Newstradamus

Jeff Parker/Florida Today

Apparently Hillary Clinton's most loyal supporters in Congress did an intervention Wednesday, and now there are plans for her to concede and endorse Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination on Saturday. Maybe...

That's, of course, what all the Clinton "insiders" were saying she was going to do Tuesday night, and instead she gave another victory speech after Obama had clinched the delegate count. The Clinton people have been playing the media like Lucy setting up the football for Charlie Brown. Oops! Hah-hah! Better luck next time, sucker!

The New York Democratic delegation still couldn't wait to throw their support to Obama ,so they gathered on the steps of the Capitol today to "endorse" Hillary for "endorsing" Obama — or for at least saying she would do so.

So what will happen Saturday? Who knows, when you have advocates like the spokeswoman on MSNBC Thursday morning who was saying that Hillary had the power of 18 million voters behind her, and she could call the tune on the vice president choice: "If she wants it, he can't refuse her." Since Obama so far does not appear to have plans to attend the big endorsement Saturday, he may be wary of getting into one of these Lucy moments, too.

When I see grizzled old warhorses like Charlie Rangel, her New York colleague and chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, shaking his head and wondering publicly what the heck the Clinton campaign could be thinking, it really makes me wonder how politically savvy Hillary Clinton really is.

We assume that because she was married to Mr. Political Animal, had been First Lady and was elected to the Senate, she MUST be politically savvy herself. But much of her life has been spent as a lawyer in the private sector, and her White House years were mostly spent in ceremonial duties — except for spearheading the health care reform project, which she made political hash out of.

Her election to the Senate in New York? With her name recognition and her bumbling opponent (filling in when Rudy Giuliani got cancer), that required little political acumen. As for Bill — his "help" for her in this campaign has made it clear that he has lost his political touch.

Her end game couldn't have been more politically wrong-headed. In retrospect, it seems either that her team headed by campaign manager Terry McAuliffe was spectacularly incompetent, or that she stubbornly ignored good advice right until the end. (And beyond the end, as we're seeing.) Say what you will about George W. Bush as a president, as a campaigner he listened to people who appeared to know what they were doing.

The football will be teed up again Saturday. Field goal or fumble? Stay tuned.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sandy Huffaker/Cagle Cartoons

Instead of the warm, inclusive moment many Democrats were hoping for with Hillary Clinton's speech Tuesday night, she instead asked the question "What does Hillary want?", then proceeded to ignore an answer. While Barack Obama, who went over the top in delegates Tuesday, was using a large chunk of his speech to effusively praise her, Clinton not only couldn't bring herself to acknowledge her defeat, but she could barely bring herself to mention his name.

What's going on here? Whatever it is, we know it's probably too sly by half, and excessively Machiavellian. While watching her speech, I had thought perhaps she was insisting on having one last ego jolt for winning South Dakota before bowing out of the race, freeing her delegates and embracing Obama the next day. But in watching the maneuverings this morning, with even many of her supporters and allies scratching their heads, it's clear there is some ill-conceived strategy playing out.

Hillary's end game has been to blame the shortcomings of her campaign on sexism, even as her campaign has made subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle references to race. In the last couple of weeks, she has stopped saying publicly that Obama can't win the general election, but her team was still making that argument in private with superdelegates. Even after Obama became the presumptive nominee, her campaign manager introduced her Tuesday night as "the next president of the United States."

Meanwhile, she makes clear that would be open to — no, is owed — being on the ticket as vice president, and surrogates are carrying out some kind of petition strategy. So what is she saying — that if she is not the VP choice her supporters will bring chaos to the convention, boycott the election or even vote for John McCain? Is she threatening the Democratic Party — or the country?

If so, it's certainly hypocritical. She has been saying that she shouldn't be forced by party leaders or the media to exit the race, and now she is using the same tactics to try to force her way onto the ticket. If she had been the presumptive nominee, does anyone think she would let Obama declare himself her veep? Of course not. She would tell him, "I won — deal with it."

And if someone in his own party could bully Obama, how does he answer critics who say he wouldn't be able to stand up to I'm-a-Dinner-Jacket, as Maureen Dowd calls the Iranian leader.

So what does Hillary want? I'm afraid to find out.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Olle Johansson/Cagle Cartoons

Whew! The evening before a big election is a time to take a deep breath — not only for candidates who have been frantically campaigning, but those of us in the media helping voters make an informed decision.

I was particularly focused on efforts on the opinion page — the question-and-answer sessions with all the supervisor candidates on the ballot (as well as Johanna Rodoni, who was not), the candidates’ My Word guest columns, and election letters from readers.

All of those, along with editorials, news stories and useful links can be found online at our special “Decision 2008” election page at www.Times-Standard.com/election/. (We printed and posted online more than 100 letters from readers on candidate and election issues.)

A caller today said he appreciated all the information — that it definitely helped him make his decisions. If you’re waking up this morning still unsure about how to vote, you’ll find what you need on our Web election page.

The Times-Standard Editorial Board was impressed with the quality of the candidates, and the tone of the campaign was on a generally high level — focusing on issues rather than personalities or “dirty tricks.”

