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My Politics
My Politics
Some of my other pages:
I'm about two-thirds Democrat and one-third Republican. In other words, when I listen to Republican politicians speak, it seems like I say to myself "What a bunch of bull" about twice as often as when I listen to Democrats speak. Not surprisingly, my political sympathies are more acceptable to my Democratic acquaintances than to my Republican ones; liberals seem to like me better than conservatives. If I were to find myself trapped in an elevator with Al Sharpton and Ralph Nader, I'd be okay. If I were stuck in there with Pat Buchanan and Bob Novak, though, I might be in trouble. But, in truth, I think of myself as a political moderate. On many issues, I think the Republicans are wrong; but I take exception to some Democratic stands as well. Ultimately, I respect the integrity and sincerity of the best members of both parties. My upbringing was definitely not bipartisan; I was raised in a solidly Republican household. My Dad had once been chairman of the Clark County (Nevada) Republican Party. Then he wrote President Nixon a letter saying that Nixon's policies were unduly squeezing the middle class. Soon afterwards, my Dad was audited by the I.R.S., as he was for the remainder of the Nixon presidency. (I suppose it could have been a coincidence.) Nixon's little black book of enemies was, and remains, outrageous. To use the machinery of government to harass your political opponents is inexcusable. In the '90's, President Clinton caught hell (and rightly so) for having secret FBI files (about Republicans) stashed away in the White House, but Nixon's transgressions were much more serious. Nixon could and should have been a better President; the potential was there. He was certainly intelligent; a former co-worker of mine, Jim Stressing, pointed out that, when Nixon answered a question, you felt like he was educating you. And I think Nixon did have principles at his core, though he let his ambition override them. His judgment, clearly, was woefully impaired. The Watergate break-in, for example, was utterly senseless; Nixon was already well on his way to a landslide victory over George McGovern (the Barry Goldwater of the Democratic Party). You would think that John McLaughlin (who at the time was a Jesuit priest and a senior member of Nixon's staff) would have exerted a sufficiently edifying influence. In spite of Nixon's sins, though, I agree with my Dad that President Ford was right to pardon him; the disgrace of having to resign the Presidency was punishment enough. And I think you'd have to be pretty hard-hearted to deny that Nixon did a lot to redeem himself after leaving office. I almost wish Gerald Ford had been elected in 1976; he was a very decent and capable man, and his unquestioned integrity restored respect for the Presidency. But any Republican following Nixon would have been doomed to defeat; the foul taste of Watergate was still too strong in people's mouths. The best thing, as I see it, about the Carter Presidency is that it raised Jimmy Carter to international status, and he's been an outstanding humanitarian and role model since leaving office. (Plus, if Carter hadn't been elected, we would never have had "Billy Beer"!) I think that Carter has been unfairly blamed by some for the Iran hostage crisis, which was in fact the end result of decades of U.S. support for the Shah's oppressive and evil regime. No one blames the Iranian people for overthrowing that monster. (We do blame them, justifiably, for holding innocent Americans hostage and for installing an equally despotic regime in his place.) In 1980, my family was solidly pro-Reagan. I asked my Dad what it meant when people said that Ronald Reagan was too conservative. Dad replied, "Conservatives believe in limited government, strong national defense... You can't be too conservative, really." (Although Dad certainly believed in a safety net for the down-and-out.) I loved Reagan's "There you go again" line; it was one of many memorable moments brought to us by the Gipper. (Regardless of what you think of his policies, he was "The Great Communicator".) When Reagan pointed out that Carter's so-called "misery index" had gotten worse since 1976, and that Carter had said then that no President with such a high misery index was worthy of re-election, I felt it to be a decisive blow, incontrovertible proof that Carter needed to go. That November, I was in a car with my sister Nancy when they announced on the radio that Reagan had sewn up the election. Nancy looked at me and screamed in delight. Scared the crap out of me. In 1981-82, my freshman year of high school, my world history teacher was Wayne Cohan, who by that time had a master's degree in Chinese and Russian history and who could speak at least a little bit of more than a dozen languages. Wayne played a big role in my social and intellectual development; he was a truly remarkable human being. He and his wife were simply the best people you could ask to be friends with (although, years later, I would