State & Local Politics

David Brooks’s much-discussed column yesterday on Sarah Palin was interesting to me, not because it seemed to offer a credible voice against Sarah Palin’s candidacy, but because of its examination about where our leaders should come from in a republic.

Brooks offers two paradigms of conservatism to examine the tension in its intellectual circles over Palin’s pick: establishment elitism and populist reformism. Brooks eventually concludes that the demands of modern-day governance make the virtues of prudence and experience found in establishment elitism more important than the common-sense instincts of populist reformism. Read more...

Although I think Barack Obama is making a mistake attacking Sarah Palin's false claims, inconsistencies and surprises in her record, it doesn't mean they are irrelevant. While Obama should stay on the subject of John McCain's plans, proposals and record of voting with President Bush, there is plenty for surrogate Democrats or Joe Biden to chew over in Palin's past.

Just today, Palin went after Obama in her remarks in Ohio, and reiterated her now-trademark line about how she "told Congress thanks but no thanks on that Bridge to Nowhere, but if we wanted a bridge we would build it ourselves here in Alaska." Read more...

Congress gaveled back into session yesterday after a long August recess, though it will only be working for a few more weeks before it breaks again so its members can campaign furiously before the November election. Congress should resist the temptation to use these last few weeks as a proxy for the upcoming election and focus on getting some urgent and common-sense legislation passed.

There's no place better to start than reforming the nation's foster care system. There are approximately 500,000 children in foster care, many of whom have been languishing in the system for years with no chance to exit — remaining in the custody of the state — and deprived of the normalcy all children deserve. The current foster care system can produce some burdensome bureaucratic nightmares for children. Currently, even if a child has been in the care of a relative for years, he or she can be required to get signed permission from a case worker to do everyday activities like stay over at a friend’s house or visit another state on a school field trip. Read more...

“I was born in a small town,” the John Cougar song goes, in one of the many songs that venerate small-town living.

Living in a small town is part of the America’s character. People like the idea of living in small towns, of knowing their neighbors, of being part of a community. Even if they live in a big city, they really want to live in a small town, so they slice their big cities into smaller neighborhoods.

Washington, D.C. is, in actuality, a pretty small town. Capitol Hill is like a college campus, the White House is its own small city, and all the departments that are sprinkled throughout the area are their own little small towns. Read more...

I would like to outline a brief history of the so-called culture wars and what potential future they hold because I am getting the feeling that they could actualize out of abstraction very quickly around one extraordinary woman: John McCain’s selection for vice president, Sarah Palin. She will not let go and the Republicans will not let her go. As David Brooks said last night, he has not met one delegate who opposes her. In fact, they’re crazy about her. All of the blue-collar people I have talked to up here in northern New Hampshire, and this is a blue-collar, bears-in-the-yard, libertarian Republican state, are likewise utterly crazy about her. They will not let go of her either, from what I can see, under any circumstances.

Power Points RE: culture war:

1 — The culture wars or the division between red and blue states is a continuation of the Civil War. To paraphrase Carl Von Clausewitz, culture war is hot war by other means; by political and cultural means. Historian Dan Carter, in his biography of George Wallace, The Politics of Rage, makes the point that the Christian Coalition and the Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson movement arose in direct opposition to the perceived decadence of the Sixties — the hippies, racial integration, sexual freedom, etc. Wallace correctly guessed that the regional values of the rural South would serve as a national theme in opposition. It did when amplified by Falwell and Robertson. Read more...

Stop Trying to Rebuild a City That is Being Reclaimed by the Sea

ST. PAUL — While many people have dismissed Al Gore and his ilk as tree-hugging liberals bent on curbing our way of life, there is one thing he is dead right about. Something strange is happening to the earth’s climate. Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav, and the tsunamis in the Asian Pacific may be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of imminent climatic threats to the world, and should give us pause to consider whether or not rebuilding New Orleans is really such a good idea.

While Gustav’s bark proved to be much worse than its bite, the fact that the collective consciousness viewed it as a serious enough threat to halt a political convention over a thousand miles away speaks volumes. People are genuinely concerned about whether New Orleans can survive as a city. With each successive season, and despite Herculean feats of engineering, the sea takes a little more of the city back into its bosom. Read more...

Now John McCain learns, as we do, that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) sent a 70-page memo to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) in February seeking $200 million for new Alaska earmarks, and as mayor of the village of Wasilla she lobbied hard for and won more than $26 million of earmarks.

If you believe Sarah Palin is a reformer, you will believe that the College of Cardinals will summon me to Rome as successor to the pope. Palin long ago hired the prime pork lobbying firm in Alaska, which features Ted Stevens's son, and Ted Stevens's former chief of staff, who serviced her pork lobbying account.

The regular junkets of Palin and her staff to Washington, hustling earmark dough, are legendary in Alaska. Someone will soon add up the airfare, hotel and fine dining tabs to push for the pork, plus the lobbying fees, all at taxpayer expense, starting with Wasilla, continuing as governor. Read more...

Earmarks. Pork-barrel politics. Money from Washington. McCain and Palin hit the campaign trail by boasting about “reform” in government.

The truth comes out. First, Sarah Palin said on Friday: “I told Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks on that Bridge to Nowhere.’ ”

Cheering crowds actually thought she opposed the $454 million for Alaska bridges. Wrong.

Articles in Alaska papers blew the whistle. Read more...

Americans were always meant to be Alaskans, just as we were meant to be Texans and New Englanders. Emerson instructed us to “go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men.” Our fate is to find ourselves again here in nature and don’t look back. That is why we go west and that is why we go to Alaska.

But it is one thing to go alone into the wilderness as Thoreau did when Concord was still in sight and with Emerson within a short afternoon walk for thoughtful conversation about the Vedas. Quite another is Jack London’s narrative of the Klondike almost a hundred years later: “He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly, it was colder than fifty below — how much colder he did not know.” Read more...

Joe Biden: he of the plagiarized speech; he of the bad hair weave; he of the long-winded and sonorous stemwinder and random aside. The one really good thing about Biden is that he is not Hillary, and it is driving the Republicans crazy that she will not be VP. Rove and Co., with an obvious hand now behind McCain’s show, are as broody as Russians. Their whole playbook is based on one Clinton or another poisoning the political water. It has granted them easy and unlimited access to unspeakable power. Such easy targets. Sort of how Bush & Co. thrill to invade little tribal countries and then ... uh-oh ... suddenly find themselves facing Russia.

This week Elvis leaves the building and so does the missus, and nothing could be worse for Bush/Rove. Bush/Clinton is like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty locked in embrace, going over the waterfall together. Good for America. Good for Obama. Read more...