Presidents’ Vacations

Presidents’ vacations.

There is an uproar over President Obama’s vacation.  And once again the charge is hypocrisy.   He is a president who champions public schools for the masses, while sending his own daughters to private schools.  And in this case, a president who urges us to visit the beaches of the devastated Gulf while he slips away to Maine.  But all the uproar over Obama’s summer vacation should be seen in context.  Presidents have always taken time off.  And most observers think they should.

In 2000, when the Supreme Court finally declared that George W. Bush was the president-elect and he made his historic flight back to Washington on Air Force One, a friend of mine was onboard.  He said that the plane was practically empty.   No family members, only a couple of staffers and my friend, who was a journalist.   Bush quickly turned the tables on the journalist and asked him the first question.

“How many days did Ronald Reagan spend on his ranch in California?”

Bush was already groaning under the pressure and he had not yet been inaugurated for spent a single day in office. He would pass Reagan’s days off but by no means set the record for a modern president.

The record, if it can be called that, belongs to Lyndon B. Johnson who served 5.5 years in office and spent well over one of those years at his Texas ranch.  484 days to be exact. And the record for the fewest days off belongs to Jimmy Carter, who took off only 79 days.

President Kennedy loved his time off and the Kennedy family had all kinds of retreats.  There was the family compound with multiple homes at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, the home in Palm Beach, Florida, and of course the President had Camp David and just in case they needed it, another home in the Virginia fox country, an hour outside of Washington, D. C.

Eisenhower wanted to get rid of Camp David.  It reminded him of Franklin D. Roosevelt who had purchased the place.  Only his wife Mamie, who liked it, and the fact that he was able to successfully rename it after his grandson, David Eisenhower, made him finally decide to keep it.  Not that Eisenhower didn’t like to take time off.  He was an avid, year round, golfer.
The work of a president is making decisions.  And that work never stops.  Even when they sleep.  Woodrow Wilson was scandalized by the pace.  It had been the family tradition for him to spend his evening with his wife and daughters reading together but after a few frustrating evenings he confessed that he was exasperated.  He said he was being forced to make decisions without any reflection.  “I can’t even take a walk to think it through.”

In earlier times, when it took three months to get a pair of scissors from Europe, decisions were more deliberate and less predictable.  James Madison once took a four month long vacation.  The business of the nation could simply wait.

No president would likely find fault with Barack Obama, for going where he wants to go or even when.  Nixon strongly urged his successors to take time off to reflect, to walk the beach.  This crisis will pass and the nation will survive.  One may disagree with Obama on the direction of the country.  The direction of his family vacation this summer, should be his own.

Obama: Right speech, wrong time?

The only thing that history will remember about President Barack Obama’s speech to the nation tonight is the date.  Obama has called the oil spill his 9-11.  If so he is offering the nation too little, too late.  The oil spill happened on April 20, 2010.  He finally got around to addressing the nation on June 15, 2010.  Nothing he says or does now can erase that delay.  It is fixed in history.

Remember 9-11?  George Bush was criticized for getting spooked by the Secret Service who had him flying around in the air for hours to stay safe.  Eventually the president awakened from his lethargy, assumed his role of leadership, told the well intentioned Secret Service to stuff it, and flew back to the dangerous White House where he addressed the nation from the Oval Office.  It took hours for him to take charge, not weeks.

On December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation the next day.

Although very late, many observers expected President Obama to strike a lofty theme that would transcend the crisis.  He would appeal to the nation to strive for energy independence.  It would be compared to John Kennedy’s call to land a man on the moon in one decade.   Instead Obama seized on the crisis to pass another piece of his favored liberal agenda, his cap and trade plans.  It is seen by many as a repeat of the bait and switch of the Stimulus Package.  Obama had been elected to office, partially to resolve the mortgage crisis.  But his Stimulus Package raided the Treasury for key constituencies and promoted favored liberal programs while not addressing even the easy fixes for thousands of suffering homeowners.

Obama’s speech talked about “windmills, insulated windows for homes, gas efficient cars” and then his voice trailed off as he mumbled some other vague reference to energy technology.   None of the stated programs will solve the energy crisis.  Unfortunately none of them will even make a dent.  And of course, none of them will do a thing for the oil spill in the Gulf.   Now, they are nice pay offs to industries and corporations who have helped finance his campaign.  And his cap and tax will punish those who didn’t.

Obama’s speech is not much different from what he promised in the presidential campaign.  If you are a liberal and you believe in higher taxes and you do not fear the transfer of wealth to the Middle East and you want higher prices for gasoline, at European levels as he once said, then you can applaud his speech.  But you surely cannot applaud his timing.

The President’s strength is his calm, phlegmatic approach to a problem.  It is a contrast to the blustering, decisive but impetuous nature of his predecessor.  But our strengths can sometimes be our weaknesses.  And this issue, this time has demanded decisiveness and leadership.  And it still doesn’t have it.

This man tried to kill my dad?

A couple of days ago we passed the tenth anniversary of Operation Desert Fox, when U. S. Air Forces, under then president Bill Clinton, tried to take out Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. 

Of course, there probably were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) then.   We learned that when the next president, George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq.   But, at the time, that was irrelevant to me.  I never for a second thought that the invasion had anything to do with WMD.  As far as I was concerned it had always and only been about Saddam Hussein. 

