By The River

Forty years ago today, some 80,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops began attacks all over Vietnam, which collectively became known as the Tet Offensive. It was the largest military operation to date by either side in the war, and it is widely blamed for finally turning the majority of the American public against the Vietnam War. Tet led to the resignation of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara on Feb. 28, 1968, Sen. Eugene McCarthy's strong second-place showing in the March 13 New Hampshire primary, and the subsequent decision by President Lyndon B. Johnson on March 31 both to end the bombing of North Vietnam and not to seek another term in office.

America suffered 6,328 troops killed in action, 20,663 wounded, and 1,185 missing during the Tet Offensive, which had three phases and continued until Sept. 23, 1968. In the week of Feb. 18, 543 were killed and 2,547 wounded, the all-time high for the war. My hometown of Holland, Michigan, had five draftees killed in action; I don't know how many were wounded. David Buursma, who I didn't know, was the first, on Feb. 9, and Scott Freestone, whose sister Nola was in my 9th grade class, was the second on Feb. 15. His death was announced in homeroom. David Arizmendez died on May 29, Robert Westrate on June 7, and Terry Meyer, whose cousin was my good friend Randy Meyer, on Aug. 13. He was buried in Graafschap Cemetery up the road from my house, and I heard the salute fired.

The communists suffered an estimated 75,000 to 80,000 killed, nearly their entire attacking force, although the exact number will never be known. It was, in fact, a crushing military defeat for the North, but a political victory. The American public had been led by Johnson and McNamara to believe there was "light was at the end of the tunnel," i.e., victory was near, and became disillusioned after seeing the enemy could still mount a major offensive and inflict large losses on the U.S. Army. You can imagine how the public reacted when the Defense Department announced a new draft call of 48,000 young men on Feb. 23, 1968.

The American press, especially CBS News, is often blamed for the communist political victory, but journalists get far too much blame/credit. Anyone with half a brain could see what was happening. When Viet Cong suicide squads could invade the U.S. embassy in Saigon, the logical assumption was that something was terribly wrong.

I've been wondering if something similar will happen in Iraq this year, during another Presidential election. Iraq isn't the same kind of war; for one thing, it has no jungles in which enemy forces can conceal their movements. So perhaps we will escape a repeat of Tet. 1968 was a horrible year--I haven't even touched on the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, or the anti-war turmoil in the streets of Chicago. Let's hope 2008 isn't a repeat.

Posted by David at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Associated Press is reporting that John Edwards is dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination for President, but won't immediately endorse anyone. It was inevitable after his third-place showing in his home state of South Carolina, but it is disappointing nonetheless. His positions on the issues were closer to my own than either Clinton's or Obama's. Lets hope Robert Novak was right and Obama plans to make him Attorney General if he becomes President.

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Sen. John McCain of Arizona won the hotly contested Florida primary, defeating Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, and Mike Huckabee with 36 percent of the vote to 31 percent for Romney, 15 percent for Giuliani, who is finished, and 14.4 percent for Huckabee. On the Democratic side, voters flocked to the polls in greater numbers than Republicans, despite announced plans by the Democratic National Committee to strip Florida of all its delegates to the party convention this summer for moving up its primary. Hillary Clinton received 49.7 percent, Barack Obama 33 percent, and John Edwards 14.4 percent. Here's the always excellent New York Times interactive page on the results.

I found McCain's remarks about Romney during the heat of the run-up to the Florida vote to be both fascinating and disturbing for what they say about McCain and what you could expect of him as President. McCain basicly accused Romney of being a defeatist on Iraq because he once sort-of maybe advocated a "timetable" for U.S. withdrawal from this hopeless conflict. Muhammad Cohen (there's a multi-cultural name), writing in the Asia Times, links McCain's hard line stance on Iraq to his experiences as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. According to Cohen, McCain remains fixated on the idea that the U.S. could have won the Vietnam War if only it had tried harder.

Combined with McCain's comments prior to the New Hampshire primary that he wouldn't mind if the U.S. stayed in Iraq for a hundred years, we should take him at his word and assume that any withdrawal from Iraq short of "victory" (whatever that is) will be over his dead body. Is that the kind of President you want? George W. Bush on steroids? Maybe attack Iran while he's at it and oh, yes, reinstitute the military draft to get enough bodies to throw against the Iranian human wave attacks? If you think Congress will refuse to reinstitute the draft, you're a cockeyed optimist. All it would take is another big terrorist attack on U.S. soil "linked" to Iran.

On a final note, I would urge Democrats to look at the Florida vote totals as cautionary. Although Clinton received far more votes than McCain, 856,844 to 693,425, Republican candidates in total received more votes, 1,925,728, than did Democrats, 1,724,855. Yes, voting behavior in primaries isn't always a reliable predictor of how the general election will go, because voters in a primary are limited to candidates from their own party. But these overall totals in Florida show one thing: it isn't in the bag yet, folks, so don't get cocky.

Posted by David at 06:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Columnist Robert Novak reports that he's been told by "Illinois Democrats" that John Edwards will be offered the job of Attorney General in a Barack Obama Administration. That would be nice, but I'd still rather see Edwards as President over either Obama or Clinton.

Posted by David at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was going to write about Bush's State of the Union address, but it's hard to write about what he says when you don't believe the half of it. Here's a quick summation: make tax cuts permanent, how 'bout my funny math on average increase if you don't, will veto any tax increase, Iraq going well, stop human cloning and those gol ' darn earmarks, economic stimulate you, poor Jenna and Barbara denied a real childhood, ain't our troops grand, oh my wonderful surge, faith-based everything, aren't you glad I stopped embryonic stem cell research, confirm those damn judges I nominated, everything's just fine, gonna sign me some autographs on the way out. Yee hah!

