Tag: Election

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Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

No Next Day Election Results For Gannett Newspapers

If there was ever a news item worthy of the “Dammit Gannett” tab, it’s this. Via The Nashville Scene:

“Editors at the [Gannett] chain’s papers around the country were informed two weeks ago that deadlines for the print edition could not be extended in order to cover elections. As a result, Wednesday’s editions of The Tennessean, Commercial Appeal and Knoxville News-Sentinel will not have final results for some of the most closely contested statewide races in years.”

Justin Fox Burks

“We do not believe print is a vehicle for breaking news,” Tennessean vice president   and editor Michael Anastasi was quoted as saying.

Anastasi’s not wrong, of course. Broadcast and online media do have advantages when it comes to live and breaking news. How that absolves daily print editions from obligations to print subscribers and expectations of  mere currency remains a mystery.

Folks who pay for paper say it with me now: Dammit!

UPDATE: NiemanLab weighs in:

“Conceptually, the push to separate print — “not a vehicle for breaking news,” that Gannett memo notes — from digital makes a certain sense, of course. And not adding any extra pages of newsprint for election results does save money. (“As you plan for print, please remember that we have tight controls on newsprint costs,” says the memo. “Any pages added need to be ‘made up’ by the end of the year preferably in November.”)

At the same time, it is those incredibly loyal print readers — the ones who have stood by newspaper companies through cut after cut in staff and in the product — who will now see that loyalty tested, again. Gannett, like a number of other newspaper companies, has more than a third of its print subscribers ages 70 or above in many markets. Most read in print; digital is a second and lesser option. (E-edition readers, who essentially get the print paper in digital form, will also be impacted by this decision.) Those subscribers, at Gannett and elsewhere, have seen their subscription rates hiked again and again, raised to the very limits of econometric modeling.”

Ken Doctor’s column notes that, in an effort to push more readers online Gannett is dropping its paywalls for 48 hours, enabling anyone with internet access to read Gannett’s election coverage. It’s a good read that takes a hard look at recent economic and subscriber history.

“What those numbers tell us is that that road to a mostly/fully digital future gets narrower month by month. Digital subscriptions — which sell at much lower prices than print ones, though with lower marginal costs — are gaining ground much too slowly. Given the combination of higher prices, a lesser product, and even increasingly erratic home delivery, print subscribers may provide less of a lifeline to the digital future than Gannett and other publishers now assume in their whiteboard calculations.”

Read it all here.

Categories
News News Blog

Disturbance on Ole Miss Campus After Obama Victory

Amid last night’s post-election social media storm, Facebook and Twitter buzzed with news that “riots” had broken out on the University of Mississippi campus over Barack Obama’s re-election. Reports spread of hundreds of students collecting on campus, yelling racial epithets, and burning Obama/Biden signs. There were also rumors of rocks being thrown and pepper spray being used to disperse the crowd.

Ole Miss student burns an Obama/Biden lawn sign

  • Ole Miss student burns an Obama/Biden lawn sign

A grainy video was taken, showing students milling about, cop cars patrolling, students singing the Ole Miss fight song school cheer, “Hotty Toddy,” and police telling a student, wrapped in an American flag and riding in the back of a pickup truck, to sit down. Another photo then emerged of a student, who identified himself on Twitter as Brandon Adams, setting an Obama lawn sign on fire.

The University of Mississippi has responded that the events were “fueled by social media, and the conversation should have stayed there.”

According to University of Mississippi Chancellor Dan Jones, police officers were alerted of “Twitter chatter” among students inciting a protest of the presidential election results at the student union. When police arrived they found around 40 students gathered in front of the union. Within 20 minutes the gathering had grown to more than 400 students. The crowd of students chanting political slogans was dispersed by university police. Shortly thereafter, around 100 students gathered at a residence hall. University police broke up the gathering and made two arrests — “for disorderly conduct, including one for public intoxication and one for failure to comply with police orders.”

Chancellor Jones has expressed that some of the incidents reported on social media outlets were less than accurate:

“Unfortunately, early news reports quoted social media comments that were inaccurate. Too, some photographs published in social media portrayed events that police did not observe on campus. Nevertheless, the reports of uncivil language and shouted racial epithets appear to be accurate and are universally condemned by the university, student leaders and the vast majority of students who are more representative of our university creed.”

For now, the administration says it will conduct “a thorough review of this incident to determine the facts and any follow-up actions that may be necessary.”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

In Florida, awhile back, Senator John McCain said, “I’m sorry to tell you, my friends, but there will be other wars.”

Who’s supposed to fight in these wars? Not our current military, which is stretched to the limit. Not me or my generation; we’re still busy fighting over the Vietnam War and the domestic cultural shifts that arose because of that bloody conflict. We’ve been doing that for 40 years now, partly because of the disrespect directed toward the soldiers who were sacrificed by the “Greatest Generation” for dubious causes and because of the fight over what determines “patriotism” when you find your country is engaged in an immoral conflict. American participation in Vietnam ended in 1973 but not before 58,000 men, average age 19, perished.

The terrible costs of Vietnam were never resolved at home. We decided it was better not to talk about such unpleasantness and went on a decade-long disco and cocaine bender instead.

I swore that when I grew older, I would never say, “When I was your age …” to a young person. But I will anyway. When I was your age, we were at war. A despised president put us there. Then an attractive candidate emerged who was adored by the young. He was a champion of the destitute and the downtrodden. Bobby Kennedy promised to end the war and bring our soldiers home in order to concentrate on the growing domestic unrest exploding in every major city. The similarities between 1968 and 2008 are striking, with two exceptions: 1) The draft was feeding my peers who weren’t able to take refuge in college into a meat grinder; 2) the voting age was 21. Despite being only 20, I had been drafted and was emotionally invested in Kennedy’s candidacy. You can imagine how crushed we were when he was murdered in Los Angeles.

Deeply dispirited, my generation chose to withdraw from politics, ensuring the election of Richard Nixon, five more years of war, and 20,000 more dead American soldiers.

There are a lot of “what ifs” in this life. Young people voting in large numbers then could have literally saved lives. My generation, which once believed we were going to transform the world, blew it — big-time. Nixon’s bag of “dirty tricks” soon turned people cynical about their government, and “wedge politics” were used for the first time — and they worked. We have been divided ever since. You can help change that now, if you remember two things: Assume nothing — this race is far from over — and do not discount the importance of your actions. Go to the polls as if your single vote were going to determine the outcome and bring a friend with you.

You’ve seen the best and the worst of my generation. We gave you Bill Clinton, a brilliant policy thinker and communicator who couldn’t keep his pecker in his pants. Then we gave you George W. Bush, a moral absolutist and former drunk who took this country to war because his Nixon-worshipping neocon staff convinced him that it was the Lord’s will. To paraphrase JFK, it’s time to pass the damn torch already. We have lived too long with prejudices that the young have never had to experience, and it clouds our thinking. Can you imagine that I never sat in a classroom with a non-white person until college? We desperately need to alter our nation’s course, but I wonder if the young are aware of the potential political clout that they possess. Being too young to vote in 1968 — when my ass was personally on the line — changed me. I am one of the laziest men walking (it took me 28 years to complete my bachelor’s degree), but I have never missed voting in a single election since. Now, it’s your future that’s at stake.

