A Graceless Encounter

I was slightly upbraided in the post below for being “graceless”, and as I thought about it I realized that the word itself is a key into the attitude about journalists towards the people they cover. I’m just a blogger, and have no pretenses about this being a journalistic endeavor. Far from it – blogs represent a break in tradition away from business as usual. Because of the internet, the old order is breaking down. We are Philistines of a sort, bringing fried chicken and beer to a cocktail party. But the cocktail party has been going on too long, the participants so inured to one another that if a journalist were to do his job, he might be seen as a hooligan. Good journalists are a royal pain to politicians and other leaders. That is a sign they are doing their jobs.

Perhaps it was uncouth to criticize Tim Russert on the event of his death. Problem is, since he was regarded as a “dean” (a very high level sycophant), he could not be criticized while alive either. Timing matters, but only a little.

Journalists and politicians should not be comfortable in the same room. A journalist, if attending a party where politicians are gathered, should immediately develop sweaty armpits. After all, the journalist has been researching and interviewing, talking to underlings and monitoring the activities of the politicians. The journalist can rightly assume that, liquor flowing freely, a confrontation is inevitable.

A politician, upon seeing a journalist enter a room, ought to get angry. After all, the journalist has been a pain in the ass. The politician has not been able to favor his friends in dealings. The journalist has been poking his head in unseemly places, interviewing employees and former business associates. The politician might fly off the handle and let the journalist have a what-for, and then even that will become news.

In Washington, journalists and politicians are quite at ease with one another, usually attending the same parties. Politicians routinely talk up the press corp and salute its integrity, a sure sign that the system has failed. A proud profession has been co-opted, the knives and daggers have been shelved. There’s been a treaty.

Tim Russert’s obituary included countless homilies on how respected he was by the political faction. It’s a sure sign that he was a failure. But he did have access to the powerful. He got it on their conditions. They made the rules, he followed. A deal was struck.

Shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton lost his cool on Democracy Now!, the independent news program whose host is Amy Goodman. DN! is no respecter of propriety, and Goodman is not at all graceful. After enough confrontational questions, Clinton went on a diatribe. He said “every question you’ve asked has been hostile and combative”. It was not the kind of treatment he was used to. He was habituated, accustomed to cordiality and respect. He took it for granted that Goodman would approach him on bended knee, and when she didn’t, he got angry.

I found the exchange interesting because I was not aware that Clinton even knew of the nightly news program, much less deigning to find it annoying. But he knew about it. He called in unsolicited to promote the Gore candidacy. Interesting.

When Goodman questioned him on the Iraqi sanctions, which had killed over half a million kids, Clinton said that it was Saddam Hussein’s doing, completely exonerating himself. That was not enough for Goodman, who reminded Clinton that two former UN heads of the program overseeing the sanctions had quit in protest. It was a graceless question. One of many. I was never so proud of the profession of journalism as I was of her that day.

Clinton and Goodman would not be comfortable at a cocktail party together, not that Goodman would ever be invited. She openly confronted him with tough questions. Clinton was angry that she had dared to be “hostile and combative”. They might come to blows. Indeed, the journalists belong at the smoke-filled bars of days gone by, recounting their experiences, sharing the battle wounds. They should not even be invited to the same party, much less attend.

Compare the feisty Goodman/Clinton encounter to the standard presidential interview by a “dean of journalism” like Tom Brokaw or Walter Cronkite or yes, Tim Russert. Remove the submissiveness, set respect aside, ask tough questions, piss the guy off, and one is removed from the world of sycophant journalism to that of Democracy Now!, a news program looked down upon by the haughty practitioners of journalism in its current form.

It’s a shame. Journalism could be fun. They are not of much use in their current manifestations.

With Deference …

It’s sad when someone dies young and suddenly. There’s a strong temptation when that happens to lionize that person. So it is that with Tim Russert people are now saying that he was some kind of special journalist. Not so. He was a toady.

Broadcast journalism is a tough world – those people have to fill air time within narrow constraints. They cannot confront the powerful, and so have to idle away the hours talking about minutia and attacking the smaller people in public life. But if they are pretty and add an air of serious discourse to the job, they often take on an air of professionalism and intellectual rigor. Tom Brokaw is a toady – he has spent his entire career reporting to us with deference on the activities of the powerful without upsetting them. He’s typical, and revered. He was allowed to ascend the alter, to perform the pièce de résistance of the profession – the presidential interview. That’s because he was dependable. So too was Russert.

