburn said it was not a `` gotcha '' aimed at forcing the opposition into a corner on a hot-button issue , although when you say you 're offering an amendment `` to protect innocent Americans from violent crime in national parks and refuges '' I think you are kind of stacking the deck
But one way or another , the Democrats clearly did feel trapped into placating the gun lobby
Twenty-seven of them wound up voting yes on an amendment that would arm the tourists and make final passage of the credit card bill more complicated
Including Reid
Then Reid tried to get the Senate to confirm David Hayes , Obama 's nominee to be deputy secretary of the interior
This proved to be impossible even though Hayes was both uncontroversial and a man whose qualifications for the job include having already been deputy secretary of the interior
But no , the Republicans threatened a filibuster because Senator Robert Bennett of Utah was ticked off at the Department of the Interior for canceling the sale of oil and gas leases on public lands in his state
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar told Bennett that he 'd review the leases and could probably reinstate some of the sales , but that it would be a lot easier to do all that if he had , um , a deputy
No deal
This is exactly the sort of procedural roadblock that you need 60 votes to overcome , and people are beginning to ask why the majority leader ca n't handle these things since Arlen Specter 's defection gave the Democrats 60 votes
Do not say this to Harry Reid
For one thing , Al Franken is still in court in Minnesota , and when you ask the Republicans how long they 're going to litigate the results of an election that took place last November , they murmur vaguely about how Rome was n't built in a day
Anyhow , Ted Kennedy is sick and Robert Byrd is 91 and it 's a miracle some of the other ones can find their way to the Capitol
Even if you eventually get all 60 Democratic votes in the same room , how do you get them to do the same thing
You will remember that when Specter came over , Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska instantly said : `` They might have a 60-member majority
That does n't mean they have 60 votes .
Reid must have found the point Nelson was making less chilling than the fact that the senator kept referring to his own party as `` they .
Next week , some supporters of Dawn Johnsen are hoping that Reid will take up Johnsen 's nomination to run the Office of Legal Counsel , the place where the president goes for advice on whether whatever he wants to do is legal
This causes the majority leader 's office to hold its collective head and moan
Johnsen actually is controversial
She was once a lawyer for the National Abortion Rights Action League
Twenty years ago , she put a footnote in a legal brief saying that forcing a woman to give birth to a child against her will was `` disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude .
This has been creatively translated into the charge that Johnsen , the mother of two , believes pregnancy is akin to slavery
Also , she has spoken out so forcefully against the Bush administration 's politicizing the Office of Legal Counsel that Republicans are claiming she 'd ... politicize the office
The inevitable filibuster threats have been made
Since the Office of Legal Counsel does n't actually have anything to do with abortion , it might be reasonable for Reid to expect that anti-choice Democratic senators could throw him a vote on the procedural issues and then oppose the actual nomination , when Johnsen would only need 51 votes and Reid would not require their help
That , however , would presume a degree of consistency that is hard to get in a place that holds one important aspect of credit card reform is giving people the ability to pack a handgun at the Grand Canyon
Sometimes , in election season , I have the feeling that the entire audience at political events is made up of teachers
O.K. , maybe an exaggeration
Democratic political events
And you do see people from other unions , although , unlike the teachers , they tend to come in large buses and wear identical T-shirts
And there will be students , as long as the event in question takes place in a university gymnasium
But the teachers good citizens who are always worried about what the government will do to them next win the political participation prize
During the presidential race , the line in Barack Obama 's speech about how standardized tests should not `` come at the expense of music or art or physical education or science '' often got more applause than getting out of Iraq
All of this takes us to Florida , where Gov. Charlie Crist announced Thursday that he was going to leave the Republican Party and run for the United States Senate as an independent
This happened at a rally where most of the attendees appeared to be teachers
It was , by the way , a terrible rally
It was smallish and disorganized , as befits a candidate whose Republican staff members were in the process of quitting
Crist 's speech was brief , yet there was plenty of room for lines like `` I love my country
I love the fact that we are the land of the free and the home of the brave .
He made it clear that he was running as an outsider , which would make him one of the rare breed of governor-outsiders
This seems only fair since his opponents a former speaker of the State House and a four-term congressman whose district was previously held by his mother are running as outsiders , too
As the whole world now knows , Crist expected he would become the Republican Senate nominee until Marco Rubio , a youthful conservative with Tea Party ties , ran rings around him in the primary race
So there he was in a park in St. Petersburg , a brand-new independent , talking about the home of the brave and introducing his family
Crist seems to have a lot of relatives , who should come in handy now that there 's no campaign staff
And there were the teachers , waving signs and attempting to follow one of the governor 's sisters in a cheer , despite the extreme lameness of `` Crist
Crist !
as a political war cry
They are exceedingly , intensely , grateful to the governor for vetoing a bill that would have tied their pay , employment and even certification to the performance of their students on standardized tests
`` Governor Crist has earned a whole lot of friends within the teaching profession , '' said Andy Ford , the president of the Florida Education Association
Can I digress , people , and say that while it 's important to make teachers accountable , telling them their jobs could hinge on their students ' grades on one test is a terrible idea
The women and men who go into teaching tend , as a group , to be both extremely dedicated and extremely risk-averse
The stability of their profession is a very important part of its draw
You do not want to make this an anything-can-happen occupation , unless you are prepared to compensate them like hedge fund traders
It 's a terrible time for American teachers almost every school district is facing monster budget cuts , and a number of politicians have tried to make them the villain in the story
-LRB- New Jersey 's governor , Chris Christie , recently accused them of using their students as `` drug mules '' to convey information on school budget votes .
If Crist defeats Rubio with the teachers ' support , it will certainly help them push back
But nothing is simple in Florida
If the teachers decide to endorse Crist , it will hurt Democrat Kendrick Meek , a longtime ally who hopes to be the first African-American elected to statewide office in Florida
Meek , who took over his district the year his mother , Representative Carrie Meek , retired , has enough problems already
For one thing , no one outside Miami seems to know who he is
For another , a billionaire named Jeff Greene has just announced he is prepared to `` spend whatever it takes '' to grab the Democratic nomination for himself
It does not seem terribly likely that Florida voters are yearning for a man who made his maxi-fortune betting that real estate prices would drop
But , still , no candidate likes being stuck with a rogue billionaire
Every election season , Florida seems to find a new way to be the center of attention , and the education angle makes this race more important than its effect on the Senate vote count
Meanwhile , all this anxiety can not possibly be good for classroom performance
Keep an eye on Florida
And give the next teacher you see a smile , or an apple
Out of all the problems we have run into in dealing with the giant hairball that is known as the Bush War on Terror , one of the weirdest is the reaction to President Obama 's plan to close down Guant namo
In the rank of threats to public safety , putting the Guant namo inmates in maximum-security prisons in the United States has got to come in way behind , say , making it easy for customers to purchase firearms at gun shows
But to hear the howls coming from Congress , you 'd think the Obama administration was planning to house the prisoners in suburban preschools
`` Terrorists
Coming soon to a neighborhood near you , '' warned a Republican Web video , which mixed pictures of accused terrorists with road signs in states where the G.O.P. predicted they might be sent
In another production , the occasionally loyal opposition resurrected the infamous `` Daisy '' countdown ad to show a little girl picking petals off a flower while the president prepares to close Gitmo
`` To bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come , '' snarled Dick Cheney in his `` no middle ground '' speech
Although really , for the sake of the national mental health , it might be better if we all just ignore the former vice president until he agrees to undergo therapy
Forget I ever mentioned it
Instead , consider the case of Hardin , Mont. , a community of 3,400 people just down the road from the place where Custer made his Last Stand
Lately , things have not been going any better for Hardin than they did for the general
Unemployment is rife
`` You go look at our downtown , there 's many closed businesses ... you 'll see drunks laying in the street
It 's not a pretty sight , '' the head of the town 's economic development authority told National Public Radio
The town built a $ 27 million , 464-bed prison under the theory that other parts of the state would pay to have Hardin look after their problem residents
But it 's been empty since it was declared open for business nearly two years ago , and the construction loans are in default
So , with the town council 's enthusiastic support , Hardin volunteered to take the Guant namo prisoners
It 's unlikely that the White House would have accepted the offer , but it was certainly an example of pluck and you 'd think everyone would give Hardin three cheers
Instead , Montana 's Democratic senators went ballistic
`` We 're not going to bring Al Qaeda to Big Sky Country no way , not on my watch , '' said Max Baucus
`` If these prisoners need a new place , it 's not going to be anywhere near The Last Best Place , '' said Jon Tester
This shows us two things : 1 -RRB- Montana has given itself many nicknames
2 -RRB- Montanans are more easily frightened than Manhattanites
Think about it
New Yorkers live in the top terror target in the nation
This week four new would-be terrorists were arrested for plotting to blow up synagogues in the Bronx
On the same day , President Obama announced that the first Guant namo prisoner to be tried in the United States would be coming to court in Lower Manhattan
Even though it appears the guys involved in the Bronx case were deeply , deeply inept , this is still not the kind of news package you want to hear
But nobody had a fit over it
`` Bottom line is we have had terrorists housed in New York before , '' said Senator Charles Schumer
New Yorkers are n't the only ones who have learned to calmly resist both international terrorism and national hysteria
The small town of Florence , Colo. , has a 490-bed high-security facility known as Supermax , which houses 33 terrorists , including Ramzi Yousef , who led the first World Trade Center bombing ; the failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid ; and Zacarias Moussaoui , convicted of conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks
The local residents seem fine with it , possibly because they know the prisoners spend 23 hours a day in their cells , which are made of poured concrete and furnished with concrete tables and bunks
Nobody escapes from maximum-security prisons
But even if they did , who would you rather have on the lam in your neighborhood a native of Afghanistan whose history suggests an affinity for jihad
Or a resident of your own state whose history suggests an affinity for breaking into people 's houses , tying them up and torturing them
The nation , as we all know , is divided into crowded states and empty states , and I was always under the impression that folks in the empty places were particularly brave and self-reliant
Those of us who live in the crowded parts have many good qualities , but we are not necessarily all of pioneer stock , given the critical importance we assign to restaurants that deliver at 2 in the morning
Who knew we were tougher than Montanans
Pretend you 're the Republican leadership in a smallish state with an open United States Senate seat
The opposition is running a popular , longtime officeholder whose sense of inevitability was shaken by recent revelations that he had referred to himself as a Vietnam War veteran when he is n't one
A -RRB- A well regarded former congressman who is a decorated Vietnam War veteran
B -RRB- A political novice who made her fortune building up an entertainment business that specialized in blood , seminaked women and scripted subplots featuring rape , adultery and familial violence
In which the candidate , her husband and children played themselves
Also , the family yacht is named Sexy Bitch
Well , obviously , you go for the yacht owner
Yes , this week the Connecticut Republican Party chose Linda McMahon , the former C.E.O. of World Wrestling Entertainment , to be their Senate candidate
Her main opponent , the former Representative Rob Simmons , packed up his war medals and went home
`` You ca n't argue with arithmetic , '' he told The New London Day
The math in question is $ 50 million , the amount McMahon claimed she was prepared to spend on her campaign
Connecticut has just under two million registered voters , so maybe she 'll just invite everybody in the state to a nice dinner at Red Lobster
So far this season , the Republicans have offered two new models of their future
One is the Tea Party vision , in which outsiders full of spirit and excitement overthrow the old order
In North Carolina , there was so much spirit and excitement that voters gave the top spot in a Congressional primary to a former drug addict who , according to court documents , once referred to the United States government as the Antichrist and claimed to have personally located the Ark of the Covenant
Meanwhile in Kentucky , primary voters nominated Rand Paul , an ophthalmologist , for the Senate , ignoring the pleas of party leaders to go for somebody less spirited and exciting
Paul promptly got into trouble over his lack of enthusiasm for requiring restaurants to serve black people and his criticism of Barack Obama for being disrespectful of oil-drilling companies
The other model is the one on view in Connecticut : richest bidder wins
For governor , the Republican convention endorsed Tom Foley , a longtime party fund-raiser who was once George W. Bush 's ambassador to Ireland
Foley , whose 100-foot yacht makes the McMahons ' 47-footer look like a dinghy , instantly identified himself as an `` outsider .
Both Foley and McMahon are what political pros like to call `` self-financers .
And while McMahon does n't dwell on her willingness to pay all the campaign freight , her sales pitch is all about financial success
`` People call Linda McMahon a C.E.O. , job creator , business leader
But I just call her Mom , '' says daughter Stephanie in a much , much repeated TV ad
W.W.E. fans all remember Stephanie from the day she slugged Mom in a spat over the Wrestlemania fight card , but we are not going there anymore
In fact , the McMahon organization has been busily scrubbing the Internet of every embarrassing clip it can claim a copyright on
The McMahons made a mint off the formerly seedy , small-town entertainment known as professional wrestling by adding heavy doses of sex , more spectacular violence and a raw tone that bordered on pornography
Linda McMahon now likes to brag that she 's `` created a product that is one of America 's greatest exports , '' as if there 's no question that bringing half-naked women wrestling in pudding to 145 countries was one of America 's greater accomplishments
You can overlook a lot of sleaze for $ 50 million
Simmons distributed a video of Vince McMahon , Linda 's husband , standing in the ring and telling a weeping female wrestler to take off her clothes , get down on her knees and `` dammit , bark like a dog .
Nobody paid attention
On the plus side , ever since Linda McMahon developed political ambitions , the W.W.E. has attempted to clean up the more outrageous elements in its act , sparing millions of impressionable children from the old hints of necrophilia , the abundance of gore and the side stories in which Stephanie lost her blouse in the ring , Vince ran off with a floozy and Linda was sexually assaulted by a competing promoter
`` One good thing has come from her run : Vince McMahon putting out an edict that there will no longer be any cutting of your foreheads with razor blades , '' said Superstar Billy Graham , a retired wrestler who contracted hepatitis from a bloody competitor
`` He has actually stopped wrestlers from cutting their heads with razor blades
This is a big deal !
We take progress anywhere we can get it
There are so many things I do n't understand in this world
Why ca n't we do something about North Korea
Why are all the bees dying
How did I miss knowing about `` Jon & Kate Plus Eight '' until last week
None of these things , however , are nearly as confusing as student loans
There was a time when kids whose parents could n't afford to pay for college just worked their way through
But the price has gone up so fast more than twice as fast as inflation over the last two decades that it 's not an option any more , unless the student in question is planning to be a sophomore through 2020 , or is exploring the possibility of part-time employment in armed robbery
Students borrowed $ 19 billion in private loans last year , from a bewildering array of options
-LRB- Does anybody find it strange that Congress is patting itself on the back for passing a law that protects college students from being offered credit cards , while they 're encouraged to commit themselves to tens of thousands of dollars in education d
Some of the regular private lenders charge as much as 15 percent , although thanks to their dedication to the cause of learning , they are still protected from having their claims wiped away by a bankruptcy court
Others sound as if they 're nearly free , except when they are n't
This week , Jonathan Glater of The Times reported the story of Travis and Stephanie Gay , a couple in Kentucky who had borrowed about $ 100,000 to become special education teachers , under the impression that they could pay their loans off in five years via a special state forgiveness program for people who worked in low-salary service professions
Right after they got married last summer , the Gays got a letter from the state agency that ran the program saying that due to tough economic times , it was canceling most of their assistance and good luck with that debt
And then , there 's the epicenter of the college loan strangeness , the federally guaranteed loans
This is a system that goes something like this : We the taxpayers pay the banks to make loans to students
We the taxpayers then guarantee the loans so the banks wo n't lose money if the students do n't pay
We the taxpayers then buy back the loans from the banks so they can make more loans to students , for which we will then pay them more rewards
Are you with me so far
Wait , I see a hand waving back there
What 's that , sir
You want to know why the government does n't just lend the money out itself
Excellent question
The White House estimates that it could save about $ 94 billion over 10 years if it cut out all the middlemen
And it has the basis of a system in place , since the Department of Education already makes a lot of direct loans to students
How many people out there think that there 's going to be some reason that this turns out to be extremely controversial
Can I see a show of hands
`` Senator Nelson is for the system as it is now , '' said a spokesman for Ben Nelson , Democrat of Nebraska
If you are a big fan of Senate stalemates , you will remember Nelson , the star of such past triumphs as The Stimulus Is Too Big
A great part of Nelson 's resistance has to do with the fact that Nelnet , a big student loan provider , has its headquarters in his state
Last year , after an investigation by the New York attorney general , Andrew Cuomo , Nelnet was one of several student lenders that agreed to a settlement in which it paid a fine and promised to abandon alleged deceptive marketing practices and inducements such as offering free iPods to students who signed on the dotted line
President Obama 's proposal would allow the private companies to continue servicing the loans , protecting thousands of office jobs
However , they would no longer get the loan origination tasks , which involve the world of high finance and high pay
Stunningly , this turns out to be the part of the business that is most popular
-LRB- The chief executive of Sallie Mae , the giant in this line of work , made $ 4.6 million last year
The vice chairman made more than $ 13.2 million plus the use of a private jet .
State agencies like the Kentucky Higher Education Student Loan Corporation , star of the Gay family debacle , also make federally guaranteed loans and they do n't want to get out of the business
They like giving state residents money
They also enjoy using their profits to finance worthy enterprises like loan forgiveness programs that run out of cash
Or , in the case of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Education Agency , spending $ 185,000 to send the board and staff to the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia for golf and spa treatments
It 's time for reform
The system is a mess
Possibly not as much of a mess as North Korea , but right up there with the dead bees and Jon and Kate
What do you think inspired Hillary Clinton to get up Wednesday morning after five hours of sleep for an impromptu dash to look at four presidents ' heads carved on the side of a mountain
Maybe it was as her staff claimed : She wanted to do it just for fun
`` This is a tourist occasion , '' she said firmly as she walked around the Mount Rushmore visitor 's plaza , trailed by a few dozen journalists
Let 's hope so
She deserves a break , even if it consisted of staring up at the 20-foot-long nose of Thomas Jefferson and discussing beetle infestation in the spruce forests with the Native American guide while everyone else took pictures of their friends taking pictures of Hillary
`` I touched her !
screamed a middle-aged tourist
South Dakota , which along with Montana is going to have the Last Primary on Tuesday , is certainly enjoying itself
`` It 's like rocket fuel was spread over the state
There 's so much excitement , '' said the executive director of the state Democratic Party
The people here , like Hillary , can use a good moment
`` We 're going to sing an encouragement song for our presidential hopeful , and also an encouragement song for our people , '' said a traditional drummer at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation , a place where residents have nothing but endless affinity for a woman who just keeps on keeping on
It took more than four hours of driving for Clinton to speak to a crowd of less than 200 , standing in a chilly wind , delivering one of her trademark lists of promises , from turning the Plains states into `` the Saudi Arabia of wind farming '' to creating a presidential tribal liaison
And she would undoubtedly do something about those beetles , too
It 's been a rather tough spring here , weather-wise
Some of us do not believe anything that has the word `` South '' in its name should still have traces of snow on the ground during the last week of May , but there you are
The future is sunlight , and , on Tuesday , the national spotlight
Hillary says that either she , Bill or Chelsea will be in South Dakota throughout the final week
Every day a Clinton sighting
South Dakota 's enthusiasm for the Democratic primary is in part pragmatic
Tourism is the state 's second-largest business after agriculture , and every little bit of publicity helps
The whole nation knows about Mount Rushmore , but do you realize how much stuff comes along with it
Reptile Gardens , petting zoos , glow-in-the-dark miniature golf , Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns , Christmas Village , Bear Country U.S.A. Every time somebody stops to ride a bumper car , pan for gold or visit the presidential wax museum , an angel gets its wings
There 's a serious public purpose at work here , too
When you live in a reliably red state with only three electoral votes and no real fund-raising potential , it takes being overlooked in the presidential races to a whole new level
Hillary 's insistence that the fight is n't over , that there 's still the superdelegates , that Florida and Michigan must be counted , that there 's still a chance she can win , has had the useful effect of making the voters here feel as if they might conceivably have a role to play
So what better way for her to start her day than with a trip to a monument that reminds us how democracy can , at times , produce extraordinary results
And , of course , if you 're trying to wrest the presidential nomination from Barack Obama in two final primaries that he 's expected to at minimum split , there 's something very attractive about seeing the happy ending that followed somebody 's decision to try carving four 60-foot sculptures out of the side of a mountain
`` It was , critics said , a preposterous idea , '' intones Tom Brokaw in a documentary on How They Did It
On the day before Hillary 's arrival , Mount Rushmore had been enveloped in a cold , damp fog that completely obscured the presidents
It was a bracing 34 degrees , but tourists soldiered through anyway , shivering and snapping pictures of each other standing in front of a big cloud of mist
`` Maybe that 's a metaphor of the national climate , '' said Skip Brown , a visitor from Minneapolis who was hoping that when Photoshop got through , the pictures he was taking would bear a faint image of George Washington
`` Earlier , the fog rolled out for a little bit and this cheer erupted , '' said Eric Eickhoff from Wisconsin , whose three young sons were happily watching the documentary
The boys had also loved the presidential wax museum
`` Look , there 's a chipmunk !
cried someone on the plaza as a little rodent scampered across
Everybody went for their cameras
When the idea of visiting Mount Rushmore came up , Hillary must have intuited how perfect it was
Not only the site of an impossible dream come true , but also the place where visitors make the best of the cards they 're dealt , prepared if necessary to stand around admiring an impenetrable fog
`` Listen up
Alabama ag commissioner is one of the most powerful positions in Alabama
Responsible for five billion dollars
Bet you did n't know that
You know why
Thugs and criminals !
This is the start of Peterson 's campaign ad
He rides into the screen on a horse that looks increasingly worried as things progress
Brandishing a rifle , the 64-year-old farmer barks at the camera about his opponent -LRB- `` a dummy '' -RRB- , somebody stealing his yard signs and immigrants being `` bused in by the thousands .
The overall effect is like being cornered at a party by an eccentric neighbor who thinks the garbage man is spying on him for the federal government
It 's extremely popular
There is quite a lot of this sort of thing going on this campaign season
You raise enough cash to film an outrageous ad
Then you post it on the Web and pray that it goes viral , gets mentioned on the cable talk shows and draws in enough donations to put the thing on TV
The trend goes back to Demon Sheep , the legendary ad for Carly Fiorina 's campaign for the Senate nomination in California
It had regular sheep and then cartoon sheep and then a guy crawling around the ground disguised as a wolf in sheep 's clothing
He had on a cardboard mask with red light bulbs for eyes
I believe the message was supposed to be fiscal responsibility , but really , all you got was Demon Sheep
Red eyes
Carly Fiorina
The man who made it , Fred Davis III , then took up the cause of Tim James , a deeply unremarkable Alabama businessman who wants to be governor
To separate James from the crowd , Davis came up with `` Language , '' a 30-second ad in which the candidate stared at the camera and demanded to know why `` our politicians make us give driver 's license exams in 12 languages .
-LRB- The actual answer is : a federal court ruling .
`` This is Alabama
We speak English
If you want to live here , learn it , '' James said irritably
`` We 'll only give the test in English if I 'm governor
Maybe it 's the businessman in me , but we 'll save money .
James 's staff insisted it was fiscal conservatism , not xenophobia , that put their candidate on the driver 's license warpath
But Alabama 's tests are automatically graded by computer , using federally financed software - even the approximately 2 percent that are taken in a language other than English
Given the fact that the state would probably have to defend the policy in court , James 's idea would actually be a new expense
But I can not emphasize how totally beside the point all that is
`` Language '' went viral
`` This is the first election in a long time where the fate of the campaign really did change on a single ad , '' said David Lanoue , chairman of the University of Alabama political science department
James is now one of the front-runners , despite a last-minute crisis involving a rumor that he believed the state was spending too much money on the University of Alabama football coach , who makes $ 4.1 million a year
Which James vigorously denied wanting to cut
It 's the businessman in him
He now has a sequel to the driver 's license ad , in which he says that as a businessman , he feels sex offenders should be required to `` re-register with the state , face to face , every 90 days .
`` Some politicians think that might inconvenience the sex offenders , '' James said somberly
He did not explain who those politicians were , but I suspect the same guys who keep stealing Dale Peterson 's signs
This has been a peculiar political year , even for Alabama
James 's biggest opponent , Bradley Byrne , was attacked by a group called True Republican PAC , which ran an ad charging that Byrne supported the teaching of evolution
Byrne , who has multiple degrees and was chancellor of the state community college system , indignantly denied the charges
But wait , there 's more
It turns out that True Republican PAC was bankrolled by the state teachers ' union , which is angry at Byrne for trying to ban teachers from holding second jobs as state legislators
The Alabama Education Association apparently felt a good payback would be to spend $ 500,000 on a group that encourages people to vote against any candidate who believes there is a scientific explanation for the origin of life
Meanwhile , over in the Fifth Congressional District primary , Les Phillip , a Republican , has an ad that features him telling a story of two young African-American men
One did great , served his country and became Les Phillip , while the other fell in with terrorists and other bad company and became Barack Obama
So far , this is only on the Web , but the campaign is hoping to go viral
As the White House 's unfiltered talking head , Biden is the perfect warning bell to show the White House when things are veering out of control
A kind of mental canary in the governmental mine shaft
As the new strain of flu spread around the country , you could imagine the president going over a mental to-do list : Monitor situation carefully
Make sure the medical infrastructure is working to prepare for any worst-case scenario
Be careful not to scare the public silly so they start cowering in their homes , terrified to get on a plane or even board the subway
`` If you 're out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes , that 's one thing
If you 're in a closed aircraft or a closed container or closed car or closed classroom , it 's a different thing , '' Biden babbled happily on the `` Today '' show
He also assured Matt Lauer that he had warned his family away from subways and that he `` would n't go anywhere in confined places now , '' but unfortunately Lauer did not inquire whether the Oval Office counts as free range
Pursue this line of thinking and suddenly one sick child is shutting down an entire Texas public school system
Or we 're Egypt , where the government is slaughtering all the farmers ' pigs for no good reason , and Parliament members are waxing wroth about public safety flu hazards in a building where , as Brian Whitaker of The Guardian noted , the `` upper house was carelessly wrecked by fire not long ago .
All the current evidence suggests that the new flu being spread around by Americans is no more serious than flu
If the government makes things sound too dire now , it compounds the chance that people might ignore warnings in the future when something worse is looming
But Biden , channeling his Average Joe , was superworried a signal to the White House that it was time to make the flu more boring
The administration quickly ratcheted up its talking points about covering your mouth when you cough and issued a hilarious set of revisionist translations that suggested the vice president was only talking about telling sick family members to avoid planes and subways
Give Biden some credit
Who can deny his right to be immobilized with worry
In fact , one recent survey of 1,039 physicians showed that 63 percent believed `` that there is some level of risk that the swine flu will result in a worldwide catastrophic pandemic .
This information comes from HCD Research , which is based in Flemington , N.J. , and has an unparalleled willingness to race out and survey people about everything under the sun and then send me an e-mail about it
It is thanks to HCD Research that I know for a fact that Randy Jackson is the most popular judge on `` American Idol .
The real key to the physicians ' response is the phrase `` some level .
If you interview a scientist about almost anything , they will tell you there is some level of risk
A while back , I talked to a prominent physicist who carefully explained that although the odds against all the oxygen molecules suddenly racing over to clump on one side of the room were really , really , really high , it could happen
And that if it did , it would be most unpleasant
Anything might happen
The flu could suddenly become superlethal
Or , as we have learned from decades of movie-going , it could be innocuous on the surface but then turn its victims into zombies or giant walking cornstalks
And if any of that happens , I want you to remember that I said it was a serious concern
No politician wants to be caught pooh-poohing a disastrous possibility , no matter what the odds
Look at what happened to Senator Susan Collins of Maine , who bloggers have been decrying for demanding that President Obama strip $ 870 million for pandemic flu preparedness out of the stimulus spending
Now if you were Collins , you could explain that you were just trying to make the package smaller by taking out stuff that had little to do with job creation
-LRB- Or , if you are Michael Steele , the Republican National Committee chairman , you could tell CNN that the stimulus `` had nothing to do with how pigs , why pigs stink , '' which seems a little less helpful .
Nevertheless , this is not the week that you want to be known as the senator who reduced the money for flu prevention
Semihysteria is the easy political path
Anxious Americans appreciate politicians ' eagerness to assure us that we 're not only right , we 're under-reacting maybe being overly stoic when we should be camping out in the emergency room , just in case
Take a deep breath
Wash your hands
And for Joe 's sake , stay out of closed containers
Back before the turn of the millennium , my husband and I wrote a book that contained a lot of lists of the best and worst of the last thousand years
Our friend Alfred Gingold contributed `` Ten Worst Ideas of the Millennium , '' which included flagellants , foot binding , wine in a box , trench warfare and French mime
I was thinking about that list the other day when I was reading about the crisis on the set of `` Jon & Kate Plus Eight .
This is , of course , the reality series about the Gosselins , who used fertility treatments to conceive twins , and then sextuplets
After four televised years of birthday parties and projectile vomiting during flu season , Jon & Kate 's marriage appears to have hit the rocks of tabloid hell
And in the process , although we are only nine years into the 21st century , I believe we have already discovered two of the new millennium 's 10 worst ideas : Fertility treatments that produce enough babies to field an entire team for any sport except tennis
Reality shows about the day-to-day lives of any family that is not headed by an aging rock star
`` One day my kids are gonna Google me , '' moaned Jon , who was caught frolicking with a 23-year-old teacher while Kate was off on a book tour
After weeks of headlines in supermarket magazines , the Gosselins were back on TV this week for the opening of Season Five -LRB- Theme : Sextuplets Turn 5 , Jon and Kate Are n't Speaking -RRB-
It drew a stratospheric cable audience of 9.8 million viewers approximately five times the ratings for `` Mad Men .
This is a tradition that stretches back to 1971 , when Bill and Pat Loud agreed to let PBS film 300 hours in the life of their `` fun family .
By the time the cameras left , the Louds were en route to the cover of Newsweek and Pat had filed for divorce
But Americans have no sense of history and now people are practically begging to be turned into a TV series
A number of the current ones involve very large families one terrifyingly named `` 18 Kids and Counting .
Once science made it so much easier for people to have six , seven , eight babies at a time , it seems right that the world would come up with some occupation that would allow the parents to make a living without leaving the nursery
The Gosselins were reportedly paid at least $ 50,000 an episode , and the family has moved into a $ 1.1 million house on 24 acres in Pennsylvania
I ca n't help suspecting that the audience for `` Jon & Kate '' was initially drawn to the show by the same fascination that compels cable TV to keep producing documentaries about people who weigh 800 pounds
Wow , how does that work out , practically speaking
But reality shows , like any kind of institutionalized gossip , also offer the occasional useful life lessons
One of the most important is that people who embrace 21st-century public life , whether it is lived on Twitter or TLC , are n't allowed to complain about the downside
-LRB- `` I did not sign up for public scrutiny of everything and neither did Kate , '' Jon told the TV cameras grumpily and inaccurately .
Recently , as the marriage continued to fray , Kate 's brother and sister-in-law appeared on CBS 's `` The Early Show '' to denounce the Gosselins and call for a law against children on reality shows
The kids actually seem well cared for and happy , although you can already imagine how the sextuplets will be tortured in the future by reruns of the potty-training episode
The relatives mainly seemed distressed by a family feud and compelled to work out their angst by going on national TV to denounce people going on national TV
My favorite angle is the feminist one
When the world first met the Gosselins , Kate was a more-than-full-time-mother and Jon was going off to work every day as an `` I.T. analyst .
#NAME?
Women tend more toward `` Pilates instructor . ''
Then Jon , who appears laid back to the point of being comatose , lost his job
Kate , who was a tad obsessive in the house -LRB- she once berated her husband for breathing too loud -RRB- , produced several best-selling books and made so many promotional tours that her husband found himself in the role of the major caregiver
By the time they started their current season , Jon 's life crisis was a mirror image of the feminine `` problem that has no name '' that Betty Friedan wrote about in 1963
He complained that he loved his kids but felt trapped
-LRB- `` It 's not what I chose , you know
It was kind of chosen for me . ''
Kate could n't understand why he seemed to resent his `` duties '' when she was out working to support the family
And anyway , he had lots of household help
There 's much to mull
But at minimum , when a listmaker of the future starts compiling the Ten Worst Multiple-Birth-Reality-Show-Meltdowns-of-the-Millennium , the Gosselins will have found a place in history
This all started with John McCain , who proposed suspending the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day in order to give regular hard-working Americans `` a little relief .
In terms of rational policy-making , this is a little bit like announcing that you want to reduce tensions in the Middle East by drilling an enormous hole in Sweden
Economists instantly pointed out that dropping the tax would cost the government around $ 9 billion , possibly add to the already obscene profits of the oil companies and do little or nothing to actually lower the price of fuel
Not to mention that it points us in the exact wrong direction on global warming and energy independence
But , hey , nothing 's perfect
McCain has taken to responding to criticism like this by saying that his proposal is not `` the end of western civilization as we know it .
This is a little weird coming from the guy who spent the early primary season depicting Hillary Clinton 's attempt to get a million dollars for a Woodstock museum as a nuclear strike against the nation 's economic security
The real point of the tax holiday proposal is , of course , to show sympathy for the little guy
It 's been a tough few months for McCain and the smallish folk , what with all those tax-cut plans for the wealthy
And then there was the health care speech when he told people to take responsibility for buying their own insurance policies and `` watch your diet , walk 30 or so minutes a day and take a few other simple precautions '' so they wo n't get sick
We will think of this forevermore as his Let Them Not Eat Cake moment
Sniffing at the Washington elite who make fun of his tax holiday , McCain told Joe Scarborough Thursday on MSNBC : `` You know that the people who live in Georgetown could literally walk to work .
Yes , there is nothing worse than snobs who live close to the office making fun of a gas-tax holiday that would in the best possible circumstances save real hard-working Americans 30 cents a day
The point is particularly piquant when made by a guy who flies around the country in his wife 's private plane
Meanwhile , to make up for the lost revenue , McCain says `` all we need to do is cut out hundreds of millions and billions of dollars of pork-barrel projects .
These are presumably different pork-barrel projects from the ones McCain is going to cut in order to pay for $ 613 billion in permanent tax cuts
Hillary Clinton , who jumped on the gas-tax holiday bandwagon posthaste , wants to pay for it with a windfall profits tax on oil companies
This makes her plan much more fiscally responsible
Not only does she balance the books , she turns a proposal that was unlikely to ever get passed into one that could not make it through the Senate if Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy both rose from the dead and hand-carried it there
There are few things more satisfying than taking a strong stand in favor of something that is never going to happen
Free pander
`` I find it , frankly , a little offensive that people who do n't have to worry about filling up their gas tank or what they buy when they go to the supermarket think it 's somehow illegitimate to provide relief for ... millions and millions of Americans , '' said Clinton the other day
She rammed the point home with a photo-op at a gasoline station while , as The Washington Post pointed out , her own fleet of S.U.V. 's ran their engines patiently right out of camera range
Barack Obama thinks this is all incredibly stupid
He is certainly not pander-phobic himself
-LRB- See : Nafta , promise never to raise middle-class taxes .
But he drew a line on this one
In Indiana , his new ad calls it `` a short-term quick fix that we can say we did something even though we 're not really doing anything .
All this actually tells us something about the Democratic candidates , which has nothing to do with fuel prices
Obama believes voters want a sensible , less-divisive political dialogue , that the whole process can become more honorable if the right candidate leads the way
Hillary really does n't buy that
She has principles , but she does n't believe in principled stands
She thinks that if she can get elected , she can do great things
And to get there , she 's prepared to do whatever
That certainly includes endorsing any number of meaningless-to-ridiculous ideas
-LRB- See : her bill to make it illegal to desecrate an American flag .
On Tuesday , root for the Democrat whose vision of the political process comes closest to matching your own
And I do not want you to be swayed by the fact that Hillary and Barack are finally having a policy debate , and it 's about the dumbest idea in the campaign
There seems to be a strong sentiment in Congress that the only constitutional right suspected terrorists have is the right to bear arms
`` I think you 're going too far here , '' said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday
He was speaking in opposition to a bill that would keep people on the F.B.I. terrorist watch list from buying guns and explosives
Say what
Yes , if you are on the terrorist watch list , the authorities can keep you from getting on a plane but not from purchasing an AK-47
This makes sense to Congress because , as Graham accurately pointed out , `` when the founders sat down and wrote the Constitution , they did n't consider flying .
The subject of guns turns Congress into a twilight zone
People who are perfectly happy to let the government wiretap phones go nuts when the government wants to keep track of weapons permits
A guy who stands up in the House and defends the torture of terror suspects will nearly faint with horror at the prospect of depriving someone on the watch list of the right to purchase a pistol
`` We make it so easy for dangerous people to get guns
If it 's the Second Amendment , it does n't matter if they 're Osama bin Laden , '' said Paul Helmke , the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
Graham wanted to make it clear that just because he does n't want to stop gun purchases by possible terrorists , that does n't mean he 's not tough on terror
`` I am all into national security
... I want to stop reading these guys their Miranda rights , '' he said
The Obama administration has been criticized by many Republicans for having followed the rules about how long you can question a terror suspect before you read him his rights
These objections have been particularly loud since the arrest of Faisal Shahzad in the attempted Times Square bombing
No one seems moved by the fact that Shahzad , after being told that he had the right to remain silent , continued talking incessantly
`` Nobody in their right mind would expect a Marine to read someone caught on the battlefield their rights , '' Graham said
Terror threats make politicians behave somewhat irrationally
But the subject of guns makes them act like a paranoid mother ferret protecting her litter
The National Rifle Association , the fiercest lobby in Washington , grades every member of Congress on how well they toe the N.R.A. line
Lawmakers with heavily rural districts would rather vote to legalize carrying concealed weapons in kindergarten than risk getting less than 100 percent
The Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on `` Terrorists and Guns : The Nature of the Threat and Proposed Reforms , '' concerned a modest bill sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey
It would allow the government to stop gun sales to people on the F.B.I. terror watch list the same way it does people who have felony convictions
Because Congress has repeatedly rejected this idea , 1,119 people on the watch list have been able to purchase weapons over the last six years
One of them bought 50 pounds of military grade explosives
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City and his police commissioner , Ray Kelly , dutifully trekked down to Washington to plead for the bill on behalf of the nation 's cities
The only thing they got for their trouble was praise for getting the city through the Times Square incident in one piece
And almost everyone had a good word for the T-shirt vendor who first noticed the suspicious car and raised an alert
Really , if someone had introduced a bill calling for additional T-shirt vendors , it would have sailed through in a heartbeat
Gun legislation , not so popular
Lautenberg 's bill has been moldering in committee , and that is not going to change
`` Let me emphasize that none of us wants a terrorist to be able to purchase a gun , '' said Senator Susan Collins of Maine , who nevertheless went on to argue against allowing the government to use the terrorist watch list to keep anyone from being able to purchase , um , a gun
`` Some of the people pushing this idea are also pushing the idea of banning handguns , '' said Graham , darkly
`` I do n't think banning handguns makes me safer .
The terrorist watch list is huge , and some of the names on it are undoubtedly there in error
The bill would allow anyone denied the right to purchase a firearm an appeal process , but that would deprive the would-be purchaser some precious gun-owning time
Before we subject innocent Americans `` to having to go into court and pay the cost of going to court to get their gun rights back , I want to slow down and think about this , '' said Graham
Slow is going to be very slow , and the thinking could go on for decades
`` Just because you 're wearing high-heeled sexy shoes does n't mean you should have a baby , '' said Neil Cole
The Conversation : Who Will Replace Souter
-LRB- May 6 , 2009 -RRB- I believe we can all rally around this sentiment
Cole is the head of Iconix , a company that makes the Candie 's line of teen fashions
A couple of years ago , under fire from critics who accused him of dressing high schoolers like tarts , he established the Candie 's Foundation , which fights teen pregnancy
And there he was on Wednesday introducing the foundation 's new teen ambassador , Bristol Palin
Palin is not in any way to be confused with the new Candie 's brand spokesperson , Britney Spears
Bristol is the one endorsing abstinence ; Britney is the one promoting `` hot bottoms .
Can I say upfront that this is a terrible , terrible idea
Not the sexy clothes
Perhaps in the best of all possible worlds we would not have 12-year-olds dressing as if they were auditioning for a leading role in `` Girls Gone Wild , '' but history suggests that resistance is futile
There was one minute back in the late 1960s when the women 's movement tried to convince everyone that being liberated involved wearing sensible shoes
It was not a success
Really , you should never try to impose feminist principles that even Gloria Steinem refuses to pay attention to
But surely , when it comes to combating teen pregnancy , the Palin family has done enough damage already
What worse message could you send to teenage girls than the one they delivered at the Republican convention : If your handsome but somewhat thuglike boyfriend gets you with child , he will clean up nicely , propose marriage , and show up at an important family event wearing a suit and holding your hand
At which point you will get a standing ovation
Now a single mom on the outs with the father of her baby , Bristol wants a new kind of happy ending
`` I just want to go out there and promote abstinence and say this is the safest choice , '' she said on `` Good Morning America .
