State & Local Politics

Whoever thought Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) was going to join the ranks of compromised politicians straddling deep deficits and entrenched interests by doing nothing as voter anger rises — you can think again.
 
He came on quietly, having run a race last fall that focused on the Garden State's problems rather than criticism of President Obama and the Democrats in Congress. During his campaign, Christie said he would govern like a one-termer, free from the constraints of reelection. He said at the time, "I'm not going to tell people just what they want to hear if I don't believe that I can absolutely guarantee it's going to happen," adding that the voters of New Jersey had "been lied to by politicians over and over again." We've all heard that before — who could have believed him?

Rugged individualism was the original guiding ethic of northern New England. Possibly it still is. I know master builders up here who have never yet seen the need to hook up the electricity to their own houses and loggers who do well for their families pulling trees out of the forest with Percherons. But this I wasn’t expecting. 

Most of the time, we’re proud of the progress we’ve made as Americans. But sometimes we’re not. Witness the retrograde, racist immigration law just adopted in Arizona.

Under the new law, police officers are required to stop anybody they “reasonably suspect” of being an illegal immigrant and demand to see proof of citizenship.

The dubious effect of the stimulus will soon be up, 100,000 will be added to the unemployment list in August when the census has been completed and President Obama charges after Wall Street in a dangerous populist offensive led by the Keystone Kops at the SEC that seems to have been drummed up in an undergraduate coffee house. Possibly the most tedious aspect of centralized government; ours, like that in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, is that the need to accommodate the entire vast horde in art and language requires a bulletproof single metaphor. One that even a child could understand. Wall street bad. Big Brother good. A not-so-bright child. Possibly a Child Left Behind in a country left behind.

Gary Andres has a great column today about, as he calls it, “the myth of American consensus.” 

As Gary puts it, “The myth concerns the level of political consensus in America. It’s a lot lower than most people think. Polls may show high levels of agreement on generic aspirations like peace, prosperity or even a better education system. But when it comes to specific steps to achieve these goals, things begin to unravel.” 

Sometimes, when something is so outrageous, I prefer to take a breath and hold off writing something, even though it means I am a little late for the immediacy and instant gratification that is so essential in these hyper-cyber times.

This is one of those occasions. After thinking things over, I am moderating what I want to say.

What the HELL, Gov. McDonnell!!??? WTH?!!!

The difference back when my home state, Rhode Island, was a major slave-trading port, was culture. Economy in the North was urban and heading toward industrialization. Economy in the South was agrarian. The two had never met and were temperamentally at odds. Jefferson anticipated Yankee invasion as early as 1797. In the 1820s Henry Adams wrote with stunningly accurate foresight of how and when the Civil War would emerge.

As Karl Rove, Dick Armey and others try to steal the fire of the Tea Parties, a singularly good idea, and a thoroughly original one that might find a place with this theater seeking a theme is suggested today in the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal: a Constitutional Convention. Because the 14-state 10th Amendment challenge to Obama healthcare is likely to fail anyway, this is not about healthcare. It is about who will manage, nurture and determine the fate of that volatile and enlightened collective soul that is Texas, Rick Perry or Barney Frank? And why again is that?

In the last 20 years North Carolina has had the churning experience of letting go of the old and finding itself again underneath; returning again to the place where it started, the Democratic Party.

Something good happened when the urbane Harvard-educated lawyer and entrepreneur Mark Warner teamed up with the rustic Scotch-Irish warrior Jim Webb from the deep hills of western Virginia. This was a new and auspicious Democratic paradigm, an advanced management and excellence model with Southern characteristics.

Politics and possibly life and probably everything are a struggle between power and anti-power; anti-power makes power stronger until it overrides it. Then it kills it. With the historic healthcare vote this week, the forces of anti-power have overwhelmed and conquered the American impulse to power. That is a good thing, as we won’t be nuking the Russians now. It is a bad thing because we won’t be doing anything else of consequence. It is a marker, like Waterloo to Napoleon, like Lenin’s black train to Nicholas and Alexandra’s Russia. Change has come.