It’s this simple: If young people come out in numbers and vote, Obama will win. If they don’t, he won’t. And history is not on your side. Young people might have saved us from a second Bush term, but registering on campus is not the same as going to the voting booth. In every election since Nixon, young voters have disappointed those candidates who depended on them. Just ask Al Gore. If you don’t know where your polling place is, you can call or Google your local Election Commission. Don’t wear your campaign gear or some zealot will make you turn your T-shirt inside out. And bring an ID and prepare to do battle with those who would challenge your rights. You have the power to decide this election, and if we do it right this time, you also have the ability to recapture a lot of forgotten dreams. If I could, I would come and beg each of you individually — please vote.

Randy Haspel writes a blog, “Born Again Hippies,” where this column first appeared.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

It’s a “Change Election,” All Right

CREDIT: by Jackson Baker

It had been a feel-good Democratic rally in Whitehaven last Sunday — replete with rah-rahs and collective self-congratulations and nifty munchables and a laundry list of party politicians pleased to be there — when it came city councilman Myron Lowery‘s time to speak. And, depending on one’s taste for verisimilitude, Lowery either broke the mood or enhanced it with some bona fide straight talk.

First off, he noted something publicly that had been on the minds of almost all the Democratic cadres at the event: “Tennessee has been given up by Barack,” Lowery said bluntly. He thereby gave voice to what everybody knew — that the Obama-Biden campaign organization, despite having laid claim to Democratic national chairman Howard Dean’s concept of a “50-state strategy” and despite having raised a formidable amount of money, including a record $150 million in September alone, had decided to bypass Tennessee, doling out only a modest amount of expense money for Nika Jackson (the campaign’s representative in Memphis) and one other state employee.

No money for anything else, meaning that those Obama-Biden signs you see here and there were paid for by private fund-raising activities here and elsewhere in Tennessee. Just as Lowery said (and despite conjectures, based on a favorable poll or two, that the state could be competitive in the presidential race), Tennessee had indeed been given up by Obama’s campaign. Nor was the Republican McCain-Palin ticket pulling out the stops.

Turning to Bob Tuke, the Nashville lawyer and former state Democratic chairman who took up the Senate race when few others were willing to, Lowery complimented the candidate for taking his challenge to Republican Lamar Alexander seriously and excoriated those Democrats who were “hanging on to the coattails of our incumbent senator, Bob, and they really let you go.”

That was after Tuke had earlier said this: “When Barack Obama becomes president of the United States, he’s going to need to have 60 senators in the United States Senate in order to vote for his legislative agenda, so that it’s more than just a promise and more than just a dream, but a reality. And, ladies and gentlemen, I volunteer.”

A late-coming dignitary, 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, would, some minutes later and with evident enthusiasm, make the same point that Tuke had — that the candidate, if elected, could be number 60, the filibuster-killer. But even Cohen, though no coattail-grabber, has been careful to observe the amenities with his colleagues in the Tennessee congressional delegation, and a courtesy visit of his to a fund-raiser for Alexander (following a joint visit to the Med by the two) had not exactly been treated as a secret by the senator’s people.

Another late arrival at the rally, Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, was asked at one point by event impresario Bret Thompson to list for the crowd’s sake the four magic names of Democratic candidates who needed full-fledged support. That might have been a stumper in any case, but the mayor’s prolonged hemming and hawing, which required Thompson himself to do fill-ins on the list, might have owed something to the fact that Wharton, along with Memphis mayor Willie Herenton and a number of other name Democrats, had formally endorsed Alexander.

Which is as good a way as any of pointing out one of the anomalies of the current political season. At a time when, if the pre-election polls are to be believed, the rest of the nation is trending — even racing — toward the Democrats, Tennessee not only holds fast to its status as a Republican state, it seems to be getting redder.

Some of this conundrum is due to purely personal factors. Tuke is the Democratic Party’s official alternative to Lamar Alexander because, as the former chairman and genial ex-Marine himself confesses, the party had trouble finding someone to take on an incumbent with so formidable a pedigree in the Volunteer State.

In the late ’70s, while still in his 30s, Alexander had become governor, succeeding a corrupt good-ole-boy Democrat (Ray Blanton, who did prison time for selling favors). In office, he sponsored educational reforms and went on to serve as president of the University of Tennessee and secretary of education under Ronald Reagan. In 1996, Alexander mounted a serious run for the presidency, losing the vital New Hampshire primary by inches after Bob Dole, ultimate winner of the Republican nomination, put non-stop ads on TV accusing the ex-Tennessee governor — unjustly — of having been a mad taxer in office.

Elected to the Senate in 2002, Alexander had succeeded by 2008 in both creating an image of a moderate who could work across the aisle and becoming the GOP caucus chairman — i.e., his party’s point man. No mean trick, that, and a tribute to his versatility.

by Jackson Baker

Bob Tuke

One example of the man’s prowess: He took on Democratic majority leader Harry Reid over the issue of appointing the Rev. William Graves, a Memphian and C.M.E. bishop, and (assisted by Cohen) won that showdown, thereby scoring with both African Americans and his Republican peers in Congress.

Hence the polls showing Alexander over Tuke by a two-to-one margin and hence a staggering fund-raising edge over Tuke, a man of parts but still a relative unknown.

But that’s just one case. It remains a mystery why the Obama-Biden campaign should be forsaking Tennessee. The campaign, after all, has targeted such hitherto red states as Virginia and North Carolina and, with recent help from former president Bill Clinton himself, is gaining toward a possible upset even in next-door Arkansas. It’s especially puzzling given the campaign’s momentum, record bankroll, and the fact of a highly motivated African-American voter base in Tennessee’s urban centers.

And the national party’s reticence toward Tennessee isn’t helpful for either the state Democratic Party’s tenuous hopes of regaining control of the state Senate (three key races are at stake statewide, and the party must win all of them) or the local Democrats’ hopes of getting their act together.

For all the exuberance of that Sunday rally on Elvis Presley, the Shelby County Democratic Party is a divided house — riven periodically by factional strife, most recently over an “official” sample ballot that includes among its mugshots of party nominees and other recommended candidates a box which, without any authorization whatever, calls for the defeat of each and every one of 10 referenda on the November 4th ballot. At press time, there has not yet been a full explanation for this mysterious event. (See memphisflyer.com for more coverage.)

The Shelby County Republicans have their own case of Ballotgate — a free-booting Germantown group having, according to Chairman Bill Giannini, misappropriated the party’s name and logo to issue a sample ballot pushing its own unauthorized slate of alderman candidates.

So much for old-fashioned party discipline.