There you have it. Made me long for the scene in "Mars Attacks!" where the Martians come to the Congress and zap everyone with ray guns. They could start with whomever among the Dems picked Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to give the Democratic response to Bush's speech. Indeed, lets hold hands with the Republicans and sing "Kumbaya." That'll work for sure.

Posted by David at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've all had the experience of hearing people sitting near us on a train or some other public place talk about things on their cellphone we'd rather not hear them talk about. Mike Lux had the opposite experience: hearing former Pennsylvania Republican senator Rick Santorum, who was in the seat behind him, make call after call trying to rally conservative opposition to Sen. John McCain. Movement conservatives like Santorum, who was defeated by Democrat Bob Casey in 2006, never liked McCain and don't want him to get the Republican nomination for President this year. Too funny.

Posted by David at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hillary Clinton must be running out of lamps to throw at Bill.

In the latest fall-out from the would-be First Husband's return to the political fray last week, the Kennedy family has made it clear that most of them, and all the ones who count, would like Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee for president this year. Now this isn't completely due to Bill's attacks on Obama--they truly see him as the political reincarnation of John and Bobby--but a good part of it is.

Caroline Kennedy, daughter and only survivor of President John F. Kennedy, endorsed Obama yesterday in a New York Times op-ed piece titled, "A President Like My Father." Sen. Ted Kennedy, who reportedly has had angry phone conversation with Bill Clinton about his tactics, will endorse Obama at a news conference today and then head out on the campaign trail with him. Ethel Kennedy, widow of Bobby, referred to Obama as "our next President" even before he got in the race.

Those of us who remember those photos in the 1990s of the Clintons and Kennedys vacationing together on Martha's Vineyard, and the stories about Hillary's bonding with former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, can only imagine what's being said in the Clinton compound today. Hillary points out that the Kennedy adoration of Obama isn't universal, that Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a daughter of Bobby, is still for her, but since much of the world hasn't heard of Kennedy-Townsend, it's like using a feather to try to balance a lead brick.

The Kennedy endorsement will matter for Obama. It will help among Hispanics, who voted heavily for Hillary in the Nevada caucuses, and may help some white liberals get past their uneasiness over Obama's less-than-progressive positions on some issues and their worries that he isn't inclined to duke it out with Republicans. In the end, though, it will come down to who has the most delegates at the Democratic National Convention this summer. Hillary could still win (and that's not necessarily a bad thing).

Don't forget the old saying: old age and treachery beat youth and skill every time.

Posted by David at 06:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The South Carolina Democratic primary results don't require much interpretation: Barack Obama won big, taking 55 percent of the vote in a three-person race. Hillary Clinton received 27 percent, and John Edwards a sad 18 percent in his home state.

It was a stunning performance by Obama in the face of day after day of attacks by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Did the Clinton's tactics backfire? I think you may see a big change in tone for Florida on Tuesday and the Super Tuesday primaries on Feb. 5. Remember, though, that black voters dominate the South Carolina Democratic primary, and he won't have that advantage going forward.

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South Carolina Democrats hold their primary today, and what had been expected to be a walk-away victory for Sen. Barack Obama in this heavily black state now seems to be in doubt. A victory, even a narrow one, by Sen. Hillary Clinton would strike a major blow to Obama's campaign. And that seems to be possible if not probable as voting begins.

Sen. John Edwards, who was born in South Carolina but now lives one state to the north, is expected to finish third. That will likely spell the effective end of Edwards' campaign--a shame, since his positions on the issues are the closest to my own. I suspect his plan is to stay in the race long enough to get some sort of promise from Clinton or Obama of either a top-level job in the next administration or positions on certain issues, in return for his withdrawal and support. Edwards would make a good, ticket-balancing vice president for either Clinton or Obama, but whether he would accept that role again is questionable. I would like to see him in a role where he can continue the fight for national health care and other progressive issues. It would be a shame if he just went back to being a trial lawyer, good as he was.

The overall race for the nomination is still, I stress, very unsettled, but it seems to be trending Clinton's way. She picked up the endorsement of the New York Times yesterday (McCain was endorsed as the best-of-a-bad-lot for the Republicans), and leads both in national polls and overall delegate count. But she's got to put Bill back in the closet. If Clinton wins with the perception that it's really a symbolic third term for him, she will have a hard time being taken seriously. Of course, for those of you in the far right who think that the Clinton's have a demonic "plan," for everything, maybe they'll separate once she moves into the White House.

I'm not among those who think it's unfair the Clinton's are double-teaming Obama. Politics ain't beanball, and what he's getting from the Clintons will pale in comparison to what the Republicans will throw at him if he wins the nomination. The primaries are a trial by fire, and if you're still standing at the end, you probably have what it takes to be President. There's more than a whiff of go-easy-on-him-because-he's-the-first-black in the criticism of Bill Clinton's attacks on Obama, even if that's never said outright.

Clinton is the establishment candidate here, in the mold of Hubert Humphrey or Edmund Muskie, while Obama is in the insurgent mold of Bobby Kennedy or George McGovern. If history is any teacher, an insurgent candidate can energize the electorate and even get the nomination, but has less of a chance of winning against the Republican. The danger is that if the establishment candidate wins the nomination after a bitter campaign, he or she will have a difficult time getting votes from the insurgent's passionate supporters. They might not vote Republican, but they might not vote at all. That's the danger I see in Bill Clinton's attacks on Obama. Fight, yes, but by the rules. The Clinton's have to leave room for reconciliation. Any Democratic candidate needs a huge black vote to win.

