He’s got a last name for his first, and a first name for his last.
Any surprise if he has his politics backward?
Tag: Musings
THAT LONGSTANDING TENUOUS SEAM IN THE GOP
For as long as I can remember, the Republican Party has had two wings that fit uneasily together – one essentially ideological, claiming a conservative label; the other, more pragmatic, meaning liberal. Think Taft versus Eisenhower. Even so, this was still the party of Lincoln, one way or the other.
And then, when the Southern Strategy landed Nixon in the White House, everything shifted. In the ensuing tilt, few pragmatists are left, and none of them would claim a liberal streak.
What now exists is an uneasy alliance of a core of the rich Wall Street contributors and the Tea Party-related corps of voters whose numbers have kept the GOP in office. (Yes, I know the Wall Street label isn’t quite accurate either, knowing how many of the biggest contributors live in Texas.) As the insightful book What’s Wrong With Kansas wonders, this has often meant electing officials whose policies and beliefs hurt the constituents’ own best interests. It’s been big money, in the end, over middle-class working families and voters.
What’s interesting at the moment is the way Donald Trump has taken control of the presidential primary away from the Wall Street establishment and is playing directly to the street-level party members. In the September 24 New York Review of Books, Michael Tomasky denotes two elements the party has been relying on – cultural and racial resentment, combined with spectacle – “the unrelenting push toward a rhetorical style over ever more gladiatorial and ever more outraged …” Or, as he says, “There is a strong tendency, perfected over the years by Fox News, to cover and discuss domestic politics as a combination of war, sport, and entertainment all at once.”
Voila! We have the Donald, who hails from a rival television network – something that has to add to the fury Fox is feeling. (Well, he has turned some of that back on Fox News itself in refusing to be interviewed … which leads to a whole other discussion.)
I’ve long wondered what it would take to split the Republican Party the way, say, abortion rights have weakened the Democrats. Maybe it won’t come down to a particular issue so much as a feeling of betrayal when it comes to a livable income for average American households – which now require two wage-earners, rather than just one as it did when I was growing up. The focus of the war-and-sport outlook just might turn in entertaining ways nobody would have predicted six months ago. Maybe we’ll actually get serious in the aftermath and consider solutions to some very real problems.
Or maybe a long simmering realignment might happen for the parties themselves.
WILL IT BE JEB AFTERALL?
Anyone else fascinated by the post mortems following the collapse of Scott Walker’s presidential campaign Monday? Each one seems to be bringing another facet to light on what was supposed to be one of the leading candidates.
From a newsroom perspective, writing the headlines could have been fun, playing with the surname:
Walker
quits
race
or
Walker
ends
run
for instance, except that officially he’s only suspended his campaign – the technical difference meaning he can still accept financial contributions. So maybe it’s more
End of the road for Walker.
One of the telling strands for me is that the Wisconsin governor spent most of his campaign chest building a national organization rather than concentrating on the face-to-face opportunities of the first-round states. I haven’t heard much about the traditional New Hampshire living room presentations by White House hopefuls so far this round, and after last weekend’s Michigan straw poll, in which the winners were all folks who showed up, unlike the so-called frontrunners, let me return to the importance of building a following one voter at a time rather than by flooding the airwaves with ads.
In other words, this Walker didn’t lose much shoe leather walking from household to household making himself a household name around here. Or, apparently, in Iowa, which borders on his own Wisconsin.
From a campaign finance point of view, it costs peanuts to rent a motel room and move about, if you’re serious about running. Or, for the more committed, renting an apartment.
The national stories, as you may have seen, are raising detailed questions about his integrity, spending, organization, preparation, demeanor, inner character, inability to lead, and so on. One that I’d add spins off from his assertions that God had called him to run – a claim supported by his pastor. From my perspective, that just might violate the Fourth Commandment, taking the name of the LORD in vain. As the New Jerusalem Bible translates the text (Exodus 20:7), “You shall not misuse the name of Yahweh your God, for Yahweh will not leave unpunished anyone who misuses his name.” (Name meaning power, rather than a word alone.) Admittedly, nobody really expects humility from a campaigner, no matter how much the faithful are supposed to practice it. Still! A dose of it wouldn’t hurt.
Some other interesting examinations are focusing on the failure of big money, meaning the super PACs, to deliver public support thus far in the race. Well, it’s still early. Just wait.
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The other hot development involves the GOP’s two leading candidates at the moment. Surely the Donald didn’t expect to get through this unscathed, did he? Carly Fiorina’s getting traction in her attacks on him, but it comes at a price. As a Washington Post headline put it today: “Trump’s sexism vs. Fiorina’s dishonesty.” A Slate headline, meanwhile, crowed her “days as GOP star are numbered.”
This fight could be riveting, especially if it drags out or others jump in. Want to talk about entertainment value and combative style?
~*~
While things are still relatively quiet here in the Granite State, it does have some of us wondering. Jeb Bush seems to be managing his funds prudently, has significant Establishment connections, and is still plodding away. Is it possible he might be the last man standing when it comes time for the nomination? Or are there other twists in the plot ahead? Someone, say, meeting folks where they live?
WHERE ARE THE SIGNS OF SUPPORT?
As the presidential gears up here in New Hampshire before the primary, along with the Iowa caucuses, I’m looking at something other than survey numbers. How about some evidence of real energy around a candidate?
On the Republican side, for all of the Donald’s flutter, I’ve seen only one property with Trump signs on the lawn. Just one. And, for that matter, not a single bumper sticker. Does he even have them? As for the others in the race? I’m waiting. (If I didn’t have a schedule conflict a few nights ago, I’d have attended the Donald’s appearance just up the road – but a rally’s not the same as a meet-and-greet, question-and-answer session where we get to size up a candidate. It’s only a special guest appearance.)
