Centrist Pundits

I always liked John McCain.  I regretted that he wasn’t the candidate in 2000.  I probably still would have voted for Gore, but I would have felt that no matter who won, the country would have been in good hands.  John McCain 2000 seemed to be someone who gave some thought to his issues, and didn’t hide behind a veneer of civility that makes politics seem so phony. George Bush seemed like a big phony, and someone who didn’t give a lot of thought to anything, let alone political issues.  8 years of his Presidency didn’t convince me otherwise, by the way.  But those 8 years did a lot to convince me that what I thought of John McCain was incorrect.

McCain wanted to be President.  He wanted it bad enough that he sold out his maverick nature to toe the Republican line far more frequently; frequently enough that his moments of breaking with orthodox thought appeared more bizarre than maverick.  By 2008, he had fallen far enough in my estimation that I essentially never even considered voting for him.  He no longer appealed to the independent streak in me, instead seeming fairly standard issue Republican.

And yet, maybe the maverick spirit lives within in the McCain family.  I’ve liked Meghan McCain since she appeared on the scene – she’s a conservative, sure, but she has sensible stands on gay marriage, sexual freedoms, and she can explain her concerns on most issues, and is willing to listen.  She also has a sense of humor, which counts for a lot.  And she tells other Republicans that blind faith to far right agenda will never appeal to the youth voters, which is true.

And today, I have new reason to respect Cindy McCain.  I always thought of her as the severe and somewhat mean-spirited woman on John’s arm.  Not only was she a political wife who only seemed to speak in order to support her husband or take a swipe the candidate couldn’t take, but the darker rumor mill indicated she allowed her husband to get away with things that are verbal abuse.  She seemed smart, but willingly used.   So of course she had to throw off all my expectations by posting for the NoH8 campaign, a movement that photographs celebrities with duct taped mouths and No H8 penned on their faces, for promoting marriage equality – or, in another term, for gay marriage rights.

Mrs. McCain, I’m not sure I like you, as I genuinely like your charming daughter… but bravo.  Bravo indeed.

JC Personalities, gay rights gay marriage, gay rights, McCain, NoH8

The powerful earthquake in Haiti was nothing but a tragedy.  Everyone knows this.  A fault runs directly beneath a large city that is built out of the most flimsy materials available, and it is an unmitigated disaster.  There is a very good list of links to how to help at the Washington Post here.

As I said, everyone seems to get the utterly catastrophic scale of the disaster.  And yet we act shocked that some people are taking advantage of the disaster to make their own twisted points.  People who’ve done so repeatedly in the past.  For example, Pat Robertson, who has in the past talked about drowning New Orleans for its sin, has said that Haiti is cursed to disasters because of a deal with the devil for its freedom.

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. Napoleon the Third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you get us free from the prince.” True story. And so the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” They kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free.  But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other…

Leaving aside the asinine nature of making the claim, the weak theology backing it up, the fact that Haiti is overwhelmingly Christian – 96% are Roman Catholics or Protestants, and the fact that a man of God should be spreading comfort, not trouble, in such times, we all need to remember one thing: he wants this attention.  He needs it.  He craves it.

People are calling Robertson a crazy old man.  Sometimes, alternatively, its that he’s an uncaring old man.  Neither are remotely true – in my opinion, its that he’s a self-serving attention whore who’s spent his life trying to be the center of attention, and uses statements like his ones about Haiti, his ones about Katrina, to keep the focus on him.  He’s not crazy – crazy people can’t plan statement to draw maximum attention this way.  And he’s not uncaring.  He cares… about how he can use these events for himself.

Rush Limbaugh, same thing.  Rush is smart.  Really, he is.  He knows that most of what he says is extreme to a point of absurdity, and he says it anyway because its gets people paying attention to him and his show, his ratings, and increases his bottom line.

Take a lesson from your childhood, folks.  While it may never really work because of their built in audiences, try ignoring them and see if it goes away – at least in how it impacts your life.  Or take your advice from the internet, if you’d rather, and don’t feed the trolls.

JC Foreign Relations, Personalities, Religion

So the world is atwitter about Harry Reid recently revealing that he said something extremely stupid and, frankly, racist during the campaign. I’m actually more shocked that we’re finding out about it now (one would think it would have come out sooner) or, if it didn’t come out immediately, that it came out at all.

There must be something about white men of a certain age thinking that being complimentary while saying something racist isn’t racist. You’ll remember that Biden did something a little less obviously stupid but still fairly dumb, calling Obama “clean”.

