The Inquiring Manatee

Send This Man to Copenhagen

    

Wonderful, wonderful CO-penhagen, salty old queen of the sea!
                                                  -- "Hans Christian Andersen," The Movie

     If President Obama wants to go to Copenhagen to flog Chicago to the International Olympic Committee, let him go, says I.
     Those who criticize him for his decision -- they say it's unpresidential, it's too much like working for the "Illinois Chamber of Commerce," it risks having him look bad if Chicago loses -- are the same people who said he shouldn't even have dared to make a stay-in-school speech to America's children. Whatever Obama does or proposes, they're automatically against.
     Whether the 2016 Olympics end up in Chicago, Tokyo, Rio or Madrid, these carpers should be lined up in the stadium's javelin target area. Let the throwers heave at 'em.
      Now, personally, I think Rio deserves the Olympics more than Chicago does. No Olympics have ever been held in South America. And the Brazilians know how to throw a party, just as Chicagoans know how to rig an election.
     Oh, sure, there's lots of street crime in Rio, but how about Chicago, where a hapless teenager was beaten to death on the street the other day as a cellphone recorded the Third World scene? You want safety, go to Tokyo. Or maybe Madrid.
     But Chicago is Barack and Michelle's hometown, and if he's still thinking like the junior senator from Illinois that he was, it's hard to shake those habits. The benefits would not accrue merely to Chicago, moreover. It would be a patriotic plus for all Americans to snag another Summer Olympics, even though we had St. Louis in 1904, Los Angeles in 1932 and 1984, and Atlanta in 1996. We need something more to brag about these recessionary days.
     So bon voyage, President Obama. Come back with those quadrennial Games nailed to the wall. And if you don't succeed, you're still not likely to lose Illinois in 2012.

Three Kennedy Men

     

There is no doubt that we would be getting a much better health care bill out of Congress this year if Ted Kennedy had not been stricken. And that is just one measure of his leadership and effectiveness in a long career of public service as a national policymaker.
       Kennedy was required to redeem himself after the entirely unworthy Mary Jo Kopechne incident at Chappaquiddick in 1969. He did redeem himself, becoming one of the great senators in modern U.S. times.
       It's plain now that he was meant to stay in the Senate. Otherwise, his inarticulateness during his 1980 challenge to President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination would be inexplicable. His heart simply wasn't in the fight, and that is why he was unable to answer interviewer Roger Mudd's simple question: Why do you want to be president?
        I saw Kennedy on a number of occasions, most recently in Boston's historic Faneuil Hall when John Kerry conceded the 2004 election. I was present at his historic speech at the 1980 Democratic convention in New York -- the "dream will never die" speech. But I never met the man. I regret that today.
        In contrast, I met John F. Kennedy several times during his 1960 presidential campaign, and I traveled with Robert F. Kennedy in Oregon and California in the week before he was assassinated. I was just a few yards behind him in the crowd at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when he was shot.
        I had tremendous regard for both John and Bobby Kennedy. Ted, especially after Chappaquiddick, had to prove himself in my eyes. Ultimately, he did. Only the most doctrinaire, hate-filled rightwingers -- and there are thousands of them, sad to say -- will begrudge today the outpouring of respect and affection for this fallen lion of the Senate. For my part, I am saddened as an American, a Democrat and a proponent of universal health care.
        As Abraham Lincoln said, let us go on to finish the work we are about. Let us enact a comprehensive and meaningful reforming of our health care system in the name of Ted Kennedy. And let such a Kennedy Act be his lasting legacy.