`` It 's not going to work , '' said her ex-boyfriend , Levi Johnston , in a dueling early-morning interview
If you have ever watched Levi Johnston on TV for two minutes you will appreciate how terrifying it is when he has the most reasonable analysis of a social issue
Because Bristol 's own philosophy seems , at minimum , tentative , it 's hard to tell whether she believes that cheerleading for abstinence should be coupled with education about birth control methods
She and Levi used condoms , except when they did n't
Her mom has said in the past that she opposes `` explicit '' sex education , which kind of sounds like ... sex education
And while encouraging kids to wait is obviously fine , the evidence is pretty clear that abstinence education is worse than useless
Texas , where virtually all the schools teach abstinence and abstinence alone , is a teen pregnancy disaster zone
`` It 's had one of the highest rates for as long as I can remember , '' said David Wiley , a professor of health education at Texas State University
Bristol appeared Wednesday at Event to Prevent , a teen town hall , during which she said very little except to assure her audience that having a baby is no picnic
-LRB- `` You have so much responsibility
It 's just hard work all the time . ''
It 's hard not to suspect that for her , being the anti-pregnancy ambassador is just a good excuse to get out of Wasilla
But where were her parents
Her mom ought to know by now that the only way to protect your family from becoming tabloid fodder is to make it clear to the media that the kids are absolutely , totally off limits
You ca n't put them on network TV one day and then complain the next when a reporter asks whether the baby 's other grandmother is still facing drug charges
`` We contacted the governor 's office , and the next thing we knew Todd Palin was on the phone and said Bristol wanted to talk , '' Cole said , explaining how his ambassador had been recruited
And indeed , there was Todd , beaming as his beautiful daughter stood in front of about 50 shrieking photographers , smiling a fixed smile
We have seen so many bad plans about breaching the public-private divide lately
Elizabeth Edwards 's book tour
Eliot Spitzer 's media blitz
-LRB- Can we point out here that when 51 percent of the public tells pollsters that they would rather have Spitzer as governor than the current incumbent , David Paterson , that is not the same as saying they would like Spitzer to come back
You could probably get 51 percent of the voters to say they would rather have Vlad the Impaler than David Paterson
Or at least 30 .
But when a teenager goes out on this kind of mission , you have to wonder where her parents ' heads were
What does this say about Sarah Palin 's judgment
Although we 've sort of answered that question before
A thousand years ago , popular birth control methods in the Western world included spitting into the mouth of a frog , eating bees and wearing the testicles of a weasel
In C rdoba , Spain , which was supposed to be on the scientific cutting edge , women were told to leap up and down vigorously after sex , and then jump backward nine times
This is by way of saying that on Sunday we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill
We live in troubled times
But let 's give thanks that we avoided the era of the weasel testicles
Like a great many of our anniversaries , this one is a movable feast
The Food and Drug Administration actually gave G.D. Searle the go-ahead to market the first oral contraceptive -LRB- not counting bees -RRB- on June 23 , 1960
But the F.D.A. announced its intention to approve the pill on May 9 , which also happens to be Mother 's Day this year and , therefore , too good to resist
This is a story about science , and obviously sex
But it 's also a saga about getting information
American women had been limiting the size of their families long before the pill came along
In the 19th century , the fertility rate was plummeting , and ads for everything from condoms to douching syringes helped keep urban newspapers solvent
My favorite factoid from this period is that a company called National Syringe offered a model with changeable nozzles so it could be used for both birth control and watering plants
What women did not have was the ability to figure out what actually worked
The powers-that-be believed that the only appropriate form of birth control was celibacy
`` Can they not use self control ?
demanded Anthony Comstock , the powerful crusader for the Sexual Purity campaign
`` Or must they sink to the level of the beasts ?
Comstock managed to get New York authorities to grant him the powers to both arrest and censor , and he bragged that he sent 4,000 people to jail for helping women understand , and use , birth control
He seemed to take particular pleasure in the fact that 15 of them had committed suicide
One of his targets was Margaret Sanger , a nurse who wrote a sex education column , `` What Every Girl Should Know , '' for a left-wing New York newspaper , The Call
When Comstock banned her column on venereal disease , the paper ran an empty space with the title : `` What Every Girl Should Know : Nothing , by Order of the U.S. Post Office .
Sanger was the first person to publish an evaluation of all the available forms of birth control
As a reward , she got a criminal obscenity charge
She fled to Europe to avoid going to jail , and her husband was imprisoned for passing out one of her pamphlets
In the end , he got 30 days , and Anthony Comstock got a chill during the trial that led to a fatal case of pneumonia
It was the courts that eventually gave women the right to not only have access to birth control , but also information that told them what was available and how to use it
-LRB- The first big victory had the memorable name of U.S. v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries .
Sanger , meanwhile , helped bring together the wealthy donors and brilliant researchers who would bring forth the first effective oral contraception
`` There 's gonna be some changes made right here on Nursery Hill , '' sang Loretta Lynn
`` You 've set this chicken your last time 'cause now I 've got the pill .
And we lived happily ever after
Except that over the last 20 years , protests from the social right have made politicians frightened of mentioning birth control and school boards frightened of including it in the curriculum
Cecile Richards , the president of Planned Parenthood , remembers getting a pretty thorough grounding in sex and the ways to prevent pregnancy when she was in school back in the days when the raciest thing you saw on television was Rob and Laura Petrie waking up in twin beds on the opposite side of the room
`` Kids growing up today watch ` Gossip Girl ' and all these shows where every teenager is having sex every day and now we do n't teach sex education in school , '' she noted
Even though 100 million women take the pill every day , to the great relief of 100 million or so of their partners , the terror of mentioning birth control is so great that the humongous new health care reform act has managed to avoid bringing it up at all
Advocates are hoping that when the regulations are finally written , they will require health insurance to cover birth control pills like any other drug
But nobody is sure
`` If the administration would announce tomorrow that all birth control would be free for every woman in America , I think the health care plan would gain 30 points in popularity overnight , '' said Richards
Not a much-valued characteristic these days
Really , not all that cool since somewhere around the Eisenhower administration
Or maybe Grover Cleveland
We just went through a whole election in which everybody wanted to be a maverick
And Arlen Specter had been a Democrat for only six days before he was on `` Meet the Press '' denying that he had ever told President Obama that he would be loyal
`` I did not say I would be a loyal Democrat
I did not say that , '' Specter insisted
Just to make his lack of loyalty crystal-clear , he added : `` And last week , after I said I was changing parties , I voted against the budget .
This was only one of Specter 's introductory displays of independence , which also included voting against a plan to help homeowners in bankruptcy court that was greatly desired by the leaders of his new party , and telling The New York Times that he hopes Republican Norm Coleman wins the Minnesota Senate seat
This is the election that is still unresolved except for the part in which Democrat Al Franken got more votes
What an opening
If he keeps it up at this rate , by the 2010 campaign season , Specter will be so helpful that he 'll have tied up Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and left him buried in the desert surrounded by fire ants
After all this , the Democrats were so angry that they stripped their newest member of his all-important Senate seniority , leaving him without a good committee post or a place to stash all of his old staffers
By midweek , Specter looked a little like Dickens 's Little Nell , wandering he knew not whither
Although to be honest , in the ranks of things you 'd want to shed a tear over , Arlen Specter in exile falls only slightly ahead of the firing of Andrew Dice Clay on `` Celebrity Apprentice .
Specter said he voted against the Democratic budget on the grounds that it contained rules that would allow Obama to pass his health care plan with only 51 votes
Specter has his own far superior ideas for health care reform that , he said on `` Meet the Press , '' emphasize `` exercise and diet and , and makes premiums lower on that basis .
It is a plan so excellent that it 's a wonder Arlen Specter is not the president of the United States at this very moment
Still , you might think that he 'd want to give the guy who carried his state by 11 percentage points a little bit of help on this one
Despite everything , Specter 's sojourn in the Democratic doghouse did not last very long
By the end of the week , the party leadership was rearranging things to give him a face-saving Senate subcommittee to chair
This is pretty much par for the course
After all , Joe Lieberman ran for re-election last year as an independent and then campaigned tirelessly for John McCain
Really , he did everything short of picketing the inauguration , and there was nary a wrist-slap
This seems wrong
Bucking your party ought to mean accepting the risk of punishment
After all , you did sign up with the team , which is supposed to work together and get things done
Unfortunately , sometimes the team will go places where a man or woman of good conscience can not follow
And then you will stand alone , a Profile in Courage
And we will cheer
But the bravery part is all about facing up to the consequences
Lieberman was outraged when the Democratic voters in Connecticut responded to his principled stand in favor of the war in Iraq with their principled decision to find a new candidate for his seat
Specter was beside himself when the Republican voters seemed ready to toss him out of office for his vote in favor of the Obama stimulus plan , so he switched parties
Then he made it clear that he expected to reserve his right to be totally unreliable as a Democrat and be rewarded for it with a powerful subcommittee chairmanship currently in the possession of another Democratic senator
President Obama , he reported to his new colleagues , told him that `` he would seek my advice , especially when I disagree with him .
We are not sure this actually happened , since Specter 's memory of what assurances he got during the party-switching period seem to be at odds with those of the rest of the world
His hearing is not what it once was
Perhaps the president said , `` I will have you over to watch Harvard play Yale , '' and Specter heard , `` I will invite you over after every betrayal .
But it does fit in with Specter 's theory , which is that his propensity to do whatever he wants should not only be tolerated , but constantly rewarded
That 's not character
It 's self-indulgence
The past seven years have given us some helpful hints on what we want to avoid in the next president
I m starting to make a list
Whenever you read that a candidate values loyalty above all else run for the hills
Loyalty is a terribly important consideration if you re choosing a pet , but not a cabinet member
How about if this time we try for a president who would recruit gifted people who can accomplish great things , as opposed to a room full of dopes who will never write tell-all memoirs
Loyalty is on our mind today because of the indictment of Bernard Kerik , the really , really loyal former New York City police commissioner
Rudy Giuliani , who was entirely responsible for Kerik s meteoric rise from mayoral chauffeur , has not seemed to draw any great lessons from his prot g s spectacular fall
Giuliani did say that he made a mistake in not clearing him effectively enough , which sounds as if he is kicking himself for not sending a second squad of detectives out to interview Kerik s neighbors
In fact , the lapse in the clearing procedure involved Giuliani ignoring the city investigations commissioner when he arrived with the news that Kerik was involved with a company suspected of having ties to organized crime
Giuliani claims not to remember this moment in the vetting process , which seems sort of strange for a guy who made his career prosecuting the mafia and those-who-had-ties
The former mayor does , however , have a bad memory
We know this because he obtained an annulment of his 14-year-long first marriage on the grounds that he had forgotten that his wife was his second cousin
On the terrible day of Sept. 11 , 2001 , Kerik was with the mayor as Giuliani left the disaster at ground zero , searching for a telephone to contact the outside world
Also loyally at the mayor s side were three deputy mayors , the fire commissioner and the head of the Office of Emergency Management
They all walked north , in a little command-clump , intent on the central mission of protecting their main man
You would have thought , really , that the protecting job could have been done by youthful aides while the alleged leaders tended to the fire , emergency and police problems downtown
But if anybody had stayed behind , focusing on the wider city rather than the man who had plucked them all out of obscurity and given them everything they had , how would he know they were loyal
The ties forged in that clump of commanders catapulted them into extremely well-paying jobs in the firm of Giuliani Partners and convinced the mayor to propose Bernard Kerik as the next chief of the Department of Homeland Security , a position for which he was approximately as well qualified as I am to be quarterback for the New England Patriots
Giuliani had a great police commissioner , Bill Bratton , during his first term when all the critical crime-fighting apparatus for which the administration became so famous was put into place
But Bratton was not particularly loyal , in the sense that he did his job well , then enjoyed taking credit for it himself
And so he was gone
There is an entire chapter in Rudy Giuliani s famous book Leadership that is titled Loyalty , the Vital Virtue
In it , he pats himself on the back for making a man named Robert Harding the city s budget director even though he knew the ever-feckless news media would point out that Harding s father , Ray , was the chairman of the city s Liberal Party , whose endorsement had done a great deal to get Giuliani elected mayor
I wasn t going to choose a lesser candidate simply to quiet the critics , he said
For some mysterious reason , the book skips over a much better loyalty lesson involving the very same family
Giuliani demonstrated his loyalty to Ray Harding , giver of the Liberal Party endorsement , not only by giving his qualified son a good job , but also by turning over the New York City Housing Development Corporation to another son , Russell , who wound up embezzling more than $ 400,000 for vacations , gifts and parties
We will not even go into the pornography part , except to point out in his defense that of the 15,000 sexually explicit images found on his computer , only a few were of children
The Giuliani version of loyalty , which bears a terrifying resemblance to the George W. Bush brand of loyalty , is entirely about self-protection
An administration safe beneath the loyalty cone does not have to worry much about leaks to the press , or even whistle-blowing
People can screw up , or fail to achieve their missions , knowing the guy at the top will protect them as long as they put his well-being ahead of anything else
When disaster strikes , the whole world may be falling apart , but they will all be clumped together , walking north
What Everything Means I ca n't stop thinking about the elections
Last weekend I saw `` 127 Hours , '' and all I could think about was that this was a metaphor for the lame-duck session of Congress
`` 127 Hours '' is the hot new movie about Aron Ralston , a real-life hiker who went for a jaunt through the Utah wilderness and fell into a hole , where his arm was pinned under an 800-pound boulder for , um , 127 hours
Then he sawed off his arm with a really , really dull knife , rappelled 60 feet to the canyon floor and walked several miles in the midday desert sun before being found by a family of Dutch tourists , who gave him water and two Oreo cookies
So I just sat there free-associating about politics
The boulder was the deficit , and the arm was the Bush tax cut for the wealthy
While he was trapped , Ralston was tortured by a lot of buzzing , stinging and biting insects , all of whom resembled Mitch McConnell
If you get obsessive enough , everything you hear carries a postelection message
The Carnival Cruise ship is adrift
And is n't America exactly like a boat full of vacationers who thought they were on a luxury trip to the Mexican Riviera
Then , all of a sudden , they 're standing in line for Spam and hoping somebody will tow them back to San Diego
No wonder Ohio turned red
The moral of the George W. Bush TV interview this week with Matt Lauer involves the fact that it got terrible ratings
This could mean that the public wants to forget all about the first eight years of the 21st century and just blame Barack Obama for wrecking the economy
Or that while the country is divided in so many ways , we 're still one big family when it comes to our national exhaustion with the previous president
Although if people had known he was going to tell that story about how his mother put the miscarried fetus in a jar and made him look at it , perhaps more viewers would have tuned in
Or maybe not
The whole interview was confusing
When the first George Bush was president , the White House seemed to go out of its way to drop hints that Barbara Bush was pro-choice
Did they know about the fetus jar story
Also , did n't it seem as if George W. was way more upset about Kanye West calling him a racist during Katrina than the fact that he invaded the wrong country
And did you notice that Bush kept calling Kanye `` Conway ?
But I digress
To be honest , the interview did not get bad ratings because of the national malaise
It got bad ratings because it was up against `` Dancing With the Stars .
In which Bristol Palin has made it to the final four
Once again , traditional Republicans were run over by the grizzly contingent
Bristol is not very good as a performer , but , as her mother put it , `` She 's never danced before , and here she 's learning the steps really quickly .
Bristol is up against Jennifer Grey of `` Dirty Dancing '' fame , who 's been doing great even though she 's 50 with a bad knee and a plate and four screws in her neck
If Bristol wins I think we can take the whole thing as a metaphor for Russ Feingold 's Senate race in Wisconsin
Finally , when popular culture ca n't explain what 's befallen us , there 's always historic reference
David Kennedy of Stanford University theorized in a postelection Op-Ed in The Times that we 're reliving the late 19th-century Gilded Age , when all the presidents proved to be hapless , Congress switched back and forth madly as voters threw the bums out over and over again , and the country experienced a raft of critical problems and impending crises , combined with `` abject political paralysis .
The Gilded Age also happened to be the time when the media was wildly fragmented , with thousands of small , underfinanced local newspapers all yapping frantically to try to make an impression
This produced a climate of semihysterical sensationalism , along with some of my all-time favorite headlines
One about Gov. Oliver Morton read : `` A Few of the Hellish Liaisons of , and Attempted Seductions by , Indiana 's Favorite Stud-Horse .
This sounds so familiar that I am pretty sure Professor Kennedy is right
So the message is that we should hunker down and wait for the next Teddy Roosevelt to come to our rescue
And then it will almost be time for Prohibition
On the other hand , the Gilded Age had Mark Twain and Eugene Debs and Lillian Russell , who exemplified a beauty standard that extolled fleshy women
A Virginia City man writing to a friend about a tightrope walker named Ella LaRue said admiringly : `` Great ` shape ' - more of it than I ever saw in any female
Immense across the hips - huge thighs .
Maybe it wo n't be so bad after all
In troubled times , it is important to try to maintain a certain level of serenity
Right now we citizens have quite a lot on our plate and there is no reason to go completely crazy about the least little thing
For instance , at that right-wing tea-party rally in Washington last week , it seemed a little weird when Jon Voight warned the crowd that if President Obama was n't stopped , the United States would wind up with a health care system like New Zealand 's
At the time , I could not help wondering what New Zealand ever did to Jon Voight
Also if he 's made any movies since the one where he got eaten by a really big snake
But you did not see me getting all carried away about it
I am not even going to rant about the fact that when Sean Hannity reported on the rally for Fox News , he marveled at the huge turnout
Which actually did not exist but sure seemed to be there when he showed film lifted from an earlier and much larger protest
Hannity acknowledged an `` inadvertent mistake '' in the last 10 seconds of his show on Wednesday
And , O.K. , I was kind of ticked off
I work for a paper that rends its garments and apologizes endlessly whenever we make an error
I would like to see Fox look at least remorseful
But all we got was a sort of amused lift of the eyebrow
And I am staying calm about the health care bill , which is so dense that getting upset feels like weight lifting
I have a friend who begins every conversation with a 10-minute health care rant , but he is writing a book about it
People writing serious books need to work themselves up or they will go back to bed and never get up again
Happily , I am currently writing a book about President William Henry Harrison , about whom no one has been able to get exercised since 1841
Until this week , all health care eyes were on the House of Representatives , which I always find strangely calming
While members of the House have been known to produce some really terrible legislation , they generally act in groups the Blue Dog Coalition and the Black Caucus and the Rural Caucus and the Progressive Caucus and the ever-popular Friends of Canada Caucus
That gives you a sense that whatever misbegotten thing is happening , it is not totally arbitrary
Although , of course , random individuals may sometimes add , say , a $ 50 million appropriation for repaving the parking lot of a historic shopping mall in Wilkes-Barre
Now the action has moved to the Senate , where every single moderate appears to think that he\/she can hold the entire legislative process hostage until everyone else falls into line
Unfortunately , the ransom does n't usually come in a simple form like pork , although Mary Landrieu of Louisiana has been known to perk up her ears at the sight of a really good parking lot
For a long while it seemed as if the Senate health care bill would be dictated by Olympia Snowe of Maine
This was somewhat disconcerting since Snowe is a Republican from a state with less than 1.3 million residents who are older , sicker and much more bothered by moose incursions in their backyards than those in most other parts of the country
But , to be honest , we could do much worse
In fact , we already have since this week the Senate 's health care bill seems to be under the thumb of Nebraska 's Ben Nelson
Since Nelson is a Democrat from a red state , if he decided to vote against the health care plan , I would greet the news with perfect equanimity
But he is threatening to stop the bill from coming up to a vote entirely , unless it meets his criteria , which include keeping the House section on abortion and not keeping the House section on a public option
Did you know that George W. Bush used to call Nelson `` The Benator ?
Do we want the entire national agenda being dictated by The Benator
I have to acknowledge upfront that I have never been to Nelson 's home state
Long ago , when Bob Kerrey had Nelson 's seat , I wrote something that offended someone in Kerrey 's press office who told me that I was banned from Nebraska forever
I do n't think the edict is still in effect , but you have to be careful about these things
Still , I have always heard Nebraska is full of lovely people , even if there are only about 1.7 million of them
Also , it has a unicameral Legislature , which means there is no senate
And that is a swell idea that we should all consider emulating
Somewhere between the time when it seemed as if Olympia Snowe was writing the health care plan and the moment when Ben Nelson grabbed the reins , it looked as if the bill was being written by Joe Lieberman
I do n't want to suggest that he is not still the central figure in this whole crisis because that could cause him to race over to Fox News and issue a new set of threats
And it is possible that when you see the film , there may be two or three of him
Americans are going through election withdrawal , trying to adjust to life without poll numbers
Really , we 've heard quite a bit of whining on this subject lately
But there 's still Minnesota
The U.S. Senate race there is up in the air
You may want to consider becoming totally obsessed with it , jumping out of bed every morning and racing to the computer to check for the latest vote count
Or perhaps not
Still , it 's something to hang on to
There are actually three Senate races that are undecided , and if the Democrats won them all , they 'd hit the magic filibuster-proof number of 60
Alaska , determined to continue in its role as the vortex of all things politically strange , still has n't counted tens of thousands of ballots
Georgia has a Senate runoff Dec. 2 , and the Democrats have dispatched tons of canvassers to help their candidate , Jim Martin
Martin is a long shot , but we should all be grateful that they 've found something to do with the Obama campaign workers , who would otherwise have been set loose to wander the country , muttering about change and attempting to register household pets to vote
But we digress
About Minnesota
Right now , the incumbent Republican , Norm Coleman , is about 200 votes ahead of the Democratic challenger , the former comedian Al Franken
In a race where 2.9 million votes were cast , Coleman is leading 41.99 percent to 41.98 percent
You may notice that there are a lot of percents missing
They went to Dean Barkley , an underfunded Independence Party candidate who did rather well by running on a platform that boiled down to : 1 -RRB- Not crazy 2 -RRB- Not Norm Coleman and 3 -RRB- Not Al Franken
`` We had a campaign in which both candidates came out with equally low favorable ratings
They were not well-liked , '' said Larry Jacobs , a professor of political science and the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota
Since Barack Obama won Minnesota by 10 percentage points , it is probably fair to conclude that Franken underperformed
He worked hard and knew a lot about the issues
But it turns out and people , you may be surprised to hear this that being a stand-up comedian is not the best possible preparation for becoming a U.S. Senate candidate
I know , many of you feel that the Senate would be a much better place if there were fewer lawyers and more comedy writers
But , as Franken has discovered , there are disadvantages to entering the political fray from a profession in which writing an essay for Playboy entitled `` Porn-O-Rama '' is considered a plus
As time passed , many voters in Minnesota decided that there are things worse than a history of making offensive jokes , one of them being a history of supporting George W. Bush
Coleman 's lead began shrinking
Both parties started pouring money into Minnesota
Both candidates cannily invested in negative ads , which were extremely effective in getting people to vote for Dean Barkley
My personal favorite was a Coleman spot that had Hollywood celebrities saying they were embarrassed to be in the same business as Al Franken
It was far from the meanest
But it is really not all that often that you get the opportunity to see Stephen Baldwin , Pat Boone and the guy who played the mailman on `` Cheers '' all in one place
`` We do n't all write dirty articles for Playboy !
yells Victoria Jackson , a `` Saturday Night Live '' alumna whose personal Web site announces : `` I hope that America realizes that Obama is a communist before it 's too late .
Experts say the lead in this race could shift several times before the recount is over
Paranoia runs deep
Questions surfaced about some ballots that spent time riding around in an election official 's car
The secretary of state has been accused of collaborating with Communists
-LRB- There seems to be an awful lot of this going around lately .
Both sides have charged hanky-panky involving Somali polling place translators
If all else fails , the election could wind up being decided by the Senate
This would be bad for democracy but extremely exciting for those among us who have always yearned to re-live the election of Rutherford B. Hayes
Now if there was a 200-vote Senate victory in New York , you would not see a new senator seated until 2050
However , our party leaders try to protect us from these problems by making sure there is never more than one candidate in any race that a sane human being could possibly vote for
But Minnesota has a well-organized system for dealing with close election counts
Right now , it 's in the audit stage , which will be followed by the recount stage , which is followed by the judges-poring-over-questionable-ballots stage
`` It 's an entirely transparent process , '' said Jacobs
`` Come along and bring a bucket of popcorn and watch .
Given the state of the current television season , it sounded like a strangely attractive invitation
Believing in Barack I believe Obama is going to get his groove back and be the leader we elected , even though he is testing us sorely
This week he went to South Korea to negotiate a trade agreement , and the agreement fell through
The administration says this is because he was being a tough bargainer , but you do n't send the president overseas to fail to get an agreement
Was n't anybody taking notes when he went to Denmark to fail to get the Olympics for Chicago
Also , the president has been looking very wishy-washy on the Bush tax cuts
We all know that he wants to extend the tax cuts for the middle class and end them for the wealthy
But that will require a huge battle with the Republicans in Congress , and the statements coming out of the White House have not exactly sounded as if everybody 's going to the mattresses
`` We need to deal with the world as we find it , '' David Axelrod , an adviser to Obama , told The Huffington Post
The theory is that the president should sound reasonable so that if the Republicans dig in their heels , they will look like the bad guys
But refusing to give an expensive break to millionaires at a time of high deficits should be a crusade
Take it to the people - let 's enjoy politics for a change
Then , if Congress sends the president a bill extending the tax breaks for everybody , the nation will be on his side when he vetoes it
Axelrod would n't comment on anything having the word `` veto '' in it , but he did tell me that the president `` will not make the tax cuts for the wealthy permanent .
So I have faith he will do the right thing , even though Axelrod 's line in the sand does not rule out temporarily extending everything for a couple more years
Obama must know that that would be wasting a great opportunity to define his party as the champion of fiscal responsibility
It would be even worse than going to South Korea to not sign a trade agreement
Finally , I believe that the president will pick the right course on the deficit
Unfortunately , before we go any further , we are going to have to discuss the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform , which is led by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson
Until this week , I had expected to be able to go through my entire life without ever having a single thought about Erskine Bowles
He 's a businessman best known for having been chief of staff for President Bill Clinton
And now that I think of it , I do remember that at some point in the 1990s , I entertained a fleeting question about what kind of name Erskine was
Simpson , the better known co-chairman , is a former senator who is famous for his witty remarks , such as referring to the AARP as `` the greedy geezers of America '' and calling Social Security `` a milk cow with 310 million tits .
In other words , he is exactly the sort of person who gives being colorful a bad name
The two of them just released a long list of extremely unpleasant things that they think Congress should do to eliminate deficit spending by 2015
It 's just their ideas
The 18-person commission has n't voted on anything yet
Nevertheless , everybody in Washington is talking about `` Bowles-Simpson .
That in itself should tell you how far we 've fallen as a nation
A couple of years ago we were all walking around saying : `` Wow , Barack Obama is president !
Now we 're all saying : `` What do you think of Bowles-Simpson ?
Does n't Bowles-Simpson sound a lot like a medical procedure
Or a really high-end vacuum cleaner
The report was impressive in the rigor of its demands for hard decisions , but not all that much else
It went on in great detail about how to fix Social Security , which is actually the one thing for which anybody could come up with a plan
Social Security is like the Israeli-Palestinian situation
Everybody knows pretty much what to do , but nobody knows how to talk the Israelis and Palestinians into doing it
The real gorilla in the deficit room is health costs
In fact , it 's a rabid big gorilla with a machine gun
All Bowles and Simpson said on that subject is that the government should establish `` a process to regularly evaluate cost growth .
If that does n't work , they advised taking `` additional steps as needed .
So not the greatest blueprint in history
But the worst thing you could do would be to dismiss it out of hand , like Nancy Pelosi , who called it `` simply unacceptable .
The people of America made it clear in the election that they want something done about the deficit
The president 's responsibility is to show them he 's going to heed their orders , and then follow through without making the economy worse or cutting critical services
I have faith that Obama is going to do just that , and that this time he 'll respond to the challenge in a way that is n't remote or opaque or confusing
Also , next year : the Mets
World Series
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction : Correction : November 15 , 2010 An earlier version of this column gave an incomplete description of Erskine Bowles 's service in the Clinton White House
He served as both chief of staff and deputy chief of staff
A lot of people are worrying about the world coming to an end in 2012
The question of whether the End of Time will arrive during the holiday shopping season three years hence is already the subject of a veritable library of books
We also have what `` The Complete Idiot 's Guide to 2012 '' claims are almost 600,000 Web sites devoted to worrying about it
This seems to be the fault of Nostradamus , the Mayan calendar , angst on the left about global warming and angst on the right about the election of Barack Obama
Or the health care bill
Or government bailouts
Or the repositioning of `` In God We Trust '' on the nation 's coinage
Really , for ultraconservatives , the last year has been one sign of the apocalypse after the other
Soon , the rivers will run red with Starbucks Raspberry-Flavored Tazo Passion Shaken Iced Tea
Owls will give birth to two-headed frogs who shriek the lyrics to Lady Gaga songs
Hollywood is unleashing a raft of movies about humanity tottering on the edge of extinction
In `` 2012 , '' a G-8 summit convenes to discuss the fact that `` the world as we know it will soon come to an end .
Actually , I would not be surprised if the participants found this preferable to another round of the Doha trade talks
The film characters who are best prepared for the planetary calamity had been consulting the ancient Mayan calendar , which runs through more than five millennia and then comes screeching to a halt on Dec. 21 , 2012
Some say that for the Mayans , this was just the end of a cycle , like completing a really long year , and that if they 'd been able to hang around for a few more centuries they 'd simply have issued a new , post-2012 calendar , this time perhaps including some nice pictures of puppies
Others see more dire forces at work
In `` 2012 , '' the crust of the earth starts bouncing around like Tom DeLay in that cha-cha competition
No one can save us , not the black president or the governor of California with an Austrian accent
Certainly the Europeans ca n't help , since not even the collapse of every tall building on the planet can get Americans to pay attention to non-American ideas
Also coming soon to a theater near you are : `` The Road '' -LRB- Viggo Mortensen struggles across a barren landscape after a mysterious cataclysm -RRB- and `` The Book of Eli '' -LRB- Denzel Washington guards a book that could save post-apocalypse humanity from Gary Oldman -RRB-
Obviously , Hollywood has determined that the reason all those Iraq-war-themed movies failed was that the moviegoers felt the scenery was n't bleak enough
I 've been disappointed that , so far , almost no one has noticed that St. Malachy 's List of the Last Popes has been running out of gas almost as fast as the Mayan calendar
Malachy was an Irish bishop who died in 1148 , after allegedly having seen a vision of the future 112 popes who would reign until the end of the world
By this count , the current Benedict XVI would be 111
Each of the popes gets a little hint as to his identity
For the most part , Malachy cannily chose to keep them general enough -LRB- `` angelic shepherd '' -RRB- that it was hard not to hit a lot of home runs
But good luck in figuring out how Benedict is `` glory of the olives .
Keeping things vague , or subject to multiple interpretations , is the real key to apocalyptic predictions
It 's what made Nostradamus a household name
He 'd stare at a bowl of water for hours on end , and then come up with something like : For the merry maid the bright splendor Will shine no longer , for long will she be without salt
With merchants , bullies , wolves odious , All confusion universal monster
Which is obviously a foretelling of the Sarah Palin book tour
My own favorite prognosticator , The Amazing Criswell , always got into trouble with specificity , including his prediction that a black rainbow would circle the earth in 1999 and suck out all the oxygen
He lost a lot of credibility even earlier , after he announced that the United States would move its capital to Wichita and that pressures from outer space would turn Denver into jelly
Really , people tend to remember stuff like that
I 'm predicting that by the time we reach 2011 , the 2012 Web sites will hit the million mark , not to mention the Twitters of Terror
But we 've survived end-of-the-world panic many times before
When I was a kid , the nuns at my school filled us with stories about prophecies of doom , frequently from Our Lady of Fatima
They always revolved around the Communist menace , and we were occasionally sent home on Friday with assurances that the End was coming by Sunday
We were credulous enough not to question why , in that case , there were homework assignments
It 's been quite a while since we 've had an opportunity to discuss the Clinton-Obama dynamic , and it does feel good to be back
Forget bankrupt automakers and retail sales numbers
It 's May , and we 're in Indiana arguing about gas prices
Barack and Joe and Hillary , together again
Just like the YouTube debate , only with more maps
Obama invited Clinton to Chicago this week for a talk
It is n't entirely clear whether he offered her the job
But if it was just a courtesy get-together , he really should have tried texting
Now he 's got her fans geared up all over again
On Friday , a speaker at the City University of New York Women 's Leadership Conference mentioned the story about Hillary 's possible appointment and several hundred women burst into applause
All around the country , the news reminded old Hillary supporters of a nagging pang of disappointment , the feeling that the great election bandwagon had left something behind
Good luck telling them that it 's actually going to be John Kerry
While there are many excellent arguments for offering Clinton the job , one of the best is that until now , Senator Kerry was supposed to be the front-runner for State
Does that sound right , people
When one is out searching for the nation 's top diplomat , does it make sense to pick a guy who gets low scores in sociability
Although Kerry has many excellent qualities and his children appear to be very fond of him , if there was a contest for Senator You Would Least Want to Have a Cup of Coffee With , he would be a good bet for top 10
Politicians often brag that they never forget a name , but Kerry is one of those guys who ca n't even remember a face
Clinton is the exact opposite
Plunk her down anywhere and she 'll catch sight of somebody who she met at the Conference of Concerned Problem-Solvers and engage them in a spirited dialogue on what 's going on with that muskrat preservation project in East Engorvia
And she can do that abroad , too , since as was mentioned a time or two during her campaign she has already visited 82 countries
True , there 's 112 countries to go before she runs the table
All the more incentive for her to make sure Obama gets a second term
And on a slightly more elevated level , there 's the fact that the rest of the world would be thrilled with her appointment
She would give our diplomatic outreach a power and gravitas that it has n't had for years
I know , my little Obama hyperpartisans
You spent a year of your lives trying to keep Hillary out of the White House because she voted to let the Bush administration invade Iraq
And now , your man is talking about letting her be the point person on foreign policy
What happened to the transformative change
We have been through all this before
Candidates who promise to bring everybody together are talking about meeting in the middle
The only people who think Barack Obama is a radical are you and Joe the Plumber
On Friday , the junior senator from New York was keeping her own counsel
She made a scheduled appearance at the New York State Public Transit Industry Fall Conference in Albany and assured the unexpectedly large delegation of reporters that she was not going to say anything that they would be interested in hearing
While that did not exactly move the story forward , the event did throw some light on one surprising part of the nation 's current political dynamic
Has anybody noticed how eager Democratic senators seem to be to get out of the Senate
Really , we were under the impression that a safe Senate seat was quite a cushy gig
The thing is that although there are indeed occasional perks , like fawning staff and an official three-day workweek , a senator 's calendar does tend to get crammed with many variations on the theme of Public Transit Industry Fall Conference
Secretaries of state also go to a lot of boring meetings ; however , very few of them take place at an Albany Holiday Inn
But I digress
Here are four good reasons why Hillary Clinton would be a great pick for secretary of state : 1
She would not let the vice president run our foreign policy
Joe Biden is no Dick Cheney , but we just do not want to go there again
We have scars
Obama could live out his fantasy of following the Abraham Lincoln model and filling his cabinet with a team of rivals without having to make Sarah Palin secretary of commerce
Clinton already has a supply of pantsuits sufficient to get her through six months of peace negotiations in the Middle East without coming home for a change of clothes
She might do a terrific job
Alaska Speaks
I know you 've been asking yourselves : What does the United States Senate election in Alaska mean to me
Really , I know it
Senator Lisa Murkowski has just claimed a historic write-in victory against Joe Miller , the Tea Party champion who beat her in the Republican primary
The first thing you will want to know is that this will make Sarah Palin miserable
Murkowski 's father , the former senator and governor , was one of Palin 's archenemies back in the days of yore when Palin was all about attacking Big Oil and corrupt politics
Her interests have changed , but her antipathy toward the Murkowskis lives on
She threw one of her superpowerful Facebook posts Miller 's way , delivering both attention and money in his direction
As soon as she saw the write-in vote count was looking good , Murkowski did an interview on CBS News with Katie Couric
Take that , Sarah
Murkowski took the opportunity to offer her opinion about Palin as presidential timber : `` I just do not think that she has those leadership qualities , that intellectual curiosity , that allows for building good and great policies .
And that
All of these developments make the Senate results in Alaska important for those Americans who find sunshine in any day that goes badly for the former Republican vice presidential candidate
Many of these same people feel an equal amount of pain when things run in the other direction , and it is important to keep these reactions under control
I am thinking of Steven Cowan from the town of Vermont , Wis.
According to a police report posted on The Smoking Gun Web site , Cowan became so upset by the political implications of Bristol Palin 's continuing victories on `` Dancing With the Stars '' that he shot the family television , precipitating a 15-hour standoff with local police
The complaint notes that Cowan did not think that Bristol `` was a good dancer .
Also , he had been drinking
Since Murkowski made it crystal clear all along that she would stick with the Republican caucus , her victory is not going to have any particular effect on the makeup of the next Senate
But Democrats and independents saved her political hide
Perhaps in the future she will occasionally pull a Joe Lieberman and do something to drive the party that dumped her in the primary crazy
Thanks to Alaska , there are still going to be 17 women in the United States Senate
That 's a pathetic number , but not quite as disheartening as it would have been if it had dropped to 16 , courtesy of Joe Miller , whose primary win was mainly because of the anti-abortion rights movement
Murkowski , however , took this thought into overkill , portraying herself as a beleaguered victim of male chauvinism
She sent out a flier with a picture of a noble-looking woman being screamed at by a mean guy with a bullhorn
`` For all the times you have been overruled - when you know you had the right ideas and solutions , '' it read
`` For all the times your accomplishments have been ignored while others who scream and yell get the credit ... This vote for Lisa Murkowski is a vote for you , too .
It then described attack ads that called Murkowski `` a princess '' as `` what women have been dealing with for centuries .
Actually , a United States senator who ends a debate by saying `` I have been leading this state for eight years '' is not really a person who seems to have much trouble with being ignored
And the `` princess '' line referred to the fact that Murkowski got her Senate seat because her father gave it to her , appointing her to fill his unexpired term when he became governor
Which is not the sort of thing most of us can count on
Miller would constantly point out that he , in contrast , had been raised without `` a silver spoon , '' a comparison that might have had an impact if he had not turned out to be one of the worst candidates in the history of candidates
The Democratic candidate , Scott McAdams , who also was not born with a silver spoon , got only about a quarter of the vote
`` Our momentum continued to grow , but we ran out of time , '' he said
`` I have no regrets .
He also had no money , or at least a lot less than his competition
As of the last reporting date in October , McAdams had $ 861,000 in contributions , compared with $ 1.9 million for Miller and $ 4 million for Murkowski
`` She 's about as entrenched with special interests as anyone , at least from a campaign finance standpoint , '' said Dave Levinthal of the Center for Responsive Politics
Unlike her opponents , Murkowski got most of her money from political action committees , many of them in the energy field
Murkowski 's first step upon returning to Washington will be to lobby to retain her post as the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
So not exactly a victory for oppressed womanhood
However , a definite defeat for Sarah Palin
Let 's take our little pleasures where we can get them
Everyone has been trying to come up with a good nickname for the 10 years we 're concluding next month
Terror Era really sounds like too much of a downer
How about the Decade of Medical Backtracking
Somewhere between the reports that Pap smears and tests for prostate cancer are n't all they were cracked up to be and the news that a high fiber diet does n't do anything to prevent cancer , the health establishment began looking decidedly nonomniscient
Then this week , a federal task force reported that most women do n't need annual mammograms
Even more fascinating , they suggested that doctors stop telling their female patients to self-examine their breasts for lumps
If you happen to be a woman , particularly a somewhat obsessive woman , this is huge news
The to-do list just got one item shorter
Now if dentists would just decide to withdraw the flossing directive , we may have enough additional spare time to learn Spanish
The task report said that the jury is still out on whether doctors should do the examinations themselves , but my general impression is that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force feels that younger women should not let anybody near their breasts unless the plan is to have sex
The report triggered two immediate and inevitable responses
Doctors and patients began an animated discussion
And Republicans declared it was all a Democratic plot
`` I mean , let the rationing begin
This is what happens when bureaucrats make your health care decisions , '' said Representative David Camp , the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee
Representative Camp is definitely on to something
Whatever happens , we do not want the government conducting any studies on whether current health practices actually do any good
Let this continue and soon you will not be able to get your hands on a good leech when you need one
There is no possible political advantage in coming out against medical testing , so the Obama administration scurried away from the report
The task force did not consider the matter of cost , but , of course , people like Representative Camp depicted it as the first step toward rationing
The current position of the Republican Party seems to be that it is not possible to spend too much money on medicine
Party on
#NAME?
Where 's the sanctity of the marketplace when we really need it ?
