AnotherVoice

Waxahachie, Texas, March 29, 2005 -- Believing what I was raised to hold sacred, that every voice counts, I've bombarded my local paper for years with letters and op-eds (and been active in politics). Yet here in the heart of everyone's favorite "red state," where it's especially important that another voice be heard, no one seemed to be listening. This is my megaphone.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Sauce for the Gander

Last week in this space I wrote about the importance of paying close attention to each candidate as the primary season moves along, because what you see can be a really good indicator of what you would get.

On the other hand, especially in politics it seems, what you see or hear may cleverly mask reality, usually because the reality might also be called the unpleasant truth.
The “Healthy Forests Initiative” comes to mind, designed as it was to expand private logging access to old-growth trees in federal forests.

Since my comments last week on the upcoming primary election focused on the putative front-runner in the Democratic race, it seems only fair to now talk about the man the pundits tell us is the Republican front-runner.

And in this case what you see is most definitely not what you get.

I have to admire, in a way, a person whose aura is so strong as to overcome everything and everyone in the room, including an elephant or two (no pun intended).

Imagine yourself at an elegant dinner in a five-star restaurant; the entree has just been set before you, the hundred-dollar bottle of cabernet has proven to be worth every penny, and a guy at the next table lights up a cheap cigar.

When word began to buzz that Rudy Giuliani was thinking about running for President, the pundits all predicted that he would never be accepted in polite society, so to speak, because of his quite liberal views, and that there was no way he could win the nomination of the Republican party.

So here we are, surrounded by the aura of strength, with a candidate who is not what he seems, and not what the country needs.

On the assumption that most non-New Yorkers don’t really know Rudy (funny, isn’t it, how both front-runners have first-name identity), I’d like to offer a short profile here. (This is where I ‘fess up to part of my roots, the formative years spent in New York, whose vestiges have remained; even though I have now lived in Waxahachie twice as long as anywhere else, formative is formative and I have never stopped paying attention to events in the Big Apple.)

Rudy Giuliani’s tenure as mayor of New York was fraught with controversy and cronyism.

There have been terrible decisions, reckless behavior, outright lies, and disastrous judgment in public appointments. Just this week one of his good-buddy appointments, Bernie Kerik, was indicted for tax fraud, corruption, and lying to the White House. (That old saw about judging a man by the company he keeps persists for a reason.)

Terrible decisions: Giuliani was elected mayor soon after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists. Nonetheless, in 1997, despite opposition by wiser folks, he insisted that the city’s emergency command center be located in the World Trade Center. A terrible decision that cost many lives.

Reckless behavior: In May of 2000, then-mayor Giuliani revealed at a press conference that he and Donna Hanover, his wife of 17 years, would be separating. It was a surprise announcement, not least to his wife, to whom he had not yet delivered the news.

At that same time he identified Judith Nathan, with whom he had been frequently seen around town, as “a very good friend.” She later became the current Mrs. Giuliani.

Disastrous judgment: And then, of course, Bernie Kerik, the ol’ buddy pal with past mob connections (that Rudy claims he didn’t know about) and a long trail of scandal before, during and after his appointments by Rudy to important positions such as NYC Police Commissioner. He even got the President to nominate Bernie to head Homeland Security, a nomination soon abruptly withdrawn.

Rudy stayed by his friend through it all, until about six months ago when he began to put some distance between himself and Kerik. About the time he declared for President, actually.

Lies: Giuliani told reporters he spent more time than many first responders in the toxic dusts of Ground Zero after 9/11, enraging the New York City firefighters because it was flagrantly untrue.

And of course Giuliani likes to take full credit for bringing down crime rates in New York while he was mayor, when in fact credit should go to William Bratton who, while he was still head of the New York Transit Police and even before Giuliani appointed him Police Commissioner in 1994 initiated the “quality of life” approach that so dramatically cut crime in the City. (After too many people became aware of his role, Bratton was moved on and out.)

Allow me to pause here to say that as I write all this I feel a little seedy, as if this were some gossip column or worse, even though these facts are out there already. I just think they are relevant in assessing the character and qualifications of a man who would be President of the United States and leader of the free world.

But still, enough. There’s just too much.

In short, the candor and authenticity that voters seem to crave this season are not Rudy’s to offer. Nor is there any evidence that he actually has the “strength” that he claims should qualify him for the presidency.