In Fatigue Veritas: The Real Hillary Clinton

   

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's bristling reaction to a question seemingly about her husband in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday lifted the diplomatic cover on the woman's underlying personality.
     Revealed was the same Hillary Clinton that I first met at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles in September 1991: a peevish, short-tempered person, full of resentments and ready to jump down the throat of anyone giving the slightest inadvertent offense.
     Bill and Hillary Clinton were in Los Angeles to show the flag for Bill's 1992 presidential primary campaign to Democratic National Committee delegates. At a reception the couple sponsored at the Biltmore, I found myself in a small group asking Hillary a few questions. I casually alluded to a mildly critical story about her husband in that morning's Los Angeles Times. She immediately snarled, attributed that newspaper's views to me and attacked me -- a wild overreaction. I recoiled at her amazingly thin skin.
      Later, during her husband's first term as president, I was a member of the White House press corps. My few encounters with Mrs. Clinton were more polite -- at least as long as I stuck to subjects such as the mansion's Christmas decorations and Socks the cat. She was generally gracious.
      But a wearing, 11-country trip to Africa weakened her defenses on Monday. As a translator, perhaps erroneously, relayed a question from a Congolese university student at an event in Kinshasa, Mrs. Clinton responded with great annoyance to the question posed: What did "Mr. Clinton" think, speaking "through the mouth" of Mrs. Clinton, about World Bank opposition to a loan offered by China to the troubled African nation? (The student later said he intended to ask, What did "Mr. Obama" think?)
      Hillary could scarcely believe the question. To paraphrase her, she wanted to know if the questioner really was asking her what her husband thinks. "He's not the secretary of state, I am," she snapped. If she were asked for her own opinion, she would give it, she said, but "I am not going to be channeling my husband."
     Sensitive, sensitive. Brought back memories of the Biltmore Hotel.
     Beyond that, the whole man-woman thing and an attitude of "it's my turn" remain big issues with Hillary. She is proud of her accomplishments and is quick to feel belittled if she feels she is not getting the proper respect. She is tired of being overshadowed by her husband, who for the most part has withdrawn into relative shadow to make way for her during her presidential run in 2008 and now as she attempts to maintain a prominent role in the Obama administration against competition on foreign policy from Obama, Joe Biden, Richard Holbrooke, George Mitchell and a cast of thousands.
     It all came out on the banks of the Congo. As the Romans might have said, In jet lag veritas.
     

Que Sarah Sarah (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)

     

When it comes to overweening ambition, no one in history can match Sarah Palin.
      Ambition for the presidency, despite her manifest lack of qualifications, accounts for Palin's bombshell announcement (dropped on the dead Friday of the July 4 holiday weekend) that she is resigning as Alaska's governor July 26. Her excuse, as near as I can understand her rambling explanation, involves the trouble and expense of defending against 15 investigations of ethical violations.
      The real reason for the strange political move is that Palin feels she's now too big to be confined to out-of-the-way Alaska when there's a 4-year national campaign to be run. Palin regards the adulation of the abortion crazies as evidence that the whole world loves her and demands her as the next president of the United States.
      There is precedent for politicians shaking off a full-time job for the freedom of unrestricted campaigning for the White House. Bob Dole resigned early from the U.S. Senate in 1996 to spend more time organizing for the run against Bill Clinton that fall. Jimmy Carter didn't start running for president in 1976 until he had left the Georgia governorship; he was literally jobless while a candidate, while many of his rivals had to hold down public positions. Ronald Reagan found as a former California governor in 1976 and 1980 that he had more leeway to run for president than when he made an abortive run for the GOP nomination while still in the governorship in 1968.
      Palin will have more time for fundraising, and she won't have to worry about hostile legislators and journalists in Alaska biting her ankles. She has launched herself into the greater political environment, for better or worse. In her case, I think it's for the worse. It's a gamble; she could have used the governorship as a springboard for a Senate try in 2010, but in resigning she is telling Alaskans that she is far above and beyond them now. Lots of luck getting them to elect her to anything again. As for the rest of us, we are stuck with her until 2012. This is good news only for supporters of the pending Tina Fey Lifetime Employment Act.
     Unluckily for Sarah, developmentally disabled little Trig will be too big and heavy by 2012 to carry around as a prop. Palin will have little going for her except her backwoods outlook, her silly winks, her spotty and scandal-plagued record in politics and a newly confirmed reputation as an unpredictable dingbat.

Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.): It's About Time

    

Class came belatedly to Norm Coleman, but at last the national Republican establishment allowed him to muster some grace on Tuesday and concede to Al Franken after suffering a 5-0 trouncing in the Supreme Court of Minnesota.
     Democrat Al Franken succeeds Coleman in the seat once held by Paul Wellstone, the Democrat killed in a plane crash. Franken and Wellstone have in common a terrific sense of humor that's generally lacking in the Senate.
      The Franken-Coleman recount controversy went on so long -- more than seven months -- that I got impatient with being begged for money from the Franken forces, and stopped taking their phone calls. I just wanted it all to end. It was an outrageous legal battle that disenfranchised Minnesotans, but the stakes were so high for Republicans -- losing the nominal ability to filibuster Democratic bills if the Democrats got a 60th Senate seat -- that I suppose they can't be blamed for fighting as tenaciously as they did.
       Some expected Republicans to take the Minnesota election case to the federal courts, ultimately ending up before the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court, friendly confines if there ever were any. I'm amazed that they didn't do it. Is there at long last a sense of shame?
       Now that it's over, let's get Franken sworn in as soon as possible so we can put this historic but unfortunate episode behind us. But we can't expect an automatic 60 Democratic votes to block any and all GOP filibusters. There are conservative Democrats like Nebraska's Ben Nelson who have an eye to the home folks. Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy are ailing and absent. Republicans may become more successful at corraling the votes of Maine's two Republican women senators.
       Still, it's good news for Democrats -- and even better news for Franken, who is bound to be more successful in the Senate than he was on Air America radio.

Cry For Me, Argentina: Adios to Another 2012 GOP Hopeful

     

Sarah Palin, for all her countless faults, is a near-certainty to obtain the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. That's because she will be the only candidate still standing, barring some new misstep.
      The Republicans are snake-bit. First it was Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, who, after making strategic first appearances in Iowa, suddenly announced a 2007-08 extramarital affair with the wife of a campaign aide, resigned his Senate leadership post and was written off for 2012.
      Today's casualty is South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. Once considered a possible nominee, he sneaked off to pursue a belatedly admitted affair in Argentina. He left his post without telling the lieutenant governor, his staff or even his wife, leaving his staff to lie and tell the news media that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail to "clear his head" after an exhausting legislative session.
      The session was so exhausting because Sanford, looking like a fool all the way, was on the losing end of a battle to refuse $700 million in federal stimulus money on ideological grounds despite his state's unemployment woes in this Great Recession.
      As if Sanford's stand on the federal money were not reason enough to doubt his mental stability, his bizarre trip to spend seven days with La Otra Senora cements his image as a dingbat -- and gives the world another picture of a family-values hypocrite. This is yet more bad news for the Republican Party. Who is left for 2012? Newt Gingrich cannot be taken seriously. Mitt Romney's attempts to reinvent himself for the 190th time may fall short of appeasing the far-righters and the Mormon-haters who don't trust him.
       It's all good news for Sarah Palin, who yesterday reimbursed Alaska for $8,100 for the trip expenses of her daughters whom she took to nine far-flung events of questionable relevance to her job as governor. But what's good news for Palin is bad news for those of us who mourn for the days when, every now and then, the GOP put forward a candidate of intelligence, common sense and, for all we ever found out, personal probity.
       