Dan Rather was the same way – he earned a reputation during Watergate for challenging the powerful when that was the thing to do, and then settled into a comfortable career in the Brokaw mode, using respect and deference and humor to repeat to us those things that those in power wanted to know. But he crossed the line a few years back and did a hard-hitting, confrontational piece about George W. Bush, and paid the price. That’s a lesson they all take to heart – if you really do journalism in that world – if you investigate and confront, you’re out.

But how do we have news? Well, we don’t have much of it. We have 24 hour news channels now, but they fill their hours with the non-confrontational and trivial – missing white women and OJ and natural disasters. Politicians come and go, and depending on their stature, they might be challenged. Dennis Kucinich, if he ever got air time, was taken for a rocky ride. He’s low-stature. John McCain will have an easy time. If indeed anyone is asked a hard question, there will be head scratching and wonderment, and the credentials of the person asking the question will be called to task.

This is the world that Tim Russert thrived in. He was perfect for the job – low key, respectful, yet erudite and polished. He was an odd looking man for a TV centerpiece – usually they are movie-star pretty folks, and Russert wasn’t that. But he had all of the other qualifications. He brought gravitas to a trivial job. He made it look like journalism.

Here’s Glen Greenwald on Russert, pre-death, when you could say things about him that were true:

Or they’ll point to “liberal” Tim Russert — Tim Russert — about whom Cheney press aide Cathy Martin said: “I suggested we put the vice president on ‘Meet the Press,’ which was a tactic we often used. It’s our best format, as it allows us to control the message.” That’s the same “liberal” Tim Russert who confessed that he operates by the defining law of the Government propagandist: “When I talk to senior government officials on the phone, it’s my own policy — our conversations are confidential. If I want to use anything from that conversation, then I will ask permission.”

We don’t have much journalism in this country. With the passing of Tim Russert, well, you never know, depending on who takes his place, we might have a little more. But don’t bet on it.

This is How It Works

1. National Review raises questions about Obama’s birth certificate, including baseless allegations that his middle name is Muhammed and not Hussein, that his first name is actually Barry, and so on.

2. In the course of an afternoon, this gets recirculated around the righty blogosphere (including some of the more vacuous bloggers in the Montana arena).

3. In a matter of hours, the narrative has changed from “questions about Obama’s birth certificate” to “The Obama campaign refuses to release his birth certificate”

4. Today, ONE WHOLE DAY after this fake controversy erupts, Obama releases his birth certificate, and… (drumroll please….) it shows exactly what it’s supposed to. This means that someone made all this shit up and the righties ran with it. Time for a retraction, right?

5. Wrong. For many, the genuine copy of the real birth certificate brings about more questions than answers (huh?). Why? Because no matter what charge Obama answers quickly, clearly, and accurately, he can’t satisfy the people who made the shit up in the first place. This will become the “Birth Certificate that looks photo-shopped” controversy from here on out.

It’s a tough position for Obama.  He’s backed into a corner where he’s literally damned either way.  He can’t ignore it, but to take it on also means giving these fake controversies credence and momentum.  He’s damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t.

The purpose of all of these accusations has never been to prove anything.  It’s all about planting negative emotions and question marks in people’s heads. It’s swiftboating at its finest, boys. Get used to it. The dumbest among us are always going to buy into this stuff, and the most unscrupulous of us will shamelessly peddle the bullshit (how’s that investigation into Forward MT going, Dave?) without apology or regret.

Some advice for the Montana dextra blogs: If you see something that proves what you’ve known deep down in your heart all along – that the Democrats have, by happenstance, nominated the most evil person in the history of this country who also happens to be hellbent on forcably converting us all to Islam or shooting as many Vietnamese boys in the back as possible – just ask yourself one question: How come it always works out this way? How come the Democratic nominees for President always have some very unprovable but obviously true misdeeds in their past (and future) that put them in the same club as Hitler and Pol Pot?

Here’s a thought: Maybe it’s YOU.

So do me a favor. Start criticizing Obama on the issues. There’s probably a lot more material there.

Weekend Reading

I’ve been trying of late to get a grip on the huge American pharmaceutical business, without much success. It’s very big and the machinations and maneuverings and political intrigue involved in bringing a drug to market overwhelm me. But here is what I have gleaned so far:

The FDA is largely compromised these days, and has given into pharmaceutical demands for streamlined drug approval at the expense of safety and efficacy.

