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September 2008
Davis trial recanting proves nothing solid
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An anguished gentleman writes from the British Isles to inquire as to why Georgia intends to execute a convicted cop killer whose guilt is now suspect because various witnesses have “recanted” their testimony.
The gentleman can be forgiven for his certainty that a miscarriage of justice is about to occur. It’s the odd nature of high-profile cases that crucial misconceptions are repeated so often that spin becomes fact.
The Troy Anthony Davis case is a prime example.
The Georgia Supreme Court dealt thoroughly and authoritatively with the alleged recantations in March.
The facts of the case, as recounted by Justice Harold Melton in the majority opinion, are these:
In the early morning hours of Aug. 19, 1989, Davis was at a Savannah pool hall with two friends, Sylvester Coles and Darrell Collins. When a homeless man leaving a nearby convenience store declined to share his beers with Coles, Coles followed him up the street, cursing. Davis, Collins and Coles surrounded him. Davis, from behind, struck the homeless man in the head with a pistol, badly injuring him. Collins fled. When it became obvious that police were being called, Davis and Coles fled, too.
Officer Mark MacPhail, working off-duty nearby, gave chase, shouting for Davis and Coles to stop. Coles did. MacPhail continued to pursue Davis. “Davis kept running and fired a handgun at MacPhail, who was shot and fell,” Justice Melton wrote. “Davis then stood over MacPhail smiling and fired again. Altogether, MacPhail was shot three times, once in the face, once in the right thigh and once in the chest.”
The father of two, a former Army Ranger, was dead.
Earlier in the evening, another shooting had occurred. A bullet retrieved by the hospital “was similar to bullets from the murder scene. Shell casings retrieved from the two scenes were matched with greater certainty.” Davis was identified at trial as the man who shot the earlier victim.
The defense contended at trial that Coles was the shooter. But trial evidence enabled the jury to conclude that Davis had clubbed the homeless man and had murdered Officer MacPhail.
As to the recanting witnesses, the justices noted that sworn trial testimony reflects fresher memories and includes public oaths, cross-examination, a presiding judge.
A recantation certainly raises questions about the witnesses’ trial testimony and has to be weighed as to whether the original testimony was pure fabrication.
An acquaintance of Davis, Jeffrey Sapp, testified at trial that he had admitted striking the homeless man and killing the officer. He lied, he said, because officers pressured him.
Another witness, Kevin McQueen, had testified that Davis had confessed to him in jail he had murdered MacPhail because the officer had seen his face. He said in a 1996 affidavit, after the trial, he’d lied because he was angry at Davis.
“We note,” wrote Justice Melton, “that, even if the recantations … were credited as true, they would show merely that Davis did not admit his guilt to these witnesses, not that Davis was not guilty.”
The homeless man, Larry Young, gave testimony “that tended to identify Davis as the one who struck him.” That was based on what the men were wearing and where they were standing. A dozen years later, Young said in an affidavit that he was “unable to remember what anyone looked like or what different people were wearing” and he “just couldn’t tell who did what.”
Wrote Justice Melton: “This new expression of uncertainty fails to show that Davis was not in fact the perpetrator …”
Collins said at trial in 1991 that he saw Davis strike Young — important because others testified that the same person who struck the homeless man murdered MacPhail.
A dozen years after the fact, Collins said he did not witness Davis striking Young. “This testimony does not in any way show that Davis was not guilty of striking Young and shooting MacPhail …” Melton wrote.
It boils down to this: Do you believe the witness testifying closest to the murder — or the revised testimony and memories of a decade or more later? Some of those who changed their testimony blamed police pressure. But it’s just as easy to believe that they felt pressure from opponents of the death penalty to spare Davis from the justice his crime warrants. The cop-out position now is: You can’t be certain; besides, he’ll never get out of prison.
MacPhail is an abstraction, a long-dead husband and father who’s not here to plead for his life. He’s not here with a public relations campaign and legal team trying to revise history. He is dead. Davis killed him.
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McCain, House Republicans win
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
No question House Republicans did succeed in making the $700 billion bailout proposal better — and credit should go to John McCain for pushing their concerns to center stage.
One feature that could have turned into a major-league boondoggle and payoff to Democratic activists — the provision that would set aside 20 percent of profits for affordable housing — was stripped from the bill over the weekend.
Another potential show-stopper was a provision — also stripped away — that would allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages. Mortgage contracts would mean nothing and it’s certain that higher mortgages for everybody else would follow as lenders built in enough financial cushion to protect themselves from that uncertainty.
House Republicans won in part, too, on their insistence that financial institutions holding bad debt be allowed to buy government-backed insurance as an alternative to dumping that debt onto taxpayers. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson predicts that not many companies will choose that option, but it does nevertheless encourage them to work out their own troubled loan problems.
It’s uncertain now House Republicans will vote yes on the bailout, but passing it is essential. And it’s unlikely to get much better.
McCain made the right decision in returning to Washington and speaking up for conservatives in the House. He won. They won.
The course now is to vote yes.
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Flailing firms need backup, but no bailout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For conservatives, the prospect of a $700 billion bailout for financial companies is a huge pill to swallow. Companies that take high-risk gambles and lose should fail. Executives who put them on that course should leave unrewarded. There should be accountability and oversight.
My opposition to the proposed bailout of financial institutions is not based on risk to taxpayers, but on the principle that a direct taxpayer bailout moves the solution from the private-sector managers with a financial stake in salvaging their businesses to politicians who have a political stake in fleecing them.
While lenders and buyers behaved irresponsibly, the launch of the problem is government, and congressional politicians specifically. Why would anybody now want to give them license to more of the mischief that they spawned?
A New York Times article from Sept. 30, 1999, circulated by Randy Lewis of the Georgia Daily Digest Web site, documents at least some of the origins of the problem. It was written by Steven A. Holmes. First paragraph: “In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.”
The start-up effort, involving 24 banks in 15 markets, “will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans” and “Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.” Continuing: “Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.”
What’s happening here — and it’s continuing in the bailout — is that liberals came to terms with Ronald Reagan’s demonization of Big Government by hoisting their social programs onto the private sector or, in the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, private-sector firms masquerading as public entities backed by taxpayers. A symbiotic relationship developed between politicians and Fannie and Freddie. Bill Clinton was mouthing empty rhetoric in declaring the era of Big Government over. It’s not over. It shifted.
Nothing’s changed, even in time of financial crisis. “Not less than 20 percent of any profit realized on each troubled asset purchased” will go to fund affordable housing, under one of the proposals debated Friday. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) contends the beneficiary of that is ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a housing interest group accused of conducting fraudulent voter registration campaigns.
Should the bailout proceed nonetheless? I’m ambivalent, but it is the House Republicans who have the principled position and the one best for taxpayers. Financial institutions are far better at managing the mess they’ve created than a government driven by politicians determined to punish, fleece and coerce them into becoming extensions of government. I don’t trust meddling politicians.
We are potentially talking big money. Andy Kessler, a former hedge fund manager and author, writing in The Wall Street Journal, opines that the bailout “could net a trillion dollars and maybe as much as $2.2 trillion” for the Treasury. I am convinced that, without the meddling politicians playing in the pool, the bailout will ultimately recover all public money put at risk, and more. The primary problem is panic.
Give them time and a steadier market to deal with their problems and this unhealthy symbiosis among taxpayers, politicians and financial institutions can be limited. Government action is essential, yes, but the House Republicans have the better approach with an insurance pool for bad mortgages that would allow the companies to work through their own problems. Keep Barney Frank off Wall Street. Keep the politicians off, too, who are looking for post-career riches.
There are lessons to be learned here. One is don’t direct private companies to be social service agencies. Build transparency and accountability into public-private relationships, which always should be kept at arm’s length. Government shouldn’t be in the business of picking industrial or financial winners, nor should it determine when executive compensation in the private sector is too much.
People who made bad decisions should fail. That applies, of course, only to the private sector. Politicians are never held accountable for the regulatory and other decisions they make that invite ruin.
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McCain shows difference experience makes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ladies and gentlemen, you just saw the difference that experience makes — and you just saw what should be the playbook for U.S. Sen. Joe Biden in next week’s debate against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
John McCain clearly set out to remind the American people that he has the seasoning, the familiarity with places and situations, and the strategic vision to be President of the United States. Time and again, he found opportunity to use the phrase: “Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand…” or to say, as he did in describing Barack Obama’s first response after Russia invaded Georgia, his call for restraint on both, as reflecting “a little bit of naivete.”
Obama really doesn’t know when to drop a conversation that’s going badly for him. Example: His insistance that he would sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or any other rogue figure, without preconditions, but with preparation, gave McCain a grand opportunity to advance the argument that Obama is naive. Obama wouldn’t let it go.
He does have the problem, reflected here, that when he makes a verbal mistake, it becomes official policy, whether it’s to meet bad guys without preconditions or to conduct strikes in Pakistan, despite the reaction of our ally in the war on terror.
McCain undoubtedly helped himself. He held his own through the first 40 minutes of conversation about the economy. He looked strong, looked decisive and managed to keep his distance from the Bush Administration. The Demcorats, of course, are determined to convince the American people that Bush and McCain are joined at the hip.
There were no major mistakes either way. Obama, to his credit, got through his weakest subject area without major blunder. He lost no votes that he already has.
Did Obama win over the undecided? No. But he didn’t materially hurt himself either.
McCain was disciplined throughout. He stayed on message.
Winner: John McCain
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Find the commander-in-chief
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barack Obama task tonight is simple: Convince people that he’s somebody they want in the White House in a world filled with terrorists threatening their lives and bad loans threatening their jobs and financial security.