An anonymous caller tried to bait the Times-Standard into digging into the personal life of one of the candidates. I said it wasn’t any of our business, being unrelated to the job of supervisor, and that I didn’t think it was the caller’s business either.

I went around and around with her for 15 minutes, asking her why she had to know. She would only say that she had a right to know about the person who would be representing her. Only at the end of the conversation did I get her to admit that she wasn’t a resident of the district in question.

Other issues that seemed to be more petty than substantive — whether somebody could be a full-time supervisor if they spent a few hours a week on another task, or whether it was right to accept a donation from an Indian tribe.

But in general, considering the sometimes polarized politics of Humboldt County, decorum reigned.

It was a different story in Nevada County, where I did a stint as an editor a few years back. Once, a last-minute whispering campaign said a candidate had rats in his restaurant. (An inspector had found mouse droppings some years before.) Not only did the candidate lose, but his restaurant soon went out of business.

In a particularly nasty supervisor race, one candidate had nails strewn on his driveway, while another was the subject of postcards titled “Supervisor for Sale?,” accusing her of dispensing governmental favors for campaign donations. Included was an invoice with county letterhead, later proven to be faked.

Once, at a meeting of the county Republican Central Committee, anger bubbled up over an old slight about the lack of an endorsement, leading to a fistfight in the street in front of the meeting hall.

Humboldt County seems polite by comparison — knock on wood!

Posted by Rich Somerville at 06:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Michael Kountouris

The death of Humboldt County Supervisor Roger Rodoni, and its impact across the county among people of all political stripes, got me to thinking about the nature of citizen-politicians at the local level.

First of all, it’s a lot of hard work. The actual time in weekly board or council meetings may not seem like much, but there are committee meetings and sessions with other government representatives. Then there are all the chicken dinners and charity functions, not to mention the constant calls from constituents wanting you to grease the cogs of government for them.

I don’t think you could pay me enough, even though Humboldt takes pretty good care of its supervisors. They get about $70,000 worth of salary and benefits for what is considered a full-time job. Eureka, which has a part-time city council, spends about $47,000 for the whole council. (The mayor, who does a lot of ribbon-cutting stuff, gets about $24,000.)

Elected officials have to be nice to everybody, even the jerks, if they expect to have a reasonable chance of staying elected. But at some point you have to make a decision and vote, at which time being nice doesn’t protect you from the dreck that rains down. Only Teflon skin can help there.

Rodoni seemed to have that protective armor around him, or maybe a Kevlar Stetson, since he seemed to chuckle as the bullets bounced off. It’s that same quality that seems to sustain Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain as they’re accused of being anti-American elitists, manipulative liars or candidates for an early-onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

At the local level, people sought elected office for a number of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with being professional politicians.

Some are on a mission, and think it will be easier to carry on the crusade from the inside rather than the outside. In Nevada County, where I used to live, Drew Bedwell was one of those. He owned some rental property, and was an weekend gold-panner, but what galvanized him into politics was a struggle over property rights.

His style of politics was Rove-style confrontational. He formed a citizens group, which pushed him to challenge a liberal supervisor. To his surprise, he won, tipping the balance of the board into a conservative majority. Before he could exert his influence at the county building, however, he suddenly died of cancer.

Others enter the arena after retiring from successful careers, thinking their skills would be of use to the community. Nevada County Supervisor Nate Beeson is one of those. He was a career Navy man who served on eight ships and was captain of three of them. After a 30-year career, he was successful in the tech field before retiring to the Sierra foothills.

But I couldn’t imagine anyone running for office if they didn’t like people and power — and by that I mean (optimistically) the power to do good.

At one point, after I had left the editorship of The Union in Grass Valley and was doing consulting for a while, I was approached to run for the city council. I said no, because I was traveling too much to be able to do a good job. But I admit it was tempting after years as a journalist, studiously avoiding any individual political advocacy.

But just as there have been actors and sports stars entering the political arena, there is the occasional ex-journalist as well — like former KMUD news director Estelle Fennell, a supervisor candidate in the Second District. Others take a reverse route, such as Bill Clinton’s former communications director, George Stephanopoulos, now ABC-TV’s chief Washington correspondent.

I’m back in the newsroom now, so no political fantasies. But maybe I can make inroads on some of my other daydreams, such as learning to play the mandolin or creating Echizen pottery.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

St. Louis Globe-Democrat's famous photo of Harry Truman with infamous headline.

Everybody was expecting another volley in the "Obama's an elitist" flurry when Hillary Clinton addressed the nation's editors and publishers on Tuesday. However, she turned her criticism on the Republicans — first on George W. Bush to critique his presidency and then on John McCain, to show how the likely GOP presidential candidate would be more of the same if elected.

Unlike the speech by Barack Obama yesterday (which had tickets for specific tables, with mine ending up way in back), this time it was first come, first served, and a little waiting in line paid off with a front row seat.

Hillary had music for her entrance — "Our Country" by John Mellencamp, which unless I am mistaken is also used in commercials for Chevy trucks. Has she been using that song for a while, or is its selection a metaphor for her non-elitism? Since questioning Obama's electability following his analysis of small-town Pennsylvanians as being "bitter," she has downed a shot of whisky in Indiana and talked of how she learned to shoot from her Scranton granddad.