discover that Wayne would play mind games mercilessly on the tennis court!). Wayne was pretty far left on the political scale. He never advocated violence or anything radical like that, but his political views were about what you'd expect of a man whose hero was John Lennon. He accepted that salaries should be unequal, but he did believe that workers should share common ownership of the means of production (e.g., the employees of a factory should own that factory). Wayne would be a strong formative influence on me (somewhat to my Mom's dismay) during my freshman and sophomore years. Later, when I attended U.C. Santa Barbara (1987-1990), Wayne was getting his Ph.D. and teaching there, which was a great stroke of luck for me. By the time of the 1984 election, I was a senior in high school and my politics were starting to move left; I kind of liked Massachusetts' dynamic duo of Ted Kennedy and Tip O'Neill. I still wanted Reagan to win, though. In one of the debates, Walter Mondale gave Reagan an exaggerated look of disbelief, and I thought, "He looks like a chipmunk." (At the time, my judgments could be a little superficial.) Today, I think very highly of Mondale; I was sorely disappointed that he did not win his last-minute bid for the Senate in 2002, after Senator Wellstone had perished in a plane crash. I think Mondale would have won if not for the unseemly, over-the-top memorial service for Wellstone, which turned into a de facto Democratic campaign event. I have mixed feelings about President Reagan. He was certainly a great personality and a peerless public speaker. And I have to give him credit for sensing that, by boosting defense spending, he could provoke the Soviets to do the same, which would soon bankrupt them. I didn't realize what he was up to at the time; I was very unhappy that he was proposing cuts in the education budget while lavishing funds on weapons programs. Obviously, his strategy worked beautifully; the Soviet Union went bust, the Cold War came to an end, and most of the Soviet bloc turned into friendly, independent nations. It's amazing how the world has changed; I never thought I'd see Germany re-united, or Russia become a capitalist democracy! But I think it's misleading to give Reagan credit for the economic growth of the '80's. Much of that growth would not have happened without those massive deficits which now saddle us with trillions of dollars in debt. I think Reagan was right to spend the money; he did it to achieve a noble purpose. But if he hadn't cut taxes so dramatically, he could have paid for a larger share of those defense budgets as he went along. The economic boom (created, in part, by all that deficit spending) was a bit of an illusion. And the Reagan administration can not escape blame for the Savings and Loan Scandal; the deregulation and lax oversight of the S & L's cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. (That's "billions" with a "b", folks. I remember reading a museum director in Santa Barbara discussing the outrage over controversial NEA grants. She pointed out that, when a controversial artist gets a $10,000 grant, people can comprehend that amount of money, and they get angrier over it than they get over billions of dollars -- an amount difficult to grasp -- lost in the savings and loan debacle.) I also frown on the whole Iran-Contra affair, and I don't think Oliver North is a hero for having participated in it. It doesn't mean I don't enjoy watching him on Fox news; I just think he was a little too self-congratulatory over his role in the whole thing. Standing there in front of the Iran-Contra commission, he did a great job of posing as a model patriot, but it doesn't excuse him for what he did. The Contras were no freedom fighters. They were, to paraphrase an old line, sons-of-bitches, but they were our sons-of-bitches. Just because people are well-disposed towards the U.S. doesn't make them good liberty-loving people; just look at the Shah of Iran or Ferdinand Marcos. Let me say now that, just as I don't give Reagan much credit for the economic boom of the 1980's, I don't give Clinton all the credit for the boom of the '90's. No matter who was President, the high-tech revolution and the explosive growth of the internet would have created an economic bubble. But Clinton did get the deficit under control, and actually started paying down the debt, and he deserves credit for that. I think the President of the United States should be more knowledgeable and more engaged than Reagan was. Reagan was extraordinarily charismatic, and as one of his sons pointed out, if you're deciding a matter of personal morality, you could do a lot worse than to ask yourself what Reagan would do. But I think the President of the United States should have a first-rate intellect. Reagan had broad vision (the "vision thing", as Bush 41 called it), but not enough grasp of the details. He was too dependent on the people around him. Clinton had his character flaws, but he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and a graduate of Yale law school. Those are the kinds of