What should by now be a wipeout for the Democrat is essentially tied. The latest Zogby poll has John McCain up 2 percentage points, 46-44, in a survey conducted Tuesday through Thursday of this week. On the books, this election shouldn’t be close. And yet McCain moved from three points down to two points up in a week of lousy news. Independents prefer McCain, 43 to 34.
Obama can’t close the deal. This problem first surfaced in the Democratic primaries. To this day, he hasn’t put Hillary Clinton away. The Democratic establishment, the super-delegates, did it for him, but they were caught up in the narrative and were, furthermore, fearful of alienating a key constituency.
At the end of tonight’s debate, Independents ought to be nodding their heads saying, yes, this guy Obama does have the right stuff; he does have the character and the decisiveness and the judgment to lead America through perilous times. People don’t sense that. Tonight is Obama’s best shot.
He will win this debate not on some clever line effectively delivered. He wins if after the debate people come to see him as commander-in-chief. He loses if they don’t. It’s close-the-deal time on that question.
For McCain, he wins by reinforcing existing perceptions that he is commander-in-chief material. He should remind people how threatening the world is, making it clear that this is no time for a rookie in the Oval Office. McCain loses if he does or says anything that makes age an issue.
It’s clear that the Obama campaign wanted to have this debate on national security issues first. It’s the subject area he’s most likely to flub. If he does, he’ll have two more debates to recover.
I’m not looking for flubs, though. I’m looking for something in his presence or his presentation that will make voters comfortable with the idea that he could be their commander-in chief.
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Clinton politics, small bank bailouts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Bill Clinton demonstrates why he succeeded in politics. He understands voters. His explanation of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s popularity — her family, including the children, a husband who stayed in the 2,000-mile Iron Dog snowmobile race, going 500 miles with a broken arm. “Why say, ever, anything bad about a person? Why don’t we … just say that she was a good choice for him and we disagree with them?”
Small banks want bad construction loans dumped on taxpayers, too. That is the problem. Once the bailout window is opened, everybody wants to unload their mistakes on taxpayers.
Apology Window Reopens, extended Christmas hours. Why? To accommodate parents who blamed Johnny’s failure to score well on the eighth-grade state math exam on a faulty test. An independent audit finds that the test was not defective. The problem is what passes, or doesn’t, between Johnny and the math instructor. Write legibly 500 times: “Miss Kathy, we is sorry for blaming you.”
Studies and various other reports purporting to show something revealing related to commutes, poverty, insurance, and other trendy topics almost always require explanation that’s often missing about when and how the measurement standard was changed. Case in point: Commuting. More people now appear to walk to work. But wait. The database before 2006 did not include dorms and military barracks.
Why not to fly with famous people — or even the niche famous. You become the fine print. Two pilots and two passengers died in a South Carolina plane crash. Headline: “Performers hurt in fatal jet crash.” The celebrities were the former drummer for Blink-182 and a disc jockey.
Requiring specially-refined designer gas for the 45 counties in Metro Atlanta, even when pumps are running dry is not a government that serves us. It’s one that toys with us, intentionally inflicting pain on motorists. The federal Environmental Protection Agency yielded to pleas for relief from Gov. Sonny Perdue, but it should be automatic whenever a hurricane is headed toward refineries.
Think health insurance is unaffordable now? Wait until businesses are required to provide the same level of coverage for mental health as they do for physical. That was part of a massive tax bill the Senate passed 93-2 this week. Health insurance premiums for employer-sponsored plans rose 5 percent last year, according to a survey by Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research & Educational Trust. The overall inflation rate has increased 29 percent since 1999, wages 34 percent. Meanwhile, the cost to employers has gone from $4,247 to $9,325, a 119 percent increase, the employee portion has risen from $1,543 to $3,354, a 117 percent increase.
Advocates of commuter rail to Athens summoned mayors, commissioners and council members to a meeting to discuss “creative funding options and true partnerships” among beneficiaries and the several governments along the proposed route. Creative funding options, huh? That would have sounded more interesting before creative financing brought down much of the Wall Street financial sector. Creative funding now should specify that fares cover the debt — and lenders who think that will hold the note.
John McCain afraid to debate Barack Obama? You’re kidding, right? Remember Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church forum and Obama’s declaration that questions about when a living being acquires human rights are above his pay grade? Obama off TelePrompTer is an uh and ah, off-message journey into trouble.
I may be premature here — or as the elders said “talking out of school” — but I have it on good authority that the Georgia Republican Party endorses Saxby Chambliss. This revelation follows the announcement by the Clayton County Democratic Party that it is endorsing — brace yourself, Betty, it’s a shocker — the Democrats running for sheriff and for the school board. Joe Lieberman prompts the parties to declare. I guess. Connecticut Democrats, angry that he spoke at the GOP convention, are circulating a censure resolution unendorsing him.
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Obama a crisis ornament
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
John McCain demonstrated Wednesday that he has the instincts, skills and leadership ability required in time of crisis.
Barack Obama, faced with the opportunity to reveal himself as presidential-in-crisis, flunked. He’s a stand-around kind of guy. Oh, if they need him, he’ll be there where the administration and Congress are attempting to save the nation from possible financial meltdown. But the campaign is more important and, besides, a President has to demonstrate that he can do two things at once — presumably campaign and save the nation by phone. He is, after all, talking daily with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others.
He’s a crisis ornament, repeating now the pattern of his public life. He’s best at second-guessing. His gig is to let somebody else do the heavy lifting in taking risks and making decisions and then to declare when they are imperfect afterwards that had he made them, they would have been smarter, wiser and better. In this campaign, he’s revealing why his life’s accomplishments outside politics are so thin. He’s a talker.
The debate scheduled for Friday night is useful and somewhat important. But it’s utterly inconsequential when compared to the importance to the country of the financial rescue now being attempted by the Administration and Congress.
Both political parties bear responsibility for failure and for a solution. It truly is one of those occasions where bipartisanship is required, where politicians are obligated to put aside their petty games and pass legislation that addresses the specific problem without turning the rescue effort into a Christmas tree.
McCain’s insticts were right. Put the distractions aside. Sit down, finish the job responsibly and demonstrate to the nation that in time of crisis, politics recedes. As President Bush said Wednesday night, a failure to act could trigger “a long and painful recession” with consequences that represent “a distressing scenario.” He’s invited both McCain and Obama to meet with congressional and administration leaders today at the White House and both have accepted.
As for the debate, Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs said he expects it to be held even if Washington hasn’t done it’s work and addressed the crisis. “My sense,” he said, “is there’s going to be a stage, a moderator, an audience and at least one presidential candidate.”
Nothing could more dramatically demonstrate the difference in the two candidates than the scenario Gibbs envisions. If Washington hasn’t acted and the one-actor performance goes on, Obama will lose this election. It will be a reminder to all America how out-of-touch with their problems politicians can be.
Bill Heard Chevrolet closed its 14 dealerships Wednesday, putting 2,700 people out of work. Tell those now-unemployed workers that it’s more important that they know a tidbit more about where Obama and McCain stand than that the two of them are at work in Washington, doing the job they were elected to do, addressing the nation’s financial woes. Tell them. And then tell Obama to perform his one-candidate show.
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Drill, baby, drill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Drill, baby, drill.”
That chant swept the GOP convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul — and in large measure, credit for what now appears to be success goes to two Georgia Congressmen, Tom Price of Roswell and Lynn Westmoreland of Grantville.
Their almost spontaneous campaign to force House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to allow an up-or-down vote on offshore drilling captured the country’s attention and the hearts of rank-and-file Republicans desperate for leaders willing to fight for principle.
It was almost spontaneous because a contingent of conservative Republicans had planned speeches just before Congress recessed in August. Democratic leaders got word of the planned speeches. To shut them down, Pelosi abruptly gaveled the House to adjournment at 11:23 a.m. on recess day as Westmoreland, Price and Indiana Republican Mike Pence stood waiting to deliver their five-minute speeches.
Pelosi knew that with gas at $4 a gallon, voters were ready to see Congress take some decisive action, specifically to include domestic exploration and production. So she shut the upstarts down with the quick gavel.
Or so she thought. Westmoreland and Price quickly agreed to speak anyway — to an empty chamber, if necessary, and without microphone or cameras. They were joined by others and, lo and behold, the spontaneous eruption proved just the spark dispirited Republicans needed. Clearly by the time the convention rolled around almost a month later, the House revolt had taken root. It sent a vital message: We’ll fight the important battles.
Now it is reported that the lonely crusade launched almost spontaneously by Price, Westmoreland and Pence has succeeded.
Democratic leaders have decided to allow the ban on offshore drilling to expire at the end of this month. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.) announced Tuesday that language to continue the ban will be dropped from a stopgap spending bill.
President Bush did his part in lifting the ban. But for it to be lifted, Congress had to act or to let it expire without action, which they’re now doing.
It doesn’t necessarily mean more exploration. That will be determined by November’s election outcomes.
But it is a great day for those who believe, as John McCain does, that oil and gas exploration should be allowed in promising areas along the Outer Continental Shelf. It’s a great day, too, for Westmoreland and Price. Their speeches to an empty chamber were heard across America — then in Congress.
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Georgia’s beauty contest for new judges cheats voters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The terms of two justices of the Georgia Supreme Court and three members of the Georgia Court of Appeals are to be filled on the November ballot. Four are incumbents. They ride free.