And, symbolically, at least, the ballot confronting all Memphis and Shelby County voters begins with a choice of no fewer than eight presidential tickets, electors for pairs of presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Topping the list are Democrats Obama and Joe Biden and Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin. With time running out, and with the Electoral College system requiring them to fry their fish elsewhere, no member of either ticket has bothered to campaign locally.

Of the six choices which follow the two major-party tickets, three have attracted some note, in Tennessee or elsewhere.

by Jackson Baker

Lamar Alexander

The Libertarian Party slate of Bob Barr (a former Republican congressman from Georgia) and Wayne Root has made modest inroads on the national consciousness for its damn-their-eyes attitude toward both Democrats (too much government) and Republicans (too much social control). Neither Barr nor Root has made a local campaign visit, however, so far as is known.

Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, yet another former member of Congress from Georgia, has been here, however — though without her running mate, Rosa Clemente.

Another visitor to Memphis was the venerable Ralph Nader, running again on the fumes of his reputation made long ago as a consumer advocate par excellence. Nader’s veep partner, Matt Gonzalez, hasn’t come this way, however.

Other pairings are Chuck Baldwin and Darrell Castle, Charles Jay and Thomas L. Knapp, and Brian Moore and Stewart Alexander — all listed on the Tennessee ballot as “independent candidates,” whatever their doctrinal claims.

Outlook: Though Tennessee seems locked up for McCain-Palin, according to the polls, Obama-Biden should win the nation. Skeptics are well within their rights to make arch references to Presidents Dewey and Kerry. For what it’s worth, early voting in Memphis and Tennessee, as elsewhere, has been brisk.

The U.S. Senate race is listed next. Besides Democrat Tuke and Republican Alexander are candidates Edward L. Buck, Christopher G. Fenner, David Gatchell, Ed Lawhorn, Daniel Towers Lewis, and Chris Lugo. Lugo, a Nashvillian, represents the Green Party and made a run-through, in tandem with McKinney, back in August.

Outlook: If Tuke is a praying man, he might qualify for a miracle. Otherwise, Alexander would seem to be a shoo-in. Aside from a certain potential in Shelby County and in Davidson County (Nashville), Tuke, whose name recognition remains minute, has limited prospects.

OTHER CONTESTED RACES

Congress, 7th District: Democrat Randy Morris is a name on the ballot, little more. If Republican incumbent Marsha Blackburn is ever to be challenged, it won’t be this year.

Congress, 8th District: Democrat John Tanner, a blue-dog perennial from Union City, is all by himself on the ballot. Literally, no contest.

Congress, 9th District: Steve Cohen, the first-term Democratic incumbent who now hovers on the edge of national stardom, scored a 4-to-1 win over primary opponent Nikki Tinker, who made a serious, if misdirected, run at him.

by Jackson Baker

Kemp Conrad

None of the three opponents running as independents against him in the general can expect to do better. Not Dewey Clark, Mary Taylor-Shelby Wright, or Newton Jake Ford — though the latter has planted some prominent yard signs of late. Some of these bill him as “N.J. Ford,” which may stir echoes of his late grandfather, the founding patriarch of the well-known funeral home which bears his name. There is no evidence, however, that candidate Ford is drawing support from his extended family, still a political clan to be reckoned with.

State House of Representatives, District 86: For some reason, Republican George T. Edwards feels obliged to challenge Democratic incumbent Barbara Cooper every two years in this reliably Democratic inner-city district. It won’t work this year, either.

State House of Representatives, District 88: Another inner-city district — this one, like Cooper’s, mainly north-side — and another slam-dunk for the Democratic incumbent, Larry Miller. Independent David Vinciarelli‘s only hope was his legal challenge to Miller’s somewhat uncertain residential status, which failed. (Vinciarelli, who had the Republican endorsement in a previous race, was erroneously referred to as the Republican nominee in an earlier draft of this article. A spokesman insists that he shares some of the precepts of both parties.)

State House of Representatives, District 91: This centrally located district is the bailiwick of House Speaker Pro Tem Lois DeBerry. Republican Tim Cook Jr. has negligible hopes.

State House of Representatives, District 93: Tim Cook Sr. has somewhat better prospects for the GOP against longtime Democratic incumbent Mike Kernell, whose son David Kernell, a student at UT-Knoxville, is currently under indictment for hacking Sarah Palin’s e-mail account. Kernell has turned away many a challenger of yore, though, and should do so again.

City Council District 9, Position 1: There’s a real race on here in this special election to replace former councilman Scott McCormick, now president of the Plough Foundation. The main contestants are businessman Kemp Conrad and IBEW business manager Paul Shaffer. Conrad, who started with a wide lead, has official support from the GOP, and Shaffer from the Democrats, but the issue in a somewhat narrowing race will likely be decided by nonpartisan voters. Arnett Montague, an unknown, and former Shelby County commissioner John Willingham, a perennial, are not expected to figure.

Memphis School Board, At Large Position 1: Incumbent Freda Williams should be well-positioned to hold off challengers Menelik Chiremba Fombi and Cynthia A. Gentry.

COUNTY REFERENDA

Ordinance No. 364: This ordinance basically recreates, with more or less the same defined duties, the five positions — sheriff, trustee, assessor, register, and county clerk — which the state Supreme Court ruled did not qualify as constitutional offices on grounds of a technicality. Prospects for passage are good.

Ordinance No. 365: More controversial is this one, which establishes limits of two consecutive four-year terms for the five newly recreated offices. Though favored to prevail, the term-limits ordinance — and only it, along presumably with a companion referendum, City Charter Referendum No. 1, which prescribes similar limits for city officials — has been formally opposed by the Shelby County Democratic Party. Resistance to the term-limits provision among inner-city Democrats is so virulent that, in a controversy that still rages, some unauthorized person or persons succeeded in grafting a box onto the party’s published sample ballot stating opposition to all referendum items, city and county.

Shelby County commissioner Steve Mulroy, a proponent of City Charter Referendum No. 5 (see below), had offered to defray the cost of affixing labels to the party’s sample ballot obscuring the offending box. But apparently copies of the original, unauthorized ballot were being passed out as recently as Sunday, at the Democratic rally mentioned earlier in this article.

CITY REFERENDA

Ordinance No. 5232: This ordinance allows for recall elections of City Council members on the basis of petitions bearing a number of qualified signatures equivalent to 10 percent of those voting in the preceding municipal election. The recall election would take place during the next succeeding general election and, if successful, would create a vacancy that would be filled by vote of the remaining council members.

Ordinance No. 5265: This would require all non-civil-service city employees, including members of city boards and commissions (the board of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art excepted) to live within the city limits of Memphis under pain of discharge. New employees would have six months to arrange compliance.

CITY CHARTER COMMISSION REFERENDA

2008 Referendum No. 1 (Term Limits): Establishes two consecutive four-year terms as the limits for the mayor, council members, and the city court clerk.