Posted by David at 07:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We had a much anticipated and dreaded staff meeting yesterday at The Patriot-News, the newspaper in Harrisburg, Pa., where I have worked as a reporter for 20 years. About half the rumors turned out to be true, and about half, thankfully, were not.

The meeting was led by executive editor David Newhouse, a man whom I've had differences with in the past. I was the last union president at the paper, and he and I have differing opinions about the value of certain types of reporting. I'll leave it at that. Newhouse is part of the family that owns The Patriot-News and many other newspapers around the country, including the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger. He handled the meeting pretty well, but seemed nervous at times.

Given the state of American newspaper journalism, and an unfortunate tendency at the Patriot-News to grasp at popular industry trends whether they make sense or not, I had feared the worst. The big rumor was that no story in the future would ever be longer than 10 inches (relatively short by newspaper standards) and many would be reduced to two or three-inch briefs. Not true, Newhouse said. At least not for everything.

He said the paper's own central Pennsylvania studies had shown that readers want quick summaries of the daily news, but also want more in-depth and investigative reporting of stories they won't find on television or the Internet. So some stories in the future, perhaps more than half, will be shorter, especially municipal meeting coverage. But the Patriot-News will encourage reporters to do longer ("20, 30, 40, 60 inches") stories on important topics that warrant the longer treatment. Perhaps not always as long as the multi-page extravaganza on the Harrisburg incinerator last year written by my colleagues John Luciew and Tom Dochat, but you get the idea. This is the kind of reporting I like to do, so I was naturally pleased.

I'm not sure what to make of Newhouse's comments about the Patriot-News Penn Live website on the Internet. The staff hates the website, which is so poorly organized that we have to give callers detailed instructions on how to find particular stories (if we can find them at all--stories frequently never appear). Everyone knows it's a lousy website, but no one seems able to do anything about it. Based on Newhouse's comments yesterday, that seems unlikely to change anytime soon.

The problem is that the Patriot-News doesn't control the Penn Live website. It provides news content, but has no control over the website itself, which is run by a different branch of Advance Publications, the Newhouse family company that owns the Patriot-News. It's a weird set-up, and it works poorly in practice because the newspaper and the website seem to have different goals and priorities. The disconnect is hurting the Patriot-News.

Newhouse seemed to be distancing himself from Penn Live yesterday. He pointed out how little advertising revenue is generated by even the biggest and best newspaper websites. That could change, and I think it will, but I agree with him that it won't be soon. So for the foreseeable future, the Patriot-News will throw its energy and talents into the paper-and-ink newspaper. I have to admit this left me uneasy, and I wondered if there were carriage makers a hundred years ago who told their skilled craftsmen that automobiles weren't going to be profitable for a long, long time. I've often mused that the Patriot-News printing plant built in Hampden Twp. a few years ago might be the last, best carriage factory of them all. We shall see what we shall see, as my German grandfather was fond of saying.

The other big news is that the Patriot-News will likely be moving out of its longtime headquarters (since the 1950s, I believe) at 812 Market Street in downtown Harrisburg. Our new home has yet to be determined, but sites in Susquehanna Twp. and Silver Spring Twp. are on the short list. The former is more likely, from all indications. I'm told that no suitable sites in the city of Harrisburg can be found, but one wonders if higher property taxes in the city are a factor as well. A suburban headquarters will pose a problem for covering stories at the Capitol Complex, where parking is almost non-existent during the workday. That's not a problem now, because we can walk from 812 Market. Newhouse said early 2009 seems to be the most likely time for the move.

Update: Monday, Jan. 28: In a memo to the editorial staff, David Newhouse says he didn't mean to sound as negative about the Internet as, well, he sounded at the staff meeting last Thursday. "Everyone can see that the Internet is our future," he said.

Posted by David at 06:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This just in. Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for President. Rendell in remarks prior to an appearance this morning in Carlisle, Pa.. Given that this will shift the full force of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania toward Clinton, it should go a long way toward getting her the state's delegates in the April 22 primary. I don't know if the nomination will still be in doubt by then. Some commentators think it will and Pennsylvania will be an important contest, but what happens Feb. 5 in the Super Tuesday primaries will likely tell the tale.

Posted by David at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was wrong. Back on Sept. 14, I predicted that former Sen. Fred Thompson--then riding a tidal wave of support from Republicans who assumed he was still alive because they saw him on Law & Order reruns--wouldn't last until the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Instead, he made a liar out of me by staying in until losing the South Carolina primary and throwing in the towel. His best showing was in the Wyoming caucuses (yes, they occurred), where he received 25 percent of the vote but Mitt Romney was the winner.

I can't help but think back to the quixotic presidential campaign of Pat Paulsen, that other fellow who tried in 1968(comedically) to ride his TV popularity on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour to the presidency. It was good for a few laughs. I remember when he ended his candidacy thanking "52 good Americans who voted for me in New Hampshire, two good Americans who voted for me in Wisconsin," etc. Thompson provided a very few laughs, but nothing he really intended. Mostly he seemed to sleep-walk through the debates and appearances, seeming continually perplexed, like Ross Perot running mate Admiral James Stockdale in the 1992 vice presidential debate, as to why he was here.

So for the Republicans, it's now down to John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, or America's favorite psychotic bully, Rudolph Giuliani. I suspect Giuliani will be out after the Florida primary, but I've been wrong before.

Posted by David at 06:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today's New York Times has one of the the nastiest true stories about a political candidate I've ever seen. It seems former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has a mean streak that extends not just to nettlesome political opponents, but to just about anybody who crosses him, big or small. Yes, all politicians have the capacity to be mean to opponents, but this goes way beyond the pale.