In 1998, while Operation Desert Fox was underway, I was talking to George W. Bush regularly on the telephone, I told my wife that if he became president we would have another war with Iraq. 

Years before, in 1987-88, I reported directly to George W. Bush.  He was helping his father’s presidential campaign.  I ran some of the coalitions.  And when George W. went out on the road I was often his traveling companion.  He loved his father.  Well, it was probably a love- hate relationship but he wouldn’t have known that.  He was also intimidated by his father.  His greatest fear was to be diminished or humiliated in front of his father.  Believe me, I could tell you stories.

And then, when the Bush family was out of power, after the White House years were over and Bill Clinton was president, and the dad, the former president, George Herbert Walker Bush, was invited for a triumphant visit to Kuwait, the country he had defended against Saddam Hussein’s aggression, there was a terrible moment.  We learned that Saddam Hussein had dispatched a team to assassinate him.

The Bush family felt so helpless.  It is a scary thing to be a target of a head of state.  A state has resources that the richest people in the world don’t have. 

And what did President Bill Clinton do?  How did he respond?  He fired off a cruise missile to take out an anti-aircraft battery in Baghdad.

After 9-11, when they asked President George W. Bush what he was going to do about the terrorist attack, he told a group of Senators, “I’ll tell you what I’m not gonna do.  I’m not gonna fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.”

That’s how Clinton had responded when Saddam Hussein had tried to kill Bush’s father.  It had seemed to the family like a pretty pathetic reaction.  Not much of a deterrent.  

I remember going out to eat with one of the Bush sons during the first Gulf War.  We ate at Maxims in Paris.  His wife, the president’s daughter in law, was going to Madrid the next day.  And she wanted to take one of the kids with her because if one of the president’s grandkids went along, she would have Secret Service protection.  But the kids wanted to stay in Paris with the dad, the president’s son.

I will never forget what was going on at that table.  There was fear.  I hadn’t expected that.  But I could feel it in the conversation.  And then I realized how vulnerable they all were.   And this was when the father was president.  How much more vulnerable they would be out of power when none of them would have protection except the former president, himself.

The Bush family knows more than most first families.  They know what it feels like to be in power but they also know what it feels like to be out of power once you have had it.  How helpless you are.

That’s why I told my wife that George W. Bush would invade Iraq if he became president because it would be his one chance to take out Saddam Hussein, the man who tried to kill his father, but also because he wanted to make the world a safer place for his daughters too.  They would have no protection after the White House, unless the law was changed.  Having a second chance at power, George W. Bush would not waste it.  He would take care of business.

Bush the younger was always strong, always tough.  In 1987 a reporter asked me to describe him and I said he was the sort of guy who could kill Old Yeller.  You remember Old Yeller?  That was the dog in the Disney movie who was beloved by the family but had turned rabid.  Someone had to kill him.  But they all loved him.  George W. Bush would say, “Old Yeller, I love you, son, you been loyal, but you gotta go.” Bang!  And he would sleep like a baby that night.

 And then, remember.  I was doing my study of presidents’ children.  This was ongoing for almost 20 years.  And presidents’ kids had a way of seeking the approval of the parent by “completion” that is, doing the thing that the father hadn’t done.

For example, Theodore Roosevelt confessed to his wife that his greatest disappointment in life was that after all his heroics in battle he hadn’t won the Medal of Honor.  Well, his sons went out there, risking their lives, one died in his twenties in World War One, two others were seriously wounded.  And finally, one of them, TR, Jr. won the Medal of Honor for valor in World War Two.

It is called completion.  And it happened over and over among all sons of presidents.

So I wasn’t surprised when George W. Bush bought his ranch in Texas.  His father had been accused of being a phony Texan.  His real home was Kennebunkport, Maine, they said.  He just kept an address at the Bayshore Inn in Texas so he could vote there.  But the son proved that Bushes were real Texans.

And the father broke his pledge.  “No new taxes.”  And the people were irate.  But the son kept his pledge.  He never raised taxes.  He bankrupted the country and printed billions of new dollars, which devalues the money people have in their pockets, he nationalized the insurance industry and banks, but he didn’t raise taxes.

The father wasn’t re-elected.  The son was.

And, of course, the father left Saddam Hussein standing.  The son took him out.  It’s called completion.

Paul O’Neil, the Secretary of Treasury for George W. Bush says that at the first Security Council Meeting of the new George W. Bush adminstration, there was a discussion that Saddam Hussein had to go.  No one asked why now?  What is this all about? And Bob Woodward describes a cabinet meeting just before the invasion of Iraq when Bush asked around the table, one by one, “Is this personal?  Is this personal?  Is this personal?”  And everyone said, “No.”  What a weird moment.  Why would it be personal to anyone? Except the president, himself?

Just before the war in Iraq, Uday Hussein issued a chilling statement. “Let not he who attacks us think that his mother or children will be safe.”

I was watching television when I heard this.  And at that moment I knew that not only would Saddam Hussein die, but both of his sons would die as well.  Bush, himself, was a son and he knew how dangerous it would be to leave the sons living.