2008 Referendum No. 2 (Staggered Terms): Mandates staggered terms for the above offices and proposes a formula to begin the process with the elections of 2011. It also would cause future municipal elections to be held in even-numbered, rather than odd-number, years.

2008 Referendum No. 3 (regarding the potential sale of MLGW): Mandates that any such sale of the city utility or any of its facilities would require prior approval of city voters in a referendum.

2008 Referendum No. 4 (Suspension from Official Duties): Reads “Any elected or appointed official charged with or indicted for official malfeasance or misconduct shall be suspended with pay pending final resolution of the charge.”

2008 Referendum No. 5 (Instant Runoff Voting): Provides a mechanism whereby voters can list candidates in a multi-candidate race in order of preference, so that in cases short when one candidate doesn’t gain a majority, the rankings are weighted so as to produce a winner, obviating the need for a subsequent runoff election.

2008 Referendum No. 6 (Filling Vacancy in the Office of the Mayor): Provides that the City Council chairman, bearing the title of Mayor Pro Tem, shall fill any mayoral vacancy for as much as 180 days, after which another mayor will be elected, either by special election or in the next general election if it occurs within the 180-day period.

Categories
Cover Feature News

As the World Turns …

So we have gotten to the point that an actress playing a ditzy vice-presidential candidate can take turns before the camera with her look-alike — a vice-presidential candidate acting on TV — and it’s hard to tell the difference. Such was the case last weekend on Saturday Night Live when Tina Fey and Republican nominee Sarah Palin traded time on stage, Fey doing a send-up of Palin, and Palin sending up … well, Palin.

One of the skits had actor Alec Baldwin, a frequent host on the show, “mistaking” the real Alaska governor for the talented mime Fey doing an impression of Palin, whom Baldwin described as “that horrible woman,” the enemy of “all that we stand for.” Two weeks earlier on the same show, Fey had done a skit in which she, as Palin, babbled incoherently when asked about the nation’s ongoing financial crisis. Viewers who had earlier seen the actual candidate, asked the same question by CBS’s Katie Couric, babble the same disconnected talking points, realized that the two takes — the real and the fictional — overlapped to the point of being virtually identical.

Was it any wonder that “Palin” — or rather, Palin — winked at us in her nationally televised debate with Democratic counterpart Joe Biden (or someone we could only presume was the bona fide Joe Biden; the hair plugs looked like Biden’s, anyhow).

In other words, what is this? Prime time or the End Time? Is our political system devolving into soap opera? Or revolution?

The confusion isn’t just on the national scene. Consider this: A Memphis state representative, Democrat Mike Kernell, is running for reelection at a time when his son, 20-year-old UT student David Kernell, is under a federal felony indictment for hacking into the e-mail account of Sarah Palin (the real one). Some of the Alaska governor’s e-mails, gleaned from that account, were posted online, and, rather than smacking of high drama and political intrigue, they read like soap opera, one friend dishing to another.

Representative Kernell’s GOP opponent, a Memphis police officer named Tim Cook, responded to the Kernell family’s predicament with a statement that made one of the most rapid, self-canceling segues from concern to condemnation on record:

“When I heard the rumor that Mike Kernell’s son was the one responsible for hacking into the Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s e-mail, I was stunned. As a father, I sympathize with Mike Kernell and can understand what he is going through as a father. And I will pray for him and his family during this ordeal.

“However, this clearly shows what family values Democrat Mike Kernell has taught his children. It reflects the values of his 34 years as a state representative in and for the Democratic Party. These are not the type of values the citizens want in their representatives.”

Whereupon Cook went on to suggest a possible media conspiracy to ignore an alleged relationship between David Kernell and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe.

Then there’s a nearby state Senate race going on in neighboring Tipton and Fayette counties featuring a candidate, Democrat Randy Camp, who’s trying to simultaneously fend off both his Republican challenger, Dolores Gresham, and his ex-wive and former in-laws, who are carrying on a letter-writing campaign against him based on his alleged former derelictions as a husband. (Something of the same kind already had befallen Ray Butler, a Republican candidate for Shelby County trustee, whose ex-wife publicly campaigned for Democrat Paul Mattila, the winner in August’s countywide general election.)

Down in Mississippi, a U.S. Senate race is going on between Republican Roger Wicker, an interim fill-in for the now retired Trent Lott, and Democrat Ronnie Musgrove, the state’s former governor. As Memphis-area TV viewers have noted, these white-haired bespectacled look-alikes have thrown a plethora of attacks at each other, ranging from Wicker’s accusation that Musgrove virtually bankrupted the state as governor to Musgrove’s charge that Wicker has done little more in office than vote repeatedly to raise his own pay.

The mud-slinging match has gotten so bad that, in the course of a recent televised debate between the two, a Tupelo journalist asked the candidates, former roommates when they both served in the Mississippi state Senate, how they could sleep at night.

Yet beneath all the tomfoolery and Jerry Springer-isms of the current election season, something very much in earnest is going on: a struggle for power that could determine the fate of municipalities, states, and nations.

That battle in Mississippi, for example, could be crucial in determining whether Democrats — who are certain, it is generally acknowledged, to enlarge their majority in the Senate — can reach the magic number of 60, which would empower them to vote closure on debate and render party initiatives filibuster-proof in the next session of Congress.

A vitally interested spectator is Democratic nominee Obama himself, whose plans for health-care legislation and his vaunted revisions of the tax code in favor of “95 percent of Americans” could well depend on the outcome. Ironically enough, Musgrove has been loath, just as Wicker has charged, to make an explicit endorsement of Obama or even to mention him by name. (His preferred formulation: “I will support all the nominees of my party.”) Even so, Musgrove’s case is Obama’s own, for the reasons stated — though it is also true that the two competing roomies not only look alike, they seem to think alike on a variety of issues, both considering themselves conversatives — especially on social issues like abortion and gun rights.

And that duke-out between Camp and Gresham in state Senate District 26? Forget the interventions of the in-laws. That’s essentially a sideshow. What’s really at stake is whether the Republicans will continue to control the state Senate in Tennessee, a state which seems to be running in a slightly different direction from the nation. (As one example of the phenomenon, incumbent U.S. senator Lamar Alexander is universally regarded as a shoo-in over the dogged if underfinanced Nashville lawyer and ex-Marine Bob Tuke, who carries the Democratic party standard against him.)

The District 26 seat is the one that was held for 44 years by John Wilder of Somerville, the retiring Titan who was dethroned by Republican Ron Ramsey of Blountville for the position of lieutenant governor back in January 2007. (The Democrats have since taken revenge of sorts on maverick Democrat Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville, who unexpectedly voted against the party grain to give Ramsey the edge over Wilder, after the state Democratic executive committee voted to nullify her narrow 19-vote primary victory this year over lawyer Tim Barnes — on the grounds that the outcome was “incurably uncertain” — the party committees in the three counties comprising District 26 promptly voted to make Barnes the nominee. Kurita, who did indeed have considerable Republican support, in lieu of an official GOP candidate, is running a long-odds write-in campaign.)