What he has, as any New Yorker can tell you, is Attitude. Now, I don’t think that Attitude gets you very far with the rest of the world, but hey! You want Attitude? Choose Rudy.

There are several quite honorable, worthy and even honest men running for the Republican nomination, but Rudy Giuliani is not one of them.

I will agree, though, that he seems to be really effective at reassuring folks AFTER a disaster, so perhaps the next president will consider him to head up FEMA.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

What You See . . .

This may come as a shock to a reader or two, but the season is upon us and beginning in just two months voters will participate in what may be the most important decision Americans have had to make in a lifetime: Who can best lead our country out of this mess?

The next President of the United States will be presented with what I liken to a pile of pick-up-sticks, each with its own label:

Iraq. Iran. Israel. Pakistan. The economy. Mortgage crisis. Health care. Medicare. SCHIP. Foreign policy. Education. Taxes. Drugs. Crime. Trade. Energy. Immigration. Environment. Social Security.

And those are just the ones we can see from here.

Where to begin? Which one to try to extract first from the stack — ever so carefully, so as not to collapse the whole?

Democratic and Republican candidates for President have been on the road for what seems years (well, in one or two cases I guess that is true) in search of support among various constituencies north, south, east and west, and interest groups however miniscule, and the question “Did you watch the debate?” is most often answered, “Which one?”

We haven’t seen a lot of the candidates here in Texas, of course, because Texas doesn’t get to vote in a primary until next March, by which time it may be all over. Or so the pundits tell us. Personally, I dearly hope not.

What I’d give for the old days of “brokered” conventions! Where the party faithful noisily got together in some welcoming city and listened for several days as an array of Presidential hopefuls and their supporters sought their votes; back when they engaged in debate, argument, negotiations and sometimes even arm-twisting to arrive at a chosen candidate for President!

Well, we have what we have, and we have to deal with it.

And first of all we have to ignore the pundits, who do a public disservice in declaring the “inevitability” of one candidate or another. I can’t quarrel with publishing the results of legitimate polling — that’s just news (and may in fact serve as a call to work harder for some candidates!). But the folks who tell us the numbers need to stop there and let us decide what to make of them.

We have a responsibility, with so little time left (at least a good chunk of which will be pretty much consumed by the holidays), to pay as close attention from now on to what the candidates are saying and doing as if our lives depended on the outcome, which may be the case.

For starters, take the Democratic “front-runner” — please!

Now I suppose if I weren’t worried about this I’d love the idea of inevitability, but I do have some concerns and I am worried (though this may be surprising to some): I don’t see what I believe America needs, and I do see what I believe America most assuredly does not need.

America needs a leader who is strong, yes, but you could say that anyone who can endure the slings and arrows and the grueling trek of an almost two-year presidential campaign just about qualifies.

And a lot of candidates talk about the importance of having one kind of “experience” or another, but the truth is there is no experience that in itself can prepare you for the singular position of world leader. It’s the people around the President to whom we should pay attention, for there you see what you are likely to get. As we ought to know by now.

Anyway, Hillary Clinton’s so-called “strength and experience” is mostly a myth. The former consists of committee appointments she sought out when she came to the Senate, some legislative moves cynically calculated to make her look tough and war-like, and an occasional war-like statement on the stump.

Her “experience” includes voting in the Senate (following President Bush) to ban flag burning and in favor of bankruptcy legislation the credit companies loved, not to mention in favor of allowing Bush to take us to war in Iraq and for legislation that might allow him to take us to war in Iran, and oh yes, before that living in the White House when her husband was President.

And of course there was the disastrous health care plan, put together in secret meetings with unidentified advisers (remind you of anyone?), that she couldn’t get through Congress despite having the full force of the White House at her disposal. So we take all we learn from listening and watching and then try to envision the kind of presidency we’d have. And here’s my problem:

I don't see a single decision being made without calculation as to reelection, and I don't see the political climate getting any better. Most troubling, I see a continuation of the kind of outright secrecy and dissembling that we've lived with throughout the current administration's tenure.

Now I don’t offer this as a comprehensive evaluation of this candidate; I just wanted to show the reader why it may be useful to pay really, really close attention to what is being said and done by those who want us to trust them with our country and our world.

I know that a lot of women, regardless of party, are supporting Hillary because they understandably are thrilled at the prospect of a woman president (as I would be, were it the right one). The perfect irony is that if she weren’t the wife of Bill Clinton she would be practically unknown.

Labels: , , , , ,

Hit Counter
Web Counters