When U. S. forces invaded Baghdad, they occupied the palace of Uday Hussein.  And in a room in a basement they found a large collection of pornography.  Plastered on the wall was a poster of the Bush twins.  The president’s two daughters.

I am not saying that Saddam Hussein is a good man.  But I am not convinced that so many others had to die to avenge a father.  Ironically, there are WMD in North Korea.  And there will be WMD soon in Iran.  But George W. Bush never considered war against either country.

“Remember,” Bush said, in a rare moment of transparency, just before the invasion of Iraq, “This man tried to kill my dad.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfmATUzBwxY

A Fox within a Fox

“Talent hits a target that no one else can hit.  Genius hits a target that no one else can see.”

- Arthur Schopenhauer

Here it is folks, the last big, untouched, television market.

Everyone knows the success story of how FOX NEWS was launched and made an effort to include conservative opinion and thinking in its news stories and how that translated into a commercial success.   Well, now, there are numbers that show a very clear “second opportunity,” another FOX, or maybe it could be better described as “A FOX WITHIN A FOX.”

Before I lay out these remarkable numbers, all referenced, consider what FOX accomplished.  For years, all the other networks reflected thinking inside the Boston-NY-Washington corridor.  The thinking of the rest of America was not only ignored it was marginalized.  In hindsight, the economics of the FOX idea appears as a no brainer.  As we approached a new millennium Americans increasingly considered themselves “conservative,” so much so that pollsters no longer asked them to identify themselves as either liberal or conservative; instead they use a series of questions to try to quantify them.  And yet for years no one at the networks acted on these huge numbers, presumably because their integrity would not allow them to compromise “the truth” as they saw it.

 Oh sure, there were occasional rebellions among journalists from the stifling uniformity of thought and there were even a few, timid, commercial attempts to benefit from the numbers.  Conservative Republican Billionaire, Rich DeVos, bought the Mutual Broadcasting System with that very idea in mind.  It didn’t work.  So the success of FOX was not just a good idea.  It was the recruiting skills and talent hunting abilities of Roger Ailes that made the difference.  It succeeded because of execution.

When MSNBC and other networks tried to copy FOX they failed because they could not execute.  They did not have the Ailes’ touch because they didn’t have an Ailes or anyone in management who actually understood how conservatives thought.  They are actually now attracting more conservative viewers as “the enemy” than they ever did when they tried to do a little “fair and balanced” programming on their own. 

So what is the new FOX within a FOX opportunity?

It is a more sophisticated approach to the evangelical Christian viewers and particularly the Pentecostal-Charismatic viewers.  This is the demographic logic behind the John McCain selection of Sarah Palin and it could be the logic behind a new television ratings bonanza.

Hear me out and follow closely the numbers.  Don’t let anecdotal experience influence you.  That is what blinded the media elites for years and allowed Robert Murdoch and FOX an opening.

Consider the following numbers. (All references and definition of terms are at the end.)

42% of the American public are born again Christians.

51% of all born again Christians are Pentecostal or Charismatics.

Now here is where it gets tricky.  You have to have a Harvard or Yale degree in theology to understand this but if you have been through that you won’t want to believe it anyway.  While half of all born again Christians are Pentecostal or Charismatics, a much greater number of all Americans are Pentecostal or Charismatic.  That is because of the Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church which is huge.  Thus a Catholic may say no to the born again question.  But yes to the question that identifies he or she as a Pentecostal or Charismatic.

Now how can this be?  Aren’t Catholics born again? Didn’t Jesus say, “You must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven?”  Yes but, a Catholic does not see themselves as born again in the way that the terms are used today.  They would say that they fulfilled this “Jesus requirement” when they experienced baptism into the Church as an infant and not as some later adult experience.  In recent years, Catholics who have had what seems like the equivalent of the Protestant born again experience, maybe at a Cursillo or some other religious event, complete with adrenalin rush and the release of endorphins, call it “an adult awareness of baptism.”  They do not refer to it as being born again.

So, if you have followed that arcane process we are ready for the killer.  According to BARNA in his appropriately named survey “Is America becoming Charismatic” 36% of all Americans believe that the New Testament gifts of the Holy Spirit such as healing and speaking in tongues are valid today.  It is approximately 80 million people.  When the media gleefully attacks Palin, especially on her faith, this is the mass of Americans who wince.

Now take a look….

23% of all Americans are Catholic.  That includes the guy who was baptized as an infant and hasn’t attended mass in years.  In some cases he is only a “cultural Catholic” but he counts in the number.

13% of all Americans are Black.

But 36% are Pentecostal or Charismatic.  To qualify they must say yes to a complicated theological question which means that this number is pretty hot.

Now you know why John McCain picked Sarah Palin, who has an Assemblies of God background, and why Barack Obama and Joe Biden were a bit stunned.  All through the Clinton years the Democrats had been reaching out to Pentecostals, hoping to peel them away from the other evangelicals.  Don Argue, the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals and a Pentecostal, himself, had set up meetings for Hillary Clinton in 2007.  Obama, who had hired an Assemblies of God young man to lead his evangelical outreach, was hoping to take advantage of John McCain’s missteps with Pentecostals-Charismatics.  McCain had fumbled baldy, his on and off again relationships with John Hagee and Rod Parsley, are examples.   Almost all GOP Black and Hispanic leaders are Pentecostals or Charismatics.

