The Silly Season, Chapter 2

A few weeks ago (December 16th, to be exact), I opined about the current Silly Season. Things have progressed…if such a word can be used. Let’s see how I did in the prophecy business:

“I predict that the Democratic nominee will be…Hillary Clinton.” (Clupeiform, The Silly Season, 16 December, 2007)

Okay, I haven’t been proven wrong yet, but even I couldn’t predict the long legs of “Obamamania”. When he received the endorsement of Clan Kennedy, I thought I was stuck in a time warp; is this a new “Camelot”? Do we really want another “Camelot”?

We’ll see. I still say Hillary knows where the skeletons are hidden.

Bill Richardson and John Edwards have dropped out; this surprised no one, or shouldn’t have. Richardson is too diplomatic, in oh so many ways. Edwards, though gone from the presidential sweepstakes, was and continues running for the job for which he has the most experience: the Vice Presidential Nominee. Could it be anything else after that memorable New Hampshire debate?

On the Republican side, I had it half-wrong:

“So who will be the Republican nominee? Magic Eight-ball isn’t very conclusive, but seems to be indicating… Rudy Giuliani, with Huckabee as a running mate.” – (Clupeiform, The Silly Season, 16 December, 2007)

Well, I was really wrong about Rudy, he’s dead and gone, and thrown his support behind McCain. I may still be right about Huck, though. If either McCain or Romney pull it out, they’re going to need something to pull in the Social Conservatives of the Great Green South. Huck, despite his somewhat controversial stance on immigration, would do both of the Unaccented Ones a great deal of good down here.

But the old war horse keeps on going. John McCain has been poor-mouthed by talk radio for his daring to work out compromises rather than follow the failed Gingrichesque exclusivity of the Contract With America years. To be uncompromising is to be polticially deranged, in a democracy. “Uncompromising” is a word very common in despotisms, monarchies, and dictatorships. It’s not a very American thing.

“We have a genius for compromise”, Shelby Foote once said, “Our whole government is based upon it.” He also pointed out that when we failed to compromise, in 1860, we went about killing each other in greater numbers than anybody else has ever managed. Something to consider, eh, you stalwart Uncompromisers? As McCain’s own 94-year-old mother said today, you “may hold their noses while [you] do it, but [you]‘ll vote for him.”

So maybe McCain will carry the Republican flag, and maybe Huckabee or Giuliani will stiffen his image for one or the other branch of Republican conservatism. Or maybe Romney will surge forward on funds and family values, and use someone…Gingrich, maybe?…to provide his conservative credentials.

It all comes down to Super-Stupor Tuesday. It all comes down to dozens of states voting on one day, with a huge number of delegates in both parties up for grabs. More than likely, there’ll be some kind of gosh-awful split, and maybe, just maybe, and against my expectation, both parties will go into the convention with no clear leader, and for once in fifty years, as my wife pointed out, we might see a convention as something other than a coronation.

But don’t bet on it.

My political prophecy batting average has yet to be determined. I’ve got one strike (Giuliani), and one ball (Edwards). Wonder what the next pitch will be….

The Silly Season

In the last ten or twelve years, state legislatures and/or state party organizations across the country have been moving their presidential primaries and caucuses earlier and earlier on the election year calendar. Now we are fast approaching the new, spectacular Super Duper Tuesday at fairly breakneck speed, and seriously, what have we learned about our candidates so far?

Not bloody much. Oh, Mr. Obama scored some points with Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement, and of course there will be a strong Winfreyite move towards him, but I think that was going to happen anyway; Oprah’s demographics have been moving into a decidedly fixed sphere in recent years, pretty much solidly Democratic and, I think, increasingly more racially focused. She will not bring Obama votes he didn’t already have. While Oprah’s endorsement might take a few away from Hillary Clinton, the Woman Who Would Be President has her own strong base that won’t be moved much even by Oprah’s imprimatur.

Edwards? <yawn> He’s not even doing that well in South Carolina.