A Modest Proposal on Guantanamo

    

As Republicans run wild on the issue of closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison and moving the 240 inmates to facilities on U.S. soil, even Senate Democrats can't be blamed for shying from President Obama's plan to remove this symbol of Bush administration high-handedness and torture.
      The NIMBY fears so easily stirred up by the entirely emotional issue, even though the detainees would be secured in Supermax federal lockups from which no one has ever escaped, have potentially vulnerable politicians running scared of a future opponent's simplistic 30-second commercials.
      But before Congress prevents the administration from moving anyone to the U.S. mainland from Guantanamo -- thereby making it virtually impossible to convince any other country to accept a detainee -- policymakers should consider an alternative that could be a win-win choice for everybody, except perhaps for the terror suspects.
      Want to gratify the rest of the world and frustrate jihadist propagandists by closing Guantanamo? Fine, go right ahead. Want to keep any Guantanamo prisoner out of any U.S. states? You can do that, too.
      The strategy: Relocate the prisoners to a high-security facility that would be newly built and opened in Guam, American Samoa or -- just a short flight from Guantanamo -- the U.S. Virgin Islands. (Quiet St. Croix, somewhat off the tourist track, has the most land. Just don't put the Muslims in Christiansted, the island's chief city.)
      All these potential prison sites have these advantages:
      -- They're on U.S. soil, so Obama won't have to back down on that point.
      -- Residents there have no votes in Congress, only nonvoting delegates.
      -- Building and operating the new prison would create local jobs, a prospect that could mute opposition from NIMPT (Not in My Palm Tree) forces. Some of those giant Samoans would make great prison guards after their careers as NFL linemen end.
      -- The locations are in tropical settings that beat the bleakness of tropical but barren and ugly Guantanamo. How could jihadists or European moralists object to housing prisoners in the balmy South Pacific, the North Pacific paradise of Guam or especially the lovely Virgin Islands? (There, the alleged terrorists would be getting a symbolic downpayment on the 78 virgins, or whatever the number is, that jihadi "martyrs" are promised in heaven.) Or the inmates could learn the Argentine tago in Pago Pago.* 
      The president's executive order to close Guantanamo by the end of 2010 would not be blocked. The detainees, whether tried by Obama's tweaked military commissions or detained Cheney-style without charges, at least would have more pleasant quarters under the American flag.
       So how about it, Mr. President and members of Congress? Try the American Territorial Solution to the Guantanamo dilemma.
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* That's a rhyme. Pago Pago, capital of American Samoa, is pronounced "Pango Pango."      
      

Yeah, but What About Us Democrat Socialists?

    

In a sudden onset of temporary sanity, the Republican National Committee, meeting in the nation's capital, has decided not to vote on a proposed resolution urging the Democratic Party to change its name to the "Democrat Socialist Party."
     The resolution -- the brainstorm of activist Republican Jeff Kent of Washington state -- marked a new low in petty, divisive, idea-free name-calling in American politics. That the schoolyard, nyaah-nyaah-nyaah proposal was even on the RNC agenda signals how far out of the mainstream the defeated Republicans have drifted.
     Once, the GOP was proud to engage the Democrats as intellectual equals, competing for votes on the basis of philosophy, policy and the virtues of candidates. Now, the Republican party, captured by intolerant ideological and religious extremists intent on driving out moderates, has become little more than a Southern regional cult.
      Aside from its other flaws, the renaming of the Democrats by the Republicans would have stood as a big, fat target for retaliation by the other side. The Democratic National Committee could have staged a national contest to pick a new name for the Republican party.
       How about: "Flabby White Neanderthal Party"?
       Or "RepubicCan't Party"?
       "So's Your Old Man Party"?
      "Fat, Fat the Water Rat Party"?
      "Anti-Science Fascist Pig Party"?
      "Evangelical Country Club Party"?

      "Seventh-Century Insubstantial Party"?

   
      Your submissions are invited.