All of that brings us to the window.

It so happens that the Roger Ailes’ talent hunt for FOX picked up primarily Catholic “movement conservatives.”  They were the only good ones in the pool.  And of course, they spoke and understood conservative ideas.  But they did not understand the evangelical world.  And the two accidental “born again” Christians in the FOX stable, Cal Thomas and Fred Barnes were not in touch with the movement.  Barnes shared the experience but none of the culture, contacts or knowledge, (at last word he attends an Episcopal church in Virginia) and Thomas hailed from the Jerry Falwell, fundamentalist wing that opposed Pentecostal-Charismatic doctrines and once taught that they were “demon possessed!”

Thus when an evangelical, Harriet Miers, was proposed for the Supreme Court, FOX went ballistic.  Ann Coulter opposed her on Sean Hannity, Bill Bennett opposed her on Bill O’Reilly.  Sam Brownback, ranking Republican on the Judicial Committee came on FOX and knocked her.  “Who is she,” they asked, “We don’t know her.”  Coulter, Hannity, Bennett, O’Reilly, Brownback are all Catholic.  Result?  The evangelicals lost the nomination to another “movement conservative,” FOX approved, Catholic, Samuel Alito who took her place.  Alito was a familiar face, “one of us.”  And so he joined Catholics Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and John Roberts  on the Supreme Court.

Some very savvy, evangelical leaders were stunned.  “We have always supported your candidates.  We are 42%, why can’t we have one? One?  One?” Some forever swore off FOX.  Most didn’t notice and soon they all got over it.  After all, FOX usually gets some of it right.  Nobody else comes close.

Then came the sudden, surprising appearance of Governor Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist, who upset the pundits, with some marvelous footwork by Texas operator, David Lane, and others and won the Iowa Caucus.  The coverage from FOX was ridiculous.  They didn’t understand the culture, the numbers, how it happened, what it meant, had never heard of Lane and they surely didn’t understand Huckabee.  They had spent a year talking about Giuliani and Romney.  They weren’t prepared for this outside evangelical insurgency, even though 42% of the American people are born again and its likelihood was obvious. FOX, who once saw the numbers that no one else could see, was blind to these. They had no evangelical Christian writers or pundits to explain any of it.

Still, the embarrassment only lasted a short while.  Evangelicals are used to abuse.  And no one else gets it right either.  And at least Fox considers their stand on many of the issues, because those stands mirror the Catholic “movement conservatives.”

But now?

Now, you have a Vice Presidential nominee who hails from a Pentecostal-Charismatic background.  And remember, Pentecostal-Charismatics are 36% of the nation, a big commercial market, totally unrepresented on national television.  Fox has one more chance to get it right but don’t count on it.

Voila!

There is a window of thirty days.  80 million Pentecostal-Charismatics will be watching television as their views and culture and ideas and language will be debated and discussed by outsiders who will get it all wrong.  Imagine a network that is all white, talking for thirty days about a Black candidate?  But if one network, for one minute can get some of it right? They will have a measure of respect from that subculture and that respect will have a long, long shelf life.  And it could be anybody.  CNN, MSNBC, anybody.

Understand, we are not talking about being pro Palin, we are talking about being accurate in the descriptions, language and ideas of this group of people. 

So a huge block of viewers are up for grabs.  CNN floated Glenn Beck and won a new audience and in the process forever won the love of Mormons everywhere.  1.9% of the American population are Mormon.

Someday, somebody will see these numbers.  The Harriet Miers’ eruption seemed like a onetime phenomenon.  It passed.  But it all came back with Governor Huckabee’s win in Iowa.  And then it too passed.  But now we have Sarah Palin.  This too will pass.  But the numbers are not going to go away.  42% of the nation claims to be “born again Christians.”  And 36% claim to be Pentecostal or Charismatic.  No one on television is getting it right.  No one seems to know how they think and why?  There is a vacuum.  FOX made its name in filling a vacuum.  Someday, somebody will fill this one too.

Appendix:

Definition of terms:

Pentecostals: These are Protestant Christians, most of whom came from Methodist tradition, who believe in the born again experience and who were forced out of their churches at the turn of the 20th Century because of their beliefs that the New Testament gifts such as healing and speaking in tongues were valid today.  They formed their own denominations.  Sarah Palin’s Assemblies of God is one of those.  The head of Barack Obama’s religious outreach is also Assemblies of God.

Charismatics: These are Protestant and Catholic Christians, who trace their origins to the “Charismatic Renewal” which began in 1960 in the Episcopal Church.  These Christians also claimed that they had begun to experience New Testament gifts (the Greek word in scripture is charismata) but this time,  more tolerant denominations let them remain as “Charismatics” within their respective churches.  The Charismatic Renewal spread to Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian and almost every other Protestant group.  By 1967 there were Catholic Charismatics.  Maria Von Trapp of Sound of Music fame, was a Catholic Charismatic, as are some of the Cardinals of the Church.