On the Republican side, the only thing unusual is Mike Huckabee’s improbable rise in Iowa. If one pauses for a moment, though, even that isn’t too surprising; he’s mild-mannered, seems a regular guy, and though his Baptist pastorship may make a few New Hampshiremen a little nervous, the Heartlanders eat him up like Sunday morning pancakes. And the only puzzlement is on the part of the New York media who never know what to make of non-Catholic Christianity, nor anyone west of the Hudson.

New Englanders in general, and New Hampshiremen (and women) have always been a little skeptical of religiosity. They’ve been in recovery from Puritanism since long before Hawthorne; and never forget why New Hampshiremen left Massachusetts Bay: to get away from the Puritans. Despite that, Romney and Giuliani are nervous enough to have launched attacks on Huckabee, which probably did him much more good than had they simply ignored him.

In the old days we’d have had more time to seine out the small fry and see someone (Bill Clinton for example) fall from Grace (or Gennifer) early, and perhaps recover. Meanwhile all the ups and downs would have revealed how the candidates would react under pressure.

You know, pressure? Like the pressure they’ll be under when the final winner gets to the White House?

We won’t really have that this year. The crucible will have just begun to boil when we get to Super-Stupor Tuesday, and while the race for the nomination may not be officially over, by most accounts the results of that day will have made the rest of the primaries just window dressing.

I feel cheated, from a spectator’s viewpoint. I mean, it’s like the baseball season beginning and ending in April.

So who will win this March…okay, February…Madness? I’m betting on Villanova. No wait! Sorry, I was confused there for a minute. Who will win the nominations? Okay, let’s see if the old Magic Eight-ball is working today…

I predict that the Democratic nominee will be…Hillary Clinton.

“Not Barak Obama?” you say; “You”re betting against The Good Witch of the North?” (By that you mean Oprah, I take it? Very pithy. Obviously you watched “Tin Man”.)

Yes, I’m betting against Oprah, because I don’t think America has come quite far enough to nominate a black man who is only second generation American (on his father’s side) to the highest office in the land. Sure, we once elected a Catholic second-gen, but he was a white guy. Hey, I’m all for electing a black man president, but most of us WASPs would rather see Morgan Freeman on Pennsylvania Avenue than a youngish inexperienced first-term black senator from Illinois. And there are African-Americans who don’t think Obama is “black enough”. (Considering he has more African blood in him than most present-day African-Americans is beside the point.) For that matter, I’d just as soon not rely on the Illinois Democratic Party to provide the nation with a candidate for president. I’m old enough to remember the elder Mayor Daly’s political machine, and the ‘68 Democratic Convention protests.

Hillary has more appeal to a broader spectrum of liberal, middle-of-the-road, and female Democrats. She also has history on her side: it was her team that won the last Democratic Presidency. She knows where the skeletons are buried.

Meanwhile, in G.O.P.-land, the race is actually a little more interesting. The Old Warhorse is there; John McCain just doesn’t seem to go away. Mitt Romney has suffered of late; whether or not his Mormonism is important, he is no JFK; he’s just too dull to be interesting. Face it, even in the Republican party it pays to be sexy, and Mitt just ain’t got that kind of appeal. Even Mike Huckabee can play bass in a rock band…even if it is Christian rock. Rudy Giuliani is still strong, has a lurid if inexplicable romantic history, but I think the nation is waking up to the fact that despite his rather impressive combativeness on and after 9/11, he’s still a man who just can’t be imagined outside of Manhattan. What does he know of farm subsidies, or the IRS, or the negotiation of water rights in the western states, or the management of the strategic oil reserve?

And what of the new face in the crowd, Mr. “How I lost a lot of weight giving up good Baptist fried chicken and apple pie every Sunday for rubber chicken on the political circuit” Huckabee. Hey, I take nothing away of his weight loss; trust me, that takes discipline…which I don’t have. Okay, as I said above, Huckabee is moving pretty well in the Heartland, and he has a warmth of personality, an optimism, and a kind of unflappable bonhomme that is appealing in all the middle-class demographics. But it’s yet to be seen whether he has the strength to get the nomination.