Drug testing is largely done under the control of the companies that produce the drugs. They are held to low standards, having only to show that new drugs are better than a placebo, and are not tested against existing drugs that are often cheaper and more effective.

The heart of big pharma is the TV ads they run, which they use to push their worst products – the ones that do little and cost much. Only the United States and New Zealand allow such advertising, and doctors, who are marketed to separately on the other end, are very susceptible to it.

Much of what passes for new drugs on the market are actually “me too” drugs that imitate other drugs. Other drugs that come to market are actually given to us in response to conditions created by the drug manufacturers to create a market for their product. (“Acid reflux syndrome” (heartburn) is one.) Drug manufacturers are not very interested in finding remedies for non-chronic conditions or for things that afflict only a few hundred thousand people (for which they have to be subsidized.) Widespread and deadly diseases, like malaria, are low priority because the people that get these diseases are poor and cannot afford expensive treatments.

Much of what is patented or licensed for exclusive marketing are merely cosmetic changes in dosage or color and shape of existing drugs to extend their patents. Pharmaceuticals spend billions of dollars in court cases to keep generic drugs off the market and even more in research to make non-substantive changes to medications.

Drug companies spend far more money marketing their products than they do on research and development. Most research is done by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and on campuses and universities. Breakthroughs usually come from that source and small startups, and are then bought up by the big pharmaceutical companies, who pay small royalties in return for the right to market these products. There’s very little new coming down the pipeline, and precious little of that from the big companies. That’s not what they are about.

Drug companies are the most powerful lobby in Washington, and can virtually write their own ticket, as they did with Medicare D, in which legislators like our Senator Max Baucus were convinced that Medicare should not be able to bargain with drug companies to lower prices. Baucus still stands by that ludicrous proposition.

So powerful is the pharmaceutical lobby that the simplest of laws, such as allowing reimportation of cheaper drugs from abroad to lower prices here, cannot be passed.

The following link is to an interview done by Jake Whitney of Guernica Magazine with Dr. Peter Rost, a whistleblower who once worked for Pfizer and has since attempted to make his career as author and expert witness. He runs a website that focuses on pharmaceutical issues, but also has a wide variety of interesting subjects.

Here are a few quotes from the interview:

Guernica: You’ve described the pharmaceutical industry as mob-like. What did you mean by that?

Peter Rost: It is scary how many similarities there are between this industry and the mob. The mob makes obscene amounts of money, as does this industry. The side effects of organized crime are killings and deaths, and the side effects are the same in this industry. The mob bribes politicians and others, and so does the drug industry—which has been proven in different cases. You could go though a 10-point list discussing similarities between the two. The difference is, all these people in the drug industry look upon themselves—well, I’d say 99 percent, anyway—look upon themselves as law-abiding citizens, not as citizens who would ever rob a bank. Not as citizens who would ever go out and shoplift. And the individuals who run these companies would probably not do such things. However, when they get together as a group and manage these corporations, something seems to happen. Just look at all of these billion-dollar fines—Schering Plough, I think is in the lead now with $1.2 or $1.3 billion in fines; and number two is Bristol-Myers Squibb. It’s pretty scary that they’re committing crimes that cause [the government] to levy those enormous amounts of fines against them. So there’s something that happens to otherwise good citizens when they are part of a corporation. It’s almost like when you have war atrocities; people do things they don’t think they’re capable of. When you’re in a group, people can do things they otherwise wouldn’t, because the group can validate what you’re doing as okay.

Guernica: You said one similarity between the drug industry and the mob was that in both the side effects are “killings and deaths.” As that pertains to the drug industry, I’m assuming you mean in unintentional deaths resulting from unforeseen side effects—unlike the mob, which intentionally kills people.

Peter Rost: Clearly, the drug industry doesn’t want to kill people. But at the same time, I’m not sure if it’s always completely unintentional. Yeah, they don’t want to kill people because it’s bad for business, right. But if you look at a number of these cases where people inside the company knew they had problems. If you look at Merck with Vioxx, for example; if you look at Bayer and the lipid-lowering drug they had that caused liver failure, Baycol. Those guys knew that these drugs were causing major problems. And they knew these problems resulted in serious side effects, including death. Yet they kept on selling the drugs. So is that intentional or not?