These stories are truly horrifying. No one with a record of vindictiveness like this ought to be given the powers of the presidency. Giuliani would make President Richard Nixon with his enemies list and IRS audits look like Jimmy Carter and a Sunday School picnic.

Posted by David at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning at the Patriot-News, the newspaper in Harrisburg, Pa., where I am a reporter, one of the newsroom staff sent out an "all" message with the subject line, "The producer of 'The Wire' could have worked here." Attached was an essay by David Simon in today's Washington Post.

Everyone read it, even if they weren't aware, as I was, that Simon is the executive producer, creator, and lead writer of HBO's "The Wire," a gritty, urban crime drama set in Baltimore that is in its fifth and last season. Harrisburg actor Dominick Cicco plays a bit part in Episode 3 as Andreas, the counterman at Little Johnny's Diner. My daughter Lydia, who knows him from the Central Pennsylvania Youth Opera production of "The Araboolies of Liberty Street" in 2006, was thrilled to see him on TV. I think he told me about this at the cast party. But I digress.

What has the journalism world buzzing is the portrayal in "The Wire" of the Baltimore Sun, which is called, yeah, the Baltimore Sun. Simon worked there as a reporter from 1983-98. It's a dead-on portrayal--rare for TV--of modern newspaper life, the good, the bad, and very definitely the ugly. Simon is unsparing. The Sun, which is owned by the Tribune Co. of Chicago, has been decimated by buy-outs, i.e., staff reductions where they pay you to leave, but even more so by self-inflicted wounds. The owners have decided that the public wants less news, not more, and wants fluff over substance (all of which is cheaper to produce). They actually came to believe that readers knew more than professional journalists about how to report the news.

Call it suicide by focus group. Why focus groups? They've been the rage in the newspaper industry for at least the last decade, and supposedly tell management that readers want less news, shorter stories, and more fluff about church dinners and groundbreakings. Ever wonder who has time to be on focus groups? Not anyone with a serious job or family obligations. They aren't exactly representative, and can end up reinforcing industry preconceptions. When more comprehensive telephone polls are conducted of all residents of a region, the results differ sharply. They tell the pollsters they want more news and more explanation of important events in the world around them, and not just in their backyards.

In the real world, the Tribune Company fired James E. O'Shea, the editor of the Los Angeles Times this week for refusing to make huge and mindless newsroom cuts going into the Presidential election and Olympics year. In his parting remarks to his staff, O'Shea sharply criticized the Tribune Co.'s single-minded focus on cost cutting, its lack of investment in the Times, and "an aversion to serious news." This is the same Tribune Co. that owns the Baltimore Sun, the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, and other papers around the country.

Those of us who love newspapers, who love the profession and have devoted our lives to it, see ourselves as the radio operator on the Titanic, calling desperately for help after the captain steered the ship into an iceberg. At least our readers escape with their lives, picked up by the SS Internet and given warm blankets and hot chocolate. But enough of this strained metaphor. Suffice it to say the Patriot-News is no stranger to the woes of the industry.

That was why my colleague wrote, "The producer of 'The Wire' could have worked here." Gimmicks won't save newspapers. Only news will save newspapers. Maybe not even that.

Posted by David at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What with the state of politics--we still have another year of George W. Bush--and the state of journalism, what's a blogger to do but turn to (writing about) drink?

I saw this story in the Toronto Globe and Mail tonight. We in the Keystone State complain often about the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, or PLCB, but at least they let us buy cheap wine--to a point. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario, or LCBO, for a time had a policy of barring sales of any wine priced less than $10.95. The article says that policy is being lifted, giving Canadians access to wine from "value regions" like Australia, South Africa, and Portugal.

Portugal? Hmmm. I was at the PLCB Wine and Spirits store in Lemoyne, Pa., today and don't recall seeing a section of Portugese wine. Spain, yes, Italy, yes, France, of course, but nothing from that other country on the Iberian Penninsula. The only Portugese wines I recall tasting in Pennsylvania were samples sent for a story a couple of years ago by Lost Vineyards, which hoped to get their fine $1.99 wines into the State Stores. Nice try, fellas. I organized a tasting among my Shipoke neighbors and the verdict was, not bad. Great labels, too. Most of their wines then came from Portugal. They've since branched out to Spain and Argentina as well.

The PLCB turned them down because they were too cheap, cheaper even than their fine offerings in the Mad Dog category. Lost Vineyards, aka Brothers International of Batavia, N.Y., insisted that the uniform retail price be $1.99. The PLCB said that wasn't possible given the great amount of tax it normally applies to a bottle of wine here.

I always tell people that if we have to have a state store system, the ones we have today, at least in the larger cities and suburbs, are a decent compromise. Pretty good selection, okay prices, especially on the Chairman's Selection wines. They're a far cry from the State Stores of yore.

When I moved to the state in 1975, the State Store in Shamokin, Pa., was the way they all were. You'd walk in and be brought up short by a counter across the width of the store. You had to tell the clerk what you wanted--no browsing allowed. If you asked for a wine recommendation, he'd toss a mimeographed product and price list across the counter. Recommendations were verboten under law. Today, all the stores are self-service and they get around the recommendation prohibition by clipping out Wine Spectator ratings and taping them to the edge of the shelf. Heck, the store in Lemoyne occasionally has wine tastings, as shocking as that sounds.

What would improve things would be an across the board tax reduction to bring the regular retail prices down to roughly those charged in Maryland and Delaware. Stop turning Pennsylvanians into bootleggers and give them decent prices on booze. You could run for governor on that platform.