Obama's Bipartisan Coup in Utah

    

President Obama could not have made a shrewder move in tapping Gov. Jon Huntsman of red-state Utah to be U.S. ambassador to China. Huntsman was equally shrewd in accepting the prestigious, challenging diplomatic post in Beijing.
     I met Huntsman in Salt Lake City in 2006. He was three years younger than his present age of 49, and his temples hadn't yet grayed so picturesquely. He was good-looking, charming and popular in his deep-dyed Republican state. I liked him instantly.
     What I soon learned about Huntsman: like Mitt Romney, he's incredibly rich, a Mormon -- what else would he be in Utah? -- and the father of a brood of kids, seven children in Huntsman's case. The Utah governor's full name is Jon Huntsman Jr. His father, Jon Sr., controls Huntsman Chemical, the nation's largest privately owned chemical company. The son has been the company's CEO in the past.
     I wondered then whether Huntsman could ever become president. Naaah, I thought. No governor from a small state like Utah is ever going to make it in big-time politics all the way to the White House, even with a resume that includes jobs under both Presidents Bush, including the post of W's trade representative.
     Huntsman is an ideal pick for China. He speaks fluent Mandarin, the result of missionary work in Taiwan. He is diplomatically experienced. And becoming ambassador to China -- a post once held by George H. W. Bush -- is one good way for Huntsman to raise his national profile. But is he doing this with a run for the Republican presidential nomination in mind? If he is, he might as well forget any presidential hopes, at least as a Republican.
      In the past week, Huntsman's name began to be floated for the GOP presidential race in 2012. That's one reason the China announcement was surprising. But Huntsman never really had a chance in 2012 in the bitter, narrow party of Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh. He's been carving out a record as a moderate, amazing for Utah. He's something of an environmentalist, and, much like Obama, favors same-sex civil unions with rights equal to those of marriage.
      The extremely conservative GOP base -- suspicious of Mormons, anyhow, as we witnessed in Romney's 2007-2008 campaigning -- would never accept Huntsman as the party nominee; they couldn't even stomach John McCain until he threw Sarah Palin their way.
      Now, tainted by his agreement to (gasp!) work for a Democratic administration, Huntsman will be shunned by his national party.
      Huntsman is too good for the Republicans. If I were he, I'd start thinking about emulating Arlen Specter and switching parties. He could easily go back into Utah politics as a Democrat and be elected to the Senate one of these days, springboarding from there to the White House. The Democrats would be lucky to have him.
      Thank you, President Obama, for making this bold bipartisan move -- one that should set Republicans back on their heels while setting in motion what could be an intriguing, long-range political process: the metamorphosis of Jon Huntsman.
    
    

Welcome, Arlen Specter

   

I suspect that even Anita Hill is delighted by the news today that Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., is now Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa.
    In announcing his switch of parties at the age of 79 and after 40 years in elective politics, the moderate fifth-term lawmaker is unexpectedly helping the Democrats achieve a filibuster-proof majority of 60 in the 100-member Senate. He makes the 59th Democrat. When and if Norm Coleman ever admits defeat and allows Al Franken to be sworn in as Minnesota's second senator, Franken would give the Democrats their 60th and decisive seat.
    Don't count on getting to No. 60 anytime soon. Deep-pockets national Republicans are egging Coleman on as they seek to postpone the inevitable as long as possible. The Minnesota Supreme Court isn't even hearing the endless case till June 1. After that, it will be more weeks until a decision, and then Coleman may want to go the Bush v. Gore route to the Republican-friendly U.S. Supreme Court.
    But today remains a day of celebration for Democrats. Specter, who gets a more natural fit for his views, escapes a certain loss in the 2010 GOP primary to the antediluvian, anti-tax rightwinger Pat Toomey, who came within 2,000 votes of beating Specter in 2004 and who would do much better next time, polls indicate.
     For Republicans, today's setback illustrates the folly of holding their elected politicians to a rigid set of extreme right-wing beliefs. Clearly, they learned nothing from the 2001 defection of Vermont's badly mistreated Jim Jeffords that handed Senate control to the Democrats. That vanishing species, the northeastern moderate to liberal Republican, takes a further step toward extinction.
     Will Maine's two classy Republican moderates, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, be next to defect? Only if a Pat Toomey emerges against them, probably, and that hasn't happened yet. Too bad. Like Specter -- and California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- they are RINOs, Republicans in Name Only. And let's not say that like it's a bad thing.
     Anyhow, thanks, Arlen. I don't know if Anita Hill will forgive you now, but I do.