Guernica: In your 2007 book, Killer Drug, you have a character named Torrance who’s the head of security at a fictional drug company called Xenal. Torrance is an extremely shady character who won’t hesitate to murder enemies of the company. The book is a novel, of course, but did you come across anyone in your career who gave you the feeling that he could possibly act like Torrance?

Peter Rost: The book is fiction. But it is using some of what I’ve seen and experienced, and taking some of the different people and putting them in a thriller environment. I’m not aware of individuals conducting themselves the way Torrance does. At the same time, I am aware that the kind of background he has is very common in the drug industry for someone who is heading up security. Pfizer has a former FBI agent, John Theriault, heading up its security department. And he has lots of law enforcement officers working under him. We have to recognize that these big companies are all building small paramilitary organizations inside the companies that answer to no one except the company itself. Look at Hewlett Packard, how they abused security consultants by getting phone records and information about journalists… and you know we only know a tiny fraction about what really happens—we only find out when these companies happen to get caught. It shows that there aren’t really any limits to what big companies—in the drug industry and others—will do.

It’s an interesting interview if you have time and interest. Discouraging for me was Rost’s statement that he doesn’t think there will be any significant change in the U.S. health care system for thirty or fifty years, since so many people from doctors to pharmas to lawyers to insurance companies are making gadzillions of dollars on it. Do you think that a Democratic Administration will change things? Think again. As Rost notes, Pfizer’s new CEO Jeff Kindler and the incoming stream of executive appointments are all Democrats. As Dr. Alan Grant said of the velociraptors and Captain Jean-luc Pecard of the Borg, “they’re adapting”.

The Department of Silly Talk

1. MSNBC has found a list of potential vice presidential candidates. Expect to see a lot of this – a media that is unable to cover issues in any depth will fall back on fluffery to fill that yawning hole called air time. With campaigns they do horse-race, and in the interludes, they do VP choices.

Anyway, some of this might be the Obama campaign doing it’s test-marketing, hoisting up flags to see if a breeze catches one. Some of it might be seriously considered. Some of it may be plain nonsense.

Supposed names on the long short-list: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Evan Bayh, Kathleen Sebelius, Ted Strickland, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Jim Webb, Bill Nelson, Jack Reed, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Tom Daschle, and Sam Nunn.

Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, Biden and Dodd are obvious no-go’s. Clinton would overshadow Obama, Kerry and Edwards are good at losing, Biden will talk our heads off without ever saying anything, and Dodd is too liberal. That leaves Bayh, Sebelius, Strickland, Warner, Kaine, Webb, Nelson, Reed and Nunn (who has the obvious advantage of being a crypto-Republican, much like Clinton).

Who the heck knows – it will probably end up being someone not on the list. One thing for bloggers and commenters to take note of: Brian Schweitzer is not on the list. Not now, not anytime. He won’t be asked, is not seriously considered. Not gonna happen.

2. Wiley at Big Sky Cairn is urging that Mike Lange run a write-in campaign for U.S. Senate against Max Baucus. As Jay Stevens notes, it’s a good idea because it means that Lange would get beaten by Bob Kelleher twice in the same year.

But it’s also telling. What has Lange got to offer? He’s not thoughtful or terribly smart, and is brash and vulgar to boot. But he’s got appeal over on that side. There’s a moral here, one to be absorbed, and I’m thick as hell. I don’t know why they think this way, I don’t know what they possibly see in this guy. I’m obviously missing something, probably something base and obvious. But I don’t see it.

Enlighten me, please, someone.

3. Max Baucus is not going to debate Bob Kelleher. Says Max, “I am not running against anybody. I am seeking just to renew my six-year contract with Montana voters. I am going to work just as hard as I would ordinarily.” (I don’t know what to make of that cryptic last part.)

It’s probably a smart move on Max’s part. If he did debate Kelleher, they would look like (bi) polar opposites, with Kelleher assuming a progressive stance on most issues, Max being more right wing. And that is probably the reason for no debate. Max doesn’t want be exposed as a faux liberal. He would be the first to remind us that in politics, perceptions are reality.

Faux-Cryptos

Rolling Stone Magazine has a nice article in its current edition by Tom Dickinson called “The Senate Caves“. It’s an inquiry into the inability of the majority of the United States Senate to legislate their will. Dickinson focuses on Charles Shumer (D-NY), and has quite a few unkind words for him. Schumer recently patrolled fences for the hedge fund industry. Hedge fund managers are people who make their money from capital gains (the increase in the value of stock held more than one year), as opposed to salaries and wages. Under Bush, capital gains have been set aside for special tax treatment, paying a maximum tax of 15% (as opposed to as much as 39% for a middle class working person).

