June 18, 2016--Presidential Hair

Commenting about candidates for the presidency as we entered the age of campaigning on TV, my father used to say, as John Kennedy was moving to succeed Dwight Eisenhower, "Without a full head of hair like his, you don't have a chance to be elected. Ike, with just that wisp on top, would not have fared well if he had to run on television."

With that my Dad would stroke his bald pate and look, ruefully and disappointedly over at me, noting my own rapidly receding hairline, realizing he would have to settle for my becoming a surgeon (which I failed to do) and not president. His real American dream.

So what to make of our current crop of candidates' hair?

Scott Walker (remember him, the governor of Wisconsin and Koch Brothers' favorite), the establishment GOP's great white hope, faded fast and dropped out first because of hair problems. His bald spot--much like a monk's tonsure--was made more visible on HD TV by the fact that his remaining hair was dyed extra black with what could only have been shoe polish.

It didn't help his candidacy when a letter surfaced that he wrote to a Jewish constituent in which he said, "Thank you again and Molotov," when he meant Mazel tov.

Marco Rubio, already suffering from the problem that he's youthful-looking and short (sorry, vertically challenged, and thus those 2-inch lift boots he was spotted wearing last week), both of which make it hard for voters to imagine him as commander-in-chief ensconced at the head of the Situation Room table, also has a hair problem. Though artfully disguised, at only 44, he is already sporting a comb-over, which becomes apparent when on the stump in windy Iowa where he has to pay more attention to beating it back in place than repeating his over-rehersed Mr. Robot talking points.

Raphael Cruz is also working on a comb-over. Look carefully and you will spot the beginnings of serious thinning along the seam of his part.

But the three candidates who have by far the most politically interesting hair are Donald TRUMP (an easy call), Hillary Clinton, and even Bernie Sanders.

In reverse order--

Bernie's hair looks as if it's cut by his wife. No $1,250 haircuts for socialist Bernie like the one that undid poor Two-Americas John Edwards. And no hair dye either to make him look more youthful (not that he needs that--he's pretty much got all the Millennials voting for him). And certainly no hair gook. The windblown, absentminded professor look do appear to be working for him. But from time to time I've been noticing evidence of a comb-forward. A modified Chuck Todd. This alone suggests that he's thinking of himself as a viable candidate, not just Crazy Bernie.

What to make of Hillary?

During her years as First Lady she struggled almost as much with what name to adopt--Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Eva Peron, Golda Meir--as she did with her hair.

Beyond her name shifting (really struggles about her identity) even more on her mind was her hair.

On the Internet there are people keeping track of everything going on in the world, including how many hairstyles Hillary sported while First lady. From their and my research I have counted at least 32. Thirty-two!

With even more on display during the past few months in Iowa and New Hampshire. Neither place good-hair-day territory.

Then, beyond imagining, irresistible to make fun of, is the now iconically famous whatever-it-is that The Donald does with his hair.

If there is anyone on the political circuit paying more attention to his or her hair than Hillary, it is TRUMP.

The style never varies and the color is consistently applicated. Couple that with all the sculpting, fixing, and the pumpkin-colored spray-job on his face and the chauk-white mask around his eyes and you have  a living, breathing cartoon superhero.

Counter-intuitively, all this attention to his hair and looks is stereotypically . . . feminine.

So we have big-bully Donald TRUMP coming off at least as girly as Hillary Clinton.

How this campaign continues to fascinate with its surprises.

Hillary Clinton a mass of contradictions, calling on her husband to pull her out of tough spots (as now in Iowa) while at the same time showing off her cajones as a potential commander-in-chief, while blustery tough-guy Donald Trump spends hours each day fussing with his hair.

Though, he said, if he's elected he'll be so busy in the White House that he won't have time for his hair and will get a buzz cut.

That prospect is almost enough to get me to vote for him.

September 3, 2015--Jeb's Pique

Once front-runner Jeb Bush is unraveling.