(On Tuesday, the big screen image of her in the hall clearly showed the gleam coming off her necklace. I asked the woman sitting next to me if they were real diamonds. She replied, "Oh, yeah!)

Like the other candidates, Clinton played up to the editors. She started off by jokingly declaring the speech off the record, expressing admiration for a group of people used to getting calls at 3 a.m., and declaring her support for a federal reporter shield law, now before the Senate.

She also thanked the editors for a headline she has thought about recently, "Dewey Beats Truman." Actually, the premature headline that appeared in the Chicago Tribune in 1948 was "Dewey Defeats Truman," but we understood what she meant. It also underlines how the speed of news has accelerated so much since those days.

Before taking on Bush in the main part of her speech, and doing a short Q&A session, she praised the mission of newspapers, which "predates our country. It is essential that we have you to inform an active citizenry.” She noted the dangers faced by journalists in the world (citing the slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Iraq), and praised investigative efforts such as the exposure of conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital, which won a Pulitzer Prize last week for the Washington Post.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Marine Corps Band plays before McCain arrived to speak at AP's annual meeting.

• McCain audio, video and transcript
• Obama audio, video and transcript

WASHINGTON — Being able to attend speeches by two presidential candidates is rare enough, but hearing them back to back — as I did on Monday when John McCain and Barack Obama visited the national convention of editors and publishers here — was a great opportunity to observe the differences between the two campaigns. And Hillary Clinton will make it a trifecta with a speech Tuesday.

And there certainly were contrasts. Both spoke at Associated Press functions, McCain at the AP annual meeting at 10:30, and Obama at the AP annual luncheon at 1:30. McCain spoke immediately after the opening general meeting of the convention, which featured a (frankly) boring panel of newspaper/web journalists on the theme of "Making Journalism Matter."

Since I was able to snag a front-row seat for that session, I had dibs on the same seat for McCain. There was no security check, either for me or the people who arrived following the panel session to hear McCain. The room was packed, for sure, but by Washington Convention Center standards it wasn't that huge of a room.

By contrast, the AP luncheon where Obama spoke was held in the cavernous main ballroom, and even with "by invitation only" tickets costing $75 each (for rubbery chicken), the event was told out — for the first time in AP's 162-year history, according to the current president of AP, who happens to be Dean Singleton. (Singleton owns MediaNews Group, which owns the Times-Standard.)

I am no good at crowd estimates, but my guess is that at least twice as many people attended the lunch featuring Obama. Not only that, but everyone at the lunch had to go through airport-type security, including random wanding. I can only surmise that it's because Obama has had Secret Service protection for a while (no doubt because of threats), while McCain so far has refused it, although he reluctantly has said that he would have discussions this week about accepting protection.

I will note, by the way, that those at the Obama luncheon were not all editors and publishers. I saw many tables set aside for AP employees, and because the newspaper trade show — NEXPO — is being held at the same time, there were many vendors and their spouses there.

My table (which was toward the back because I bought a late ticket when I learned Obama would be speaking) was filled with people who had NEXPO booths, such as one guy from Montreal who is involved in the installation of new presses in Fremont for the San Francisco Chronicle, and another who works for a clipping service. (He contracts with businesses to send them clips of every mention of his clients in the media; the media get a copyright cut.) To my left was the VP of operations for the Chicago Tribune.

There were a ton of working journalists at both speeches, because of the latest tempest over comments Obama made about some voters being "bitter." Hillary Clinton has taken the opportunity to try to drive a wedge between Obama and superdelegates by charging Obama is "elitist."

McCain weighed into the fray himself here Monday. Being interviewed onstage by AP reporters Liz Sidoti and Ron Fournier (who accompany him on the campaign trail), McCain wouldn't bite on several questions asking him if he thought Obama was an elitist. But he said he thought the Democrat's comments were elitist.

In his prepared remarks, McCain also said if the vote for a federal reporters' shield law (to protect them from being jailed if they did not give up confidential sources, such as whistleblowers) were held today, he'd be narrowly in favor of voting yes. That drew applause from the audience.

When he sat down with Sidoti and Fournier, he loosened up and showed some of the bonhomie he's said to employ with reporters on the campaign trail. He lit up like a kid at Christmas when Sidoti preceded the questioning by offering him "your favorite" — donuts. "With sprinkles!," McCain said when he opened the box.

Obama, after zinging Clinton yesterday, didn't mention her at the AP lunch. In his prepared remarks, he talked up front about the elitism charge, admitting that he hadn't expressed himself clearly. But he said he was looking forward to a debate with McCain about who was more in touch with the American people.

Dean Singleton followed up with questions from the audience that had been submitted earlier. One asked whether Obama thinks Clinton — who trails in votes, delegates and states won — should drop out of the race. He credited his rival with toughening him up by hitting him with all the strategies he'd be likely to face in a campaign against McCain.

In another question asking about the candidate's strategies in going after al-Qaida, Singleton referred to "Obama bin Laden." Obama did a double-take, then grinned at the red-faced Singleton and said, "This is part of the exercise I've been going through over the last 15 months — which is why it's pretty impressive I'm still standing here."