Should three crucial Senate contests, including District 26, go the Democrats’ way, the next state Senate speaker and lieutenant governor will almost certainly be current Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle of Memphis. If even a single one of those races goes for the GOP, Ramsey’s Republicans will remain in charge.

The GOP, in fact, has theoretical chances of capturing the state House, as well, needing only a turnaround of four seats statewide to do so. Hence, the mild flurry of excitement in Republican ranks over the Kernell affair. Cook, however, seems to be getting less support from the party than a string of previous opponents did against Kernell — a deceptively laid-back progressive who has been undefeated for nigh on three decades.

Turning full cycle back to Sarah Palin: There is no doubt that the previously unknown governor from the far north is a personality, as cover-worthy on the nation’s supermarket tabloids as any misbehaving show-biz nymphet. There is also no doubt that she has, as all the analysts seem to agree, animated the Republican Party’s base. Where doubt exists is whether the candidate now identified with the apochryphal line “I can see Russia from my house” can see the newly grave and mounting national dilemmas clearly enough to serve should the Republicans’ main man, Arizona senator John McCain, be elected and subsequently prove unable, through death or disability, to continue as president.

That’s just one of the realities that lie behind the giddy public face of a campaign year that has all too often masqueraded as an entertainment.

(Next week in Politics: a run-through of selected races on the November ballot and their likely outcome)

Shelby Dems Go Ballistic:
The Case of the Contraband Ballot

Anybody who has attended a meeting of the Shelby County Commission since Sidney Chism got elected to it back in 2006 has no doubt where the former Teamster leader and onetime Democratic Party chairman stands on the issue of term limits for elected officials. Chism, whose normal mien is robust and affable, becomes hoarse and virtually apoplectic when the issue is even discussed, seeing it as a means whereby the future Republican minority in Shelby County (for such, virtually all observers concede, is the demographic prospect) intends forevermore to straitjacket and tame the Democratic majority.

Roger Wicker and Ronnie Musgrove

“This is the first time a majority has ever voluntarily handed over power to a minority” was Chism’s refrain countless times during the debates earlier this year that led to referenda featuring two different versions of term limits for Shelby County elected officials. The first variant of the idea — prescribing three four-year terms as the max for the county mayor, county commissioners, and five newly defined countywide offices — went on the August election ballot and represented something of a triumph for Chism, who had thundered vigorously whenever the subject of term limits came up.

He had something of a point. The commission, which devoted innumerable hours, considerable heat, and every now and then a modicum of light to the issue of charter revision last year and this, had never been enjoined to do or say anything about term limits. All the commission had been faced with, as a result of a January 2007 finding by the state Supreme Court, was a need to re-create in its charter the five offices — sheriff, trustee, assessor, register, and county clerk — which had been invalidated on a technicality by the court.

At length, during the course of many contentious meetings, augmented by a series of public forums, a plethora of other issues crept into discussions — term limits, a popular concept in the white Republican government-distrusting suburbs, prominent among them. Chism did his best to keep the issue off the ballot, and he and various commission allies — mainly Democratic and mainly black — did the next best thing in getting the three-term proposition on, especially since it would have raised the existing limits on future mayors and commissioners by a whole four-year term.

But that proposition lost in August, by a hair. And Chism and his allies had shot their wad. Try as they might, fulminate as they would, they could not prevent a commission majority, cowed by the August defeat of the relatively liberal three-term provision, from putting together a new series of referenda, including one imposing a stricter two-term limit on the five redefined county offices. The Shelby County mayor and the 13 members of the commission already were limited to two terms as the result of a 1994 referendum which, after the narrow failure of the August proposition, would remain in effect.

The term “ballistic” is probably too mild a descriptor for the state of mind this fact has induced in the Chism wing of the county commission and, equally importantly, of the Shelby County Democratic Party, whose steering committee is dominated by Chism partisans.

Fade to this past week, when the first of an estimated 60,000 copies of official party voter guides rolled off the presses at A-1 Print Services on Brooks Road and got seen by party cadres. The letter-sized, full-color sample ballot bore mugshots of the party’s nominees and endorsed candidates: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bob Tuke for U.S. Senate, Steve Cohen for Congress, etc., etc., through various legislative candidates and a candidate for the Memphis school board.

So far, nothing out of the ordinary. It’s the kind of thing both major political parties and various other organizations that endorse candidates do just before election time. Only one problem: Mixed in with the candidates’ portraits is a small but prominent box bearing the message: “Vote on Referendums/ SAY NO TO REFERENDUMS.

What did we say about the word “ballistic”? Reassign it to numerous aggrieved Democrats, both executive committee members and rank and file, who were never consulted about the all-encompassing wording and were now prepared to out-Chism Chism in their outrage. Not to mention the County Commission majority, who had worked all those months to put together a referendum package. Nor the seven members of the Memphis Charter Commission, who had labored even longer to put together a package of referenda revising the city charter.

“SAY NO TO REFERENDUMS”: That took in a lot of territory — two commission-approved options (one merely reestablishing the five redefined county offices, another establishing a two-term limit for them); two City Council ordinances (one laying down the conditions for recalling officials, another establishing revised residency requirements for certain classes of city employees); and six recommended revisions to the city charter proper.

Ironically, it is only these last six ballot options — all relating to the city charter — that each go by the name of “referendum.” The county term-limits provision so loathed by Chism and his cadres on the Democratic steering committee is termed an “ordinance.” Talk about drowning the baby with the bathwater! Here were nine other offspring going down the drain along with the targeted one.

Although much of the preliminary activity that resulted in the publication of the party ballot is still shrouded in mystery, the facts would seem to be these: At the September meeting of the full Democratic executive committee, a resounding majority of the members present voted to reject the ballot initiative for county term limits. At the October meeting of the party steering committee, which is the executive committee’s smaller governing core, county commissioner Steve Mulroy, the leading local proponent of city-charter referendum Number Five, pitched the initiative, which would approve an instant runoff formula for municipal elections. The issue was not approved, on the grounds, said party vice-chair Cherry Davis, that the steering committee had not had ample opportunity to study the initiative. Period. Those are apparently the only formal actions ever taken by an established organ of the Shelby County Democratic Party.

Who then approved the ballot with its mischievous box on “referendums”? Apparently not party chairman Keith Norman, who was handily reelected early this year despite widespread criticism of his absentee, hands-off style. It was Norman, in fact, who, along with Mulroy, called a press conference Monday to vent criticism of the suspect ballot. Typically, groused Norman’s critics, the chairman was a no-show at the press conference, which was presided over in his absence by city councilman and city charter commission chairman Myron Lowery, Mulroy, Councilman Shea Flinn, local NAACP chair Johnnie Turner, steering committee member Lynn Strickland, and former party chairman David Cocke.

