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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

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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.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

A Master Vision

We have seen the future, and it consists of, among other things, one million new trees. We frankly don’t know how much of that promise is literal and how much is figurative, but the scope of the proposed planting — disclosed with much else to members of the Memphis Rotary Club on Tuesday by

Rick Masson, executive director of the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy — is appropriately grand. After all, Shelby Farms Park, the subject of Masson’s prospectus, is the nation’s largest continuous urban park, and it has remained so despite numerous no doubt well-intentioned efforts over the past few decades to “develop” it or fragment it for commercial or quasi-commercial purpose.

All of those ambitious schemes, fended off by numerous defenders of the environment, became a thing of the past with the establishment in 2006 by Shelby County government of the SFPC, a public-private body which has now produced a “master plan.” The plan, approved by the County Commission in August, promises changes over the next 20 years that are sweeping and even breathtaking but are basically extensions of the natural-park concept which already exists.

The master plan is subtitled “One park, one million trees, twelve landscapes,” and it will proceed, said Masson, in four phases of five years each. The first of these, costing $100 million, will see the beginnings of the massive reforestation, the construction of a new Plough Park playground and bridges and other connectors between the park’s several “landscapes,” and the three-fold expansion of Patriot Lake, which is already the signature premise on the property and is destined to become more so, accommodating virtually every known form of water activity, a boardwalk, and an amphitheatre.

And, as the TV ads used to say, there is “more, more, more!” We can hardly wait to see it, and we congratulate Masson, the governing board and staff of SFPC, county government, the far-sighted county office-holders who saw things through to this point, the designing firms who have produced this vision, and the various donors, large and small, institutional and private, who have contributed to the fulfillment of it.

Up Against It

With roughly a month to go in what has already been a heated race for the presidency, it is probably futile to expect our nation’s politicians to forgo partisan rhetoric long enough to cooperate on a plan to rescue both Wall Street and Main Street, not to mention the rest of the world, from a looming economic catastrophe.

So far Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have each, perhaps understandably, had difficulty decoupling their own exhortations for national unity from the same old boilerplate recriminations against each other and against the opposition party.

Shame on the demagogues in both parties who couldn’t stop politicking long enough to agree on a plan when the issue came to a congressional vote early this week.

Next time will have to be the charm. This is a deadly game, and we won’t get three strikes.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Win, Lose, or Draw?

John McCain, the old warrior, came to Oxford, Mississippi, last Friday to punch out an opponent. Barack Obama, the former law professor, came to take part in a conversation that he presumed would favorably showcase his elegance and expertise.

That was the story of the first presidential debate at Ole Miss’ Gertrude Ford Center, and it should have been prefigured by the way in which the previous week had gone. On the previous Wednesday, as we all subsequently learned, Democrat Obama reached out to Republican McCain to see if the two might make a joint statement concerning the ongoing bailout negotiations in Washington.

McCain’s response was to call a press conference in which he made the shocker announcement that he intended to “suspend” campaigning and return to Washington to do … whatever. And this could well mean he would miss the much-ballyhooed one-on-one down in Oxford. Meanwhile, he let it be understood that Obama could follow him to Washington if he cared to.

In the sequel, we all saw the photo-op shots of McCain at the conference table three seats to the right of President Bush, and, sure enough, there was Obama three seats to the left. God only knows what either of them contributed to a dialogue that, as an anxious and stupefied financial world would learn this week, led to no immediate agreement.

Meanwhile, down in Oxford, preparations for the debate went on feverishly if somewhat nervously, in the knowledge that Obama would definitely be down for something — a “town hall” meeting if nothing else. And when, on Friday morning, McCain finally allowed as how he’d be there, too, all seemed well.

If the Arizona senator had wanted center stage, he’d got it, for better or for worse. Had his off-again/on-again attitude toward the debate stamped him as a waffler? Or would he know how to use the spotlight, now that it was turned fully on himself?

