vp

The polls in early June are looking good for John Kerry, as opposed to just bad for GW Bushed. But with the bleeding of bad news at least slowed, and some superficially good news, the next couple of sets of June polls will show how deep dissastifaction is with Bush, because he should get a bump up if it's the normal seesaw for this time of year.

The scandals are hardly over, and in fact the worst may be yet to come, as actual criminal indictments could be forthcoming over the spite outing of the CIA agent wife of a career diplomat who not only told Bush the truth, he told the world---two unpardonable offenses in Bush-Cheneydom. Who knows what Farenheit 911 and the Bill Clinton book will do.

But Kerry's invisibility cloak is beginning to bother even his supporters, so he needs to have a really great July. He needs to set themes, make a terrific impression at the convention, and before that, there's the naming of a VP candidate.

Our guess here is that it will be John Edwards. The Kerry Kamp must by now realize that deserved or not, Kerry is getting the "charisma-challenged" mantle from the media, and it's mirrored in voters. The last thing they need now is to name an unknown like Vlisap of Iowa. Kerry can carry the gravitas, and with Bush falling so far in national security areas, he has less need of someone with those credentials. He needs an energizer. And Edwards can do that, if only to jump-start July. After that the vp is largely irrelevant anyway.

But there is still the tantalizing possibility of John McCain. Although he has categorically ruled it out, we've seen reports that he's increasingly angry with the Bushies. As a former POW he has to be shaken by the still emerging torture policy scandals. If he comes to the conclusion that it is his patriotic duty to help form a unity ticket, he just might do it. He and Kerry are friends, so they could work out a working relationship. He is a good deal more conservative than his image with independents might suggest, but he's good on several key issues, including global heating. And as things are taking shape now, a Kerry-McCain ticket would get so much attention and relief if not utter enthusiasm that it could set the stage for a very different kind of campaign, as well as the bitter defeat of GW.

UPDATE 6-13 Several stories over the weekend said that Kerry had approached McCain again recently, and was rebuffed. What the stories aren't saying is why, and we think it might have more to do with the state of McCain's health than his party loyalty. Meanwhile, a poll on vps has Edwards ahead, but that's mostly name recognition. The same poll shows that Edwards doesn't add much to the ticket in terms of gross votes. So the question remains, does Kerry need help in a particular key state, and can a vp possibility he likes help him? Or does he go for the energizer bunny from North Carolina? Or (some stories suggest) he may try another moderate Republican---a July Surprise.

UPDATE 6/19 Our final word (probably)...There are lots of lists of potential candidates, and the only name that seems to reappear on all of them is Richard Gephardt. Gephardt is supposed to be charisma-free, which is one of those impressions we've had to take on faith because we've always thought the guy is an impressive speaker, with both intellect and emotion. So apart from that judgment, he would seem just about a no-brainer. Kerry needs Ohio and could use Missouri, and Gephardt is popular in both states, as well as other unionized midwestern states. Kerry really likes Gephardt and would have supported him if Iowa had turned out the opposite of how it did. This all points to Gephardt. He's not as well liked as Edwards, but then again, he's not as unknown as Vilsap. Reports keep surfacing that Kerry is very serious about the presidential qualifications of the vice president, and in this violent year, with all the terrorist stuff, that's probably a realistic if sobering insistence.
So that's our prediction now, and unless something real happens to change our minds, it's our final one: Gephardt.

Reaganistory


His life was an American epic---small Midwestern towns boyhood, radio sportscaster who made up his own play-by-play while reading baseball game stats off the ticker, B movie leading man, governor of California, two-term President, and a man lost for a decade in the horrific wasteland of Alzheimers. All the grief that's pouring out now should be measured against the obscurity of that decade, when his staunchest supporters failed to support the kind of research that might have improved or at least honored his last years.

It's interesting what John Kerry chose to highlight in his official statement upon Ronald Reagan's death. He began it by recounting the relationship President Reagan had with the highest ranking Democrat, Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill. They would fight over policy and legislation, and then retire to the Speaker's office to tell tales, and share memories of their lives. A time before the bitter partisanship we've seen since the 90s, Kerry implies.

But the Reagan-O'Neill relationship signaled the end of an era that presidents and opposite party leaders had maintained for a very long time. Reagan's administration began the demonization of "liberals" that led to this era of smashmouth politics, in which the icons of righteous Christians engage in outrageous lying as a matter of course.

Now we're in the middle of this weird week-long media memorial. President Kennedy was assassinated on a Friday and buried on the following Monday, but Reagan's funeral service won't be until this coming Friday, almost a full week after his death. The justification apparently is that he was both Governor of California and President, so there are rites prescribed for both. It all comes in the midst of a presidential campaign with very high stakes, at a perilous moment in history. So risking the appearance of disrespect, but in the interests of the decisions we must make today, we feel compelled to offset some of the media gush with memories of a very bad decade for America presided over by Reagan and his administration.

He is remembered as the Morning in America man, the godfather of conservatism. In context however, his accession in 1980 unleashed an ugly mood in this country, that denigrated the poor and the values of giving, and especially the responsibilities of democratic government that had become accepted in America, and still are in the rest of the civilized world. The Reagan 80s saw the deification of selfishness, the cultural dumbing down and elevation of the most simplistic and vulgar Positive Thinking ethic in which self-marketing replaced self-improvement and self-knowledge; the Greed is Good era of Wall Street, and the replacement of art with the Art of the Deal (yes, the first golden era of Donald Trump.) The elevation of business success to define creativity and heroism, the Masters of the Universe,quickly followed by the junk bond and other business scandals which Enron etc. recapitulated in recent years.