One is an open seat now held by retiring Court of Appeals Judge John H. Ruffin Jr., a 1994 appointee of Gov. Zell Miller. For the one open seat, seven candidates have qualified.
Five of the seven gathered in Atlanta last week to present their qualifications to members of the Federalist Society, the American Bar Association alternative that should assess qualifications of nominees to the federal bench when conservatives occupy the White House. But that observation is unrelated to their Federalist Society invitation. The five were asked nothing that would have prompted them to hint at their leanings on issues of public concern. The Federalist Society, in any event, does not endorse candidates.
One area of complete agreement among the five is that not one would have challenged an incumbent — hence the free ride for incumbents.
This is the dilemma voters have in selecting judges: Incumbents are rarely challenged and when there’s an open seat, it’s virtually impossible to know who’s best qualified. Judicial elections are a crap shoot, and that’s intentional.
The public’s ignorance is cultivated by lawyers and judges and by the establishment bar, almost all of them fearful that the unwashed masses will come to expect judicial elections to be something other than beauty contests.
Truth is, of the dozen members of the Georgia Court of Appeals, four got there without being first anointed by the politicians and other insiders. They are the choice of the People of Georgia.
Admittedly, all four have surnames that start with an “A” or a “B” — Chief Judge Anne Elizabeth Barnes, first elected in 1998; Presiding Judge G. Alan Blackburn, first chosen by voters in 1992; Judge Gary B. Andrews, first elected in 1990; and Debra Bernes, elected in 2004.
But even with the alphabet boost, the fact is that all are good, solid judges, meaning that when given a chance, voters are perfectly capable of fulfilling the constitution’s requirement that judges be elected.
Over the decades, that right has been stolen from them. The custom — though it’s not what the framers of the state constitution envisioned — is that incumbents resign just before their terms expire, enabling the governor to choose their successor.
New language was added in the 1983 constitution that insulates those appointees from competition.
That sentence reads: “An appointee to an elective office shall serve until a successor is duly selected and qualified and until Jan. 1 of the year following the next general election which is more than six months after such person’s appointment.”
The impact of that is to protect the governor’s appointee for more than two years, by which time he or she is firmly ensconced — and can count on running unopposed.
The role of voters is that of voters in the old Soviet Union, to affirm our rulers’ decisions. It’s a sham system.
Real elections occur only when a departing judge, for whatever reason, elects to play it straight — because of principle, because the sitting governor is of the opposing party or because of contrariness.
That open seat on the Court of Appeals has produced a top-notch field. It includes in reverse alphabetical order:
Mike Sheffield of Lawrenceville, who lost a cliff-hanger in the election ultimately won by Bernes four years ago. (www.electsheffield.com)
State Sen. Michael S. Meyer von Bremen of Albany, chairman of the Senate’s special judiciary committee. (www.mvbcourtofappeals.com)
Former state Sen. Perry J. McGuire of Douglasville, who lost a race for attorney general to incumbent Thurbert Baker two years ago. (www.perrymcguire.com)
Christopher J. McFadden, a Decatur appellate lawyer. (www.mcfaddenforappealscourt.com)
Bruce M. Edenfield, of Atlanta, a trial lawyer whose father, Newell Edenfield of Atlanta, served on the federal bench.(www.bruceedenfield.com)
Sara Doyle of Atlanta, whose practice with Holland & Knight focuses on education issues. (www.votesaradoyle.com)
Tamela L. Adkins of Lawrenceville, a sole practitioner specializing in domestic law. (www.tamelaadkins.com)
A real judicial election is a rare treat.
Georgia is a beauty contest state. One where the candidates actually tell us something other than name, rank and serial number is even rarer. But ask anyway.
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Trust Congress on bailout?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Once the door is opened to taxpayer bailouts, as it is with the $700 billion (or more) bailout of the nation’s financial institutions, it’s an invitation to politicians to make a bad deal worse.
The President’s three-page proposal will be fleshed out during a presidential election cycle by by Democrats who control Congress. The elements could not be worse. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, delighted to be talking about something other than “Drill Here, Drill Now,” has a beach-ball issue tossed her way. The President’s proposal, she said, “does not include the necessary safeguards. Democrats believe a responsible solution should include independent oversight [of the bailout program], protections for homeowners and constraints on excessive executive compensation.”
That means, of course, politicizing every aspect of the bailout, adding a bail-out for individuals who took high-risk mortgages they couldn’t afford, and doing for executive compensation what Congress has done for campaign finance — and that is to yammer noisily and pass legislation that purports to deal with an alleged problem while simply moving money, whether campaign finance or executive compensation, from one stack to another.
The case is not yet made for the bailout — and may not be. Yes, the stock marked has soared. But the bailout establishes a floor. The isolated company or individual may bite the dust for personal or corporate irresponsibility, but if people and companies are irresponsible on sufficient scale, government protect them from their recklessness.
Congress going to “fix” the nation’s financial troubles in the days before a close and highly-competitive presidential race that will determine which party runs the nation for four-to-eight years? The cure may be worse than the problem.
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These class clowns mock legal system
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Today’s lesson, boys and girls, is judge shopping.
The elders who run some of your local school systems have acknowledged that they failed in their obligation to provide you an adequate education. Oh, I know, some of you have disengaged parents. What’s “disengaged”? That means they’re content to pack you up and send you off to school without concerning themselves much about what happens or doesn’t in the classroom or whether you’re text-messaging instead of doing homework. What’s “homework”? Never mind.
The point is that you’re self-esteemed through make-work school days by adults charged with the responsibility of providing you an education. Get to college and the realization dawns quickly: You know nothing. You’re not gifted. You’re remedial. This brings us, children, to today’s lesson on judge shopping.
The elders in some failed school systems across Georgia, as elders often do, blamed their failings on others. It’s not our fault, they said, reflecting the consensus of the times that somebody else makes us fail. We bear no responsibility. It’s not our fault.
So, as is the custom of the times, they formed a group and gave themselves a nifty name, the Consortium for Adequate School Funding. And they sued. Taxpayer money — at least $2 million diverted from the job of educating children in some 50 mostly rural systems and more than $1 million from the state’s coffers — was spent trying to convince a judge to give them more taxpayer money.
This is one of those roll-around-the-country lawsuits that activists pursue, regardless of a state’s per-child spending.
The consortium’s invitation to a judge with no particular education policy expertise is to snatch that responsibility from elected officials and to decide in isolation that, of the thousands of possible causes for a system’s failure to perform, the answer is more money. It would be a stupendously arrogant and activist judge to take that bait.
First up, a judge would be required to determine why some of the 50 suing systems produce better results than others. Some of the state’s best systems are not the big spenders. But the story of the day here is not the legitimacy or lack thereof of their complaint.
It’s judge shopping.
To succeed, the suit requires an activist judge willing to substitute his or her opinion for that of the executive and legislative branch. When circumstances unrelated to the specifics of this case required that it be handed over to one of the active Fulton County judges, the lawsuit fell to Craig Schwall, a Superior Court judge of unquestioned character and competence.
So what did the consortium’s leadership decide?
To drop the lawsuit “so that it can take other actions, including the filing of a new lawsuit in another court in Georgia.”
That, children, is judge shopping.
Worse still, it’s judge shopping preceded by a gratuitous slur directed at Judge Schwall. “We were … concerned that the critical issues of this case would not receive a fair hearing under the new judge,” said former Atlanta School Board chairman Joseph G. Martin Jr., the consortium’s executive director.
Mind you, Judge Schwall had never touched the case and has given no clue, in any respect, how he would receive it, except to agree that the case would go to trial on Oct. 21, as scheduled. The consortium’s cheap-shot objection is that he is a Republican appointed by Gov. Sonny Perdue — prompting the governor to declare that he is “particularly troubled by the consortium’s blatant and unfounded disrespect for the judiciary in general and Judge Craig Schwall in particular.
“Before Judge Schwall could even make a ruling, the consortium baselessly accused him of not being impartial, retreated and expressed plans to file again in a transparent attempt at forum shopping that undermines the most basic principles of this country’s legal system and the rule of law,” the governor said.
The state should now ask for a hearing on attorney’s fees — and it should insist, too, that the suit be dismissed “with prej-udice,” thereby making it more difficult to rework the lawsuit and refile it elsewhere.
That would do nothing about the shameful slur directed at Judge Schwall. But it would make judge shopping more difficult.
This issue is before the governor and the General Assembly. That is where it belongs.
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Dumbed-down college; financial lessons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Charles Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at American Enterprise Institute. Here’s his assessment of the traditional college route to adulthood: “College is not all it is cracked up to be. Dumbed-down courses, flaky majors and grade inflation have conspired to make the term B.A. close to meaningless. Another problem with today’s colleges is more insidious: They are no longer good places for young people to make the transition from childhood to adulthood. Today’s colleges are structured to prolong adolescence, not to midwife maturity.” Hope this assessment doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings who’s, you know, on campus or anything.
Wall Street Journal headline after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. fell to bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch & Co. fell to Bank of America: “Old-School Banks Emerge Atop New World of Finance.” Lesson: Save. Don’t get strung out on debt. There’s no new way to make debt an asset. In a financial crisis, those with cash can buy good stuff cheap. Landing Merrill Lynch “was the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Bank of America Chairman and CEO Ken Lewis. “This … creates the company instantly that would have taken decades to build.”
Thirty-four years after he viciously murdered his wife for her modest insurance, justice came to Jack Alderman. On the day before his execution Fulton Superior Court Judge Melvin Westmoreland ordered a stay until the state parole board held a “meaningful” clemency hearing. A last-minute stay after 34 years. The board met meaningfully and again denied clemency.