In either case, the initiative was McCain’s. If it hadn’t been obvious before, it certainly was when, only minutes before showtime, Cindy McCain came onstage for an unexpected cameo just when Janet Brown, executive director of the Commission for Presidential Debates, was getting ready to say her lines in the ritual dog-and-pony show that preceded the debate proper.

It was obvious in the candidates’ characteristic tics as the debate wore on. As one of the network summaries would note, McCain uttered countless variations on the phrase “Senator Obama doesn’t understand,” meanwhile looking stonily ahead. Obama’s refrain, on the other hand, was agreeable in the extreme, consisting of frequent nods of the head as his adversary talked, followed by equivocations beginning, “Senator McCain [alternately, “John”] is right.”

All of this came off unpredictably. In the immediate aftermath, a reporter for the BBC began his TV stand-up with these words: “Whatever the spin doctors will say, the reality is that Barack Obama has always found it hard to match his debating skills with his inspiring oratory. John McCain was far more aggressive on foreign policy. He made his experience count.”

And there was this, from Rhodes College professor (and sometime blogger) Michael Nelson, a longtime pol-watcher who has written several books on political campaigns and the presidency: “McCain didn’t look like an old man!” Meaning that he came off as seasoned rather than doddering.

But the first poll soundings, like one from CBS giving Obama a 14-point edge among uncommitted voters and another from CNN showing a 51-38 percent differential, seemed clearly to lean toward the Democrat.

Some key to this disconjunction may lie in the curve thrown the two aspirants right off the bat by moderator Jim Lehrer, who announced: “Tonight’s [debate] will primarily be about foreign policy and national security, which, by definition, includes the global financial crisis.”

As translated into what actually ensued, what he meant was that issues relating to “foreign policy and national security” weren’t touched, even tangentially, until some 30 minutes into the hour-and-a-half proceedings, when Lehrer happened to ask a more or less pro forma question about the economic impact of spending on the Iraq war.

In the half hour preceding that foot-in-the-door on what had been billed as a foreign policy debate, McCain and Obama traded licks on the ongoing financial crisis, focusing rather more on their standard economic boilerplate than on the current bailout crisis itself.

Each of them deplored the moment in the roundest terms. Obama: “We are at a defining moment in our history. Our nation is involved in two wars, and we are going through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” McCain: “We’re not talking about failure of institutions on Wall Street. We’re talking about failures on Main Street, and people who will lose their jobs, and their credits, and their homes.”

Each candidate touted his own health-care and energy proposals and deplored his opponent’s. Obama got to talk about his proposed middle-class tax cuts to benefit “95 percent” of the public (the percentage who consider themselves “middle class,” it would appear) and his determination to close tax loopholes for the wealthiest few. McCain got to complain about earmarks and pork-barrel spending and what he said was the second highest rate of business tax in the world.

As for the issue of the moment — the threatened insolvency of the nation’s economic structure — both candidates claimed to have done something substantial to fix things.

Obama talked about the four general propositions he had proposed as add-ons to the $700 billion bailout package: enhanced oversight, a means by which taxpayers might recoup their investment, a lid on “golden parachutes” for CEOs, and help for homeowners on foreclosures.

McCain made the case for the efficacy of his own bailout — from the campaign trail. “And yes, I went back to Washington, and I met with my Republicans in the House of Representatives. And they weren’t part of the negotiations, and I understand that. And it was the House Republicans that decided that they would be part of the solution to this problem.”

Whatever.

When asked point-blank by Lehrer, both candidates said they were inclined to vote for the emerging bailout deal, whereby $700 billion of suspect Wall Street securities would be bought up by the federal government (i.e., the taxpayers). In any event, neither would have to right away, inasmuch as the House — all those advance predictions of success notwithstanding — rejected the proposed bailout package 225-208, with 95 Democrats and 133 Republicans voting no.

Once a clean transition was made into foreign policy discussion per se, McCain, whose own military background is so well known, seemed to feel himself on more confident ground. “I have the ability, and the knowledge, and the background to make the right judgments, to keep this country safe and secure,” he said. “I don’t think I need any on-the-job training. I’m ready to go at it right now.”