intellectual credentials I want in the leader of the free world. I want a Jefferson or a Lincoln, or at least an FDR. I know we can't always find such men, but those are my paragons for the Presidency. In 1988, I was finally able to vote for President. I registered Democratic for the primaries. At the time, I had swung about as far left as I would ever swing, and in the primaries I voted for... Jesse Jackson. It wasn't an entirely naive choice; at the time, I planned to be a high-school teacher, and I figured that no candidate would spend more on education than Jackson. I pretty much knew he couldn't win the nomination; I just wanted to send the message that I cared about his issues. Besides, he came to speak at UCSB. I have pictures. There was never any doubt about who I would vote for in the general election, even after Dukakis gave his bloodless answer to Bernard Shaw's question in the debate. For those who don't remember, Dukakis had fielded many questions during the campaign about his opposition to the death penalty, and by the time he was nominated he pretty much had down a stock response that he gave whenever the issue came up. Well, in the debate, Shaw gave Dukakis an extreme version of the question, asking if he would approve of the death penalty if an assailant were to rape and murder Mrs. Dukakis. Without hesitating, Dukakis went into his stock response, that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent, etc. It was disastrous. The iceman cometh, and the iceman goeth down to defeat. When Dukakis said he was very tough on violent crime, the Republicans in the audience laughed. It was rude, but they were essentially right. Two general stereotypes about the parties tend to hold true: the Republicans kowtow to the super-rich, and the Democrats coddle criminals. The prison furlough plan had been used in Massachusetts under Republican leadership as well, but the Willie Horton incident still happened under Dukakis' watch. Dukakis' keen intellect, though, was a breath of fresh air after the Reagan era. And he had a first-rate Vice-Presidential choice, Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas. Bentsen was a man you could easily picture in the Oval Office; his experience, dignity and presence left Dan Quayle in the dust. When Bentsen delivered his memorable zinger in the vice-presidential debate -- "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." -- Democrats finally had revenge for Reagan twice saying "There you go again." Unfortunately, Dukakis' ill-advised tank ride put him back on the defensive. That November, Dukakis became a footnote in history, and the Bush dynasty was born. Jon Lovitz of Saturday Night Live realized unhappily that Dana Carvey would get to play the President for the next four years. It was during the Bush presidency that my political pendulum began to swing back towards the right a little. I couldn't escape the fact that I thought the Republicans were generally right about violent crime. I don't doubt that many people are turned bad by their environment, but that doesn't change the fact that people who play by the rules need to be protected. I have very little sympathy for violent criminals who instill fear into decent people. Lots of us undergo rotten experiences which could turn us into worse people than we actually become. I do deviate from the Republican norm when it comes to mandatory minimums for drug possession. I'm no fan of illicit substances; I don't use them, and I don't like seeing friends use them. Big-time dealers are the scum of the earth, turning a blind eye to the misery they cause. The public-service ads pointing out the link between drug money and awful crimes seem corny to some, but they're 100% right. If you use coke or ecstasy, you better realize that your money is going to some of the most unsavory people on the planet. But, on the other hand, locking up someone for ten years because of a couple lines of coke makes no sense to me. The money is much better spent on prevention and treatment than it is on incarceration. And frankly, I think marijuana should be legal. I don't think it's any more dangerous than alcohol. I know people argue that it's a gateway drug, and I'm certainly not advocating legalization of harder drugs. But the fact is, most of the people I know smoked pot at one time or another, and they're no worse off for it. If you make something a crime, you're in effect saying that people who engage in that behavior are enemies of society, and I really don't think that a college student experimenting with weed should be branded that way, even if they inhale. The idea of putting someone in jail with hardened criminals, and giving them a criminal record for life, because they're caught with a joint is totally unjust to me. I believe society's moving in my direction on this issue. It can't move fast enough. What made it clear to me that I was becoming more conservative was the lead-up to the first Gulf War. Wayne was against it early on, feeling that it was an Arab issue to resolve. His wife was firmly against the war. She pointed out