Chism was the prime suspect as the prime mover of the unauthorized mystery ballot. It was party members close to him who delivered it to the printer. But the commissioner declined to take credit Monday, saying, “I had nothing to do with it. Didn’t even know about it. But I agree with it!”

What the protesting group at the press conference asked was that those copies of the sample ballot — the great remainder — that had not been passed out should have labels pasted over the offending box before being distributed. In a meeting of the steering committee that took place later Monday, various alternative actions were reportedly discussed, including an offer from Mulroy to foot the bill for the labels.

Some who were there described the steering committee meeting, in part, as a “bash Mulroy” session. That sentiment, such as it was, emanated from the Chism cadres, who apparently sought an apology from the commissioner for his part in voicing public dissent concerning the suspect ballot. Certainly Chism himself had earlier expressed himself adversely: “Who appointed Steve Mulroy to speak for Democrats?” he had said.

A resolution of sorts to this proverbial Mell of a Hess was finally reached at Monday night’s steering committee meeting. The committee voted to have one more press conference, presided over by Mulroy and Norman, which would clarify the fact that only one act of opposition — to the term-limits resoluion — had ever been resolved on by the Shelby County Democratic Party. And the committee did in fact accept Mulroy’s offer to pay for new labels, to be pasted over the offending boxes, pointing out that reality.

Nobody was certain what the effect of the brouhaha would be on voters contemplating the affected ballot provisions. The affair could result in their damnation. But it could equally well end in a backlash favoring the 10 referenda, city and county. Given that early voting is now well under way, either reaction is entirely possible.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

I am going to file a complaint against myself. I’m not

sure how or why or to whom, but I’m going to file one. For some

reason, Sarah “Betchabygollywow” Palin has done this in her home state of Alaska and it’s working fairly well so far at keeping her from having to answer questions in the investigation she is trying to stall

into whether or not she abused her power as governor when she fired public safety commissioner Walt Monegan for not firing her sister’s ex-husband, Alaska state trooper Mike Wooten.

I’ll admit I don’t really understand it completely. Apparently, it has something to do with a legislative investigation versus a state personnel board investigation, and now it appears that Palin might have tampered with her ex-brother-in-law’s worker’s compensation (which was denied after he was in an accident while on duty and hurt his back). A Freedom of Information Act request from the legislative investigators for e-mails from Palin’s personal Yahoo account (which she apparently misused to conduct state business, thereby keeping her actions secret, or so she hoped) was met with an answer from her office: something to the tune of yes, we’ll turn over the e-mails, but it’s going to cost you $88,000 for the paper documents.

Hmmm. What are they using in their printer? Hand-crafted parchment made from near-extinct sheep? Probably. Any action to endanger living things seems to be fine with the Palins. Look at their house. There are more heads on the walls than a wig warehouse. I wonder if they used the same taxidermist for all those animals as they used to stuff John McCain. He looks so lifelike, until he opens his mouth. It’s then obvious that he is really dead and there’s a tape machine installed in him that channels Ronald Reagan.

But I digress and fall into smear tactics. We wouldn’t want that to happen now, would we? I think it’s great that Sarah Pail is trying to deflect her ailin’ and flailin’ about her probably illegal e-mailin’ by assailin’ Barack Obama about something that happened when he was 8 years old and studying reading, writing, and arithmetic without failin’, which I guess is why he is now “elite,” instead of dumbed down like Palin. And the way she prides herself on this knowledge of his “terrorist ties” by reading about it in “my copy of The New York Times” as a way of trying to rebound from her idiotic remark to Katie Couric that reflected the fact that she doesn’t read newspapers is priceless. It’s so contrived and desperate and humiliating, it’s almost charming in a very, very weird way.

But then, everything about her is weird. Just before sitting down to write this, I watched her give a speech in Clearwater, Florida, which has my brain so scrambled that I might be making much less sense here than even Palin does when she non-answers a question. I was not really paying attention to her or what she was saying because I just can’t listen to that voice (I mean, I’m not making fun here; I really can’t hear it without scouring around searching for pills of some sort), but I was mesmerized by her crowd of supporters. If there was one black person in that entire crowd of people, he or she was hiding and doing a great job of it. I mean it. See if any of it is on YouTube yet. Or see if any of her speeches are on there and see if there is one black person anywhere in sight. Do we really want another Great White Hope for any reason in the United States in this century? Of course, it may be that she has very few African-American supporters. Imagine that. Oh. Wait. I forgot. Race is not an issue in this election. Please excuse me. I’d best file an ethics complaint against myself to keep from having to answer any gosh darn questions about that one, ya know? But that is going to take some more research into the trailer-park saga of Sarah Palin’s attack on her ex-brother-in-law. Unless, of course, all of that comes out when her aides and her husband stop breaking the law this week and abide by the subpoenas that were issued to them to comply by answering questions in the investigation. It could be an interesting showdown, but then again, it could have the same outcome as all of the investigations into the administration of their buddy, George W. Bush: more of the same old game of getting away with anything they want. I just hope no polar bears or wolves get killed in the process.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

October Surprises

It has long been a tradition in American presidential races for there to be an “October surprise” — a sometimes game-changing development that impacts the election in the waning days of the campaign.

In the 1972 contest between Republican incumbent Richard Nixon

and Democratic challenger George McGovern, for example, Nixon’s secretary of state Henry Kissinger announced that “peace was at hand” in Vietnam. It wasn’t, of course, but even if it had been, it’s unlikely McGovern would have done much better than he did in the general election.

In 1992, when George H.W. Bush was trying to hold off challenger Bill Clinton, four days before the election, independent counsel Lawrence Walsh announced that Bush’s defense secretary Caspar Weinberger was being indicted in the investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal. Republicans accused Walsh of timing the indictment to influence voters against Bush. Did it work? Hard to say. But it certainly didn’t hurt Clinton’s chances.

One of the oddest October surprises occurred in the George W. Bush-Al Gore contest of 2000 (at least, it was odd considering the source). Less than a week before Election Day, Fox News reporter Carl Cameron uncovered and reported on Bush’s decades-old drunk-driving arrest in Maine. Bush won, anyway, and promptly began crafting the eight years of non-peace and non-prosperity we Americans are enjoying today.

There are other examples, of course, including the last-minute video plea from Osama bin Laden in 2004 to vote for John Kerry. (With friends like that, Kerry didn’t need enemies.)

As October 2008 approaches its mid-point, we can only imagine what lies in store in the next three weeks. The McCain-Palin ticket languishes in the polls, both nationally and in several critical swing states. The GOP ticket has already announced — and followed through on that announcement — that it was going to “go negative.” This, despite McCain’s pledge not to do so.

In recent days, McCain has called Obama a liar and “dishonorable” and asked rhetorically, “Who is Barack Obama,” hinting at dark secrets in his opponent’s past. Palin accuses Obama in her stump speeches of “palling around with terrorists.” These attacks are beneath contempt and are the hallmarks of a campaign that is out of ideas. The Obama team has responded with tough personal attacks of its own on McCain and Palin, though the name-calling hasn’t been as reckless.