Posted by David at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While I suspect the main concern for many Americans over an invasion of the U.S. by Mexico would be whether it brought better Mexican restaurants in its wake, our friends at Fox News and their rightwing political allies are in a froth over 17 supposed "armed incursions" by the Mexican Army or other Mexican government agents into U.S. territory last year. They are demanding that Bush build the border fence and are threatening doom to any Republican candidate for President who doesn't toe the line on immigration.

While border crossings by a neighboring country's army are certainly cause for concern, I suspect many of these "incursions" were inadvertent--the border isn't always clearly marked and isn't always the Rio Grande. There could be an equal number of incursions by the U.S. Border Patrol into Mexico. And how 'bout that long, unguarded Canadian border? Shouldn't we take a few billion dollars from education, say, to build a fence up there, too? If we built it really tall, maybe we could stop those cross-border incursions by cold Canadian weather fronts. Those kill a lot more Americans than the Mexican Army does.

But seriously, folks, this anti-immigrant hysteria has gone too far. Responsible political leaders in both parties need to take public stands in which they basicly tell people to cool it. A story in the New York Times today highlights the fear in which Hispanic immigrants in Waukegan, Illinois, now live. We're a nation of immigrants, legal or otherwise, and need to end the hysteria.

Posted by David at 06:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I received word yesterday that three alumni of the Hope College anchor, the student newspaper where I toiled happily from 1971-75, are organizing a reunion of all anchor (never capitalized) alumni for the weekend of June 20-22 in Holland, Michigan.

The three organizers are George E. Arwardy, publisher of the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger, John M. Mulder, and Don Luidens, who is on the Hope sociology faculty. While I don't approve of the current rightward drift (in truth, it's a speedboat race) of Hope College, I do enjoy journeys through the liberal past and so will make every effort to be there. Please pass the word about the reunion to any anchor alumni you know.

In e-mails this morning to Tom O'Brien, Gary Gray, Joe Courter and Jim Harris, I've suggested food from Burger King be served. Also, there could be guest appearances by former campus security chief Glen Bareman and Richard Angstadt, the alumni who did weekly paste-up of the paper in the early 1970s at The Composing Room in Grand Rapids. Plus a contest to see which of us can still fit through the tiny window into the former anchor office in Graves Hall that we used to get inside when we didn't have a key. Arwady, I'm sure, will talk about the honor of being the publisher of the newspaper that Tony Soprano walked down to pick up at the end of his driveway in many an episode.

Tom O'Brien--evidence that this event is already getting out of hand--suggested a recreation of the anchor staff "streak" (ca. 1973) through the Pine Grove. Gary Gray offered to provide photographic evidence of the original event. Former ad manager Joe Courter begged off attending, saying it was a long way to travel from Florida. But he reminded us of one of his favorite memories, a news clip (written directly from a school press release, as I recall) hanging on the office bulletin board about the installation of a new organ at Dimnent Chapel. Some of the wording was a bit, well, odd. Jim Harris reminisced fondly about a parody op-ed piece he wrote for the ranchor, the annual humor issue (printed on yellow paper) "that made Gordon cry."

All in all, it should be fun. I tried to link a pdf of the nuts-and-bolts information, but couldn't figure out how to do it, so if you're interested, contact Don Luidens at luidens@hope.edu. You can register online at http://myhope.hope.edu. See you there. Despite the fact that the events will take place on the Hope College campus, and despite connections between college and the family of a certain well-known operator of a mercenary firm, no Blackwater personnel will be present. As far as I know.

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The Michigan primary results yesterday are being portrayed as a big win for Mitt Romney over John McCain and Mike Huckabee, but I'm not sure what they prove beyond the fact that Romney can claim favorite son status here. His father, George, was a popular governor of Michigan from 1963-69, and his mother, Lenore, ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1970. Romney won 38.9 percent of the Republican vote, McCain received 29.7 percent, Huckabee, 16.1 percent, and Ron Paul, 6.3 percent. Turnout was said to be light because of bad weather.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich were the only candidates in the race, Barack Obama and John Edwards having honored the Democratic National Committee's request for them to withdraw after the Michigan Legislature moved up the primary date. Their supporters were urged to cast votes for uncommitted delegates instead. Clinton won 55.4 percent of the vote to 39.9 percent for uncommitted and 3.7 percent for Kucinich. Clinton actually lost narrowly to Uncommitted in two counties, Washtenaw, which includes liberal Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, and Emmet at the northern tip of the Lower Penninsula.

Ottawa County, where I grew up, gave Huckabee 24 percent of the Republican vote, his third-highest percentage in the state after St. Joseph and Shiawassee counties, which each gave him 25 percent of their vote. Ottawa's percentage for Huck is probably a reflection of the high number of conservative and evangelical Christians there. Romney carried the county with 35 percent while McCain polled 30 percent.

If all this sends any particular message to you, let me know in the Comments section.

Posted by David at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I grew up in Michigan between 1953-75. Most of that time, the state was flush with money from the auto industry, both in terms of wages paid to legions of auto workers and corporate tax dollars flowing into the state treasury. The state gave out college scholarships, usable at any public or private college in the state, worth (in inflation-adjusted terms) more than $4,000 a year per student. But then came the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, and Detroit's chrome behemoths no longer sold so well. The auto industry seemed unable and unwilling to design and sell quality cars for a changed world. The state began a long decline and today is an economic basket case. Unemployment stood at 7.4 percent in November.

Michigan votes today in its presidential primary, although it's kind of a half-baked affair because the state is being punished by both the Democratic and Republican national committees for moving up its primary to today from its previous date in February. The party committees were trying to stop the competition among the states to be have the first or nearly the first primary or caucus in the nation, on the theory, probably correct, that an early primaryforces candidates to pay more attention to a state's issues and concerns. The Democrats say they won't seat any of Michigan's delegates elected today, and Hillary Clinton is the only major candidate left on the ballot. The Republicans say they'll cut Michigan's delegate allocation by half. The Republican candidates have stayed in, and the only real action today is on the GOP side.

