Pledge to America

I was listening to a bunch of Republican policy wonks on NPR the other day, mostly discussing the upcoming elections and the Republican party's new "Pledge to America." One of them, a policy guy from one of the Washington conservative think tanks said, "No one can read the Pledge to America and still say that the Republican party has no ideas!"

So I decided to read it. All I can say is that, "I think I'll scratch my ass now" is also an idea, and it offers just about as much insight into how the GOP plans to balance the budget as their pledge does.

You can read it here, but a better use of your time would be to read Tom Friedman's column from this past Tuesday, which talks about the kind of leadership this county really needs, but will probably never get. (I'm starting to feel about the nation's future they way I feel about pro football; i.e., like a Brown's fan. We haven't won anything since '64 -- so long it's hard to remember what victory feels like.)

My mom and Phyllis Diller

While it’s lost a lot of its power over time, when my mother was a younger woman she had a laugh that could wake the dead. On the rare occasions our family would eat dinner in a restaurant, I’d sit there wondering when the blast would come, because I knew it was coming, and when it did, any semblance of anonymity would be gone. All other conversation in the restaurant would stop, and all heads would turn to our table in wonderment.

Despite its explosive impact, people never seemed to be annoyed by it; perhaps because it was so obviously joyous and spontaneous that all you could do was laugh along or stop and stare for a moment in wonderment. It was so distinctive that sometimes a friend would stop by our table to say, “Oh we were way over on the other side of the room, but I heard you laugh and I turned to Bob and said, Mickey is here – that laugh can’t be anyone else’s.”

I was never embarrassed by it. It was a force of nature at which I stood in awe and wonder. It was like being near Old Faithful or Krakatoa.

* * * * * *

One day in 1961, my parents took my three brothers and me for a Sunday drive from our home in Northeastern Ohio to the magic city of Pittsburgh. We got to Cleveland at least once a year, but the 80 mile drive made Pittsburgh a much less frequent and more exotic destination. Its steel mills were beginning their last full decade of smoke-belching dominance, new glass and aluminum skyscrapers were already anchoring the Golden Triangle downtown, and the city had recently opened a modern new airport filled with retail and entertainment attractions, a noteworthy Alexander Calder mobile, and a spectacular observation deck where we could watch jet airliners, still a novelty, come and go. This was our exciting destination that day.

As we walked through the wide concourse dressed in our Sunday best, my brothers and I probably looked less like brothers with a strong familial resemblance than we did four crescent wrenches pulled from a set. I, being the oldest was the ¾”; my youngest brother was the 7/16”. We were missing the 9/16” which I will explain in a moment.

I don’t have strong memories of the look of the place except that it had a very Jetsons-like feel to it -- although it would still be a year or two before that show, which defined the early part of the ‘60’s for us kids, made its debut. Being small-town boys we were appropriately awed.

My parents, who rarely went to bed until they had watched at least some of the Tonight Show were excited to see a billboard promoting Phyllis Diller, one of Johnny’s favorite guests, who was appearing in the nightclub at the airport. We were all chatting about Phyllis, and teasing our mother that she was a woman with a laugh that could rival her own, when we turned a corner and nearly ran her over. Phyllis Diller that is.

In my memory she looked exactly as she did on television, wearing an upside-down, martini-glass shaped dress of a multicolored, dizzying pattern, her hair, the color of new piano keys, pointing in every direction at once, and of course, a long ebony and rhinestone cigarette holder firmly clenched between her teeth – a benevolent Cruella deVil. It’s probably not an accurate memory but I enjoy it and have no desire for greater truthiness in this case.

“MY! What a good-looking bunch of boys you have here!” Phyllis shrieked as she squeezed my little brother’s cheeks together the way you might fold a peanut butter sandwich in half. “How old are they?”

“12, 10, 6 and 4,” my mother replied.

“What happened 8 years ago?” Phyllis asked.

Mom didn’t hesitate: “That’s when we got television.”

The simultaneous, stereophonic, explosion of laughter from Phyllis and Mickey brought all pedestrian traffic to a halt. Heads turned and jaws dropped as mom and Phyllis vented their mutual mirth.

Phyllis was both charmed, and charming. We stood and talked to her for several minutes before she had to ran off, her back now to us we heard her mutter to herself, “Television. HA!”

Groundhog Day and the Doobie Brothers

I spent most of the last four months without cable TV or internet, and no regular newspaper. I’d like to tell you it made life perfect, but in truth, I missed all of them and was looking forward to returning to Florida to get a media fix.

Now that I’ve had it for the last ten days I wish I was Punxsutawney Phil and could crawl back into my burrow for another six weeks. Nothing has changed. I had forgotten how bombastic and pointless our national political dialog has become. We are a nation of Nero’s, fiddling away as the country burns down around us.

There is only one reason to have a government, and that is to solve problems. Does anyone think that is what our political class is doing for us – solving problems? I honestly don’t think I know a single person – either on the left or the right - who feels that way. Everyone is frustrated.

