Chapter 78.8: McCain-Palin, My First Impressions

Perhaps first impressions is a misnomer, since I'm offering them here a day after the announcement. But I don't mind saying this was my first impression: if disaffected Hillary voters go for the Republican ticket purely because he selected a women to the vice presidential slot of the ticket, then there's something seriously wrong with how people think.

At a certain level, I feel bad for Governor Palin. She's being used like a pawn, though her career after 2008 has just been placed on a higher path. Her selection is so blatantly opportunistic — trying to sway those angry Democrats who were Hillary supporters — that it's beneath the presidency. Does anyone actually think that a person who's spent more time as the mayor of 8,500-strong Wassila, Alaska, than she has as governor of a state with just 670,000 people is ready to step in as president if something happens to the 72-year-old who could be the leader of the free world? Her selection completely undermines the Republicans argument that Sen. Obama is not ready to be president.

Moreover, this selection strongly suggests that the conservatives still run the Republican party, which will only bode poorly for those millions of Americans who ascribe the recent economic difficulties on the conservative policies of President Bush's administration and the previous Congress that followed essentially in lockstep. True, things aren't much better under the current Democratic-led Congress, but I certainly believe there was more debate about things now than there was during the first three-quarters of the Bush administration.

That's another thing I don't like about McCain's selection of Gov. Palin. He's reported to have made the decision based on just a couple conversations. I have enough faith in Sen. McCain to believe he assessed her background and recognized that Palin's conservative stands coupled with her willingness to rock the boat made her a good match for him. But I can't help but think he'd have done more to help his cause by selecting Carly Fiorina as his VP. She's already part of his team as a chief fundraiser and has actual experience leading major corporations. I recognize that Alaska is not exactly some political backwater, but I simply don't think Palin has more experience than Fiorina.

The more I read about Palin, the more I think she could be underestimated, so I'm sure there's a lot more to be learned. But I have to say, it seems to me that the Republicans have conceded that they have little shot of winning the election.

Chapter 75.3: Blog Till You Drop?

Ok, as any regular reader of my blogs (Cammy, this means you) has probably noticed by now, I'm not on any sort of regular schedule of posting. This is my first post of April, and we're closing in on the sixth day of the month (Happy Tartan Day, all you Scottish-Americans out there!) I'm sorry if anyone has missed me, but I do have a life offline, as the photo above is meant to imply.

So, I'm a little dismayed at reading this in the New York Times. The story is about a few bloggers who have died because of the stress of posting regularly for paid blogging jobs. Of course, I'm not getting paid to blog, but I do get paid to write and edit. That is, after all, what I was placed on this earth to do, as far I've been able to tell. (Though the cats beg to differ.) But blogging is not worth dying over, no matter what someone gets paid.

Now, I must admit, it never occurred to me that my occasional posts might be worth a minimum of $10 each. I mean, come on! Who in the hell cares what I have to say? I don't care what presidents and members of Congress have to say, most of the time. (Funny aside -- at least I think it's funny -- I was driving home just a little bit ago and heard John Lennon's Give Me Some Truth and I thought, if I ever run for any office, that'll be my theme song.) So, I can't imagine making $10 for the fifteen minutes I might spend writing a drafty piece of crap like this. And surely, if I were getting paid per post, I'd write a whole lot more and would soon demand more than $10 per.

The economy sucks right now. I think it's a fairly nonpartisan thing to say and altogether accurate for most people. I live in an affluent nook of America, and I see people struggling. It's not necessarily that they can't pay their bills but they're feeling their bills in ways that they weren't before. I was talking to a friend a couple weeks ago and she put it perfectly. She said, "I was in the super market, and I overheard a mother tell her kids, 'no, we're not going to dye Easter eggs this year.' The reason, my friend continued, is because the price of a dozen eggs has skyrocketed. In my area, each egg costs twenty cents. That's right. Per egg. Remember when your kids could toss them to each other during summer camp because they only cost about a nickle? Fun and laughs were cheap then. It wasn't so long ago.

Now, if the bloggers in the Times story had their heart attacks because they had slathered on layers of cholesterol from eating twenty-cent eggs and buttered toast, perhaps I'd have a little more sympathy for them. But no, these poor guys died because they were working their buns off to have a chance to pay for the frigging eggs and butter. I have sympathy for them; I think they should be regarded as casualties of war.

The price of eggs is up in part because the price of gasoline is up. The price of gasoline is up because some moron decided to stick other people into a hornet's nest in the Middle East and now we're quagmired there for at least another decade. Neither Hillary nor Barry (Barack) nor McCain is going to solve that little Rubik's Cube any time soon, no matter what they say (and in this regard, I think only McCain has been close to honest). So get used to expensive eggs, expensive milk, expensive gas, and cheapened lives.

I've got better reasons to die. And as the photo above suggests, better reasons to live. I may just have to start blogging daily in order to pay for the basic necessities.

Chapter 72.5: Is Inspiration Enough?

I wasn't alive during the time of John F. Kennedy, and during brother Robert's tragically short campaign I was too young to understand anything that didn't mean "food." So I don't know exactly what it's like to have lived while a politician was able to inspire us. The closest thing to an inspirational leader was the fictional Jed Bartlet during the West Wing years, and even that wasn't really inspirational.

So I read George Packer's story in the New Yorker with great interest. So too, Paul Krugman's essay on the lasting effect of John Edwards on the campaign.

Packer outlined differences between Sens. Obama and Clinton and their presumed approaches to the presidency. Obama would be an 'Inspirer in Chief' and offer hope to the masses. Not a bad goal at all, and I could subscribe to that. But if he's as disorganized as Packer suggests, then we'll all pray to God that he has an excellent team of staff to pick up after him. All presidents need that, but a President Obama might need it more. President Hillary Clinton would be a leader that "would have to use unifying rhetoric and reach across partisan lines. But ... she is readier to march ahead and let those who will follow her do so." As Packer adds, "These rival conceptions of the Presidency—Clinton as executive, Obama as visionary—reflect a deeper difference in how the two candidates analyze what ails the country."