We'll see what Hillary brings us Tuesday. She's also speaking at a $75 lunch with full security checks. Last time she spoke to us, a few years back, there was no security check, but she wasn't running for president then.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

R. J. Matson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

This Jeremiah Wright kerfuffle won't go away, at least from the tabloid television news, which loves the "let's you and him fight" style of election coverage. The discovery of some other juicy tidbits that Barack Obama's former pastor may have said or done almost pushed off the air the important speeches by all three presidential candidates about the economy.

Bill Clinton says that "if candidates don't want to get beat up, then don't run for office. ... Let's saddle up and have an argument."

OK, we'll let go for the moment that the Clintons are among the biggest protesters when something is said about them that they don't like. (Witness the wailing that resulted when their daughter Chelsea — an adult who has willingly "saddled up" for the campaign trail — was asked a legitimate question about the Monica Lewinsky incident.)

So if Hillary Clinton is OK with ignoring Obama's passionate rejection of Wright's more extremist views, saying SHE would have left his church, and that Obama is not a Muslim "as far as I know," then she has no problem with being called a liar for misremembering the conditions of her mission to Bosnia as First Lady, or being accused of trying to "kneecap" Obama, Tonya Harding style, to make him unelectable in her bid for superdelegates.

And by that standard, it's business as usual if John McCain is said to have a "senior moment" over al-Qaida and Iran, or is so old he needs Depends.

Well, it's not OK with me. I'm willing to accept Obama's statements about what he believes about America, Clinton's explanation that she misremembered about her Tusla reception, and the McCain campaign's description of his flubs about the difference between Sunnis and Shiites as misspeaking.

I'm even willing to give Reverend Wright a little benefit of the doubt and look a little deeper. When Hillary opined about Wright, she said she based her view — as most people did — on what she "heard and saw" about the man, presumably those small YouTube clips that cycled over and over.

I took a look at the transcript of the sermon from which the most controversial clip was taken — given after 9/11. The part of the sermon in the popular video was a reference to an appearance on Fox News by Edward Peck, a former state department official and terrorism expert in the Nixon and Reagan administrations. Wright said:

"This is a white man, and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out ... that ... America's chickens are coming home to roost. We took this country, by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Iroquois, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism — we took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians — babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with Stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working fathers. We bombed Khadafi, his home and killed his child. ...

"We bombed Iraq, we killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed the plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy — killed hundreds of hard working people — mothers and fathers, who left home to go that day, not knowing they'd never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye. Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school — civilians, not soldiers. People just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and South Africa and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas is brought back into our own front yard. America's chickens are coming home, to roost. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism.

"A white ambassador said that, y'all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism — an ambassador whose eyes are wide open, and who's trying to get us to wake up, and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said that the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have, but they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them, and we need to come to grips with that."

Wright was making a point by quoting a white diplomat. He was expressing his opinion. I recognize that many Caucasians, accustomed to the comparatively staid nature of mainstream white churches, may have problems with a man wearing a dashiki, speaking with a booming voice and gesticulating wildly. In a video, such a man could appear threatening.

But in reading that quote, it's a valid argument, whether you agree or not. Yes, it threatens our view that the United States is always in the right, and that "collateral damage" is sometimes necessary to spread good in the world. (President Bush basically said that the other day on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.) But it's a view that is increasingly untenable, and in our hearts we know it.

You may read the full text of the sermon and still come away thinking Wright is evil, but you owe it to yourself to get more than a video bite. And to show that there is more to Pastor Wright that meets the eye, you might want to read the text of "Audacity of Hope," the 1990 sermon showing the side of Wright that inspired Barack Obama's book of the same title.

In a defense of Wright in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Martin Marty — a (white) professor emeritus at the University of Chicago School of Divinity who attends Trinity United Church of Christ— also takes a wider view:

"In the early 1960s, at a time when many young people were being radicalized by the Vietnam War, Wright left college and volunteered to join the United States Marine Corps. After three years as a Marine, he chose to serve three more as a naval medical technician, during which time he received several White House commendations."

That doesn't sound like somebody who hates America.

Marty acknowledges and, like Obama, criticizes some of Wright's more fantastic beliefs, such as the government having a role in spreading AIDS (just as white evangelists like Pat Robertson believe AIDS is God's punishment for gays). "Having said that, and reserving the right to offer more criticisms, I've been too impressed by the way Wright preaches the Christian Gospel to break with him. Those who were part of his ministry for years — school superintendents, nurses, legislators, teachers, laborers, the unemployed, the previously shunned and shamed, the anxious — are not going to turn their backs on their pastor and prophet."

I am not a drum-beater for religion in politics. It seems nobody can run for election any more without proclaiming their born-again (and mostly Christian) bona fides. This whole Wright episode is an example of the harm that can cause.

In the nastiness that historically has marked American politics, it would be too much to expect any candidate to adopt the Golden Rule. Nonetheless, by the time this election is finished we'll probably end up despising them all.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 06:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (242)

Larry Wright/The Detroit News

For me, like many political junkies, this started out like a dream year: Wide-open presidential races in both parties, with different types of candidates for every political bent.

It got even more lively when the front-runners, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, began to develop cracks in their pedestals. It was like the great line from Bette Davis’ character, Margo, in “All About Eve”: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Two and a half months into the primary season, however, and the campaign has many of us reaching for our air-sickness bags. The bumps are turning into screaming death spirals, with charges and counter-charges about race, religion, money and fear squeezing out crucial issues such as war, economy, health care and immigration.

