First, a hearty congratulations to President-elect Obama. With a compelling life story, a strong message, and a superb ground game, he seized a moment in history. And, he gave us Republicans a thorough pasting. In many ways, we deserved it.
Already, the fight for the party's soul is on. The hard right has already begun plotting a campaign to push the party further to the margins of the spectrum. Those of us on the center-right had better fight back.
Because, as Margaret Thatcher once said, politics is like an airplane. The right and left wings may provide lift, but the middle is where the brains are. Alas, ...
Democrats are effervescing over the possibility that they will win enough Senate seats on Tuesday to have 60 votes, a “filibuster-proof” majority.
Well, it’s not that simple. Issues drive the dynamics of each filibuster. It’s not a given that every Democrat would vote to shut down every Republican filibuster every time. Or vice versa, if the shoe were on the other foot.
But with one party holding 60 or more votes, the filibuster would be in a weakened state. And that is not necessarily a good thing. Here’s to the defense of the filibuster. Not because it is all the leverage that Republicans may have in a town awash in blue. Because filibusters are a check on excess. And that’s good for both parties.
A story, possibly apocryphal, has it that shortly after the Constitutional Convention, Thomas Jefferson was having coffee with George Washington. Jefferson asked why the convention had created the Senate. Washington asked Jefferson why he had just poured his coffee into a saucer. To cool it, Jefferson replied. Exactly why Congress needs a Senate, Washington responded. ...
At the rate that the stock market has declined over the past week or so, the Dow Jones Industrial Average will fall to zero by Thanksgiving, by which time America’s system of industrial capitalism will have collapsed and we’ll all be herding goats for a living.
Then, we can stop worrying about climate change.
OK, I’m kidding — I hope. A little dark humor never hurts in times of trouble and uncertainty.
But seriously ...
One of the media wise guys said before the vice presidential debate that it was like a NASCAR race – a good percentage of the fans came to see one or both candidates hit the wall and spin out.
The thrill-seekers were disappointed. Sarah Palin, the newest of newcomers on the national scene, held her own against Senate veteran Joe Biden, who seems to have been a DC figure since the Ice Age.
After a painful patch of bad interviews, Palin reverted to her appealing, just-plain-folks form, cheerfully punctured the pompousness of DC insiders, answered the questions, and even gave Biden a little chin music that scored a few hits.
For his part, Biden...
These are the days that we should be grateful that the Founding Fathers built federalism into the Constitution and retained a strong governance role for the states.
Last Thursday, when the Capitol descended into conniption fits over high finance, was one of those days. Oh, and the renewable energy and energy efficiency tax incentives that expire December 31 have been caught in the maw of partisan tantrums also. Huge investments in wind and solar energy on tap for 2009 are circling the drain.
To paraphrase the late, great Barry Goldwater, we might be well served to saw off Washington, DC, from the rest of the country and let it float out to sea.
While the pols in DC were looking out for number one, states from one end of the country to the other were getting some useful work done for their citizens.
Start with the Northeast. ...
Banking panics are supposed to be a forgotten relic of the 19th century, when laissez-faire reigned supreme and the federal government was composed mainly of clerks toiling away in a quiet Southern town by the Potomac River.
But there’s no getting away from human fears, which set off the old-fashioned banking panic that swept through the financial sector last week.
When the economy is fishtailing and the mentality is to circle the wagons, fear is taking hold. Which is not a sound environment for making decisions that have long-term environmental benefits.
The tendency is to deal with the short-term crisis and forget about long-term consequences. Understandable, but not always smart.
Here’s a sign of the times: A survey of chief marketing officers released this month by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business shows that cause-related marketing has plunged to the bottom of the priority list for marketing messages.
Marketing officers increasingly believe that financially-stressed customers are more interested in getting a good deal on products than in hearing that products are nice to polar bears. ...
This most unusual of presidential elections has become an all-consuming drama. The projection of 300 million sets of hopes and fears onto John McCain, Barack Obama, and Sarah Palin is getting a wee bit close to the neurotic.
Whoops, sorry, Joe Biden, didn’t mean to leave you out, but your public profile seems to have gone out with the tide during the last two weeks.
Anyway, sometimes it helps to calm down, take a step back, and find out what we can learn from others about elections, policy debates, and leadership.
Take Canada, a great country, our biggest trading partner, and longtime friend that doesn't get enough attention from its giant, self-absorbed neighbor. It ought to be a tradition that a new U.S. president always goes to Canada for his or her first foreign trip.
Canada is holding a national election, which is getting scant notice south of the border. Parliament was dissolved last week and Canadians will go to the polls October 14. That’s the first thing that we can learn from our neighbors. What is taking us two years, Canada will accomplish in five weeks. ...
You had to be there.
Once Sarah Palin stepped to the microphone, the reasons for her extraordinary appeal to Republican faithful and for the impression that she made on John McCain became instantly apparent.
Even veteran commentators jaded by political windbaggery likened her to Ronald Reagan, the gold standard of GOP charisma. Best speech at a GOP convention in years, they said.
That’s not media hyperbole. The hockey mom’s command of the audience in the St. Paul hockey arena was real, even from up in the rafters where I was seated. Those who dismiss Palin as a former beauty queen chosen for her double-X chromosomes do so at their peril. They'll be wondering what just hit them. Just ask Frank Murkowski and Tony Knowles, the veteran Alaska pols whom Palin flattened.
Quite a promotion for a former small town mayor and governor of a faraway state who could have walked incognito down any street in the lower 48 only one week before.
Yes, yes, say environmentalists, but look at her record of promoting drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, her doubts about the human imprint on climate change, and her state government’s opposition to listing the polar bear as a threatened species. Her energy policy is all about drilling rigs and pipelines. Their fear is that she will cast a spell on McCain and make him change his mind about climate change and the Arctic refuge. ...
Politics had something to do with the draft Republican platform
including an acknowledgment that human activities play a role in
global climate change and not including a call for oil drilling in the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The politicos decided it wouldn’t be politic to adopt a platform that
contradicts their presidential candidate’s views favoring climate
legislation and opposing Arctic drilling.
The muttering was palpable. One of the platform committee members, Jeff
Grossman of Oregon, said that John McCain has some catching up to do
with the rest of the party on drilling the refuge.
In John McCain’s Navy, that’s known as insubordination. An ensign who
tells the admiral to get with the program will swiftly find himself
reassigned to new quarters in the brig. Grossman, it’s you who needs to
get with McCain’s program, not the other way around.
Papa-hanau-moku-akea. Once you break the word down into syllables, you can get the hang of pronouncing it.
The Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument covers nearly 90 million
acres in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands. As one of the largest
marine reserves in the world, the monument is a stunning seascape
featuring coral reefs, numerous tropical species, including sea
turtles, and rich archaeological sites.
The 2006 proclamation establishing the monument is a shiny jewel in the Bush administration’s otherwise checkered environmental record.
More such oceanic monuments may be established before President Bush
heads back to Crawford in six months. The word around DC is that Bush
is considering use of the Antiquities Act to establish a few more
really big monuments in the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico. Ocean advocates
are whispering tempting legacy thoughts into Bush’s ear about being the
“Teddy Roosevelt of the seas.”
If he follows through with the proposed monuments, he would deserve the flattering moniker.
Unfortunately, Bush’s marine conservation achievements are likely to be
overshadowed by the administration’s flaky record on global warming,
which was capped by Dick Cheney’s cack-handed squashing of the
administration’s last chance to do something positive about the problem.
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