Every rational American wants qualified experts to keep re-examining current medical practices
The only thing that bothers me about the mammogram report is all the emphasis on the `` anxiety '' that might follow a false-positive
We live in a time when we are constantly being reminded that a fellow plane passenger might be trying to smuggle explosives in his sneakers
We can manage anxiety
I am going out on a limb to say that the real problem with a test that creates a lot of false-positive results is that it leads to a lot of other medical procedures , some involving hospitals
Unless you are genuinely sick , there is no more dangerous place to be hanging around than a hospital
I had breast cancer back in 2000 , and I am trying to come up with a way that I can use that experience to shed some light on these new findings
I have never believed that everything happens for a reason
But I do feel very strongly that everything happens so that it can be turned into a column
Whatever the moral would be , I do n't think it helps Representative Camp 's argument
I had mammograms every year like clockwork , and I had just gotten a clean bill of health from my latest one when I found a lump on my left breast while watching a rerun of `` Buffy the Vampire Slayer , '' multitasker that I am
It turned out to be cancer , of a fairly low-grade variety
My oncologist felt strongly that it never would have developed if I had n't taken estrogen replacement therapy another one of the medical marvels that has now been consigned to the Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time category
So , in summary , the cutting-edge of medical thinking of the 1990s may have induced my cancer , and then the universally recommended testing protocol failed to detect it
Nevertheless , everything seemed to work out fine , except that I had to have radiation while I was covering the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia
In retrospect , it is possible that my attitude toward the Bush-Cheney ticket was colored by the fact that I was thinking a lot about mortal danger at the time
Hillary Clinton stood on a stage for two hours Tuesday night , being yelled at by six men
Now this is what they mean by pressure
The most important job in the world is at stake and every single one of the other candidates walked into the presidential debate gunning for her
They began piling on from the first question
She took it all and came out the other end in one piece
She s one tough woman
Her fighting spirit was all the more impressive because so many of the positions she was defending were virtually indefensible
It s not easy to try to make a matter of principle out of a refusal to say anything specific about Social Security
And you really need a spine of steel to stand up on national television and explain why it was a good idea to vote for a bellicose Senate resolution on Iran that has given George W. Bush a chance to start making ominous remarks about weapons of mass destruction again
Well , first of all , I am against a rush to war , she said
That would have been disturbing even if she had not attacked the idea of rushing to war twice more in the next 60 seconds
Being against a rush to another war in the Middle East seems to be setting the bar a tad low
How does she feel about a measured march to war
A leisurely stroll
And how could she have voted for an Iran resolution that was sponsored by Joseph Lieberman , who was basically drummed out of his party in Connecticut because of his hyperhawk stance on Iraq
Lieberman , who was once a somewhat boring but apparently good-hearted centrist , has turned into a disaster area for Democrats , a one-man quagmire
If it hadn t been for his unhelpful performance in Florida after the 2000 election , perhaps Al Gore would be president now and there would be peace and global cooling throughout the planet
Honestly , there s a book in this somewhere : Joe Lieberman Ruined Everything
We digress
Hillary Clinton is relying on her Democratic audience to understand that all her peculiar positions and triple-waffles have to do with a fear of being demagogued by the Republicans in the general election
But you would have to be a very , very committed Hillaryite to be comfortable listening to two solid hours of dodging and weaving on everything from her vote on the Iran resolution to her husband s attempt to keep records of their White House communications secret until after 2012
-LRB- ... Certainly we ll move as quickly as our circumstances and the processes of the National Archives permits .
On Social Security , the underlying message seems to be that Clinton will not support any effort to keep the program solvent by eliminating the cap on Social Security taxes until she gets elected president and sets up a bipartisan commission to provide political cover
The problem with that , as Barack Obama pointed out , is that you don t arrive in the White House with a mandate for anything more daring than appointing a bunch of people to do a study
And when you re talking about taxing income above $ 97,500 the same way we do income of , say , $ 30,000 , it s not really helpful to describe it as a trillion-dollar tax increase on middle-class families
Clinton needs to ration her obfuscations
Otherwise , she risks looking as silly as she did at the end of the debate , when she gave a perfectly rational explanation of why she once said that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer s plan to allow illegal immigrants to get driver s licenses makes a lot of sense , then raised her hand a minute later to add that the fact that she understood why Governor Spitzer was trying to do it did not mean that she thought it should actually be done
The good news for her side was that nobody else seems really poised to take her place in the front of the field
Barack Obama continues to be a calm , measured , let s-all-work-together presence , occasionally reminiscent of Oh , Lord
Joe Lieberman before the fall
Obama s vision of a presidential leadership that rises above the squabbles and partisanship that stalk the Clintons is extremely appealing
However , it s tough to play the wise elder statesman when you re just three years out of the Illinois State Senate
What the debate did demonstrate was that the others deserve more time to make their case
Hillary might have looked immovable on that stage , but she sure didn t look inevitable
There are still two months before the first primaries , contests that as we all know only involve a tiny , tiny number of very , very special voters
#NAME?
If you know anyone in Iowa or New Hampshire ... -RRB- Most of the nation has at least until next February to think about this , and Hillary really hasn t sealed the deal
But you do have to give her a few points for not letting the guys push her around
THE AD CAMPAIGN ; McCain Reflects on P.O.W. Past , and Goes After Clinton -LRB- October 25 , 2007 -RRB- NYC ; To the Candidates : Do n't Forget Cities And Their Voters -LRB- October 12 , 2007 -RRB- Related Searches Presidential Election of 2008 Democratic Party Clinton , Hillary
It 's almost here
The one and only Election Day
Except , of course , in the 30-odd states where voting has been going on for some time
Nov. 4 is not quite as much of an event there , although it 's still a big date , what with watching the returns and celebrating Laura Bush 's birthday , along with the increasingly popular feast of Half a Week After Halloween
Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins discuss the 2008 presidential race
Our two-year presidential campaign now ends with a monthlong vote , followed by weeks of litigation over provisional ballots
After that , the new president is sworn in and given 100 days to accomplish his legislative agenda , after which everyone will start plotting for 2012
It is a grand system in that great American tradition that has given us the seven-month baseball season and the half-gallon cup of soda
We have supersized the election
And why not
Barack Obama 's campaign budget is now supporting half the national economy
I do n't know how we 're going to get along without it , unless we can convince Mitt Romney to start gearing up instantly for his comeback
Although the polls have consistently shown Obama ahead , Democrats are all afraid of the infamous Bradley effect , in which people falsely claim to be voting for a black candidate so pollsters do n't think they 're racist
In the case of this campaign , you 'd have to be paranoid enough to believe the canny closet racists were also falsely assuring the pollsters that they thought Obama would do better with the economy , health insurance and bringing change to Washington , and would appoint better people to his administration than McCain
Which does seem like a lot of effort to impress a stranger on the other end of a telephone line
The polls also suggest that Sarah Palin has , in two short months , managed to scare the pants off large portions of the population
Confidence seems to be plummeting not only in her own qualifications but in McCain 's overall ability to pick good assistants
These concerns were probably not allayed by the candidate 's promise to take Joe the Plumber to Washington with him
It also did n't help when former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger , a McCain supporter , was asked on NPR whether Palin would be ready on day one to step in if a crisis occurred
`` Of course not , '' Eagleburger responded
This was a particularly cruel blow since Eagleburger is not just one of the five former secretaries of state that the McCain campaign constantly cites as having endorsed the ticket
He is one of the four who McCain was actually able to remember during a recent interview on `` Meet the Press .
To be fair , Eagleburger went on to qualify his statement and said that given some time in office , he thought Palin would be `` adequate .
These days in the McCain camp , this may be what passes as a ringing endorsement
Obama is going to be racing around from rally to rally over the final 96 hours eight states in three time zones
This sort of last-minute dash around the nation is another American political tradition , which serves the dual purpose of setting a good example for the campaign workers and torturing the campaign press corps in retribution for all those months of writing down the things the candidate said
Obama 's target audience is the 10 percent of voters who told this week 's New York Times\/CBS News poll that they did not feel as if they had received enough information to make an informed decision on the presidential race
I believe we have met them before
They are the men and women who get up at a town hall meeting after the candidate had just made a 20-minute opening speech about his\/her plans for health care reform , and say : `` What I want to know is , what are you going to do about medical costs ?
My theory is that whenever they hear someone start to discuss the issues , they cover their ears and make humming noises , the way my husband does when I say it is time to take a look at our 401 -LRB- k -RRB- s. In The Times 's poll , the percentage of respondents who said that they were n't totally sure who they were going to vote for was almost identical to the percentage who said that they think the economy is doing well
Are they the same people
If so , perhaps they are still undecided because they are waiting to get their marching orders from well-informed friends like Abraham Lincoln , St. Catherine of Siena or Seabiscuit
The best approach at this point is probably to ignore all polls and just wait to see what happens
Take a deep breath
Do a little meditation
Make a list of all the things you 're going to do once you no longer have to spend time worrying about who 's going to be the next president
I personally am planning to read the Russian classics
The Zombie Jamboree The hottest new show on television is `` The Walking Dead , '' in which a small-town sheriff wakes up from a coma and finds that almost everybody in the country has turned into a zombie
Being out of commission in a hospital is the classic way that horror movie heroes manage to avoid contagion while the rest of the world mutates into something unpleasant
I have always wondered why the newly hatched zombie nurses do n't just use their coma patients for a quick snack
In BBC 's `` Dead Set , '' the only people to escape zombification are the contestants locked away on the reality show `` Big Brother .
Soon , the term `` elimination day '' takes on a whole new meaning
The best seller `` Pride and Prejudice and Zombies '' is about to be made into a movie
`` How is the road to Meryton ?
Mr. Darcy asks politely in the graphic novel version of the book
`` Do you often meet with zombies ?
Mr. Collins proudly announces that he has been honored by the patronage of Lady Catherine de Bourgh `` after she had been forced to behead her previous rector when he succumbed to the walking death .
There 's a zombie game app that will allow you to kill time by killing zombies and a popular `` Political Zombies '' post on YouTube that shows you John McCain , Barack Obama and Sarah Palin morphing into undead versions of themselves
-LRB- But , really , that 's too easy
You can turn anybody into a zombie on the Web
See : `` My Zombie Kitten . ''
Over in Arizona , someone reprogrammed an electric road sign on a highway near Tucson to read : `` Caution Zombies ahead !
What 's the attraction of zombies
They do n't really do anything but stagger around and eat raw flesh
The plot possibilities seem limited
Zombies come
Humans shoot them
More zombies come
Humans hit them over the head with shovels
Nobody ever runs into a particularly sensitive zombie who wants to make peace with the nonflesh-devouring public
-LRB- `` On behalf of the United Nations Security Council today , I would like to welcome the zombie delegation to the ... aaauuurrgghchompchompchomp . ''
Maybe that 's the whole point
Our horror movies are mirroring the world around us
The increasingly pass vampire story is about a society full of normal people threatened by a few bloodsuckers , some of whom are maybe just like you and me , except way older
It was fine for the age of Obama
But we 've entered the era of zombie politics : a small cadre of uninfected humans have to band together and do whatever it takes to protect themselves against the irrational undead
The new incoming Tea Party Republicans are lurking in the halls of the Capitol , hiding behind the statuary and hoping to leap out and behead a Democratic zombie spendthrift
-LRB- Dan Quayle 's boy Ben promised to `` knock the hell out of Washington '' and now he 's there , ready for action .
Bipartisanship is so ... Twilight novel
Give them an inch and they 'll take a liver
In an interview with Robert Draper for The Times Magazine on Sunday , Sarah Palin said she had been `` innocent and na ve '' when she began her political career in believing that the two parties could work together
`` I learned my lesson
Once bitten , twice shy .
Well , for sure you do not want to be bitten
On the other side , the Democrats are waking from an election night coma to find that the country is overrun with zombie Republicans who are demanding to be allowed to shut down the government even before their swearing-in
And when President Obama invited their leadership to break bread and talk about working together , John Boehner and Mitch McConnell said a pre-Thanksgiving sit-down did n't fit into their schedules
Would n't want to be there when the meal finally comes off
`` Bless us , oh Lord , and these , thy gifts , which ... aaauuurrgghchompchompchomp .
In private , the Democratic senators complained bitterly about the old Obama let-us-reason-together strategy
Zombies are n't going to make a deal on the Bush tax cuts or pass the arms treaty
All they care about is plump , tasty Democratic thighs and calves and kidneys
Obviously there are some big problems here
One is that both parties think they 're playing the small-town sheriff
The other is that this story line never really ends all that well
Zombies are impossible to eradicate
They 're worse than bedbugs
All you can do is hope to find a safe haven in some remote part of the world
Which is why we were so interested to hear a report from National Journal that Bob Ney , the congressman who spent 30 months in the clink for his part in the Jack Abramoff scandal , is now in India , studying meditation techniques with Buddhist monks
He described himself as `` very happy - very , very happy .
Unlike the rest of us back here
Few people have spent more time contemplating The Journey of Life than Oprah Winfrey , and on Friday she provided another useful tip in navigating it : Quit while you 're ahead
At the current moment , this is not necessarily a thought for the masses
Unless something dramatic happens on the economic front , most of us are not going to be able to quit period
But the greatest decision a stellar public figure can make is to resist the temptation to keep doing the same thing forever
Even if the fans do n't want you to stop
One day you 're the champion of the world , the people 's choice
Then , next thing you know , you 're losing a unanimous decision to Trevor Berbick
Or putting `` Dictator for Life '' on your business cards
We are talking here about a timely and well-planned leave-taking like George Washington , refusing a third term
Or the end of `` The Mary Tyler Moore Show .
This is not to be confused with its evil twin sister , the Abrupt Rogue Departure
You can not get yourself elected governor , serve for two and a half years , disappear for the better part of another and then announce you 're quitting because nobody likes a lame duck
Well , it turns out you can , but it is a really , really bad idea
`` I love this show
This show has been my life
And I love it enough to know when it 's time to say goodbye , '' Winfrey told her fans tearily
She 's not actually leaving until the end of season 25 , nearly two years from now
Talk about long-term planning
However , if she really wanted to drive home how much her viewers were going to be losing , she might have picked a more inspiring lead-in to her announcement than a 20-minute interview with Ray Romano
-LRB- Along with a promo for an upcoming interview with a woman whose husband was addicted to porn .
It 's been quite a run for the Oprah brand
The ber-guests , the good works
The Obama campaign
Her forays into books -LRB- we will really miss the book thing -RRB- and spirituality -LRB- not so much -RRB-
She never coasted
Her next step seems to involve a new cable TV channel
But since Winfrey has I believe this is an exact figure a trilliondy-billion dollars , she probably has more than one option
Her audience , of course , does n't want her to move on
Americans are congenitally attached to too much of a good thing : `` Law & Order .
Professional sports
-LRB- The national calendar seems to be divided into two seasons : Baseball and Holiday Shopping .
The idea that anything popular should stay around until we turn green at the sight of it is not , of course , confined to our culture
The British have Tony Blair and The Spice Girls Reunion Tour
We do hate change
Even though we know that our demand for more of the same is a treacherous road that will eventually lead to Sharon Stone in `` Basic Instinct 2 .
Nowhere is the need for the graceful exit more apparent than in our politics
This week Senator Robert Byrd turned 92
He has been in office for more than 50 years
That 's an all-time record for Congress
In fact , it is probably a record for every deliberative body since Athens in the Age of Pericles
To be fair , this was not entirely his idea
The Democratic Party begged Byrd to stay and hang onto a seat that will probably fall to the opposition when he leaves
But still , this is not a record that we want to encourage other people to aspire to break
Nothing becomes a politician like a timely departure
If Rudy Giuliani had quit after 2001 , we 'd still think of him as America 's Mayor instead of the worst presidential candidate in the history of the world
Imagine how much better Joe Lieberman would look if he had called it a day after the vice presidential run
Or Ross Perot if he had stopped in 1992
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has n't even begun his controversial third term and already he seems to have shrunk to a pocketsize
And what a revered figure Ralph Nader would be if he had called it quits back in the 1990s
He 'd be an icon the pioneer of consumerism who had the corporation 's number from the get-go , instead of the guy who robbed Al Gore of the presidency and then just would n't stop talking
He could have spent the last 15 years giving inspiring lectures to college students and now it would be time for the comeback tour
People would be flocking to hear him explain how the structure of the American economy failed its people in last year 's collapse
By the way , you can have a comeback tour if you retire gracefully
Just not one every single year
We have an economy that 's crashing and a vacuum at the top
Bush who is currently on a trip to Peru to meet with Asian leaders who no longer care what he thinks has n't got the clout , or possibly even the energy , to do anything useful
His most recent contribution to resolving the fiscal crisis was lecturing representatives of the world 's most important economies on the glories of free-market capitalism
Putting Barack Obama in charge immediately is n't impossible
Dick Cheney , obviously , would have to quit as well as Bush
In fact , just to be on the safe side , the vice president ought to turn in his resignation first
-LRB- We 're desperate , but not crazy .
Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would become president until Jan. 20
Obviously , she 'd defer to her party 's incoming chief executive , and Barack Obama could begin governing
As a bonus , the Pelosi presidency would put a woman in the White House this year after all
On the downside , a few right-wing talk-show hosts might succumb to apoplexy
That would , of course , be terrible , but I 'm afraid we might have to take the risk in the name of a greater good
Can I see a show of hands
How many people want George W. out and Barack in
A great many Americans have been counting the days all year on their 2008 George W. Bush Out of Office Countdown calendars
I know a lot of this has been going on because so many people congratulated me when the Feb. 1 Bush quote turned out to be from one of my old columns
-LRB- `` I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth from the middle class , I think we should knock down the tollbooth . ''
This was not nearly as good as Feb. 5 -LRB- `` We ought to make the pie higher '' -RRB- or Feb. 21 -LRB- `` I understand small business growth
I was one . ''
But we do what we can
In the past , presidents have not taken well to suggestions that they hand over the reins before the last possible minute
Senator J. William Fulbright suggested a plan along those lines when Harry Truman was coming to the end of a term in a state of deep unpopularity , and Truman called him `` Halfbright '' for the rest of his life
Bush might not love the idea of quitting before he has a chance to light the Christmas tree or commute the execution of one last presidential turkey
After all , he still has a couple more trips planned
And last-minute regulations to issue
-LRB- So many national parks to despoil , so many endangered species to exterminate ... .
And then there 's all the packing
On the other hand , he might want to consider his legacy , such as it is
In happier days , Bush may have nurtured hopes of making it into the list of America 's mediocre presidents , but somewhere between Iraq and Katrina , that goal became a mountain too high
However , he might still have a chance to avoid the absolute bottom of the barrel , a spot currently occupied by James Buchanan , at least in my opinion
Buchanan nailed down The Worst President title in the days between Abraham Lincoln 's election and inauguration , when the Southern states began seceding and Buchanan , after a little flailing about , did absolutely nothing
`` Doing nothing is almost the worst thing a president can do , '' said the historian Michael Beschloss
If Bush gives up doing nothing by giving up his job , it 's possible that someday history might elevate him to the ranks of the below average
Better than Franklin Pierce
Smarter than Warren Harding
And healthier than William Henry Harrison
The person who would like this plan least probably would be Barack Obama
Who would want to be saddled with the auto industry 's problems ahead of schedule
The heads of America 's great carmaking corporations are so dim that they could n't even survive hearings run by members of Congress who actually wanted to help them
Really , when somebody asks you exactly how much money you need , the answer should not be something along the line of `` a whole bunch .
An instantaneous takeover would also ruin the Obama team 's plan to have the tidiest , best-organized presidential transition in history
Cutting it short and leaping into governing would turn their measured march toward power into a mad scramble
A lot of their Cabinet picks are still working on those 62-page questionnaires
But while there 's been no drama with Obama , we 've been living a Technicolor version of `` The Perils of Pauline .
Detroit is tied to the railroad tracks and the train is coming
California 's state government is falling into the sea
The way we 're going now , by the time the inauguration rolls around , unemployment will be at 10 percent and the Dow will be at 10
Time for a change
Here is how our beloved national tradition works : One lucky turkey gets to live and fly first class to Disneyland , where he is grand marshal in the Thanksgiving Day parade -LRB- I am not making this up -RRB-
While another nameless bird gets slaughtered in his place
It 's `` A Tale of Two Cities , '' except somehow I doubt that the doomed turkey volunteered for the job
Who mourns the Backup Bird
What fickle finger of fate decided that he should literally get the ax , while the one who was supposed to go next lives happily ever after on the Big Thunder Ranch in Frontierland
The president did not seem all that thrilled with his role
`` There are certain days that remind me of why I ran for this office
And then there are moments like this , where I pardon the turkey and send it to Disneyland , '' he said
His daughters , who were trotted out as the alleged champions of the turkey pardon , looked as if they 'd be perfectly happy to retract
Malia , who noted that the bird reminded her of `` a large chicken '' seemed particularly unenthusiastic
The National Turkey Federation named the bird Courage , perhaps in memory of Benjamin Franklin 's contention that the bald eagle was a bird of bad moral character while the turkey was `` though a little vain and silly , a bird of courage .
If Franklin 's argument had prevailed and the turkey , rather than the bald eagle , had become the national symbol , would we still be eating them
Would the turkey farmers still be in business
What does eagle taste like , anyway
These are the whims of fate that we celebrate on the day before Thanksgiving , when one random , somewhat sullen-looking bird gets pardoned while another goes to the presidential dinner table
The turkey-pardoning is supposed to be a long-running national tradition , but it officially only goes back to George -LRB- the Good One -RRB- Bush and 1989
Since Thanksgiving is a holiday that 's particularly rich in long-running traditions , 20 years barely counts as an impulsive gesture
If we want a political tradition , we can do better
Let 's all just gather around the family computer and watch that video of Sarah Palin discussing Thanksgiving in front of a bloody turkey abattoir
There was actually no mention at the presidential pardon of what the Obamas themselves were going to be eating on Thanksgiving
While the turkey federation traditionally donates a live bird for the ceremony and dead ones for the White House dinner , the oven-ready birds seem to be the ones that the president and the girls were taking to a Washington charity
As to the menu at the White House , a spokesman said it would involve `` traditional foods and family favorites , '' but declined to give details
We all know that Obama is extremely logical
He must understand that the only way for this pardoning ritual to make sense would be if he spared the backup turkey , and the backup 's backup , all the way down the line
Then he could announce the creation of a new vegetarian Thanksgiving to commemorate the day the Pilgrims and the Indians got together over a steaming platter of parsnips
But since this is keep-it-cool , middle-of-the-road Barack Obama , he would probably skip both the drama and the turkey and go meatless without telling anybody
After all , if the word got out , who knows how many tea parties it would spark
Birthers would probably claim that no one actually born in the United States would consider celebrating Thanksgiving without a turkey
Glenn Beck would weep over the incipient loss of our freedom to consume really dry meat on a holiday
Rumors would arise that Michelle does not really love her national cuisine
Whatever they 're eating , the Obamas will undoubtedly discuss the things they want to give thanks for this year
You wonder what the president would say
He can always mention his family
Not every man has daughters loyal enough to accompany him through a cheesy turkey-pardoning
But when he tries counting his blessings , does the specter of President Karzai rise up through the mashed potatoes
Do the brussels sprouts all look like little versions of Joe Lieberman threatening a filibuster
If it turns out that there is a turkey , and someone inevitably remarks that it looks like the biggest ever , does Obama think they 're talking about the unemployment rate
It 's not really fair
The president knows he could jump-start the economy , fix health care and do his ambitious energy policy if only the last administration had n't cut taxes , started two wars and created a new , large Medicare entitlement without paying for any of it
When he 's not making his way through Thanksgiving photo-ops , he 's adding up the numbers over and over in his mind , and sending mental daggers at the Republicans who are yelling at him about deficits that they created
Although what else could he expect in a Washington that thinks you can pardon your turkey and eat it , too
Sure , this is n't the absolutely best and brightest holiday season ever
But look at the pluses
There has never been a better time to buy a condo in Reno , Nev. , or a plane ticket from Oklahoma City to Disney World
Bargains abound
And we sleep the sleep of the insolvent innocent
Our retirement funds may have evaporated , and we may be envisioning ourselves deep-frying chicken nuggets on our 85th birthdays
But the good part is that it was n't our fault
As a matter of fact , if it had been left to us , the subprime derivative never would have been invented
And a clean conscience is worth more than all the golden parachutes , indoor squash courts and $ 13 million vacation houses in the world
Also , we 're thankful that we 're not Iceland
Of course , we 're glad that George Bush is gone
Or almost
Sure does seem to be taking his time , does n't he
And we 're thankful for Barack Obama
Ca n't get enough of him which is a good thing , because he 's been on TV a lot
Everybody seems pleased that he plans to use Abraham Lincoln 's `` Team of Rivals '' strategy to encourage a wide range of views within his administration
This sounded even better , however , before I heard that Millard Fillmore used it first
Some people are upset because Obama has been dipping into the old Clinton crowd for his appointments
But really , where did you expect him to go
The Carter administration
This does not qualify as bad news
Bad news would be suddenly noticing that the president-elect was filling the White House with old friends from the Illinois State Senate
So , we 're happy
Give thanks
And let 's be grateful that Tim Geithner is going to the Treasury Department
True , we miss the days when we could not even remember who the secretary of Treasury was , let alone refer to him by his nickname
But thank heavens that Tim is on the case , along with the other widely respected economists that Obama has recruited for his team
Let 's also give thanks that we are not widely respected economists ourselves
Because God knows what they 're going to do with this hairball
We should be happy that Hillary Clinton is apparently going to be secretary of state
On the down side , she does have a tendency toward disaster
But then she generally figures out what she did wrong and fixes it
This is way , way better than the outgoing system of decreeing that the original stupid error is not only correct but written by the hand of God
So it 'd be nice to have Hillary on board
You would not necessarily want to be the first trouble spot on her agenda , but by the time she gets to number three or four she will be terrific
As a side benefit , New Yorkers are enjoying the opportunity to speculate about who would be appointed to Clinton 's Senate seat
We 're extremely grateful to have something to take our mind off the unemployment rate
So far , attention has focused on the attorney general of New York , Andrew Cuomo , whom voters have named in several polls as The Only Person on This List We Have Ever Heard Of
However , everybody in the State Capitol seems to agree that it would be best if Gov. David Paterson could find a Hispanic congresswoman upstate for the job
Unfortunately , there are no Hispanic congresswomen upstate
But perhaps an upstate congressman will resign and Paterson could appoint one
There 's a lot of that sort of thing going around lately
I am personally thankful that `` Mad Men '' got renewed , that Britney Spears is feeling better and that Joe the Plumber has found work as a spokesman for an online converter-box retailer
Even though he does not seem to appreciate the irony of reminding viewers they can apply for a $ 40 government rebate to help pay for the product
I am also feeling O.K. about `` Twilight '' being the big seasonal hit so far at the box office , although having gone through all four of the books that make up this series , I have to warn you that the vampire becomes increasingly obsessed with avoiding sex outside of marriage
And ever since she named her baby Bronx Mowgli , we can all be grateful that we are not related to Ashlee Simpson
So it 's all good
And we have n't even gotten to being thankful for beloved friends and family , because I know you can do that on your own
Have a happy Thanksgiving
Enjoy your dinner
Although we can never feel quite the same about turkey after that Sarah Palin video
One of the defining issues of our time , declared Mike Huckabee , who is leading an anti-treaty charge
People , what do you think of when you hear defining issues of our time
Middle East
Global warming
Did it ever occur to you there are Americans who would say : Law of the Sea Treaty
Americans who are running for president of the United States
Americans who are rapidly moving up in the Iowa polls
This is close to Invasion of the Body Snatchers territory
The treaty has been theoretically under consideration in Washington for a quarter of a century
Some might regard it nostalgically , like a 202-page lava lamp
It was approved by the United Nations in 1982 , after endless negotiation during which attending Law of the Sea debates was named one of the Ten Most Boring Things To Do in New York
Its intent was to clarify rules for navigation and mining in international waters and set up a system for settling disputes
When it got to Washington , Britney Spears was still a toddler and Rudy Giuliani had a full head of hair
Ronald Reagan rejected it because he was worried about deep sea mining rights manganese nodule mining to be exact
Happily , that s no longer an issue because : a -RRB- The United Nations fixed the part Reagan had a problem with
b -RRB- Manganese nodules not quite as hot an item as they were when disco ruled
Bill Clinton wanted the treaty , but gave up trying to find 67 votes in the Senate
Nothing much has happened since , except 155 other countries have ratified it , including several that didn t exist when it was first passed
The United States , of course , is not the only nation holding back because of well-considered reservations
I hear Libya made some excellent points
And our side also includes all the parts of the Axis of Evil we have yet to invade
Huckabee gave a speech to the values voters convention recently in which bashing the Law of the Sea got a roaring response from the social conservatives
This seemed to unnerve the other Republican candidates , most of whom are burdened by a personal history that does not involve quite as big a dose of family values as they might wish
Perhaps they are hoping that having a crazy position on the treaty makes up for one divorce
-LRB- Mitt Romney would want it to wipe out one waffle .
I would love to give you all the arguments about the virtues of the Law of the Sea Treaty , but it seems like a cruel thing to do to readers on a Saturday
One problem with the debate is that the earnestness of the proponents is equaled only by their lack of pizazz
#NAME?
The advocates call it The Law of the Sea Convention .
While the pros will tell you all about the importance of having a rational system for arbitrating disputes over the Alaskan continental shelf , the cons spin up conspiracy theories about how the International Seabed Authority will force us to give up our cars and cancel the war on terror
Just take my word
The Navy wants the treaty
Greenpeace wants the treaty
The oil and gas industry wants the treaty
George W. Bush wants the treaty
-LRB- Look at it this way : he s definitely due to be right on something .
The number of people who really care about stopping the treaty is not large
But even if there were only 200 , what if 120 of them go to the Iowa caucus
John McCain , who used to support the treaty , recently waved the white flag on a conservative Web site
I think that we need a Law of the Sea , he blogged
I think it s important , but I have not frankly looked too carefully at the latest situation as it is , but it would be nice if we had some of the provisions in it
But I do worry a lot about American sovereignty aspects of it , so I would probably vote against it in its present form
The other candidates have issued statements that seem to reflect an inability to come up with any rational arguments
Rudy Giuliani said he can not support the creation of yet another unaccountable international bureaucracy that might infringe on American sovereignty and curtail America s freedoms , and Fred Thompson roused himself long enough to announce that the efforts of treaty proponents would be better spent reforming an ineffective , unaccountable and corrupt United Nations
Mitt Romney s spokesman just said Mitt has concerns
Meanwhile , Mike Huckabee called the treaty the dumbest thing we ve ever done
Pause now to make a list of things we ve done that you think might be dumber
The Day After the Day After Harry Reid
There 's gonna be more Harry Reid
Nobody thought it could happen , but the charisma-challenged Senate majority leader won another term , decisively defeating Sharron Angle , a Tea Party favorite who had claimed that American cities were run by Sharia law and who had ingratiated herself to a roomful of Hispanic teenagers by telling them that they looked Asian to her
Yes , the Titanic went down , but Harry Reid got a lifeboat
I know you were hoping for someone more Leonardo DiCaprio , but right now you 'd better take what you can get
In her concession speech , Angle congratulated herself for having `` inspired once more , '' which was certainly one way of putting it
There were awful speeches from all sides on Tuesday night , but I liked Christine O'Donnell 's adieu
-LRB- `` We 've got a lot of food
We 've got the room all night
So God bless you
So let 's party ! ''
That girl is so on her way back to cable TV
Although this time around they will have to pay her
Meanwhile , over at his victory party , Reid said that `` balloons and ballrooms are not my thing .
Which we sort of guessed
Barack Obama , looking as if he had been up all night bailing water out of the basement , seemed somewhere between numb and shell shocked at his postelection press conference
He called the results `` a shellacking '' - for which he took `` full responsibility .
A number of TV commentators swiftly decried his performance , particularly noting his failure to take responsibility
Soon-to-be-Speaker John Boehner broke into tears during his victory address , recalling how he had risen from a low-income childhood mopping the floors of his father 's tavern
`` I spent my whole life chasing the American dream , '' he said tearily
It was a better invocation than many we 've heard in recent months when candidates attempted to equate the dream with everything from a monster yacht to a professional wrestling empire to a health care company that bilked the government out of more than $ 1 billion
Nevertheless , when you have suits as expensive and lobbyist friends as numerous as Boehner , it 's no longer really appropriate to start weeping on TV about your humble roots
Boehner announced that his party 's plan was to `` roll up our sleeves , '' which is coincidentally exactly what Harry Reid said his plan was
So you can look for lots of naked forearms in Washington in the near future
That would count as process reform
As to policy , when asked for some things the Republicans would cut to balance the budget , Majority-Leader-to-be Eric Cantor promised to eliminate earmarks
When asked how he would cooperate with the incoming House majority , President Obama said : `` My understanding is that Eric Cantor today said that he wanted to see a moratorium on earmarks continuing
That 's something I think we can work on together .
People , what would we do without earmarks
How would elected officials respond when asked for concrete plans to cut the budget\/cooperate with the opposition if earmark-squashing was n't an option
These little devils are harder to get rid of than the Taliban
The earmarks were a welcome break for Cantor , who spent most of his election night yelling at interviewers who asked him whether he still proposed keeping all the Bush tax cuts
`` There 's no tax cuts
There 's no tax cuts !
he shouted on MSNBC , insisting that the soon-to-expire temporary tax reductions should be seen as reality as we know it , a part of our history and tradition that was locked in place forever , as sacred as Social Security
Sacreder , actually
Way , way sacreder
Those Bush tax cuts were , of course , given an expiration date because there was no money to pay for them
The first order of business for the lame-duck Democrats is going to be to try to make sure the cuts only get extended for nonwealthy families
The Republicans want to keep them for the rich , too , thus blowing a new hole in upcoming budgets
Which they will fill by getting rid of earmarks
Trade you a pocket full of bridges and highway exits for $ 700 billion in lost revenue
Democrats , we know you are sad
And this next battle is going to involve parliamentary maneuvering and Harry Reid and worrying about the innermost thoughts of Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska
Everything that made the public turn on you in the first place
But , this time , see if you can remember to point out that you are on a noble venture
Lift up your tails and trot out there and help balance the budget by killing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy
The American dream is depending on you - the one without any wrestling or yachts
In Ohio , citizens marched to the polls on Tuesday and voted to allow gambling casinos in the state
This was obviously a message to President Obama that independent voters are not happy with the way the health care bill is going
Really , I do n't see how else you can interpret it
Ohioans were looking forward to the lower insurance costs that would come with a robust public option , and if the president ca n't deliver , they 're planning to pay their future medical bills with their winnings at the roulette wheel
Also , people here in Cincinnati rejected a proposal that would have made it harder for the city to expand mass transit
Obviously a repudiation of the entire cash-for-clunkers initiative
Meanwhile , both Atlanta and Houston voted on mayoral races , and in each city there is now going to be a runoff between a woman and a black guy
You think this is a coincidence
The meaning could not be clearer if the ballots had had a `` maybe we should have gone for Hillary '' line
There seems to be a semiconsensus across the land that the myriad decisions voters made around the country this week all added up to a terrible blow to the White House
If that 's the way we 're going to go , I do n't think it 's fair to dump all the blame on gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia
Although there is no way to deny that New Jersey and Virginia were terrible , horrible , disastrous , cataclysmic blows to Obama 's prestige
No wonder the White House said he was not watching the results come in
How could the man have gotten any sleep after he realized that his lukewarm support of an inept candidate whose most notable claim to fame was experience in hog castration was not enough to ensure a Democratic victory in Virginia
New Jersey was even worse
The defeat of Gov. Jon Corzine made it clear that the young and minority voters who turned out for Obama will not necessarily show up at the polls in order to re-elect an uncharismatic former Wall Street big shot who failed to deliver on his most important campaign promises while serving as the public face of a state party that specializes in getting indicted
They would not rally around Corzine even when the president asked them
Really , what good are coattails if they ca n't drag an unlovable guy from a deeply corrupt party into a second term
Also , we have heard a lot about the fact that Corzine 's campaign made sport of his rather chunky opponent , Chris Christie
It was not until Wednesday morning that it became obvious that Christie 's victory was actually an outcry by average , pudgy Americans against a president who has to continuously battle against a tendency to lose weight
We have a dramatic saga story line brewing here , and I do not want to mess it up by pointing out that Obama 's party won the only two elections that actually had anything to do with the president 's agenda
Those were the special Congressional races in California and upstate New York
But obviously they reflect only a very narrow voter sentiment , since one involved a district that was safe for the Democrats and the other a district that had not been represented by the party since 1872
On the other hand , Mayor Michael Bloomberg 's victory clearly fits into the pattern of voter outrage against an unsuccessful White House
Initially , New York City residents found it hard to figure out how to send their message of inchoate rage against all that Barack Obama stands for , since Bloomberg is neither a Republican nor a Democrat , but rather a member of the well-known splinter group , Extremely Rich White Persons
Also , Obama had backed his opponent , Bill Thompson , with an endorsement that could not have been more oblique and half-hearted if he had sent it via Candygram
In the end , everyone got together and decided to re-elect Bloomberg by a margin that was much narrower than expected
I know this is the first time that you are hearing this , but I voted on my way out of town on Tuesday , and I can assure you that everyone in New York intended to convey their unhappiness with the administration 's foreign policy by electing Bloomberg by a margin of five percentage points exactly the average number of letters in `` Iran '' and `` Israel .
The voters were directed by a crack team of political operatives disguised as elementary school bake-sale ladies , who spelled out their orders with chocolate chip cookies
The national news media missed this entirely , but insiders could tell that the cookie people were working under cover , since the school system banned genuine pastry sales as part of Bloomberg 's healthier-than-thou initiative
It all worked out great , and I hope Obama has gotten the message
Really , he had better shape up and completely transform the way Washington works before the next election
Otherwise , another governor 's head could roll
Even if you voted for John McCain , be happy
You 've got the best of all worlds
Today , you can bask in the realization that there are billions of people around the planet who loathed our country last week but are now in awe of its capacity to rise above historic fears and prejudices , that once again , the United States will have a president the world wants to follow
Then later , when things get screwed up , you can point out that it 's not your fault
About the inevitable disasters : I am sorry to tell you , excited youth of America , that Barack Obama is going to make mistakes
And the country 's broke
Perhaps we should have mentioned this before
But let 's leave all that to 2009
When somebody runs one of the best presidential campaigns ever , he deserves a little time to enjoy the sweet spot between achievement of a goal and the arrival of the consequences
Let 's hear it for the voters
Good turnout , guys especially you Virginians who stood in line for seven hours
A professor at George Mason University who studies this sort of thing claims that there has n't been such a high participation level since 1908
You could turn out to be the ever-elusive answer to the question : `` Name one thing that Barack Obama has in common with William Howard Taft ?
Let 's hear it for Hillary Clinton , who lost but made the country comfortable with the idea of a woman as chief executive
And Joe Biden , who actually ran a disciplined campaign , given his truly exceptional capacity to say weird things
And let 's give a shout-out to John McCain
As desperate as he was , he still passed up opportunities to poke hard at the nation 's fault lines of race , religion and region although he has probably created a permanent gap between the rest of us and segments of the country who feel under imminent threat from Bill Ayers
McCain ran a dreadful campaign , but it 's over
Give the guy a break
He was stuck with George Bush
And the Republican Party
And the fact that he was constitutionally incapable of giving a decent speech
The road was hard , but he soldiered on and did a lovely concession Tuesday night
Sarah Palin did go over the top with her small towns vs. the world mantra
However , she does get credit for giving us a real understanding of the difference between a moose and a caribou
O.K. , there is nothing positive to say about Sarah Palin
And Alaska , are you re-electing Ted Stevens
What 's going on there
Did you actually believe him when he said that the court verdict was still up in the air
On the day after he was found guilty
By the way , if Stevens does win , it will be with about 106,000 votes
In total
There are more people than that in my immediate neighborhood
What kind of state is this , anyway
But we 're in a good mood , so let 's forget Alaska
Instead , we 'll contemplate the fact that North Carolina tossed Elizabeth Dole out of office despite her ad campaign aimed at convincing the state that her opponent , Kay Hagan , was an atheist
This was accomplished , you may remember , through the creative strategy of showing Hagan 's picture along with another woman 's voice saying : `` There is no God !
If Dole had won , by the next election we would have been bombarded with ads that appeared to show candidates saying `` I support adultery !
or `` Let 's kill the puppies !
Now that wo n't happen
Thank you , North Carolina
By the way , I believe that during the campaign McCain 's great friend Senator Lindsey Graham said something along the line of promising to drown himself if North Carolina went for Obama
I believe I speak for us all , Senator Graham , when I say that we are feeling extremely mellow today and you do not have to follow through
Congratulations to Senator Susan Collins on her re-election
The entire moderate Republican caucus in the Senate may now wind up consisting of women from Maine
As Maine goes , so go the Supreme Court nominations
Finally , on behalf of the baby-boom generation , I would like to hear a little round of applause before we cede the stage to the people who were too young to go to Woodstock and would appreciate not having to listen to the stories about it anymore
It looks as though we will be represented in history by only two presidents , one of whom is George W. Bush
The boomers did n't win any wars and that business about being self-involved was not entirely unfounded
On the other hand , they made the nation get serious about the idea of everybody being created equal
And now American children are going to grow up unaware that there 's anything novel in an African-American president or a woman running for the White House
We 'll settle for that
The Grizzly Manifesto This is one of the many things I love about Steinem
When things are darkest , she will come up with a very cheering factoid about Iroquois women in pre-Columbian America or the private life of female bears
`` Mama grizzlies mate later than other bears , '' she continued
`` They have two cubs instead of four
They wait four years - about twice as long as other bears - between having cubs
And after they 're pregnant , if winter is hard or their health is not good or the food supply is uncertain , they re-absorb the embryo into their body .
This is certainly a side of grizzly home life that we have not been getting from Sarah Palin , who has adopted the bear as the symbol of her movement
After the election , her political action committee posted a triumphant video in which Palin announced : `` This is our movement
This is our moment
This is our morning in America .
It concluded with the silhouette of a humongous bear , presumably of female and grizzly persuasion , rearing up on its hind legs in the moonlight and roaring
I thought the bear looked a little like the teenage werewolves you see in movies , howling and shifting shapes just at the moment when they meant to be picking up their date for the prom
But probably that 's just me
We spent a lot of time during this election season trying to figure out what the campaigns said about women in politics
It turned out not much
New Republican women won , incumbent Democratic women lost , but in the same proportions as the men
The numbers of women in the House and Senate will be just about the same as they were before
`` We wanted to ensure the percentage of women in the Democratic caucus did not shrink , '' said Stephanie Schriock of Emily 's List , which raises money for Democratic women
`` In fact , we were 22 percent of the Democratic caucus , and now we 're going to be 25 percent .