Mitt Romney is hoping for "favorite son" status in the GOP primary. He is a son of former MIchigan Gov. George Romney, who led the state during some of its glory years, 1963-69. The elder Romney, who had been president of American Motors, wasn't quite a liberal Republican but he came close. As his Wikipedia entry puts it, he was somewhat more conservative than New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller but far more liberal than Sen. Barry Goldwater or California Gov. Ronald Reagan. His own presidential ambitions flamed out in 1968, victim of the Detroit riots of the previous summer and his statement that he had been "brainwashed," i.e., lied to by U.S. officials, on a fact-finding trip he made to South Vietnam during the war.

Mitt Romney is far more conservative than his father was, and that will be a hard sell to a majority of Michigan voters, though perhaps not to a majority of Republican voters. His problem is that Michigan allows cross-over voting in the primary, meaning you choose in which primary you want to vote when you arrive at the polling place. There is no party registration. Democrats who don't want to vote for Hillary Clinton or "uncommitted" may choose instead to vote in the Republican primary. Sen. John McCain is said to be encouraging this.

McCain could end up the victor on the GOP side today. His brand of flinty independence plays well in Michigan. It is an odd state electorally. The bulk of Democratic votes are in Detroit, with large parts of the rest of the state, including my hometown of Holland, firmly Republican. But people vote, not square miles, and Michigan is still a Democratic state. A Romney-like candidate, Amway heir Dick DeVos, Jr., lost a bid for Governor in 2006 to the Democratic incumbent, Jennifer Granholm.

My guess is that McCain will get a lot of Democratic votes and walk away with whatever number of Republican delegates Michigan is finally allowed.

Posted by David at 06:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my first clues that Mike Huckabee might be big on the Republican side of the election this year came when I saw that the father of a girl in the youth opera company to which my daughter also belongs had a "We (heart) Huckabee" bumper sticker on his minivan. I think he may have written it with white liquid shoe polish on the window, too. I knew he and his wife home schooled their kids. Many, though not all home schoolers are conservative evangelical Christians, and Huckabee is deeply religious, so it all kind of added up. Home schoolers were said to be big supporters of Huckabee in the Iowa caucuses.

But it seems the bloom is off the rose for some home schoolers in Michigan, the next state to hold its primary, and in some in other states as well. The head of the state's Christian home school association has come out for Mitt Romney, ostensibly because Huckabee signed a law when he was governor of Arkansas that required parents pulling their kid out of public school to home school them to wait out a 14-day cooling off period. It was a sensible law, aimed at heading off hasty, panicked decisions because the evolution section of high school biology was coming up or a teacher indicated that gays and lesbians were not actually spawn of Satan.

Home school zealots (and not all are) won't accept even the most reasonable of regulations. The New York Times reported last week that because of legal actions or threats of legal action by the Home School Legal Defense Fund, a number of states have no regulation of home schooling whatsoever. I don't want home schooling banned entirely. I want it preserved as an option for students who truly need to be home schooled, for example for medical reasons or because they are being bullied at public school. Some parents of my acquaintance do home schooling very well, and others do not.

But who really benefits if parents can pull their kids out of school because "they were teaching them stuff I didn't understand," as one home schooling mother famously told the Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot-News a couple of years ago. There have to be regulations to protect kids from nutty parents.

That's an issue for another day. The reasons some home schoolers are abandoning Huckabee for Romney and Fred Thompson i have much less to do with the 14-day cooling off period than Huckabee's sins against the tenets of movement conservatism. Anyone who calls the Club for Growth the Club for Greed isn't going to get the plutocrat vote, and plutocrats have been using the fundies for some time to advance their own selfish economic interests.

It's morbidly fascinating to watch the Republican Party in freefall, each candidate fighting hard, as I put it in a previous post, to in effect be the next CEO of Enron. I suspect John McCain will end up the Republican nominee for President this year, and will lose by not a whopping margin to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John Edwards. He'll be the Bob Dole of 2008, a respected, elderly war veteran who has certain appealing traits but who, like Dole, won't be able to convince a majority of Americans that he has what it takes to be President.

Posted by David at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While there's a certain logic and even comfort in thinking that whomever the odious ex-U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) is against, I'm for, I don't think Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would be any improvement on the current occupant of the White House.

Santorum and the National Review, among others, have come out against McCain in the wake of his victory in the New Hampshire primary this week. That someone as conservative as McCain--who is barely less conservative than his late mentor Barry Goldwater--could be dubbed a Republican In Name Only (RINO) tells you how far to the right the party has moved even since the time of Ronald Reagan. His sins? Not being willing to paint immigrants as the source of all evil, having once spoken out against George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, and not wanting to grant corporations unlimited rights to despoil the environment.

While that's all true, and certainly to be admired as far as I'm concerned, McCain would keep us in Iraq from now until Doomsday. He's a big fan of the Iraq War. At a campaign appearance before the New Hampshire vote, McCain said he wouldn't mind if the U.S. stayed in Iraq for 100 years.

Which is about 99 years and six months longer than most Americans are willing to tolerate.

Posted by David at 07:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Obama's stunning loss to Hillary Clinton by more than 6,000 votes in New Hampshire is being blamed on polling deficiencies. And more specifically, according to David Kuo at Huffington Post, on "race-gap polling."

Kuo never really explains what that is, but put simply, it is a recognized phenomenon in which some people don't want to admit they won't vote for a black candidate. They feel embarassed to confess that, even in a semi-anonymous conversation with a pollster. So they give a false answer, and that skews the poll results.