As the country struggles with a confidence-shaking economic meltdown, unfinished and bloody business in Iraq and Afghanistan, and soaring energy costs, we can only hope that the candidates will move past this ugliness and get back to the real issues soon.

Now that would be a real October surprise.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Tangling in Tennessee

NASHVILLE — The second of two presidential debates to be held within spitting distance of Memphis was scheduled to take place in the state’s capital on Tuesday night, and various influential Memphians — including Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, who thereby missed Tuesday’s joint city-county forum on consolidation — were on hand to kibitz.

Among those conspicuous by their attendance were former 9th District congressman Harold Ford Jr., who was featured, either as panelist or as subject, in several of the warm-up events. (The political future of Ford, now head of the right/centrist Democratic Leadership Council, became a subject in a Monday forum on “political civility” presided over by Governor Phil Bredesen.)

The debate at Belmont University between Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican John McCain came at a crucial point in the presidential race, with various polls showing McCain falling behind Obama. McCain was generally credited with a vigorous performance in the debate in Oxford, Mississippi, two weeks ago, as was his running mate, Sarah Palin, in her contest with Democrat Joe Biden last week in St. Louis.

But in both cases, polls showed the Democrat to have fared better.

(In-depth reports on this and the previous two debate events can also be found at memphisflyer.com.)

• U.S. senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican up for reelection, got some big-time help from Democratic friends last Friday night. Memphis mayor Willie Herenton hosted a reception for Alexander at the Majestic Grille in downtown Memphis in tandem with MPact Memphis, 100 Black Men, and the Black Business Association of Memphis. A C Wharton, who along with Herenton has endorsed Alexander, was also an attendee.

The affair was described by Alexander’s staff as “political” but not a campaign event. The senator faces opposition in November from Democratic nominee Bob Tuke of Nashville.

Both in a brief interview and in his prepared remarks, Alexander, the GOP’s caucus chairman in the Senate, defended the amended $700 billion bailout bill passed by both houses of Congress and signed on Friday by President George Bush.

Acknowledging that the bailout plan was unpopular with the American public, Alexander compared the situation confronting members of Congress to one in which “a big ole wreck out on the highway” had occurred, blocking other drivers whose first instinct was to get angry and blame the careless drivers who’d caused the accident.

Among the blocked vehicles might be one car “carrying money for your auto loan,” others carrying the funds for “your mortgage loan or somebody’s farm credit loan,” and yet another “carrying the money for your payroll check.” Under those circumstances, the senator argued, the only feasible thing to do was to clear the highway of the obstructing vehicles, “getting ’em off the highway,” so that ordinary commerce could resume.

That, in essence, was what had been done with the bailout package. “Next week we can have our philosophical discussion about what we can do so as not to have another wreck,” Alexander said. “But this was step one in making this economic downturn shorter and easier to get out of.”

In his introduction of Alexander, Herenton praised the senator for his work on behalf of a “rescue package vital to this community getting back on its feet.” Boasting a friendship with Alexander that went back two decades (“three-and-a-half decades,” Alexander would offer by way of correction), the Memphis mayor said, “His service deserves the support of all great American thinkers and all great Tennesseans.”

Alexander told reporters the bailout package had been improved during the past week with add-ons. The so-called extenders included several provisions useful to Tennesseans, including a continuation of the state and local sales-tax deduction for Tennessee residents and a solar tax credit that would benefit Sharp Manufacturing.

Asked to appraise last week’s debate performance by Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Alexander said that Palin had performed well in the debate, especially when compared to Democratic opponent Joe Biden, whose Washington insider lingo might strike most Americans as “a foreign language.”

The senator added, “That was the second time — the first was the convention — when she had to get up in front of 70 million Americans and perform. Not many people could do that.”

• Tennessee’s other Republican senator, Bob Corker, had been one of the chief critics of the original $700 billion bailout package but was among those who overwhelmingly approved it last week. Corker said he was willing to abide the newest version of the bill, because the measure had become “a purchase of assets” and not an “expenditure” — a bill for “Main Street” and not “Wall Street.”

Overall, said Corker in a conference call with Tennessee reporters on Thursday, the bill was necessary to “create liquidity in the financial system,” including the credit markets normally accessed by small businesses and ordinary purchasers.

He had been skeptical when the plan was first outlined almost three weeks ago by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson but, after participating in the revision process himself, had been satisfied by early changes that, he said, protected taxpayers, provided accountability and oversight, and limited exorbitant executive pay.

Most important of all, “100 percent of any income made will go toward paying down the debt,” Corker said in a news release. “If our resources are invested properly, the federal government will get all of its money back and taxpayers may even see a return on the investment.”

This, he would elaborate on the conference call, distinguished the bailout bill from the Bush-sponsored “stimulus” package enacted earlier this year, which Corker opposed. “That money was thrown into a ditch. This money we have a chance of getting back.”

Corker told reporters that the much-vaunted tax-break “extenders” to the bill to attract votes not only weren’t an incentive for himself but really didn’t change the final package. “They are related but have very little effect on each other. I wish [the extension package] hadn’t been included,” said Corker, who thought it might attract more Republican members when the House voted again on Friday but could also repulse the “Blue Dog” or conservative Democrats who had been induced to vote for the bill when it first came before the House on Monday.

Indeed, 8th District congressman John Tanner professed outrage at the additions and went through a process of rethinking his original vote for the bill.

“Some of us in this body are so thoroughly disgusted with the other body right now and the way this bill has been handled,” Tanner said in a speech on the House floor. “We’ve found that it doesn’t take a lot of political courage to spend other people’s money who can’t vote.”

But when push came to shove, Tanner voted for the bill as amended by the Senate, which passed the House handily this time, 263-171.

“When the [Treasury] secretary came over here with a bill, it was a bailout. It was public risk and private gain,” Tanner said during debate on the bill. “By the wisdom of the body here, we put Section 134 — the ‘recoupment’ clause — in, which now makes it private risk and public gain, which is the way it ought to be. It is now a situation where we’re not talking about bailing out Wall Street or the high-flyers. If, at the end of the day, there is a shortfall to the treasury of the United States, then [the financial industry] will be assessed that shortfall, and the treasury will be made whole.”

Voting again for the bill, as he did earlier last week, was 9th District congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis, who had pushed vigorously for what may have been a key piece of the add-on bait that switched votes from the “nay” side to the “aye” column.

Cohen had prepared his own legislation raising the deposit-insurance ceiling of the FDIC. The congressman had sought an increase to $200,000. The final bill saw the ceiling rise to $250,000.

The chief exception on the local congressional front was the 7th District’s Marsha Blackburn, who voted against the bailout legislation both times it came before the House and appeared frequently on a variety of TV talk shows as a vigorous opponent.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Election 2008

John McCain has resurrected the old Republican playbook: Become a disqualifying factor in painting your opponent as unacceptable, and use smear on top of smear when you have nothing left to say about your own policies.