Evangelicals: People who believe in the born again experience and that the Bible is “the inspired Word of God.”  But most people who are “evangelical” do not acknowledge the term, that is, they consider themselves Baptist, or Lutheran or Nazarene or some other denomination or they only know that they go to the church down the street.  Thus polling on numbers of Evangelicals and how they vote is practically worthless.  The born again vote is more accurate for measuring numbers.  It is why FOX and other media outlets could not predict, track or follow the Huckabee surge.  It is also explains how the media missed the loss of “born again” votes for George W. Bush in 2000, in spite of his declaration that Jesus was his favorite “political philosopher or thinker.” (sic.)  Al Gore and Democrats had successfully raided  the vote.

Gallup’s question: When we say that 42% of the American public claim to be born again, they are asked this question by the Gallup Organization.  “Are you a born again Christian, that is, have you had a turning point in your life in which you committed yourself to Jesus Christ?”  In 1992, they added the line, “And, or, are you an evangelical?”

Sources on numbers of Pentecostals-Charismatics:

http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrowPreview&BarnaUpdateID=287

Can McCain still win with a crashing stock market?

Can McCain win in spite of the stock market crash?

Presidential elections are as complicated and nuanced as the stock market so trying to tie the two together is sometimes elusive.  There is so much data and so many variables that one can almost prove any bias.  There is one thing clear.  Most markets are booming just before the election and most take a hit for the first two years of the presidency.  This has been the formula since 1960’s when Keynesian economics have been dominate in the United States.

According to this trend, George W. Bush should be presiding over a bullish stock market and the new president, Barack Obama or John McCain, would have to apply the tough medicine his first year and then slowly crank it all back up for re-election in 2012.

Not this time.  This time, the younger Bush president is seeing the stock market go south.  If it holds up, or I should say, stays down, it will be the first time in modern history that the market actually declined in a full two year period before an election. 

So can John McCain win?  Sure.  But it won’t be easy.  And it means that something big will still have to happen. 

The best examples of how other events can trump the economy are the number of times in modern history when a challenger has beaten the incumbent party in spite of a rising market.   

 The American stock markets fell throughout most of the turbulent Watergate year of 1974 and then began one of their most stunning rebounds.  During Gerald Ford’s brief presidency through the end of the 1976 election year, the market had climbed a remarkable 70%.  Of course, inflation was a factor, but nothing like the inflation that we would experience under his successor.  Nevertheless, in the midst of a booming economy, challenger Jimmy Carter beat incumbent Gerald Ford in 1974 promising the American people that he would never lie to them.  It wasn’t about the economy stupid.  It was about the pardon of Richard Nixon.

During the same two year period at the end of the George Herbert Walker Bush presidency, the growing markets regained 38% from their bottom.  It was twice the two year gain that had propelled Bush into the White House in 1988 after the end of the Reagan years but the perceptions were vastly different.  In 1988 the American people were seeing the end of the Cold War and beginning to anticipate the “peace dividend” which would move trillions of dollars from weapons development into education, other social programs, national infrastructure and back to the people in lower income taxes.

In 1992, the last year of the senior Bush presidency, the rising market was an accurate reflection of the positive economic data.  But the media, which continued to proclaim a failed economy with heartrending anecdotal evidence, didn’t want to see it.  The president’s self confidence about the numbers, thinking that they would be eventually seen for what they were, led to the perception that he “didn’t get it” and turned off voters who elected Bill Clinton to save them.

This later story is instructive.  The two year stock market gains, leading up to the 1992 election loss of the first Bush were actually greater than the same gains of the second Bush, which led to his 2004 re-election victory.  But it was not about the economy stupid.  It was about national security and the war on terrorism.

That’s why this marathon roller coaster 2008 election contest is not absolutely over.  Barack Obama’s liberalism is an issue.  Polls show that Americans are still not “liberal” and may yet balk at electing “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate” and what that means for public safety and law enforcement and other issues. 

And then the barely controlled media bias against the Republican vice presidential nominee, Governor Sarah Palin, continues to irritate their readers and viewers who don’t like “news” crammed down their throats by arrogant, opinionated, big brothers.  They like to make up their own minds.

There has been clear polling evidence that McCain-Palin have partially co-opted the Obama claim on “change.”

With only a little more than one month left before the election, it may only take one outside event to steal the headlines from the falling stock market.  Or even a spectacular market bounce.  That happened in 1987, leading up to the 1988 election.  And then the race would truly be up in the air.

As a historian, I wouldn’t bet on any of it.  It’s getting late. 

Either way, we will have the first African America president or the first woman vice president.  So history wins.  BTW, whomever wins, as a historian, I would advise against any major, risky stock market investments this first year of a new presidency.  The odds aren’t going to be good.

Obama’s community service commendable but not new!

 

Early in the week the Obama Campaign went out of its way to promote the idea that their man’s community service was a precedent setting thing for a presidential candidate.  It may or may not have been good politics, and certainly his community work is commendable, but it reflects poor scholarship on their part and slovenly reporting on the part of the media who dutifully reported this inaccurate line.

The fact is that almost all presidents were involved in community and volunteer efforts of some sort, it is very common.  It is part of the formula for power.

Washington volunteered for everything and served in unofficial and auxiliary roles, as well as his local militia.  His mother, Mary, once stormed over to Mt. Vernon and prostrated herself before him, complaining that he cared for everyone else in the colonies but her and his own family.  Over the years she bitterly wrote his siblings about her son’s “public involvement.”