So who will be the Republican nominee? Magic Eight-ball isn’t very conclusive, but seems to be indicating… Rudy Giuliani, with Huckabee as a running mate.

My talents as a prophet are not particularly phenomenal, so it’s all pretty silly even to ponder, but, well, I’m basing my predictions on just as much evidence as will be available to most voters February 5th. So what the hey! Why not?

Oh, yeah, the VP running mate for Hillary? Joe Biden…or maybe Bill Richardson. Not alot of voting strength, but Biden is the smartest brain on the Demo side, and has the relationship with Congress that Hillary has managed not to establish in her terms in the Senate. Richardson has that important Hispanic vote behind him, experience with foreign relations, and is a much warmer personality. Okay, let’s say Richardson.

So there’s my predictions for the nominations. Now, who’s going to win the whole shebang?

It’s early yet, but in for a penny, in for a pound. At this point, I think it will be President Clinton. I think the electorate, unless it finds a Republican it likes pretty darn fast, is going to swing to the Democrats out of sheer boredom. It’s not like we even acknowledge there’s a war on. We’re still more concerned about whether Bradgelina is going to adopt another Sudanese baby, or whether Roger Clemens really did use steroids, or whether we’ll ever find a Wii for the kids at Best Buy before Christmas.

There is one good thing about the turn of the new year. At the end of it, we’ll have a new person in the Oval Office. Whether or not there will really be any new policies coming out of the Oval Office is anybody’s guess. The realities of the Middle East, and our presence there, as well as our continued need for the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf, have gained a certain historical momentum and even a Democratic administration must face the fact that getting out of there too precipitately will be just as damaging to the security of our country as rushing into it has been.

So the Silly Season begins, and the silliness, even if it’s going to come to a head sooner than ever, on February 5th, will probably not give us a clear new course and a clear majority in our country to push any major changes. But, as a Republican businessman once said on a MARTA train the day after Bill Clinton was re-elected in ‘96, “We’re Americans. We can handle this.” And you know, major changes are vastly overrated.

Point, click, bang.

The obscenity has occurred again. A disaffected teenager with an automatic weapon opens fire on an anonymous crowd of people, kills a double handful, and then blows himself away. All because his girlfriend broke up with him. At least he saved the state the expense of a trial and execution.

Would citizens with guns have prevented today’s tragedy?

Panicky citizens don’t shoot straight. Most people who buy handguns have had little or no training in how to shoot them. Of course, they don’t need much to be lethal. Guns are too easy to use. Point, click, bang, and eight people go down. Point, click, bang, and the bad man, and maybe ten innocent bystanders, go down. Even trained policemen have trouble hitting anything when lead is flying at them. I have serious doubts about the marksmanship of frightened amateurs.

The gun is the most democratic of weapons. It is no coincidence that the overthrow of the ancient kingdoms in favor of more (or, in some cases, less) representative governments came about soon after the invention of relatively cheap, good quality gunpowder weapons. Such was the power of the gun: after centuries in which only wealthy and powerful noblemen had the time to train in the art of killing, the gun allowed peasants of modest means, and modest strength and stature, with but a few weeks training, to kill those well-muscled noblemen very, very dead. The gun was and is, to say the least, a great equalizer.

With guns, especially automatic guns, people can die in tens and twenties, or hundreds, even thousands. Any teen-aged malcontent with pimples and a Glock can make the news by killing a crowd of innocents. People can die by accident, with the merest flick of a finger, just because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because someone was just a little distracted, or a little too focused. Lead a quail just a little too long, point, click, bang: and your friend has a face full of twelve-gauge birdshot. Lose track of your gun and your children, and point, click, bang; you’re child isn’t playing cops and robbers anymore. Play around with that “unloaded” gun, and point, click, bang; you’re laughing friend’s an organ donor.

So, do we cry out for gun control and ban guns from everyone?