When it comes to finding silver linings , Schriock is right up there with Gloria Steinem
The most infamous of Palin 's pet candidates , the ones who became national celebrities , were people like Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle and their high profile was because of their tendency to say , um , crazy stuff
They lost
Goodbye loopy mama grizzlies
Thanks for the memories
You often were a headache , but you never were a bore
We 're left with a passel of normal conservatives of both sexes along with a cadre of male and female wackos , some of whom we have yet to really meet
Others of whom we know all too well
Michele Bachmann wants to be in the House leadership
She 'd be the only Republican woman at the top of the heap , but I think even-keeled Americans of both parties and genders can have sympathy for John Boehner 's desperate signals that he 'd rather not
This week , Bachmann triggered a blog explosion when she claimed , on CNN , that the president 's trip to India is going to `` cost the taxpayers $ 200 million a day .
This is more than it costs to prosecute the war in Afghanistan
Many women are horrified by people like Bachmann because they fear that when the rest of the country watches her bizarre performances , they see not just an addled person from Minnesota , but a woman in politics
We have to get past that
Men do n't cringe on behalf of their sex when Newt Gingrich goes Islamophobic , or Carl Paladino threatens to take out a reporter
There are many battles yet to be fought , but I think women have achieved enough success in this country to stop feeling as if Bachmann reflects on anyone but her party and herself
Palin , meanwhile , was engrossed in her own postelection minicrisis when she `` favorited '' an Ann Coulter Twitter message praising a church sign that referred to President Obama as a `` Taliban Muslim .
Coulter would be another one of the women we are not taking responsibility for
This month , a new reality TV series , `` Sarah Palin 's Alaska , '' premieres on TLC , starring Sarah and Todd and the kids
`` I love watching these mama bears , '' the former vice presidential nominee says in an early episode , as the family sits in a boat looking at a mother bear and cubs walking along the bank of the river
This particular mama looked really emaciated
She 's probably working double shifts trying to support her kids , with no help from anybody , and now there 's a TV crew and a bunch of Palins out there in the water , trying to make a profit off her family
Maybe she was on her way to Planned Parenthood
I am grizzly , hear me roar
Here we are at the big Health Care Bill Weekend
The House of Representatives is actually getting ready to vote on legislation
How long has this been in the works , anyway
Was `` Mad Men '' on TV when the debate started
Had TV been invented
On the eve of the big vote , leaders admitted that things could stretch into next week
But no later than Tuesday
Unless something else happens
Rome was n't built in a day
Anyhow , we concerned citizens need to decide exactly what we 're rooting for
Public option
Which one
How much would you care if there were none at all
For some people , a health care bill without a public option is like a car without an engine
For others including some members of the Obama administration it 's more like a car without a hood ornament
Everything was thrown into an uproar by this week 's elections , when people in Virginia and New Jersey voted down a deeply unpopular Democratic governor and a deeply incompetent Democratic would-be governor
This has been interpreted as a sign that the much-beloved independent voter thinks Obama is not doing enough , and also too much
Congress is panicking
This happens quite a bit , but right now they 're behaving like a herd of overly caffeinated cattle that missed the last train connection
Meanwhile , there 's nothing but confidence and serenity among the right-wing tea-party types
They can not get over the triumph in upstate New York , where thanks to their really extraordinary efforts , a completely safe Republican seat went to the Democrats
Think how far their movement has come
Only a few months ago , they barely had the power to disrupt a town meeting
And soon they will be able to destroy anything in their path , including their own party , like conservative locusts
The tea-party folk were back in Washington at the end of the week for a rally against the health care bill called by Representative Michele Bachmann , Washington 's newest Famous Strange Person
Their extreme enthusiasm and cheer was truly awesome
Representative Todd Akin of Missouri led the rally in the Pledge of Allegiance noting that the part about `` one nation under God '' always `` drives the liberals crazy .
Then he promptly forgot the rest of the words
In most hyperpatriotic groups , the inability of a Congressman to remember that this is one nation indivisible might be a downer
But the crowd responded like a troop of pumped-up motivational speakers
`` Great job !
someone cried without the least trace of cynicism
`` That was awesome , Todd !
yelled someone else
You can not totally dislike a group with that kind of team spirit , so I hope those were not the exact same people carrying the sign that equated the health care bill with the Holocaust
There was something sort of touching , in an eerie , slightly disturbing way , when John Ratzenberger the guy who once played the mailman on `` Cheers '' told the crowd that the health care bill advocates were `` Woodstock Democrats '' like Abbie Hoffman and Wavy Gravy
The crowd seemed on the old side , but is it really possible that any of them are still worrying about Abbie Hoffman
That any of them knew who Wavy Gravy is
Was n't his main claim to fame giving out free granola
Is this a problem we need to deal with at the present moment
But I digress , sort of
If the health care vote happens this weekend , perhaps you will want to flip back and forth between the football games
Try to picture Minority Leader John Boehner as an overage cheerleader with a strange-colored tan
A while back , Speaker Nancy Pelosi was promising that the House bill would have a `` robust '' public option that would have offered real competition to the insurance companies , thus driving costs down
But then Pelosi was faced with a mini-rebellion from red state Democrats who were terrified by the news of Republican victories in races having nothing whatsoever to do with Barack Obama , Congress or health care , and she modified the plan
Now it 's a nonrobust option , sort of like decaf instant coffee
And even if it passes , the bill will go to the Senate where everybody is embroiled in an argument over whether the public option should involve a trigger , as Olympia Snowe urges , or an opt-out , which Majority Leader Harry Reid is peddling , or be eliminated altogether so the red state Democrats are pacified and Joe Lieberman does not go through with his threat to filibuster
Although Lieberman is no longer a Democrat and backed John McCain in the last election , his former party did let him hang around and keep his important committee chairmanship
Supporting an attempt to kill the Democrats ' most important piece of legislation through a parliamentary procedure would be a tad churlish
But there we are
The health care bill has a lot to recommend it anyway , but if you 're a public option fan , where do you draw the line
Personally , in these moments of crisis , I generally recommend looking to see where Joe Lieberman is going
Then head the other way
Back in mid-2001 , when Mayor Rudy Giuliani was busy committing adultery , lurching into his divorce and third marriage and rooming with a gay couple he promised to marry as soon as the law allowed , who among us would have imagined that one day he would be endorsed for president by Pat Robertson
Actually , Robertson , the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network , has had peculiar positions on the terror attack
He once said it was nowhere near as big a deal as the problem of judicial activism , and on another occasion he explained that the destruction of the World Trade Center was God s punishment for abortion and rampant secularism on television
It s hard to understand what drew the two men together
Rudy has hedged his positions on quite a few issues lately but he has yet to suggest that New York had it coming
It s been quite a busy time for Giuliani , who recently tried to establish himself as the toughest dude on the anti-terror block by making fun of torture victims , drawing the wrath of John -LRB- Actually Tortured -RRB- McCain
Let it be known that nothing , including the extensive evidence that prisoners being tortured confess to things that aren t true , is going to stop a President Giuliani from wringing every last drop of inaccurate information out of the evildoers
They talk about sleep deprivation
I mean on that theory , I m getting tortured running for president of the United States
That s plain silly , he said at a town hall meeting in Iowa
You would really think after all the trouble Mitt Romney got for equating life in the Mitt Mobile with service in Iraq , people would be a little careful about comparing the perils of the campaign trail with military service
It also gave McCain the opportunity to remind the nation that Rudy got a deferral from serving in Vietnam by convincing his boss , a federal judge , to pull strings and have him declared an essential civilian employee for his critical work as a law clerk
But we digress
Robertson s backing will surely give Giuliani a leg up among voters who believe that God sends natural disasters to punish Americans whose school board members believe in the theory of evolution , or who have the bad luck to live near an inclusive amusement park
-LRB- He warned Orlando that when Disney World welcomed gay patrons it was letting them in for terrorist attacks , earthquakes , tornadoes and possibly a meteor .
Yesterday , Robertson said that America s Mayor had won him over because to me , the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the bloodlust of Islamic terrorists
-LRB- So much for judicial activism .
Our second goal should be the control of massive government waste and crushing federal deficits
Now this is the part that I have never been able to get
When did government spending become part of the divine agenda
Is there something in the Bible about smiting down federal bureaucrats
Even within the ranks of the social conservatives , Robertson is regarded as a tad over the top
Who among us will forget the time he claimed that the special protein shake he was marketing had enabled him to leg-press 2,000 pounds
Or the time he said God had given Ariel Sharon a massive stroke because he let the Palestinians run Gaza
-LRB- He did apologize for saying the United States should assassinate the president of Venezuela .
Still , the endorsement must have been a blow to Mitt Romney
He has gotten a couple of social conservatives on his side
But given the way he s prostrated himself before the right wing , renouncing every position he s ever held , all the way down to stem cells , you d think he d do better
It s a mystery why even someone as loopy as Robertson would pass up the exhaustingly virtuous family man for a longtime hound dog like Rudy , who has been qualifying his liberal social positions but never really retracting them
Persuasion is an important part of politics
It may be for some leaders , Giuliani is more persuasive , particularly in private , suggested John Green , who studies conservative religious movements for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
It does seem true that miraculous things happen when conservative leaders meet with Giuliani behind closed doors
Maybe they just find Mitt Romney extremely irritating
Maybe Rudy has a secret grip , like the Vulcan mind-meld or one of those sleeper holds they used to have in professional wrestling , that fills his victims with an irrational degree of trust
Or maybe his leadership is so powerful that people exposed to it find it impossible to doubt the sincerity of his every word
In which case I ve got a protein shake I d like to sell you
Correction : In a Nov. 3 column on the Law of the Sea Treaty , two references to manganese nodules wound up as manganese modules
I apologize to the many , many manganese fans who wrote in
With all the stories about people doing happy dances in the street and smiling on the subways after Barack Obama won , we have overlooked the dark side of the postelection mood
I am sorry to say that there have been some instances of gloating winners and sore losers , going even beyond the moment when Barney the White House dog bit a Reuters reporter
For instance , there was the matter of Senator Lindsey Graham
In the fervor of the final week of the campaign , Graham basically promised to drown himself if Barack Obama took North Carolina
When I wrote that we did not really expect Graham to follow through , a number of readers took exception
`` A promise is a promise , '' wrote John Kaseley of Bonita Springs , Fla. `` Ca n't we at least throw him in the lake ?
asked someone else
There are two problems with this attitude
First of all , you can not be angry with Republicans for supporting the Republican presidential candidate
It 's like getting angry at squirrels for climbing trees
Second , and far more important , Graham is not actually going to drown himself , so you might as well get points for urging him to stay out of the water
In the good old days , victorious politicians did not have to worry about currying good will
Their defeated opponents were sent to work out their issues in the Libyan salt mines
That does n't happen much anymore , so let 's try to be gracious
Sure , it was an intense campaign
Of course , regrettable things were said in the heat of the moment
My mother and my sister Patti , for instance , had an argument about the prospects of the local Republican congressman that culminated in my mother betting her house that he would be re-elected
But when he lost , Patti generously announced that she had decided to let Mom stay in residence
I think this is the spirit we should all be trying to emulate
Still , there is a fine line between good sportsmanship and being played for a sucker
I am thinking of McCain 's other BFF , Senator Joseph Lieberman , who not only endorsed the Republican ticket and spoke at the Republican convention but also said , in the course of the campaign , that unlike McCain , Obama did not always put his country first
Since Lieberman is part of the Senate Democratic caucus , all this is not normal like squirrels climbing trees
It 's more like squirrels breaking into your house and setting fire to the sofa
On the other hand , the most Lieberman accomplished with months and months of nonstop campaigning was to push McCain support in his home state of Connecticut to 38 percent
Treachery is bad , but inept treachery is easier to get over
Since Harry Reid , the Senate majority leader , needs the vote , you could understand him telling Lieberman that he 's still welcome
Lieberman , however , apparently is demanding that he also be allowed to keep his chairmanship of the homeland security committee
CNN reported that he turned down appointments to less prestigious posts and went home to mull his options
I know what you 're wondering , but Lieberman did not promise to drown himself if Connecticut failed to go for John McCain
The Republicans are being way more nasty to Sarah Palin than the Democrats are to Lieberman
They 've been portraying her as both a shopaholic and a woman who walks around in nothing but a bath towel , a hillbilly who 's also a prima donna
The leakathon climaxed this week when Fox News 's Carl Cameron announced that Palin did not know that Africa was a continent
Palin says this is untrue
But the worst part is that if these people get any meaner , we 're going to wind up feeling sorry for her
This is not something we are looking forward to , Republicans , and we will resent you for it
Another bad role model on the postelection manners front is the House minority leader , John Boehner , who called Rahm Emanuel , Obama 's future White House chief of staff , `` an ironic choice for a president-elect who has promised to change Washington , make politics more civil and govern from the center .
The only possible argument for this kind of language was that it was actually not all that inaccurate
Still , nobody should want to be first in line to trash an administration that does n't even exist yet
Would it have killed Boehner to say something conciliatory
Something like : `` It will be good to see a familiar face in the new White House , and I want Rahm to know that I am not mad anymore about the time he bit me on the ankle .
Setting a much better example , Senator Graham called Emanuel `` a wise choice '' who `` understands the need to work together .
Of course , Graham is undoubtedly hoping that if he 's nice enough , the Democrats will forget about you-know-what
Our question for today is whether it 's fair for a politician to point out that his opponent is fat
This involves the New Jersey gubernatorial race , where Gov. Jon Corzine has been running ads showing extremely unflattering shots of the Republican contender , Chris Christie , and claiming that Christie `` threw his weight around '' when he was stopped for traffic infractions
While Christie is certainly a large guy , the more interesting factoids in the ad would seem to be that he is a large guy who is a bad driver
A bad driver who was given to loudly pointing out that he was the U.S. attorney when he was stopped for things like speeding , driving without a car registration , or whoops
running into a motorcyclist while going the wrong way on a one-way street
However , the weight issue is the one that has caught all the attention
Patrick Murray , the poll director at Monmouth University , told David Halbfinger of The Times that he thought Corzine was trying to send a `` subliminal message '' that Christie was reckless about his health and , therefore , might be reckless about , say , the state budget
During a debate among candidates for N.J. lieutenant governor , the Democrat , State Senator Loretta Weinberg , was asked whether she felt Christie is overweight
`` I do n't think that there are too many of us in this race who could make it into ` The Bachelor ' or ` The Bachelorette , ' '' she responded
This was an extremely discreet answer , although now that we have seen how much attention Tom DeLay got for `` Dancing With the Stars , '' I suspect that the networks would have no hesitation whatsoever in tossing a couple of lieutenant governors into a serial dating show
It is definitely true that you do not see many overweight people in Washington these days
The Obama administration is so pathologically fit that I have developed a truly unexpected affection for Larry Summers
But I would really hate to see national anti-fat standards move into state government
For one thing , it would totally ruin my hopes of becoming the next person to be appointed lieutenant governor of New York when something untoward happens yet again in Albany
Also , one of the best things about state capitols is that they are places where people who have most of their teeth and some of their hair can count on feeling pretty darned attractive
Some commentators have come down hard on Corzine for the `` weight '' ad
However , it 's hard to blame his campaign for focusing on matters of girth
The state is a mess , his party members keep getting indicted and his personality is what we always like to politely term `` abrasive .
All he 's really got is his ability to run a 10K
Corzine ca n't even dwell on Christie 's terrible driving record given the fact that he spent the first part of his administration incapacitated because of an unfortunate decision to mix speeding with failure to buckle one 's seat belt
Other people have argued that the ad will backfire and elicit sympathy for Christie among the multitudes of overweight voters even in the relatively fit state of New Jersey
-LRB- And God help the candidate who tries to pull this kind of thing in Mississippi .
That 's happened in the past
Like the time Mitt Romney ran against Ted Kennedy for the Senate during one of Kennedy 's particularly unslender periods
The Romney camp ran film of Kennedy struggling to squeeze behind a table
-LRB- Subliminal message : Too much fat in the budget .
Kennedy responded with workers who had been laid off after a factory takeover engineered by Romney 's firm
-LRB- Subliminal message : How do you like downsizing ?
Of course , Kennedy cleaned his clock
This is my second-favorite Mitt Romney story
I could n't figure out any way to bring up the one about him driving to Canada with the family dog strapped to the car roof
I think we can all agree that William Howard Taft would not have made it into the White House if there had been YouTube in 1908
But George W. Bush gave fitness such a bad name I really expected the next president to be someone like Hillary Clinton , who does not seem to regard her treadmill as an integral part of the family circle
Instead , we elected a guy who 's so attractive that the Nobel committee could n't resist giving him a Peace Prize before he ever did anything
It was sort of like one of those greeting cards that say : `` Thank you for being you .
If the anti-fat bias among voters gets too intense , we are going to get in trouble eventually
The number of overweight Americans keeps going up , and pretty soon there are only going to be about six people in each state who are qualified to run for the U.S. Senate
The presidency may have to become a monarchy
Fred Thompson did great in that debate
He stayed upright the whole time
And he knew the name of the prime minister of Canada
No question , this man is ready to lead
There the Republican presidential candidates were , debating in Michigan , the state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation
Its government is foundering in a sinkhole of disappearing revenues
Detroit is a shell of a once-great city
The good union jobs keep disappearing
The sense of betrayal , of loss and sadness , is everywhere
And there was Fred Thompson , first up to the plate , offering hope to these particularly beleaguered Americans : I think there certainly are those in Michigan that are having difficulty
I think you always find that in a vibrant , dynamic economy
I think that not enough has been done to tell what some call the greatest story never told , and that is that we are enjoying a period of growth right now , and we should acknowledge what got us there and continue those same policies on into the future
Thank you so much for coming to Michigan , Senator Thompson
Loved you in The Hunt for Red October
When you watch a bunch of presidential candidates on a stage , you are almost invariably looking at a bunch of very rich people
Some of them were born into privilege , like Mitt Romney and John McCain
Some had privilege thrust upon them , like Rudy Giuliani , who parlayed his 9\/11 moment into an extraordinarily lucrative public speaking career and consulting business
Thompson rose from humble roots thanks to friends and one well-connected ex-wife
Voters tend to admire wealth , and they certainly know that nobody gets to be a serious presidential candidate by picking a good mutual fund in a 401 -LRB- k -RRB-
They just want to be shown that despite all those chauffeurs , private planes , secretaries , housekeepers , nannies and personal assistants , you still understand what regular folks lives are like
Fail , and you wind up John Kerry
But at least the Democrats who nominated Kerry did not imagine that they were choosing him for his down-home personality
What exactly is the point of Fred Thompson
He once got elected to the Senate by driving around Tennessee in a red truck -LRB- which , critics carped , he ditched as soon as he was out of sight of the last voter -RRB-
He persuaded people that his opponent was wrong when he claimed Thompson was nothing but a Gucci-wearing , Lincoln-driving , Perrier-drinking , Grey Poupon-spreading millionaire Washington special interest lobbyist
Of course , that was some time ago , and things have changed
Thompson is now a Gucci-wearing , Lincoln-driving , Perrier-drinking , Grey Poupon-spreading millionaire Washington special interest lobbyist and actor
This week s debate was Thompson s first , and he had to share the stage with eight other guys , some of whom have barely bothered to drop in on New Hampshire or Iowa and have no support outside their immediate families
The next time you see a nine-way presidential debate , people , tell yourself : This is being broadcast by lily-livered poltroons who are afraid of offending Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter
If the networks cut out the people who have no supporters , no campaign donations and who spend less time on the road than the average Mister Softee vendor , they could finish in an hour with far less viewer slippage
The main action in the Republican race is currently the squabbling between Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani
At the debate , Romney tried to brand Giuliani as an enemy of the line-item veto
This is , of course , fatal in a party in which everybody quails in fear of the powerful right-to-veto lobby
It s been a long time since we ve had a good line-item veto fight
Not as exciting as the moment when John McCain laced into the Smoot-Hawley tariff , but quite the dust-up
Standing next to the towering Thompson and Giuliani , who always looks a little strange and skeletal , Romney resembled the handsome prince in Shrek
Not exactly the most reliable character in the kingdom , but a truly great head of hair
So there we are
Thanks to two hours of Republicans talking , Americans can now rest assured that Fred Thompson A -RRB- has all his marbles and B -RRB- is a terrible candidate
All actors , it seems , are not Ronald Reagan
Thompson not only isn t charismatic , he doesn t even seem pleasant
If Fred is a man of the people , I am Jennifer Lopez
People who play by the rules and work hard can expect to live the American dream , he said sternly
If they need help in this country , they get help
And those who can help themselves are expected to do so
I hope that s clear
All you losers out there have obviously failed to play by the rules and work hard
Everybody who doesn t own a house didn t try hard enough to buy one
Stick to the program and you will have all the Guccis and Grey Poupon you need
You ve got to say this about Fred Thompson
He s one hell of a tall candidate
I miss August
August was neat
The Dow was over 10,000 and nobody had ever heard of Sarah Palin
Remember how we used to joke about John McCain looking like an old guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn
It 's only in retrospect that we can see that the keep-off-the-grass period was the McCain campaign 's golden era
Now , he 's beginning to act like one of those movie characters who steals the wrong ring and turns into a troll
During that last debate , while he was wandering around the stage , you almost expected to hear him start muttering : `` We wants it
We needs it
Must have the precious .
Remember when McCain 's campaign ads were all about his being a prisoner of war
I really miss them
Now they 're all about the Evil That Is Obama
The newest one , `` Ambition , '' has a woman , speaking in one of those sinister semiwhispers , saying : `` When convenient , he worked with terrorist Bill Ayers
When discovered , he lied .
Then suddenly , with no warning whatsoever , she starts ranting about Congressional liberals and risky subprime loans
Then John McCain pops up to say he approved it
All in 30 seconds
And , of course , McCain would think it 's great
For the first time , the Republicans appear to have captured his thought process on tape
The Republican campaign strategy now involves sending their candidates to areas where everybody is a die-hard McCain supporter already
Then they yell about Obama until the crowd is so frenzied people start making threats
The rest of the country is supposed to watch and conclude that this would be an enjoyable way to spend the next four years
Maybe the Republicans should have picked somebody else
I miss Mitt Romney
Sure , he was sort of smarmy
But when Mitt was around , the banks had money and Iceland was solvent
And , of course , when we got bored , we could always talk about how he drove to Canada with his Irish setter strapped to the car roof
I miss the old George W. Bush
When he came out of the White House and made an announcement , you would usually think that whatever he wanted to do was a terrible idea
But at least you thought he could actually make the terrible idea happen
I miss the old American public that was too busy shopping to worry about the state of the world
Now everybody is getting scared and weird
They 've been racing off in great numbers to see `` Beverly Hills Chihuahua .
And nagging Target to take the Little Mommy Cuddle 'n Coo dolls off the shelves because people think that when it gurgles you can hear the baby say `` Islam is the light .
I miss the old Cindy McCain
The one who used to go to rallies and sit huddled in the corner looking as if she thought the audience had a communicable disease
Now , she 's right up there on stage , standing behind her husband and making disgusted faces when he rails on about the opposition
And she 's started railing herself
-LRB- The family that rants together ... -RRB- Obama is waging `` the dirtiest campaign in American history .
His votes on Iraq were votes `` not to fund my son when he was serving .
Remember when the McCains would n't talk about the fact that their son was in Iraq
Oh well
Maybe Cindy is trying to hold her own against Sarah , who is with John almost as much as she is
I miss the old guy-guy McCain who had so many male pals around he looked like a walking fraternity reunion
Now , he 's starting to resemble an ambulatory patient accompanied by female attendants on an outing
Palin has been pressing the line that people do n't really know `` the real Barack Obama , '' and who could make the argument better than a woman who we 've already known for almost six weeks
Really , she 's like one of the family
We 've gotten so close we 've already learned that she did n't actually sell the plane on eBay , did n't actually visit the troops in Iraq and did n't really have a talk with the British ambassador
As soon as we get the Trooper thing and Alaska Independence Party thing and the tax thing figured out , she 'll be an open book
And she 's got a point about Obama
True , he 's been campaigning for 19 months and has been interviewed by everybody from `` Meet the Press '' to `` Men 's Health .
Which would be O.K. if we were talking about somebody from a small town rather than , as a McCain campaign co-chairman noted delicately , a `` guy of the street .
Back in August , women politicians were afraid of going negative because it might have made them look too strident
Amazing , the things you wind up being nostalgic for
When Mitt Romney s son revealed that his dad once drove to Canada with Seamus , the Irish setter , stuck in a crate on the car roof , the Republican presidential candidate explained that he did it because Seamus : 2
When Barack Obama was a state senator , most of the power in the Illinois Legislature was controlled by a tiny group of leaders known as the : A -RRB- Four Tops
B -RRB- Four Freshmen
C -RRB- Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
When she entered college , Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl who kept Conscience of a Conservative in her bookcase
Which event did she say was the last straw that led to her break with the party
A -RRB- Actually reading Conscience of a 4
According to The Boston Globe , near the end of Mitt Romney s race for governor in 2002 , his campaign ran an ad that was so unpopular it almost cost him the election
The ad was : A -RRB- An endorsement by Seamus
B -RRB- An issues ad explaining Romney s charts and timelines
In the first Democratic debate , former Senator Mike Gravel said he felt as if he was : A -RRB- An Amway distributor who wandered into the wrong hotel ballroom
B -RRB- Someone who last held office in 1980
C -RRB- A potted plant
Fred Thompson said that he is always uncomfortable when he s in New York City because : A -RRB- Residents don t like Law and Order as much as you d think
B -RRB- It s illegal to carry a handgun
C -RRB- It s hard to get adequate nap time in a city that never sleeps
Describing the expertise she would bring to the role of first lady , Judith Nathan Giuliani said that the first time she met then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani , she asked him : 8
Newt Gingrich announced that he was not running for the Republican presidential nomination because : A -RRB- Nobody asked him
B -RRB- Ethics sanctions , government shutdown , sex scandals
C -RRB- He would have had to give up his work with the well-known American Solutions organization
Mike Huckabee said that he is pretty sure that in heaven : evolution thing
B -RRB- There will be duck hunting
C -RRB- There will be presidential debates every hour on the hour and all the angels will have to watch
Dennis Kucinich has : A -RRB- A really hot wife
B -RRB- Appeared in at least 33 presidential debates
C -RRB- Served as mayor of Cleveland but was not the one who accidentally set 16
When Richard Nixon learned that Fred Thompson was going to be the Republicans counsel on the Watergate investigation , he told aides Thompson was : A -RRB- Fair but lazy
B -RRB- Lazy but tall
C -RRB- Dumb but friendly
Answers : 1-B , 2-A , 3-B , 4-C , 5-C , 6-B , 7-C , 8-C , 9-B , 10-D , 11-E , 12-A , 13-A , 14-A , 15-A ,
So many memories
That Republican debate where people had to raise their hands if they did n't believe in evolution
The snowman who asked the question about global warming
The time John Edwards made fun of Hillary Clinton 's jacket
Dennis Kucinich
Ron Paul
`` That one .
And now , the sufferings of Joe the Plumber
O.K. , on second thought , perhaps not quite as much fun as summer camp
For the last two years , dedicated voters have practically lived with Barack Obama and John McCain
We 've watched three dozen debates
We 've seen them in groups large enough to stage a small invasion , then one-on-one , then at a faux town hall , surrounded by regular people made only slightly irregular by the rule prohibiting any show of emotion
We 've seen them debate standing behind podiums , wandering around the stage , and finally in a dramatic change of pace sitting around a table
O n swivel chairs
The staggering McCain campaign virtually closed down this week as everybody attempted to come up with a big debate game-changer that did not require an entirely different pair of candidates
Once he calmed down and stopped grinning manically , McCain did , indeed , go on the offensive
He not only managed to compare Barack Obama to Herbert Hoover , he told America that the community group Acorn was `` maybe destroying the fabric of democracy '' with their sloppy voter-registration programs
Did it work
Was the audience moved by McCain 's description of the plight of Joe , the Ohio plumber , who discovered that the Obama program might mean higher taxes for him if his business were to net more than $ 250,000 a year
Or were they stunned by the idea that anybody still expects to make that much money in the foreseeable future
For a while , it seemed as if Joe was sitting right there at the table
McCain began addressing him directly through the TV screen
-LRB- `` If you 're out there , my friend ... '' -RRB- Then , at one point , Obama joined in the discussion with the phantom plumber , and the two candidates for president of the United States argued over whose health care plan Joe would like the best
By next week , I expect Joe will have his own cable TV show
Or at a minimum , a really fancy blog
You had to give McCain credit for spunk
It 's been , after all , a dreadful couple of weeks
He built his entire Senate career around low taxes , low spending and a war on those earmarks that his peers use to get special funding for their pet projects
Then suddenly he was in Washington voting to give the secretary of the Treasury $ 750 billion for what turned out to be a partial-government takeover of the banking system
Not only was he financing a semi-socialist handout to wasteful financiers , the bill was also stuffed with earmarks
Evil , hateful , soul-destroying earmarks
O.K. , debates done
We 're ready to move on
We 've compared the economic recovery plans
We know more about Bill Ayers the ex-Weatherman than his mother does
We have developed a tic when we hear the words `` my friends .
We are really , really well acquainted with Barack Obama and John McCain
Neither , to be honest , is everything we were hoping for when this all began
Back to that summer camp metaphor : Obama is like the coolest , most popular camper
You ca n't wait to see him again after school starts
Then you discover that back in real life , he 's founder of the Model Boat Society and the president of the Safety Club
And McCain is like the head counselor who led all the hikes and who you wished was your older brother
Until you realized that he spent the cold weather hanging out at a biker bar and watching reruns of `` Dog the Bounty Hunter .
And they 've moved on , too
None of their effort during the debate was for those of us who have been with them since the beginning
At this point , they only care about the small chunk of undecided voters in swing states
That means a handful of people in Ohio who have managed to avoid noticing that Obama and McCain disagree on virtually every important issue facing the nation and continue to insist that they are torn between them
Plus , of course , a couple of folks who got picked for a long-running television panel of undecided voters and do n't want to admit they 've made up their minds because they 'll get thrown out
This is one of the reasons why the last few weeks of a presidential campaign tend to be so awful
The candidates are gearing their remarks to people who have managed to completely ignore nearly two years of news about the 2008 elections
In the end , it 's always all about the ones who play hard to get
It 's pretty clear that kindergarten behavior is off-limits , although there are several people running for important offices this year who remind me of a preschooler I once knew who hated sharing so much that whenever other children came to play he 'd pile everything he could get his hands on , down to large pieces of lint , in one huge mound and sit on it all afternoon
College years are more problematic
In Delaware , Chris Coons , the Democratic candidate for Senate , has been haunted by an essay he wrote for the Amherst College student newspaper , in which he light-heartedly referred to himself as a `` bearded Marxist .
During a debate this week , Coons and his opponent , Christine O'Donnell , tangled over whether the line , which he wrote in 1985 , was more damning than the multitude of strange things O'Donnell `` said on a comedy show 10 years ago .
It was arguments like this that made the Delaware debate by far the most interesting encounter between Senate candidates so far this year
When it was over , CNN 's Wolf Blitzer named O'Donnell the narrow winner because `` she did n't come across as just a weirdo or anything like that .
The bar for debate victory this year has become unacceptably low
Also , I 'm not sure that O'Donnell won by any standard
She went absolutely blank when she was asked to name a recent Supreme Court decision with which she disagrees - even though she was prepped by some advisers to Sarah Palin , and that was a question that brought Palin to grief in 2008
I used to watch a cooking show in which contestants always screwed up the Beef Wellington Challenge
You 'd think after a season or two they 'd have begun to practice it in advance
But , no , every year it was soggy pastry and undercooked meat
For a Palin-wannabe preparing for a big national TV debate , the Supreme Court question is Beef Wellington
Not having an answer is unacceptable , even if you follow up with : `` I 'm sorry
I 'll put it on my Web site
I promise .
But I digress
Candidates deserve to be able to throw a cloak of invisibility over youthful indiscretion , but what 's the limit
First of all , nothing anyone did in college short of a felony should count against them
I feel strongly about this as a person who went to college and does not want to have any discussion whatsoever about the fact that I got an incomplete in Ethics of Journalism
Rand Paul , the Republican candidate for the Senate in Kentucky , is currently getting heat for his membership in a college secret society that was banned from the Baylor University campus for making fun of organized religion
And you may remember that earlier this year a woman who went to Baylor with Paul claimed that he and his friends `` took me out to this creek and made me worship Aqua Buddha .
This is exactly the kind of information we ought to ignore
The whole point of college is to experiment with different kinds of rebellion , and we do not want the next generation to embrace premature conformity just because they nurture a dream of one day serving with Max Baucus on the Senate Finance Committee
Although we still would really like to hear more about the Aqua Buddha thing
In the Delaware debate , O'Donnell claimed her opponent had broken an agreement that no one would mention anything the other candidate did in their 20s
-LRB- She made the famous `` dabbled in witchcraft '' remark at age 30 , but that would at least have excised her condemnations of masturbation , evolution and the theory of separation of church and state .
She might have a point
Social scientists have proposed that the entire 20-30 decade be redefined as `` emerging adulthood , '' in which young Americans stay in school , live at home or hitchhike through Europe while their emotion-controlling prefrontal cortexes ripen like fine wine
However , it is definitely not fair to demand that the all-clear zone extend to your 40th birthday , even if , like O'Donnell , you take two decades to actually finish your college degree
And I think we have the right to expect that candidates will take their previous behavior into account when making up rules to apply to the rest of us
The Republican Senate candidate in Alaska , Joe Miller , seems to have had some trouble earning a living as a lawyer and nobody would criticize the fact that his family once got health care through a program for low-income Alaskans or that his wife applied for and received unemployment compensation
However , you would expect him to consider that before he denounced government health care plans and concluded that unemployment compensation was unconstitutional
When we last heard from Miller , he was announcing that he would no longer answer any questions about his personal life
`` We 've drawn a line in the sand , '' he said
Last rule : Lines in the sand can not be drawn retroactively
In the last presidential candidate debate , Chris Matthews of MSNBC asked whether this country would ever get back to the days when a young guy could come out of high school , get an industrial job and provide for a family with a middle-class income and his spouse wouldn t have to work
Given the fact that more than two-thirds of American mothers have been working outside the home since the 1980s , Matthews could just as easily have demanded to know when we ll get back to using manual typewriters and rotary phones
Still , it might have been a great conversation-starter
While it s becoming virtually impossible to support a middle-class American family on one parent s salary , we never hear political discussion about the repercussions
In a two-hour debate that focused on job-related issues , the Republican presidential candidates managed to mention the Smoot-Hawley tariff and trade relations with Peru but not a word about child care for America s working parents
John McCain , who was on the receiving end of Matthews s question , chose instead to focus on the fact that 50,000 Americans now make their living off eBay , that the tax code is eminently unfair and that Congress wastes too much money studying the DNA of Montana bears
We live in a country where quality child care is controversial
It was one of the very first issues to be swift-boated by social conservatives
In 1971 , Congress actually passed a comprehensive child care bill that was vetoed by Richard Nixon
The next time the bill came up , members were flooded with mail accusing them of being anti-family communists who wanted to let kids sue their parents if they were forced to go to church
It scared the heck out of everybody
Right now , the only parents who routinely get serious child-care assistance from the government are extremely poor mothers in welfare-to-work programs
Even for them , the waiting lists tend to be ridiculously long
In many states , once the woman actually gets a job , she loses the day care
Middle-class families get zip , even though a decent private child care program costs $ 12,000 a year in some parts of the country
The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies , or Naccrra , -LRB- this is an area replete with extraordinary people organized into groups with impossible names -RRB- says that in some states the average annual price of care was larger than the entire median income of a single parent with two children
For child care workers , the average wage is $ 8.78 an hour
It s one of the worst-paying career tracks in the country
A preschool teacher with a postgraduate degree and years of experience can make $ 30,000 a year
You need certification in this country to be a butcher , a barber or a manicurist , but only 12 states require any training to take care of children
Only three require comprehensive background checks
In Iowa , there are 591 child care programs to every one inspector
California inspects child care centers once every five years
You have a work force that makes $ 8.78 an hour
They have no training
They have not been background checked , and we ve put them in with children who don t have the verbal skills to even tell somebody that they re being treated badly , said Linda Smith , the executive director of Naccrra
What is wrong with a country that thinks that s O.K.
We aren t going to solve the problem during this presidential contest , but it is absolutely nuts that it isn t a topic of discussion or even election-year pandering
The Democratic candidates for president happily come together to tell organized labor about their unquenchable desire to have a union member as secretary of labor
The Republican candidates flock to assure the National Rifle Association about their dedication to Americans constitutional right to carry concealed weapons in churches
But you do not see anybody racing off to romance child care advocates
The only candidate who talks about child care all the time is Chris Dodd of Connecticut
He has been the issue s champion of the Senate forever
People who work in the field know he s their guy , but it s hard to see what good it does him out on the campaign trail
They aren t inclined to be the kind of people who engage in the political process , he admitted
They don t have the money
This is Hillary Clinton s Women s Week
On Tuesday , she gave a major speech on working mothers in New Hampshire , with stories about her struggles when Chelsea was a baby , a grab-bag of Clintonian mini-ideas -LRB- encourage telecommuting , give awards to family-friendly businesses -RRB- and a middle-sized proposal to expand family leave
Yesterday , she was in the company of some adorable 2 - and 3-year-olds , speaking out for a bill on child care workers that has little chance of passage and would make almost no difference even if it did
Clinton most certainly gets it , but she wasn t prepared to get any closer to the problems of working parents than a plan to help them stay home from work
At least she mentioned the subject
Everybody knows that anything our president says is very likely wrong , and certainly wo n't happen
If he announced : `` I 'm sending government agents to Spokane to arrest the looters , '' we would expect that the officials would get lost , nobody would be arrested , and the looters probably never existed in the first place
So hearts sunk throughout the nation when Bush appeared at a Chamber of Commerce gathering to say that the economy would recover
`` America is the most attractive destination for investors around the globe
America is the home of the most talented and enterprising and creative workers in the world , '' said the president , who also insisted that `` democratic capitalism remains the greatest system ever devised .
Which translates into : all the money is going to Asia , nobody will ever get a job again and Karl Marx was right after all
Americans are also in a very low state about the presidential elections
Once again we 've hit that magic moment when both sides are sure they 're going to lose
The Republicans are deeply depressed
Only Sarah Palin is chipper , perhaps because , as she told her supporters , the staff wo n't let her watch the news
The Democrats are terrified
They 're convinced something terrible is going to happen because something terrible always happens
Look at 2000
Look at 2004
All the exit polls said it was going to be Kerry and then he lost
How could that happen
Because God hates Democrats , that 's why
It 's like the curse of the Bambino
The Democrats fear they 're under a jinx because they committed some sin , the political equivalent of trading away Babe Ruth
If so , it probably started with nominating Joe Lieberman for vice president
The only people who seem to have faith that Barack Obama can pull this off are the Republicans
They thought McCain did well in the final debate and were crushed when viewers only saw his rolling eyes and glares
Maybe McCain 's problem is not his temperament but his positions
It 's hard to be cheerful and self-satisfied when you 're peddling an unpopular product
This week , when McCain made appearances at the Al Smith dinner and `` The Late Show With David Letterman , '' he was funny and self-deprecating
Suddenly you remembered this guy used to be likeable
Back before he was trying to argue that what a country in economic collapse needs most is tax cuts for the rich and an end to Senate earmarks
With less than three weeks to go , saddled with an unpopular ideology and an unattractive candidate , the McCain campaign 's deep thinkers decided the only possible hope was ... Joe the Plumber
Joe is , of course , the conservative guy from northwestern Ohio who told Obama : `` Your new tax plan is going to tax me more '' because he planned to buy a business that he hoped would reel in more than $ 250,000 a year in profits
The proper answer , as Obama should have known , was : `` No , it wo n't .
Instead , he engaged JtheP in conversation , remarking that it might be helpful in this time of crisis to `` spread the wealth around '' a little
Since this was before George W. Bush put the nail into the coffin of capitalism at the Chamber of Commerce speech , Joe was appalled
The Republican presidential campaign is now all Joe , all the time
Obama 's plan to give tax breaks to people making less than $ 200,000 a year is being described on a McCain Internet ad as `` welfare government handouts .
In Miami , Lieberman told a rally that McCain would `` fight for Jos el plomero !
Meanwhile , Joe was happily standing in his front yard , holding forth to the assembled national news media on his theories about everything from Social Security -LRB- bad -RRB- to the war in Iraq -LRB- good -RRB-
And do not condemn him , people , unless you imagine that if all the cable television reporters in the world were in your driveway , begging for your opinion on the state of the nation , you would say : `` No , I leave that to the experts .
You should , however , understand that once the interview is over , the reporters will go down the street and ask the sanitation man whether you 've ever failed to recycle
Joe the Plumber , it turns out , is actually named Samuel and is not a licensed plumber
He has a lien on his house for unpaid taxes
While his professional life is still a little hazy , there is not much evidence he 's ever going to become a small business owner
And he would be a beneficiary of the Barack Obama tax plan
I think the lessons here are very clear : 1 -RRB- Do not organize your presidential campaign around a guy you 've only seen on YouTube
2 -RRB- Before you become a media sensation , examine your conscience and start separating the bottles and newspapers
3 -RRB- Never let George W. Bush mention you at a Chamber of Commerce speech
This is the sort of thing an opposition party is supposed to say because it sounds virtuous even if it makes no sense whatsoever
It 's like complaining that the health care bill that Congress has been working on since 1964 is being rammed through without enough study
Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri has been trotting around the cable TV circuit , complaining that the president needs to spend those precious Copenhagen hours consulting with the military about Afghanistan and working `` to keep our country safe .
Bond is the logical point man on these matters because he is the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee
And I do not want to hear any jokes
Actually , the president will hardly miss any White House time at all
He 's leaving on Thursday night , sleeping on the plane and spending part of Friday morning hanging out with the International Olympic Committee before taking off for home again
Truly , it is not the sort of mission you want to whine about if your party 's last chief executive spent more than one-third of his presidency hanging out at Camp David or clearing brush outside Crawford , Tex.