Hedge fund managers get virtually all of their income from capital gains. That’s what they do – buy and sell securities and commodities. Therefore, they pay that 15% federal tax, and no more. Simple fairness and equity would dictate that they pay the same rate as everyone else – they are no more special or important than Joe the plumber. But congress refused to block that special treatment, and Schumer led the charge.

Schumer’s love of his made-up friends in the middle class didn’t stop him from championing one of the biggest tax breaks for billionaires in the history of the republic. Last year, Democrats in the House fought to close a loophole that levies a tax rate of only 15 percent — barely half what real-life versions of [Schumer's fictional middle class couple] the Baileys pay — on hedge-fund managers who make as much as $3.7 billion a year. But when the debate reached the Senate, Schumer broke with his fellow Democrats and sided with Wall Street — inspiring the hedge-fund industry to hail him as its “guardian.”

It’s an interesting article and does a fairly decent job of surface-skimming a phenomenon that has been with us for so long as the wealthy have been subjected to democratic rule, which I call the rule of “faux liberals” and “crypto-conservatives”. These are the “faux-cryptos”.

As the hedge-fund fiasco demonstrates, Democrats have turned the Senate into the chamber where good legislation goes to die. Since regaining the majority in 2006, the Democrats have granted the Bush administration and big telephone companies immunity for illegal wiretapping, declared a branch of the Iranian military a terrorist organization and stuffed the recent Foreclosure Prevention Act with far more goodies for big lenders than for struggling homeowners. They also confirmed Attorney General Michael Mukasey despite his refusal to disavow torture — a move engineered by Schumer. “You really want to like the Democrats,” says Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Then they go and do shit like this.”

There’s a widespread perception now that the Democrats would do more, would be a more progressive party if only there were more of them, and especially if one of them occupied the White House. (That millions of Democrats think that Hillary Clinton satisfied the quest for a liberal president is another part of the problem – dumb-assedness – which is a significant part of the faux-crypto phenomenon.) But it begs the question – if faux-cryptos are the problem, how on earth is having more of them aboard going to solve anything? Will Schumer suddenly be emboldened if there are 58 Democratic senators instead of 51? Will Harry Reid grow a set?

Not likely. The problem is one that speaks to the nature of our political system, which is sponsored by and indebted to the wealthy classes. It’s not enough that so-called liberals and progressives are compromised. If that were the case, they might indeed come around with enough public support and more colleagues-in-arms. It’s much more basic – faux-cryptos are protected by the people who finance our political system. They receive campaign perks and contributions from the same sources, and are slaves to the same media that vets all politicians. If they want money, if they want favorable press, they had better play ball.

It’s no good to have a two party system financed by the same people if one of the parties actually fights for ordinary people. So we are given something different – a perceived two party system. I see the fire in the eyes of conservatives – I know they hate Democrats. I know they think Democrats are really socialists who want to enslave us all via the welfare state. And it’s good that conservatives believe that because it reinforces the false division that we have between Democrats and Republicans, and maintains the perception that there are significant divisions between the parties.

There are a few good Democrats who fight hard for ordinary people. Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd come to mind, as do Dennis Kucinich and George Miller. They are a distinct minority. Far more often we liberals are represented by the likes of Schumer, Diane Feinstein and Max Baucus. These are people who know the boundaries and play safe and, when it comes right down to an important issue where their votes make a difference, vote with the opposition. These are not liberals – they are merely playing liberals. What better way to have a debate than to have all parties to the debate owned by the same moneyed interests?

Election fraud aside, it appears as though Democrats will make significant gains this November. They might even capture the White House, though that is a long shot. I look around and see that most Democrats are bought into the notion that the coming changes will break the dam, and that progressives legislation, long bottled up by Republicans and faux-cryptos, will be set free. It won’t happen. And when it fails to materialize new excuses will pop up. Probably it will be the fraudulent argument that Democrats are stymied by Senate debate rules that require a majority of sixty to make things happen. Says Dickinson,

In reality, the Democrats have everything they need right now to assert their own agenda and put a stop to Bush’s abuse of power — most important, the backing of a wide majority of Americans on issues ranging from the Iraq War to children’s health care. But instead of scratching and fighting to make good on the promises that got them elected — or at the very least, turning up the heat of the obstructionism of the GOP minority — they continue to make excuses.

