More views on Palin

Democratic leaders have been largely following Obama's lead in their discussions of Sarah Palin and her problems. "Really, she's one of the nicest and most photogenic inexperienced book-banning intolerant right-to-lifers you could find," said one, "but I think the personal life of that really pretty daughter is off limits." Asked for comment, John Edwards, enjoying a protracted vacation at his summer home on Figure Eight Island, 158.6 miles away from his presumably still-chilly wife Elizabeth, said "I have never met Bristol Palin and am not the father of her child."

Things I have learned over the last two weeks

1. Michael Phelps got one more gold medal than all of Canada. Their desire to be taken more seriously in world affairs may have to be deferred.
2. Synchronized diving looks pretty silly in sports.
3. Synchronized diving is highly effective in politics.
4. No North Carolina justice of the peace would have performed a marriage for any of those Chinese gymnasts. They'd have to drive down to South Carolina, and would still have to pay a bribe.
5. It turns out you can count the Clintons out.
6. Russia has been paying attention to the ongoing diplomatic dialogue between the United States and North Korea and has learned its overarching lesson very well.
7. Women's beach volleyball was on 18 hours a day either because it requires incredible skill and consummate athleticism or because the participants wear bikinis
8. Georgia won no gold medals because "doing something insanely stupid on the ludicrous assumption that France, Germany and Italy will do anything about it" is not yet an Olympic event.
9. John Edwards is a rich idiot with surprisingly questionable tastes in new age crazy ladies but at least we were spared one last rendition of "Two Americas" at the convention.
10. While the Olympics and the Democratic convention were going on the Bush Administration agreed to let India become a part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a nuclear power and nobody noticed. This may be the largest mistake made by this administration and "largest mistake" is a pretty high bar.

From an imaginary Newsweek article from an alternative universe

In the closing months of President Gore's second term, it is time to look back on the legacy he will leave behind. Historians polled by this magazine agree that the Gore presidency will be remembered favorably, but there were missed opportunities, as well. Compared to recent presidents, he will be remembered as more effective than Clinton, if only because his administration was not distracted by scandals and the legal wrangling that accompanied them, but less effective in achieving his goals than Reagan, a more effective communicator whose presidency coincided with the beginning of the current era of Republican dominance in Congress. He was nevertheless an effective leader in the days following the 9-11 attacks, gathering international support and reaching across party lines to rebuild New York and spearhead the international response.

His presidency began, of course, in controversy. When the Florida vote was inconclusive and the Floridas courts ordered a recount that some feared might make the election's outcome unclear for months, Republican candidate George Bush petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and stop the recount and accept the results as certified by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. The Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, declined to stop the recount but accepted the case for review. The Supreme Court agreed (7-2) that counting votes in different counties by different standards violated the "equal protection" clause of the Constitution, but held 5-4 that Florida's statutory deadline require that the recount of a Federal election be concluded by a specific date. Justice Kennedy was the swing vote in both 5-4 decisions, and court insiders say he appeared undecided as deliberations began. The decision returned the election to the Florida Elections Commission, which had been continuing its recount as the legal arguments proceeded and whch completed its hand count within a week of oral argument and well before the Electoral College's deadline of December 24. The result was late, but the Constitutional crisis was averted.

Once in office, Gore was known for policies that were methodical more than they were charismatic, but his administration was largely free of the scandals and ethical violations that had plagues several prior administrations.

On the domestic front, President Gore's continuation of economic policies that date back to the Clinton era have resulted in consistently balanced budgets despite the ongoing military presence in Afghanistan. Budget surpluses have been used to shore up the Social Security system, which as recently as 1998 was considered dangerously underfinanced. Budget surpluses have also led to a strong dollar, which remains the world's primary currency and which attracts investors from around the world. The recent drop in housing prices was short and the economy's recovery from what some feared might become a recession are the result of Gore's balanced budget and strong economy. The president's vetoes of Republican bills that would have deregulated the energy markets, reduced federal oversight of lending institutions, and relaxed auditing standards for large corporations were widely criticized in Congress, but have probably contributed to the long-term stability and growth of our economy. His commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions have led to strict standards, but it will be years until we see whether the targets can be met, and if so, if they slow global warming, but his emphasis on conservation and alternative energy technology has already paid dividends in hydrogen fuel cells, increased efficiency and reduced costs of photo-voltaic generators, wind-generated electricity, and reliable hybrids and electric-only vehicles, to name just a few.