It works on gullible, uninformed voters who will support the “hot chick” or the “hero guy.” But for most of us, it doesn’t work any more. We’ve had eight years of these kinds of tactics. Karl Rove was one of the best at it. He could turn black into white and lies into “truth.”

Sarah Palin is an actor, and she played a credible politician in the vice-presidential debate. But I have seen a lot of actors in my day, and her performance was just that: a performance. If McCain and Palin are elected, the next four years will be like the last eight years. Only the names will have changed.

Palin is back on the stump, trying to tie Obama to former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. But being on a charity board with the guy is not the same as endorsing his conduct of 40 years ago, when Obama was 8 years old. The American people can surely figure that one out — except maybe some residents in East Tennessee, where any candidate who has a fish decal on the trunk of his car, wears a “WWJD” bracelet, and isn’t black is their kind of guy.

Joe M. Spitzer

Memphis

Imagine you’ve just received documents in the mail about your financial situation — scary information that your retirement funds are in danger, your savings and investments are not as robust as you’d been led to believe, and that soon your paycheck will be affected.

Two teams appear offering to help you figure this stuff out. One team talks a bit about the numbers. Some of what they say makes sense, some of it sounds half-baked, but at least you get the notion that these guys have experience with this kind of situation and have some sort of plan to fix it.

The other team gets all chummy and offers you a can of your favorite beer. They ask about your family and point out that they are “just folks” from down the street, same as you, no pretenses, no glib intellectualism. They give you a friendly squeeze on the shoulder. “We’re just regular guys, here to help,” they say. When pressed for specifics, they mutter some vague comment about how the other team has connections with terrorists.

You’d probably toss the second team out of your house because you’d recognize that their fake attempt at friendliness shows they have something to hide and nothing to offer.

Rodney Stells

Memphis

A Canadian friend recently asked me, “How could Americans possibly elect yet another president who wants to give more tax breaks to the richest 1 percent of your people?” 

I had to explain that a great number of factors come into play in American politics: Roughly 50 percent of Americans can’t read above a fifth-grade level, thereby making it hard for them to keep up with candidates’ records and points of view; evangelical Christians will vote for any candidate who says he opposes abortion, even if that candidate has murdered a bus load of nuns in front of 100 witnesses and openly advocates nuking Russia. I further pointed out that even Sarah Palin is far more knowledgeable about economics and foreign policy than 95 percent of Americans. 

Sadly, we have lost our lead as the nation with the highest living standard (that position is now held by Great Britain). We have lost our lead in science education and in respect around the world. Now our economy is failing due to eight years of rampant deregulation and lack of oversight from federal agencies. Most of this can be directly attributed to an uninformed electorate that bases decisions on emotions rather than reasoning. 

I recently read a letter to the editor decrying the awful “mess” of the Clinton years. I’d love a mess like that again: the highest budget surplus in history, the greatest prosperity in decades, and respect around the world that we will likely never experience again. 

Jim Brasfield

Collierville

With the election not far off, the political yard signs are starting to appear. As I drive around neighborhoods, I see signs reading “McCain/Palin” and “Obama/Cohen.” What happened to Joe Biden? Guess he’s not very well liked in the Mid-South.

Joe Mercer

Memphis

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Political Party

Jerry Lee Lewis didn’t get his nickname, “The Killer,” because he killed somebody. Mississippi’s piano-rocker acquired his dangerous-sounding moniker because he frequently used the term as a generic nickname for friends and acquaintances. The Killer’s verbal tic bounced back, establishing an appropriate brand name for rock’s iconic wild man.

I mention all of this in prelude to a story about something weird that happened a little southeast of the Killer’s ranch — last Friday, in the Grove at Ole Miss — where a huge crowd assembled to watch presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama duke it out via jumbotron. Fierce supporters of McCain and Obama threw a peaceful party there in honor of the Democratic process. At that party, both groups decided that — whether they liked it or not — the time for serious change had finally arrived.

When McCain called himself a “maverick” for the umpteenth time, he did himself no favors. Instead of branding himself, the 72-year-old politician transformed himself into the pimply geek who’s trying to prove he’s tough. And everybody in the Grove felt it.

The crowd at Ole Miss was thick with Republicans. Given the sheer number of cute teenage girls with McCain’s name stitched across the ass of their Daisy Dukes, it’s probably safe to assume that conservatives were a strong but conflicted majority, possibly unable to reconcile their politics with their politicians (let alone the cut of their daughters’ britches). One blond coed felt comfortable enough to wear a button reading “I’m Pro-Gun” next to another button reading “I’m Anti-Obama.” But for all this Republicanism, both candidates were cheered throughout the debate, with McCain receiving oohs and aahs for the tough shots he fired across the bow of an opponent he couldn’t look in the eye. As a pugilistic spectator sport, it seemed clear that from this crowd’s perspective, the grumpy disabled vet was going to emerge a battered but certain winner. And so it should have been.

No matter what you may think of his policies, Obama is a lousy debater. He stammers and parses like John Kerry doing a comic impression of a John Kerry impersonator. Nevertheless, Obama’s biggest ideas — like delivering a tax cut to 95 percent of Americans — still seemed to make their way through to the consciousness of working-class voters and Republicans who’ve grown weary of trickle-down theories and extreme Reaganomics. His reminder that McCain once crooned “Bomb, bomb Iran,” to the tune of an old Beach Boys song didn’t have to be smoothly delivered.

When McCain reminded viewers about his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, a bipartisan wave of disapproving moans rumbled through the crowd. There was no cheering countermeasure, no chants of “USA, USA.” There was instead a palpable sense that even in the deep-red state of Mississippi, where chicks dig guns and detest Democrats, war is losing its luster.

In Denver and St. Paul during the political conventions, the streets were feverish with protest and disagreement. Oxford’s debate crowd was, on the other hand, entirely civil. With the possible exception of one man who screamed “Hit ’em in the mouth” when moderator Jim Lehrer asked the candidates how they planned to handle Iran, McCain was easily the angriest person in Oxford.

Considering the debates of 2000 and 2004, there’s nothing to suggest that reasonable answers win presidential debates. But even as a sign reading “Palin’s a Fox” was toted from the Grove by some resolutely conservative church lady, the TV pundits were calling the debate a draw and giving a slight advantage to Obama. Flash polls showed that the Democrat won by especially large margins among independents.

There was no bragging among conservatives in the Ole Miss parking lots after the show. There was certainly nothing to rival the cocky displays in New York on the last night of the Republican National Convention in 2004, after Bush was recoronated at Madison Square Garden.

Southerners have a gift for masking their various hatreds beneath the thin but convincing veneer of civility. But something else happened in Oxford last week: A calm cross section of the American South came together to eat, dance, listen, and ultimately, to change.

Goodness gracious. Great balls of fire.

Chris Davis is a Flyer staff writer.