Where I do see the grassroots energy is almost entirely with Bernie. Bumper stickers, lawn signs, lapel pins, face-to-face events, canvassers ringing doorbells. All combined with a smoothly functioning organization. At the moment, his camp feels like a party, in fact. Along with the oft-repeated quip, “He’s the one who’s really telling it like it is.”
WELCOME TO THE PARTY
Remember the axiom about casinos, “The house always wins”?
Think about that when it comes to the Donald versus the GOP Establishment – the one that’s often seemed to be the House of Rove, Rumsfeld, and Cheney.
It’s a high-stakes game, indeed, and a lot of high rollers and table proprietors are getting really nervous. When do they call in Security? Or who’s about to lose a proverbial shirt or more?
Let’s watch as the adrenaline kick in and the poker faces crack open. It’s been too dull up till now. Let’s see who can put how much on the line …
WATCHING THE REPUBLICAN CIRCUS
Still waiting to hear something new.
REMEMBERING SILAS
Sometimes an image says everything. I remember sitting on the green at Bowdoin College one afternoon during Yearly Meeting sessions and looking out to see a line of boys marching along the far sidewalk. Four or five, maybe six of them, ages somewhere between eight and 12, and determined with a destination. In tow, perhaps twice their height, was another, hunched forward in his gait, a man obviously grinning to be part of such a mystery – Silas Weeks, of course. Who knows what they had to reveal to him? Only that it must have been important – very important, in ways that remain veiled or part of that precise moment.
The fact that they were leading him, rather than the other way around, says a great deal about trust and openness, in both directions. Even the role of affirmation. Everything so natural and rare.
Silas was one of those “old Quakes” who had managed to become A Character, in the best sense of the meaning. He was already well into retirement by the time I relocated to New Hampshire, and remained a force in Dover Meeting for much of the next two decades, despite his growing deafness. He was one of the handful of Friends who reopened the meetinghouse to weekly worship in the 1950s, after its use had become irregular for several decades, and he faithfully served it in many capacities, including clerk, over the years. That’s not to say he couldn’t be stubborn or cranky, but he did manage to get Friends moving on a project. Thus, his passing at 94, though not unexpectedly, brought a deep sense of loss to the meeting.
“Silas tells funny jokes,” is what Eli Abbott, 13, remembered.
Silas stories were bountiful, within and without the meeting, and there’s no way I could begin to tell them all.
When majoring in community development at the University of New Hampshire, however, one of our friends had Silas for her academic advisor. She remembers being honored to be part of a group of students invited to a social gathering out at the farm, until he announced on their arrival that it was time for potato planting – and then pointed to the spades. For them, it was an awkward situation where nobody could say no freely. The next semester brought another invitation, this time accompanied by the revelation that it was now harvest time for the spuds.
Apparently, there was no ill will. After learning that they shared the same birthday, however many years apart, these two begin meeting for a dinner each year to celebrate together – not always on the exact day, but as close as they could manage – a tradition that spanned three decades. And she still keeps a garden, in response to his lessons.
PRIVILEGE … OR RESPONSIBILITY?
Having all of the presidential hopefuls at hand, as we in New Hampshire do during our unique primary season, comes at a price. Not just the traffic congestion as candidates race from one site to another or the advertising that clutters on the airwaves or the willingness to venture as outsiders into hotbeds of supporters. No, the more vigilant and responsible of us spend hours of personal time and gallons of fuel driving to scheduled events to meet the hopefuls in the flesh and see how they respond to public concerns. It often means arriving early to get a seat while knowing all too well the star of the show will arrive late, and not just by minutes.
And then, sometimes, you get there only to find the parking lot’s empty – the event just got cancelled. We could name names here but won’t.
Let me say, though, you get a much different view of them up-close and in-person than what you’d otherwise obtain. Especially when they’re off-camera and pulled away from the script.
PLAYING ALONG WITH TEMPTATION
The race for New Hampshire’s First-in-the-Nation presidential primary, currently set for February 9, has barely entered its pregame activities and already our phone’s ringing. Not just the candidates, either, but the surveys, especially – rarely does a day go by without at least one.
OK, some of the surveys are no doubt fronts for candidates or campaigns, but the frequency of the bona fide pollsters is also troubling. Ideally, the statisticians are sampling a legitimate cross-section of likely voters or, in an era of unlisted cell phones, they’re turning to a very small fishbowl regardless of its ultimate match. I fear the later.
It’s also raising the temptation of playing with the game itself. Say, with four registered voters in our family, we decide to tell everyone this week we’re backing X, and thus inflating that hopeful’s ratings, only to totally ignore X a week later. You can imagine how the pundits would react to the fluctuating numbers.
~*~
My larger concern has to do with leaving room for the process to actually occur without all of the Big Media tampering. Let the candidates meet the public without having hundreds of reporters tagging along – especially the intrusive television cameras and sound bites. Yes, I want a few journalists to be there for the unscripted moment that can enliven or derail a campaign – I just want the general public to be there as active participants rather than merely as an entertainer’s backdrop. That is, the journalists should be invisible rather than part of the celebrity-style entourage.
~*~
Well, one thing we do know. All of this is about to speed up. And how!
DROUGHT RECOVERY
As I said at the time …
The ground was so dry the rainfall ran right off. The grass had all browned and turned to thatch.
But then, after a week of storms, the green returned. Mushrooms sprouted everywhere, even in broad sunlight.
~*~
Gee, these days I don’t even remember where that was. But I do know it’s true.
Jnana's Red Barn 