Internationally, Gore managed to maintain the core of the international coalition that has brought almost 50,000 troops to Afghanistan, only 25,000 of which are American. The international community came to America's aid in the days following 9-11, and while many criticized the troop surge to 60,000 in 2004, it is clear that increased troop levels led, albeit indirectly, to the capture of Osama bin Laden. Gore's many Republican critics decried his stubborn insistence that all military actions be under the aegis of the U.N. and, to a lesser extent, NATO, but without the U.N. resolution allowing regional military action, the U.S. alone would probably not have been able to undertake the large-scale operations that that brought Coalition control to the Hindu Kush mountains in Pakistan and Tajikistan. As commander of NATO forces on both sides of the Durand Line, General Gates was able to bring stability not just to Afghanistan, but to the entire region. Similarly, Congressional Republicans have frequently called for unilateral action against Iraq, arguing that Saddam Hussein is almost certainly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. U.N. investigator Hans Blick has consistently said that there is no evidence of any manufacture or acquisition of WMD by Iraq, so the U.N has thus far refused to act. Whether the Administration or the unilateralists are right may be learned only if Iraq attacks the U.S., or a neighbor, or its own population, as it did to the Kurds in 1988.

Gore's opponent in 2000, former Texas Governor George Bush, is now commissioner of Major League Baseball and has his hands full with the steroid scandal. His opponent in 2004, John McCain, is in a close presidential race with Senator Hillary Clinton. Her primary campaign has been able to unify the Democrats behind her candidacy despite strong early results for Vice President Lieberman and newcomer Barack Obama, but neither candidate seemed to be able to find an issue that would give their candidacies traction. Clinton's promise to stay the course appears to be resonating well with voters. With the continued strength of the American economy and relative stability in the Middle East oil prices remain low, and the New York round of accords that modified the Kyoto Treaty, initiated and championed by President Gore, give strong incentives to China and India to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. True, two goals announced by Gore at the beginning of his presidency remain un-met: the administration has been unable to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine, and it is unclear that our aggressive reductions in greenhouse gases can be met. The administration's attempts to increase the number of acres in the U.S. designated as wilderness, strengthen the Environmental Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act were impossible to achieve with an uncooperative Congress, but overall, the Gore administration has been one that history will judge a success. He has not been our most charismatic president, but his policies led to stability and prosperity at home and abroad.

Polarization? I guess that's one word for it

People (including me) have been speaking regretfully about the polarization of politics over the last few years. Liberals (like me) tend to lay a preponderance of the blame for this on the Republican party, which, during the first year of the second Bush administration, imagined that they had established a Republican majority in the United States, including both houses of Congress, that was destined to last a generation. Tom DeLay didn't need a single Democratic vote to get even the most complicated or controversial legislation passed, so no compromise was needed on any issue, and because all Republican House members were beholden to Tom, there was no deviation from the party line, even on the most divisive of issues. Republican leaders got so accustomed to getting their way that they forgot how to react when something didn't go their way. One example: when pitiful, brain-dead Terri Schiavo's husband elected to terminate life-support and let the poor woman die in peace, true believer Tom DeLay and pandering toady Bill Frist ram-rodded legislation through both houses of Congress that would have allowed a judge to intervene between Ms. Schiavo's family and her doctors to compel the doctors to continue life support. When both Florida state court judges and Federal court judges at trial and appellate levels refused to intervene in this extremely difficult decision-making process, DeLay had a temper tantrum in front of the television cameras, a melt-down of epic proportions in which he fumed about "activist judges." Activist judges? All judges of all political persuasion who had been asked to do so had declined to take any action at all. DeLay was the activist, and for a politician, losing your temper in front of the cameras is a bad sign. But the fact that he could get that legislation passed was an impressive display of legislative clout.