William Henry Harrison took up the cause of veterans and literally ran his own unofficial veterans administration, serving as a postmaster, helping old friends find each other, helping orphans and widows and eventually made a political career out of it and got the government involved.  The Harrison family produced two presidents.  And what General Harrison did as a volunteer, soon became a part of the formula for any successful presidential candidate ever since.  Even today, we argue over which candidate truly deserves the veteran’s vote.

Abraham Lincoln volunteered as an untrained militiaman in the Black Hawk wars.  He was elected captain.  The first time he ever got elected anything.

Teddy Roosevelt and his first wife met as trainees for missions work in their own church denomination.  They both shared a desire to help the poor of the inner city.

George W. Bush famously did community work in Houston, among disadvantaged youth.

So, yes it is commendable that Barack Obama did such work, and it enriches his resume, but the national network reports that this is precedent setting for a presidential candidate are shameful.  If they aren’t going to do a better job vetting the Obama Campaign propaganda dished out to them, they need to move aside and let a new generation of journalists do the job.

Hey Mr. Prez, now name a street after Tony Snow !

The interesting thing is that Tony Snow was just as kind, just as brilliant, just as much a champion for the underdog before he got cancer as he was afterwards. It is not the disease that made him. It only made us look at him and see who he was.

I first met Tony when he was a reporter for the Washington Times. He was fair but persistent and thoroughly honest. He was not impressed by White House spin which can often be outright lies, whether coming from a Republican or Democrat administration. As one of his few White House sources I tried to help him pursue his stories but he lacked the guile and aggressiveness of his rivals who would lie and manipulate back to get their information. I thought he was in the wrong profession, thought he should be heading up Mercy Corps.

He came into the Bush, Senior White House as I was leaving but I heard he was balm upon the troubled waters. It sounds like him. Of course, he would come back years later and do it again for George W. Bush too.

When I went through my days of infamy, as the taper of Bush the younger, he sensed there was more to the story. He understood all too well how complicated and dangerous Washington can be. So, over the objections of others, he had me on his television shows and once even asked me to sit in as a guest host for his radio program but I had a conflict and was unable to make it. It was a gesture I will never forget.

He never once asked for details, never once said, “Tell me what was really going on?”

He just knew, instinctively, that no one is all bad or all good, especially in Washington, D. C. and the stories the public thinks they know the best they usually know the least.

Vince Foster left us sadly. In his suicide note he called Washington politics a “blood sport.” In his own soft way, Tony Snow left us too. No suicide, of course, but a stress related disease nevertheless. Both men may have been better than their environment. We are certainly better knowing Tony Snow.

Blazac once wrote that kind men hide some earlier evil for which their life atones. If so, the life of Tony Snow has wiped it clean. Now, that the president has named a street after Tim Russert. Let him name one after Tony too.

Will the US Attack Iran?

  

“America must not ignore the threat gathering against us.  Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

 

- George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq

 

Now that it is clear that China and Russia will block any meaningful sanctions against Iran, there are compelling strategic reasons why the United States might participate with Israel in a massive joint air assault on Iran this summer.  But, as you will see if you read on, don’t hold your breath.

 

Israel rightly sees its survival at stake.  The government of Iran, which has publicly announced its intention to wipe her off the face of the earth, moves inexorably closer to developing a nuclear weapon. 

 

The idea that Iran needs nuclear energy for domestic economic reasons is almost laughable.  Strategic analyst, Joel Waterman, points out that Iran produces only 30% of her own finished petroleum products, this because she lacks refinery capacity.  “You just can’t take raw crude oil out of the ground and operate ships and planes and autos.”  So Iran is in the unique position of exporting crude oil and then importing it back as refined oil.  By far the most important future economic investment for Iran should be the development and expansion of her own refining industry.

 

It is no big secret.  Iran wants nuclear power to go to war.  Read the speeches of her politicians.  It is almost Hitler encore.  His plan was there for all to read, including German living space in the East and the destruction of the Jews.  And no one wanted to believe it.   It was absurd to the point of embarrassing.  Sensible people bought Mein Kampf to be informed but no one read it or talked about it aloud.  Absurd or not, Iran and its leaders have publicly called for the annihilation of the Jewish people, a chilling proposition.

 

Iran recently tested its new medium range missiles, well within striking distance of Israel.  This is excused by the New York Times as only saber rattling to forestall any joint US-Israeli action?

 

America is in no mood for this crisis.  She seems to have expended all of her international energy in Iraq.  Why do we have to be involved?  We have already alienated most of the world with what is seen as our impertinent action in Iraq.  If Israel is really threatened, why couldn’t she go it alone and show that this is not more American Imperialism at work?  She recently took care of Syria on her own.  And she took out Saddam Hussein’s Franco-nuclear program in 1981.

 

The problem is that Iran’s nuclear facilities are partially built underground.  Only American strategic bombers and American bunker buster ordinance can do the necessary damage.  It may come as a surprise to many that the Israeli air force has no strategic bombers.  Yes, it has those famous fleets of fighters and has demonstrated that they are among the best in the world.  Their recent rehearsal showed that they have not lost their touch. It ain’t easy putting 100 fighter aircraft in the air on a coordinated mission.