We all knew that preppy Jeb for whom everything came easily as destined for people of his background and class was potentially touchy about a few subjects--his brother, his father, his mother.

But allowing Donald TRUMP to get under his skin, nouveau riche Donald? Classless, tasteless, parvenu Donald? (Why am I using so many French words?)

It was bad enough he had to deal with the likes of a Scott Walker and Rick Perry. Such, I suppose, is the life of anyone who wants to be anointed president.  Treat them like help, he must have thought, and it will soon be over.

But Donald TRUMP!

Well, yes.

The New York Times reported yesterday that The Donald's let-it-rip style of campaigning is making poor Jeb crazy.

This is not what he bargained for. TRUMP's slash-and-burn kind of politics is just what he loathes most about running for office. He's much more comfortable in polite conversations about policy, policy, policy.

But to have to get down in the mud with the likes of the bloated billionaire from Queens, of all places. If he has to do that, is the presidency, the family business, worth it?

Good question which for Jeb will be resolved in a few months after he gets trounced in Iowa and New Hampshire. Forget South Carolina. South Carolina! Not his kind of place at all. Tacky, tacky.

Jeb thought all he needed to do was lose the flab so he would appear lean-and-mean, produce a couple of hundred policy papers, trot out his Mexican wife to secure the Hispanic vote, and to top it off speak a little Spanish.

So what is he getting in return? Mainly mockery from TRUMP.

One thing that seems to gall him more than the rest of TRUMP's mockery is the assertion that Bush is "low energy."

"Hey, Donald, have you checked out my new waistline? And, by the way, you could use a little work on your own."

Bush is so rattled by the jibe that he lacks energy that he has taken to talking about it on the campaign trail. A fatal political mistake.

"I'll just give you a little taste of the 'low energy' candidate's life this week," he said, and then went on to tick off a list of places he had been during the past two day--McAllen, Texas; Salt Lake City; Denver; Birmingham; Greensboro; and Pensacola.

Pensacola, I'm sure he thought, The things one has to do. Can't we just skip to the Inauguration and get to the noblesse oblige part?

"The 'low energy' candidate," he continued, "this week has only been six days, 16 hours a day campaigning with joy in my heart."

Poor you.

What's worse, he's making it to easy for Saturday Night Live writers.

But here's the problem--TRUMP is right.

Bush lacks energy, which is another way of saying that he is too patrician for the rough-and-tumble of a gloves-off contest and is evidence that he really doesn't want to make the effort to win the job.

He wants it bequeathed to him like pretty much everything else has been in his life.

Maybe he should have listened to Mother--"We've had enough Bushes."

August 10, 2015--On the Rag

When I saw yesterday that Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times was about Donald TRUMP, half to myself, I moaned, "Here we go again. Yes, he deserves to be eviscerated yet more for his misogynist comments. Not for what he said at the debate about Megyn Kelly (in effect that she was unfair to him because she was--as he and I would say where we both grew up in Brooklyn--"on the rag") but for all the despicable things he has had to say about, as he would put it, "the women" throughout his life in public."

I promised myself I would get to it after reading through less-predictable stories.

When I did, as she less and less has done in recent years, Dowd this time surprised me with her fresh and tell-it-like-it-is insights about TRUMP, the media, and the state of our political culture.

Read it all if you haven't, but here's a flavor from the very end. About TRUMP talking about how he contributes money to politicians so he can have access to them and get them to do favors for him--

His policy ideas are ripped from the gut instead of the head. Still, he can be a catalyst, challenging his rivals where they need to be challenged and smoking them out, ripping off the facades they're constructed with their larcenous image makers. Trump can pierce the tromp l'oeil illusions, starting with Jeb's defense of his brother's smashing the family station wagon into the globe. 

Consider how Trump yanked back the curtain Thursday night explaining how financial quid pro quos warp the political system. 