If DeLay's attempts to intervene in the Schiavo matter and his success at forcing an unenthusiastic legislature to take a stand on an issue for which it had no palate was a good example of how a powerful man can polarize the House of Representatives yet be successful in imposing his will despite opposition by enforcing party discipline, the last chapter also contained the seeds of the collapse of DeLay's career and of Republican dominance in Washington. Keeping Congress in line is one thing, and DeLay was good at it. Getting the individual Representatives re-elected is something else entirely, and the Schiavo mess demonstrated that DeLay had lost his moorings as a politician. The electorate was against his attempts to interfere in that regrettable mess by more than two to one (poll figures here) but he paid the electorate no heed.

There were other signs, too. In that same term no less sophisticated a politician than Trent Lott, senior senator from Mississippi and Majority Leader of the Senate, made the same kind of error--thinking that the only people who matter are people just like you. In Lott's case, the one that cost him his leadership position was a brief speech he gave at Republican Senator Strom Thurmond's hundredth birthday party. He said he and others like him had voted for Thurmond when he ran for president in 1948 and were proud of it, and that if Thurmond had won, our country could have avoided many of the problems we subsequently faced. Since Turmond ran as a Dixiecrat on a one-issue platform of maintaining segregation and the Jim Crow laws that institutionalized it, Lott's protests that he'd been misunderstood were difficult to credit.

Although Lott was smoother than DeLay, there were a lot of parallels between the two men. DeLay had been Majority Whip of the House before he became Speaker, as Lott had been Majority Whip in the Senate. Both were southern strong-arm enforcers who used divisive issues like abortion and gun control and gay rights to polarize the electorate, embrace the self-righteous, and encourage partisanship. Both treated dissent or disagreement as unpatriotic appeasement. Neither showed any inclination to reach across the aisle. Both were impervious to criticism and appeared invincible in 2004, but then both were gone by 2007, resigning in the midst of (in the case of DeLay) or one step ahead of (in the case of Lott) scandals involving money.

Yesterday there was a small indication that liberals (like me) who like to blame the Republican party and the current administration for Washington's current uncivil, polarized environment got some useful demonstrative evidence. In their minority status, and in the absence of enforcement-minded ideologues like DeLay and Lott, the Republicans can't even be civil to each other. Up until now, it's been liberals (like me) and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats (like me) that have been polarized. Now the polarization is between Republicans in the executive branch and Republicans in the legislative branch.

Yesterday when the administration's national intelligence director, Mike McConnell, brought new rules governing the interactions between intelligence agencies to the congressional oversight committee on intelligence, the Republicans on the committee all walked out in protest, about as uncivil a treatment for a high-level witness one can imagine. The rules had been drawn up, revised, adopted, and signed into law in secret, and McConnell showed up to brief the committee on the rules, which Congress clearly understood it could not affect in any way. "The president is making it impossible for Congress to do oversight of the intelligence community," said the senior Republican on the committee, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan. "The only effective oversight that can be done is out of the executive branch. And this is the fox watching the chicken coop."

I know this isn't the point in our nation's history when our politicians are the most polarized and the least civil. In 1865 Sen. Charles Sumner, Republican of Massachusetts, gave a particularly pointed anti-slavery speech, and Rep. Preston Brooks, Democrat (like me) of South Carolina responded by beating him senseless with a cane in the Senate cloakroom. The issue of slavery polarized our nation like it would never be again. But even if things could be worse than they are today, there's another way to go about this, too. Politicians like Republican Everett Dirksen and Democrat Lyndon Johnson bargained and wheedled and compromised and worked things out, and had immense respect for each other. Tip O'Niell and Gerald Ford were friends. They listened to what each other had to say. They had drinks together. They told jokes. Somehow we've lost that in the last twenty years.