And it’s not just the Democrats who seem to be trying to self-destruct. While halftime in the attempted neo-con evisceration of John McCain, no doubt the second half will begin before long.

Is it just me, or is all this election’s positive appeal being swiftly replaced by a sense of impending dread, no matter what one’s political hopes are? It wasn’t that many weeks ago that I looked forward to a long and stimulating campaign. Now I just want it to be over.

What better time to start thinking about our local elections, which promise to be every bit as lively as the national contests without (we hope) the ugliness.

In 2006, the biggest local issue was the Balloon Tract, which came into play in both the races for Eureka City Council and Humboldt County Board of Supervisors. This year, a main driver of the supervisor contests will be the General Plan update, which seems to be coming to a head after many years in the waiting.

The Times-Standard launched its in-depth county election coverage last week with overviews of those who filed for the three supervisor seats up for grabs this year.

Dairy farmer John Vevoda is challenging incumbent Jimmy Smith, a former commercial fisherman, in the First District.

The three-way Second District contest in Southern Humboldt pits incumbent Roger Rodoni against former radio news director Estelle Fennell and Clif Clendenen of Clendenen’s Cider Works.

Registration for the Third District seat was extended after incumbent John Woolley decided not to run for re-election. So vying in another three-way race are financial adviser Bryan Plumley, Arcata City Councilman Paul Pitino and environmental activist Mark Lovelace.

In the June 3 primary, a candidate can win outright if he or she gets more than 50 percent of the vote. Otherwise, the top two vote-getters will be in a runoff on Nov. 4.

Between now and then, the Times-Standard will be examining the issues and candidates from many different directions to help voters make their decisions. And we’ll be asking our readers to help us.
In the meantime, I hope with a little fresh air the current queasiness about the national race will pass.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 06:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Adam Zyglif/The Buffalo News

Just when I think people might be getting over their racial, religious and gender bigotry, I get a call or letter bringing me back to reality.

This past week, the Times-Standard made its choices in the Democratic and GOP primaries for Super Tuesday's primary: Barack Obama and John McCain. I quickly got a letter that sounded so much like a Rush Limbaugh Dittohead that I had to double-check to see that she had, indeed, said she was a supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

First she notes that although our editorial said Obama's mother is from Kansas, she actually lives in Honolulu — you know, where all those brown-skinned people live.

But she was just warming up. She makes sure to mention that Obama's middle name is Hussein, notes that his Kenyan father was raised as a Muslim, and that his stepfather is Indonesian. I guess this is supposed to be a smear, since she is quick to point out that she, herself, is a "white, Christian woman." But she quickly adds, "This is not the issue here." I guess she just wanted to get the unimportant racial and religious stuff out of the way early.

But then later in the letter she expresses amazement that blacks will vote for Obama because of the color of his skin, considering that "he isn't actually black." Maybe he's what the plantation owners down in the Ol' South once called an octaroon. (She'd better watch out — with recent DNA breakthroughs, people are finding they're not quite as "pure" as they thought.)

Of course, she has to finish off by saying, "I'm not a racist, but I can see and hear." Those "buts" will get you every time. I guess this woman is the audience Bill and Hillary were playing to in the week before the South Carolina primary.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 01:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (238)

Lining up at Redwood Acres (Mark McKenna/Times-Standard)

The afterglow of having former President Bill Clinton visit Humboldt County is still tinged with grumbling by those who feel betrayed by being left out in the cold.

One way to look at this organizational car crash would be like an insurance claim: percentages of fault.

About 50 percent of the fault goes to the Clinton campaign, because the site selection was their job. I'm sure the local Democrats were telling them there could be a crowd of 1,000 or more. Phones were ringing off the hook all over town from people wanting to know when and where they should show up.

And why not? It's one of the most wide-open presidential elections in a generation, and even if you're not interested in politics, it's been 40 years since a sitting or former president came here. The historic implications are enough to make any parent want to take their kid.

(I remember the thrill as a 14-year-old Boy Scout attending the National Boy Scout Jamboree in Colorado in 1960, when I saw President Eisenhower drive by in his convertible limo.)

But the thing is, a campaign organizer is absolutely terrified of booking a candidate — or the candidate's spouse — into a venue where there is a possibility of empty seats. Visually, they want the place to look packed to overflowing, and people looking like they're on the Titanic, trying to get into a lifeboat. Great visuals for the evening news.

Then there is the Secret Service, which doesn't want to have to deal with a humongous mob packed into an arena. And the campaign advance team doesn't know for sure how many will turn out; they've never set up a campaign appearance here before. If they overdo it, and leave four or five times as many people outside than inside, the local party people can take the heat, not them.

But 25 percent of the blame should go to the local Democratic organizers, because they knew a throng was going to show up, and they seemed to react like deer in the headlights.

No. 1 on their planning agenda should have been a simple and fair way to ensure that those who lined up early were rewarded by getting in. Instead, although it appears those in line were handed numbers for some purpose, it all went awry when the doors opened and it was "survival of the fittest" — the biggest and most aggressive shoved their way in.

