Month: August 2010

by Conor Friedersdorf

Imagine a successful two-term Republican governor with a credible small government record, a demonstrated commitment to civil liberties, skepticism about foreign wars, a longstanding determination to right America's fiscal ship, evidence of competent management skills in the public and private sectors, and an utter lack of ugly populist rhetoric during the whole of his substantial time in public life. You'd think he'd be a God send for tea partiers and civil libertarians, a possibility to win the GOP nomination in 2012, and an appealing alternative for those of us who think that given a sane alternative Barack Obama doesn't deserve another term.

That attractive, reality-based Republican exists! His name is Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico. Says Niall Stanage in a Salon.com profile:

Aside from his low name-recognition, he has no discernible power base. After eight years on the job in Santa Fe, he was term-limited out of the governorship at the end of 2002 and stepped back from public life thereafter. Fundraising will be arduous. And his ambitions are the object of outright scorn from the Washington establishment. 

"His chances are zero," political analyst Stu Rothenberg says via e-mail. "I'd say that they are less than zero, if there was such a thing. I'd expect his impact to be nonexistent."

Tell a savvy politico that you'd love to see former Governor Johnson win the Republican nomination and they'll tell you the same thing, usually in a condescending tone: he doesn't have a chance. It's a dynamic I might accept if the GOP field were filled with excellent options. As things are, however, there's talk of Mitt Romney reappearing in a guise that has yet to be determined, a new xenophobic version of Newt Gingrich advancing the notion that Saudi Arabia and its treatment of religious freedom should inform attitudes toward religious freedom in America, and Sarah Palin, whose crowning achievement as governor of Alaska was… well, never mind that, she's a cultural phenom and really connects with the base!!

Here's the thing about politicians and their initial rise to national attention: it's often a phenomenon driven by elites. Sometimes promising young leaders are given a speaking slot at a political convention, like Barack

Obama. Other times it's taste-makers in coastal media who launch a pol from obscurity: take Bill Kristol's role in the rise of Sarah Palin, who he championed after meeting her on a luxury cruise to Alaska. There isn't anything wrong with elites alerting the wider public to a deserving candidate. What I object to are the judgments about who is worthy of that boost.

The GOP establishment gave us George W. Bush as a fait accompli during the 2000 primary season, and taste-makers in the conservative movement remain proud of having launched Sarah Palin's career in national politics. Either the elites on the right should start alerting us to worthier leaders, or else the GOP rank-and-file should start looking elsewhere for inspiration. (Being a Gary Johnson partisan, I'd suggest Reason magazine, where writers seem more interested in advancing the careers of people who share their professed beliefs, as opposed to helping ciphers who'll advance their agenda out of a combination of policy ignorance, malleability, and personal indebtedness.) At the moment, the best way to raise your profile in the GOP is to denounce the mosque and community center being planned a few blocks from Ground Zero. Is that the incentive structure the right wants?

It remains to be seen what Barack Obama will do for the remainder of his term. And national politics tends to reveal previously unknown facts about people who enter it, so perhaps Gary Johnson is less appealing than he seems. Were our criteria for viable presidential candidates more sane, however, he'd be a strong contender, due to his experience, desire to reform obviously broken policies, apparent lack of disqualifying traits, credibility in principled statements, and alignment with a sizable chunk of the most dissatisfied voters on key issues.

Instead attention is meted out based on opaque standards that are causing us to consider Mitt, Sarah and Newt as front-runners, a status quo that does a special disservice to tea party voters who'd love a former New Mexico governor if only they knew more about him.

At the very least, it is time to give Gary Johnson a fighting chance.

by Chris Bodenner

"[Your producers] did not tell me that you were going to grill me for this specific information that I was not ready to give to you tonight," – Texas representative Debbie Riddle, upset that Anderson Cooper dared to ask her for any evidence behind her claims that "terror babies" exist.

by Chris Bodenner

Copyranter captions this campaign for a karate studio:

Yeah, Pops. Nip that gaiety in the ass, and get junior kicking some ass and karate-chopping some wood, all while listening to Eye of the motherfucking Tiger. That'll knock those show tunes out of his head and some sense into him.

by Patrick Appel

Josh Barro's two cents:

What I find bizarre about some of the conservative response to Cordoba House is not just the objection to the construction of the mosque, but the conviction that it should be stopped by any means necessary—even if that means violating conservative principles about property rights, rule of law, and federalism.