And did you hear the Democrats complaining about that
Well , yes , actually quite a bit
No American president has gone to lobby for the Olympics before
But then no American president had gone on the David Letterman show before
No president had ever made a speech in Cairo before
No president had ever been called a liar by a U.S. representative during a speech to Congress
No president had ever been accused of `` following Marxist theory '' by Andy Williams , the pop singer we have n't heard from since `` Moon River '' was in vogue
There was a time when no head of state would even consider running off to beg members of the unpredictable , quirky and occasionally bribable Olympics committee for their votes
But these days , you ca n't beat them off with a stick
The president of Brazil , who is popularly known as `` Lula '' is there , as is the prime minister of Japan , who is popularly known as `` the new guy .
The city of Madrid is the fourth contender for the 2016 Summer Games , reportedly trailing behind Chicago , Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo
So Spain is just sending the king , who is popularly known as `` Your Highness .
There are downsides to Obama 's decision to race off to Copenhagen , none of them involving failure to make the country safe
One is that it might actually not make sense for Chicago to spend tons of money to win the right to stuff the city with new places to throw a javelin
Chicagoans seem about evenly divided on whether hosting the Olympics would actually be a good thing , although they are overwhelmingly certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that they do not want to be on the hook for cost overruns
Which their City Council , nonetheless , voted unanimously to guarantee
But the White House is full of people who love Chicago and want to see it shine on a world stage
You can just hear them telling each other that it 's easy to come up with reasons not to try , but where did that ever get anyone
Seize the day
Beat Rio
`` I 'm going after you in Copenhagen , '' Michelle Obama told the wife of the Brazilian president
This was said in good humor at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh , a well-known venue for joshing
What if Obama goes to Denmark and Chicago loses anyway
Let 's hope the White House has been guaranteed that the fix is in
If you 're going to waste the administrative momentum on a big gamble , it really ought to be to slow global warming or to reform Wall Street , not to make sure the 2016 triathlon champion wins his medal in Illinois
The worst downside about Obama 's trip to Denmark is that even though the Republicans ' complaints are spurious , he did say the other day that he could n't go because he was too busy `` making real the promise of quality , affordable health care for every American .
His new confidence that it 's all right to leave suggests that maybe the president feels as though the promise got real when the Senate Finance Committee began pummeling a bill into exactly the shape desired by lawmakers who represent large and representative states like North Dakota and Montana and Maine
If so , this whole scenario is very depressing
I prefer to think that Obama suddenly agreed to go to Denmark not because Chicago could n't win without him , but because he just needed a short break from thinking about Max Baucus
If the Republican presidential candidates go any farther right , they ll be opening their town meetings by biting the heads off squirrels
Let s kill the death tax
cries Mitt Romney in New Hampshire , lashing out at that onerous levy on multimillion-dollar estates
Let s give the death tax the death penalty
one-ups Rudy Giuliani
Coming soon : Let s slice open the death tax s stomach and burn the entrails before its eyes
Meanwhile , there s John McCain , snarling about how that children s health care bill would require an unthinkable tax increase on cigarettes : A dollar a pack increase for cigarettes
So we want to take care of children s health and we want everybody to smoke
And then Mitt tops the entire pack by confiding that while on the campaign trail , he spends his evenings reading the motel Bibles
Nevertheless , the social super-conservatives are restive
Giuliani , McCain , Fred Thompson what are all these ladies men doing in their primary
And while Mitt Romney has changed everything but his name in order to make them happy , a sizable chunk of the Christian right can not seem to forgive him for being a Mormon
When Bob Jones University Chancellor Bob Jones III endorsed Romney , he couldn t resist insulting Mitt s faith in the process
-LRB- As a Christian , I am completely opposed to the doctrines of Mormonism ... -RRB- The old guard of the religious right is terrified that if Rudy Giuliani gets the nomination people will conclude that the evangelical leaders aren t all that powerful a
Their affections are up for grabs , so all the Republican candidates betook themselves to Washington this weekend to woo the Values Voter Summit
-LRB- Social conservatives , having been so successful in appropriating the word life are now trying to commandeer values .
They d been warming up for days
Down in South Carolina , Romney dismissed the United Nations as a total failure and called for the creation of a new world body made up only of countries that agree with us
Up in New Hampshire , Rudy made fun of Hillary Clinton s proposal to give a $ 5,000 nest egg to every newborn American and asked his audience who they thought would qualify for that cash the children of illegals
Even Fred Thompson emerged from his cave long enough to make an appearance yesterday
Thompson s tendency to look down and read his remarks provided the audience with some of the most prolonged views of the top of a bald politician s head in recent history
When you feel compelled to use an index card for lines like , We must have good laws
We must do our best to stop bad laws , you have been spending too much of your life filming 30-second bits of dialogue
Thompson wasn t quite what the V.V. s hoped for
-LRB- It probably did not help that it had just been reported that he said that he had no regrets about lobbying for an abortion rights group since it happened in private life .
While his campaign had the summit awash with volunteers , the candidate himself couldn t work up any energy even when he was railing against abortion and gay marriage
Nothing worse than phlegmatic pandering
Now Mitt Romney there s a man who can put the pep into pander
I am pro-family on every level , from personal to political , he told the summiteers
-LRB- Take that , Rudy .
He reeled off anti-abortion pledges not just the requisite anti-Roe Supreme Court nominees , but promises to oppose abortion in military clinics , oppose funding abortion in international aid programs and I will work to ban embryonic cloning
He was almost as impassioned as he was during his Senate race against Ted Kennedy when he talked about the dear , close family relative who was very close to me who died from an illegal abortion and his firm conviction that we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter
And you will not see me wavering on that
When it comes to flip-flopping , this year s Republicans make John Kerry look like those early martyrs who had their tongues torn out rather than renounce even the most obscure tenet of their faith
Do the values voters believe Mitt won t flip back again
Should the people who admired Rudy Giuliani s refusal to sign the idiot no-taxes-no-matterwhat pledge just presume that he was being insincere -LRB- pretend-pander -RRB- when he promised that he would rule out a tax increase for any purpose whatsoever
Are his fans voting for the Rudy who thought the flat-tax idea was stupid , or the new one who kinda likes it
And are they voting for the Mitt who refused to sign a no-taxes pledge , or the one who is now bragging about having signed it at every conceivable opportunity
-LRB- When this man says change begins with us , he means it literally .
This is a sensitive point , you know
We ve been burned before
There was this Republican candidate in 2000 who opposed using U.S. soldiers for nation-building and promised he d never invade a country without an exit strategy
In Delaware , the Republican voters were so angry that they rejected a popular congressman and gave their Senate nomination to an apparently unemployed 41-year-old woman whose major life success had been an ongoing performance as Wacko Conservative Girl on late-night talk shows
In Alaska , they were so mad that they tossed out their incumbent senator for Joe Miller , a lawyer who believes unemployment compensation is unconstitutional , except when his wife is receiving it
So now in Delaware the unangry Democrat candidate is way ahead
In Alaska , Miller keeps dropping in the polls , which made him so mad that he had his private security guards take an inquiring reporter into custody
That did not go over very well even in Alaska , an extremely angry state that hateshateshates all forms of government , despite the fact that 40 percent of its economy comes from government aid , and the state 's oil-revenue-sharing program gives families thousands of dollars in payments every year
`` Unemployment has never been lower ; there is no housing crisis ; banks are solvent
We just got Permanent Fund Checks - and , boy , are we pissed off !
said Michael Carey , an Anchorage Daily News columnist
Really , people , rage never gets you anything but overturned garbage cans and broken windows
If you want to do rage , go to France
We are talking here about undifferentiated anger , which creates nothing but a feeling of moral superiority on the part of the irate
It 's natural to get furious at specific things : a tax increase or an unfaithful spouse or a blown tire
Or , in the case of the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky , Rand Paul , a debate opponent who asks : `` When is it ever appropriate to tie up a woman and have her kneel before a false idol that you refer to as Aqua Buddha ?
This involved a college prank that Paul told reporters he does n't remember
You can see why he was angry , although it does sound hard to forget
It 's the difference between Joe Manchin , the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in West Virginia , who has ads showing him metaphorically shooting a bullet into the heart of the cap-and-trade bill , and the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Congress in Arizona , who had herself filmed spraying machine-gun fire all over the place while an announcer said : `` Pamela Gorman - conservative Christian and a pretty fair shot .
Even if you do n't agree with Manchin 's position , you have to admit that Gorman would probably be more difficult to work with
In New York , Republicans were so full of free-floating rage that they nominated Carl Paladino , a hotheaded developer from Buffalo , for governor
For a while this summer , upstate New York was littered with `` I 'm Mad As Hell , Too , Carl !
lawn signs
Paladino quickly developed a gender gap the size of the Grand Canyon
A recent Siena College poll showed that 71 percent of female voters preferred his opponent , Andrew Cuomo , while 21 percent supported him , demonstrating yet again that women will not vote for a guy who yells
The Republican nominee got into fights , promised to `` take out '' one reporter and insulted gays
He trotted out his poor wife , who gave interviews recounting how she had forgiven Carl for fathering a 10-year-old daughter after he broke the news while she was getting ready for their son 's funeral
Cuomo , meanwhile , has not only refrained from yelling , he 's barely had to leave his office
On the rage-o-meter , this week 's gubernatorial debate in New York was not quite as stirring as Kentucky 's , possibly because it involved seven people , some in alarming get-ups , sitting on uncomfortable chairs in a line
Actually , it looked less like a debate than a tryout for some particularly embarrassing reality show
Several third-party candidates , including a former Black Panther in a Nehru jacket , were more experienced in the politics of unproductive rage than Paladino
In a late-breaking attempt to change the tone , Paladino announced that he was not actually angry but simply `` passionate .
Unfortunately , the world will remember his performance only for the part in which he had to run off to go to the bathroom before his concluding remarks
The person who got the most postdebate attention was Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party
McMillan wore black gloves and had a moustache that wound around his head like a ribbon , and a goatee that looked like two little fuzzy gerbils hanging from his chin
He was very , very , very angry
Particularly about the rents , which he pointed out were too damn high
Afterward , Sarah Maslin Nir of The Times tracked him down in Brooklyn and discovered that McMillan 's own personal rent is , he said , zero
His landlords , he added , are `` like family
They do n't want me to pay any money at all
I am basically living rent free .
Which does n't mean he ca n't be ticked off about it
Zoromski was prepared to interrupt people during their dinner hours to encourage them to vote Republican
But when he got the script saying `` you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers , whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol , the Pentagon , a judge 's home and killed Americans , '' he packed it in
`` Even though I was paid to do it , I did n't feel comfortable , '' Zoromski told WKOW-TV
This story , relayed via Mike Allen on Politico.com , struck me because I once worked as a telemarketer , and it is an occupation so soul-numbing that it is hard to imagine that anything could make it worse
I woke up people on the overnight shift who had just managed to fall asleep for the first time in six days
Sometimes , when there was clearly nobody at home , I would just let the phone ring and ring in order to avoid having to call anybody else
Once after about 30 rings , I heard the breathless voice of a man who had climbed down off the roof in hopes that this was the critical business call he had been waiting for all year , the one that was going to change his life forever
Imagine his joy when he discovered that it was , instead , an exciting opportunity to purchase an entire packet of portrait photographs of his loved ones at a special discount price
So truly , if you can come up with something that would send a telemarketer over the edge , you have really overachieved on the offensiveness front
For a while , John McCain and Sarah Palin were so over-the-top about Barack Obama that people in the crowds started yelling death threats sometimes while simultaneously begging McCain to `` take the gloves off .
The idea of what they were hoping to see in a post-glove era scared everybody so much that the campaign tamped things down
Opening for a McCain rally in North Carolina last weekend , Representative Robin Hayes said he wanted `` to keep the crowd as respectful as possible .
In order to pursue that goal as efficiently as possible , Hayes then announced that `` liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God .
This was an especially unfortunate turn of phrase given the fact that he had begun his remarks by saying he wanted to `` make sure we do n't say something stupid .
All this was a direct outgrowth of Sarah Palin 's own comments in North Carolina , in which she praised the `` pro-America '' areas of the country
But Hayes had clearly been absent for the day in scurrilous campaign school when they explain that you are n't supposed to specifically name the anti-American parts
Meanwhile , over on MSNBC , Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota was launching into the Obama\/terrorist spin when she suggested that the news media should investigate `` the views of the people in Congress and find out : Are they pro-America or anti-America .
So far , the only person who 's felt the impact of her call to reinvent McCarthyism for a post-Communist planet has been her opponent , a hitherto totally ignored Democrat named Elwyn Tinklenberg , who was stunned to discover in the following days that he had received close to $ 1 million in donations
When reporters first began covering political speeches in the 19th century , politicians were so appalled at the idea that somebody planned to write down what they said that they would stop speaking if a reporter showed up along the campaign route
Today , in the post-macaca era , you 'd figure that politicians would be so sensitive to the perpetual presence of recording devices that they 'd censor their comments even while muttering to themselves when taking a shower
Not to mention comments made right after they have been made up , offered coffee in the MSNBC green room , had a technician install three different recording devices under their clothing and given a seat in front of a large camera
But the tone of this campaign has given some of the Republican faithful , even those who are members of Congress , the impression that questioning the patriotism of large groups of the population is now O.K. Right now , all the polls predict that in less than two weeks , Barack Obama is going to be elected president
The McCain campaign disputes this
Large numbers of Obama supporters are also in doubt , possibly because they keep getting e-mails from their relatives in Toledo revealing that Obama has gone to Hawaii not to visit his ailing grandmother , but to destroy evidence that he is not actually an American citizen
For John McCain , the best question now is not whether he 's going to lose , but what kind of a country he 'd wind up with if he won after a campaign even a telemarketer ca n't love
Truly , I am learning something new every day in this long campaign season
People , did you know that the official state bird of Alaska is the willow ptarmigan
Or that Alexandria , Ind. , is home to the world 's largest ball of paint
Well , you do now
But about Russ Feingold
He is running for a fourth term , in a very tough race against Ron Johnson , a plastics manufacturer and one of those rich political virgins who have been popping up in races across the country , waving a checkbook and a copy of `` Atlas Shrugged .
It 's ironic that Feingold , who is possibly the most independent member of the Senate , a Mr. Clean who votes against his party regularly , is among the incumbents in the most danger from an anti-Washington voter rebellion
Especially since Johnson is not all that impressive
Unless you like Ayn Rand and are yearning to see the country run just like a plastics business
`` My opponent never even refers to Wisconsin , '' said Feingold , 57 , a twice-divorced policy wonk who thinks the election is being hijacked by big money conservative forces outside the state
He loves to talk about Wisconsin 's `` great progressive tradition , '' as well as `` the rich tradition of clean government .
Still , you have to acknowledge that the state that gave America Fighting Bob La Follette also created Senator Joe McCarthy
`` Well , there are other traditions , '' Feingold conceded
I 've gotten sort of tired of independent spirits in the U.S. Senate , and when Feingold decided to vote against the financial reform bill because he just felt it should have been better , I felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for the majority leader , Harry Reid
But there are two things about Feingold 's campaign that won my heart
First , unlike the majority of Democrats running for re-election in Middle America , he is not trying to pretend that he did n't vote for the health care bill , or that he voted for it with his fingers crossed , planning to completely overhaul it in 2011
`` You bet I voted for that bill
I 'm proud I did it !
he hollered during a campaign stop with Michelle Obama
He keeps pointing out all the good and popular things the law contains
In debates , he asks Johnson - who 's promising to repeal Obamacare - if he really wants to reopen the hated `` doughnut hole '' in the Medicare prescription drug program or go back to allowing insurers to refuse to cover children with pre-existing medical conditions
Second , Feingold is actually sticking to his principles even though it could cost him the race
This is the Lone Ranger year in American politics , when big money donors have been able to buy campaign TV ads without revealing their identities , laundering the money through groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce or blandly named newbies like the American Action Network
The Sunlight Foundation , a nonprofit group for government transparency , says there 's been more than $ 2.7 million spent by these outside groups in the Senate race in Wisconsin
About $ 2.67 million of that went for ads to praise Johnson or attack Feingold
Less than $ 40,000 was spent on Feingold 's behalf
This is because the senator told outside groups , including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee , to stay away
`` He lives by his rules , '' said Fred Wertheimer , the guru of campaign finance reform and chief of Democracy 21 , a nonprofit organization
`` He 's true to his school , which makes him a freak of nature in Washington .
This is not the first time Feingold has risked his seat to hang onto his convictions about the proper way to finance political campaigns
In 1998 , in a race he ultimately won by a whisker , he told outside groups not to come into Wisconsin with unregulated `` soft money '' ads on his behalf
`` No career , including mine , is as important as breaking the hold of this system of legalized bribery , '' he told R.W. Apple of The Times
Then he and John McCain managed to push a bill through Congress to control soft money
But it was upended this year by the Supreme Court
In response , the House passed a bill requiring the liberated attack-ad machines to at least reveal the names of their major donors
It was killed by Republicans in the Senate , with McCain 's help
`` I think John will be back , '' said Feingold
`` He had a tough primary .
Which is sort of the point
There is a law in Washington , followed by politicians great and small from both sides of the aisle , that principles are fine , but not something you 'd want to lose your seat over
Feingold disagrees
And Wisconsinites , if you decide to re-elect this guy I will be so happy I will personally lead a movement to make the rest of the country stop calling you Cheeseheads
Unless that 's something you like
Really , whatever you want is fine
I know many of you were waiting to hear who the star of Walker , Texas Ranger has decided to endorse in the presidential race
Well , the winner is ... Mike Huckabee
It s time to quit choosing our leaders based solely upon charisma or one strong suite , said Norris , in a statement that was rich in historical references , if a little weak on copy editing
Norris has a side career as a columnist for a conservative news Web site , so perhaps his opinion carries more weight than your average action star who has not yet been elected to public office
-LRB- It would help , though , if the Current Events section of the Chuck Norris home page was not devoted to the schedule for the World Combat League .
But the question we want to consider today is why he is virtually the only prominent name backing Huckabee , who is this season s likable presidential candidate
This is the venerable , if not particularly rewarding role once held by Morris Udall and John McCain2000 , and it involves having reporters appreciate you much more than the politicians and donors do
Like Bill Clinton , Huckabee was born in a town called Hope and became a pretty good governor of a state that doesn t make it all that easy
-LRB- Plus , you have to love the fact that he lived for a while in a mobile home on the Arkansas Statehouse grounds .
He s extremely inclusive , defending minorities who are illegal immigrants as well as the ones registered to vote
He can be both funny and convincing on the stump
On the downside , I think he d be a terrible president
He doesn t know beans about foreign affairs , he wants to replace the income tax with a national sales tax , and his positions on social issues are far to the right of the general populace
But why aren t the social conservatives rallying around this guy
Unlike any of the major candidates , he s still on his first wife and first position on abortion
Once we start getting into the inevitable personal stories of redemption , Americans would have a much better time listening to Huckabee tell how he lost 110 pounds than sitting through Rudy s 9\/11 story again or looking at pictures of Mitt s 10 grandchildren
Yet the leaders of the Values Voters keep waiting for one of the top-tier candidates to change a strategy that any woman who s had an unsatisfactory boyfriend could warn them is never going to pan out
They pace around muttering that maybe Fred Thompson will start acting more ... alive , or that Mitt Romney will stop being a Mormon
Tony Perkins , president of the Family Research Council , seems to think Rudy Giuliani has come around on gay marriage
-LRB- Perkins should talk to Rudy s gay former roommate Howard Koeppel about the time the then-mayor promised to marry Koeppel and his partner as soon as the laws change .
Huckabee s problems say more about the leaders of the religious right than about him
They re united mainly by their hatred of abortion and gay marriage , and a desire to win
Considerations like who has the most Christian attitudes toward illegal immigrants don t register
And the fact that as governor Huckabee spent a lot of time trying to spend money on the needy doesn t go over all that well with the ones who believe that God s top priority is eliminating the estate tax
Lately , anti-Huckabee conservatives have been suggesting he s soft on crime
The story involves an Arkansas man , Wayne DuMond , who was accused of kidnapping and raping a high school cheerleader in 1985
While he was free awaiting trial , masked men broke into his home , beat and castrated him
His testicles wound up in a jar of formaldehyde , on display on the desk of the local sheriff
At the trial , he was sentenced to life plus 20 years
When Huckabee became governor , DuMond was still in an apparently hopeless situation , though theoretically eligible for parole
Huckabee championed his cause , and wrote him a congratulatory letter when he was finally released in 1999
Then in 2000 DuMond moved to Kansas City , where he sexually assaulted and murdered a woman who lived near his home
There s nothing you can say , but my gosh , it s the thing you pray never happens , the clearly tortured Huckabee recently told The National Review
And it did
If by some miracle he became the presidential nominee , there would obviously be many opportunities to point out that Michael Dukakis never sent a letter to Willie Horton celebrating his furlough
Why do the leaders of the religious right keep sidling away from a Baptist minister whose greatest political sin seems to have been showing compassion to a prisoner who appeared to deserve it
Why can t they rally around the candidate who pushed for more government spending to promote poor children s health and education , and reminded his conservative critics that when they talk about being pro-life , life doesn t begin at conception and end at birth
I think we have answered the question
Here we are just a little more than a week away from one of the most important elections in modern history , and most of us are beside the point , our states long since written off as hopelessly red or blue
This is the time of year when parents from New York to Alabama ask the experts : How old should my child be before I tell him that his vote does n't count
Do I wait until she 's in high school to break it to her that if she decides to plant her roots in California or Utah , her role in presidential elections will be less significant than her voice in deciding who should be eliminated in the next episode of `` Dancing With the Stars ''
As we all know , in America the president is actually chosen by an Electoral College of 538 members
This was a system devised by the founding fathers , who got the idea from ancient Rome , where democratic government worked exceptionally well
The electors are chosen by the states , winner take all
The only exceptions are Maine and Nebraska , which divvy their electors up more or less according to the popular vote
A much more sensible approach , and good work , guys
But although Maine and Nebraska are lovely , first-rate states , neither has been much of a political trendsetter since the Alf Landon era
Let 's be realistic
There are lots of calls for reform , but we have a country in economic meltdown
The globe is warming , the Middle East is in chaos and `` Mad Men '' keeps teetering on the brink of cancellation
We 're not going to get around to repairing the Electoral College any time in the near future
I have given this a lot of thought , and I think our best immediate course of action is to whine a lot
I want attention
I want to get Republican robo-calls during the dinner hour , telling me that Barack Obama is a terrorist
I want to have college students from other states coming to my door with helpful leaflets
I want volunteers offering to drive me to the polls
Or sitting at my feet , admiring the way I fill out my absentee ballot
I want to hear political ads every time I turn on the television
I want the love
People in Virginia and Florida , please do not send me letters telling me that being the target of all this interest can be tiring , and that you yearn for quieter times when the ads on television were all about big cars , room fresheners and helpful messages on the best medication to take if you have a mysterious disease that consists only of initials
I do n't care
I want my ballot to be important , to have a serious career of its own
We recently heard a report that 13 people , most from New York and California , are being investigated for renting a three-bedroom house in Columbus , Ohio , and registering to vote there , just so they could count
I do not advise this sort of behavior , but truly , you can see where they were coming from
The biggest mistake of my life as a voter was leaving Ohio for New York
You can imagine circumstances under which the fate of New York 's electoral votes might remain uncertain in late October
But if that happened , the Democratic nominee would still not come to try to woo us , because he and all his associates would be hiding out in a fallout shelter beneath the Berkshire Mountains
If I still lived in Ohio , I would go all the way and embark on a career as an undecided voter
Nothing could force me to make up my mind
Every day , cable TV shows would call me up to take my political temperature
If I had a cranky , anti-Obama day , it would make the CNN map turn pinker
Wolf Blitzer would have my phone number on auto-dial
The Obama campaign honchos spent the summer bragging that they were the inclusive campaign because they were targeting 18 states
That of course meant that 32 states had already been relegated to the category of chopped liver
But they rightly pointed out that the McCain campaign was targeting only 11
Now , it appears that John McCain has decided that it is once again all about Florida
The Democrats , in response , have created the Great Schlep , in which Jewish youths are supposed to go to Florida and talk their grandparents into voting for Obama
While it 's not clear that many of these trips have actually taken place , it is probably a bad sign that we have not heard any talk about McCain urging retired WASPs in Arizona to go to Wisconsin and try to talk their grandchildren into voting Republican
But there are still nine days left
And whatever you do , do n't forget to vote
This is actually an old journalism trick
If you want to do a retrospective of an important event , it is really much better to do it well before the appropriate date , when you have the field all to yourself
I learned this from one of my first editors , who made me write a year-later piece about a famous murder a little more than nine months after the crime occurred
It was a big success
So , the elections
When we look back on the elections of 2010 - and we will look back , people , I promise you it really is going to end - we will all have our lists of best and worst moments
For best , one of my favorites was the discovery that Bill and Hillary Clinton are now the Republican Party 's favorite Democrats
You will remember Jennifer Steinhauer 's story in The Times about how Republicans in Congress are speaking nostalgically about the great bipartisanship of the Clinton years , and how Sean Hannity recently referred to the ex-president as `` good old Bill .
Meanwhile in Delaware , Christine O'Donnell , when asked to point to a Democratic senator she could work with , picked Hillary
Who is of course not in the Senate any longer , but I 'm sure she appreciated the shout-out
Earlier on Fox , O'Donnell had expanded on her admiration for the secretary of state , who she said `` was a great senator .
This is an important life-lesson for all of us - except the Clintons , who clearly knew it all along
Victory comes to those who hang in there
Today , you may be the most loathed person in America who is not wanted for a capital crime
But tomorrow the people who are attempting to impeach you will get over it
And the ones who claimed that you organized the assassination of your good friend Vince Foster will forget
Then a year or 10 down the line they will be ticked off at someone else and talking about you as if you 'd been best pals since sleep-away camp in the third grade
There have been so many possible worst campaign moments that it 's impossible to pick a favorite
The woman who got stomped by a Rand Paul supporter
Rand Paul 's head-stomping response
-LRB- `` It is an unusual situation to have so many people so passionate on both sides . ''
The political operative in South Carolina who felt compelled to go on television and confess to a one-night stand with the gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley
Sharron Angle 's `` some of you look a little more Asian to me '' remark to the Latino students
Sharron Angle 's announcement that Dearborn , Mich. , is governed by Islamic Sharia law
Sharron Angle
My own personal worst campaign moment came at the New York gubernatorial debate , when the lights went up to reveal seven contenders vying for the right to lead the state , one of whom was famous only for her claim to be the madam who supplied Eliot Spitzer with prostitutes
This was possibly the worst debate I ever saw , and while some of that was due to the fact that the Republican , Carl Paladino , was preoccupied by his need to go to the bathroom , the big problem was all those third-party candidates clogging up the stage
I 'm beginning to think we make it too easy to clutter the ballot with names of people who want to run for office only because they lack the money to achieve their true objective , which is to have a large poster of their face looming over Times Square year round , or at least get a continuing part in a reality TV show
Let 's return to the bright side
Another really good outcome in 2010 may be the decimation of the filthy rich candidate
Meg Whitman -LRB- running for California governor -RRB- , Rick Scott -LRB- Florida governor -RRB- and Linda McMahon -LRB- Connecticut senator -RRB- have together spent almost a quarter billion dollars of their own money trying to get elected
Whitman and McMahon are both running far behind while Scott is in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent
We may be looking at nearly $ 250,000,000 in thwarted ego , folks
So on election night , keep an eye on Scott 's fortunes , even if you do n't live in Florida and could not care less that when he was making all his money in the private sector , he oversaw the biggest health care fraud scheme in the history of American government
So , to conclude : This election has taught us that not only are there second acts in America , there are third acts
And really spectacular curtain calls
Also , that there is nothing cool about running for high office on the Look At Me Ticket
And finally , that money does not buy happiness
Or maybe even the governorship of California , which in a sane world you would not be able to give away
There 's Arizona , where Jan Brewer , the immigrant-bashing governor , stomped away from her horrible debate performance while reporters yelled : `` Governor , please answer the question about the headless bodies !
Always hard to beat a state with a headless-bodies controversy
Arizona got additional awfulness points when Brewer announced that she was not participating in any future debates since she only needed to do just that one to get public campaign funds
Still more when she said she would probably change her mind if her poll numbers dropped
Even more for the fact that they have n't
California -LRB- Fourth Month Without a Budget !
has a governor 's race that 's degenerated into a debate over whether Meg Whitman should take a lie detector test to refute the weepy claims of her undocumented ex-housekeeper
And in South Carolina , the most impossible Republican in the Senate , Jim DeMint , is opposed by an apparently delusional Democrat named Alvin Greene
He 's facing a felony charge and pushing a jobs platform that involves putting people to work creating action figures of Alvin Greene
Whenever you 're looking for a dreadful political culture , you have to consider Illinois -LRB- $ 13 Billion in the Hole and Still Digging !
and its unending Chicago versus Downstate feud
The Republican Senate candidate , Mark Kirk , is running an ad downstate that telescopes his entire biography into the sliver of his life he lived somewhere in Illinois besides the Chicago area
-LRB- `` Mark Kirk : Born in Champaign , attended college in Carlinville , with mainstream Illinois values . ''
This calls to mind the old saying that if a cat gives birth to kittens in the oven , it does not make them muffins
Meanwhile , Kirk 's ads demonize his Democratic opponent , Alexi Giannoulias , as a `` Chicago politician , '' which would seem to be the least of Giannoulias 's problems , what with his family 's bankrupt , sleazy-loan-making bank
Although to be fair to Kirk , The Associated Press reported that he managed , in a single interview , to refer to his opponent with the phrase `` lent a tremendous amount of money to mobsters and felons '' eight times
I have to put in a plug for New York -LRB- Looking for Our Fourth Governor in Five Years !
where the Republican candidate , Carl Paladino , attempted to protect his love child from the prying news media by accusing his opponent , Andrew Cuomo , of having `` paramors .
Paladino later admitted that he had no proof , then reversed the reversal
Once again , it appears , New Yorkers will fail to achieve their dream of having a governor whose sex life is a complete mystery
And everybody wants to talk about Delaware and Christine O'Donnell , the Republican Senate candidate who once had a date on a `` Satanic altar , '' leaving us with an image even more disturbing than Eliot Spitzer 's encounter with a prostitute with his socks on
O'Donnell keeps having r sum problems , and it appears that she has particular trouble keeping track of where she went to college
She got her bachelor 's degree last month , not in 1993
Also , the alleged stint at Claremont Graduate University was actually at a conservative think tank called the Claremont Institute
And rather than attending Oxford University , O'Donnell attended a course run by a group that had rented a room at Oxford University
Colorado voters , in the fun-loving spirit that has filled so many Republican primaries this season , gave the gubernatorial nomination to a newcomer named Dan Maes , who had already been hit with one of the largest campaign finance violation fines in state history for claiming more than $ 40,000 in mileage reimbursements - which would suggest that he spent the last year driving the equivalent of more than a third of the way to the moon
Now Maes is in r sum trouble , too , for apparently making up a story about being an undercover operative for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in Liberal , Kan.
Liberal is best known as the home of a `` Wizard of Oz '' Museum , although , unfortunately , that had nothing to do with the investigation , which involved a drug ring but did not involve Dan Maes
But for overall awfulness , I 'm going to go with Nevada , where Harry Reid , the Senate majority leader , is in a battle with Republican Sharron Angle in a race in which the voters have made it clear they loathe everybody
Both Reid and Angle have decided the wisest course might be to stay out of sight and just run attack ads , helping to turn this into the Year of the Burrowing Candidate
They did both appear at a forum at a Christian school recently but made sure they were never on stage at the same time
This made for a rather noneventful event , except for the end , when two female Reid supporters and a male Angle fan got into a fistfight
We are so ready to wrap up this presidential race
It 's been a great ride , but once you realize you 've got the Barack Obama TV special on your to-do list next to recaulking the bathtub , you know the magic 's gone
Time to stop talking and start worrying about whether the voting machines have all their working parts
Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins discuss the 2008 presidential race
Sarah Palin almost got me back in the ring when she suddenly attacked federal funding for scientific research that uses fruit flies
Is she a member of a fruit-fly rights group
Opposed to basic research
Or does she want to limit federal funding to labs that do all their testing on puppies
No , I 'm not going there
We need a break
Dare you to answer this end-of-the-endless-election quiz : Take the interactive version of the quiz Take the text version of the
The end of an election season is always thick with regrets
Do you think Meg Whitman is contemplating all the other things she could have done with $ 141 million
Does the Republican candidate for the United States Senate in West Virginia kick himself for allowing his wife to establish a voting residence in Florida
Personally , I am sorry about something I wrote about Dan Maes , the Republican nominee for governor of Colorado and possibly the worst candidate for anything in the entire country this year
Among many , many other things , Maes was accused of making up a story about being an undercover operative for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in the city of Liberal , Kan.
I regret very much that when I wrote about this incident I pointed out that Liberal is `` best known as the home of a ` Wizard of Oz ' Museum .
While Liberal does , indeed , have such a museum , a number of readers pointed out that it is much better known for being the home of a Shrove Tuesday Pancake Race , in which contestants vie to see who can run the fastest while flipping pancakes in the air
This is the sort of information we really like to acquire during a hard-fought campaign , but , alas , most of what we 've learned this year is about the candidates
See how you score : I : Who said it
A -RRB- `` Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me , especially for the holidays
Little dolls
Like maybe little action dolls .
B -RRB- `` When is it ever a good idea to tie a woman up and ask her to kneel before a false idol , your god , which you call Aqua Buddha ?
C -RRB- `` I made money the old-fashioned way
I inherited it .
D -RRB- `` Equality is the prime rib of America .
E -RRB- `` Jan , I call upon you today to say there are no beheadings .
1 -RRB- John Raese -LRB- West Virginia , Senate -RRB- 2 -RRB- Alvin Greene -LRB- South Carolina , Senate -RRB- 3 -RRB- Lady Gaga on the campaign trail 4 -RRB- Terry Goddard -LRB- Arizona , governor -RRB- 5 -RRB- Jack Conway -LRB- Kentucky , Senate -RRB- \*\*\*\*\* II
Match the excuses : A -RRB- `` I 'll put it up on my Web site , I promise you .
B -RRB- `` I had read that in one place .
C -RRB- `` This is four years ago .
D -RRB- `` You know , I 'm a mom
... My daughter 's in Europe .
1 -RRB- Sharron Angle , the U.S. Senate candidate in Nevada on her claim that Dearborn , Mich. , and the nonexistent town of Frankford , Tex. , are governed by Sharia law
2 -RRB- Alex Sink , a gubernatorial candidate in Florida , explaining why she looked at a debate tip , texted onstage via a makeup artist 's cellphone
3 -RRB- Ben Quayle , a Congressional candidate in Arizona , on charges by the owner of the Dirty Scottsdale Web site that Quayle once ran a section aimed at finding `` the hottest chick in Scottsdale .
4 -RRB- Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell of Delaware on her failure to come up with a Supreme Court ruling she disagreed with
\*\*\*\*\* III
Who fired whom for what
A -RRB- Press secretary , for marrying a Lebanese national for a fee
B -RRB- Media firm for sending out a casting call for actors with a `` hicky '' look to appear in West Virginia campaign commercial
C -RRB- Aide for Twitter message : `` What 's the difference between selling out your party 's values and the oldest profession ?
-LRB- To be perfectly accurate , the aide was actually kept on staff but stripped of all twittering privileges .
D -RRB- Volunteer coordinator for stomping on a MoveOn.org protester
B -RRB- Told an interviewer that upon arriving home , she has her staff check the shrubbery in front of her house to make sure no enemies are hiding in the bushes
C -RRB- Failed to make sure the phone was really hung up before engaging in a conversation that included the name of his female opponent and the word `` whore .
D -RRB- Has never satisfactorily explained why the family yacht is named `` Sexy Bitch .
E -RRB- Raced off the stage just before his final statement in the one and only governor 's debate in order to use the bathroom
F -RRB- Ran an endorsement ad starring a dead senator
1 -RRB- Jerry Brown -LRB- California , governor -RRB- 2 -RRB- Christine O'Donnell -LRB- Delaware , Senate -RRB- 3 -RRB- Rick Scott -LRB- Florida , governor -RRB- 4 -RRB- Lisa Murkowski -LRB- Alaska , Senate -RRB- 5 -RRB- Carl Paladino -LRB- New York , governor -RRB- Answers : I : A-2 ; B-5 ; C-1 ; D-3 ; E-4
II : A-4 ; B-1 ; C-3 ; D-2
III : A-4 ; B-2 ; C-3 ; D-1
IV : A-3 ; B-2 ; C-1 ; D-6 ; E-5 ; F-4
One of my personal dreams is that we should have a public health insurance option
To tell you the truth , this was not on my list at the beginning of 2009
But so many really irritating people have been announcing that a public option is impossible\/wrong\/possibly treasonous that now I yearn for it night and day
And if we 're really going to get the economy rolling again , everybody is going to need a lot more dreams involving very large plasma TVs
Plus new cars and maybe a really snazzy espresso machine
The White House had a dream of getting Chicago the Olympics
Did n't work out
At all
And some people feel it was sort of weird for Barack Obama to throw himself into the fight with such ardor
They may have a point
But if the president is going to take a flier on an improbable and possibly delusional quest , I would prefer that it involve lobbying the Olympic committee rather than , say , invading a country
As a nation we seem to be overstocked on dreams involving fame and fortune , particularly the ones that come untethered to any plans for actual achievement
Every time a TV show holds auditions for a new singing or dancing or top-modeling competition , the streets are stacked with people who appear to have no particular talent or training but are confident that they can make it to the top , thanks to the critical dream factor
And maybe they have a point
When President Obama told the nation 's schoolchildren that success requires hard work , a reality TV star named Spencer Pratt retorted that it was actually quite easy
He makes millions of dollars every year playing himself on `` The Hills '' and attending a large number of nightclub openings
This was not something Pratt had to study for
Sarah Palin has not been setting a very good example , either
This week her publisher announced that Palin had produced a 400-page memoir , `` Going Rogue : An American Life '' in only four months
This is exactly the kind of facility that many nonwriters who dream of best-sellerdom imagine they could summon once they got the right title and dedication page
First-time writers generally only achieve this kind of stupendous productivity when somebody else does the actual writing
Palin was channeled by Lynn Vincent , who has worked with a number of other conservative celebs , including William Boykin , the general who got into hot water by suggesting that his God was better than the Muslims ' God
-LRB- Boykin 's `` Never Surrender : A Soldier 's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom '' was widely acclaimed for the length of its subtitle .
In an ingenious spin on the co-author strategy , Stephenie Meyer , who wrote the `` Twilight '' novels , said that her vampire hero appeared in a dream and then dictated the first book as fast as she could type
He did not demand a percentage of the advance
This does sound like a great strategy , and I understand that millions of American women currently have a dream of having that dream
Then there is Tom DeLay and `` Dancing With the Stars .
I promise not to bring this show up again , unless they surprise us with a guest appearance by Mitt Romney doing the hustle
However , it is the perfect example of our theme since it is packed with people who had once briefly achieved stardom and now yearn to recapture lost glory by doing something for which most of them have no actual talent whatsoever
`` Dancing With the Stars '' calls DeLay `` arguably the highest-ranking star we 've ever had , '' which really translates into `` was once more important than Donny Osmond .
DeLay 's dream appears to be to remake himself into a person who is famous for something other than transforming the Congressional Republican caucus from cost-cutting reformers into lobbyist-loving back-scratchers in less time than it took Sarah Palin to deliver her first chapter
He looked terrifyingly cheerful during that cha-cha last week but was far more somber in the second competition
He looked , in fact , as if the House ethics committee had just plunked itself down at the judges table
It turned out that he was suffering from what the announcer described as the agony of `` toe trouble '' or a `` pre-stress fracture .