No. 2 should have been figuring out what to do with the hundreds who inevitably wouldn't get in. The only strategy seemed to be to tell people, "Tough luck — go home and listen on the radio." How hard would it have been to put chairs in some other, heated rooms — Redwood Acres is a big place — and rig speakers to bring them the speech.

Instead, there were reports that much time was spent making sure the friends of the Democratic committee members got seats. I am told that a great percentage of people at the event claiming to be "media" were no such thing. Hey, there's nothing wrong with rewarding loyal party people. Just be up front about it, and don't fool Joe and Jill Sixpack and their kids into thinking they actually have a chance of getting in.

And the final 25 percent of the blame? It falls on those people who were whining about how they didn't have somebody hold their hand to escort them to the front row, just because they showed up. I'm being facetious, but as Bill Clinton kept repeating, "You see what I'm saying?" Welcome to the real world. You really didn't think it would be a disorganized mess? Life is like that.

It wasn't much different at Bill's earlier stop in Napa, where they crammed 500 people into the opera house, except Bill spent much more time there in glad-handing the crowd outside before he went in, and afterward at the opera house cafe.

In general, although I didn't attend his Eureka appearance (I'm an enochlophobe), my impression is that things here were handled about as well as could be expected, and at least there were last-minute efforts to let folks outside get a peek at the former president, or to rig external speakers.

When people called me on Wednesday morning to ask about where and when, I told them there would be more than 1,000 there, and even if they got in line that afternoon the odds were against them. Every one said they still wanted to take a chance — if they didn't get inside, maybe they could get a glimpse of Bill.

I respect that — you take a chance, you lose, you shrug and go home. Like in baseball, there should be no crying in politics. But wait — that seems to be "in" this year. Waaaaah!

Posted by Rich Somerville at 06:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Bill's golf course crying jag?

Since most of a candidate's (or surrogate candidate's) stump speech is boilerplate stuff, repeated at stop after stop, a more interesting exercise is to listen for where they seem to depart from or embellish the same old, same old.

I was particularly watching whether Bill Clinton, in his trip to Humboldt County, was going to adhere to the so-called "truce" the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns seemed to have declared the day before, after the racial-oriented dialogue (including Bill's crack about Obama's "fairy tale") got overheated and verged on damaging both candidates.

Somewhere between his stop in Napa and his speech in Eureka Wednesday, Bill apparently heard about the interview in which Obama — asked for examples of "transformative" leaders, like he says he will be — said Ronald Reagan had been transformative in ways that Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton had not.

It was obviously a trial balloon for what Obama might do if he gets the nomination, which is to show he can appeal to moderate Republicans ready to desert a GOP candidate that models himself after George Bush. But it also was a conscious slap in the face to Bill, and it seemed Clinton was itching to respond as soon as he got off the plane here.

Right at the top of his speech, he admitted that unlike Reagan, he had not claimed trees cause pollution or told "welfare Cadillac" stories, but then went on to list the many ways in which his administration had been better for the people than Reagan's.

Just when I thought he was going to make his speech all about Bill, he segued into talking about what "real" presidents do (as opposed to wannabe presidents) and how Hillary would be one of those kinds of leaders.

But how quickly the kid gloves came off, although it didn't get much notice. However, John Edwards picked up the banner yesterday, taking shots at Obama for his reference to Reagan. Possibly Bill Clinton's response here will be uncovered and get more national attention — or Bill will be repeating it at other stops, unless his handlers yank the kid gloves back on.

I also found the story Bill told at the end to be revealing. Again, he was trying to make a point about how compassionate a president Hillary would be, but the anecdote was more about Bill. He told of being stopped on a golf course by a caddie who really was a New York fireman. The fireman said he was backing Hillary because she championed medical help for those who breathed toxic air while hunting for remains at Ground Zero after 9/11.

Bill repeated several times that he was "crying like a baby," seeming to be saying, "Hey, if you think my wife getting verklempt in New Hampshire was something, look how much of a sob sister I am!"

Other tidbits from my notes during the speech:

— Unlike politicians who like to dress like Paul Bunyan when they come to redwood country, Bill was very sharp, in a suit and tie. I appreciate the respect. He had even upgraded from his earlier stop in trendy Napa, where he wore a sportcoat.

— I haven't have time to listen to the whole speech again (although you can here), but I'm sure I heard him misspeak once when he referred to America having to get loans abroad to pay for "Bill Clinton's tax cuts," when of course he meant George Bush's.

— Bill had an irritating tic of — after illustrating something with an amusing story — saying, "I'm kidding, but you see the point I am trying to make?" He did that several times, and I wanted to say back to the radio, "I get it, Bill, and I'm sure all the hayseeds you're talking to get it as well."

Nonetheless, the old pitcher showed he can still bring the heat, kind of like an unjuiced Roger Clemens. Certainly keeps the campaign from getting dull. Maybe local voters' enthusiasm for his visit may prompt other campaigns from both parties to bring their people here — after all, there are plenty of Republicans on the North Coast, too.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (333)

"Mr. Change" of 1992

Today's anticipated visit by Bill Clinton to Eureka gave me a 16-year flashback to the presidential campaign of 1992, when Clinton — that year's Barack Obama — came to Sioux Falls, S.D., where I was editor of the Argus Leader.