The United States Constitution, in words tempered by our natal Revolution and hallowed by millions of NRA pamphlets, is pretty clear:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Both sides of the gun-control debate seem to suffer from a form of selective illiteracy. The NRA seems to never read the initial clause of the amendment. The gun-controllers can’t seem to remember there is a Second Amendment at all. Those of us who are literate and capable of reading the entire text of the amendment may understandably be as worried about the quality of reading education in our primary schools as we are about who can buy a gun and what kind of gun they can buy.

But what constitutes a well-ordered militia? The National Guard? The Army Reserve? Whatever it is, what we saw today in Omaha, and earlier this year in Salt Lake City and Blacksburg, do not constitute anything like a well-ordered militia. There must be a compromise, no matter the mercenary fears of the gun manufacturers who fund the NRAs lobbying efforts, no matter the foaming-at-the-mouth shrieks of the Left that would have citizens armed with nothing more than coffee and a danish. There has got to be something better, better than a defenseless community, better than bodies lying dead in a shopping mall.

Here’s a couple of suggestions:

Every state in the union requires new teenaged drivers to take a test before they can have a driver’s license. Most require at least some period of time with a learner’s permit before getting behind the wheel of a fifteen-hundred pound automobile. They do this for a machine that is designed to carry people from place to place, and is only occasionally and accidentally used to kill people. Why don’t we require a training period, a certification of some kind, for firearms, which are machines designed specifically to kill?

Or, if we’re not going to require training, what about a test? Why not a simple test so that someone can prove they have a basic understanding of gun safety before they’re given the ability to kill other human beings with the mere flick of a finger?

No, we don’t license other weapons; we don’t require training in knife safety before we can buy one. But trust me, if it were so easy to kill someone with a knife, then the French Revolution would have happened in 1345, not 1789.

I am not going to say that training course or test would have stopped today’s killing. Angst and automatic weapons are never a healthy mix, and a test wouldn’t have kept the Omaha gunman from killing eight people before taking himself to his own special place in Hell. But maybe, just maybe some of those accidental deaths, those stupid, senseless household tragedies might be curtailed. Because it’s an awful way to die, and an awful way to lose a child.

I say this, even though the kidney and the pancreas I received once belonged to a young man, a teenager, killed in one of those accidents: a friend with a gun who thought it wasn’t loaded. I received my new chance at life from the donor’s family who chose to turn their tragedy into a gift to help people they did not know. I will always thank them for that gift.

I will never thank the gun that killed my donor.

Point, click…

Bang.

Strange things are happening.

If anything can teach you that human expectations are a comedy of errors, it is this year’s college football season.

The teams everyone expected to win have lost. The teams that triumphed over the teams that everyone expected to win, have lost.

I thought to opine on how my own Alabama Crimson Tide had been humiliated by a second-tier team Saturday. After a few tries at it, though, I thought better of it. There is more chaos in the world today than football can exhibit. Why should I limit my writing to the merely perplexing, when I can tackle the completely inexplicable?

Consider that after six years of the “War on Terror”, our leaders have managed to keep us from being attacked on our own soil…while tying up most of our military resources in what at best is a Pyrrhic victory in Iraq. And now there are rumblings of war with Iran and worry over the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

Consider that after months of a premature Presidential campaign, we have seen candidates cozening the canny hayseeds of Iowa, with even Rudy Giuliani kissing pigs. This morning on the George Stephanopolous show I even heard intelligent, reasoning human beings saying Ron Paul, the finest political mind of the 1920s, may actually have a chance in Iowa. Is this the process to find the person to solve the major crises of our time: the War on Terror, the Health Care Crisis, Global Warming … Paris Hilton’s pregnancy?

Why do I spend so much time worrying about my college football team? Maybe because I’d rather see twenty-year-olds lose football games they shouldn’t, than watch twenty-year-olds lose lives they shouldn’t, in a country that, if it weren’t for chaos, they shouldn’t be in. Maybe because I like to hope that next year, my team will win the games they’re supposed to. I hope that next year the kids who may be winning this war we’re in, will get to come home from overseas and win their own football games.

I doubt it, but…stranger things have happened.