that, before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, an Iraqi official had indicated Iraq's displeasure with Kuwait to an American diplomat, who in effect replied that the U.S. didn't have a dog in this fight. She felt that it was hypocritical of us to turn around after the fact and act outraged. I think that both Wayne and his wife acknowledged that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was unjust (even though it did turn out that the most-hyped story of Iraqi brutality -- the removal of Kuwaiti babies from their incubators -- was a canard), but they objected to our military response to it. I thought the Bush administration was making a fairly persuasive case that Iraq was on its way to developing nuclear weapons, which was clearly an unacceptable prospect. Obviously I was concerned, like all Americans, about losing our soldiers' lives; at the time, there was talk that huge numbers of stars-and-stripes-draped coffins would be coming back from the Middle East. And after the war, I thought it was unfortunate that so many ordinary-Joe Iraqi troops had had to pay with their lives for the misdeeds of a few lunatics at the top. But as 1991 went on, my misgivings about the war diminished, and I came to see it as having been an unfortunate necessity. I think the Gulf War set me on the path to being a political moderate. A conservative President had followed a course of action which my liberal friends opposed, and I came to side with the President. It must have just killed George H.W. Bush in 1992 that he could not beat a "pot-smoking, draft-dodging, womanizing small-state governor" (as Clinton's critics derisively described him). Of course, had it not been for Perot, Bush would have won that year's election; polls showed that Perot was drawing far more votes from Bush than from Clinton. I remember the Presidential debate where all three candidates wore navy-blue-and-red striped ties (at least one tie's stripes were angled the opposite way from the other two). I remember Perot asking rhetorically, "If you were to die, which candidate would you want to raise your children?" Frankly, the answer didn't seem as obvious as he was implying. (I kind of leaned towards the Bushes.) Maybe that's why Perot quickly went on to ask, "Who would you want looking after your children's inheritance?" Despite my admiration for the Bush family's child-rearing skills, I voted for Clinton that year. It was funny how, just like in 1988, the Republicans were warning, "Watch out! He's going to do to the country what he did to his home state!", while the Democratic candidate was promising, "I can do for the country what I did for my home state." I honestly liked the two-for-one idea: Bill and Hillary as co-Presidents, sort of. And I do believe that the Clintons genuinely care about other people and about our country's well-being. In spite of his flaws, Bill Clinton truly loves America and Americans, and is loved in return. Clinton had obviously been a playboy, but I really thought that as President he would behave. Sadly, I was wrong. I just don't understand how Clinton could have repeatedly surrendered to impulses which caused so much harm to his reputation, his legacy, and his family. Poor Chelsea! Republicans always point out that the economic recovery of the Clinton presidency began while Bush 41 was still in office, and that the recession of the Bush 43 presidency began under Clinton's watch. It's debatable how much influence the administration (this or any other) has on the direction of the economy, but the economy is certainly influenced by people's perceptions; when consumer confidence is high, the economy tends to do better. It seems to me that, if the recovery of the early '90's began only after it became clear that Clinton would be the next President, then perhaps Clinton-inspired optimism contributed to the uptick in the economy even before he actually took office. Likewise, once people saw that Bush 43 was going to be the next President, they may have started tightening their belts even before he was sworn in. I'm not saying it for sure, but I don't think these speculations are unreasonable. As many critics have observed, Clinton ran as a moderate, then took a sharp left turn once he was in office, and the Democratic party still hasn't recovered. His early "stimulus package" smelled like a payoff to groups that he owed. And then he made the terrible decision to press the issue of gays in the military. That ended the presidential honeymoon in a hurry. I think that "Don't ask, don't tell" is the right policy to have for now; eventually, I think gays will be able to openly serve, and I don't have a problem with that. Years after living with him, I found out that one of my old roommates had come out of the closet, and I don't feel violated as a result; I really don't care. But Clinton should have started his Presidency by pushing for some less-controversial programs and issues. As it was, he handed the Republicans excellent excuses to take a strongly adversarial position to him almost from the outset. I supported the Clinton