Obama was more tentative, to the point that some of his hesitations were built into the transcripts that were handed out irregularly to the attendant media: “And part of what we need to do, what the next president has to do — and this is part of our judgment, this is part of how we’re going to keep America safe — is to — to send a message to the world that we are going to invest in issues like education, we are going to invest in issues that — that relate to how ordinary people are able to live out their dreams.”

There were moments of heat, moments of light, and some nice extended dialogues on policy, though — largely at McCain’s insistence — far too much time was devoted to the pluses and minuses of the “surge” and to the Republican candidate’s repeated praise of the “great general” David Petraeus, current commander of American forces in Iraq.

Each man earned style points, and these may have benefited McCain disproportionately, since much of what he had said and done in recent weeks (notoriously his pronouncement, early in the bailout crisis, that the American economy was “fundamentally sound”) had seemed curiously off-point, arousing speculation here and there (and anxiety among his supporters) concerning his age and fitness.

Early in the debate, when Lehrer, playing bad-boy moderator, commanded Obama to direct a rather professorial and abstract criticism to McCain directly, the Arizona senator managed a wry grin and said, “Are you afraid I couldn’t hear him?” When Obama chided McCain for not promising an audience to the prime minister of Spain, the following exchange ensued:

Obama: “If we can’t meet with our friends, I don’t know how we’re going to lead the world in terms of dealing with critical issues like terrorism.”

McCain: “I’m not going to set the White House visitors schedule before I’m president of the United States. I don’t even have a seal.”

More impressively, McCain seemed to have an all-purpose instant recall when he needed it. At one point, after Lehrer had cited a platitude from former president Dwight Eisenhower, McCain responded simultaneously with an apt reference to letters Ike had written as commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force on the eve of D-Day in World War Two.

Sometimes, however, McCain over-played his hand. When he chastised Obama for talking out loud about the prospect of invading Pakistan, Obama was quick to remind him of a famous indiscretion of his own: “Coming from you, who, you know, in the past has threatened extinction for North Korea and sung songs about bombing Iran [“Bomb, Bomb, Bomb/ Bomb, Bomb Iran!,” to the tune of the old rocker, “Barbara Ann”], I don’t know how credible that is.”

In the end, neither man gained a decisive victory, nor did either commit an error so serious as to undermine his chances. The debate might well be regarded as a draw, though even before the next two presidential forums, this Thursday’s debate in St. Louis between vice-presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden could tilt things one way or the other.

Only one thing is surefire about that one: Win, lose, or draw for Republican Palin, a resurgent Tina Fey and Saturday Night Live will have new fodder for two nights later.

That’s if the congressional version of Deal or No Deal? doesn’t end in disaster between now and then. In which case — literally — all bets are off.

• Former Memphian Babs Chase, now head of foreign press for the State Department, shepherded a large corps of journalists from various countries around Oxford. Sitting at a picnic table last Thursday night on the lawn of the university’s journalism facilities and dining on Southern-fried specialties were Sulaiman Alamin, from Sudan; Ole Nyeng of Denmark; and Jean-Marc Veszely of Belgium.

All were frank to say they hoped for an Obama victory — a reminder of the McCain strategy of trying to stigmatize the Democratic candidate’s support as reflecting a foreign consensus rather than a Middle American one. But all three journalists made it clear they were motivated less by any “celebrity” of Obama’s than by fear and loathing concerning what they see as the disasters of the eight-year Bush administration.

But, asked who they thought would win, the three split, with only Nyeng, the Dane, opining in favor of Obama. Veszely was not prepared to pronounce, and Alamin refused to believe that Americans would actually vote for someone with African ancestry. He saw McCain as the victor, primarily on racial grounds.

“Things here have not changed that much,” said the Sudanese freelancer, though his point would have been disputed by Chancellor Robert Khayat and other University of Mississippi officials, who did their best all week to convince the media, foreign and domestic, that things had indeed changed, not only in America at large but at Ole Miss itself. Once a citadel of segregation but now struggling to redefine itself, the school is, in the words of a letter from Khayat that appeared in every media press packet, “a nurturing and diverse community where people of all races, religions, nationalities, economic groups, and political alliances live, study, and work comfortably together.”