It was n't entirely clear whether it was the stress or the fracture that was imminent , but DeLay vowed to carry on despite his suffering
`` I 've worked too hard and even though my foot hurts , nothing 's going to stop me from doing this dance tonight , '' he said grimly , in a quote that we really hope will go down in Texas political history , right under whatever Davy Crockett said before the battle of the Alamo
Then he almost dropped his partner on her head
What can I tell you , people
Dreams die hard
The former House speaker , who once shut down the federal government because Bill Clinton gave him a bad seat on Air Force One , has decided that his extremely promising candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination will have to be nipped in the bud due to the tyranny of campaign finance reform
The McCain-Feingold Act criminalizes politics , he growled to George Stephanopoulos , launching into an explanation about how the law would have cruelly required him to sever his ties with a political advocacy group in order to run for the most powerful job on the planet
Who said campaign finance reform wouldn t accomplish anything
But , look , here comes Alan Keyes
The former Reagan administration official and career loser-of-elections seems to have snuck into the race while nobody was looking
There he was , in the Republican debate at Morgan State University the other day , appearing absolutely the same as he did in 2004 , when he suddenly popped up in Illinois just in time to lose the Senate race to Barack Obama
Before his unhappy collision with McCain-Feingold , Newt Gingrich had apparently surveyed the field and decided there was room for one more recovering womanizer among the front-runners
Keyes must have checked out the second tier and detected the need for more unelectable right-wing candidates who are obsessed with abortion
The front-runners , as is now well known , all ditched the Morgan State debate , even though it was the only one focusing on African-American issues , so they could spend the time raising money before the quarterly reporting deadline
The ones who came were either driven by their concern for the feelings of the black community or because they had no money to raise and getting to be on television is the whole point of their candidacy
I debate therefore I am
Well , the main reason I m here is because I was invited , said Representative Ron Paul
The Republican second tier has come to resemble a middle-aged singing group
You only see them en masse and require helpful hints to remember their names
There s Mike Huckabee -LRB- the nice one -RRB- , Sam Brownback -LRB- the curly-haired one -RRB- , Tom Tancredo -LRB- He Who Rails About Immigrants -RRB- and Duncan Hunter -LRB- the one who looks like the sheriff in a 1950s B-movie -RRB-
Paul , who looks like a cranky rancher in the same movie , is the libertarian congressman who usually performs the useful function of complaining about the war in Iraq so everybody else can leap in and defend it
We certainly do not want to disrespect the hopeless candidates who have been responsible for so many good times over the long , long presidential campaigns of yore
Keyes perked up the 2000 proceedings considerably when he threw himself into a mosh pit and bodysurfed to the tunes of Rage Against the Machine
It s possible that the day Gary Bauer fell off the stage during a pancake-flipping contest in New Hampshire was the highlight of the primaries
Given the extremely large crowd of hopeless candidates this time around , I think we have every reason to believe that sooner or later somebody will fall off something again
The problem for Republican voters is that as time goes on , the main candidates are beginning to resemble the hopeless ones more and more
Fred Thompson s campaign peaked the day before he officially announced
Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are spending most of their time taking back everything they said during their previous political careers
And John McCain has gone so ga-ga that he told a Web site devoted to spirituality that he would not be comfortable with a president who didn t share his religious beliefs
No wonder Newt thought , for one brief shining moment , that he might have a shot
The political parties find themselves on two different tracks this year
Democratic voters are resentful because Hillary Clinton seems to be wrapping things up so fast
#NAME?
The negative ads haven t even come out yet !
Meanwhile , the Republicans have more than their share of candidates , but on many days not a single one of them seems like somebody you could reasonably nominate
The Democrats used to give their unsatisfactory lineups names like The Seven Dwarfs
What would you call this crowd of Republicans
The Legion of Doom
The front-runners are all at least two entirely different politicians , and no voter can possibly avoid hating one version
John McCain , the maverick reformer , is now the Superhawk friend of Falwell who thinks Christianity is in the Constitution
The Rudy Giuliani who fought for gun control is now the guy who learned from 9\/11 how important it is for Americans to pack heat
-LRB- Coming soon : Rudy explains how 9\/11 taught him that homosexuality is wrong .
And you could fill an auditorium with all the Mitts we ve got running around out there
There is , however , only one Fred Thompson , and he appears to have been stuffed by a taxidermist
The Republicans were euphoric over Sarah Palin 's debate performance , particularly the part in which she stood tall and refrained from falling off the stage
`` There are conservatives and Republicans across America who are ... breathing a sigh of relief , '' said Pat Buchanan on MSNBC , adding that `` of the four debaters we 've seen , she was the most interesting , attractive of them all .
Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins discuss the 2008 presidential race
Palin did indeed answer each question with poise and self-confidence , reeling off a bunch of talking points that were sometimes totally unrelated to the matter at hand
When she was asked to respond to Joe Biden 's critique of the McCain health care plan , she announced : `` I would like to respond about the tax increases , '' cheerfully ignoring the fact that tax increases had never been mentioned
After the recent Katie Couric unpleasantness , Palin told the viewers that this time they were getting a chance to hear her `` answer these tough questions without the filter .
And , indeed , her answers were murky in the extreme
She railed repeatedly about government regulations getting in the way of the private sector , then announced that the financial rescue plan `` has got to include that massive oversight that Americans are expecting and deserving .
She said that she did n't want to discuss what caused global warming , only how to ease its impact
She appeared to agree with Dick Cheney 's manic theory that the vice president is a member of both the executive and legislative branches , although it 's hard to tell since she began her answer this way : `` Well , our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president
And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president 's agenda in that position .
When the moderator , Gwen Ifill , asked under what circumstances the candidates would consider bringing America 's nuclear weapons into play , Palin said : `` Nuclear weaponry , of course , would be the be-all , end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet , so those dangerous regimes , again , can not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons , period .
It 's hard to remember that a month ago , very few people had ever heard of Sarah Palin
McCain sprung his vice-presidential selection on us at the last minute , possibly under the impression that the country felt things had gotten too boring lately , and would appreciate the excitement of having a minimally experienced political unknown serving as backup to a 72-year-old cancer survivor
Since then , she has spent most of her time going from one Republican rally to the next , repeating chunks of her convention speech , which have grown more disjointed with every stop
-LRB- In an airplane hangar in Ohio recently , she told the people of Youngstown she was happy to be there because Alaska has , per capita , the nation 's most `` small planes and small pilots . ''
For reporters hoping to question her , she has been determinedly unfindable , a Judge Crater from Juneau
And after the Couric debacle , you can bet your boots that the campaign is going to take Palin 's debate performance , declare victory and wrap her up until after the election
This is all a terrible shame
For us , mainly
But also for Palin , whose intelligence and toughness may wind up buried under the legend of her verb-deprived ramblings
Palin is , in many ways , a genuine heir to the women 's liberation movement of the 1970s , which tried to make sure that future generations of American women would grow up feeling they had every right to compete with men for all the best rewards and adventures the world had to offer
She never seems to have had a single doubt that she could accomplish whatever she set her mind to
When she got involved in politics , she used the time-honored male route of cultivating powerful mentors , then pushing them out of the way at the first possible opportunity
When she was governor , she did what very few female politicians do , and ignored all the subsidiary issues in order to put all her bets on one big policy payoff in the form of a new state energy policy
Then , somehow , she concluded that her success in clawing her way to the top of Alaska 's modest political heap meant she was capable of running the United States
This entire election season has been a long-running saga about the rise of women in American politics
On Thursday , it all went sour
The people boosting Palin 's triumph were not celebrating because she demonstrated that she is qualified to be president if something ever happened to John McCain
They were cheering her success in covering up her lack of knowledge about the things she would have to deal with if she wound up running the country
When Rudy Giuliani wants to make a point , he frequently opens his eyes very wide , eyebrows arched
The effect is eerily like Norma Desmond announcing that she s ready for her close-up
He was in full Desmond mode this week in New Hampshire , explaining why he should be the next president of the United States
People who live in New York tend to be a little stunned by the fact that their former mayor is the front-runner for the Republican nomination
Honestly , people , we thought you would have gotten over it by now
That the pictures of him in drag as Rudy\/Rudina would have been enough all by themselves
Yet here he is , the leader of the pack
Obviously , the fishnet stockings went over better in South Carolina than we had anticipated
To his credit , sort of , Giuliani has finally figured out that he can not simply keep muttering 9\/11 ... 9\/11 ... 9\/11 until February
The trick is finding something else Republicans are interested in , something that he has agreed with them about for more than six months
Which brings us back to : Fiscal
New York City had government that was way out of control
I reduced the growth of government , and I reduced taxes 23 times , he tells the voters
When it comes to taking credit for reducing taxes , Giuliani has a fairly expansionist view
If it happened on his watch , it was his tax cut
If the tax in question happened to be a state tax , well he urged it
Urging counts
Giuliani does have bragging rights for coming into a liberal tax-and-spend government burdened with a huge deficit and balancing the budget
Unfortunately , his main opponent , Mitt Romney , has more or less the same r sum
-LRB- Amazing how the two most opposite human beings in the world can look so identical on paper .
Mayor Giuliani sued the Republican governor to keep in place the commuter tax
I lowered taxes on commuters
Romney declared at a gathering this week
In response , Giuliani rolled out former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Paul Cellucci to call Romney a desperate candidate and a wimpy tax cutter
Giuliani s tax-cutting record really is better than Romney s. That is mainly because the mayor of New York has much more power to control budgets than the president , a governor or pretty much any chief executive this side of Vladimir Putin
-LRB- If the New York City Council was lost at sea , it would take months before anyone noticed .
The commuter tax had been imposed by the State Legislature a long time before , and any sane mayor would have fought to keep it
Only a politician like Rudy Giuliani , however , could create so much loathing that New York City legislators preferred losing the revenue for their own city to helping him out
When Giuliani and Romney talk about what they would do with the federal budget , they differ in very typical ways
Romney has been mind-bogglingly vacuous
Right now he s running ads bragging that he signed a No New Taxes pledge a megapander that even Mitt in less desperate times admitted was a gimmick
Obviously , with no new taxes , something s got to give , and Romney has been extremely unhelpful in explaining exactly what that should be
-LRB- We ve got to rein in spending !
Giuliani , ever the tough-talking warrior , promises he ll only fill half of the federal civil service jobs that become empty due to retirement , an effort that would reduce the number of workers by close to 20 percent over two terms
I have a very , very strong view that the smaller we can make government , the more prosperous our economy is going to be , he added
This is classic Rudy-rhetoric , which is heavy on the very-very
When I was mayor of New York City , I worked very , very hard to reduce the size of government
I will do the same thing as president
The only problem is that this is never going to happen
To dramatically reduce the number of federal workers over the long run you d have to eliminate something huge that Congress really likes
Not even Ronald -LRB- Holy Be His Name -RRB- Reagan did that
Giuliani worked very , very hard during his first term as mayor and cut city jobs by less than 10 percent
By the time his second term was over , many of them were back
Thanks to Bill Clinton , others were being paid with federal funds
The total size of the city s work force was almost exactly the same as when Giuliani first took office
And partly thanks to the cost of contracting out other services , he left his successor with a budget deficit that was worse than when he started out
So what do you prefer , American voter , the guy who has a bold plan for controlling spending that is never going to work , or the one who would not say anything specific if you waterboarded him
Welcome to campaign 2008
Republicans have been pointing to Connecticut as a place where they could win the game-changing 51st Senate seat
They were originally hoping to take that seat in Delaware until enthusiastic primary voters nominated a woman who is currently trying to reassure the state that she is not actually a witch
So this week 's Senate candidate debate in Hartford was a big deal
Particularly since , thanks to the science of modern polling , we know that the race is virtually a dead heat
Or Democrat Richard Blumenthal is ahead by about 12 percentage points
Definitely one or the other
Blumenthal , the state attorney general , is nothing if not a familiar face
`` I 've spent 20 years listening to people in Connecticut
There 's a joke about Dick Blumenthal : If there 's a garage door opening , he 'll be there , '' he said proudly
People , is this the sort of thing you would really want to brag about
His opponent , Republican Linda McMahon , is running as a businesswoman who helped build her family 's World Wrestling Entertainment business into a sports empire so successful that it was able to create programming with prestigious partners such as the `` Girls Gone Wild '' franchise and allow the McMahon family to achieve the American dream , including a self-financed Senate campaign and a yacht named Sexy Bitch
McMahon supporters packed the auditorium - these people definitely understand the importance of tickets
But Blumenthal was widely regarded as the winner because he avoided showing any signs of terminal nervousness , such as fainting or staring blankly into the camera
McMahon is a much better public performer , with a particular talent for looking fierce , a quality that has been intensified by all those replays of her kicking a W.W.E. announcer in the groin
However , she is a total wimp when it comes to taking a political stand
She once declined to say what she would do to cut the cost of entitlements like Social Security by explaining that she did not want such an important issue to become `` a political football .
Her response to virtually any controversial question is that the matter needs to be studied
If you asked her at the end of a long day whether restaurants should be allowed to serve fried puppies , her answer would probably be that it should be looked into
Blumenthal tried to demonstrate his commitment to job creation by promising to try to restart construction of F-22 jets in Connecticut
The F-22 is infamous for being a waste of money , and there are still 187 of them sitting in hangars waiting for the return of the era of the dogfight
It would have been more sensible to demand that Congress move everybody in Bridgeport to the Bahamas for the winter
McMahon has already spent so much money that residents of this small state may be wondering why she keeps deluging them with mailings and TV ads instead of just buying everybody a car
Now that Blumenthal has pointed out that McMahon took home $ 46 million in a year in which she laid off workers , they may be wondering why she ca n't give each of them a well-appointed R.V. Blumenthal also demanded to know why McMahon did n't create jobs in the United States instead of having W.W.E. action figures made in China
This was the moment when McMahon really should have promised a study
Instead , she claimed that the United States does not `` have the kind of policies in place here that are conducive to manufacturing , '' citing , among other things , `` high labor costs , '' which could not have been much of a comfort to the state 's workers
It was a sign of some desperation on McMahon 's part that right before the debate her campaign unveiled a new attack ad about the fact that , in speeches to Vietnam veterans , Richard Blumenthal gave the strong impression that during the war he was ducking bullets in the rice paddies rather than being at home tucked safely in the reserves
This was an important point when it was first reported by The Times in May
We need to be sure that a candidate does n't have trouble distinguishing fact from fiction
Like Douglas Stringfellow , a former congressman from Utah who was elected in 1952 on the basis of his record as a heroic secret agent who was left a paraplegic from torture he received in a German prisoner-of-war camp
When it turned out that he was not a hero or a former secret agent or a paraplegic , you can see how voters must have wished they had known that in advance
But this season we 've had candidates who 've made up everything from a war medal to a career as an undercover agent
Plus one who ca n't seem to manage to make a list of three academic achievements without inflating every one
Who once said she dabbled in witchcraft
Really , they 've raised the bar so high that Blumenthal would have had to have claimed that he raised the flag at Iwo Jima to get attention
Republicans in the House of Representatives attempted to remove Charles Rangel as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday , arguing that Rangel 's current ethics controversy has `` held the House up to public ridicule .
In my capacity as a person who has held the House up to public ridicule on numerous occasions , I would like to go on record as saying I do not need any 79-year-old committee chairman to help me do it
Really , it 's a breeze
Although perhaps slightly harder than before Tom DeLay dropped out of `` Dancing With the Stars .
The Republicans are , however , completely right about Rangel
Whenever a powerful committee chairman has so many problems that you need a timeline to keep all the allegations straight , he is a liability
When those problems revolve around things like failure to pay taxes , it is not a good plan to have him be in charge of tax policy
I say this with great sadness because Rangel is my congressman
My neighbors and I have heard about the totally ludicrous benefits that are showered upon the constituents of a powerful committee chair
Ever since he took control of the Ways and Means Committee , we have been waiting for our ship to come in
Perhaps bearing a special subsidy for families who live near a large number of pigeons
Or an extra lane on the West Side Highway that only residents of the 15th Congressional District are allowed to use
Despite my great stake in keeping Rangel in his current post of power , I 'm not prepared to argue that you can have a chairman of the tax-writing committee who failed to declare $ 75,000 in rental income on a Caribbean villa on his tax returns
Or one who seems to think you can turn yourself into a resident of two different cities if it gets you cheaper housing and that the House only requires its members to list their financial assets beginning with the letters F through M. The Democrats made no attempt whatsoever to defend Rangel when the Republican resolution came up in the House
They just swiftly and sullenly referred it to the ethics committee , which is currently embarked on Year Two of its Charles Rangel investigation
Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims the current Congress is the most ethical and open one in history
And given what 's gone before , who knows
Pelosi actually has instituted some reforms , and punished some bad apples , or at least nudged them out of critical posts
But this is a test of whether the Democrats will follow through when it 's really , really hard
We already know that Pelosi will not fail to act if one of her members gets caught with $ 90,000 in marked bills hidden inside his freezer
We do n't know whether she 'll be as firm if a popular guy who also happens to be the co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus gets caught doing a laundry list of things that are totally outrageous but not necessarily grounds for a major criminal indictment
Rangel is certainly not going to step down without a push because he does n't seem to feel as if he has done anything all that wrong
He did apologize for the failure to pay taxes and settled up with the I.R.S.
But when a man who represents a district that is about 50 percent Hispanic says he was unable to figure out whether he had rental income because his agent in the Dominican Republic kept speaking in Spanish , you can presume he is not exactly bowed down with grief and shame
Rangel 's friends say he was just sloppy , but it 's more likely that he just feels he 's too important to be bothered with the rules
He 's treated like a king in New York , where he does not mind being referred to as `` the Lion of Lenox Avenue .
And , of course , in Washington , the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee practically gets carried down the street in a litter
Here 's a Rangel story : During the Democratic convention in Denver in 2008 , city police got carried away and unleashed pepper spray at some demonstrators and every innocent bystander in the vicinity
The refugees poured into a hotel lobby , coughing and teary
Some middle-aged women were in particularly bad shape , and their friends wondered whether to call 911 as they bent over , hacking and gasping
Suddenly , in breezed Rangel
It was a moment in which an important politician could have scored a lot of points just by being slightly solicitous
The Lion took in the scene and boomed : `` I 'm outta here
I 'll send you cigarettes !
There are tons of people in Congress who have huge egos and an impatience with the minor irritations of life
If the Democrats made Rangel step down , it would be a reminder that holding public office means you have to be more conservative about drawing the line between proper and improper behavior than your humblest constituent
It would be worth it even if my neighborhood never does get a bridge to nowhere
John McCain traces the rancorous tone of the presidential campaign back to last summer when he invited Barack Obama to have lots and lots of town-hall meetings with him all around the country
When Obama turned him down , obviously McCain had no choice but to start depicting his opponent as a terrorist-loving advocate of talking dirty to kindergarteners
Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins discuss the 2008 presidential race
Finally this week , the two men did meet in a town-hall showdown , which turned out to be like all other debates , except with much less excitement and much more pacing around
It seems unlikely that many people switched off their TV sets and said : `` Gee , I could sit through a dozen of these .
McCain may feel compelled to go back to his guilt-by-association theme
And this has me feeling very guilty about my associates
The McCain folks have been obsessed with William Ayers , a neighbor of Obama 's who is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Back in the 1960s , Ayers and his wife , Bernardine Dohrn , were leaders of the Weather Underground , an antiwar group whose penchant for violence was exceeded only by its haplessness
Ayers has since become an education expert and was named Chicago 's Citizen of the Year in 1997
He gave Obama a house party when Obama was running for the State Senate
In my experience , most State Senate hopefuls are so thrilled at any sign of interest that they would happily attend a reception given by a homeless couple in their cardboard box
But even though Obama was 8 years old at the time the Weathermen were in the news , that house party puts all their misdeeds on his platter
Sarah Palin has been telling her increasingly scary rallies that he is somebody `` who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists .
Fox News , in a one-hour special on Obama 's associates hosted by Sean Hannity , came up with an `` Internet journalist '' named Andy Martin who has spent his life running bizarre political campaigns with occasional detours into the clink and filing lawsuits laced with paranoia and anti-Semitism
Based on this expertise , Martin deduced that Ayers was the puppet master of Obama 's rise in politics and that Obama 's community-organizer gig was actually training for `` a radical overthrow of the government .
Before we go any further , I have a confession to make
When I was a college student , I believe I attended a party with Bernardine Dohrn
This was pre-Weather , when Dohrn was a leader of the Students for a Democratic Society , better known as S.D.S.
Some of my friends wanted to meet her because they were interested in establishing an S.D.S. chapter at our campus
I was opposed , under the presumption that S.D.S. meant Students for Decent Styles , a group that had been active in fighting spaghetti-strap dresses at my high school
Still , under the new rules , I believe I may now be held partly responsible for all of Dohrn 's misdeeds , including aggravated battery , bail jumping , the Days of Rage and unreadable political tracts
McCain 's favorite supporter , Senator Joseph Lieberman , recently called the Obama-Ayers connection `` fair game .
This reminded me that Lieberman once came to a party at my house
It was years ago , when he was still a Connecticut state senator , and we have already established that state senators will go to anything
Still , I ca n't help but feel that I am not only a potential victim of the new guilt-by-association standard , I am also somewhat complicit in establishing it
Obama 's retaliation for the Ayers assault has been to remind voters that many years ago McCain was censured in the Senate for his relationship with Charles Keating , the rogue banker whose failed Lincoln Savings and Loan cost the taxpayers $ 2.6 billion at a time when $ 2.6 billion was really worth something
When I was a teenager , Keating came to my Catholic girls high school in Cincinnati in his capacity as the founder of Citizens for Decent Literature , an anti-pornography group
His theme was the evil of wearing shorts in the summertime
Keating said he knew a young mother who took her child for a walk while wearing Bermuda shorts
A motorist , overwhelmed with lust at the sight of the back of her uncovered calves , lost control of his car and slammed into them
Everybody was killed , and it was all her fault
We were then asked to sign pledge cards promising to conform to standards of modesty that would have satisfied the Taliban
True , none of this really proves that I was responsible for the banking scandals of the 1980s
But if Barack Obama is responsible for the Weather Underground , and if the mother in Bermuda shorts was responsible for the car crash , I am pretty sure that I am on the hook as well
I recently wrote a column on the pressing question of which state is having the most terrible election this year
Nevada won
Immediately , there were outcries from voters who believed their state had been unfairly overlooked on the dreadfulness meter
A reader from Missouri demanded consideration for his state , where Representative Roy Blunt , father of former Gov. Matt Blunt , is running against Secretary of State Robin Carnahan , sister of Representative Russ Carnahan , whose father was a governor and mother a senator
`` There probably has n't been an election in Missouri in 30 years in which a Blunt or Carnahan was n't on the ballot , '' he complained
And you know what
That seems to be true
Thirteen Blunt candidacies and thirteen Carnahan ones since 1980
While extreme boredom is not nearly enough to get a state into the awful-election finals , Missouri , you do need to think about getting a little variety
Several readers from Maine pointed out that their Republican candidate for governor , Paul LePage , has homes in both Maine and Florida , each of which got tax breaks as the family 's principal residence
`` If elected -LRB- he leads in polls -RRB- will he be governor of both states ?
one correspondent demanded
No , gentle reader
Florida has its own governor 's race , where the leading candidate is a wealthy businessman who made history when his company was fined $ 1.7 billion for fraudulent Medicare billing
It has enough on its hands
On the plus side , Florida might soon be able to bill itself as The Place Where Other States ' Officials Stash Their Loved Ones
West Virginia 's Republican candidate for the Senate , John Raese , has a house in Palm Beach where his wife lives with the kids , who attend local schools
Raese is a very rich guy
-LRB- `` I made money the old-fashioned way
I inherited it , '' he told an interviewer .
His $ 2.9 million , 7,000-square-foot crash pad has made numerous appearances in Democratic campaign literature , which always notes that the driveway is paved in pink marble
Raese rejoined that it is `` peach-colored tile '' that he did n't even pick himself , leading a West Virginia union leader to say that the coal miners felt `` great sympathy and understanding for multimillionaires who were steered in a wrong direction by their interior designers .
The presence of one outrageous candidate in a race is not nearly enough to make it the worst election in the country given all the competition we have this year
Here in New York , the Republican candidate for governor , Carl Paladino , seems incapable of discussing anything , including the state budget , without making a reference to his opponent Andrew Cuomo 's sex life
Cuomo has barely said a word since the campaign began
We would be looking forward to the upcoming gubernatorial debate , except there will be so many minor candidates on the stage that it will be hard to pick him out
And when I tell you that one of the debaters is going to be a woman who claims to have supplied former Gov. Eliot Spitzer with prostitutes , you will understand that I am setting the bar for Worst Election winner very , very high
Nevada won the contest because it has a high-profile race for the Senate in which voters seem to find both candidates so loathsome that neither incumbent Harry Reid nor his Republican opponent , Sharron Angle , wants to come out and campaign
The voters were tired of Reid , the powerful Senate majority leader , even before he attempted to run for re-election while his son was the Democratic gubernatorial nominee
Too many Reids
Really , Harry , if you wanted to pull something like this , you could have moved to Missouri
Angle did make an appearance last week at a rally of Tea Party supporters in Mesquite , where she responded to a question about `` Muslims wanting to take over the United States '' by decrying the fact that Dearborn , Mich. , and Frankford , Tex. , were governed under Islamic law , called Sharia
Which , of course , they are not
The Associated Press , which reported on this event , noted that while Dearborn does at least have `` a thriving Muslim community , '' it was not clear why Angle picked on Frankford , Tex. , which did not seem to have many Muslims , and also went out of existence around 1975
Nevada , you are the winner , and we appreciate the way you make the rest of us feel better about our own political woes
`` Wow
Texas did not make the list
Things are looking up , '' wrote a grateful Texan
`` I ca n't tell if this is a sign we 're improving or the rest of the country is going to hell , '' wrote another
Let me go out on a limb and say that it is not a good plan to heckle the president of the United States when he 's making a speech about replacing acrimony with civility
Most of the Republicans listening to Barack Obama 's health care address Wednesday night followed the normal rule about sitting in stony silence while the president 's party leaps up and down in rapturous applause
But there were a few exceptions , notably Joe Wilson , a member of Congress from South Carolina who loudly called the president a liar
This was when Obama said illegal immigrants would not be covered by health care reform
It seemed like a pretty tame remark for so much disrespect , given all the recent uproar over the president 's alleged ability to brainwash elementary school students
You might have expected Wilson to hold his tongue and wait to see if Obama would yell `` Marxism is a good thing !
and send the commerce committee racing off to give workers control over the means of production
I always wonder what the members of Congress are actually thinking while they listen to a presidential address
Maybe Senator Max Baucus , the chairman of the Finance Committee , was thinking about the health care reform bill he has yet to pass , although it is equally possible that he was just daydreaming about his recipe for huckleberry pie or that time he walked all the way across Montana , just because it was there and he was running for re-election
Baucus has become central to health care reform , through the classic dithering technique
Finance has been so slow off the dime that in his speech , Obama gave it kudos for having announced `` it will move forward next week .
The problem , according to Baucus , is that he wants a bipartisan bill that meets the cost-control demands of his favorite Republican colleagues
Sure , Obama talked the fiscally responsible talk last night
But he can not hold a candle to Baucus and Chuck Grassley , the committee 's lead Republican
These guys are really , really , really concerned about balancing the budget
And that seems only fair since they were basically the ones who unbalanced it in the first place when they worked in splendid bipartisan concert in 2001 to pass George W. Bush 's first $ 1.6 trillion in tax cuts
We do not know exactly what Grassley was thinking while the president was talking
Perhaps he was mentally composing a twitter about the speech
The senator has been tweetless since last weekend , when he recorded the memorable : `` Saw Ia U beat my school 17\/16
UNI played best I proud of my team Pres Mason came up 22pts short of her prediction 4 victory
She good Prez .
All summer we have heard reports that a special bipartisan group of six senators , including Baucus and Grassley , were working on a health care reform deal
Having a conversation
Talking on the phone
Posting on each other 's Facebook wall
Still , no bill and the definition of `` bipartisan '' shrank from 70 votes in the Senate to `` Olympia Snowe seems to like it .
We do not know exactly what Senator Snowe of Maine was thinking during the president 's speech
Probably about the president 's speech
She is really , really diligent
It 's always possible that the Republicans will realize that their virulent opposition is not doing the country any good , and at least be obstructionist in a more cheerful way
Although Wednesday night , when the TV cameras caught the House minority leader , John Boehner , he looked as though he had just swallowed a cough drop
Boehner got the day off to a fine start by telling reporters he expected the president would `` try to put lipstick on this pig and call it something else .
It was a stunning development , suggesting that a new page in American politics was turning , one in which members of both parties could once again come together and toss around that lipstick-pig metaphor without being accused of a sexist attack on Sarah Palin
The speech sounded fine to me , although I have to admit I 'm still disappointed that Obama 's people have not done enough to start interesting rumors on their side of the debate
`` Security and stability '' is not quite as exciting as stories about old people being executed or registered Republicans being stripped of their Medicare
So , I was hoping that the reform side would do some groundwork before the big address and start floating stories about how universal health care would save the car industry or combat hair loss
I envisioned Robert Gibbs getting up at the next press conference and saying : `` Look , I know it 's all over the Web that under health care reform every family will get a new wide-screen plasma TV
It 's just not so
That provision was merely proposed by the House Commerce Committee
`` However , I can confirm that the public option has been renamed the Captain Sully Sullenberger Julia Child Oprah option .
They 're calling each other up to discuss how doomed they are , vowing to move to Canada as soon as the election is over and the inevitable worst has occurred
Really , we evacuated several hurricane-prone states with more cheer and optimism
Cheer up , Obama-ites
You 're overreacting
I 'll answer all your questions as long as you promise to take deep breaths into this nice paper bag
Have you seen the polls
He should be talking more about the economy
Why is n't his campaign working harder
If the Obama brain trust seems relatively serene compared with its seething base , it 's because they live in the Electoral College world , where the presidential race only takes place in a third of the country
They do n't care about national polls a concept as quaint as measuring one 's wealth by caribou pelts
They worry about the undecided vote in Minnesota and Ohio and run their TV ads -LRB- about the economy -RRB- in places like Colorado and Michigan and Florida
If you live in California or New York or Texas , you do n't really have much of a feel for their level of effort because as far as they 're concerned , you 've already voted
I 'm beginning to think we should have gone with Hillary Clinton
Hillary now lives in a golden alternative universe
As soon as the Democrats had actually nominated Obama , they decided that Clinton was by far the better candidate and that they had destroyed their chances by not choosing her
This is the nature of the party
If she had not been in the race , the Democrats would probably be bemoaning the fact that they had n't stuck with John Edwards and nailed down the critical swing-state philanderer vote
Obama seems to be disappearing from the news compared with Sarah Palin
One of the great things about this campaign is that both sides are convinced they 're going to lose
Remember how nuts all the Obama people went when Hillary refused to concede
How suicidal the Republicans were when Obama was knocking them dead in Europe while McCain was tooling around in a golf cart with the president 's father
We still have nearly two months to go
The people who have n't decided who they want to vote for by now are n't going to make up their minds until the last minute
Just chill for a few weeks until the debates start and let the Sarah Palin thing play itself out
But the vice president is n't supposed to get any attention , and all people can talk about is Palin , Palin , Palin
I think that 's because she 's from Alaska
It 's got that frontier aura that we 've missed since all the cowboy television series were canceled a generation ago
Plus , it gives us the opportunity to talk a lot about moose , which are a funny animal no matter how you slice it
If Palin had been a deer-hunting mom from New Jersey , John McCain would have gotten no post-convention bump whatsoever
McCain , by the way , is the Republican nominee for president
You may remember him from the Sarah Palin convention in St. Paul , where he gave a speech and was congratulated by Sarah Palin
Have you seen that Republican lipstick video
They 're trying to say Obama called her a pig
Obama simply brought up the old saw about how `` you can put lipstick on a pig ; it 's still a pig .
The Republicans seem to be assuming that since Palin has a joke about how hockey moms are pit bulls with lipstick , all references to mammals wearing lip rouge are about her
If you really want to see a strange line of attack , take a look at the wolf ad
It cuts from Palin 's face to Obama 's to packs of wolves prowling through the forest , presumably in search of vice-presidential prey
Then comes the text claiming that as Barack drops in the polls , `` he 'll try to destroy her .
Given Palin 's affection for shooting wolves from airplanes with high-powered rifles , it 'd be more appropriate to have them cowering in their dens while she aims her machine gun from a diving Cessna
You do n't seem to appreciate how critical this election is
Well , I definitely appreciate how long this election is
Time only seems short because these people have already been running for a year
Calm down
Remember , that 17-mile-long Swiss particle collider that people were afraid would create a black hole that swallows the Earth
It started operation this week
And so far , no planet-eating black holes
So you see , things could be worse
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction : Correction : September 11 , 2008 An earlier version of this column misidentified the location of the Republican convention where Sarah Palin gave her speech as Minneapolis
The location was St. Paul
In a continuing effort to bring you cheerful news even when the world seems determined to be abysmal , I want to point out that next week is the end of the primary election season
Which began , as we all know , sometime during the reign of Ethelred the Unready
The sole exception is Louisiana , which is having yet another series of runoffs on Oct. 2
What is it with you , Louisiana
We worry about your weather , your oil wells , your family-values senator consorting with prostitutes
And now it seems you 're never going to stop voting
Why are you making this so complicated
But let 's focus on Delaware , which is having one of several big primaries on Tuesday that pit an established Republican against a Tea Party insurgent
Until recently , everyone presumed the Senate nominee would be Mike Castle , 71 , a former governor who has been the state 's one and only congressman for the last 18 years
-LRB- We will stop here and briefly contemplate the fact that while Delaware has enough people to fill only one of the nation 's 435 Congressional districts , it gets two senators .
Then the Tea Party Express , which provided critical financial help to a little-known right-wing insurgent who won the Senate nomination in Alaska , announced it was sending $ 250,000 to Christine O'Donnell in Delaware
That was followed by The Endorsement
Sarah Palin called Sean Hannity 's radio show and then made the all-important Facebook posting , predicting O'Donnell would `` help usher in the real change we need to get America on the right track .
The Democrats , who had nominated a county executive , Chris Coons , without much optimism , did their happy dance
`` Thank you , Jesus , '' breathed a Democratic operative when Palin bestowed her blessing
There was perhaps a time when the Democrats would have rooted for Castle , who has worked well with them on bipartisan legislation in the past
That is so over
O'Donnell is a marketing consultant whose clients included the movie `` The Passion of the Christ '' and a Vatican portrait-painter
One of the most notable things on her political r sum is her well-publicized position against masturbation
-LRB- `` The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery
So you ca n't masturbate without lust . ''
Her real drawbacks as a candidate are numbers and shrubbery
O'Donnell has had a series of financial problems , and her disclosure form says she earned only $ 5,800 last year , although she claims she had other income that did n't require disclosing
She said for years that she was a 1993 graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University , but it turns out she actually got her degree ... last week
And a conservative radio host was compelled to correct her when she claimed that she had won two counties in a 2008 race against Senator Joe Biden
That would have been quite a trick , given that Delaware has only three counties and she lost the election by 65 percent to 35 percent
`` I meant tied , '' she said , forcing the host to point out : `` You did n't tie him either .
About the shrubs
O'Donnell 's campaign pays half the rent on her town house , which she argued is appropriate since she really lives elsewhere , in a location she needs to conceal from her opponents
She told The Weekly Standard that she returns at the end of the day to the town house `` and then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and check all the cars '' to see if she is being followed by someone who might jeopardize her safety
Her opponents , she added , are also `` hiding in the bushes when I 'm at candidate forums .
Political parties traditionally stay neutral in primaries , and encourage the contenders to save their negative ads for the general election
But those rules should n't apply if there 's a truly strange and unelectable person on the ballot
Otherwise you wind up with situations like South Carolina , where Democrats gave their Senate nomination to Alvin Greene , an unemployed political novice recently indicted on a felony charge who has an economic development platform that seems to center on encouraging the manufacturing of Alvin Greene action figures
So this week the Republican Party of Delaware filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission , claiming the O'Donnell campaign and the Tea Party Express are illegally working in concert
Castle abandoned the high road and began running ads about O'Donnell 's past financial difficulties
-LRB- `` Owes $ 11,744 in back taxes
Defaulted on her mortgage . ''
Her campaign believes this will all increase sympathy for their candidate and remind Delaware that O'Donnell is a woman of the people
Which is definitely the case if you define people as individuals whose foliage is filled with enemies
I 'd have been willing to bet that we had a national consensus on the undesirability of a congressman yelling out `` You lie !
during an address by the president of the United States
But no.
It turns out there are quite a few people who think this is a good idea
Joe Wilson , who will be forever known as the `` You lie !
congressman , unless he does something even weirder in the future , has a lot of fans this weekend at the Taxpayer March on Washington
This is an anti-Obama demonstration organized by FreedomWorks , the group that helped bring us the summer town hall meeting protests
Those were , of course , the events where we learned that we did not actually have a national consensus on the inadvisability of bringing loaded weapons to places where the president is speaking
Among the co-sponsors of the march are the Tea Party Patriots , who helped bring us those anti-tax rallies last spring , during which we learned that there are some patriots who love the country so much that they would like to see their state secede from the union
And now they also love Joe Wilson
`` People need to stop being afraid and not bite their tongues , '' one of the marchers told the newspaper The Hill
Actually , fear of self-expression does not seem to be that big of a problem with this group , but Wilson undoubtedly appreciated all the supporters who honored him by yelling `` Liar !
as often as possible
The tea party movement activists range from geeky Ron Paulists who obsess about the money supply to conspiracy theorists who believe that Barack Obama is a noncitizen brought here by people who hate this country and had the foresight to plant a birth notice in a Hawaiian newspaper 48 years ago , just in case they ever needed it
The one thing that unites them seems to be a sense of inchoate rage
Although mentioning it makes them really , really mad
Perhaps that 's why they like Joe Wilson
#NAME?
Where do the Republicans find all these faux Joes ?
After his outburst , he explained that he had been so furious when the president said illegal immigrants would not be covered by the health care reform bill that he `` let my emotions get the best of me .
This does not seem like a great excuse
Would n't you rather admit it was a plan than say you had so little self-control that hearing the president make a frequently stated claim about a much-debated bill caused you to create a spectacle on national TV
Obviously , this is not a guy you want to let in the room if Hugo Ch vez ever comes to town
Perhaps Wilson is just given to mood swings
He seemed somewhere between mild-mannered and zombielike in a follow-up video , in which he stared into the camera and promised not to be muzzled if people would send him contributions
`` Health care is a matter of life and death for so many , '' he intoned
`` I choose life with health insurance reform .
Not all that catchy , but who knows what works these days
The Republicans are pointing out that Democrats made unfriendly noises during George W. Bush 's 2005 State of the Union address
This is true , although the difference between that and `` You lie !
is about the same as the difference between calling an opponent wrong and accusing him of `` hatred of America , '' as Wilson did in a TV debate with a congressman opposed to the Iraq war
After a certain amount of arm-twisting by Republican leaders , Wilson did apologize for his behavior
Now we are going to move on to arguing about the apology
The Democrats are demanding that Wilson apologize all over again , on the floor of the House , or face the wrath of their official disapproval
Meanwhile , just to make sure nobody else ever goes off the rails like this again , the Senate Finance Committee is changing its version of the health care bill from one that does not provide benefits to illegal immigrants to one that absolutely , positively , for sure does not provide benefits to illegal immigrants
Over at the Taxpayers March , people wanted the Republicans to apologize for asking Wilson to apologize
They seemed to be taking a cue from Rush Limbaugh , who said he was `` ecstatic '' when Wilson yelled at the president , since he himself had been shrieking `` liar '' at his TV throughout the speech
Tea Party Patriots , do you really want your members of Congress doing something just because Rush Limbaugh does it
The next thing you know , they 'll be abusing prescription drugs and comparing the Abu Ghraib tortures to a fraternity initiation
Interestingly , very few of Wilson 's defenders have noted that in the British Parliament , members shout insults all the time
They are probably loath to unfavorably compare Congress with a legislative body that supports inhumane and murderous practices like national health care
The candidates running now are not the same ones we started out with
It 's `` Invasion of the Body Snatchers '' all over again
We 're watching the clash of the pod people
The first hint that things were not what they seemed came when Barack Obama turned into Hillary Clinton
We believe this was engineered by Hillary fans who had seen that early `` Star Trek '' episode about the woman who wanted to be a starship commander so bad that she figured out a way to switch brains with Captain Kirk
They did not anticipate , however , that the new `` Barack '' would start giving boring policy speeches and muttering about inexperienced people coming out of nowhere , fooling the voters with oblique promises of change
Gov. Sarah Palin had only been on the Republican ticket about a week before she became a totally different person
Did you see her being interviewed by Charlie Gibson about foreign policy , trying to slither away from saying anything controversial and rewriting her own history whenever it suited her
She has obviously been replaced by a Sarah shell , stuffed with bits and pieces of John Kerry and Mitt Romney
The replacement , in fact , announced itself on national TV
Why else , when Palin was describing being asked to run for vice president , did she keep insisting : `` I did n't blink .
When Gibson suggested that she did n't believe global warming was caused by human behavior , the replicate rebelled
`` Show me where I have ever said that there 's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change
I have not said that , '' she insisted
And , in fact , she had never said any such thing
It was the earlier , earthling Sarah Palin who said that she was not `` an Al Gore doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity .
The new one just wants the world to know that the fact that she did n't have a passport until last year is a positive sign that she is not part of the Washington elite
The old Sept. 3 version of Sarah Palin had foreign-policy experience because she controlled the Alaska National Guard
The new one has foreign-policy experience because she knows a lot about natural gas pipes
-LRB- `` Energy is the foundation of national security . ''
The current Sarah Palin does an excellent job of imitating the original when it comes to social issues and the soft stuff
And if she 's been editing her biography , there have been plenty of helpers
`` She sold the airplane ; she fired the chef , '' John McCain said on Friday , explaining why his running mate would be an agent of change in Washington
If you fire the governor 's chef and then charge the state a per diem for every night you sleep in your own house , does that make you an agent of change or Charles Rangel 's accountant
And the airplane , of course , was sold so ineptly that Palin should have been encouraged to consider a new career in the home finance industry
Still , you can not blame McCain for misrepresentation
He has mutated into so many different versions over the past few months , his memory banks are probably totally shot
The real senator from Arizona was apparently replaced by a cranky android sometime last spring
The switch came to light when the android McCain conducted an interview with Time in which he seemed to be channeling Grandpa Simpson
He refused to say what he meant by the word `` honor , '' snarling : `` I defined it in five books
Read my books .
When asked whether he missed the old John-and-the-reporters-gabbing-on-the-bus way of doing things , he snapped : `` I do n't know what you 're talking about .
Now , the Republicans have acquired a warmer , gender-gap-closing Johnbot , which seems to have gotten its programming from those TV series in which sensitive men spend all their time applauding their girlfriends ' achievements and talking about feelings
This week , when he was not busy appearing in ads denouncing Obama as a person who is mean to Sarah Palin , `` McCain '' has been hanging out with Rachael Ray and chatting with `` The View '' hosts
But we 've still got the original Joe Biden , I think
Show me the artificial life form that would introduce a state senator confined to a wheelchair by urging him to `` stand up .