I have said in this blog and in conversations with friends of various political persuasions, I consider myself a moderate but I also found the populism espoused by John Edwards to make the most sense. I respect that he said, in effect, to have the healthcare system most of us believe we need (i.e., one that covers all Americans), we're going to have to raise taxes. This would be difficult to carry out, admittedly. Clinton's suggested health plan is very much like Edwards' plan. [Which makes me wonder, would he be a good choice to fill the role of Secretary of Health and Human Services, or lead the healthcare charge as Vice President, or should he be Attorney General, where his talents seem best suited? And if he had any of those roles, would a President Clinton or a President Obama be concerned about the prospect of cabinet member Edwards trying to draw too much credit and run against the sitting president?] I have no doubt that a President Clinton would have an active role in shaping that national discussion. How would a President Obama inject his vision of national healthcare? It could be a wonderful plan, and I'm willing to hear him discuss it. But Edwards' plan sounded best to me.

New Jersey is among the nearly two dozen states that will hold a primary on Super Tuesday (soon after the Super Bowl. Go Giants!), and I'm still unsure who I'll vote for. I'm probably leaning toward Clinton at the moment, she seems more able to step in and lead. But Obama is an inspiring figure. So I'm left wondering, Is Inspiration Enough? Sen. Obama's comments about Iran earlier in the campaign concerned me. Is he so naive to think that having a simple conversation with the Iranians will actually be perceived as a simple conversation? Good God! People who can honestly say the met the president at the White House -- any president -- seem to others as if they've reached a pinnacle. That's why photo ops are considered important. They lend credibility to the poor schmoe next to the hot shot.

The wife of a friend of mine ran for public office in their home town; she used a photo of her with then Sen. Jon Corzine in her publicity. It made her look like she had connections, which was the point. She'd never met him before the evening when the photo was taken. I suspect the other candidates in line after her to get their photo taken were similarly unfamiliar with Sen. Corzine. At a certain level, it's all about appearances.

So publically speaking with a high-ranking official of a nation we publically accuse of sponsoring international terrorism is a mistake. No ifs ands or buts about it. Would a President Obama agree with campaigning Obama? I don't know. And I see it as something that would create tension in an Obama White House. Like the fictional President Bartlet, his administration would make a lot of early mistakes. I'm not sure we can afford to let him struggle so much.

But I also don't know that we can afford to have a Republican continue in the office for the next four years. So can Sen. Clinton defeat Sen. McCain? That's a subject for another day. If I'm so inspired.

Chapter 71.6: There's No Crying in Politics

There may be no crying, but there certainly seems to be political capital in coming close to crying. Hillary Clinton has taken New Hampshire, surprising me and probably a lot of Americans who were starting to think that the Obama Express was getting into gear and powering up for an impressive spring. That still may happen, but Sen. Clinton clearly isn't done.

What surprised me more than Clinton's victory in the primary, however, was that there were voters who were swayed by her emotional answer about how hard the campaign slog can be and why she is still doing it. I don't believe it was forced; I accept that she has finally found her voice, as she said later. But she'll need to back that up with an even more grueling schedule ahead of her. And I don't think for a second that Sen. Obama is going to concede anything either.

Chapter 66.8: Aliens for Richardson

No, I don't mean the aliens that are probably streaming across the New Mexico border, but rather the ones that streak across the sky (maybe that's what was lighting up the sky the other night.)

Yes, even an august publication like the Washington Post is trying to determine the how extraterrestrials will influence the 2008 election. I think this story was supposed to run next April -- as in April first, a day for fools. What the heck is Dana Milbank doing? The article's funny, yes, but does the Post pay him to report on whether Dennis Kucinich is a closet UFOlogist? And Bill Richardson's only chance to get elected to higher office is if ET and his buddies land and get suffrage before November 2008. Oh yeah, and they'd have to spread out across the country, because if they're only in New Mexico, he'd only win that one state -- and even then, he'd probably have a tough time in that swing state. Something tells me Richardson's only help from above is God, not aliens.

I enjoyed the sense of humor displayed by Hillary Clinton's spokesperson, who responded to Milbank's question by saying, "Let me check in with the mother ship." I'm not sure how the senator would take that, however.

If nothing else, we can be thankful that there are spokespeople who aren't afraid to tell a reporter to stuff it. Take this from Kucinich's spokesperson:

"If you have a serious question, just ask me," Kucinich spokeswoman Natalie Laber replied when told of the UFO crowd's hopes for her boss. "If not, then just keep your silly comments to yourself."

For the record, while I'm ok with people trying legally to make a better life for themselves in the United States, I don't think ET should be fast-tracked to get a vote, whether they're Republicans, Democrats, or independents.

Chapter 55.2: Catch the News Cycle

Sen. Barack Obama has announced he's created an exploratory committee about running for president. And in other places he's quoted as telling Iowa party leaders that he's definitely in. So what does unknown-outside-his-state Rep. Tom Tancredo decide to do? He's launching his exploratory committee too. Way to capture that news cycle!

I'm no C-SPAN geek who knows every representative and senator (I barely recall the name of my town's mayor), but if Congressman Tancredo is looking to get much attention and still have a viable candidacy by the end of 2007, he's going to need some help forming a message beyond his attitude against immigration and getting that message to the public. I don't know that this image on an unofficial blog will help him in New Jersey, for example. Perhaps he doesn't care since Jersey's been a pretty blue state the past few elections, but my first impression is he needs some work. Who was the last one-issue president elected?