Now that’s something that no major Mississippi official, governmental or academic, would have said backaways.

• Complementing the carnival that was the Ole Miss campus last week were numerous booths, vans, exhibits for the curious, and donors like Anheuser-Busch, which maintained a food-and-drink tent nearby the media facilities and offered exotic enough fare — Portobello mushrooms, Italian sausage cheeseburgers, German beer, and French wine — to attract politicians like Massachusetts senator John Kerry and his Michigan colleague Carl Levin.

Not least among the bounties in this provender-laden tent were Rendezvous ribs, personally supervised and served by restaurateur John Vergos himself.

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Opinion Viewpoint

A Reassuring Choice

I saw another man dance with Joe Biden’s wife, Jill. It was almost three years ago, on the terrace of the sublime Villa d’Este on the shore of Italy’s stunning Lake Como, and Biden watched, smiling broadly and sometimes laughing, as the man gracefully moved Jill around the dance floor. It was late, and the guests still there looked on keenly because Jill Biden’s dancing partner was very good-looking and very famous. He was John McCain.

I tell this story to suggest that if anyone — including, of course, Barack Obama — thinks that Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is going to play the usual role given to a vice presidential candidate, that of hatchet man, then the wrong man has been chosen. Biden is capable of the occasional gaffe, the sentence without end, the piquant but (literally) politically incorrect statement such as the one he made during the primary campaign — Obama is “not yet ready” to be president — but he has the essential decency that once was commonplace in Washington and now, alas, is taken for weakness and lack of proper fervor. Joe Biden is a gentleman.

In choosing Biden, Obama reached into the very heart of the Washington establishment — especially its foreign policy wing. In his many years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, both as a member and as chairman, Biden has come to know just about all the players. He has been at it so long — elected senator at the ridiculous age of 29 — that then-Captain John McCain (U.S. Navy) was his military aide on some foreign trips. I applaud the choice of Biden, but the one thing he does not represent is change.

In fact, Biden represents the foreign policy consensus that Obama, and especially his followers, opposed — and in the latter case, abhorred. Biden voted for the Iraq war. He based his position on the received wisdom of that time, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and needed to be taken out. Biden later recanted, said he made a mistake. But his mistake, he had to add, was predicated on the assumption that President Bush would not rush to war. That was his second mistake.

Yet if Biden was wrong on Iraq, he has been right on so much else — including that military force had to be used in the former Yugoslavia to end ethnic cleansing. He has been right, too, about the dangers of nuclear proliferation — a dull topic of merely life-or-death importance. Over the years, he has been loyal, to his party and to his president, even when that president was as irresponsible as Bill Clinton.

Biden’s selection represents an implied admission by Obama that he lacks what Biden has: foreign policy credentials. In that sense, the Delaware senator does not make the ticket whole. Instead, he calls attention to what it lacks.

A vice president’s only meaningful constitutional obligation is to succeed the president in the event of death or incapacitation. Biden can do that. But his foreign policy experience is almost beside the point. A president has an entire staff dedicated to national security and a national security adviser who, depending on the president, can have more power than the secretary of state.

No, Biden was chosen because, in the end, he satisfied Obama’s apparent desire, if not need, to reassure those who wonder about his youth, his race, his manner, his peripatetic childhood: I’m safe. I’m prudent. I’m thoughtful. I was president of the Harvard Law Review, for crying out loud. On the stump, Obama did not need someone like himself. He felt the need for someone more rooted.

For Obama, the risk in choosing Biden is that he will, sooner or later, throw this highly disciplined campaign off-message. Biden has substituted loquaciousness for the conventional and more colorful weaknesses of politicians. To quote something I once wrote, his mouth is his Achilles’ heel.

In response to that column, Biden called and left a message. He thanked me for the column … he needed to be told the truth … it was good for him … hard to hear, but in the end the sort of thing he needed to know … of course, he had his reasons for going on so long — this was during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito — since he had things to say … points to make … but, yes, I was right, and he went on too long and he had to do something about that and it was good of me to point it out … Beep! The machine cut him off.