The presidential race is close and it's by no means certain who will win, but both candidates come from the relatively collegial confines of the Senate, both are experienced legislators who should understand the importance of consensus and compromise. Obama has consistently stressed the need for consensus and collaboration. One beef that Republicans voice about McCain is that he didn't always stand with his party on ideological issues, but chafing at Trent Lott's leadership is a hopeful sign of a less ideologically polarized era to come. McCain also got burned early in his career by taking campaign donations from Charles Keating, and from that point forward was very careful about whose money he took, a lesson that would have helped keep Republicans Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and Ted Stevens in office, or at least out of jail, and avoid the shadow over Abramoff friends John Dolittle and Conrad Burns.

So. Whichever way this goes, we have a decent shot at increasing the level of civility and decreasing the polarization in Washington, and that would be welcome.

In the words of Beck, "Things are going to get better. I can feel it."

From those wonderful folks who brought you street violence in Baghdad

Your friends at Blackwater came up with a clever scheme that allowed employees to train with AK-47s and other fully automatic weapons in its headquarters in sleepy Moyock, North Carolina: they bought 34 machine guns and "donated" them to the Camden County Sheriff's Department, which has all of nineteen deputies, none of whom has been trained with the Kalashnikovs or any other automatic weapon. According to the local paper, AK-47s are considered a poor choice for police work, even for SWAT teams, because they're "too powerful."You will probably not be surprised to learn that most of the weapons were stored not at the sheriff's office, but at Blckwater's headquarters. Note that Blackwater has more firepower in its headquarters than all of the state and municipal police departments in the State of North Carolina. I, for one, am not sure this is wise.

The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (as P.J. O'Roarke says, "all my hobbies under one roof"), unpersuaded by the figleaf tale, seized all of the weapons.

Locally, the Blackwater story shared today's front page with District of Columbia v. Heller, a landmark case handed down yesterday in which the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is an individual right not tied to the need for a state militia. Ironically, since the AK-47 is entirely appropriate for a militia and is in fact the weapon of choice of militias world-wide, logically, it fits within the original intent of the drafters of the Second Amendment.

Justice Anton Scalia, asked for comment, drew a gun and shot the reporter.

Yet another reason for Mac users to act smug

From the "Satan complains about the temperature in Hell" department, click here for a link to a scathing e-mail sent by Bill Gates to senior Microsoft executives complaining bitterly about how hard it is to use Windows. (Scroll down through the string to see Bill's part.) In the end he gives up on trying to download software from his own web site. Your standard Windows experience--repetitive re-entry of personal information, machine code error messages, repeated re-boots, obscure patches loaded for no reason--it's all there. The only thing that would have enhance the e-schadenfreude would have been a last desperate attempt to fix the problem by calling Microsoft customer support only to have the call answered by an Urdu speaker with limited English skills who referred to him as "Bill" in every sentence.

Polycarp's Tentative Return to Irregular Horoscoping

Polycarp hasn't posted here for a while. Things have been stacking up--lawsuits to defend, cookbooks to write , packages to wrap. There was the important issue of waistcoat vs. cumberbund to sort through. The editor at Strangepup was also nice enough to ask Polycarp to contribute over there, and he has (click on either "Strangepup" or "Phil Martin" to the right to see). Now that the primary season is in full flower again, though, he just can't resist.

Click on the highlighted words and phrases for subtle clues as to what the stars might be saying to you.


Aquarius (January 20-February 18): Well, President Aquarius, after a bruising election campaign and a surprising and surprisingly public divorce in the last few months, you have chosen to concentrate not on the economy, which has problems, or the increasingly tricky problem of immigration, or on unemployment, which is at all-time highs, but on an extraordinarily attractive Italian pop singer. Your poll numbers are plummeting, but what the Hell? Does the fall in the numbers tell us that something about France is changing? And does the fact that you are almost the same age as Mike Huckabee tell us something about the USA?