 

And Iran has formidable anti-aircraft weaponry.  It will take waves of American unmanned drones with ability to detect heat patterns, light emanations and movement, allowing us to identify and locate the coordinates for the Iranian anti aircraft batteries and missile sites.  And finally, Iran has reportedly placed 13,000 missiles in Hezbollah hands in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank.  The attack on Iran would have to be massive and complete and Israel could not do it alone and expect to survive unscathed.

 

The flow of oil would be interrupted.  Causing a worldwide shortage, further exasperating world economies.  That’s why it would have to happen this summer.  Action in the fall or winter would leave homes across Europe and North America without heat and threaten the survival of many.

 

Of course, Iran would suffer the most in such an exchange but Iran’s fanatic leaders seem willing to turn their country into one giant suicide bomber.  They might not care how much they suffer if they can destroy their enemy, the men, women and children of Israel.  She would surely attempt to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and she could try to invade Iraq to bleed our boots on the ground there, even at the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of her own boys.  America’s air attack would have to be complete.  It would have to shut down Iran and destroy her ability to meaningful retaliation.  And it would be expensive.

 

On such a mission, American could not trust another country except Israel itself.  Seeking help or fly-over permission would be tantamount to announcing our coming to Iran.

 

But will it happen?

 

Don’t count on it.  This is not Iraq.  The president has nothing personal at stake here.  Saddam Hussein had ordered the assassination of the president’s father, George Herbert Walker Bush, remember?  The president does.  And so we invaded Iraq to make the world a safer place for Bushes.  If it were about tyrants we would move now on Mugabe, just as we would have moved on Pol Pot in years past.  (Pol Pot survived four American presidents, including Ronald Reagan.)  If it were about nuclear power, we would have moved on North Korean or Iran, whose pursuit of WMD has been no secret, not Iraq who bid us no harm.

 

Shortly before the invasion of Iraq, in one last meeting, the president polled each of his cabinet officers one by one.  “Is this personal?  Is this personal?” 

 

“No,” they replied one by one.

 

What an odd question.  Why could it possibly be personal to the Secretary of Agriculture that we invade Iraq?

 

There was only one person in the room who could have said “yes” to that question and he was the one who was asking it.

 

It will be hard for George W. Bush to order the attack on Iran.  The world will be against him.  There will be outrage.  The American economy will drop like a rock into certain recession or worse.  A Democrat will be elected president.  Only Israel and people of sound judgment and eventually history, itself, will see the courage and necessity of such an action. But if it was wrong to exaggerate the threat of Iraq and invade the country to settle a family score, it is equally wrong to ignore the very real threat of Iran and what she will do to innocent millions if she has nuclear weapons. 

 

The problem is that all the words that describe this moment have already been used up in the adventure that took us to Baghdad.

 

“America must not ignore the threat gathering against us,” George W. Bush once said, about Iraq. “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

 

But it is very possible that we will do just that, “ignore the threat gathering against us.”  The time to act is weeks away and it appears that the president just can’t do it.  This is the cry wolf story on a massive, tragic, strategic scale.  Obama will not likely risk his worldwide popularity to deal with Iran.  He has already announced he will “meet” with them.  And so the lingering threat will gather against us and the day will grow nearer when the suicide bomber will be more than a woman, taking out a bus on an Israeli street corner, it will be a nation, taking out a nation.

 

 History will not say that this president tried to deal with Fundamentalist Islamic terrorism but was all alone, a man ahead of his time.  They will say, he attacked Iraq for personal reasons and got caught in the act and then let the real threat build next door in Iran and did nothing to stop it.  If he delays, he will share blame in whatever happens with an Obama administration.  If he acts now, he will be vilified and castigated and driven from office with outrage but he may be forgiven for Iraq and redeemed by history.

 

Give Charlie Black a Break

C’mon.  You got be kidding?  Charlie Black, one of American’s most veteran, experienced, professional political operators, is asked by a journalist if a terrorist attack on American soil would work to John McCain’s advantage and he says yes.  And that is a scandal? Naaah. Tell me this ain’t happening?

And then Obama spokesman, Bill Burton says that Black’s comments are “a complete disgrace.” Te, he, he.

And then McCain says of Charlie Black, his own political strategist, “I cannot imagine why he would say it.  It’s not true.” Oh my goodness. Did McCain really say that?

This is just too comical.  At least thirty million people have said and thought that a terrorist act on American soil would work to McCain’s advantage that includes everyone who has read a headline or watched the evening news at least once in the last month.  It doesn’t mean they want it to happen or that they don’t care about their fellow Americans, they are just thinking the same things that any political observer with an I.Q. of 85 and above would be thinking.  Sort of like, the continued downturn in the economy helps Obama.

I’ll tell you what would have been a scandal, if Charlie Black had said no.  Now, that would have confirmed to us all that he is either a blooming idiot or a hypocrite.  Which is what McCain looks like for saying what we all know is an absolute bald faced lie.  I mean, I may vote for the man, but for him to get up and say that it is not true, that a terrorist act on American soil would not raise our concerns about security and make us more likely to vote for him, is just gaggable.  If it is not true then why is he running for president?  He needs to change his speeches and pull all his proposed ads for the fall.