Gotta love someone like that.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Taking Down Tinker

What’s Nikki Tinker going to do now that she’s a two-time loser with a national reputation for low-road politics? Even the functionaries at Emily’s List, the pro-choice feminist PAC that heavily funded both of the corporate attorney’s congressional runs, publicly rebuked their candidate for running commercials odious enough to attract international attention.

“I’ve just got to put my faith in God,” Tinker told a restless gaggle of reporters who crowded around her when she finally arrived, late, to her own unhappy “victory” party at Ground Zero last Thursday night. She reminded the media that she was only 37, and that, if the Lord saw fit, “Tinker time” could come again.

“I’m just a child of God,” she said, echoing verbatim the things she said after her last, less devastating defeat in 2006 to Steve Cohen, who ran as the incumbent congressman this year. “You all know how strong my faith is.”

But God was nowhere to be found at that party. Even Morgan Freeman, the club’s Tinker-supporting superstar owner, who did play God in the film Bruce Almighty, was absent, having sustained injuries in a recent automobile accident.

It’s tempting to describe the mood at Ground Zero as grim from the outset, but it was even worse. The mood was nonexistent. For most of the evening, there was no candidate in the house and not many supporters waiting on her arrival. The blues band on stage played “Come On In My Kitchen” to a mix of bored reporters with nothing to talk about and tourists who’d stopped in for ribs.

Even the sparse snack table went untouched until 9:40 p.m., when hungry speculators began to wonder if Tinker was going to be a no-show — because the candidate hadn’t merely lost an election, she’d run a campaign based almost solely on race and religion, and she had been definitively crushed by an opponent she’d attempted — bizarrely — to tar as both a Jewish anti-Christian and KKK-friendly.

Throughout the evening, a small cluster of well-wishers — Judge D’Army Bailey (sipping chocolate martinis and talking about his book deal) and Tinker’s boss, Pinnacle Airlines CEO Phil Trenary (describing himself as a “big Democrat”) — would cluster around a television on the club’s northeast wall to tut-tut over the returns.

“It’s a rout,” one man of Armenian descent grumbled into his cell phone. “The race isn’t even competitive.”

He was flanked by two other men of Armenian heritage who had thrown their support behind Tinker, because Cohen, who has long criticized America’s invasion of Iraq, refused to support a measure asking Turkey to acknowledge the post-World War I era Armenian genocide. Peter Musurlian, the West Coast filmmaker whom Cohen physically removed from his home during a press conference the day before was among them.

“I filed charges against Cohen today,” said Musurlian, who also has been identified as a “Republican operative” by the website MyDD.

“He’s not going to like my documentary very much,” the filmmaker said, scratching his head and voicing his astonishment that Tinker could have been beaten so badly.

Tinker could have been a contender, some thought. But the Alabama native, who’d barely closed her suitcase before running for Congress in Tennessee two years ago, made a mistake this time in trying to paint Cohen, a lifelong Memphian, as some kind of outsider.

Her chances evaporated completely 48 hours before the election, after her campaign released a commercial promoting the false perception that prayer isn’t allowed in Tennessee schools and implying that former state senator Cohen, a Jew, was to blame.

The ad’s content jibed too well with some harsh anti-Semitic leaflets distributed by the Rev. George Brooks, a pro-Tinker propagandist from Murfreesboro, and prompted Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s acerbic host of Countdown, to name Tinker “The Worst Person in the World.”

Shortly thereafter, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama expressed his disapproval, and Tinker’s friend and onetime employer, former Congressman Harold Ford Jr., followed suit.

It was nearly 10 p.m. when Tinker finally arrived at her party. She hugged a few people, supplied the media with a variety of faith-centric non-answers to questions, and claimed no knowledge of Obama’s comments. She never officially addressed the crowd, and, as soon as she left, an event that had never begun was over.

Chris Davis is a Flyer staff writer.