Cheers for DeKalb Solicitor Robert James, who hauled parents to court for their children’s unexcused absences from school.
Tolls on interstate HOV lanes, already built with tax dollars? Not legitimate. It’s a second tax on highways to fund other spending. And what do those who pay the second highway tax get? Not another square inch of road capacity.
Everybody who expects problems at the polls on election day should vote early. Problem solved.
Volunteers needed to hunt for lost vice presidential candidate. Anybody seen Joe Biden?
Horror of horrors, the DOT has prematurely bought some land in the path of future road construction. Shocking. But if the state had an extra billion dollars, buying future transportation corridors in Metro Atlanta — or all of North Georgia — would be a smart investment. As the Northern Arc debacle revealed, you can’t move once people put down tap roots.
The Brian Nichols jury is selected. Take a couple of days to decide his guilt or innocence and then another 90 trying to convince all 12 jurors to impose capital punishment. I’m thinking the defense got a 10-2 or 11-1 jury on that.
Give it your best shot, I say to my friends on the left. Sarah Palin does too. “If you want specifics and specific policy or countries, go ahead, you can play stump-the-candidate if you want,” she said to a questioner Wednesday. That is the game, as everybody knows. Palin won’t be cowed. The guys — Barack Obama, Biden and John McCain — all have that inside-the-Beltway feel — McCain the maverick less than the others. Palin’s the genuine outsider. “I think because I’m a Washington outsider, opponents are going to be looking for a whole lot of things that they can criticize” but on Inauguration Day “I’ll be ready.”
Russia vows to mark its Arctic territory so it can claim a large share of its mineral riches. Russia, the U.S., Canada and other countries all are trying to assert jurisdiction in the Arctic because of oil, gas and minerals. One more reminder: The future requires a strong leader in the White House, a decision-maker. It’s no time for a facilitator. False signals could be consequential. We’re dealing with thugs.
If I had $100,000 available, I’d pour it into financial stocks and others battered by the panic. What we have to fear is panic. Have faith in America.
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Hacking Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ever since John McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, the left has been wild with rage and frustration. The woman simply drives them up the wall. The old guy, they had measured: Run against him as a Bush clone, goad him into over-reacting, prompting a display of ill temper, and count on a few senior moments to win Barack Obama the coronation they are convinced he deserves.
With Palin, they’re grasping for the stuff — the material, the appeal, the line of attack — to bring her down. Dig in. The dirt-diggers are out in full force. Hackers broke into the Yahoo! e-mail account used for official business and distributed on the Internet personal messages — nothing consequential,but personal — that they stole from it.
“This is a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law,” the McCain campaign responded in a written statement. “The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them.”
The spin from this is not that sleazy political operatives are so unnerved by the prospect that Palin lit a fire under Republicans and is drawing more women and Independents to McCain that they’re willing to break the law in digging for dirt. Oddly enough, the spin is that — as the Associated Press reports — “the disclosure Wednesday raises new questions about the propriety of the Palin administration’s use of nongovernment e-mail accounts to conduct state business.”
If Palin survives the frantic efforts to trash her, she’ll clearly be tough enough to be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. The Left really is desperate to break this woman.
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Obama, McCain both wrong
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a crisis politicians are just worthless. There’s nothing helpful they can do — and therefore they have nothing of value to say.
Not John McCain. Not Barack Obama. Not Barney Frank. Not Jim Martin. All are quoted in today’s AJC commenting on the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the takeover of Merrill Lynch and the Federal Reserve rescue of insurer American International Group.
McCain’s response to the rapid demise of Wall Street financial institutions was to say that “we are going to reform the way Wall Street does business and put an end to the greed that has driven our markets into chaos. We will stop multi-million dollar payouts to CEOs who have broken the public trust. We will put an end to running Wall Street like a casino. We will make businesses work for the benefit of their shareholders and employees.”
Obama is an empty suit, once again vowing that he would have been smarter, better and wiser in providing solutions — something he’s never yet demonstrated in his life. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had him pegged in her acceptance speech: “Listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate.” The problem with Obama and his rhetoric is that, in his mind, all the world’s troubles started 8 years ago and they end with his election. This is not a guy you want around in crisis, any crisis.
Then there’s Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who is part of that cozy Washington insider culture that allowed Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to operate with lax regulatory oversight, while using its profits to fund their social programs and campaigns and provide employment to the well-connected. Frank is part of the problem.
His comment to the AIG action?
“This is one more affirmation that the lack of regulation has caused serious problems. That the private market screwed itself up and they need the government to come help them unscrew it.” You wonder why politicians are unpopular? Barney Frank. Their action, or lack of it, help to create the problem — and they take no responsibility.
Even Jim Martin, the Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, can’t resist the temptation to say stupid things. Opponent Saxby Chambliss has “been part of a system that’s been broken in Washington” and “I hold him accountable for the financial crisis we’re in,” said Martin. May-lar-kee. Chambliss has been there one term — of course, all this just started 8 years ago, as the left sees it — and during that time he’s been part of some problems, excessive spending among them. But on this Martin’s just background noise.
Right now the Bush Administration and the Federal Reserve are putting out fires that have been smoldering for decades. It is outrageous that even a dollar of taxpayer money has been required to salvage financial and now insurance firms. I’m not sold on the AIG rescue and want to see no more for financial institutions, but so far the Administration has handled the crisis properly to keep turmoil from spreading.
They’re not bailouts in the sense that taxpayers rescued investors and managers from bad decisions and reckless lending behavior. The reckless lost their investments, their companies and in many cases their jobs. The golden parachutes that would have brought Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd $8.4 million and former Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron $15.5 million have been taken away by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
It’s probable that the failed companies are in better shape financially than the current panic among investors would suggest. It’s the panic the Administration and the Federal Reserve have to contain. Ultimately, these loan guarantee should turn out like the 1979 Chrysler Corp. guarantee. Taxpayers lost no money, but still government loan guarantees to private companies is no more desirable as financial policy than it was as industrial policy.
McCain suggests that something like a 9/11 Commission is needed and he’s right, though Obama ridicules it. The worst possible outcome now would be for Congress to dash out regulation, even of the sort McCain first suggested to combat “greed.” What’s needed is a careful analysis of how the Washington insiders and Big Money got so close that government lost its ability to regulate properly.
It started at the bottom with a system that allowed people to buy homes they couldn’t afford without checking their ability to repay and without requiring them to put down their own money. And it continued up the line. Nobody was accountable. Nobody owned the bad loans they made or took.
The solution is not more regulation. In some cases it may be less. At the end of the day, though, no private business — and especially not Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae — should exist in the marketplace with real or implied taxpayer guarantees.
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The left is in a quandary over Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
How to destroy Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin?
That’s the quandary of the left, of the campaign Democrats and the bloggers and other commentators who camp with them.
She sailed through the first two tests — her introduction to the nation as John McCain’s running mate and her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention — with an easy self-confidence that alarmed adversaries expecting a deer-in-the-headlights revelation of the former small-town mayor’s unpreparedness for the duties ahead.
One of her greatest tributes came from an independent-thinking feminist and Democrat, Camille Paglia, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Writing on Solon.com, she admitted being wowed by Palin at the convention as “a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.” Continuing:
“Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist.
“In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, Philistine feminist establishment.”
After returning from the GOP convention, I attended a family reunion near the South Georgia town of Douglas. Politics are rarely discussed. Most are yellow-dog Democrats or occasional Republicans. Years ago, after the Monica Lewinsky affair, a female cousin of about my age sidled up to me and whispered furtively that for the first time in her life, she was voting Republican. She half-expected lightning to strike. “My daddy would turn over in his grave if he knew,” she continued whispering.
At this reunion, perhaps because it came on the heels of the gathering in Minneapolis / St. Paul, conversations often turned to politics — and specifically to Sarah Palin. Men and women alike found her captivating, a blend of smart, independent and accessible woman that women could relate to and the good ol’ girl the men would like in the F-150 beside them on way to the hunt. No other woman on the national scene touches people on the levels that Palin does.
About 37.2 million viewers saw her convention speech, a larger audience than the American Idol finals or the opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games. That she made such an impression on viewers ranging from Camille Paglia to women and men not normally attuned to politics explains why it’s essential for the Obama campaign and its media allies to tarnish Palin.
She has, as polls indicate, changed the dynamics of the election. Even down-ticket Republicans — those running for the U.S. House and for the Senate — see their prospects improved. She’s reinvigorated the base and is much-sought by candidates in close races and by fund-raisers. Obama, who first agreed to abide by public financing campaign limits before changing his mind, raised a record $66 million in August and is approaching half a billion dollars raised and spent on his presidential quest. McCain chose to remain in the public system and is limited to a total of $84 million, though Obama’s advantaged could be lessened or neutralized by money raised and spent by the Republican National Committee.
Palin, in any event, has given spark and energy to efforts to go after contributors who can lift the entire ticket.
Democrats have to attack. Or do they? Every effort so far has failed, whether launched by the Obama campaign or by the crazies on the left who are terrified that an election that was theirs may be slipping away.
Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, now a commentator, offers free but sound advice to the Obama campaign: Aim for the old guy. Palin’s trouble.
They can do the gotchas. They can make sport of her observation about the proximity of Alaska and Russia, as Saturday Night Live amusingly did. They can dig for dirt. But they’d be smarter to take Noonan’s advice and ignore her.
For the record, I’m hoping they don’t. My money’s on Palin.
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Shocking! Panicky Obama levels an ‘ism’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You’ve got to hand it to Barack Obama and his campaign operatives. For sheer gall, they may be without peer.