We worried that once Obama 's running mate got out on the campaign trail and started babbling , he 'd have to be replaced by a terser model
But this week , when Biden announced that Hillary Clinton was not only qualified to be vice president , she also `` might have been a better pick than me , '' we knew for sure we were still working with the original
Autumn in Alaska
Leaves are falling
Glaciers are melting
The walruses have abandoned their vanishing ice floes and are piled up along the coast in a formation that is apparently not dangerous , unless one rolls over at the wrong time
We do not generally compare Republicans to walruses , but things are unusually crowded in that quarter , too
The Alaskan Republican Party expected to float to an uneventful victory in November with its incumbent senator , Lisa Murkowski
Then she got dumped in the primary by Joe Miller , a Tea Party candidate who wants to eliminate everything federal - from the Department of Agriculture to the student loan program
Taxpayer rage has , of course , been the rule in Republican primaries lately
But it was hard to predict that the fury would spread to a state that has virtually no taxes
Mitch McConnell , the Senate Republican leader who is looking like an endangered species himself lately , threw in with Miller and announced that Murkowski should `` move on .
But where can she go
She 's already in Alaska
Instead , Murkowski is contemplating a write-in candidacy , a dim prospect that became slightly brighter when election officials allowed that they would probably count `` Lisa M. '' Meanwhile , Scott McAdams , the Democratic candidate , is introducing himself to the voters
This will take some time because McAdams 's big claim to fame is being mayor of Sitka , a town of 8,700 with no road access
`` I 'm a big guy from a small town , '' he told a group at the Anchorage Senior Activity Center
`` Will you have the courage to tell us what we do n't want to hear ?
demanded a man with a long , gray beard
This sounded like a trick question
Obviously , the bearded man wanted to hear , `` yes .
Did that mean McAdams should be brave and say `` no ''
McAdams said that he would definitely have the courage to say no to lobbyists
The mayor 's big adventure began when it was Sitka 's turn to hold the Democratic state convention this year and the delegates were looking under every rock , melting glacier and sleeping walrus for a respectable candidate to face Murkowski
A star was born , sort of
For weeks , McAdams ran in obscurity with no staff and a budget adequate to cover a meal for four at Red Lobster
Then the Tea Party struck , and now he 's Mr. Smith , trying to go to Washington
Unfortunately , even in the movie , Mr. Smith had a pretty limited agenda ; he wanted to start a camp for boys , which was a nice idea , but , good grief , the Depression was on
McAdams is on a quest to do stuff for Alaska
Like the late Ted Stevens , whom he admired , McAdams believes that , as a `` young state , '' Alaska deserves to be covered with roads , bridges and septic treatment plants like other states
`` There was a time , '' he says frequently , `` when the transcontinental railroad was a Railroad to Nowhere .
This scenario is playing out around the country : the new , empowered Tea Party Republicans preach their national agenda , which seems to involve not spending federal money on anything George Washington did n't personally shop for
The Democrats respond with a hymn to crop subsidies and infrastructure improvements
The rest of us may yearn for a new budding statesman , but the folks at the Anchorage senior center had more practical concerns
Such as the fact that Miller does not seem to feel George Washington would have approved of Social Security payments
`` What about resources ?
asked a woman who was worried that McAdams lacked the cash to take on the might of Miller , George Washington and Sarah Palin combined
The national Democratic establishment has been ignoring McAdams
So many crazy Tea Party candidates to take advantage of , so little time
If places like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee forgot about Alaska before this week , they must be totally distracted now that the Republicans in Delaware have decided to nominate a woman who wo n't tell anybody where she lives because she 's afraid her political enemies will come and hide in the bushes
McAdams may be an imperfect candidate , but he 's also an extremely inexpensive one
An Alaskan political campaign costs less than a tenth of one in big-media states like Florida and New York
He could probably run a competitive race for a million dollars , which is about the equivalent in California of Barbara Boxer 's postage budget
McAdams theorized that the national Democrats are hanging back because people in the Lower 48 mistakenly believe that Alaska is superconservative - `` this far-off land of Palin .
His own view , he told his audience , is that the state is full of `` independent moderates .
`` A man who stands in the middle of the road gets hit going both ways , '' called out a woman
It was one extremely tough group of senior citizens
I think we have a pattern here
Last year , it seemed as though the whole world was a derivative
This year , no matter what the subject , there 's a death panel lurking behind every bush
The student loan bill actually has very little in common with the great hairball that is known as health care reform
For one thing , so far , it seems to be moving through Congress rather nicely
For another , it 's pretty easy to explain
It would simplify the federally guaranteed loan system , save an estimated $ 87 billion over 10 years and use that money to increase aid to low-income students , improve community colleges and raise standards for early childhood education
Let us stop here and recall how the current loan system works : 1 -RRB- Federal government provides private banks with capital
2 -RRB- Federal government pays private banks a subsidy to lend that capital to students
3 -RRB- Federal government guarantees said loans so the banks do n't have any risk
And now , the proposed reform : 1 -RRB- The federal government makes the loans
You really do wonder why nobody came up with this idea before
`` We thought about this for a long time , '' said George Miller , the chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor
`` Before , we never had the horses to do it .
It is a tad depressing to imagine all those committees of yore , sitting there and saying : `` Gee , it sure would be nice to improve Pell grants and community colleges
But everybody says we need that money to give to the banks .
The House Republicans have a different proposal
Which , as Representative John Kline of Minnesota explained , is to leave everything the way it is and `` convene a nonpartisan commission .
Perhaps there will come a time when the words `` convene a nonpartisan commission '' do not cause people to topple over in depression and despair
But it may take a while
Just hours before , Senator Max -LRB- Futility is My Middle Name -RRB- Baucus had unveiled the long-awaited product of his blue-ribbon , bipartisan committee on health care reform
You will remember that the whole legislative world came to a screeching halt so Baucus 's group could do its work
All summer long , the members floated above tawdry political concerns and labored on a meeting of the minds
Now the final product has landed , its wishy-washiness exceeded only by its total lack of bipartisan backers
`` No Republican has offered his or her support at this moment , '' said Baucus , ever cheerful , ever hopeful
But never mind
Just when you begin to think that these people are never going to be able to do anything , ever , here comes student loan reform , scampering down the aisle , wagging its hopeful tail
The bill actually got a couple of Republican votes in Miller 's committee , which is two more than Baucus has gotten on anything so far
When it gets to the Senate , the Democrats plan to do one of those reconciliation maneuvers that allow them to pass a bill with a mere majority of votes , radical as that might seem
If it all works out , Congress will have come a way toward fixing this problem , at least when it comes to federally financed student loans
There 's already a new law that forgives part or all of the debt for graduates who go into careers in public service
Terms will be easier for low-income debtors
But there 's a lot longer way to go
The central problem with financing higher education is that tuition keeps running ahead of the rate of inflation like Secretariat closing in the Belmont
The assumption that kids can just pay the bill with borrowed money has to be one of the reasons schools are n't feeling more pressure to control costs
`` That 's a very serious subject of conversation on my committee
We have not come up with a good answer
We 've come up with a lot of gibberish , '' said Miller , with winning candor
Two-thirds of college students now borrow to pay for college
They have a sympathetic ear in the White House
Back during the presidential campaign , there was nothing Barack and Michelle Obama talked about with more passion than the burden of student loans
Really , there 's nothing like the memory of $ 80,000 in debt to put fervor in your delivery
There was a time when the Obamas doubted they 'd ever get out of hock
Then Barack became a world-famous political figure , sales of his memoir skyrocketed and the family was able to pay off all the student loans
Unfortunately , this is not a financial plan that many other people can replicate
`` The people of Ohio are the most productive in the world !
yelled John McCain at a rally outside of Youngstown on Tuesday
Present company perhaps excluded , since the crowd was made up entirely of people who were at liberty in the middle of a workday
Folks were wildly enthusiastic as the event began
That was partly because Sarah Palin was also on the bill
-LRB- With Todd !
And when McCain took the center stage , they were itching to cheer the war hero and boo all references to pork-barrel spenders
Nobody had warned them that he had just morphed into a new persona a raging populist demanding more regulation of the nation 's financial system
And since McCain 's willingness to make speeches that have nothing to do with his actual beliefs is not matched by an ability to give them , he wound up sounding like Bob Dole impersonating Huey Long
Really , if McCain is going to keep changing into new people , the campaign should send out notices
#NAME?
Today he 's a vegetarian !
`` We 're going to put an end to the abuses on Wall Street enough is enough !
this new incarnation yelled , complaining angrily about greed and overpaid C.E.O. 's
Slowly , people begin to peel out of the crowd and drift away
Even in these troubled times , there are apparently a number of Republicans who think highly of corporate executives and captains of high finance
The whole transformation was fascinating in a cheap-thrills kind of way
It 's not every day , outside of `` Incredible Hulk '' movies , that you see somebody make this kind of turnaround in the scope of a few hours
On Monday in Jacksonville , Fla. , McCain made his now-famous reassurance that the fundamentals of the economy were still good
It 's a longstanding line of his , but this was perhaps not the best week to dredge it up
So the handlers went to work , and by the time McCain arrived in Orlando a few hours later he was reprogrammed
And angry
`` We 're going to put an end to the abuses on Wall Street
Enough is enough
We 're going to put an end to the greed !
he told a town hall meeting crowded with Hispanic Republicans
It was a rather jumbled message , but the new story line was firm
The fundamentals were not things like employment rates or trade statistics
The fundamentals were the workers
We are the fundamentals
And , naturally , the humble , hard-working fundamentals are good
Who could doubt it
Was Barack Obama trying to say that he did n't think the American working man and woman was good
Was this the sort of thing they talked about at those fancy-schmancy Hollywood fund-raisers
Which , of course , John McCain hates
Give him some hard cider and a log cabin , and he 's happy as a clam
But wait
The fundamentals are in danger
At risk because of `` greed .
Which John McCain was shocked to discover has been running rampant in the canyons of Wall Street
Now in an election like this , you expect a certain amount of tactical reimagining
McCain used to like reporters , and now he treats them as if they were carrying the Ebola virus
Fair enough , although given the fact that he 's terrible at speeches , and the famous town halls have now become Republican-only lovefests , the campaign really should invent some new method of communication
-LRB- And remember , the man does n't text .
It is also disconcerting , of course , to hear the Republicans rail against Washington as if the Socialist Workers Party had been running things there for the last eight years
But really , what would you do if you were McCain
There are n't a lot of options , and he never did like George W. anyway
This new tactic is different
McCain has always , genuinely , believed in dismantling government regulations , and there he was , vowing to create new `` comprehensive regulations that will apply the rules and enforce them to the fullest .
It makes you think that he 's trying to impersonate something he 's not
Or was n't
Or might not be
The image is getting fuzzy
This week , while McCain 's chief economic adviser was telling reporters that it was wrong to `` run for president by denigrating everything in sight and trying to scare people , '' McCain 's ad people were unveiling a new spot announcing `` Our economy in crisis !
and calling for `` tougher rules on Wall Street '' along , of course , with more offshore drilling
Mournful unemployment-line music swells
I have absolutely no idea of how John McCain would handle a financial crisis if he were president
But on behalf of all the nation 's fundamentals I would like to say that he now has me ready to stage a run on the first bank in sight
I swear I did n't say a word
Alaskans are very hospitable , and they offer strangers a plate of Palin anecdotes just as they would cookies
I spent the week here , and almost everyone I talked to wound up revisiting Sarahland unprompted , from a woman who said they went to the same gym , to a Republican who once ran against Palin and told me how , after a debate , she had complimented him on his grasp of figures and policy , and then added : `` But then I look over the crowd and wonder - does that really mean anything ?
Currently , a lot of Alaskans are blaming Palin for the Republican primary in which Senator Lisa Murkowski was upended , depriving the state of its last bastion of seniority power
-LRB- The state 's lone congressman , Don Young , has been in office forever
But he was stripped of his seniority over an earmark he stuck in the budget for a connector road that was slightly outside his district - being located in the state of Florida .
Now the Republicans have Miller , a far more conservative candidate , who got the nomination after Palin 's endorsement was followed by a big last-minute infusion of Tea Party money
He 's a rather professorial 43-year-old attorney who believes unemployment benefits are probably unconstitutional and that Social Security is a definite rip-off
`` I want to make sure that in the future I can put my money where the government ca n't steal it from me , '' he said
Democrats are hoping their candidate , an earnest mayor named Scott McAdams , can win on likability
However , Miller seems to be trying to increase his own warmth factor by toting along his wife -LRB- `` Wave to everybody , Kathleen '' -RRB- and continually pointing out they have eight kids
On Thursday , in the beautiful fishing town of Petersburg , Miller and McAdams mixed it up in a candidate forum
The organizers seemed unsure about whether Miller would show up , but he walked in halfway through the proceedings to murmurs of excitement in the school gym where people had been listening to a rather unthrilling discussion on a transportation reauthorization act
It was one of the first times in this campaign season that a Tea Party insurgent had any sort of joint appearance with his or her Democratic opponent
Quite a few of the new ultraright candidates seem to have gone to the ground , where they keep busy renovating their old positions
-LRB- In Nevada , Sharron Angle has evolved from `` privatizing '' Social Security to `` personalizing '' it .
McAdams frequently says that he went into the race expecting to have `` great debates about the great issues with somebody I have a great deal of respect for '' until Murkowski was dumped
-LRB- Now that Murkowski has decided to run a write-in campaign , it will be interesting to see if his enthusiasm for her virtues cools .
But there he was instead , going mano a mano with Miller
History was being made in the Petersburg gym
And it turned out that the two men 's worldviews were so different that they could have been running on different continents
McAdams said he wants to bring home the bacon
-LRB- `` We are a young state
We have great needs . ''
Miller said the pig is dead , the barn is on fire and a killer tornado is headed for the farmhouse
Social Security ca n't be saved over the long run
Instead of fighting to protect Alaska 's huge federal aid , Miller wants to make Washington give up control of Alaskan lands and waters so private enterprise can develop the resources untrammeled
Otherwise , he said , Alaska will be in big trouble `` when the government goes .
Since Alaska depends on the federal government for about a third of its budget , it 's reasonable to wonder why voters are attracted to Miller , who is pretty much opposed to federal spending on anything that does n't have to do with national defense
The answer is that he and McAdams represent the two sides to Alaska , which simultaneously regards itself as a land of free-spirited adventurers as well as an infrastructure-poor newbie in need of government help before it can walk on its own
`` By and large , we 're a schizophrenic state , '' said Andrew Halcro , the Republican who once ran against Palin on an independent line
And the Palin spirit lives on in the Alaska Senate race
For most of their history , Alaskan officials regarded their state as needy and wheedling money out of the federal government as a sacred crusade
When Sarah teamed up with John McCain , she added on the anti-earmark campaign line
The state did n't get rid of its dependency on federal cash
It just learned how to entertain two opposing views in the head at the same time
`` Guiding Light , '' the longest-running daytime drama in history , breathed its last on Friday
This may be the beginning of the end for soap operas
And since it 's being replaced by `` The Price Is Right , '' there 's really no way you can spin this as a step forward
`` Guiding Light '' certainly did its best to provide a happy ending
In the final episode , several couples got married in rapid succession and two young women announced that they had gotten into Berkeley
The whole cast had to race from one of the weddings to wave goodbye to them , because they both had to leave the very minute they were accepted
-LRB- The University of California has become way too spontaneous .
A long line of former residents walked in to announce they were moving back to town forever
Then everybody went on a picnic
Many Champagne toasts
`` This is n't supposed to happen
... I 'm getting everything I wanted , '' a woman told her partner
A man holding a baby got a dream job as a coach
Another man with a baby got a job in construction
Then Josh and Reva , major characters of many decades ' standing , met at a lighthouse and drove off together in a truck
The whole thing had an air of unreality , and this was only in part because 72 years of tears and trauma ended in the greatest explosion of bliss since the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Previous cost-cutting efforts had caused the series to stop spending money on studio space , and the cast and crew have been wandering around Peapack , N.J. , ever since , without much help in the way of costumes or makeup
If `` Guiding Light '' had lasted another year , the actors would probably have been replaced by bloggers
Now we 're Guiding Lightless for the first time since 1936
-LRB- The program debuted on the radio as `` The Guiding Light , '' but in our fast-paced era , we have no time to waste on meaningless modifiers .
The original story involved a minister who left a light in the window so people could see that he was home and ready to listen to their problems
While it is conceivable that you could sell an idea for a series like that today , the minister in question would probably have to be a vampire
There was a time when soap operas were hot
In 1976 , Time did a cover story on `` their huge popularity and money-making capacity , '' which the magazine attributed to `` housebound women , students , hippies and the unemployed .
Now there are only seven left , some clearly listing toward the fate of `` Guiding Light .
Their decline is blamed on the fact that women have all gone off to work although there seem to be plenty of unemployed people around to close the gap
The real problem may be that for younger viewers , the desire to watch an ongoing drama involving very average people who talk endlessly about their feelings is filled by `` Big Brother '' and `` The Bachelorette .
That 'd be a shame for those who believe that written stories almost always trump real life on screen
But it 's hard to get too sentimental about a form that seldom posed a question more profound than : `` Can a girl from a little mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled Englishman ?
At the beginning , though , soaps were a revelation
For women who had spent millennia at home , working in silence , the company of the first radio dramas was heaven
I once read a diary that a Kansas farmwife named Mary Dyck kept during the Depression
The doings of her real family were all mixed up with the things like , `` Bob is making plans to get his Marriage Lisense tomorrow , '' which occurred on `` Betty and Bob , '' a soap opera about a secretary who marries her boss
She was n't confused about what was real and what was fiction
But there were probably days in the Dustbowl when Betty and Bob 's wedding plans kept her sane
Now , the remaining soaps are much-maligned for over-the-top story lines Reva of the truck-finale had a history that included 9 or 10 husbands and being cloned
But it 's hard to create exciting stories about the personal lives of average people who stay in the same town\/hospital for decades without throwing in a mad scientist or split personality here and there
It 's also difficult for the writers to keep all the relationships straight
Every once in a while they 'll forget that somebody had a hysterectomy in 1997 and make her pregnant with triplets
My favorite factoid along that line involved `` Days of Our Lives , '' whose writers once sent Uncle Tommy upstairs for a nap and left him there for two years
Imagine how great it would be if we could manage stuff like that in the real world
Glenn Beck has been looking a little weary lately
A rest would do him good , and when he came back downstairs in 2011 , he 'd probably feel like a new man
When it comes to conveying a sense of urgency , Paul Revere s ride was a 10
A zero would be Alan Greenspan , empowering George Bush to slash taxes and then confidentially warning him that it only works if you also get Congress to slash spending , as frequently happens when hell freezes over
Donald Rumsfeld making a handwritten list of 15 , 20 , 25 things that could go wrong in Iraq just before the invasion would be a negative-6
And now we have John McCain , who says that he has been warning us since 2003 that President Bush was creating a huge mess in Iraq
As I said at the time , it was very much like watching a train wreck , he announced on the Senate floor yesterday
As Adam Nagourney and Michael Cooper reported in The Times , McCain has begun separating himself from Bush s war
-LRB- For nearly four years we were on opposite sides , because I believed and knew the Rumsfeld strategy was failing .
Now , there is a new Petraeus-war , permitting the senator from Arizona to embrace his inner hawk
-LRB- Things are great in Anbar !
McCain can run for president as a cheerleader for the surge , while differentiating himself from his major opponents , who don t like to criticize the commander in chief
Or in other words : I actually was against this war before I was for it
Way back at the beginning , McCain was a charter member of the Iraqi-people-will-greet-us-as-liberators club
Then he made his first trip to the war zone in August of 2003 , and came back very worried about the way things were going
If we do not meaningfully improve services and security in Iraq over the next few months , it may be too late , he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed
And after that deadline passed with no plans for sending additional troops , he simply kept grumbling on Sunday morning talk shows and making speeches to the Council on Foreign Relations
Now McCain sees this conflict as a potential fight for survival , and at minimum , the only thing standing between the Middle East and catastrophic consequences and genocide
If he realized the war was being run so badly , you would really expect a level of dissent somewhat higher than you hear when the issue is , say , inadequate funding for the No Child Left Behind Act
You would figure that McCain would be delivering a passionate speech every single day
Offering amendments that threaten to withdraw funding unless more troops are added
Staging hunger strikes in front of the Washington Monument
Instead , he helped George Bush get re-elected
Introducing the president to a crowd of soldiers in Fort Lewis , Wash. , in 2004 , McCain reminded the audience that we were in a fight between good and evil
He warned them that if the terrorists got hold of weapons of mass destruction we would all be toast
As far as how things were going , he said : Like all wars , this one has had its ups and downs
Yes , in 1775 , we had The British are coming
In 2004 , John McCain tries to jar the nation into facing the harsh reality of what was happening in Iraq with like all wars , this one has had its ups and downs
It was not until the president was safely re-elected that McCain announced he had no confidence in the secretary of defense
Even then , he declined to call for his resignation
Bush , he said , can have the team that he wants around him
Follow the thinking here : A -RRB- Disaster if we mess up in Iraq B -RRB- Rumsfeld is messing up in Iraq C -RRB- Only Bush can decide to get rid of Rumsfeld D -RRB- Bush wants to keep Rumsfeld E -RRB- Support George Bush
As his own presidential campaign got under way , McCain became more and more outspoken about the disaster that is Donald Rumsfeld
-LRB- He must not have received that 25-point memo .
The war was being run by one of the worst secretaries of defense in history
But you would have thought that the Pentagon was a separate nation-state , since McCain never seemed to connect the secretary to the man who hired him and protected him
Until McCain IV : The No Surrender Tour , in which the candidate s Web site lists all the TV interviews in which he dropped the phrase more boots on the ground over the last four years
Here s the great thing about playing the role of Cassandra
We re not supposed to hold the four years of lost lives , international chaos and missed chances against John McCain because he always knew it was going badly
He said it on Meet the Press
And we should trust him about the surge because he was right about the presurge
Or at least potentially right , since there is no way of proving whether the more boots on the ground critique was actually an answer , or simply just a way to avoid confronting the fact that everything was a hideous mistake from day one
This is the way you rationalize the Iraqs of the future
And when they don t go well , remember : I warned you
Looking either grim or overmedicated , Bush spoke for several minutes 1,260 words worth of reassurance
That was a far more ambitious effort than the day before , when , as Politico 's Roger Simon noted , our president devoted 100 fewer words to his public utterances on the collapsing economy than he did to toasting the president of Ghana at dinner
lot-of-good-it-did-us stood the Fed chairman , Ben Bernanke , who appears to be actually running the government
On Thursday night , Bernanke had called Congressional leaders together and terrified them into supporting a quadrillion-dollar rescue plan
Legend has it that there was a time when these sorts of gatherings took place at the White House , but it would probably have really cast a pall on the president of Ghana 's big night
Anyway , by the time Bush got around to making his speech , or at least a speechlet , Bernanke had already made the plan public
The stock market had rallied , and if the president had just stayed inside practicing his pending welcome for the Boston Celtics , the world would have little noted nor long remembered
`` This is no time for partisanship , '' Bush concluded
That 's the ticket
There have been more vicious political eras in the nation 's history , but probably never one in which so much vitriol has been mixed with so many demands for reaching across the aisle in fellowship
Down in Florida , Barack Obama was also endorsing a bipartisan approach to the rescue
For good measure , he also tacked on a call on both parties to join together in backing `` an emergency economic plan '' crafted out of a whole bunch of things that the Republicans are never going to support in a million years
Obama declined to provide many specifics
The most notable thing about his performance this week besides his really extraordinary skill in packing large numbers of economic advisers onto a stage has been his calm
Even this late in the campaign , it 's hard to tell whether it 's the product of wise serenity or a low metabolism
But , under present circumstances , it was definitely soothing
John McCain , on the other hand , was angry
He had been angry Monday , when he blamed the financial crisis on greedy speculators , and on Tuesday , when he blamed it on people who did n't respect the American worker
He was furious on Wednesday , when he blamed the crisis on C.E.O. 's with golden parachutes until it was pointed out that one of his highest-profile advisers , Carly Fiorina , had sailed out of Hewlett-Packard with a 24-karat whopper
On Thursday , he was mad at the head of the Securities Exchange Commission
On Friday , McCain looked steamed when he gave a new policy speech in Wisconsin with Sarah Palin at his side
The Republicans have discovered that McCain ca n't draw a crowd without Palin , and the dangers of letting her float off by herself are apparent
So the two are manacled together these days like Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in that old escape-from-a-chain-gang movie
McCain 's proposals were pretty much in line with the emerging Washington consensus
The real theme of the speech was assignment of blame
Normally at times of great national trauma top politicians say they want to avoid finger-pointing
But the McCainian digit was ready for action , and its owner assured the audience that he had found `` plenty of places to point .
The main culprit , the finger 's final resting place , turned out to be Obama
His opponent , McCain claimed , took campaign contributions from officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , and had a couple of former C.E.O. 's of Fannie Mae as advisers
`` In a McCain-Palin administration , there will be no seat for these people at the policy-making table , '' he vowed
Given the amount of time the campaigns have spent arguing about the misdeeds of advisers , I think we might all be better off if the term was eliminated completely
From now on , everybody who is invited to consult with a candidate should be referred to as `` complete-stranger-who-dropped-by-to-talk '' or perhaps `` the person I thought was a FedEx deliverer .
Actually McCain 's remarks were a bit more muted than on Thursday , when he helped restore the financial markets ' shattered confidence by accusing Obama of responding to the crisis with `` the kind of me-first , country-second politics '' that `` sees an economic crisis as a political opportunity instead of a time to lead .
Still , he managed to get himself pretty riled up , culminating in a claim that people like Obama were `` too busy gaming the system '' to fix things , and that the junior senator from Illinois , despite his brief career in Washington , was smack dab in the middle of a `` culture of lobbying and influence-peddling '' that created the whole financial crisis
He ended with a call for bipartisanship
When the nation observes the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock school desegregation on Monday , there will undoubtedly be a great deal said about Bates , who was head of the city s N.A.A.C.P. chapter
She helped recruit nine black teenagers and escorted them through irate mobs of white adults and into their first classes
As a result , she and her husband , Lucius , lost their business
She was jailed , threatened and the Ku Klux Klan burned an 8-foot cross on her lawn
Bates was invited , of course , to the famous March on Washington in 1963 , when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his I Have a Dream speech
Rosa Parks was invited , too , and Pauli Murray , the lawyer and feminist who had staged the first sit-in at a Washington restaurant during World War II
When they got there , they were all assigned to walk with the wives of the male civil rights leaders , far away from the cameras
Not a single woman was invited to make one of the major speeches or be part of the delegation of leaders who went to the White House
The omission was deliberate , Murray said later
Dorothy Height , the head of the National Council of Negro Women , and others begged that at least one woman be included among the speakers
They nominated Diane Nash , the student leader who had been perhaps the one person most responsible for the success of the Freedom Riders in the South
No dice
Nothing that women said or did broke the impasse blocking their participation
I ve never seen a more unmovable force , Height wrote
The men kept telling her that women already had participation both Marian Anderson and Mahalia Jackson were going to sing
In the end , A. Philip Randolph delivered a Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom while the female civil rights legends sat on the stage
We ve learned , with some pain , to celebrate all our national heroes through clear eyes , as people whose great hearts and minds still did not take the dream of freedom and equality past their own immediate cause
The Declaration of Independence is our noblest piece of prose even though Thomas Jefferson kept slaves
Susan B. Anthony is my favorite Founding Mother , but I know she broke her old friend Frederick Douglass s heart when she lashed out at a government that would give the vote to Sambo and ignore well-educated , middle-class white women
Dr. King and the other male leaders and martyrs of the civil rights movement are always going to be a beacon in the center of our history
But they generally believed women s place was in the home , and most were privately looking forward to the moment when they would all go back there
The women of the civil rights movement who are most celebrated tend to be the brave victims , like Rosa Parks , who dutifully played the simple seamstress too tired to give up her seat on the bus , even though she had in fact been an activist for longer than almost any of the men
Still , in her autobiography she remembered that March on Washington and noted that these days women wouldn t stand for being kept so much in the background
The women who men were less enthusiastic about were the ones who led
Martin Luther King Jr. s first triumph as the public face of the Montgomery bus boycott was possible because a group of middle-class black women led by a college teacher , Jo Ann Robinson , had organized it
They had been preparing for the opportunity so long that when Rosa Parks went to jail , they had 35,000 fliers ready the next morning , to deliver to black households through their children at school
Yet now they have practically vanished from our history
You do not have to dismiss the men to believe that Ella Baker was the greatest organizer the civil rights movement ever knew
When she was passed over for the directorate of King s Southern Christian Leadership Conference , which she helped found and ran as acting director , she attributed the rejection to the fact that I was female ; I was old
I didn t have a Ph.D.
Then she went right on organizing , guiding the black college students into forming the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee , which she would direct throughout its glory years as adviser and unpaid spiritual leader
Baker also got it the moment of recognition that all the previous movements for American social justice had not quite grasped
Remember , she told the young people , we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone , but for the freedom of the human spirit , a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind
You watch the reports from Jena this week and you wonder where women like Bates and Baker and Robinson would be if they were alive today
Wherever it was , it would be at the front of the parade
The legislative process is almost never uplifting
But if you watch the United States Senate in action these days , you come away convinced that the nation has jumped the shark
On Tuesday , the Senate failed to override a Republican filibuster of a defense authorization bill
This is a new record for dysfunction
Until now , even when politics was at its worst , Congress did manage to vote to pay the Army
The bill did contain a lot of controversial pieces
It eliminated the `` do n't ask , do n't tell '' rule for gays serving openly in the military
And the majority leader , Harry Reid , tacked on a provision that would allow undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children to win a path to citizenship if they serve in the military or go to college
So the debate was about ... parliamentary procedure
`` I can not vote to proceed to this bill under a situation that is going to shut down debate and preclude Republican amendments , '' said Senator Susan Collins of Maine
She supports repealing `` do n't ask , do n't tell , '' but neither that nor pay raises for the troops could compare to the principle of unfettered amending
Perhaps Collins was frightened by Tea Party talk in her home state
Perhaps she had been unnerved by Lady Gaga 's decision to go to Maine and hold rallies on behalf of the bill
As a rule , moderate Republicans from swing states are not likely to be moved by a celebrity comparing gay rights to the dress made of meat she wore to an awards show
-LRB- `` Equality is the prime rib of America . ''
Cynical minds might presume that Collins was just caving in to her party 's determination to keep the Democratic majority from accomplishing anything before the elections and grabbing at a convenient , if incoherent , cover
If so , she had plenty of company
Orrin Hatch of Utah , who had supported the immigration proposal three years ago , said he was voting against it this time because : `` They do n't go through committees like they should in the Senate
They do n't give the minority any chance at all to bring up even legitimate amendments , and this stuff has to stop .
Democrats said they had offered the Republicans ample opportunity to propose changes to the bill but that they were n't going to give them a blank check
The Republicans , with many references to the founding fathers , demanded the same open-ended system that was used when the Senate debated the financial reform bill , a process that ate up eight weeks of floor time
Who is right
People , it makes no difference
Never pay attention to procedural debates
They will make you crazy
It 's like arbitrating a border agreement between two countries whose representatives keep fighting about who did what at the Battle of the 10 Skulls in 1284
Plus , anybody who claims to be voting solely in the defense of legislative precedent is fibbing or delusional
Senator John McCain , for instance , was nearly apoplectic about the fact that Reid was attaching unrelated amendments to the defense appropriations bill , like the one allowing illegal immigrants to become citizens after serving in the military
He had never seen such a thing `` for as long as I have been privileged to be a member of this body .
Except that he had , including Republican proposals on everything from allowing people to carry concealed weapons across state lines to banning Internet gambling
McCain himself once successfully attached a campaign finance reform amendment to a defense appropriations bill , arguing that it was relevant because better campaign finance would give our men and women in uniform more confidence in the democracy they were fighting for
But that was the old John McCain , before he was kidnapped by space aliens and reprogrammed
The only people more patently evasive about their motives than the procedural-purity Republicans were the two Democrats who refused to vote to end the filibuster
Both are from Arkansas , and they said they were impelled to break with their party because , um , the system is broken
`` I have heard my constituents loud and clear , and I will continue working to ensure that we do things in an open and transparent way
I opposed the motion to proceed because we all need to listen to our constituents and provide time to fully debate and consider the issues they care about , '' Senator Blanche Lincoln said in a statement
She is in a very tough race for re-election and must have been trying to show Arkansas voters that she is an independent thinker
But it was a terrible plan
The poor woman is way , way behind in the polls
Give it up , Blanche
This is not the moment to try to woo the alienated independents with a strange and obscure press release
You should have voted with your heart , spoken your mind and gone out with a bang
Ah , well , there 's always the procedural whimper
Tom DeLay , the former House majority leader , was ridiculed for doing the cha-cha on `` Dancing With the Stars .
But you have to admit , DeLay 's decision to make a spectacle of himself on national television was a terrific game-changer
His performance did create the kind of uncomfortable feeling you experienced when your crusty Uncle Fred got drunk at your graduation party and tried to sing `` My Way .
But I bet not a single person watching DeLay slide across the floor on his rhinestone-encrusted knees with that manic grin on his face was thinking : `` Gee , I wonder how that money-laundering indictment is working out for him ?
And look at Sarah Palin
Everybody thought that she was a desperately uninformed goofball whom the Republican Party might , nevertheless , someday nominate for president in an effort to cement its reputation as worst major American political organization since the Know-Nothings
Then this week she went off to Hong Kong and gave an 80-minute , closed-door speech to financial fund managers , for which she was paid an undisclosed but indisputably vast sum of money
The early reviews from people exiting the ballroom ranged from `` well prepared '' to `` boring .
Given that she started the day as a celebrity whose deepest recorded thought was how only dead fish go with the flow , this was quite a triumph
If Palin can arrange to make all her future speeches in Asia , with no reporters present and tons of money falling out of the ceiling at every stop , I think she has a real shot at rehabilitation
For those in need of a life change without a six-figure speech in the offing , consider the advice given by the heroine of `` The Good Wife , '' the new TV series about the wife of a disgraced politician : Just keep trudging along
`` It 's the superficial things that matter most right now , '' said Alicia Florrick , the lead character , as she extolled the virtues of fixing your makeup and getting a good haircut
This worked great for Alicia
Her hair looked great even while she was visiting her husband in the clink
And by the end of the first episode she had managed to restart the legal career she abandoned in her youth , win her first case , free a second-grade teacher unjustly charged with murder and reconnect with a hunky former law school classmate
Just by taking it one day at a time
And not all that many days , at that
Sometimes , friends can show you the way
Barack Obama has been trying to put his pal David Paterson on a more fulfilling path than Paterson 's current one , which involves being governor of New York and dragging down the entire Democratic slate in the 2010 elections
So far , the White House 's efforts have not gotten a particularly warm reception
But perhaps that was because until now , New York did n't have a lieutenant governor
If Paterson had left Albany to be , say , chief of an exciting new think tank located in a really excellent office in Manhattan , control of the state would have fallen to ... well , hard to say
Probably whichever state senator could do the best impression of a junior high school delinquent shaking down the third graders for their milk money
But this week , the state 's highest court ruled that Paterson 's desperate attempt to swear in Richard Ravitch as lieutenant governor while Ravitch was dining at a steakhouse in Brooklyn was actually legal
Who 'd have thought
Despite his peculiar initiation , Ravitch is an eminently respectable guy who has held almost every appointive office in the state except Grand Marshal of the Columbus Day Parade
If Paterson decides he needs a life makeover , it 's clear sailing
Here is the exciting part
Then there would be an opening for another new lieutenant governor
And I think I would be a really excellent candidate
I am totally up for an exciting new challenge , but preferably one that does not involve mouthing `` Wild Thing '' while attempting to ballroom dance
And it would have to be something that would not force me to quit my current job , which I really like
So lieutenant governor would be perfect
Nothing ever gets done in Albany , and I could just sit in my shiny leather chair and work on my laptop all day
New York has lost an uncommon number of elected officials over the last few years
So they 're probably starting to run out of people to plug up the holes
And I have good qualities that set me apart from many other possible contenders
For instance , I am not currently under indictment
And I have been very active in New York politics , in the sense that I have voted in all the elections , including that one for public advocate the other week in which only about 10 people took part
If this does n't work out , there 's still the haircut
How do you think the besieged financial community felt when the White House announced that George W. Bush was going to address the nation on television Wednesday night
Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins discuss the 2008 presidential race
`` We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis , '' the president said , reading his lines flatly and stolidly , like an announcer delivering a long public-service message about new parking regulations for the holiday season
The whole event had a kind of unreality to it , since Bush has arrived at that unhappy point in American public life when a famous person begins to look like a celebrity impersonator
There is , in a way , a kind of talent required to tell the nation that it 's teetering on the brink of disaster in a way that makes the viewers ' attention wander
Bush 's explanation about how the rescue bill would unclog the lines of credit made the whole thing sound less important than a Liquid-Plumr commercial
But help is on the way
John McCain and Barack Obama are going to join Bush at the White House to work over the details of a rescue bill with Congressional leaders
As Obama put it : `` The risk of doing nothing is economic catastrophe .
Or , as Sarah Palin told Katie Couric on CBS News last night : `` Not necessarily this , as it 's been proposed , has to pass or we 're gonna find ourselves in another Great Depression
But there has to be action taken , bipartisan effort Congress not pointing fingers at this point at ... one another , but finding the solution to this , taking action and being serious about the reforms on Wall Street that are needed .
So say we all
-LRB- Palin was unable to answer questions about McCain 's record and relief for homeowners with troubled mortgages
But she did reveal forthrightly that she considers her running mate a `` maverick . ''
About that rescue bill
Passing it is going to be a test of true bipartisanship , which involves both sides deciding that they will share the blame for doing something messy and unpleasant
But first , Congress has to hold hearings until every single member of the House and Senate has had a chance to yell at Henry Paulson
This can be a surprisingly useful exercise
It is much easier to work up sympathy for the rescue plan once you 've heard Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky call it `` un-American .
Meanwhile , McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign , taking his ads off the air and going back to Washington to do something leaderlike and bipartisan
This was yet another new McCain , very different from last week 's versions , that blamed Obama for the financial meltdown while tossing out rescue plans like a desperate dart player 10 minutes before the bar closes
`` Following Sept. 11 , our national leaders came together at a time of crisis
We must show that kind of patriotism now , '' he said
In deference to the current emergency , we will refrain from pointing out that when our national leaders came together following Sept. 11 , the results were , all and all , worse than if they had stayed home
Last week , while McCain was desperately reinventing his position every day , Obama was withholding , declining to take a position until the administration plan had jelled
But in the end , it turned out that their ideas were both vaguely similar and similarly vague
On Wednesday , Obama called McCain to propose issuing a joint statement
Then McCain one-upped him by announcing that he wanted to postpone Friday 's debate until the economy was rescued
His minions raced off to the news shows to say that the American people were `` tired of debates and talking .
Since Obama , the Commission on Presidential Debates and the University of Mississippi , which is hosting the debate , all say it will go on , it is n't clear what will happen if McCain fails to show up
An empty chair
A last-minute invitation to Ralph Nader and Bob Barr to drop on by
Once in New York , when Rudy Giuliani boycotted a mayoral debate , one of his opponents spent the night twirling around a rubber chicken and the citizenry enjoyed it quite a lot
This is n't the kind of thing you could imagine Obama doing , but I 'd keep my eye on Barr
Obama , meanwhile , had not even promised to show up for the rescue bill vote until McCain made his grand gesture
When reporters asked him on Tuesday whether he was planning to go to Washington , he was noncommittal : `` If we get consensus and everybody is popping Champagne , then I 'll probably go back to campaign with folks who are having a tough time in Ohio and Michigan .
This seemed like an overly casual way to avert economic catastrophe
Since the people of Ohio and Michigan have been visited by a presidential candidate virtually every hour for the last six months , it would seem that they could get by on their own for a day or two
This election is turning into a Goldilocks story
One candidate 's too hot , and one 's too cool
Congress is staggering toward recess
I 'm going to go way out on a limb and guess that they 're not going to accomplish anything major before they leave
But as long as they 're still in town , taking up space , the least they could do is approve the National Women 's History Museum bill
Honestly , I would not be making this plea if everybody was knee-deep in the budget or reforming the tax structure
But they can barely summon the will to open the mail
And the museum bill always has been uncontroversial
It 's a great idea ; it does n't cost any money ; and virtually everybody in office has already supported some version of it in the past
The legislation would simply allow a private group , conveniently named National Women 's History Museum , to buy an unlovely piece of federal land on Independence Avenue for the site
`` We will pay fair market value and pay for construction , '' said Joan Wages , the president
The bill allows five years to raise the money and break ground
If the group fails , the land would revert back to the government , which would get to keep the purchase price
The problem , Meryl Streep pointed out at a fund-raiser for the museum this week , is getting the government to take the money
At the gala , Duane Burnham , the former chairman of Abbott Laboratories , announced a donation of $ 1 million in honor of his four granddaughters
Streep then put up $ 1 million herself
`` I was a little mad that a man did it first , '' she later said to me
`` I was just jumping on his caboose .
She was en route to London to play Margaret Thatcher in a movie and was inspired to make a grand , albeit non-Thatcherian , gesture
As Streep likes to point out , Washington already has a postal museum , a textile museum , a spy museum and the Newseum
You may be wondering why there is any problem getting Congressional support for a women 's history museum
Especially since the bill has already passed the House unanimously and come out of its Senate committee with unanimous approval
And since the bill , which is sponsored in the Senate by Susan Collins of Maine , has 23 co-sponsors from both parties
The Senate itself passed a different version of the plan unanimously a few years ago when the museum people were hoping to lease a government building rather than construct a new one
The answer - and , people , how many times have you heard this story
#NAME?