Pisces (February 19-March 20): Your positions on conservative issues are slipperier than an eel in Astro-Glide, Pisces, but the big wallet and full-family press seem to be paying off. The main drawback from your own party seems to be your faith, which to Polycarp is inexplicable and sad. What's the Trinity among friends? Polycarp has a suggestion, though: since the Repubs don't seem to mind your conservative conversion experiences on abortion, gun rights, gay marriage, etc., and only seem to care that you're saying the right thing to them right now, why don't you see the light and become a Baptist until November? You've changed your position on every other core belief and value, so what's one more?

Aries (March 21-April 19): 2007 was a really good year for you, Aries. It's not often that you get two of the most coveted awards in the world in the space of a few months. You haven't voiced a public opinion about the current campaign, but Polycarp thinks that's because you understand that with the phrase "elder statesman" comes a certain amount of gravitas. Gravitas that would be lost, for example, if you were to engage in partisan scrabbling and cat-fighting out on the stump. The challenge for you is going to be to remain relevant to American politics while remaining above it all at the same time. Polycarp is therefore assigning homework to all Aries former vice presidents: pick up the phone and call any Leo former chief executive bosses in your Rolodex and tell them to look up the word "dignity" in the dictionary, and tell them that his wife got hammered in South Carolina because of a lack of it from the two most important campaigners out there. Time to be friends. Go after Cancer instead of each other. God knows the material is there.

Taurus (April 20-May 20): Last time your name came up at the Polycarp Security Council meeting it was right after you got appointed special envoy to the middle east and were going to run over there and sort through all this donnybrook once and for all. And then Cancer and Scorpio of State ran over there and were going to do the same thing in straightaway. Polycarp used to think you were the smart one of the Tweedledee and Tweedledum routine, but has re-read the star charts and has come to the conclusion that you suffer from the same intellectual limitations as Cancer, the Secretary of Scorpio, a former Cancer of Defense, the sharpshooting Vice-Aquarius in his undisclosed location, and above all, that idiot Paul Aquarius: you all expect Middle-Easterners, with their complex history of conflicts and tribes and heritage of intense identification with particular plots of land and exceptionally precise ethnic identities and millenia of struggle to act like the British and the Americans. You were just as bad as the rest of them, Taurus, albeit more articulate and appealing, but your narrow view of human behavoiur dooms your current portfolio to failure.

Gemini (May 21-June 20): The stars say it's over, Gemini, and in some ways that's too bad. You're sounding traditional Democratic themes, but people under stress tend to revert to what they know best, and you've turned back into a plaintiff's lawyer, manipulating jurors into voting for your client. But a long jury trial lasts three weeks, and we've been hearing that same speech since 2003. By now it sounds like what it is: plaintiff's closing argument in a med. mal. case. "Big corporations are bad and you know it. Let me fight them for you. Send them a message," etc. Polycarp has heard this closing in many courtrooms in many towns. It sometimes works with jurors, but on the stump it sounds facile and as real as Mitt Romney's conservatism. You're a good plaintiff's lawyer, so I know you righteously believe that what's best for you is the best for the world, but good intentions and don't get you any kind of job, much less the best one of all. You also developed a bad case of "do as I say, not as I do" with your hedge-fund pals and high-rolling ways (see also $400 haircut, 2004). So no White House for you this time. You do, though, qualify for a wonderful consolation prize. At a the astrologist's gathering Denver in August, the heavens predict 33% Scorpio (despite South Carolina), 30% Leo, 17% you. So in effect you pick the next president. It is traditional to negotiate a really good job in exchange for the vote. You could completely re-invent the Attorney General job. Put your legal skills back where they belong.

Cancer (June 21-July 22): Your deft touch with personnel matters continues, Cancer, showing us we have much for which to look forward over the next year. Presumably because of his immense success as Undersecretary of Defense (he was the one who convinced you to invade Iraq) and as Chairman of the World Bank (he was the one who left in disgrace over the scandal about his mistress being on the payroll) you have appointed this same Leo to chair the International Security Advisory Board, a high-level arms-control post that reports directly to the Scorpio of State. The stars say that he will succeed just as well in this post as did in his prior jobs, which is to say just as qualified as Harriett Meiers was for the Supreme Court, and as tempermentally suited for it as John Bolton was to be U.N. Ambassador, and as carefully screened as Bernard Kerik was to be Homeland Security chief, and excel as Michael Brown did as FEMA chief, and Donald Rumsfeld at Secretary of Defense, and ... oh, well.