health-care proposal which was defeated in '94. I think that every U.S. citizen should be able to get free health care. Opponents cried that the Clinton plan would limit a patient's choice of a doctor; well, what do HMOs and PPOs (Preferred-Provider Organizations) do now? And when people cry "socialism", or even "communism", I remind them that the AARP endorsed the Clinton plan! Is the AARP a communist front? Free nationwide health care works fine for hundreds of millions of Canadians and Europeans. I've heard some denunciations of the Canadian system from people here in the U.S., but the Canadians I've spoken to wouldn't trade their system for ours. I think the Clinton administration was morally in the right with their proposal, but their timing was wrong. Providing Clinton could have resisted Monica Lewinsky, he would have had a good chance, I think, of pushing through his health-care plan if he had waited until his second term. As it was, though, I think that his stand on gays in the military and his ambitious health care proposal scared voters and brought the Republicans control of the Senate and the House in '94. For the Democratic party, Bill Clinton has been something of a double-edged sword, cutting his friends as well as his enemies. Travelgate, Whitewater, FBI files in the Clinton's safe, Hillary's $1,000-to-$98,000 futures investing... I guess Clinton fell short of his "most ethical administration ever" promise. But I generally liked his policies. Bringing the government back into surplus was a tremendous achievement, although I reluctantly have to give Congress some of the credit. The surprise, for me, of the '96 campaign was that I liked Senator Bob Dole better at the end of it than I had at the beginning. His primary personal blemish seems to have been a cheap shot he delivered many years ago in a debate during a tight Senate re-election bid, and even that wasn't particularly out of line by political standards. I think Dole is personally admirable, but he had the misfortune of an ill-timed election, as well as an ill-tempered Texan. (I really shouldn't say that; I have nothing against Perot.) If Dole had been able to run against Clinton in 1994 or 1998, he would have had a better chance. But the election was held when Clinton's early scandals had run out of steam and Monica was yet to come. In my opinion, Dole made an outstanding Vice-Presidential selection: Jack Kemp, who has been called every Democrat's favorite Republican. I voted against Dole not because of the man himself, but because he came from a party whose philosophy and platform I opposed. Since the election, I've come to like Dole even more. I think his commercials for Visa and Pepsi were tasteful and funny, and it was gutsy of him to do the Viagra ads, knowing that the late-night comics would have a field day with them. Also, I enjoyed his book on political wit, though, like Ross Perot, it was a little short. (That one was for you, Senator.) I don't know what it is with Al Gore. Again and again, I've heard that, behind closed doors, he is genuine, at-ease, funny and amiable. But in public, he just stiffens up. It feels so presumptuous for me to say this, but put him behind a podium and he seems to try too hard to get people's respect and to win them over. I cringed during the 2000 town hall debate when, walking by George W. Bush, he nearly shoulder-butted the man and said aggressively, "My turn." It seemed so forced and unnatural. And how could he have let out all those exaggerated sighs during the first debate while Bush was speaking? Critics rightly pointed out that that's a high-school debater's trick, unworthy of a Presidential aspirant. It's puzzling, seeing as how Gore had done quite well against Ross Perot in the NAFTA debate on "Larry King Live". Gore's moving speech about protecting our children from the dangers of smoking was undercut a little when it was revealed how much campaign money he'd taken from the tobacco lobby over the years (a necessary evil for a Southern politician, I suppose). Gore is a very bright man; there's no doubt in my mind that he's smarter than Bush, even if their college grades were comparable. But he was a terrible candidate. It's such a pity, because I think he would have been a fine President, giving us Clinton's good policies without the extra-curricular activities. The events of 9/11 brought out a side of Gore that we rarely see. Bush rose to the occasion well; when he stood at ground zero with his arm around a New York City fireman and declared that the people who had done this would hear from all of us soon, just about every American was proud, at that moment, to have George Bush as their President. But Gore would have risen to the occasion also. He would have inspired and unified America, and he would have been an extremely formidable foe for the terrorists. It's pleasing to see Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice in such prominent positions. My friend Mustafa has pointed out that people in many parts of the world just feel that they have no use for African-Americans. Well, now they