Back then, that state's primary was still significant because it was in February at a time before so many states had moved theirs to early in the year. (Not much else to do in South Dakota in the winter.)

You may recall that Clinton took a beating that year in the Iowa caucuses, then came in second in New Hampshire and called himself "The Comeback Kid."

But there were still plenty of rival Democrats in the race — because Clinton had not fully recovered from the Gennifer Flowers scandal, despite Hillary holding his hand on "60 Minutes" — and they all headed to South Dakota. The one who really was under the gun to win was Bob Kerrey, former governor of neighboring Nebraska. But Massachusetts' Paul Tsongas still had a chance, as did California's Jerry Brown.

I never got to meet Clinton, but Brown, Tsongas and Kerrey sat down with the Argus Leader Editorial Board. If memory serves, Clinton spoke at the local college or something. He rarely spoke to newspaper editorial boards, except maybe the New York Times. (I suspect he won't be stopping by the Times-Standard, either.)

The newspaper ended up endorsing Tsongas, but Kerrey won the primary. Not that it made any difference. Clinton soon was on a roll, sweeping Super Tuesday (in March that year), and taking the nomination going away.

I think what eventually handicapped Tsongas (a very bright man) was voter worry about his health. He had stepped down from the Senate in 1984 after being diagnosed with cancer. He had fought the illness off and ran for president, but even though he beat Clinton in New Hampshire, he could never overcome the Arkansan's "comeback" momentum. (He died five years later, in 1997, when the cancer returned.)

It was a strange election in many ways, kind of like this one. There was a raft of strong Democratic contenders, including a woman, Sen. Pat Schroeder of Colorado (a graduate of my high school).

That was also the year of Ross Perot's quixotic third-party candidacy. And on the Republican side, President George Bush the Elder was trying to run for re-election in the face of a recession that even had GOP voters thinking about jumping ship. (In South Dakota's Republican primary, with Bush's name the only one on the ballot, nearly a third voted for "Uncommitted.") Not hard to see why he lost.

I'd be interested in going to see a Clinton stem-winder in person, but I'm averse to crowds, and it's sounding like Redwood Acres will be a mob scene. So I'll be content to tune the radio to Clinton who, as a front-line Baby Boomer three months older than I am, has crossed paths with me once again.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Michael Kountouris

My goodness — 68 comments on The Humboldt Herald blog regarding Hank Sims' ruminations about whether or not Larry Glass changed his mind about filing charges against developer Rob Arkley in the Avalon incident.

Although Heraldo sagely acknowledges the powers of "the all-knowing Times-Standard editor Rich Somerville," delving into this debate would be like engaging in a Clintonian exercise into what the meaning of the word "change" is. The entire episode seems to be related to the councilperson's fear of being accused of apostasy by the high priests of the Church of the Anti-Arkley. Mustn't let even the tiniest waverings undermine the faith.

Of course, the pro-Arkley religion has its rites and rituals as well, only it's more like a Polynesian cargo cult.

I was reminded of the religious struggle going on in the Republican presidential race, which doesn't mean much to the average voter but to many fundamentalists and Mormons it's what the election is all about. Remember when a wide-eyed Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist minister who has studied theology, asked a New York Times reporter whether it was true that Mormons believe Jesus and Satan were brothers. That's always my first source for theistic analysis — journalists.

Actually, I believe the scriptures show Satan was Jesus' ne'er-do-well brother-in-law, and not actually a blood relative. Makes, me wonder, though, if Glass and Arkley might be related...

Posted by Rich Somerville at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Pat Bagley/Salt Lake Tribune

A Saturday New York Times story following up on the Iowa caucuses had this provocative paragraph:

Advisers said that both Clintons had miscalculated the endurance and depth of what they called “the Obama phenomenon.” They both believed that, in the final months of 2007, more voters would question whether Mr. Obama was ready to be president and more reporters would pick apart his political record and personal character. Now anger inside the campaign at the news media has hardened; Mr. Clinton, in particular, believes reporters will be complicit if Mr. Obama becomes the nominee and loses to a Republican.

Talk about chutzpah! Here is a candidate who rose to the top of the presidential pile back in '92 because of his appeal and coziness with the national press covering his campaign. Because of that, he coasted over his own "personal character" problems, the Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones sex accusations and the issue of his avoidance of the Vietnam war draft.

So now he and his wife's handlers are upset because the reporters aren't doing what the Clintons want them to do? Sounds like a vast improvement in media ethics in the past 15 years. Of course, reporters shouldn't lie down on the job of fully exploring the past foibles of Barack Obama (if there are any beyond what's already been dissected), or any other contender.

Seems like this is a general problem for politicians, government officials and business leaders: News organizations that don't do as they're told, and are unsatisfied by non-answers, half-answers, or outright lies. But they need to get used to it.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A caucus or primary night is a perfect example of the value of cable news — if you're a campaign junkie. Sure, I flipped around the dial to see what the networks were doing, but for sheer longevity and wall-to-wall coverage, you can't beat CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. If you want more of everything — full candidate speeches, long-winded bloviation from pundits, and endless digging into (in the case of Iowa) entry polls, that's where you get it.