by Patrick Appel

Nearly half of Americans incorrectly believe that Obama signed TARP. Weigel muses:

I just think it's fascinating that TARP has been the entry point for Republicans bashing Obama's social democratic economic agenda. It's one of the reasons I disagree with liberals who say the tea party is rooted in racism. Now, there's a case to make that some opposition to big spending, welfare programs is rooted in fear of money being redistributed to non-whites. But every big initiative of the Obama era has been slammed with that new pejorative word "bailout." It conjures images of wealthy Wall Street executives and wealthy bankers, not images of ACORN volunteers.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

While I understand your readers' arguments that socioeconomic factors are the major contributors to a seemingly perpetual black underclass, I am not persuaded. I have to agree the problem is cultural. My parents grew up in a time when racial discrimination was rampant and opportunities for poor blacks were scarce. They were both born in the rural South. My grandparents were farmers and had not graduated high school. Not only were there no examples of highly-educated or affluent blacks in their communities, there were no examples on television, and certainly not in the oval office. There was no family expectation that they go to college, only that they work hard, not lie, cheat or steal, and grow up to become decent human beings.

Both took the initiative to go to black universities to better themselves. There were no available scholarships. They worked their way through school and my maternal grandmother got a job outside the home for the first time in her life, standing on her feet all day peeling shrimp so she could send my mother her earnings for living expenses. My parents tell me that when they were in college, black men outnumbered black women. They tell me that it was considered shameful to be unkempt, that they all worked together to keep their grades up and keep their eyes on the prize – graduation and professional success. Both my parents went on to get graduate degrees.

Given the pervasive, accepted, and even legal discrimination faced by previous generations of black Americans, there is no excuse for our current failure to succeed.

Another crucial point: if the black community's success or failure is out of our own hands, how depressing and discouraging is that? If that's what our young people believe, it's no wonder they don't have a vision for their own futures or a belief in the opportunities this country provides. On the other hand, if our success is simply a matter of changing our own internal cultural norms and mindset, the profound disparities between white and black America can be ameliorated in a generation.

At some point in the last twenty years, black America took a wrong turn and it's up to us to save ourselves. And now after Obama's election there truly is no excuse. He should serve as a constant, highly visible example to black kids of what is possible in America.

(Photo from a Reader's Digest profile: "Craig, Fraser, Marian, and Michelle Robinson around 1965. "Craig and I had excellent role models, " says Michelle [Obama]. "My parents didn't go to college, but they were smart, commonsense people who believed in hard work.")

by Conor Friedersdorf

A great pleasure of The Daily Dish is interacting with as thoughtful and diverse an audience as I've found in the blogosphere. You've my belated gratitude for the advice offered prior to a road trip I took across The South, when I drew liberally on suggestions shared in this space to guide my travels. Those e-mails also prompted many of you to remark on how enjoyable it is to ponder the thoughts and life experiences of fellow Dish readers.

In that spirit, I'd like to begin the week by offering another prompt: Tell us the story of your first kiss. 

It's a query that springs from a dozen curiosities. Are the stories from older readers going to differ substantially from younger readers, or is this sort of thing timeless? Do men and women remember the experience differently? Did anyone wind up married to their first kiss? What's the culture surrounding first kisses in other countries? What's the funniest story in this community of readers? How well do people remember their first kiss?

Give context.  Reflect on larger meanings. Take liberties with the question, and explore angles I didn't mention. I'll share a number of reader responses over the next several days. Email conor.friedersdorf@gmail.com with "first kiss" in the subject line. (Always feel free to use that email address for any correspondence directed to me. Twitter addicts can also reach me via the handle @conor64).

Finally, if you're new here, I'm a California based writer, a newly minted senior editor here at The Daily Dish, erstwhile blogger for The Atlantic's special reports on cities and ideas, a columnist at The Daily Beast and Forbes, and proprietor of WhatAmericaLooksLike.com — it's a Web site inspired by that trip around the South where I solicit submissions that show what the USA looks like outside the few places we see in the mass media. I'm also at work on other freelance projects and a biography of Milton Shedd, a co-founder of Sea World, World War II hero, and marine conservationist. My political beliefs are mostly grounded in conservative and libertarian philosophy, though I am allied to neither a political party nor an ideological movement. 

I'm eager for your thoughts, your concurrences, and especially your dissents.