Thursday, November 23, 2006

What happened to white America?

In his New York Times column of July 4th, with the attention-grabbing title Disunited States of America, John Tierney contemplated Americans acting like “the Red people in the South and the Blue people in the North had a border between them”. Ouch! Not exactly our very own version of a Shia-Sunni divide, but one that is becoming more and more jarring with each passing election.

In 1984 Ronald Reagan won reelection by a landslide capturing 49 of 50 states. Yet I can’t remember any divisive debates about red states and blue states from that era. In fact, the only red state that President Reagan was focused on back then was the one he derisively referred to as “the evil empire” – which he was passionate about defeating. And, the only ridicule that I recall following that lopsided election was a cartoon depicting the lonely “blue” state of Minnesota – as a part of Canada! The rest of the 49 states were not considered “red” – they just happened to represent the “United” States of America.

It was only after the split election of 2000 that the red state-blue state dichotomy began to get deeply ingrained into the American psyche. Candidate Bush, who had promised throughout that campaign to be a uniter and not a divider, ascended to the presidency despite losing the popular vote. President Bush then chose to further alienate the red and blue states throughout his first term. In fact, he successfully used this divisive “politics of color” to win reelection in 2004. In spite of a narrow victory, he claimed to have gained “political capital”.

He quickly managed to spend that capital and some. One would have hoped that the outcome of the 2006 mid-term elections would inject a dose of reality into the remaining two years of his presidency. However, recent indications from the White House seem to suggest that “stay the course”, on all manner of Bush policy, is here to stay – in spite of the American people having expressed their displeasure at the status quo.

The Clinton impeachment over lying about a personal indiscretion now seems Kafkaesque in its absurdity when compared to the steady string of whoppers that the Bush Administration has fed us over the past six years regarding vital matters of state. Nonetheless, impeaching this president, especially in a time of war, would be a cop out – it is imperative that President Bush get us out of the mess that his own “untruths” have created. We the people have elected a Democratic Congress so that we can finally hold the Bush Administration accountable for its actions.

Through his rash conduct of foreign policy, President Bush has seriously degraded the reputation and standing of the United States in the eyes of the world. It is imperative that we set our differences aside in our attempts to repair our international image. In the spirit of which I ask this seemingly provocative question “What happened to white America?” However, I do not ask this question in a pejorative manner implying race, but in the patriotic spirit of red, white and blue! Instead of our constant focus on red vs. blue in every aspect of policy making, I suggest that we all look at a compromising, neutral “white” – which could become the bright white light of enlightenment that guides US to glory!

Thursday, November 09, 2006

The Accidental Pundit

It was the best birthday present that I had received in a long time. In the wee hours of the morning of November 8, 2006, about 3.15 am to be precise, I decided to call it a night. The Democrats had recaptured the House and they were just 2 seats shy from getting control of the Senate – it was time to get some shut-eye.

I awoke again at 5.30 am, only to learn that Burns and Macaca were hanging in there – damn, why couldn’t they just throw in the towel? Nevertheless, it turned out to be the birthday that kept on giving. President Bush called a press conference at 1 pm to announce that he had fired Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. The president also announced that Bill Gates was taking over from Rummy!

I thought that was kind of weird – why would the President want the retired marketing genius from Microsoft running the Defense Department? Honestly, it was kind of late in the day to expect Iraq 3.0 to work. After all, Bill might do Windows and philanthropy well, but honestly what did he know about a war gone bad? Besides, Bill would just throw a whole lot of money and people into the mix – the President had already tried the former and consistently rejected the latter.

Suddenly the phone rang and I woke up. I had dozed off just as the President’s press conference got rolling. I had actually heard Bob Gates being mentioned and then drifted off into a blissful sleep… it was during that brief interlude that I got to wondering how on earth could the Microsoft marketing machine salvage Iraq, when those “nattering nabobs of neocons” had failed to do so?

My son was calling to say that he had been up until four that morning in his college dorm waiting for Burns to go down in flames. After we discussed the exciting turn of events, I let him into my little secret.

I sang it to him in my best Britney Spears imitation, “Oops, I did it again!”

“What on earth are you talking about, Dad?” my son asked in an exasperated voice.

“You are not going to believe this, Jay,” I said, “but I had entered Al Kamen’s ‘In the Loop’ contest about a month ago.”

“Oh, that Post guy who does all that sarcastic stuff on the Federal Page of ‘The Washington Post’?” Jay asked rather impatiently.

“That’s right, son. I had called the mid-term election in his contest as follows – 51 to 49 in favor of the Democrats in the Senate and 239 to 196 in favor of the Democrats in the House.” I said quite proudly.

“Wow! That’s great.” Jay replied.

“Yeah, but Macaca could throw a monkey-wrench into my Senate plan. I know Burns doesn’t have much fire left in him. Also, MSNBC is projecting the final House tally at 234-201 for the Dems. That ain’t bad. I think I am going to nail this puppy.” I told Jay quite animatedly.

Then I went on to remind him about my last great call on the eve of the millennium (December 31, 1999) – almost a year before that infamous 2000 election – when I had prophesized about the first split election in over a century! I still smart from the fact that I got no recognition for that prescient piece of punditry. Maybe if someone from Gore’s staff had read my piece (“Musings for the New Millennium”) in a timely fashion, they would have been better prepared to deal with those “hanging chads”.

Nonetheless, the inconvenient truth is I blew my subsequent predictions in 2002, when I wrote that the Democrats would capture the Senate 53-47, and in 2004 when I went out on a limb for Senator Kerry and “stuck” with a 53% to 47% victory in his favor! What had I been smokin’?

The moral of this story is that punditry has as much to do with your political skills, as it has to do with premonition and luck. Just ask triple-crown winner, Karl Rove, and all the conservative talk radio gasbags that he invited on to the lawns of the White House in the week prior to this election. They all blew so much hot air from under those tents that day, one could have floated across the mall and landed right on the steps of the Capitol to witness a new Republican Congress being sworn in.

In any event, as I write this, Macaca has decided to settle for the “real world of Virginia” and ride into the sunset (at least, for now). So I could hit the mother lode again this time, but I no longer pine for my fifteen minutes. I am trying to be happy just being an accidental pundit, who happens to get it right once in a while. But maybe just this one time, say, later “this week”, I would love to “meet the press” and then “face the nation” squarely – and, tell them about my plans for “Saving President Bush” (the title of my upcoming blog, which has a metaphorical reference to the movie, “Saving Private Ryan”).

With sincere apologies to Harold Ford, and minus the wink, I conclude my commercial with this appeal, “George, Tim, Bob… call me!”