A few impressions of the evening:

— Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee provided excellent examples of why they won. Obama — who already had a good reputation as speaker but had seemed lackluster at times on the campaign trail — unleashed an emotional stemwinder. Anyone who heard the whole thing couldn't help but see him now as very tough to beat for the nomination.

— Huckabee also made a good speech, but I was impressed with his folksy and humorous banter in an interview with Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. He was like a snake-charmer with these guys. You could see Huckabee's training as a preacher underneath, but leavened (genuine or not) with the folksy southern political warmth. It was way more appealing than the oily, cold-smile persona of Pat Robertson or the corporate glibness of Mitt Romney. Howard Fineman of Newsweek, one of the MSNBC analytical panel, thought it was a hoot that Matthews and Olbermann — for a minute, anyway — seemed ready to pass the plate for Rev. Huckabee.

— Back in 1992, Bill Clinton worked the same mesmerization with the press — stump emotion and personal warmth — to rise above the large Democratic field that year.

— The other candidates were not as impressive in glossing over their disappointment and rallying their troops for New Hampshire or beyond. Hillary, in particular, amid praise for her opponents, created an image of knife-sharpening going on in the back room.

— Hardly anybody mentioned Giuliani. One senses that his strategy of waiting to win in Florida may be a strategy to disappear before Florida.

— I found myself watching MSNBC most, perhaps because when the pundits got tired of talking, they ran full candidate speeches and then reran the whole evening. I have to say, though, that it's a tossup between Matthews and Olbermann as to who can produce the most convoluted, never-ending and self-important questions.

— I kept looking for Chris Kerrigan in the crowd behind John Edwards when the runner-up spoke to the faithful. The Eureka city councilman has been on leave for months, working Iowa for Edwards. Maybe Chris was somewhere having a stiff drink. Never has a second-place finish seemed so . . . uninspiring.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When it comes to televised debates, I’d much rather read a summary of the high (or low) points, since the full programs are a snooze. First of all, they’re not really “debates,” but a string of questions offered by a moderator to candidates individually. The White House hopefuls usually reply with stump boilerplate “talking points,” while weary reporters wait to pounce at any misstep or any perceived insult.

And as the silly season nears its “official” kickoff in few weeks at the Iowa caucuses, it seems as if the moderators’ questions are getting more lame, such as the trend toward such questions as “Raise your hand if you believe in Darwin's theory of evolution."

This week’s Republican and Democratic debates in Iowa sponsored by a paper I used to work for, the Des Moines Register, had the rare distinction of being both stultifying boring and unintentionally funny. On Wednesday, the schoolmarmish moderator, Register editor Carolyn Washburn, tried to keep the unruly GOP candidates in line, but they refused to play her hand’s-up game about whether they believe "global climate change is a serious threat and caused by human activity." Fred Thompson said, “I'm not doing hand shows today.” Then Alan Keyes (where did he come from?) hijacked the show for a while, leading the editor to mutter an audible “Sheesh!”

With the Democrats on Thursday, she announced up front that she didn’t want anybody to talk about the war in Iraq. Wrote the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, “This created a scene reminiscent of the ‘Fawlty Towers’ episode in which innkeeper Basil Fawlty, trying not to offend his German guests by mentioning the war, keeps blurting out war references inadvertently: ‘So, that's two egg mayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Goering, and four Colditz salads.’”

According Susan Milligan of the Boston Globe, Washburn had been boning up for nearly a year to be ready for these debates, and Milligan quotes the Register's longtime political reporter, Dave Yepsen, as warning the candidates to expect a grilling. "She asks tough questions and pointed questions,'' he said. "She doesn't mess around."

Right . . . .

Posted by Rich Somerville at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

People under 30 may not realize that less than 20 years ago the creation of the Web browser turned the Internet from a text-only labyrinth of BBS's, Gophernets and FTP's into the amazing World Wide Web that we almost take for granted today.

That transformation accelerated changes already taking place in the information, news and communications fields that not only continue, but are gearing up for another quantum leap that some have called Internet 2.

This blog is intended to track and try to understand these changes, particularly how they affect my lifelong field, journalism, as well as public life both on the North Coast and elsewhere.

One example is an article by Matt Bai in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on Dec. 9. His main point: It's becoming clear that presidential candidates have failed to grasp the key lesson of Howard Dean's soar-and-crash 2004 campaign. "Dean's campaign didn't explode online because he somehow figured out a way to channel online politics; he managed this feat because his campaign, almost by accident, became channeled by people he had never met."

Bai says that "in this new and evolving online world, the greatest momentum goes not to the candidate with the most detailed plan for conquering the Web, but to the candidate who surrenders his own image to the clicking masses, the same way a rock guitarist might fall backward off the stage into the hands of an adoring crowd."

That's why it's fun to watch Ron Paul, this year's darling of the blogosphere, looking stunned — like a deer in the headlights — as he goes from a "who's he?" to a guy who can raise $4 million online from 21,000 individuals in a single day. Or to watch Hillary Clinton's handlers work so hard to create a "hip" Web site that is painfully lame. Or analyze how the "Obama Girl" YouTube video may have affected Barack Obama's public image.

The Web users' campaign of 2008 could have as much impact on the future of politics in this country as television did with the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)