State & Local Politics

Pat Quinn, the just-elected Democratic nominee for governor, is a seriously overweight man who loves his breakfast bacon. He defeated Dan Hynes, a seriously underweight man whose appearance comes to mind when listening to nutrition zealots preach that those who consume the fewest calories live the longest. (I’d rather eat the risotto and sacrifice a few years.)

At a press conference last October, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was asked: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”

She replied with that wild-eyed self-assurance that grew more shrill and extreme as we got to Christmas: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

I don’t live in Illinois anymore, although all of my extended family does. So I keep an eye on what happens there on a daily basis.

The New York Times had an interesting item in its op-ed pages this morning. It had the credit ratings of the most of the nations in this world, and all of the states. America’s credit rating is still at AAA, the highest you can get. Amazing but true. Read more...

Should gay marriage be a states’-rights issue? Abortion?

Should the 10th Amendment be the First Amendment, as Jefferson might have liked?

Should we “End the Fed,” as Ron Paul and his son Rand (running for Senate in Kentucky and endorsed by Sarah Palin) would like?

Should we go back to a gold standard?

Is California really one state, or two states or more?

On Monday morning I wrote a post describing how Republicans were salivating over making Illinois the next Massachusetts — taking the U.S. Senate seat once held by Barack Obama and giving it to a Republican, North Shore five-term congressman Mark Kirk, a Naval Reserve intelligence officer who is untouched by corruption and exceedingly strong on national-security issues.

There has awakened this past year in Massachusetts and across the continent a new vein of conservatism that might be seen as the dawning of a new age of common folk.

Scott Brown in barn coat and pickup truck at the heritage hockey rink, and Sarah Palin, married to a fisherman and from people, as she says, who worked with their hands. While the Democrats have somehow managed to become the party of the rich and superrich, conspicuously being seen and seeing these past weeks at those new courts of Louis XIV and the Dauphine de France, Davos and Copenhagen: Bill Clinton, Haiti’s Lord Jim, with his 50 gold watches; Nancy Pelosi, of untold California millions; friends of Obama and Bill, who bask at Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard with John Forbes Kerry, said to be the richest man ever to run on a national ticket.

I live in Chicago, so the name David Hoffman has been in the back of my mind for a few years. He was the city’s inspector general, rooting out corruption in Mayor Daley’s City Hall — some of it, anyway; a team of 200 IGs would be needed to really make a dent. He was said to give Daley hives, and the mayor was surely relieved when Hoffman came to him last August, just a couple of weeks shy of his four-year term, and told him that he was resigning the next day to run for the U.S. Senate seat that Barack Obama occupied briefly before moving up to the White House.

Instant fame followers are crowning Massachusetts Sen.-elect Scott Brown, the political flavor of the week, as the future of the Republican Party and the reflector of the demise of the Democratic congressional majority, perhaps even the Republican presidential candidate in 2012. I bet he isn’t reelected to a full term.

 Brown has been quickly labeled a political hero. I believe he is the product of 1) a perfect storm of unpredictable political events outside his control but from which he benefited and 2) the evanescent phenomenon of a 24/7 media that is fickle, irrational and only temporarily influential. It will chew him up, then discard him, as it has others.

The country had descended into war, disassociation and debt because the king had fallen into a trance. It is the theme of that great, primitive myth of the English-speaking people, “Lord of the Rings,” which swept the airwaves at the turn of the millennium.

Then the king suddenly woke up. That is the sense of things with the election of Scott Brown. It came to mind again last night listening to an interview with Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, who is running for governor of California. America is coming out of a trance.

First out it was Levi Johnston v. Sarah Palin. Then Letterman vs. Sarah Palin. And Republican PR person Steve Schmidt, way post-seasonal in the marketing curve, coming in just in these last few weeks. But now in Texas it is George H.W. Bush vs. Sarah Palin. The stakes couldn’t be higher. The Republican primary race in Texas is now virtually a referendum on federalism.

George H.W. Bush supports Kay Bailey Hutchison. Sarah Palin supports the current governor, Rick Perry.