Part of me agrees with the Republicans who are trying to equate Reid with Trent Lott. Whether or not the comments were equally offensive, I understand the impulse to say that if your stupid enough to make a racist comment like that, well, you deserve what happens. And what’s good for geese is good for ganders… or Democrats and Republicans.

On the other hand, part of me wants to take President Obama’s lead. He’s basically told Reid that it was all okay now. Given that the comments were about Obama, that seems that.

On the third hand, what do I know? I’m white. On the other hand, a lot of people who shouldn’t be piping up are. Normally, I wouldn’t take Michael Steele to task for commenting on it, even as much as I like pointing out how bad a Republican leader he is – but he’s in trouble of his own right now for using the phrase “honest injun” and the sheer weight of hypocrisy for criticizing one foolish, probably innocent racial comment while defending his own foolish, probably innocent racial comment may cause him to implode. I’m concerned for his safety!

On the fourth hand, I’m perfectly willing to let this be Reid’s waterloo. I have no love for Reid, not because he’s a racist – and I don’t know that he is or isn’t – but because he’s not an effective leader. If in a month he emulates Dodd and says he’s retiring, I’d be fine with that. Sure, it means Nevada will almost inevitably go back to the Republicans, but I think that’s likely anyway.

I guess what I’m saying is Reid just bugs me. Whether or not he’s doing something stupid right now.

JC Personalities, Society racism, Reid, senators, Steele

Well, the media is all abuzz about Sarah Palin’s book.

I haven’t read it yet, so I’ll reserve judgement on it. But with all due respect to our friends over at Palintology, I think that she’s got a really big job ahead of her in terms of political rehabilitation.

Certainly her resignation as governor is the biggest thing for her to get around. I mean, I understand why she did; having to deal with one bogus ethics complaint after another week after week after week would make me want to quit too.

But it’ll take a lot more than a book to reverse her political fortunes. Yes, she’s the darling of the far right, and she can have a very lucrative career as a public speaker and fundraiser if that’s what she wants. But if she wants to be elected to national office, she’s going to have to appeal beyond that base — and that means to us, the centrists.

I remember watching her debate coverage when she ran for governor of Alaska and being impressed — and being shocked when she ran for Vice President and appeared to have lost at least 40 IQ points. That observation alone makes me tend to believe that at least some of what she says about being mishandled by McCain’s staff is true. But she’s gotta convince us that she’s more than a caricature, and she’ll do that by speaking things other than right-wing catchphrases.

It’ll take some time, and I don’t think it’ll happen in time for 2012. It took about 20 years for Joe Biden’s national political repuation to get repaired. Maybe it won’t take so long for Palin, but if she wants to get elected to something, she needs to have a realistic timeframe. The problem is that the GOP might actually nominate her in 2012, when she won’t be winnable. That’s a serious mistake on their part.

During the campaign, though, the time I was the most impressed with her was towards the end, when she says she stopped listening to the advisors (at a point where it was very clear that they couldn’t win anyway) and she gave a series of speeches on energy policy. It’s an area she knows, it’s an area she’s comfortable talking about and she makes a hell of a lot of sense. If she’s really lucky, she’ll get taken on as Energy Secretary in the next Republican administration.

Greg 2012 Election, Media, National Politics, Personalities Palin

Can we take back the Nobel Prize and exchange it for the Olympics? I mean, there’s actually been work done towards the Olympics…

Greg Foreign Relations, National Politics, Personalities

I’ll try to take the time to look over Obama’s speech more closely, to examine the good and the bad, and what works for Centrists, when I have a little more time.  For now, let me just say, no matter what party the President is, no matter how much you disagree with him… you don’t heckle him at a joint session of Congress.

To be fair, I think Representative Joe Wilson has realized that.  His apology actually did sound sincere.

I wonder if John Boehner even knew he was on camera when he let out a heavy sigh when Obama referred to the fact that the last administration and the Congress is had didn’t try to pay for programs as they went.

In a perfect world, no one would interrupt non-Presidents outside of joint sessions, either – like the town hall problem.  Unfortunately, the extremes of both parties seem to have decided that being the noisiest is equal to being the winner.

Huh.  I wonder.  Maybe the reason the Center is never taken seriously is because its hard to be “extreme” as a centrist.  What would we yell?  ”MAKE FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE BUT SOCIALLY CONSCIONABLE CHOICES NOW!”

JC Congress, Health care, Personalities centrism, Health care, obama

The Lion of the Senate has passed.

Whether you agreed with his views or not, whatever you thought of some of the more controversial aspects of his life, there is no denying that Ted Kennedy is one of the, if not the, most influential Senators of our time.

His name is on many of the most important bills that have passed since he started in the Senate in 1962.  And despite being a fairly ardent liberal, he was the go-to Senator for bipartisan bills from the Republicans, because he got stuff done.