So here I am again, Mr. Negative. Always trash-talkin’ Democrats. Why can’t I see that the Democrats, while a weak answer, are the only answer available to us? Well, it’s because the Democrats are not a weak answer. They are the wrong answer. They are the ones who make it look like we’re having a real debate, while all the while it’s just a diversionary tactic. They do the real work of the Republicans. They take all of the fervent belief and hard work of everyday people, and make sure it goes nowhere. They are like that famous parade at the end of the movie Animal House. The baton was stolen, the marching band was led down an alley and hit a wall, and they kept right on marching and playing their instruments.

So let’s get on now with American politics. Let’s have our furious debates, complete with political organizing and debates where people sit in bars and cheer just like it was a sporting event. Politics can be fun. “Laugh about it, shout about it when you’ve got to choose. Any way you look at it you lose.”

That’s negative, I know, and this is a year for hope and change. But the only real change that is ever going to happen is still years away, and will only come about when people abandon not Republican politics, but faux-crypto Democrats as well.

News You Can’t Make Up

1. One in four New Yorkers has genital herpes. The study refers to New York City, and not the wider state. But here’s the kicker – nationwide, 19% of us have the virus. If ever there were a gold mine for some pharmaceutical company, this is it. It’s an incurable condition and the symptoms are usually hidden. It calls for a drug that does nothing that has to be taken on a regular basis and costs lots of money. And big pharma has delivered. It’s called Famvir. It costs about $300 a month. Meanwhile, millions of cases of malaria go untreated. No money in that.

2. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, an evil demon, can park his big arse on a bicycle and make it go. That in itself is a story. But it gets worse – the bike he was riding was made in a factory that is a joint venture between the governments of Venezuela and Iran. It gets worse. Chavez – did I say he was an evil demon? – took the opportunity of riding the bike to make fun of George W. Bush. He said “My dear friend, president of the United States, I offer you this bicycle, see the bomb. See it… you think that is a bottle of water, no, that’s the bomb.” We must put an end to this disrespect. We must put Venezuela on the list of countries we wish to bomb. Bombs, unlike bicycles, are something we actually make in this country.

3. Two of 109 historians think that George W. Bush is not the worst president ever. The survey failed to give the name of the two, fearing retribution. Bush likes to point to the fact that he, along with Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln were also very unpopular during parts of their terms. Give the man his due – indeed he does have that in common with those great men.

4. Vanity Fair has insinuated, and Gina Gershon has vigorously denied that she and former president Bill Clinton had an affair. I don’t know if that is true, but I feel more than I know that Bill Clinton is still at it. As Pat Buchanan said on MSNBC last week, Bill is a dog that does not stay on the front porch. If Hillary Clinton were elected Republicans would have had fun trying to figure out how to impeach the First Gentleman.

5. In an an exchange that typifies the witty repartee that so often takes place on capitol hill, Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS) referred to FEMA officials as a “bunch of buttheads”. FEMA was quick to retort that Taylor was a fartfaced liar.

6. Somewhere some conservative blog commenter or poster has made reference to the fact that Ted Kennedy is a liberal and has had brain surgery. I feel this more than I know it.

He’ll Be Back

Just in case any of you were despairing over the idea that Montana’s time in the sun ended on June 3rd with the end of the primary season, it sounds like there’s reason to believe that this is not the case.

In the spirit of Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy, Barack Obama’s campaign is aggressively planning on rewriting the electoral map by targeting states that have traditionally been Republican strongholds and trying to bring them into the Democratic fold this November.  And, luckily for us, it sounds like Montana’s one of the states he’ll be targeting.

In addition, part of the rationale behind this is to get McCain to spend some money and time in places he probably wasn’t planning on originally, which means we may be getting a visit from the old man as well.

Of course, this comes with positives and negatives.  I don’t think many of us enjoy being bombarded with mailers, phone calls, and television and radio ads at all times.  It sounds like we’ll be dealing with this for a few more months, which is unfortunate for those of us who’ve already made up our minds.

However, the upside of this strategy is clear.  Some of us (ahem… me) didn’t see any of the candidates while they were in the state the last time, and we may get more opportunities to see them face to face, and maybe shake the hand of the next President of the United States.

In other words, Montana matters for another five months.  Bask in it, because it may not happen again for a very long time.