"Well, I'll tell you what, with Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding and she came to my wedding," he said. "You know why? She had no choice because I gave. I gave to a foundation that, frankly, that foundation is supposed to do good. I didn't know her money would be used on private jets going all over the world. 

Sometimes you need a showman in the show.

Go Maureen!

In the aftermath of the debate, the media was obsessed about one thing, the wrong thing--themselves.

Much of the commentary, on full display on Sunday's TV talk shows and on the Internet's political websites, was about TRUMP's on-going trashing of Fox News' Megyn Kelly. Did The Donald really say she was unfair to him with her tough questions because--did he imply--because she was menstruating?

With the exception of Maureen Dowd there was hardly a post-debate word about the most important issues. For example how the four governors among the GOP "Top-10" (is this about the presidency or American Idol?) exaggerated--OK, lied--about their records in Florida (Jeb Bush), Wisconsin (Scott Walker), Chis Christie (New Jersey), and John Kasich (Ohio). How they didn't tell the truth about jobs created during their terms in office, their states' budget deficits, and about how public education fared as a result of their leadership.

Here's a flavor--

Jeb Bush claimed that high school graduation rates increased dramatically during his eight years as Florida governor. They "improved by 50 percent," he boasted. In fact, most of the gains occurred after he left office. During his two terms graduation rates grew by 14 percent.

He also claimed that he cut taxes by $19 billion but failed to mention that most of those cuts were because of federally-mandated decreases in the estate tax.

John Kasich lied when he said that the state's Medicaid program "is growing at one of the lowest rates in the country." In fact, Ohio ranks 16th in enrollment growth among the 30 states that opted out of Obamacare.

Scott Walker claimed that because of his leadership, Wisconsin "more than made up" for the job losses that were the result of the recession. In truth Wisconsin gained 4,000 jobs since that time.

How did Maureen Dowd put it? This posturing and dissembling is the work of "larcenous image makers" and of course embraced by the candidates.

But enough about this. What did TRUMP really mean when he said Megyn Kelly was "bleeding from wherever"?

Megyn Kelly and her Fox News colleagues

August 5, 2015--GOP Debate

I've got a six-pack of cold beer ready for Thursday night's GOP debate. It should be a good one.

First, there's the matter of who will be invited to debate. By Fox News no less.

With at least 16 announced candidates, to make a good show of the 90 minutes, Fox decided to invite only 10--the top 10 based on the most recent polling data.

Thus, Donald TRUMP, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Ben Carson will participate but not Rick Perry (his smart glasses will soon be available on eBay), which is too bad since last time around he was dependably hilarious; or Rick Santorum, who last time around was the last man standing when Mitt Romney secured the nomination; or Carly Fiorina (the only woman running--oh, how I pine for Michele Bachmann); nor of course will we hear from George Pataki (who?) or Lindsey Graham (though thanks to TRUMP we have his cell phone number), the latter two polling at less than one percent. It's never a good thing when you're favorability rating begins with a 0, as in  0.15 percent. Their number.

Everyone's attention will be focused on the star of the show, Donald TRUMP--what he will blurt out and the zingers the others are desperately rehearsing to launch his way. The first debate and, who knows, maybe the entire lumbering nomination process, will be about TRUMP, unless he gets bored having to hang out with John Kasich and Ted Cruz. How tedious would that be.

Speaking of Senator Cruz, little is expected of him but he could turn out to be one of the unanticipated winners. Chris Christie as well and maybe Ben Carson. These three have at least some jizzum and come across as sort of spontaneous. Compared to the ever-boring Jeb Bush and the over-managed Scott Walker these three appear to be at least alive and breathing.

Then there is TRUMP. Yesterday I caught him on Morning Joe. They had him booked for a quick phone call interview that was set to last perhaps 10 minutes. He was so good that they skipped commercial breaks and kept him on air for what felt like half an hour.