After criticizing Gov. Sarah Palin as inexperienced — despite the fact that she has more executive experience than Obama, Joe Biden and John McCain combined — the campaign now takes aim at McCain’s age and his years in Washington, though Joe Biden has been there longer.
Obama is convinced he can ride the left’s hatred of George W. Bush into the White House — and continues with a new TV ad an effort to link McCain and Palin to Bush, with a personal attack on McCain
But the obvious fact that Bush is not on the 2008 ballot and McCain and Palin are is an inconvenient truth. No matter. The Obama operatives will simply run against the administration past by pledging more of the Democratic programs of the past while talking soothingly of change to voters and potential voters with short memories.
They, too, promise a new, more civil campaign — and deliver the standard trash-talk. The campaign’s latest TV ad attacks McCain personally, based on his age. It pulls a news clip of a hearing in the early 1980s where McCain is dressed in the fashion of the era. It projects other images: Rubik’s Cub, a disco ball, an outdated computer and phone. “Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn’t,” says the announcer. It attempts to tie his unfamiliarity with computers to his understanding of the economy and veers off to connect it all to “tax cuts for corporations.” It closes with a photo of McCain with Bush, describing both as out of touch.
So we have a guy with no executive experience at the top of the Democratic ticket trashing the experience of the woman who’s number two on the GOP ticket. At the same time it trashes the 26 years McCain has been in Washington, while overlooking the fact that the number two guy on the Democratic ticket has been there 36. One is “more of the same,” but the other guy’s not?
What it boils down to is that Obama is trashing McCain because of his age. In the Obama world, where he gets to decide which criticisms directed at him are allowable, age would be off-limits. It’s not, of course. In an election for President of the United States, everything that shapes a candidate’s beliefs, values and character are fair game.
The Obama attack on McCain is noteworthy because it is a reminder that Democrats are lashing out in panic. Poll numbers are breaking against them. So here we have a campaign built entirely on the failed social spending programs of the 60s and 70s trashing the old guy — resorting to ageism, one of the politically incorrect “isms” that liberals ordinarily find shocking! - to claim that McCain is stuck in the 80s.
Wierd. Oh the twists and turns of the panicky.
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Panic sets in for Obama, Democrats
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barack Obama knows it. The election he had in the bag is slipping away.
The selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate has so thrown him off stride, as it has most other Democrats, that all the momentum he had has vanished. He’s getting panicky advice from everywhere. He intends to launch more and sharper attacks, abandoning any pretense of a new and different, more civil campaign.
Democrats know something, and desperation is setting in. They have a novice campaigner who wanders off message. With every advantage in the primaries, Obama couldn’t win the big states — New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania — against Hillary Clinton, even when he got to define the rules for running against him. She could never risk alienating the base she’ll need in 2012; John McCain and Sarah Palin have no such constraints — hence the panic.
For a “change” candidate, Obama appears to be a man locked in time, unable to move past criticism, unable to move from the grip of the Democratic left, unable to adapt to the changed reality that the campaign is not the referendum on the war in Iraq or on the administration of George W. Bush that he’d envisioned.
He’s begun to sound dated. Last week, for example, he devoted valuable campaign days — less than two months remain — into explaining a silly “lipstick on a pig” line. The McCain campaign had reacted, accusing him of making the reference to Palin. “I don’t care what they say about me,” Obama responded. “But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and ‘Swiftboat politics.’ Enough is enough,” he said. (The Swiftboat reference is from the 2004 campaign of John Kerry).
The Democratic left is still seething from the Kerry campaign’s loss and is determined to see Bush expelled from the White House in disgrace — the reason it is locked in to making this a referendum on the administration now ending.
It barely worked when the maverick McCain, no darling of the Bushites, got the nomination. With Palin, the Washington outsider, the “third term” argument is plainly absurd. But Obama can’t let go, just as the lefties can’t let go of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth defeat of Kerry. He can’t move on.
Obama has the habit, too, of reminding voters of their doubts about him, as he did in reminding a Detroit audience that he’s been accused of being less interested in protecting you from terrorists than reading them their rights. And, when he professes love of country as his basis for refusing to allow the McCain campaign to attack his words, he raises questions about why he finds the affirmation of love necessary.
Obama will lose because with less than two months remaining voters won’t be able to get comfortable with him. He can’t stay on message and he can’t avoid sending signals that interfere with the message when he does.
McCain, on the other hand, has been superb going back at least to Obama’s European tour. Mainstream America is comfortable with him and, with Palin’s selection, conservatives who had their doubts are onboard. The GOP is energized and suddenly an unwinnable election is reversed.
Obama got this far by winning small states and Southern states he has no chance of carrying in November. In Georgia, for example, the latest Insider Advantage poll has McCain pulling 56 percent of the vote to 38 percent for Obama, numbers that are not likely to change more than 4 percentage points in November. The undecideds and those who intend to vote for third-party campaigns are at 6 percent.
In this election, voters will decide early. Obama’s been in a yearlong campaign; McCain’s familiar. The two are sufficiently exposed and known for voters to make a decision now.
It’s not over. But it’s getting there — and Obama knows it.
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Apologies, transparency, Grady woes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Billionaire Henry Samueli apologized for lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission investigators in advance of sentencing, which has been postponed. Ever hear anybody who’s not been caught apologize for lying or some other offense?
Secretary of State Karen Handel strikes a blow for transparency, too, launching her “Transparency in Government” initiative. A Web site will include her budget, monthly spending reports, her personal and campaign financial disclosure and ethics policy. “Responsible fiscal management begins with a commitment to transparency and accountability.” Republicans who run Georgia should own this issue. It’s what Georgians want. Transparency, performance standards and accountability.
Broken record: The new CEO of Grady, Michael Young, sounds like all of those who have come before him. Stop dumping your nonpaying patients on Grady, he said. Produce the evidence. Nobody before him has.
The Kathy Cox Apology Window is open. All those who criticized her for appearing on “Are You Smarter Than a 5th-Grader?” while somewhere in Georgia a child was failing, should now eat crow. She won $1 million, which she promptly donated to three schools serving the blind and the deaf. Can we rise now from pettiness?
The state should not take over any local school system, nor any airport, nor any city’s sewer system or anything else that fails at the local level. It has no particular expertise running schools or other local services. Vouchers, yes. In Clayton County adults elected the board and hired the superintendent; it’s up to locals to fix public education —- though no child should be held prisoner there while they try.
Now that they’ve been taken over, Freddie and Fannie should be broken apart and dispatched into the private sector without any suggestion that taxpayers will cover their recklessness and their mistakes.
No unkindness today for Barack Obama or Joe Biden. They’re still reeling from the old guy’s boldness in picking Gov. Sarah Palin and, in the process, seizing the “change” momentum. It’s hard to think of a guy who’s never bucked the Democratic establishment (Obama) and a 36-year Washington insider (Biden) as agents of change. Easier to imagine that from two party mavericks.
Oh, my. It can’t be long before those who believe high gas prices are good (take the bus; don’t build more road capacity) jump on a report from the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan. It finds that —- brace yourself for this shocking news —- when gas prices skyrocket, driving and therefore highway fatalities drop. So get ready for the campaign: High Gas Prices Save Lives. The anti-road crowd likes high gas prices, but their desire is that government and not the oil companies, get the juice.
Universities can be very selective in determining which values they seek to impose on students. At the University of Miami, it’s use of public transportation, ride-sharing and biking —- their intent in banning cars for freshmen. Wonder if they’d require, say, the pledge of allegiance at the first-of-day classes. Nah. Too jingoistic.
DeKalb County considers ending the practice of busing children to out-of-district schools. Projected savings would be $5.9 million. It’s a practice that should stop everywhere. Children should be able to attend any school they want —- but it’s the parents’ obligation to form car pools to get them there. Gas subsidies for vans or car pools would be OK.
Landing Ron Paul as a running mate would be a coup for Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr. That alignment could be trouble in some close states, since both pull from John McCain. Their pull could, of course, be offset by Cynthia McKinney’s pull with the left. She’s the Green Party nominee.
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Did Obama blow it in picking Biden?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barack Obama blew it when he opted not to pick Hillary as his vice president, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday. “She would have unified the party in one evening…and they would have been almost unbeatable,” he argued.
Furthermore, he said, with Hillary on the Democratic ticket, John McCain would not have chosen Gov. Sarah Palin.
The question of the day is this: Did Obama blow it in picking Joe Biden? My first reaction was that Biden was not a terrible choice. He did, indeed, offer some reassurance to those who are uncomfortable with the prospect that an inexperienced guy the nation doesn’t really know has his finger on the nuclear trigger.
But in the days after Palin’s selection and after watching her at the convention, I’m convinced that Gingrich is right. Hillary would have been a better choice, though it would have been hard to keep her from overshadowing Obama, even in the White House. If not Hillary, a woman from outside Washington who could excite Democrats.
The Obama campaign, recognizing that Georgia is unwinnable, is pulling staff from the state. In recent days I’ve been in the part of the state south of the gnat line and I can tell you that people have taken notice of Palin and like what they see. She’s sparked the energy Republicans needed and, according to a poll of Independents, she and McCain are moving those numbers as well. A new Fox News poll has McCain leading Obama 46-31 among Independents. A month ago, Obama led by one point.
The good Biden will do the ticket has been done. His pick told the nation that an experienced foreign policy guy would be at the table when important national security decisions are being made. Beyond that, he doesn’t help. Palin does.