Whatever the reason, Clinton's campaign is now re-energized and Obama knows what it is to lose. Even so, Clinton's victory wasn't numerically overwhelming. She got 39 percent to 36 percent for Obama and 17 percent for John Edwards. On the Republican side, John McCain dealt a serious blow to Mitt Romney, winning by a bigger margin than Clinton over Obama, and showed that Mike Huckabee apparently can't do well in states without large populations of evangelical voters, like Iowa.

Kos has the primary schedule through Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.

Posted by David at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've never quite accepted Iowa's role as the first occasion for casting votes for the eventual nominees for President. To me, because I grew up in the 1960s, the real first-in-the-nation voting occurs in Dixville Notch, N.H., a tiny village about 20 miles south of the Canadian border. The primary there usually draws 15-20 voters at most. They gather a minute after midnight to vote, with reporters waiting on the results of this odd tradition. Ever since 1968 and Richard M. Nixon, the Republican winner in Dixville Notch has been the eventual Republican nominee for President.

So will it be John McCain, Mike Huckabee, or Mitt Romney? We'll know in a little over two hours. From the latest polls, McCain, who won in 2000, seems to be ahead statewide. But who knows what that will mean in the Notch. For the Democrats--again statewide--Barack Obama is pulling away from Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. The Democratic primary in the Notch is more of a curiosity. The village didn't even have any Democratic voters to speak of until the late 1960s, when the composition of the New Hampshire electorate began to change as hippies and other liberal types began to move to the Granite State.

That change has continued. Once reliably, solidly Republican along with Vermont and Maine, New Hampshire is now a toss-up state, though still barely in the Republican column. Vermont now elects Socialists, and Maine's two Republican women senators are quaking at the prospect of their next re-election campaigns. New England Republicans are an endangered species in the era of George W. Bush and the Southern dominance of the Grand Old Party. And Iraq. And Katrina. And everything else.

So if you're up after midnight and are tired of recaps of the Ohio State-L.S.U. football game, look for coverage of that less-heralded, but just as traditional contest in Dixville Notch, N.H. You just might learn something.

12:06 a.m. updzte: The results are in! John McCain received four votes in Dixville Notch to 2 for Mitt Romney and one for former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani. On the Democratic side, Obama led with seven votes to two for John Edwards and one for Bill Richardson. Could be a bad day for Clinton and Huckabee.

Posted by David at 09:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I loved him in 1972 and I still love him today. Senator George McGovern, the Democratic nominee for President in 1972, has written a call for impeachment of Bush and Cheney that is printed on the op-ed page of today's Washington Post. Read it.

No one has talked about this very much, but I see great danger for American democracy in the decades ahead if there is no formal repudiation of the Bush-Cheney horrors, either through impeachment or indictment or both. Just letting them go quietly into history risks a new and worse Bush figure building on the legacy of this one.

Posted by David at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I can only imagine the turmoil in Sen. Hillary Clinton's camp right now, as the latest CNN poll shows Sen. Barack Obama pulling ahead of her by about 10 points in New Hampshire, which holds its primary Tuesday. Same in Romneyland: Sen. John McCain, written off for dead not too long ago, has pulled ahead of Romney by about six points. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee trails in third place. I suppose McCain could still pull it off and become the Republican nominee, but along the way voters are bound to figure out how old he would be when he took office (72--Reagan was 70) and how old he would be if he completed two terms (80). And that he supports endless war in Iraq.

Obama is riding the crest of his win in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday, receiving the kind of press that will pull undecided voters into his column. Clinton has to be worrying that she's going to end up like Sen. Ted Kennedy, a legacy candidate himself who once had an air of inevitability about his own presidential prospects. If Obama wins New Hampshire decisively, it will be hard for Clinton to come back. Or John Edwards, for that matter.

If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee and is elected President, the question then becomes whether he can deliver on the "change" he has promised, and which his legions of followers so clearly wants. That will all depend on the make-up of the U.S. Congress. Dramatic change requires dramatic majorities, not the bare Democratic majorities that exist now.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected in 1932, wouldn't have had a prayer of enacting the New Deal reforms if not for the big Democratic majorities in the 73rd and especially the 74th Congress. The Congress before the 1932 election was much the same as the Congress now, nearly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

President Herbert Hoover had enjoyed strong Republican majorities in the Congress that took office with him after the 1928 election. That Senate had 56 Republicans, 39 Democrats, and one Democratic Farmer-Labor member. The House had 270 Republicans, 164 Democrats, and one DFL. But then came the stock market crash in October 1929 and the relentless onset of economic depression in 1930. Hoover lost his strong majority in the 1930 election, just as George W. Bush did in the 2006 election because of the Iraq War. After both elections, though, the Congress became essentially stalemated. Democrats couldn't do much about the Depression under Hoover, just as they couldn't end the Iraq War under Bush.

Then came Roosevelt's defeat of Hoover in 1932. Many Democrats were swept to victory on the new President's coattails. The new Senate had 59 Democrats, 36 Republicans, and 1 DFL. The House had 313 Democrats, 117 Republicans, 5 DFL, and 2 Progressive Party members. With those majorities, he was able to enact several key economic recovery measures. But the really far-reaching legislation didn't come until after the 1934 election, when his majorities went even higher.

Beginning in 1935, the Senate of the 74th Congress had 69 Democrats, 25 Republicans, 1 DFL, and 1 Progressive. The House had 322 Democrats, 103 Republicans, 7 Progressives and 3 DFL. And some of those Republicans, like Nebraska's Sen. George Norris, would today be considered radical liberals. Roosevelt could do just about anything with those kind of numbers, and did. Obama, take note.