Leo (July 23-August 22): The stars say that bickering like school-children on TV with Scorpios with lots of money in a state that allows you to marry your fourteen year-old cousin looked decidedly un-presidential and gavs the boyishly-handsome third-runner a rare chance to look like the only grown-up in the room, Leo. Polycarp says that thirty seconds of juvenile squabbling in public can erase months of talking about conciliation and unity and healing, and there you stood, and this is far too close a race to give the Scorpio in your life the jump. Nobody wants the finger on the button to have a surly temper. Congrats on the win, but knock it off. You have a chance here. Don't screw it up.

Virgo (August 23-September 22): Last summer, you were dead candidate walking (just scroll down, Gemini--Polycarp thought you were the Lindsay Lohan of politics) and now you're looking like if not quite yet the front-runner, at least a runner again. Congrats. And Polycarp thinks that having Pisces martial artists who dye their hair and routinely play parts far younger than they had any reasonable reason to play should keep their age-related remarks to themselves. Still and all, Polycarp's polling staff has staff has told him that the Republican turnout in every primary thus far this season has been lower than the Dem turnout. How do you get over that come November?

Libra (September 23-October 22): Bye, bye, wee Libra. Polycarp was sorry to see you pull out. It was kind of comforting having you on the stump, espousing traditional liberal values, earnestly campaigning with the candidates who actually have a chance, proposing hippie-ish ideas like a Secretary of Peace in the cabinet, and spotting UFOs over Shirley McClaine's house. Nutty as your presentation is, Polycarp thinks your heart is genuinely good and that if all politicians were as honest, earnest and well-intentioned as you, our world would be a better place. So now you'll just have to go back to Washington with your much younger and much taller smoking-hot wife and console yourself somehow.

Scorpio (October 23-November 21): The planets suggest that Leos are going to a big part of the next few months for you, Scorpio: suggesting romantic attachments to one, competition with another, international unrest caused by a third, folksy homespun humorous comments at your expense from a fourth. Despite the dismal results in South Carolina, Polycarp sees lots of votes and money in your future, but to have continued success in your chosen occupation, you have to appear to be in some way qualified for it, and constant bickering with the junior Leo from Illinois is about as far from being presidential as you could possibly be. After that debate in South Carolina, Gemini cracked that he "represented the grownup wing of the Democratic party" and all the pundits on NPR have been quoting him with relish. Keep this up and you'll let him back in the race.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21): Hmmm. Sagittarius. You've been in your job for a little over two years and everybody's talking global recession. Your highly-respected predecessor held the job for twenty years through four different administrations and got along well with all of them. With dems and repubs alike He managed, through brilliance of perception and analysis, and force of personality, to convince the politicians to do the right thing, and kept the economy on its largest-ever sustained growth. Well, except for that nastiness about the dotcom burst. But that wasn't His fault. Maybe. Anyway, Polycarp has looked at the star charts and has two bits of advice for you. First, your Pisces predecessor told the politicians what to do and made them listen. Having politicians tell you what to do to help the Repubs stay in the White House is probably not fated to be such a successful strategy. Polycarp's also says that your predecessor has a phone number and that you have a phone book. Ponder these bits of information and think about their implications.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19): Polycarp gets most of his news from NPR and The New York Times so he doesn't hear much about football, although he is excruciatingly up to date on the African Nations Cup soccer tournament (Ivory Coast over Nigeria in a 1-0 hearbreaker) and Indian cricket scores (431 to 7 tonight) but the stars tell him that short-lived congratulations are in store for you, Aquarius, for recent athletic accomplishments. The stars also say that February 3 is an unlucky day for Aquarius New Yorkers traveling to Arizona to engage in competitions with annoying Roman numerals in their titles, especially if the contest is with people from Boston, but maybe now your big brother will stop teasing you about watching all the important games on TV.