I was dining a few months ago with a group that including a young man who didn’t particularly like the menu selection he’d made. Mine, he thought, was better.
“You out-ordered me,” he said.
There’s no question McCain “out-veeped” Obama.
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‘Barack the bomb-thrower’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Barack, the guy running for president,” became Barack the (stink) bomb thrower Tuesday, suggesting that John McCain can put lipstick on a pig — a reference to Gov. Sarah Palin’s joke about the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick — and it’s still the policies of George Bush.
Obama’s reeling and reaching. Democrats are searching for dirt or something beyond a few photos of kids with booze or a very attractive mom in a bikini to use Palin’s selection to sink McCain. And who can blame them? A CNN-Opinion Research poll taken Sept. 5-7 puts her up 53-44 in a head-to-head with Joe Biden.
Obama followed the lipstick-on-the-pig ploy with the she’s-needed-at-home approach. Palin’s an interesting story, he said. “Look, she’s new, she hasn’t been on the scene, she’s got five kids. And my hat goes off to anybody who’s looking after five. I’ve got two and they tire Michelle and me out.”
Obama and Biden will overplay it with Palin. Watch them.
More interesting to me, though, than the lipstick line was Obama’s view of his country, as expressed in remarks playing off his first name.
Speaking in Detroit Tuesday night, Obama responded to a questioner asking about civil liberties by saying that he is accused of being “less interested in protecting you from terrorists than reading them their rights.” He criticized the administration’s suspension of habeas corpus rights for suspected terrorists.
Habeas corpus, he said, ” is the foundation of Anglo-American law, which says very simply, if the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, Why was I grabbed?' and say,Maybe, you’ve got the wrong person.’” The continued:
“The reason we have that safeguard is we don’t always have the right person. We don’t always catch the right person.
“We may think this is Muhammad the terrorist. It might be Muhammad the cab driver. You may think it’s Barack the bomb-thrower. But it might be Barack, the guy running for president.”
In other words, the U.S. war on terrorism is based on stereotypes. Any old Muhammad. And old Barack. They look alike and have funny names.
Barack, the guy running for president, constantly reminds us, however unintentionally, why he stumbles through simple questions from seven-year-olds, as he did in telling one why he wants to be president:
“America is, is no longer, uh, what it could be, what it, it once was…and I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children.”
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Plenty of red meat for GOP delegates
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Man, does Sue P. Everhart, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, know how to recover from a canceled speaker.
When the scheduled speaker for the lunchtime gathering of delegates bailed last week at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, the state GOP recovered with this lineup:
U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss.
Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, who defeated incumbent Edwin Edwards and others to claim the governor’s office in 1988. While serving in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1981 and 1988, he was a Blue Dog Democrat. He switched parties in 1991. Edwards defeated him in 1991.
John R. Block of Illinois, who served as U.S. secretary of agriculture under Ronald Reagan between 1981 and 1986.
John McCain’s son, Andy.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki, who served three terms between 1995 and 2006.
Gov. John M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah, elected in 2004.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez, appointed by President Bush in 2004.
Former Iraq prisoner of war Warrant Officer Ron Young of Lithia Springs.
Former Vietnam prisoner of war Col. Lee Ellis of Cumming, whose plane was shot down over North Vietnam 11 days after McCain’s. He and McCain were prisoners at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” camp.
Wow! Not surprisingly, Georgia’s Secretary of State Karen Handel, who was also scheduled to speak, opted to take her shot at delegates’ attention on another day.
Some really good lines and stories came out of it, red meat for the delegates. Huntsman, who served as an advance man for Ronald Reagan, avowed that “any state that can be run by a guy named Sonny obviously has to have a positive outlook on life.”
On 9/11, he said, he was a trade official visiting Vietnam. While there he went to the Hanoi Hilton and saw the flight suit McCain had worn when he was shot down.
“When freedom is taken away from some people I believe they are in a little better position to preserve it for the next generation,” said Huntsman.
Gutierrez, a native of Cuba, was the low-key speaker of the day. He said of Barack Obama, “he has been in Congress for a short period of time and half of that time has been spent campaigning.”
Of Obama’s thin resume, Gutierrez said: “Tell me what you have done and I will know what you are going to do.”
(Vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin later told the full convention that listening to Obama speak, it’s easy to forget this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform.)
Former New York Gov. Pataki told the Georgia delegates that Obama had picked the “ultimate Washington insider,” Sen. Joseph Biden, who’s best known “for the length of his speeches.”
Of the accusations that Palin’s inexperienced, Pataki countered: “I learned more about how to run a government in one month as a governor than I did in 10 years as a legislator.” Neither Obama nor Biden, or for that matter McCain, has executive experience.
Ellis, a POW with McCain, described him as “tough as a knot.” McCain declined release because the code of POWs was that the sick and wounded be set free first and then they would go in the order of capture.
Obama, said Chambliss, is “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate —- that is, when he decides he wants to vote.”
Andy McCain said of his father that “he’s pretty tough. Growing up with him, you did it his way.” The elder McCain is “arguably one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met,” with a keen sense of humor, he said. He wants his grandchildren to call him “the old geezer.”
While he “disagrees with everybody at some point,” the son said his father had told him repeatedly: “I will never make a decision where I won’t put the country first.”
Red meat for the partisans? Sure. But with the back-up entertainment, nobody bothered to ask who’d canceled.
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Obama, McCain, Fannie and Freddie
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The campaign of Barack Obama has reason to be concerned in the first week of the post-convention campaign season.
For one, his rival’s bump from the convention and from the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate was solid. John McCain now leads 50 to 46 percent among registered voters, according to a Gallup poll taken Friday through Sunday.
Of greater concern to the Obama campaign, though, is his lead among those who are most likely to vote. That’s 10 points, 54-44. Obama’s strong lead on dealing with the economy has essentially vanished, too. It was 19 points before the convention and is down to 3 now, which is within the poll’s margin of error.
During a post-convention trip to South Georgia, I had a chance to get some reaction to the GOP convention and to Palin. Far and away, she was the hit of the convention.
Obama continues to be bedeviled by questions about his religion, something I picked up repeatedly from people who aren’t political junkies. It’s not surprising that Obama lashed out on that issue Sunday. He can’t shake the believe that he is a Muslim, the religion of his father and religion of at least part of his childhood.
Obama badly needs to do something to shake that perception. A major speech, addressing it head-on, is warranted.
On another front, the feds moved decisively over the weekend to deal with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac problem. Partisan commentators and others are quick to react, calling such efforts a bail-out. When you lose your investment, your job and the franchise, as will now happen, it’s hardly a bail-out for managers and investors. The two entities should be stabilized, broken up, and sold back into the private sector completely free of government guarantees on debt.
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Our values reflected in those of Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Country music legend Loretta Lynn, the coal miner’s daughter, captured the America that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin touches in Lynn’s 1971 hit, “One’s on the Way.”
The song contrasts the glitzy world of celebrities with the routine of the ordinary life of a woman in Topeka where: “The rain is a fallin’. The faucet is a drippin’ and the kids are a bawlin’, one of ‘em a toddlin’, and one is a crawlin’. And one’s on the way.”
Though dated, it speaks to life removed from the spectacle of television, where unimportant people engage in celebrity and important people play games with incomprehensible purpose and rules, while, for the rest of America, “the screen door’s a bangin’; the coffee’s boilin’ over and the wash needs a hangin’,” and the routines of ordinary life prevail.
There is a frustration extant in this country. It’s the frustration that, while we play by the rules and manage, as a family, the routines of life, Washington betrays us. Betrays us in the sense that we are made strangers from our government. We can’t make it be responsible. We can’t make it reform. We can’t make it understand — we can’t make them, the celebrities and insiders, the important people, understand.
That’s what’s most refreshing about Palin. She is one of us. Her family is the one where the rain falls and the faucet drips and, no matter what, the family deals with it. These families go to work every day, send their sons and daughters off to fight the country’s wars, nurse their children through crisis, and walk proudly together to face the troubles that come their way.
It’s been said repeatedly that she’s genuine. She’s authentic. She’s real. She’s not somebody who scripted her life to be in a position of power and influence by age 30 or 40. She’s just a woman from the nation’s frontier state who lives among people who are open and honest, who don’t know when not to talk to the media or how to speak in phrases empty and correct. They just live and deal with life as it comes.
Gov. Sonny Perdue, when asked once why he didn’t trumpet his administration’s successes, responded by telling a story of farmers gathered at the country store. Boasting was pointless and unbecoming, he said, because farmers had but to drive by the fields of others to know the caliber of their work. The crop spoke for itself.
With Sarah Palin, the crop speaks for itself. There’s no pretense, nor political calculation, nor abstract Washington think-tank or interest group agendas in play on the issue of abortion. She and husband Todd had months to decide about a problematic pregnancy; they chose life. They chose to build their family in accordance with their values. They were not dealing with what-might-be. They were dealing with life.
On the crisis in their daughter’s life, they were pawns in a chess game that pits abstinence-only education interest groups against those that argue some other policy position. They are the American family. “Our family has the same ups and downs as any other,” she told the nation Wednesday, “the same challenges and the same joys.”
Their son Track is off to war. This is no abstraction. This is no pro-con on the wisdom of pursuing the war waged against us into Iraq. This is an Amercian family that understands and feels the obligation that John McCain had expressed to the Bob Dole generation in his 1996 speech to the Republican convention: You did for us. We do for you. It’s not a game. It’s not a talking point. It’s Topeka. It’s Commerce and Lithia Springs and Wasilla. It’s us.