have to adjust their attitudes, and that's a positive change. I think General Powell and Dr. Rice are very intelligent, well-qualified people who are doing their jobs conscientiously and skillfully. I don't think Gore could have done much better filling those 2 positions (although I do have some reservations about Rice in the wake of the second Gulf War). I like Tom Ridge as Director of Homeland Security. I'm glad that his Cabinet position was bumped up in the line of Presidential succession; I think that anyone we entrust with overseeing homeland security is probably better qualified to be President than, say, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. I don't care for John Ashcroft, though. An arch-conservative as the chief law enforcement officer in the land is a worrisome thought. Also, even though I find Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to be oddly charismatic, I wish someone else (with different aides) were in charge at the Pentagon. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who voted for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election got exactly what they deserved: a Republican victory. I suppose it's fitting. Turnabout is fair play, as they say, and Republicans had been denied the presidency in 1992 because of a third-party spoiler. But at least Perot's supporters honestly believed that he was the best candidate in the race. How many people really believed that about Nader? He was a protest candidate, plain and simple. I think it was very disingenuous of him to belittle the differences between Bush and Gore. I understand that the Green Party wanted as many votes as possible so that they would have a shot at getting Federal matching funds in 2004. But they sold their causes down the river to get those votes. Virtually everyone with Green Party sympathies would be much happier with a Gore presidency than with a Bush one. Anyone who voted Green in Florida in 2000 has little right to criticize anything the Bush administration does. I was shocked when Gore won the popular vote. I thought his only chance to win the Presidency was through the Electoral College, and I had it completely backwards. It's ironic that now many residents of my home state of Nevada are ticked at the Bush administration's Energy Department for giving the green light to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. I think it was clear before the 2000 election that our only hope of defeating Yucca Mountain was a Gore Presidency, and in spite of that, Nevada voted for Bush. Had we voted for Gore, our 5 electoral votes would have given him the Presidency. Soon, we'll all be glowing with pride. Trains derail all the time, and vehicles keep falling off the overpasses of the treacherous "spaghetti bowl" freeway interchange near downtown Las Vegas. Once the nuclear waste starts coming in, I think an accident is all but inevitable. Hopefully the waste-storage casks are as sturdy as we're told. It was sort of amusing to see Pat Buchanan hijack the Reform Party. (Perot, however, was not amused.) Maybe if Buchanan had gotten more votes, he could have offset Nader. But Buchanan was sidelined by illness, and he made a dreadful Vice-Presidential pick. I assume he wanted to demonstrate his inclusiveness by choosing a black woman, but it's hard to get behind someone who (reportedly) used to collect disability by claiming a mental disorder she never had. Buchanan would have been much better off persuading another conservative pundit to be his running mate, ideally John McLaughlin. (Buchanan/McLaughlin: the neo-Nixon ticket. Sometimes, when I watch the McLaughlin Group, I wonder if Eleanor Clift, the panel's knee-jerk liberal, secretly voted Buchanan in 2000. I bet she did. I've seen that twinkle in her eye when she looks at him, unlike the look of death she gives Tony Blankley.) Or Buchanan could have chosen Michael Kinsley, giving us the Crossfire ticket! It would have been like rolling the dice: We start with a reactionary, but if he goes off the deep end and gets deposed by the Cabinet, we get a radical to bring us back to where we started. I thought George W. Bush's tax-cut proposal of 2000 was appalling. The economy had been going well, the national debt was being paid down, and there were surpluses as far as the eye could see. 9/11 hadn't happened yet. In polls, the majority of Americans said that the money could be better spent than on a tax cut. And 43% of the dollars in the tax-cut were earmarked for 1% of Americans. It was morally indefensible -- and, I think, economically indefensible as well. If you want to stimulate the economy, give money to people who will spend it! As a hypothetical example, let's look at Mort Zuckerman, publisher of U.S. News and World Report and one of my favorite billionaires. Let's say Mort makes $50 million extra because of the tax cuts. His spending probably isn't going to change that much. He won't be likely to chug an extra brew at the bar. He won't race over to K-Mart and get that TV/VCR combo he's had his eye on. He can already afford to give Fred Barnes