I’m normally an advocate for term limits, but then I forget that would have shortened the legacy of some truly awesome American leaders, like Kennedy.

If there’s anything to take away from this, anything looking forward, instead of past – not that his history won’t be examined – but it is merely this - Ted Kennedy beleived that people can get things done.  He made it true in his own life and encouraged it in others.

“The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on.”

What are you doing to live up to the idea that you can make a difference?  What are you doing to make America a better place?

JC Personalities death, senators, Ted Kennedy

Name recognition is a powerful thing.  A short while ago, news agencies started reporting that Jim Bunning wouldn’t be running for Senate again in 2010.  Bunning has cited a lack of funds and a lack of support from the NRSC as his main reasons.  This kind of shocked me, as I figured a senator who’s name I recognized so easily shouldn’t have any fundraising problems.

Except that while I may know his name, simple research in to him to remind myself of the details of his political career reveal that this shouldn’t be a surprise at all.  He’s always had a rocky relationship with the NRSC and the Republican leadership in general, and he’s never won his elections by large margins on his own merit.

He was a fairly popular Representative in his heavily-Republican district, but for his first Senate term he won only by half a percentage point.  His second term should have been an easy sailing in to office when his first opponent had a marriage scandal and his second was an unknown.  But then Bunning started saying stupid things, and apparently it turned off a lot of people (and the Democrats started pouring more money in to the race to capitalize on those stupid statements) and he only won by one point.  Wide-spread assumption is that he actually rode Bush’s coattails in to office, which is saying something, because Bush’s coattails were short and slippery.

His state openly talked about recruiting someone to run against him in the primary, and Bunning has suggested that lawsuits might be the solution to that.  He has ongoing financial disagreements with Republican fundraising bodies and leadership disagreements with, well, Republican leaders.

Time Magazine has called him one of America’s 5 worst senators – which ironically may be where my name recognition of him comes from, because I remember reading that article (it was in 2006).  His popularity is astoundingly low in a fairly Republican state, leading one to wonder just how badly one has to perform to be polling behind all of 4 Democrats interested in the seat… in Kentucky.

I saw the breaking news blurb about his choice not to run and originally thought it this was going to be a piece on how badly the economy is affecting candidates fundraising efforts, especially Republicans, if even someone I’d heard of like Jim Bunning was having trouble.  But upon rereading and analysis, the only conclusion I can come to is maybe, just maybe, Jim Bunning isn’t worth Kentucky’s… or America’s… time.  They have very clearly said he’s not worth their dollar.

JC Personalities, State Politics elections, fundraising, senators

When Representative Castle was asked about Obama’s birth certificate at a town hall, and rightly said Obama is a citizen, and was booed, it lifted the birth certificate controversy I’ve talked about before to the national media.  Now these “birthers” are making national news.  Once upon a time, we locked crazies up, but no more.

But you know, here’s what Castle should have done.  That lady was holding up a birth certificate in a bag.  He should have asked her if he could see it for a moment.  When she handed it over, he should then have put it in his briefcase and demanded she prove she’s a citizen.

It wouldn’t have been very effective, rhetorically, but it would have made for better TV.

JC Media, Personalities birthers, obama

To be honest, I didn’t think I’d be bringing up Senator Ensign again.

CNN has their political ticker, a website off their main page that does brief political news stories.  I find it a very useful website for scanning what the major political stories of the day are.

Tonight, one of the stories is:  http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/08/report-senator-tried-to-stop-colleagues-affair/  which is about the efforts of Senator Coburn to get Ensign to break off his affair.  It is a news article about a more complete story located in the Las Vegas Sun, at http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/jul/08/spouse-ensign-affair-says-senator-should-resign/

Now, in the article, it says that the husband of the woman having an affair with Ensign reached out to a conservative Christian senator, Coburn, for assistance in ending the affair.  That’s all well and good, a story about a good man trying to help another man behave well.  Right?

I want to call attention to one line in the middle of the Sun article:

“The group, including Coburn, a well-known conservative, confronted Ensign and suggested that the Hamptons needed to be given financial assistance — in the millions of dollars — to pay off their $1 million-plus mortgage and move them to a new life away from Ensign.”

I guess I could be misreading this, it doesn’t explicitly say it, but is that saying what I think it is saying?  That a group of people including Senator Coburn, in their attempt to get Ensign to break off the affair, suggested that he pay off his mistress to just go away?  Isn’t that just called “hush money” most of the time?

I think CNN really buried the lead on this one.

JC Media, Personalities John Ensign, Media, senators