It’s the family that’s proud to be American composed of those who feel goose bumps when the flag passes in parades. Palin drew wild applause Wednesday night when she declared in obvious response to Michelle Obama’s pronouncement that for the first time, with the ascent of her husband, she felt proud to be an American:
People in the small towns where she grew up, “love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.” It’s not conditional love. It’s not love based on whether we behave and believe as others wish. It’s lasting and unconditional.
Palin’s story is our story. Her life is our life.
She and McCain will carry the South because her values and his are ours.
She is not of Washington.
She is of us.
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Coverdell, gun joke, gas prices
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend-free-for-all, convention edition. Pick a topic:
It’s no secret that I was a great fan of the late Paul Coverdell, the U.S. senator from Georgia who was destined for greatness until his premature death in 2000. One of the nicest and most unexpected tributes imaginable came this week in Minneapolis from the 1996 presidential nominee, Bob Dole of Kansas, who served as Senate majority leader. Speaking to a small group that included no more than half a dozen Georgians, he extolled the willingness of Sen. John McCain to offer assistance, rather than criticism, on tough issues. Then, almost as an aside, he mentioned that there was another guy like that, uh, Coverdell. That free-thought tribute was, I thought, one of the finest possible from a legendary senator who had known them by the score.
Great joke making the rounds here: Every gun shop in Alabama was bought out after news broke that the Russians had invaded Georgia. Seems they were determined to stop the Russians before they ravaged Alabama too.
Gas prices drop. Pickup sales improve. GM’s Chevrolet Silverado was the nation’s best-selling vehicle last month. Discounts helped. Price still sells cars. Those who don’t like big trucks as personal vehicles like high gas prices because they dampen the market and, presumably, the need for more road capacity.
T. Boone Pickens, who’s pushing windmills from Texas to Canada and solar from Texas to California, likes high gas prices too. His argument is “drill, baby, drill,” an oft-repeated phrase since it was spoken on the floor of the convention Wednesday, but only as one part of an energy strategy. Nancy Pelosi makes Pickens’ argument that drilling offshore and in Alaska won’t solve the problem —- whoever thought it did? —- but she has no strategy for energy independence and Pickens might.
A band of “drill here, drill now” Republicans is manning the fort back in Congress, still trying to pressure Pelosi for a vote. That valiant effort, soon to conclude, was led by Tom Price of Roswell and kicked off by Lynn Westmoreland of Grantvillle. All Georgia Republican House members participated. When Price and Phil Gingrey spoke on it here in Minneaopolis, a supportive Georgia delegation cheered wildly. They want fighters (one of the reasons they loved Gov. Sarah Palin).
What Obama surge? Georgia’s Secretary of State Karen Handel still insists the numbers are not there. It could happen, but “right now you’re just having the normal presidential voter registration,” she told me Thursday. Between December and Aug. 31 of 2004, registration increased 4.9 percent. For the same time period this cycle, it’s up 5.2 percent. Georgia’s a high voter-registration state and “there’s not a whole lot more room to go in terms of getting full capacity to vote,” she said.
Lots of voter registration forms are going out the door, but in many cases they’re re-registering voters. That’s one reason Gov. Sonny Perdue can say, as he did here: “Let Obama and Joe (pause, as though trying to remember the name) Biden come to Georgia and spend as much money as they want … and we are still goin’ to wax ‘em.”
- Three reasons to be concerned about an Obama and a “what’s his name?” victory, as explained by Sen. Johnny Isakson: In the first 30 days of Democratic control of the White House and Congress, they’ll do away with the secret ballot in union-organizing drives, sunset “every one of the rational Bush tax proposals” between 2009 and 2011, and “the world will know America blinked in the war on terrorism.” Convinces me. And that’s just the last two of the three.
8 More threes, this from House Speaker Glenn Richardson. One’s a prediction, the other’s a promise and the third’s an epiphany, he said. Prediction: McCain-Palin wins Georgia by 10 points, and with 38 state House seats contested, Dems won’t take control. (Nobody in either party thinks they will.) Promise: “We’ll stop some of the fussin’ and fightin’” under the Gold Dome. (Yes, do, or it’s career terminal.) And the epiphany? He’s realized the truth of what his mother always told him: Just because it pops into your head, it doesn’t have to come out of your mouth.
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McCain’s big night
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
He is the stern and compassionate grandfather, the reliable voice of experience who behaves and acts according to a code of personal conduct borne of hardship and testing.
John McCain’s acceptance speech was upbeat and positive, optimistic and spirited. He made a strong saales pitch to those who are looking to get comfortable with a leader who represents “change,” the kind of change that’s not risky or flighty, but different. He spelled out in enough detail to draw real distinctions between himself and Barack Obama and promised that he and Gov. Sarah Palin would be the reformers who shake up the Washington establishment. The crowd loved it.
Demonstrators sought to disrupt John McCain’s big night, drawing the camera’s eye and delegates’ attention. McCain was cool. “Please don’t be diverted by the ground noise and the static,” he told them. “Americans want us to stop yelling at each other.”
It was not a spectacular speech until the end, but it was one that will raise the comfort level of most Americans with him. That’s all he really needed to do.
The most beautiful part of the speech was the finish and his discussion of the POW ordeal. It does not get any better. Said McCain:
“I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn’t my own man anymore. I was my country’s.”
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Waiting for John
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A dozen years ago, John McCain delivered what may go down as his best convention speech — that in support of U.S. Sen. Bob Dole. It was a speech where he expressed the Vietnam veteran’s appreciation to a those who had fought in World War II, the generation that saved the free world.
What to expect tonight? No repeat of last night is required. The country knows John McCain. Some Republicans love him; some are lukewarm. He is a maverick. But whatever your thoughts and feelings, he’s known. No mysteries of his life are out there to be explored.
We’re not being introduced to John McCain. We’re having a conversation with a man we know. The platform and the convention hall is being changed to reflect that. It’ll be a town hall.
If his speech hits a homer, fine. If not, no problem. We know John McCain.
His views and those of Barack Obama are radically different. You either prefer one or the other.
The race, really, is a referendum on whether Barack Obama is ready to lead this country in a world where bad guys want to kill us because of who we are and what we believe and represent to the world. It’s a referendum on whether we want the size and reach of government Obama and Biden represents
McCain should be upbeat and positive about the future. He’s likely not to get the audience Gov. Sarah Palin got Wednesday, but that’s no big deal. We know him — and we know how he will act in times of crisis and stress.
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Southern women (and men) know Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Southern women — and the men who love them — will identify instantly with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Her speech last night was brutally effective. Democrats do not know how to react today. They’re stumbling all over the place trying to construct an appropriate response, but they’re always a phrase or a Joe Biden smirk away from overplaying it. They can’t ignore her, but they can’t trash-talk her either.
In a soft, inquiring-minds-want-to-know fashion, she delivered devastating lines.
On Barack Obama: “This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word ‘victory’ except when talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to the studio lot, what exactly is our opponent’s plan?”
This is a woman who speaks as “the mother of one of those troops” determined to bring victory to Iraq. One week from today son, Track, will “deploy to Iraq with the Army infantry in the service of his country.”
As she points out, she’s not some Washington insider. She’s the mother of a serviceman sitting across the aisle at the country church in small-town America who’s exasperated with the way things are getting done — or, more precisely, not — in Washington, a good, Southern country woman who temporarily hands over the newborn to her husband or daughter, saying “Hold this baby while I go to Washington and whup some butt.”
We all have seen her, if not the whupping kind, certainly the fed-up kind, or the take-charge kind who’s convinced that everything’s falling apart and 100 people expecting to be fed are due within the hour.
They’re polite and well-mannered. But in this state of mind, they’re not to be messed with.
This woman just closed off Barack Obama’s openings in the South — and throughout small-town America.
She looks sweetly into the gaggle of guests and muses aloud: “The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery; this world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn’t just need an organizer.”
Ouch. Barack Obama’s just been whupped.
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That Palin’s a fighter
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Some conventions have magic moments. One was the 1996 Republican convention in San Diego when Elizabeth Dole took the microphone and wandered among delegates, talking conversationally. The huge arena took on the feel of an intimate family room. I stood and watched the delegate crowd. Delegates were mesmerized. She owned them.
That moment occurred again Wednesday night. When Gov. Sarah Palin walked onstage, the crowd was electric. They wanted to inspire her on — and, clearly, as she grew more comfortable in delivery, they did. For Democrats — and partisans in the media — this will be a very dangerous woman. Better think twice before picking a fight.
Delegates made the moment electric in part because they had built up anger all week long, convinced that assorted stories and headlines had crossed into her family’s private lives. At one point earlier when former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani delivered a rip-roaring attack on the opposition, one guest seated near me in the stands leaned over and shouted up to the MSNBC booth: “You getting any of that up there?”
Palin demonstrated convincingly that she can handle her load in this campaign. On her high school basketball team, she was called Sarah Barracuda for her aggressive play. Republicans want a fighter. I do believe they have one in Gov. Sarah Palin.
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Waiting for Sarah
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last week the acceptance speech of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama drew 38 million viewers — 60 percent more than John Kerry’s 2004 acceptance speech.
Here in Minneapolis-St. Paul, delegates are sky-high with anticipation. The headline on one of the national newspapers declared this morning, after President Bush spoke, that it’s now John McCain’s convention. Yes, but….
The thing about McCain is that he’s a known figure with a national reputation that needs, really, no fleshing out. Though it’s his convention, he just has to accept the reality that the exciting figure is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She’s the rock star — and that’s fine. McCain is the guy who instills confidence on national security issues. But she’s the gal who inspires a belief that Washington can be changed and that, indeed, the divide between Washington and the kitchen tables of American can be closed.