A hold is one of those quaint Senate traditions that ensures that each individual member of the chamber will have the power to bring all activity to a screeching and permanent halt
The bill 's supporters seem to feel that DeMint , who is now famous as a leader of the new Republican far right , is the chief obstacle to getting the project sprung
He was raised by a single mother who helped support her family by running a dance studio
He also has daughters
Perhaps he just puts holds on things as a matter of habit , like a compulsive twitch , and does not have any actual objection to celebrating the American women 's story in the nation 's capital
Perhaps he will call up Collins on Monday and tell her it was all a terrible mistake
Coburn 's office said the senator was concerned that taxpayers might be asked to chip in later and also felt that the museum was unnecessary since `` it duplicates more than 100 existing entities that have a similar mission .
The office sent me a list of the entities in question
They include the Quilters Hall of Fame in Indiana , the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Texas and the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens in Washington
There also were a number of homes of famous women and some fine small collections of exhibits about a particular locality or subject
But , really , Senator Coburn 's list pretty much proved the point that this country really needs one great museum that can chart the whole , big amazing story
Beginning in the late 1960s , the restrictions and prejudices that had hobbled my sex since the beginning of Western civilization began to be questioned , repudiated and overturned
It happened so fast that it was easy to forget all the women who had dreamed and fought for that moment but never lived to see it
And it was easy for the next generation to grow up unaware of what happened
I lived through what was perhaps the greatest social shift in the history of our culture
You all did , too , unless you 're young enough to have been born into a brand-new platform of gender equality that was created , really , just for you
There will never be a time more appropriate to celebrate this great fact
Although it 's sort of hard to resist when you 've got Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi working on a plan to dismember Switzerland
This thought is not central to my argument about the U.N. , but we live in troubling times and it might be very soothing to stop worrying about Iran for a while and listen to world leaders argue about the Swiss Menace
The president of Switzerland , Hans-Rudolf Merz , paid a conciliation call on Qaddafi , who is camping out at the Libyan Embassy in New York City this week after literally being unable to find a patch of ground on which to pitch his tent
Merz has been trying to get Libya to spring two Swiss businessmen , who have been stuck in Tripoli since 2008 , when Qaddafi decided that Switzerland is a `` world mafia and not a state .
He also withdrew Libya 's assets from Swiss banks , recalled his diplomats and closed the Nestl office in Tripoli
This would be immediately after the Geneva police arrested Qaddafi 's son Hannibal and his wife for beating two servants with a coat hanger and belt while they were staying in one of the city 's luxury hotels
The servants later withdrew their complaint after receiving what The Associated Press said was `` compensation from an undisclosed source .
Unappeased , Qaddafi submitted a U.N. proposal to abolish Switzerland altogether and divide the territory among its next-door neighbors
Hannibal has an interesting r sum , which includes being picked up in Paris for drunken driving at 90 miles per hour on the wrong side of the Champs lys es
On another occasion , he was taken into custody by French police after he allegedly pulled a gun on officers who came to his hotel room to investigate reports that he was beating his girlfriend
After he was released , he was quickly arrested again in another hotel for breaking up the furniture
Perhaps he has a problem with rented rooms
But we digress
About the United Nations : For eight years , the Bush White House regarded the U.N. mainly as an annoyance , a mole in the garden of the new American world order
Now we are in the age of the Obama , and trying to once again play well with others
Qaddafi 's weird performance before the General Assembly on opening day was a bit of a blow to the American plan to deal with the U.N. seriously , although the 96-minute speech may have suffered from the fact that his translator collapsed somewhere into the second hour
But things improved a lot when Obama got the Security Council to pass a resolution on nuclear proliferation , just before he and the leaders of Britain and France dramatically blew the whistle on Iran for hiding a second uranium-enrichment plant from U.N. nuclear inspectors
The resolution encourages member nations to consider whether the folks who buy their nuclear technology are allowing the U.N. to keep track of what they 're doing with it
It also encourages nations to get their nuclear materials secure within four years
There has never been so much encouragement this side of elementary school tee-ball leagues
Basically , the Security Council resolved that it would be really keen if members refrained from selling nuclear bomb kits to just anybody who happened to show up at the door
There are two ways to look at this
One is that it just goes to show that the U.N. ca n't really step up to the plate
`` Fluff and stuff , '' grumbled John Bolton , the U.N.-hating U.N. ambassador during the Bush administration
The other is to feel that while the United Nations can be feckless and frustrating , it 's not any more so than , say , the United States Senate , which has been busy this week trying to make sure that health reform does not involve anything that might really work
Legislative bodies are maddening , even when they 're made up of people from the same country
In fact , if the United Nations was the New York State Senate , instead of passing a semi-toothless resolution , the Security Council members would have started locking the doors on each other and arguing about whether France could be counted as part of a quorum if its delegate just walked across the room to get a cup of coffee
If it was the Connecticut House of Representatives , China and Russia would have been too busy playing solitaire on their computers to pay attention
The State Legislature in Hartford was recently embarrassed by pictures of two lawmakers playing card games on their state-issued laptops during a late-night budget debate
However , if the U.N. had handed out similar equipment to the General Assembly , there might have been a lot more people hanging around through that Qaddafi speech
Anyhow , I 'm thinking good work , Security Council
At least it was n't a study commission
All the major Democratic candidates for president have signed a pledge promising they will only go to Florida or Michigan when they want to raise money
Among the really bad ideas in the history of the Democratic Party , this ranks somewhere between butterfly ballots and William Jennings Bryan
Hillary Clinton , John Edwards and Barack Obama have all vowed to honor the Democratic National Committee rule that only New Hampshire , Iowa , South Carolina and Nevada can hold primaries before Feb. 5
At the urging of the Democratic chairs of the four firsties , they signed a pact promising not to campaign in any state that tries to break into the front of the line
There is , however , an exception for activities specifically related to raising campaign resources
Florida has moved to Jan. 29 , and Michigan to Jan. 15
Cue the Democratic Death Star
Iowa , New Hampshire , Nevada and South Carolina need to be first because in these states , ideas count , not just money , said Edwards
He actually sent out a press release bragging that he had signed an agreement under which he can hang out with the fat cats at a Miami fund-raiser , but would presumably have to flee in the other direction if a group of regular citizens stopped him at the airport to ask for his views on health insurance
What were they thinking
No comment , said an Obama spokesman
She thinks it was important to honor the normal procedure the Democratic National Committee set forth , said a Clinton spokesman
We hope to see this sentiment on a banner at Hillary s next Rally for Change
Ray Buckley , the chairman of New Hampshire s Democratic Party , urged that all questions be directed to Carol Fowler , the chairwoman in South Carolina
It was her idea , he said
Fowler did not respond to a request for comment
Let s take a brief pause here to vent about Florida
In election years , Florida rules the universe
The major presidential candidates spend half their waking hours riding back and forth between Tampa and Daytona Beach
Because all politicians quiver in terror of Florida , we have a completely loony policy toward Cuba and ridiculously high sugar tariffs
And now , Florida has moved its presidential primary up because it feels that it has not been getting enough attention
I feel better
The Florida primary was moved by the State Legislature , a body in which Democrats have about as much control over policy as Harry Reid does over Iraq
Nevertheless , the D.N.C. is planning to strip it of all its convention delegates , so whoever wins the primary will come away with nothing
This is not the perfect way to woo a state that will probably come in handy down the line
Florida is also not the very best place to announce that when voters go to the polls , the Democratic Party has made sure that none of their votes will count
Meanwhile , the Republicans are snickering
Their leaders in New Hampshire , Iowa , etc. , aren t trying to get candidates to sign blood pacts about where they campaign
And while in theory , rebellious states could lose Republican delegates , too , nothing will happen until the convention next year when it will almost certainly be too late for anybody to care
Meanwhile , as Michael Luo reported in The Times , Florida Republicans are urging Democratic voters to change their registration so they can vote in a primary that really means something
All this is happening to protect a primary schedule that s not worth saving
If Florida moves , the argument goes , the first four will move , too , and you ll have the Iowa caucus in December instead of January
Big deal
Iowa in the winter is Iowa in the winter
Michigan Democrats , bent on undermining the tyranny of New Hampshire firstism , seem determined to march down the Florida path
We are taking on the system
said Debbie Dingell , a longtime party leader
As it stands now , Michigan will get the no-delegate treatment , and if a group of Detroit children invite Obama to their school , he ll have to tell them that he needs to see a check first
In one reluctant concession , the Democratic chairs in Iowa , New Hampshire , South Carolina and that great American tradition , the Nevada caucus , are graciously allowing one exemption to the no-campaigning rule so the candidates can participate in a conference held in Dearborn by the Arab American Institute
Are you following all this
Here s where we are so far : Michigan : Both of the above , but Arab-Americans organized into a large conference are exempt
Really , the Democrats should give it up
The worst that can happen is that the states will keep jumping ahead
They ll have to stop once the New Hampshire primary occurs immediately after the presidential inauguration
John McCain looked a bit off his game during the big presidential debate
Maybe he was exhausted from parachuting into Washington to resolve the financial crisis
Really , there are only so many hills a man can charge up in the course of a single week
Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins discuss the 2008 presidential race
The debate had barely begun , the financial crisis barely addressed , when McCain started off on government spending
`` You know , we spent $ 3 million to study the DNA of bears in Montana ... '' Oh , no
Not the bear study
Congress is working feverishly on the $ 700 billion rescue of the national financial system and McCain is complaining again about the $ 3 million the Senate blew to help determine whether the grizzlies are still an endangered species
To be fair , both McCain and Barack Obama appeared equally eager to move past the central issue of the day and on to anything else
Neither seems capable of saying anything about the credit crisis except that it 's important to protect Main Street from Wall Street
Do n't the other streets of America deserve a little consideration , candidates
Can we have a few mentions for Elm Street once in a while
What about Broadway
Least compelling moment following the bear DNA episode : the intense argument over whose position on negotiating with Iran was most like Henry Kissinger 's
This was supposed to be the foreign affairs debate , and it 's hard to beat down McCain on foreign affairs anybody who can start a sentence with `` I 've been to Waziristan ... '' has a natural advantage
But Obama really more than held his own
`` John , you like to pretend like the war started in 2007 , '' he said
`` You talk about the surge
The war started in 2003
And at the time , when the war started , you said it was going to be quick and easy
You said we knew where the weapons of mass destruction were
You were wrong .
Although this is a very old argument , it sounded remarkably fresh , like revisiting semiforgotten territory
McCain stumbled over the name of the president of Iran and misstated the name of the new leader of Pakistan
This would , under normal circumstances , be less than nothing
But the first presidential debate is meant to be an event so fraught with meaning that combat to the death pales in comparison
Every word matters
This campaign has been so chock full of excitement , however , that the debate lost some of its normal most-important-moment-in-history sheen
The real tension , after all , had been getting McCain there in the first place
A simple trip to Mississippi turned into a saga featuring many , many rapidly changing story lines : \* Cancel the debate
\* Maybe cancel the debate
\* No debate unless Congress passes a financial rescue bill
\* No debate unless Congress has a plan to pass a financial rescue bill
\* Oh , what the heck
After all that , when the wandering debater finally showed up Friday night , he just looked like a smallish , grayish , slightly grumpy guy with a grizzly obsession
To be fair , it had been a very long week for McCain , what with ruling out the debate , ruling in the debate and returning to a Senate from which he has been AWOL so long that it 's believed his desk is now being used to store janitorial supplies
He raced there in answer to the crisis call , after a brief detour to New York to deliver a desperately needed speech on fossil fuels at the Clinton Global Initiative
He could not have sounded more filled with passion about service and country and the need for his leadership
Then he joined President Bush , Obama and members of Congress in a White House meeting that his campaign had orchestrated , where he sat in near-silence as a bipartisan consensus fell apart
One thing we now know for sure
Electing John McCain would be God 's gift to the profession of journalism
A story a minute
Imagine what would happen if a new beetle infested the Iowa corn crop during the first year of a McCain administration
On Monday , we spray
On Tuesday , we firebomb
On Wednesday , the president marches barefoot through the prairie in a show of support for Iowa farmers
On Thursday , the White House reveals that Wiley Flum , a postal worker from Willimantic , Conn. , has been named the new beetle eradication czar
McCain says that Flum had shown `` the instincts of a maverick reformer '' in personally buying a box of roach motels and scattering them around the post office locker room
`` I ca n't wait to introduce Wiley to those beetles in Iowa , '' the president adds
On Friday , McCain announces he 's canceling the weekend until Congress makes the beetles go away
Barack Obama would just round up a whole roomful of experts and come up with a plan
Now , it s always nice to hear a husband say he thinks his wife is tops
But I can t get past the idea that while Bill Clinton was still in law school he believed he already knew every baby boomer worth knowing
I didn t even know everybody in my dorm , said a friend when I told him this story
Obviously , Clinton wasn t including Barack Obama , who was only about 12 at the time
Now , Obama s campaign is the revenge of Gen XYZ an inconvenient reminder to the 50 - and 60-somethings that they ve become part of the system they used to decry
His big rally this week in Greenwich Village was an event that Hillary could never have pulled off politics as a dating scene
Thousands and thousands and thousands of mostly young people swarmed into Washington Square Park where they were warmed up by a 25-year-old Asian-American rapper named Jin , who announced that Obama was going to be getting my first vote ever
To this crowd , Clinton is what you hope you won t have to settle for at the end
Better than Bush , of course , but not a real agent for change
There are competent people who will manage the system the way it is , said Obama about you-know-who , and , of course , the crowd cheered that no , they wanted someone braver and better and maybe even ... younger
The Democratic Party seems to be gradually acclimating itself to the idea that Hillary Clinton is going to be the nominee
It s a little like that frog in a beaker of water that Al Gore talks about in his global warming speech the one who won t notice he s being boiled to death if you turn up the heat ever so gradually
Day by day , debate by debate , poll by poll , the sense of Hillary s inevitability seems to be seeping in
She thinks she s got it nailed as long as she doesn t make any mistakes , and that can be a trap
It is possible to be so careful that you drive everybody crazy , make them so itchy for adventure , for a noble mission instead of a winnable hand of poker , that they ll be willing to undo all your hard work just to juice things up
During the latest Democratic debate , Hillary Clinton was exactly that kind of candidate
When she was asked if she favored lifting the cap on Social Security taxes -LRB- currently only the first $ 97,500 in income is taxed -RRB- , all she would say was that she wanted to put fiscal responsibility first
As opposed to all the other people who want to put it last
When the moderator , Tim Russert , asked whether she was completely ruling out the idea of lifting the cap , this is what Clinton had to say : Well , I take everything off the table until we move toward fiscal responsibility and before we have a bipartisan process
I don t think I should be negotiating about what I would do as president
You know , I want to see what other people come to the table with
This is an excellent example of how to string together the maximum number of weasel words in one sentence
It was also pretty typical of Hillary s entire evening
It s one thing to refuse to answer a hypothetical question about whether there is any circumstance under which you might ever use nuclear weapons against Iran
It s another to refuse to commit on who you d root for if the Yankees played the Cubs in the World Series
No young person is going to fall in love with politics because of a candidate who says : I would probably have to alternate sides
The Republican debates have become an ongoing suspense drama in which viewers try to guess which of these unlikely suspects will actually become a presidential nominee
The Democratic ones , meanwhile , are becoming less about the competition and more and more focused on how Hillary performs
That s bad for the Clinton camp , since her strategy is all about not losing
She never gets caught in a disaster , but if you re waiting for her to say something unexpected or pointed or forthcoming , you may have a long night
In that last debate , the candidates were asked if they thought it was appropriate for a teacher to read young children a story about a handsome prince who marries a handsome prince
Clinton started off by taking an all-purpose stand against divisiveness and ended with a plug for hate crimes legislation
In between , she said this : With respect to your individual children , that is such a matter of parental discretion
I think that , obviously , it is better to try to work with your children , to help your children understand the many differences that are in the world and to really respect other people and the choices that other people make , and that goes far beyond sexual orientation
Now people , don t you think the most gifted person of her generation could do better than this
Sarah Palin is going to Iowa to be the headliner at a Republican fund-raiser
In the state that will be the first to hold a contest in the 2012 presidential campaign , even if it has to do it in 2011
Her staff says this means nothing whatsoever , but let us acknowledge that Palin is on a roll
She 's got her own TV show , not counting Fox News
And she twitters
Or somebody does it for her
Hard to tell which
Her twit on the president 's Iraq speech was : `` may make u want to dig out ur old Orwell books so rewritten history can be deciphered .
On the one hand , the sentence construction does have that Sarah ring to it
On the other , how many of you think that Palin has old Orwell books hanging around the house
May I see a show of hands
And she endorses candidates
In the Republican primary for the United States Senate race in Alaska , her pick , a hitherto unknown person named Joe Miller , beat the incumbent , Lisa Murkowski
Whether Palin 's backing made any difference to the 28 percent of eligible voters who flocked to the polls is unknowable
But Palin 's endorsement did inspire the Tea Party Express to give Miller nearly $ 600,000 for TV commercials , which he used to brand Murkowski as a liberal insider who changes her positions `` more often than a moose sheds its antlers '' and as a member of a family that regards itself as entitled royalty
`` We stayed on the high road , '' Murkowski said when she finally conceded on Tuesday
She originally got her Senate seat from her father , Frank , who held it before her and then decided to appoint Lisa as his successor when he moved on to the state 's governorship
So the royalty ad may have had a point , although I 'm sure the bit about the antlers was over the top
Almost no one expected her to lose - certainly not the Alaska Democratic Party , which had dumped its nomination on Scott McAdams , the affable mayor of Sitka , a town with 9,000 people and no road access
He seems to be an intelligent and well-spoken guy
But the choice was apparently based on the fact that the party 's state convention was held in Sitka and McAdams was , if not well known , at least extremely handy
Anyhow , Miller 's victory was another big win for Palin in this year 's primaries , and it was followed by the news that she was going to appear at a fall fund-raiser in Iowa - the Iowa of Iowa presidential caucus fame
`` Iowa Republicans are going to look favorably on anybody that has come to this state this year to help us win in 2010 , '' the state party chairman told The Des Moines Register
So very hard to imagine Palin as a presidential candidate
So very easy to imagine her on a reality TV show
`` Sarah Palin 's Alaska , '' is set to premiere in November on TLC , the cable network that was known in happier days as The Learning Channel
One of the episodes will reportedly involve an educational visit to Alaska by Kate Gosselin and her twins and sextuplets , who also have a reality show on TLC that used to be known as `` Jon & Kate Plus Eight '' until her husband ran off with a large number of different women
Kate Gosselin appeared last year on `` Dancing With the Stars , '' and Bristol Palin will be competing on it this fall , holding what is apparently the Recent Break-Up slot in the competition
While Levi Johnston , the father of her baby , runs for mayor of Wasilla , Alaska , on his own reality show
The Palins are now reality TV royalty , like the Blagojeviches and the Ozzy Osbournes
In her spare time , the former governor of Alaska is making speeches at $ 75,000 a pop
To which she must be flown first class , as per her standard contract , or in a private plane that `` MUST BE a Lear 60 or larger .
This is a new , emerging `` Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous '' version of Palin
In her public comments , Sarah is still just a down-home gal , making moose chili for the kids and assuring an N.R.A. convention that she and Todd prefer sleeping in the back of their truck to paying for a motel room
A new Vanity Fair profile by Michael Joseph Gross suggests that Palin does still cut costs by being an extremely bad tipper
The piece also resurrects the charge that she does not actually hunt , and claims that Todd had to scour the neighborhood to find some moose to put in that chili when a TV crew came to call
This is not the first time Palin 's hunting creds have been questioned
I think it is time for her to take a pool of reporters out into the woods , bring down a moose and dress it on the spot
Maybe she could compete with other allegedly outdoorsy politicians , like Joe Miller
Maybe they could call it `` Shooting With the Stars .
Already , I can see readers racing for the doors
This is one of the hardest subjects in the world to write about
Many , many people would rather discuss ... anything else
Crazy Tea Party candidates
Crop reports
So kudos to the new documentary `` Waiting for Superman '' for ratcheting up the interest level
It follows the fortunes of five achingly adorable children and their hopeful , dedicated , worried parents in Los Angeles , New York and Washington , D.C. , as they try to gain entrance to high-performing charter schools
Not everybody gets in , and by the time you leave the theater you are so sad and angry you just want to find something to burn down
My own particular , narrow wrath was focused on the ritual at the heart of the movie , where parents and kids sit nervously in an auditorium , holding their lottery numbers while somebody pulls out balls and announces the lucky winners of seats in next fall 's charter school class
The lucky families jump up and down and scream with joy while the losing parents and kids cry
In some of the lotteries , there are 20 heartbroken children for every happy one
Charter schools , please , stop
I had no idea you selected your kids with a piece of performance art that makes the losers go home feeling like they 're on a Train to Failure at age 6
You can do better
Use the postal system
On a more sweeping level , the film has sparked a great debate about American education
The United States now ranks near the bottom of the industrialized countries when it comes to reading and math
It 's not so much that schools here have gotten worse
It 's just that for the last several decades , almost everybody else has gotten better
Finland , what 's your secret
The director of `` Waiting for Superman , '' Davis Guggenheim , says he 's not offering an answer : `` It 's not ` pro ' anything or ` anti ' anything
It 's really : ` Why ca n't we have enough great schools ? '
But plot-wise , the movie seems to suggest that what 's needed is more charter schools , which get taxpayer dollars but are run outside the regular system , unencumbered by central bureaucracy or , in most cases , unions
However , about halfway through , the narrator casually mentions that only about a fifth of American charter schools `` produce amazing results .
In fact , a study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that only 17 percent did a better job than the comparable local public school , while more than a third did `` significantly worse .
I 'm still haunted by a debate I stumbled across in the Texas Legislature a decade ago in which conservatives repelled any attempt to impose accountability standards on the state 's charter schools , even after only 37 percent of the charter students passed state academic achievement tests , compared with 80 percent of the public schoolchildren
There 's something about an unfettered school that lifts the hearts of the Born Free crowd
Then there 's the matter of teachers ' unions
Guggenheim is the man who got us worried about global warming in `` An Inconvenient Truth .
In his new film , the American Federation of Teachers , a union , and its president , Randi Weingarten , seem to be playing the role of carbon emissions
The movie 's heroes are people like the union-fighting District of Columbia schools chancellor , Michelle Rhee , and Geoffrey Canada , the chief of the much-praised , union-free Harlem Children 's Zone
`` I want to be able to get rid of teachers that we know are n't able to teach kids , '' says Canada
That 's unarguable , and the Obama administration 's Race to the Top program has turned out to be a terrific engine for forcing politicians and unions and education experts to create better ways to get rid of inept or lazy teachers
But there 's no evidence that teachers ' unions are holding our schools back
Finland , which is currently cleaning our clock in education scores , has teachers who are almost totally unionized
The states with the best student performance on standardized tests tend to be the ones with the strongest teachers ' unions
Older teachers tend to respond to calls for education reform with cynicism because they 've been down this road so many times before
In 1955 , a best seller , `` Why Johnny Ca n't Read , '' stunned the country with its description of a 12-year-old who suffered from being `` exposed to an ordinary American school .
Since then , the calls for reform have come as regularly as the locusts
Social promotion has been eliminated repeatedly , schools have been made bigger , then smaller
But dwelling on that wo n't get us anywhere
Right now , the public is engaged
The best charter schools are laboratories for new ideas
But the regular public schools are where American education has to be saved
We can do better
Superman has n't arrived
But we may be ready to fly
Levi Johnston you will remember him from his featured role as the father of Bristol 's baby at the Republican convention has written an article for the new issue of Vanity Fair
It 's his take on the Palin home life , which Johnston says was `` much different from what many people expect of a normal family .
Given the fact that Johnston is a 19-year-old high school dropout whose mother was arrested last year on six felony drug counts , it is conceivable that he is not the perfect arbiter of normal families
But even if he were an Eagle Scout with a scholarship to Harvard , can you imagine anything worse than discovering your daughter 's teenage ex-boyfriend has been given a national platform to discuss his impressions of her mom 's parenting skills
It 's hard to totally resist an article that has sentences that start with : `` In early August , before I went hunting and Sarah was picked , Bristol and I were at a tattoo parlor in Wasilla
... '' Or information like the fact that baby Tripp 's middle name is Easton in honor of `` my favorite hockey-equipment company .
But somehow I have a feeling that even the most ardent Palin-haters are not going to be able to work up much sympathy for Levi 's complaint that Sarah made him cut off his mullet before his appearance at the Republican convention
Or that when she moved to Juneau after being elected governor , she tried to take Bristol with her in order to break them up
In fact , trying to separate her daughter from Johnston could be filed away in the rather slim folder titled `` Sarah Palin 's Good Ideas .
Levi 's reports on Palin 's failings as wife and mother sound exactly like what any self-absorbed teenager might say about his girlfriend 's working mom
She does n't cook
He and Bristol had to do everything
They had to take care of the kids and go to Taco Bell to get Sarah a Crunchwrap Supreme
Plus , Sarah fought a lot with Bristol 's dad , Todd , and they certainly did n't look like a happy couple to Levi
She claimed to be a hockey mom but he did n't notice her at the rink all that often
-LRB- Why do I have the feeling that the amount of time Johnston spent keeping tabs on his teammates ' parents was not extensive ?
It 's too bad Johnston is untrustworthy about every subject not covered by Field & Stream
Otherwise , this article might be fair payback for the Levi-Bristol convention appearance
In an effort to cement her family-values cred , Palin gave every teenage girl in the country a deeply unrealistic and dangerous vision of the wonderful way a boyfriend would transform once he discovered there was a baby on the way
#NAME?
In the real world , after whacking off Levi 's mullet , Sarah had to veto his plans to go partying and force him to hang around the hotel with her pregnant daughter
`` It was boring , '' he concluded .
Besides selling a fantasy about how easily a semi-delinquent , unemployed father-to-be could be turned into Prince Charming , Palin also spent her campaign trying to give the impression that running for vice president and taking care of five children , the youngest a baby with special needs , was as easy as falling off a snowbank
Politicians who do n't want the federal government to address child care issues like to imagine that 's true
It absolves them from dealing with the question of who takes care of the kids when women make up almost half the work force
So it would be helpful to know if Palin was `` always in a bad mood and she was stressed out a lot , '' as Johnston claims
But really , we 're going to have to wait for a more reliable witness
Maybe Piper or Willow are preparing their memoirs
Levi and Bristol split up last spring , a few months after the birth of their baby
-LRB- `` It was the happiest day of my life , but it was also terrible because my family could n't be there , '' he writes
`` I did n't think Sarah wanted my mom around all the cameras because she had been arrested for selling prescription medication a week and a half earlier . ''
The Palins have accused him of trying to cash in on his relationship to the former vice presidential candidate , and we can add this to a very brief list titled `` Sarah 's Accurate Depictions of the World Around Her .
However , I was fascinated by his claim that she does n't know how to shoot a gun
Hunting is one of the very few matters in which Levi Johnston seems like a trustworthy source , and if he says she showed no familiarity with weapons , I want to know more
In fact , I think Palin should never be allowed to bring that moose stuff up again until she appears at a rifle range and gives us a demonstration
`` Here 's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators : I 'm not going to Washington to win their good opinion , '' said the moose-gutting , polar bear-trashing , aerobics-class-networking vice presidential nominee
This was shortly after two very prominent Republican commentators got caught trashing Palin 's candidacy when they thought an MSNBC microphone had been turned off
There has been a lot of that going around this year , people
We can do better
In the years to come , let us teach our children that if you ca n't say anything nice about somebody , step away from the voice enhancement equipment
The speech was very well done
The Palin family who we 're supposed to ignore , but they did sort of seem to be pretty much front and center were adorable
And she was way more effective than the keynote speaker , Rudy Giuliani , at the red-meat-tossing detail
If you 're going to be really mean for an extended period of time , it 's better if you do n't look as if you want to lunge for the throat of the cameramen
We had been waiting for a long time to hear from Palin , who went to the mattresses almost immediately after she was introduced to the nation by John McCain last week
What followed was a long line of unexpected revelations , from the fabled teenage pregnancy to my own personal favorite : the threat to fire the town librarian who refused to censor books
Last night , Palin blamed the confusion and complaints on the news media , which hates her because she is `` not a member in good standing of the Washington elite .
John McCain , the member of the Washington elite who picked her , was temporarily unavailable for comment
Palin 's speech totally swallowed up all the attention in St. Paul , leaving nothing whatsoever for speakers like Mitt Romney , who celebrated the convention Reform Day by announcing : `` We need change all right
Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington .
Tragically , nobody seemed interested enough to point out that this made no sense
It 's a long way from the golden days when Mitt invented the `` Washington is Broken '' slogan , and people took the time to ask him exactly who he thought had done the breaking
It 's been one big reunion in Minnesota for the old gang Rudy and Mitt and Fred and Mike
Together again , for the first time since those primary debates
Reliving the golden days in which they managed to convince Republican voters that no matter what John McCain 's defects , he could not possibly be as bad a candidate as they were
Did you see Fred Thompson
We had forgotten the electricity that is Fred until his speech on Tuesday , when he railed at the Democrats for overplaying Americans ' economic woes
-LRB- `` Listening to them , you 'd think we were in the middle of the Great Depression . ''
It was that same instinctive connection to the common man that had caused him to refer to the problems of unemployed Detroit factory workers as something that `` you always find in a vibrant , dynamic economy .
Reform Day was , of course , tailor-made for Palin , who is all about reform
Particularly , reforming the Republican party
Normally , in a democracy , the way you reform a party is by tossing it out of power until it learns its lesson and gets its act together
But the McCain-Palin plan is to reform Republicanism by keeping Republicans in control of the White House and most of the powerful posts in the federal government
That 'll show them
Also fiscal reform
How many times have you heard McCain promise to slash taxes and pay for it by eliminating unnecessary programs
And who better to help carry out that agenda than the governor of a state whose residents pay less taxes than anyplace else in the union due to their genius in making the federal government pay the tab for virtually everything
`` Taxpayers have an advocate in Sarah Palin !
said Giuliani in his keynote speech
Rudy had been extremely busy all day
In a stroke of genius , someone picked him to run around to the TV shows before Palin 's address to defend McCain for picking her after having met her only once
When he was mayor , Giuliani hired people who had been in his inner circle since about the third grade
And most of them were terrible
So you see , there are lots of ways to screw up a big hire besides not thinking about it until the last minute
For all her great skills at presentation , many people , including some Republicans who think the microphone is off , believe that Sarah Palin is a terrible choice for running mate
But you have to remember who the other options were
As the summer of '09 slinks off into the sunset , let 's take a minute to reminisce
Who would have thought , when it began , that we 'd spend two whole months burying Michael Jackson
Or arguing about whether or not Barack Obama wanted to pull the plug on grandma
I think we have a theme , people
`` Ghoulish '' is not a word you normally attach to `` vacation season '' except in certain teen-slasher movies
Yet here we are
Passions about health care ran so high
Just this week , we heard about a clash of demonstrators and counter-demonstrators in which one man got a piece of his finger chomped off
Without taking sides on who started the fight , I am going to come right out and say that this is a bad plan
You can not achieve universal health coverage by biting off somebody 's pinkie
Anyway , let 's see how much attention you 've been paying : I. Match the locale and the protester : A -RRB- Man with loaded handgun strapped to his thigh shows up for an Obama town hall meeting
B -RRB- Man carrying assault rifle shows up at Obama speech to veterans
C -RRB- Congressman holding town hall meeting is greeted by a raucous crowd including at least one participant packing heat
D -RRB- Congresswoman holding a `` Congress on Your Corner '' event at a local supermarket is greeted by demonstrators , one of whom has a pistol holstered under his armpit which falls and bounces to the floor
A -RRB- The governor is being sued by a cocktail waitress , who claims he assaulted her outside a nightclub ; the lieutenant governor is facing felony charges for misusing state funds ; the junior U.S. senator admits he had an affair with his campaign bookkeeper
B -RRB- After the governor was impeached for trying to sell a Senate seat , his wife tried to help support the family by competing on a TV reality show , where she ate a tarantula
When last seen , her husband seemed to have embarked on a new career as a professional Elvis impersonator
C -RRB- A hot race for governor was interrupted when prosecutors indicted three mayors , two state assemblymen , five rabbis and a guy who was allegedly running an organ-trafficking business
D -RRB- Two Democratic state senators switched parties , throwing control to the Republicans , then switched back again
One of them is under indictment for attacking his girlfriend with a broken glass
The other one was named majority leader and promptly tried to give his son a $ 120,000 Senate job
A -RRB- `` Right now we are looking at reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom in this country .
B -RRB- `` The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama 's ` death panel '
... '' C -RRB- Refuses to fill out her census form
D -RRB- Urged people to be `` armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax .
E -RRB- Going to China to address an investors forum sponsored by a Hong Kong brokerage firm
F -RRB- `` Only dead fish go with the flow .
Affairs to remember -LRB- Match the admitted adulterers and their quotes -RRB- A -RRB- `` I made a very difficult decision to tell the truth
... '' B -RRB- `` Let 's not make decisions based on hyperbole .
C -RRB- `` I have n't done anything legally wrong .
D -RRB- `` There was a gentle shyness ... that I found endearing .
1 -RRB- Senator John Ensign 2 -RRB- Basketball coach Rick Pitino 3 -RRB- Sheryl Weinstein , mistress of Bernie Madoff 4 -RRB- Gov. Mark Sanford V. Match the reality TV stars : A -RRB- `` I had no idea how fuzzy it was ... and how all-encompassing that richness of flavor was going to be .
B -RRB- `` She 'll call me like , almost like a lame fish .
C -RRB- `` The photo shoot was so much fun
It was like going to Disneyland .
D -RRB- `` I was jumping up and down going , ` Thank You , Lord . '
1 -RRB- Jon Gosselin , of `` Jon & Kate Plus 8 '' 2 -RRB- Michelle Duggar , mother in `` 18 and Counting , '' who is expecting her 19th child
3 -RRB- Tom DeLay , after his invitation to compete on `` Dancing With the Stars .
4 -RRB- Actor Lou Diamond Phillips after beating the ex-governor 's wife in tarantula eating
ANSWERS : I. A-4 , B-1 , C-3 , D-2 ; II
A-2 , B-3 , C-1 , D-4 ; III
Bachmann : A , C , D , and Palin : B , E , F ; IV
A-2 , B-4 , C-1 , D-3 ; V. A-4 , B-1 , C-3 ,
`` There is only one man in this election who has really fought for you in places where winning means survival and defeat means death , '' Sarah Palin told a crowd in Wisconsin on Friday
John McCain , standing behind her , shifted restlessly as she went on and on about his idealism , his leadership and did you know he was a war hero
Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins discuss the 2008 presidential race .
... the kind of fellow whose name you will find on war memorials in small towns , '' Palin said
On behalf of the big cities , can I point out that we have memorials , too
Palin had already suggested to her audience which happened to be in a small town that people who live in communities of modest size are harder working , more patriotic and definitely not community organizers
At least give us credit for honoring our war dead , Sarah
`` Is n't this the most marvelous running mate in the history of this nation ?
asked McCain , when he finally got a turn at the microphone
A visitor from another planet who dropped in on the Republican campaign at this point would very likely assume that the presidential nominee was a guy who had spent his life as a prisoner of war until he was released just in time to pick Sarah Palin for vice president
`` I ca n't wait to introduce her to Washington , D.C. , and the pork barrelers and the lobbyists , '' he said
Ah , the dreaded pork barrelers
John McCain is not actually running for president
He 's running for Senate majority leader
All his passion is directed at defects in the legislative process
He 's been a military man or a senator for virtually all of his adult life , and listening to him talk , you get the definite impression that the two great threats of the 21st century are Islamic extremism and the appropriations committee
`` When I 'm president , the first earmark , pork-barrel bill that comes across my desk I will veto it !
he announced right off the bat
`` You will know their names !
McCain hates , hates , hates earmarking the Congressional habit of sticking appropriations for special back-home projects in the budget without going through the normal priority-setting process
He talks about it with an enthusiasm that he never manages to summon for the economy , health care or education
Earmarks are indeed a bad thing
If you ever become a U.S. senator , please dedicate yourself to getting rid of them
But for the chief executive of the country , they 're about as critical a problem as the overlong Christmas shopping season
`` As governor of Alaska , Sarah Palin said : ` We do n't need a Bridge to Nowhere , and if we do , we 'll build it ourselves ! '
McCain enthused
The Bridge to Nowhere was that $ 230 million federal appropriation to help build a span to an island with only a few dozen residents
For McCainiacs , the fight to kill that bridge was the Battle of New Orleans , the invasion of Normandy and the charge up San Juan Hill all rolled into one
Palin , whose state is more pork-laden than a barbecue stand , actually turned against the bridge project because she thought Washington might make Alaskans build it themselves
If she ever agrees to talk to a reporter , the interviewer should ask Palin whether she thinks a state that is extremely wealthy from oil and gas revenue should not be forswearing federal aid entirely so that less fortunate places can have more
Really , a governor who puts her country first might think about that
`` We 're not going to spend $ 3 million of your tax dollars to study the DNA of bears in Montana , '' McCain continued
`` I do n't know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue , but ... '' This is an old line , which he continues to use even though it has been established that the bear project was an extremely useful attempt to figure out how many grizzlies Montana has and whether they need continued protection as an endangered species
But even if it was the biggest waste of $ 3 million in history even if it was money to sedate grizzlies so hairdressers could apply attractive red tints to their fur do we want a candidate for president of the United States obsessing about it
American voters generally do n't like to elect senators to the White House
They 've done it only twice in modern history
John F. Kennedy was not much affected by time in the Senate
Like Barack Obama , he regarded it as a boring stepping-stone to something better
Warren Harding was so dimwitted he may never have noticed he was there
The problem with the Senate is that the skills you need to thrive there even if you thrive as a maverick are n't the ones you need to be president
If McCain wants to convince us that he can adapt and widen his vision , he can start by vowing never to mention the bridge or the bears again
A minister in Gainesville , Fla. , has created an international uproar by vowing to burn the Koran on Sept. 11
This is under the theory that the best way to honor Americans who died at the hands of religious extremists is to do something that is both religious and extreme
I am not going to mention his name , since he 's already been rewarded with way too many TV interviews for a person whose seminal career achievement has been building a thriving congregation of about 50 people
The Koran-burning has been equated , in some circles , with the fabled ground zero mosque
This is under the theory that both are constitutionally protected bad ideas
In fact , they 're very different
Muslims building a community center in their neighborhood on one hand
Deliberate attempt to insult a religion that is dear to about 1.5 billion souls around the globe on the other
This week , New York City was visited by another minister , with the depressing title of `` Internet evangelist '' who announced plans to build a `` 9\/11 Christian center at ground zero '' in response to `` the lies of Islam .
This guy , who is from Tampa , drew an estimated crowd of 60 people
Does that make him more popular than the minister from Gainesville
Plus , is there something in the water in Florida
When this sort of thing happens , it is important to remember that about 5 percent of our population is and always will be totally crazy
I do n't mean mentally ill.
According to the National Institute for Mental Health , 26 percent of American adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year
So , basically , that 's just normal life
I mean crazy in the sense of `` Thinks it is a good plan to joke with the flight attendant about seeing a bomb in the restroom .
There is nothing you can do about the crazy 5 percent except ask the police to keep an eye on them during large public events , where they sometimes appear carrying machine guns just to make a political point about the Second Amendment
And , in situations like a Koran-burning , make it clear that the rest of us disagree
So far , the people lining up to denounce the burning of the Koran include the pope , Gen. David Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
On the Republican side , Haley Barbour , theMississippi governor and would-be presidential contender , stepped up to the plate
`` I do n't think there is any excuse for it , '' said Barbour at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor
Unfortunately , Barbour followed up his bow to tolerance by suggesting that the public 's confusion over Barack Obama 's religion is because of the fact that `` this is a president that we know less about than any other president in history .
The governor claimed that Americans had been particularly deprived of information on Obama 's youth , while they knew a great deal about the formative years of the other chief executives all the way back to the way the youthful George Washington `` chopped down a cherry tree .
Let us reconsider the above paragraph in light of the fact that while Obama wrote an entire book about his childhood , Washington never chopped down the cherry tree
But I digress
While a pope , a general and a cabinet member are speaking out , the candidates running in this year 's elections seem to be superquiet about the Koran-burning
However , quite a few have been racing to bash the Muslim community center for Lower Manhattan
In Florida , the gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott has an ad railing against a mosque `` just yards away '' from ground zero , which is semiaccurate only if you believe `` city blocks '' and `` yards '' are the same thing
And in New York , the Republican candidates for governor appear to be running for the Mosque Removal slot on the ballot
`` Just before the primary , we had candidates who thought they might gain more votes by bashing Islam , '' said Saleh Sbenaty , a leader of the Muslim families in Murfreesboro , Tenn. , whose community center construction site has been vandalized twice in recent weeks
`` We had a rough , rough time during the primary .
My memories of Sept. 11 , 2001 , are still intense , and they are mainly about the outpouring of concern from the rest of the country
The piles of donated clothes and food piled up , unused but not necessarily unwanted since each bit was a token of someone 's good will toward the city
Helping us achieve that state of public grace is the highest possible duty of every elected official
But , lately , they 've abdicated or worse
And the fight for public sanity has fallen to average citizens , like Professor Sbenaty , who is still trying to explain to the rest of the world what happened in his community
`` Let me say first , '' he told an interviewer on NPR , `` there are crazy people in every society .