We’re not going to question Reagan’s beliefs, but his function was as the public relations president, a qualification that he shares with the current one. He was a Democrat and a union leader when that was the politically popular thing to be, for a not exactly first rate actor or big star in Hollywood. But then the Blacklist threatened his career future, and the rich corporations like General Electric promised much better prospects with much higher speaking fees, so after Death Valley Days he became a pro-binness conservative Republican.

There were strange quirks to him as president, like his companionable relationship with Gorbachev at the moment his administration was working hard to bankrupt the Soviet Union, even though every cab driver in Moscow seemed to know more about the sorry state of the Soviet than did the CIA and especially the defense establishment, anxious to extend its free ride with the absurdity of Star Wars.

That was one sorry legacy among many others---as long as our attention is on that era, we’d better not forget those legacies because we’re living with them now, and they are part of our present and future. Star Wars alone wasted untold billions, probably enough to pay the Iraq bill, and continues to soak up money, with not only no reason for it to be, but with absolutely no evidence that it even minimally works. It has to be one of the greatest scandals of our time—but then we have so many we seem more than capable of shrugging off.

We owe Iraq and al Qaeda in large measure to Reaganites and their wonderful work in recruiting, motivating, arming, supplying, and training terrorists, and teaching them the importance of finance, especially through the drug trade. I doubt if Iran-Contra is going to be widely mentioned this week, or the travesty of Nicaragua and central America in general. Reagan the great communicator more than once compared the armed thugs called the Contras with the American Founding Fathers.

Reaganites also began the increasingly tragic policy of privatization, which has enriched conservative Republican donors but caused untold suffering to those who can't make ends meet, go to a decent school or get health care. Our national infrastructure continues to deteriorate because Reagan and his ilksters wanted to get gubmnt off our backs. And of course his name is forever preserved in Reaganomics, which gave us the debt and deficits we had to waste an entire 8 years of a rare Democratic presidency to erase. But 8 years was apparently long enough to erase the national memory, so we got us another Republican who created more debt and deficits faster than a speeding non-silver bullet. So we can look forward to more corroding infrastructure and financial constriction, not to mention empty social security and medicare coffers, just when global warming increases disasters and diseases everyone will look to gubmnt to deal with, and that's just for starters.

We doubt we'll be around to hear it, but by the next decade there will turn out to be a good reason that two recent presidents, Reagan and Bush jr., famously retorted that they didn't care what history said about them. It's not going to be as nice as sappy anchorfolk are making now.

And what is George jr. going to say at the funeral? Too bad the affable icon and his family had to suffer through nine years of a devastating condition, but junior needs the rabid religious right vote so nix on that stem cell research, sorry, but politics trumps all.

There was a movement in Congress recently to get rid of FDR’s image on the dime and replace it with Reagan’s. No doubt it’s going to come up again now. A better idea might be to use this occasion to print a brand new denomination---not being in the class to know from personal experience, we’re not sure what the highest denomination paper bill is, but I’m sure after all these years of inflated incomes among the decreasing percentage of people who own most of the country’s wealth, there’s some market for, say, a $500,000 bill. Why not put Reagan’s picture on that one? For all his regular guy appeal (another legacy to George Jr. that George Sr. couldn’t quite pull off)Reagan remains most attractive to the supra income group. Let the people who can afford it look at his picture on their money. They're the ones who profitted from his legacy. We can mourn Reagan the man, but in remembering his presidency, we are mourning America.

Honor Them Now

Now that we've had a solid week of memorials for dead soldiers of past wars, could we please turn our attention to some folks we can actually do something about other than sing them songs of honor---the live soldiers of the current war?

Mike Keefe has this cartoon in the Denver Post: A ring of men in uniform with big guns pointed outward, are protecting a man at a podium in the center, identified as "Iraqi Interim Gov't." One soldier says to another: When I joined the National Guard, I thought the nation I'd be guarding was mine."

On June 2, the U.S. Army announced that soldiers bound for Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the ones already there, won't necessarily be getting out when their enlistments are up. They have to stay as long as their units are there. The New York Times reported this "could keep thousands of troops in the service for months longer than they expected over the next several years." But there is no limit set to the amount of time they would be "retained." The order applies to Army Reserve units as well as active duty soldiers.

This not only places the lives of these soldiers in increased peril while they are in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also places the lives of their families at home in peril, and their own ability to support their families decently if and when they return.

Even official Defense Department numbers (from the most recent report, issued in 1999) showed that 40% of lower ranking soldiers face "substantial financial difficulties" because of their low pay. That report indicates that some 25,000 families of soldiers are eligible for food stamps. The real numbers now are almost certainly much higher, especially for soldiers serving abroad. Front-line battle troops earn less than $16,000 a year. This is a Wal-Mart level wage---and many of those folks are on food stamps, too. A second lieutenant earns $26,000, which (according to Barbara Ehrenreich) is about what they'd make at home for re-soling shoes.

While doling out huge benefits in tax cuts to the rich, the Bush administration left some 200,000 armed forces personnel without a child tax credit, and has proposed cutting combat pay bonuses by $150 a month (this at a time when soldiers and their families are spending up to $1,000 out of their own pockets to pay for body armor and other protections the U.S. military doesn't provide them.) The Bushies propose to add costs to veterans' health care insurance which will drive an estimated 200,000 out of the system, and discourage another million from enrolling.

But not all the news is bad. Despite the poor or nonexistent medical care many wounded soldiers receive when they return in secret, hidden from even a not very inquiring press, the Bush administration proposes to double the death benefit for those soldiers in coffins that Americans are forbidden to photograph and see. The families get $6,000 now.