Powerful Impressions

We were lucky enough while out in San Francsco this spring to catch an exhibit by photographer Annie Liebovitz. I can’t begin to describe it. But here are two of her more powerful images – Willie Shoemaker and Wilt Chamberlain, and Mick Jagger.

Expert Election Analysis

I’m no amateur, dammit. I know my politics, and when it comes to elections, I put up many worthy comments and ideas. Here’s just one from a post I put up here last month: “Bob Kelleher is a force to be reconciled. He could sneak up and win if Republicans are not careful.” Can’t find the link right now.

It’s kind of funny now to watch as the blog and newspaper pundits try to make sense of it all. What are the voters telling us? What wisdom can we glean from this?

I thought I would share my experience from running for office in 1996. I ran against Peggy Arnott and got trounced, and stubbornly did everything wrong. The problem was that to do all the right things, I would have had to have been a different person.

Just one example: All of the Democratic candidates in Billings were marching and holding signs at a Republican event on First Avenue South to generate some publicity, and I was handed a script and told to read it for the TV cameras. It talked about the wonders of the fearless leader, Bill Clinton. It talked about how he was putting more cops on the street to fight crime, among other right wing ideals. I couldn’t read it. I just couldn’t. I handed it back to the organizer and said have someone else do it. And someone else did it.

I just can’t be a party boy. It’s not in my makeup. But to win that election I needed to soften up my stances, say things I didn’t believe, and play ball. Peg was a smart politician (and a nice lady of integrity too). I talked to people who voted for her of various stripes after the election. I asked them if, when she came to the door, she left the impression that she agreed with them on the issues of importance. Without fail, liberals and conservatives alike, Peg was there for them. Except on the abortion issue. She stood her ground there.

And that was the key. Let people validate their emotions through you, the candidate. If they are upset about Iraq, you’re concerned too. If they are behind the invasion, so are you. If they are upset about gas prices, you pay them too and want to bring them down. If they want clean air, so do you, and if they want jobs that cost us clean air, you want that too. No matter the issue, you can forge a position to support them. After all, once the election is over, the public loses interest, and you’re free to do as you wish. Peg knew this. I was naive.

But I knocked on doors for months on end, tracking every household, revisiting the ones I thought would vote for me. (People lie! If all those people who said they were going to vote for me did, I would have won.) I talked to thousands of people. In the beginning, I was carrying petitions for raising the minimum wage and Clean Water initiatives, and using them to put a friendly foot in the door. There was natural support for both these issues, people were warm and accepting, and I thought the strategy was a good one. But along about October, television campaigns against these initiatives came out. Neither initiative had much financial backing – only grassroots support.

In the wake of the TV ad campaigns, the doors turned ugly – I stopped talking about clean water and minimum wage. It just made people mad. But I had hitched my wagon. Both initiatives, which enjoyed huge early support, went down to defeat. This is when I learned that no matter your reasonable stance on an issue, no matter your literature or talking points, TV rules. And it’s not a rational medium. It’s a visual one. The Clean Water initiative went down because a mining company shill pretended to drink water from a stream below a mine near Cardwell. It was phony, but a powerful visual image, and that is all it took to defeat months of door knocking and signature gathering.

That’s politics. One vote is not very much, won’t change the outcome, and people are busy. They are not stupid, and are not going to invest any time in studying issues. There’s no reward. They want quick and dirty, and TV fits the bill. Candidates are free to say anything they want on any issue, and to do anything they want once elected. That’s why our campaigns are so shallow and the results so confusing.

(Just don’t make the mistake of giving the television people a bad image, like Mike Lange did. People remember stuff like that.)

This particular election featured some neophytes. Jim Hunt thought he could skip the primary, and focused on beating Rehberg in the fall. But he hadn’t built name recognition, and went down. The Republicans took a pass on running against Baucus, and Bob Kelleher snuck in the back door. Now they are saddled with a cantankerous 85 year progressive parliamentarian.

This is bonehead stuff. Manage your base. It’s about images, TV exposure, and name recognition. The parties right now, Republicans especially, appear to be run by amateurs. The old hands are gone, and the new ones don’t know what they are doing.

I delight to see that John Driscoll and Bob Kelleher won. This race lacked glitzy names and ad campaigns, and voters put up a picture that looks like a monkey throwing paint at a canvas. The parties failed to manage the voting public. Heads oughtta roll.