the complete second season of "The West Wing" on DVD. He might not even go for the steak and the salad bar at the Sizzler. But if you give 50,000 lower-middle-class people $1,000 each, most of that money is going to be pumped into the economy, buying products (such as U.S. News subscriptions) and services and fueling job growth. Mort might buy some stocks or land, which will make a stockbroker or real-estate agent very happy. (I realize that some of the money does "trickle down".) He might even set up a trust fund for Pat Buchanan's former running mate. But his extra spending just isn't as likely to jump-start the economy as the spending of people further down the economic ladder. I know that the wealthy will always benefit disproportionately because of tax cuts, and that's okay; we want to encourage people to work hard and get rich. I hope Mort ends up being worth $20 billion and that he takes me to Sizzler for steak and salad. (Actually, I want a steak and a bloomin' onion at the Outback. Mort's good for it.) But 43% of the cash for 1% of the population! It's absurd! (By the way, Mort Zuckerman isn't the best example to have used here, because he probably will spend the money in a manner that creates a lot of jobs -- buying new printing equipment, launching new magazines, taking his employees to play laser-tag. But I think he's the exception, not the rule.) I think that the tax-cut money should have gone instead to paying down the debt, improving education, and giving senior citizens a comprehensive prescription-drug benefit, and I'll bet that the clear majority of Americans would agree with me. Maybe even Mort. In summation: If you ever see me inside an elevator with Pat Buchanan and Bob Novak, and the door closes... please make a donation to the Democratic National Committee in my memory.September 23, 2004: Despite all the talk about this being a close election, I don't really think it will be close. I've been saying for a couple months now that I expect Bush to win, and to win fairly easily, at that. By the time election day rolls around, I don't think there will be any real doubt about the outcome. I'm not happy about it, but that's the way I see it. Of course, I'll vote for Kerry/Edwards. I was hoping Kerry would choose Gephardt as his running mate, but Edwards is good too. Gephardt had better credentials. He easily passed the "heartbeat away" test; he is clearly a man who is qualified and ready to be President of the United States. Edwards has intelligence and charisma, but his experience is a little thin. On the other hand, he's just as qualified as Bush was in 2000. In 2008, I expect him to give Hillary Clinton a run for her money in the Democratic primaries. I predict Hillary will come out on top, though. Nevada will go for Bush again, despite being stabbed in the back on Yucca Mountain. (Bush said he would let the science decide the fate of the nuclear waste repository, when in fact he clearly let the politics carry the day.) Kerry may be a late convert to our views on Yucca Mountain, but I do believe he's a sincere one. Having tens of thousands of nuclear waste shipments serve as moving targets for terrorist strikes all over the country makes no sense. Within 50 years, science should give us a much better way to deal with the waste than to bury it in an unstable and porous mountain. Senator Kerry is a good candidate (a decorated veteran with an impressive resume), though not the best campaigner. Many of the attacks on Kerry have been cheap shots; just look at Vice-President Cheney's statement that "if we make the wrong choice (on Nov. 2) then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States". Those are pretty bold words, coming from an administration that dropped the ball (just as its predecessors had) prior to 9/11. (We knew about hijackers, and we knew about the kamikazes from World War II. Was it that much of a stretch to connect the two? After all, back in '96 Hollywood presented one possible scenario in the movie "Executive Decision", about a group of Islamic terrorists who hijack a jumbo jet for use in an attack against the U.S. The fact is, neither Democrats nor Republicans have much reason to be proud of their prescience concerning terrorist attacks.) I was delighted to hear Kerry's response to President Bush's declaration that the difference between John Edwards and Dick Cheney is that "Dick Cheney can be president": Bush "was right that Dick Cheney was ready to take over on day one, and he did and has been ever since, folks, and that's what we have got to change." Admittedly, the Kerry campaign has lobbed a few cheap shots Bush's way as well, but the worst offenses have come from Bush supporters. John McCain himself condemned the attacks on Kerry's war record, and rightly so.In the future, I'll post my political opinions and comments on my weblog, in case anyone is interested.11/22/05: I started a separate weblog just for news and politics early this year, but it fizzled out. I kind of burnt out on blogging. Just no time for it, really.
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