Out of the 74th Congress came Social Security, which ended many of the terrors of old age, the National Labor Relations Act, which created the modern labor union movement that moved millions of Americans into the middle class, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which established that people through their government can force radical reform on business without its consent, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or welfare, which gave children of low income parents a shot at survival and a better life. A President can't pass laws like that with bare Democratic majorities in Congress. It just doesn't happen.

So whether the next President is Obama, or Edwards, or even Clinton, if you want real change it is vitally important to elect a strongly Democratic Congress, too. There is no other way.

Posted by David at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With all the hoopla over the Iowa caucus victories of Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, and former Gov. Mike Huckabee, the Republican, one can easily forget how unlikely it is that these first-out-of-the-gate wins mean anything for who ultimately gets the party nominations, and who becomes the next President.

Obama won 37.6 percent of the Democratic caucus votes, while former Sen. John Edwards received 29.7 percent and Sen. Hillary Clinton 29.5 percent. On the Republican side, Huckabee won 34.3 percent, Romney 25.3 percent, and--this is interesting--other Republican candidates received 40.1 percent, suggesting that GOP voters are still broadly split. That's hardly a resounding win for Huckabee.

If Obama doesn't ultimately win the Democratic nomination, he would join the ranks of Congressman Dick Gephardt (1988) and favorite son Sen. Tom Harkin (1992). If Huckabee doesn't go all the way, he would join the ranks of Sen. Bob Dole (1988). Even worse for Obama, the Democratic winner in a contested caucus in Iowa since 1972 has never become President (*Al Gore). Jimmy Carter in 1976 placed second to an uncommitted slate but went on to win the nomination and the presidency. That's hardly a comforting portent for Obama.

Questions have been raised about the impact of Iowa college students from outside the state on Obama's victory. I think another interesting factor that hasn't gotten much attention is Obama's strong support, much stronger than the other Democratic candidates, for ethanol and other bio-fuels. Iowa is a huge corn state, and nearly all ethanol is made from corn. Corn prices have doubled in recent years as a result, raising Iowa farm incomes but also the price of food for all Americans. Did some Iowa Democrats vote their pocketbooks more than their hearts in picking Obama?

Another interesting thing is that Obama's victory wasn't across the board. He didn't carry every county. O'Brien County in northwest Iowa, where my father grew up, gave Clinton 38 percent, Edwards 27 percent, and Obama 27 percent. Union County in southern Iowa, where my mother grew up, went 34 percent for Clinton, 33 percent for Edwards, and 25 percent for Obama. Obama appeared to carry 45 Iowa counties to 28 for Edwards and 26 for Clinton.

So on we trek to New Hampshire this coming Tuesday for the next state-level contest of 2008. Obama and Huckabee will carry the glow of winners into the New Hampshire primary, Huckabee in particular since he overcame far greater odds to beat Mitt Romney in Iowa. I see Huckabee's win as making a Democratic victory in 2008 all the more likely, and not just because he's a bad candidate who will be found out as the process goes on.

Huckabee's message, apart from the evangelical religious fervor that clearly helped him in Iowa, is one of economic populism. One of my favorite Huckabee lines was when he called the anti-tax Club for Growth the "Club for Greed." This will be the year when the public grew tired of being told that tax cuts for the rich and trade with China are good for them. Huckabee will reflect that populist message, but ultimately won't benefit from it.

Posted by David at 06:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today it begins, in the great state of Iowa. A year-long series of elections culminating in the main event next November and, I and millions of other Americans fervently hope, the return of Democratic sanity to the White House.

My favorite candidate, former vice president Al Gore, never got into the race. I had hoped he would after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Of those that remain, Congressman Dennis Kucinich's positions, especially on national health insurance, come closest to what I believe. He won't win, although I hope he is given a position of importance, perhaps Secretary of Health and Human Services, in the next administration. Of the major candidates, I have switched back and forth among Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards, and currently am supporting Edwards. I don't support all the minutiae of his positions, and I still like Kucinich better on health insurance, but I see Edwards as the most likely of the three to fight for serious economic changes that will benefit average Americans.

The latest Zogby poll has Obama in the lead with 31 percent, Edwards with 27 percent, and Clinton with 24 percent. But turnout will be key. Mike Huckabee is the leader over Mitt Romney in the Zogby poll.

On the Republican side, all the candidates are fighting to be the next George W. Bush, which is kind of like fighting to be the next CEO of Enron. If for some deluded reason you like how Bush has handled things, just vote Republican in November because all of the GOP candidates promise you more of the same, including (Ron Paul excepted) war in Iraq without end. They have refused to criticize the Great Leader on anything, which shows the final bankruptcy of the movement conservatism that began with Ronald Reagan.

My family has historic ties to Iowa. My mother and father both grew up there, she in Creston and he in Primghar (they met at Hope College in Holland, Michigan). None of her family lives there anymore. Quite a number of my Dad's family does, although as time has passed and uncles and aunts have passed on my own connection with them has grown fainter. Still, I find Iowa an interesting place, far more complex than it is often given credit for. Lets hope Iowans give John Edwards a victory today.

Posted by David at 05:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Happy New Year, and I hope you're not too hung over from last night's revelries.

2008 will likely be a watershed year in American history, just as 1968 was 40 years ago. Bob Herbert of the New York Times runs through the drama of that year in his column today.

But I really wrote this to call attention to a New York Times editorial from yesterday that was perhaps the bluntest statement about what George W. Bush and his people have done to America that I've seen anywhere.

Take a break from politics today to watch football and parades, but sneak a look at this angry editorial when you have a spare couple of minutes. It will help prepare you for the year that is to come.

Posted by David at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)