I have more sympathy for the Tea Party-types than any other segment of the chattering classes. At least they seem sincere in their belief that the government has to be smaller. And does anyone actually believe we’d be worse off without Departments of Education, or Energy? Can you name one thing they’ve done for us? You have to at least give them credit for making Mitch McConnell’s life miserable.

As for the Republicans, well they are what they are. At least they are transparently in the pocket of big money and the closest they come to making a secret of it is to say it is because the economic benefits will trickle down to working class people. It’s a lie, but it is consistently told.

The Democrats are the worst because they so often disappoint. Like their hero Bill Clinton, they fall so far short of their potential it breaks your heart. You know the biggest political lie of the last couple of elections? It was “you should vote Democratic because Republicans don’t believe that government can do any good, and so they govern poorly. Democrats believe in good government and govern well.” Now there is some world class bullshit, as George Carlin might have said.

With their man in the Oval Office and an unbeatable majority in both houses they had two once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to show us what good government looks like. The first was the stimulus bill, which could have put hundreds of thousands of people to work rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure, but instead, became a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stick American taxpayers with the bill for every two-bit Congressman’s pet porker project, Harry Reid’s monorail from LA to Las Vegas, for example.

A now, with our bridges still falling down, and millions of people in need of jobs, there is zero chance of another stimulus bill because no one – Republican, Tea Bagger or Democrat – believes Congress would spend the money wisely. What is their latest approval rating – like 16%?

The Dem’s second great opportunity to show what great government could look like came with health care reform. After wasting months trying to look like they were good guys, willing to compromise with the GOP (which I doubt they really were, but it’s moot now), they ended up cramming a bill down the Republican’s throats anyway. But instead of a well considered, rational plan that any American could understand, we got yet another 1000-page plus monstrosity of a bill that most of them never read and none of them understood, pushed through at the last minute. And now they’re crying in their Chardonnay that the plan is being misrepresented by their opponents. Boo-hoo. You should have done it right. Then the voters would have understood. Instead you’ve got to send President Obama out again on one of those inane “backyard real-folks” tours selling health care reform months after the fact. Jesus – what losers.

And then there’s the Faux Financial Reform Act, the legion of Goldman advisors surrounding the President, and his misguided Afghanistan plan. If this is good government we might as well elect Sarah now and get it over with.

We don’t even talk about the really important issues in the public debate. (When was the last time you heard a serious discussion of the defense budget?) In fact it’s not a debate; it’s just one interest group shouting at another. This is good for cable TV and the internet; it provides very cheap programming and builds audiences, because we don’t really want to listen to ideas that conflict with our own version of reality. There’s no other way to explain Fox News, MSNBC or about a hundred thousand political web sites and blogs. As the Doobie Brothers told us many years ago:

“But what a fool believes…he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems…to be
Is always better than nothing”

We don’t discuss issues we wrap lies in a thin veneer of half truths; we don’t solve problems we build Potemkin solutions that are politically mollifying but substantively meaningless. What’s it going to take to change things? The financial crash didn’t do it. Two failed wars didn’t do it. Katrina didn’t do it. How bad do the schools have to become? How much more dependent on imported oil do we have to be?

Just talking about it, knowing nothing will be done is degrading in its own way. I long to do something real and tangible, no matter how small or insignificant it may appear. I’m going back into my burrow.

I'm back

Well, I’m back in Florida and more or less settled in. I’m working on a political post, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share a recent road trip story, which I found rather heartening. I drove more than 7000 miles between May 15 and September 15, all without incident until my right rear tire blew out when I was about 200 miles from my Florida base last Sunday. I was on a two lane country road. There was no real shoulder, so I pulled into the grass and called for assistance. It was late afternoon, 94 degrees and humid, with threatening thunderheads on the horizon. There wasn’t a building in site – hadn’t been for miles. I leaned against the completely packed truck of my car and waited for the service truck, hoping he would arrived before the rain. If not I’d be forced to take refuge in the Dutch oven that my car was quickly becoming.

In the 45 minutes I waited, four vehicles stopped to ask me if I needed help, and a Hollywood casting director couldn’t have picked a more interesting mix of people. The first car, a late model, upscale SUV held a 60-ish couple who looked like they were on their way to a church social. They couldn’t have been nicer and promised to stop on their way back in about an hour to see how it was going.

Next, a 10 year-old F-150 pickup driven by a young Hispanic man who spoke broken English, stopped. He offered to change the tire for me. Third came a minivan so bland it could have been any age or make, occupied by a couple who were closer to 80 than 70. The wife was driving and she actually made a U-turn to see if I needed anything.

Finally, an 80’s era Firebird (or was it a Trans Am?) pulled up, driven by young white man wearing a backwards ball cap over a Florida mullet, a sleeveless tee-shirt and grimy blue jeans. If you’d seen him I suspect the label that would have come to mind would have been either “red neck” or “white trash.” I confess, with some shame, those were my first thoughts. But he made sure a truck was coming and then pointed out a path that leading through the woods to his house where he told me I was welcome to wait for the truck if it started raining.

Sometimes the world seems like a cold place, but there are a great number of good people among us.