I’ll tell you what would have been impressive.  If the Obama camp had just overlooked it, or said something gracious like they did when Hillary mused about the tidings of June.  That would have made them look really big.

And sooner or later, McCain has got to demonstrate loyalty to somebody.  Other than George W. Bush, that is, and the media drummers to whose beat he, McCain, faithfully jumps.

Look at Barack Obama’s difficulty in breaking with Rev. Wright?  In fact, one could make the case that he didn’t break with him at all.  It was the other way around.  And Obama stood by his foreign advisor who made the ill timed remarks at that conference in Canada.  It smacks of Harry Truman’s touching loyalty to Thomas Pendergast.  It makes him look good, like a leader.  Like someone who will not drop you when you’re down.

And then compare that to McCain’s dumping of John Hagee, who raised $30 million for Israeli – Jewish causes but was left to look like some anti-semite bigot because it was too complicated to explain predestination.  And now, McCain dumps on his own political strategist. Hmmm.

“I cannot imagine why he would say it.  It’s not true.”  Yeah, right.

How many brothers does George W. Bush have?

How many brothers does George W. Bush have?

By Doug Wead

After meeting with my kids in California the mailbag is overflowing so I am going to try to answer some of these questions by blog. At least three people have wondered about the president’s brothers. I guess they learned of the ongoing work that Mary Achor and I are doing on presidential siblings. Hopefully, someday it will be the third book in a trilogy on presidential families. The first two books are All the Presidents’ Children and The Raising of a President, about the children and parents of presidents respectively.

It has been my humble privilege to meet most of these Bush children and siblings of presidents, all of them but Robin, so I will offer here a brief bio on each and my own take away observations. It is a remarkable family.

George W. Bush is one of four sons and two daughters, all born to former president, George Herbert Walker Bush and his wife, Barbara Pierce Bush.

President George W. Bush, the eldest son, was born July 6, 1946 in New Haven, Ct. He came to Washington in March, 1987 where he worked for his father’s presidential campaign. During that period I worked at his side in helping to garner the votes of evangelical Christians for his father’s effort. In the waning months of the election he began his efforts to put together a financial team to buy the Texas Rangers. In 1994 he was elected governor of the State of Texas. In 2000 he was elected president.

Pauline Robinson “Robin” Bush was born, December 20, 1949. She died of leukemia in 1953.

John Ellis “Jeb” Bush was born February 11, 1953. He was the Florida Secretary of Commerce in 1987 when I had a one on one lunch with him in Tallahassee. I was doing some things for his dad and he wanted us to meet. Soft spoken, bright, Jeb was the one son in the family who was expected to do well and to follow in his father’s footsteps. There was a time when elder brother, George, was struggling with his life and little brother, Jeb, was a multimillionaire in Florida real estate. In 1998, Jeb Bush was elected governor of Florida.

Neil Mallon Bush was born January 22, 1955. IMHO, Neil has the best personality in the family and may be the best public speaker. He has been a popular featured corporate speaker to audiences of thousands on four continents. His education program, Ignite, has helped foster a revolution in teaching methods. Early family talk suggested that he would one day run for governor of Colorado but Neil has declined efforts to involve him in public life. I’ve had the privilege of traveling with Neil and my family once enjoyed a leisurely dinner at Maxims in Paris with Neil’s family.

Marvin Peirce Bush was born October 22, 1956. He runs his own investment banking firm in Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C. Shortly after his father was elected president my brother, Bill, and I took Marvin out to eat at a classy Italian restaurant in Alexandria. We asked if any from his generation were likely to get into the political game. “Well, Jeb, seems to be headed that way,” he said. “We think he has an opportunity.”

“What about George?” I asked, after all George was the oldest in the family and as my boss, I guess, I was a little defensive for him.

“George?” Marvin said, chuckling, “He’s the family clown. He’s not going to go anywhere.”  He was joking.  Actually, Marvin and George became quite close during the latters presidential years.

Dorothy Bush Koch was born August 18, 1959. She is an author and involved in numerous charities. I will never forget February 8, 1988, her father had just come in third place in the Iowa Caucus and it looked as if his political career was over. There were rumors that he was going to accept a job as president of the Purolator Company. I sat with Doro in the bar of the headquarters hotel until late in the night, assuring her that it was not over, that her dad was going to win the nomination and the presidency.

The eerie mirror:

Shortly after his father was elected president, George W. Bush encouraged me to write a memo on what happens to presidential children. When I finally gave it to him, I pointed out the curious mirrored image of the Bush kids and the children of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Both were families of four boys and one girl. Both had a fifth sibling that died in childhood. One Roosevelt went to Florida where he ran for office, just like Jeb. One went west, just like Neil. And FDR, Jr. went home to the family base in New York where he ran for governor.

“Did he win?” asked Bush? We both knew that he was planning to return to Texas and run for governor.

“No,” I said. “No son of a president has ever been elected governor.”

He groaned. It was his only reaction to the forty four page memo. But the Bush family would break that barrier, electing not one, but two sons of a president as governors of a state.

Note: George  H. W. Bush: Historical Ranking.