This is a Republican town this week, but even when you strip away the partisan-laced enthusiasm for Palin, there’s something genuine and exciting about her and the reaction of women, especially, to her.
It may not be 38 million watching tonight. But she’ll draw millions of Americans who don’t normally tune in politics. The convention so far has been fairly routine as these things go. Tonight, I wouldn’t miss it.
Questions: Will you watch? What do you expect?
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Spotlight turns to teen father-to-be
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The experts who stage political conventions are far smarter than I am about how to handle stories that are likely to result in a media frenzy. But dang if I’d have brought the father of Bristol Palin’s baby to the GOP convention on one of the three most important days in Gov. Sarah Palin’s campaign life.
The third of those important days is Oct. 2 when the vice presidential debate is held at Washington University in St. Louis. The first was her introduction last Friday.
Governor Palin was spectacular on the day she was introduced to the nation as John McCain’s vice presidential nomination. She was confident and comfortable before what may have been the largest audience she had ever addressed. She easily passed the first major test.
The second comes Wednesday night when she addresses delegates and, more importantly, the nation. When her name was mentioned Tuesday night, delegates roared their approval. They share the sentiment expressed by former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee — “what a breath of fresh air Gov. Sarah Palin is” — and they’re ready to showcase her to the rest of the country.
They want the nation to see her as Thompson does: “She is a courageous, successful reformer who is not afraid to take on the establishment” and is, furthermore, a small town woman with small-town values.
That’s the reception she’d get, too. The nation that’s not jaded or devoted to the opposition will find her to be the breath of fresh air Thompson describes.
Wednesday is her day to shine.
She is a bold selection who represented some risk for McCain and the GOP. A New York Times story on Tuesday agonized about whether the woman can do it all, something incidentally I’ve never read about a man offered the vice presidency, no matter his family situation.
The point, really, is that the first few days of media attention is intense. She’ll do fine, I believe, based on her performance to date. But the young man?
Having him here on her day is daring. He and the pregnant daughter become the dominant story of the day leading up to Governor Palin’s convention moment. It may make sense to the experts to get it all out of the way up-front. But to this PR amateur, it looks like a bad call.
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Bush: Independence, character changed history
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President George W. Bush gots the opportunity he’s earned to address the last GOP convention to be held during his administration. He got 8 minutes — and a loving introduction from the First Lady who has stood by him for 8 tough years in the White House.
She made certain that delegates and the nation remembered his successes — the most important of which is that “President Bush has kept the American people safe” and in the process brought freedom to 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Much of his eight minutes was devoted to promoting John McCain as eminently qualified to become Commander-in-Chief. Earlier today, U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss spoke to the Georgia delegation making that point, as well.
On the war in iraq, Chambliss noted the progress that’s been made since the decision was made to add more troops. “Thank goodness, the President finally listened to John McCain,” Chambliss said. “Just what John McCain said has come true.” We are winning, “thanks to the leadership of our Commander-in-Chief and the advice he got from our nominee, John McCain.” said Chambliss.
In his remarks, Bush is effusive in his praise of McCain. After Democrats took control of Congress, they threatened to cut off funds. “In the face of calls for retreat, I ordered the surge of forces into Iraq… One senator above all had faith in our troops and the importance of their mission — and that was John McCain.”
No question this is John McCain’s convention, and some delegates here were not disappointed to see President Bush engaged elsewhere Monday night when he was scheduled to address them, though he got a rousing reception Tuesday night. He got off a couple of really nice lines. When McCain was released from the Hanoi Hilton “his arms had been broken, but not his honor,” said the President. If the enemy did not break his spirit at the Hanoi Hilton, Bush said, “you can be sure the angry left never will.” The crowd went wild.
On success it’s possible to pull troops from Iraq. And on success, it’s possible to talk, however briefly, about the still-dangerous world in which we live. “We need a President who understands the lessons of September 11, 2001: that to protect America, we must stay on the offensive, stop attacks before they happen, and not wait to be hit again.”
Bush said of McCain that his “independence and character helped change history.” The same can certainly be said of George W. Bush.
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Republicans dodged the bullets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republicans have been on a high for days — certainly since last Friday when John McCain picked Gov. Sarah Palin to be on the ticket. Across the board, she’s been a wildly popular choice, erasing doubts conservatives had about a McCain presidency. Besides with the Number One (Barack Obama) and Number Three (Joe Biden) liberals in the U.S. Senate making up the other ticket, conservatives were ready to get on board.
The mood-change that kicked in Friday with the Palin selection was dampened Sunday and Monday by the prospect that Gustav would inflict major damage on the Gulf Coast, and New Orleans in particular. The coast dodged the worst — and so did Republicans in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
An awfully close election is expected. Small things, therefore, are made large. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were scheduled to speak here Monday. Protesters were at the ready. Some 50,000 were expected — though security here is so well developed that it’s really difficult for protesters to interrupt anything. Some were apparently intending to inflict harm. Police over the weekend raided homes and other areas where they were gathering and confiscated shrapnel and other material that could have been used to inflict bodily injury.
With President Bush in Texas, all of the visuals, all of the small things that could have conveyed the messages that Republicans feared, largely evaporated. The protests were small, in the hundreds, and not particularly violent: a few broken windows, a bit of tear gas and bent nails thrown into the roadway.
The other visual Republicans feared was one of them festive and conducting partisan business as usual while the coast suffered. They carefully avoided that by making Monday essentially a business-only day, though Cindy McCain and First Lady Laura Bush addressed the convention, but just to discuss ways to help those in need on the coast.
Their worst fear on the partying visuals was that the Louisiana delegation would be partying with a famous New Orleans drink called the “hurricane,” which is an extremely sweet concoction made of rum, passion fruit syrup and lime. One visual of that could have wiped out the Republican Party in Louisiana and might have cost John McCain a state or two. There were no parties featuring that particular beverage. Instead, McCain made a plane available for any delegates who wanted to return south.
So Monday was no partisan business, no Bush or Cheney, no crass or excess frivolity and, best of all for Republicans and for the nation, no repeat of a Category 5 hurricane like Katrina.
The only news of the day was the announcement that the Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant and will wed the baby’s father. That was buzz for a slow day — but there’s no reason to expect that to be a consequential story. The baby will be born with a mother and father in the home.
The days that matter most here are still to come. Delegates can’t wait to see and hear Palin. And, oh yes, McCain too.
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Pregnant daughter: 2-for-2
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
About midmorning Monday, I was seated in a small conference room at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis with about 25 others, most of them Georgia delegates, listening to a prominent U.S. senator discuss the upcoming campaign.
An aide walked into the room and quietly relayed the news of the morning: The 17-year-old daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, is five months’ pregnant. She is not married but, as Governor Palin announced later, is planning to wed the baby’s father.
As soon as the session ended, the conversation among delegates turned to the question: What will the media make of this?
My response: It’s no big deal. Nobody in the room expressed any particular concern.
“Life happens,” said a John McCain aide later. “An American family,” offered another. The daughter, Bristol, and the baby’s father will marry before the child is born.
The crisis in the family is not that teenagers engage in risky behavior that often has consequences. The crisis is that teens and unmarried adults create life without giving the child an opportunity to grow up in a home with a mother and father present.
So far the Palins are two-for-two on doing the right thing by an unborn child.
How do Dems attack Gov. Palin?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republicans attending this week’s convention here in Minneapolis-St. Paul have been giddy with excitement about John McCain’s vice presidential choice. I’ve never seen anything generate quite this much excitement among delegates. It would have been a very different convention had it started last Thursday — different in the sense of Republicans being fearful that their party was marching unavoidably to an election-day slaughter.
On Sunday, I rode out to the convention center in St. Paul (a $42 cab ride from the Georgia delegation’s hotel in suburban Minneapolis, an inconvenient location that is a far cry from the perks the party enjoyed in the glory days of Newt Gingrich’s party influence.) Security is as tight as I’ve seen it. Inside, though, the arena is almost intimate. The speaker’s platform is modest, nothing like the set in Denver. At these things go, it’s understated. Quite appropriate, now, for the nation’s circumstances. Sue P. Everhart, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, began her first-day message to the delegation by urging them to “keep our neighbors on the Gulf Coast in our thoughts and prayers.”
The preconvention buzz has been almost entirely about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The question: How do Democrats, and commentators on the left, take her down? How do you smear the hockey mom?
Democrats who never bothered to notice that Barack Obama had probably fewer than 150 days of active service in the U.S. Senate before seeking the presidency, have been quick to cite her inexperience. Granted, on national security matters, she’s no more experienced than Obama and if you object to her being a heartbeat away from the nuclear trigger, you have to be terrified by the prospect that Obama could be the triggerman. On that issue, it’s hard for Democrats and partisan commentators to play the inexperience card. Give me the option of inexperience in the number two job and inexperience in the Oval Office and I’ll take junior every time.
This is really tricky for Democrats. In attacking her, they’re awfully close to making the argument every woman and every minority has heard about why they’re not promoted. Not ready. Not able to give the job full attention. Throw arrogance — Joe Biden’s strongest suit — against her and there’s a real chance it backfires. She may not know the name of some obscure third world leader, one Republican here noted, but she will know the price of milk — and when it went up.
It’s John McCain’s convention. But if it ends early because of Gustav, the one person they’ll regret missing is not McCain, George Bush or Dick Cheney. It’s Palin. She has this party on a Rocky Mountain high.
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