And what a half hour it was. I didn't catch any gaffs (though his trashing of John McCain and his subsequent additional surge in the polls suggests he has a get-of-out jail gaff card--for example in South Carolina, McCain's pal Lindsey Graham's state, where TRUMP has at least a 20 point lead in the polls: 34% compared with 10-11% for Bush and Carson.

More than anything else, at least for the moment, in contrast with all the other GOP candidates, he sounds actually enthusiastic about the prospect of being President. Not winning the nomination and then the general election but being the President.

The others (Hillary included) feel interested only in the process of being elected. TRUMP already sees himself sitting in the Oval office telling people what to do, as he previewed on Morning Joe.

"I'll tell Carl Ichan, a friend of mine, 'Congratulations, Carl. I'm sending you to China. Handle China.' And I'll send someone like that to Japan to handle Japan. Can you believe Caroline Kennedy is our ambassador? She said she couldn't believe they gave her the job. Speaking of jobs, I'll create jobs. I've created tens of thousands of jobs including for Latinos and African Americans. Let me tell you something, I'll win the Hispanics and blacks. Mexicans love me. They buy my apartments."

As I said, Thursday evening will be fun.

August 4, 2015--The Southernization of America

Anyone interested in understanding the conservative resurgence or revolution, if you will, should turn off Fox News and read Godfrey Hodgson's prescient, 1996 eyeopener, The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America.

If you are interested in the intellectual roots, he does a good job of summarizing the contributions of serious economists such as Friedrich Hayek; pseudo-serious novelists such as Ayn Rand; polemicists like William F. Buckley, Kevin Phillips, and Irving Kristol; evangelical religious leaders such as Jerry Falwell; and political figures including Barry Goldwater and of course Ronald Reagan.

All of this is familiar ground for anyone paying attention to the cultural and political shift rightward, but nowhere all pulled together as well as by Hodgson.

For me, noteworthy is Hodgson's insight--or at least his clear statement--of how the ideology and politics that followed on in the South, transforming it from the Democrats' Solid South, after the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 were signed into law, and quickly became solidly conservative and Republican. The South at that time became the South that we now know and live with, continuing today to shift inexorably to the right.

Nothing that new about that. But what is new is Hodgson's perception that much of the North shortly thereafter--certainly by 1980 when Ronald Reagan became president by picking off millions of so-called Reagan Democrats--became southernized.

This happened in two stages--first there was the dramatic population shift of northerners to the former Confederate States and thereby their accruing electoral power. Reallocation of members and redistricting meant more seats in the House of Representatives for conservatives at the expense of liberal states such as New York and Pennsylvania; and, as Texas and Florida passed New York to become the second and third largest states, there was a dramatic increase in the South's number of votes in the Electoral College. With the South also becoming solidly Republican that made it much more difficult for Democrats to control Congress much less the White House.

The second stage, the result of Reagan's appeal to traditional blue collar Democrats and his election and reelection, subsequently turned a number of blue states into purple states (Pennsylvania is a good example) and over time threatened to turn a few northern purple states to red states.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of that transformation, and perplexing to progressives because of its role in the history of the emergence of the Progressive Movement, is Wisconsin, where Scott Walker managed to get elected governor three times, largely by acting as if Wisconsin were South Carolina.

As in the South he appealed to hawkish hyper-patriotism, belief in American exceptionalism, evangelical impulses, anti-affirmative action forces, a desire to limit government of all kinds, dog-whistle racism, and above all attacks on unions. Thus, Wisconsin has tipped to the right and now culturally and politically could become a permanent part of the emerging conservative majority.

July 20, 2015--Great Scott!

Great Scott? Scott Walker the legendary governor of Wisconsin who managed to get voters in the Badger State to keep him in office in spite of fierce and well-financed attempts by unions and other progressives to recall him because of his political glee at, to quote Hillary Clinton, "stomping on working people," particularly unionized state workers. Everyone, that is, but the police and firefighters whose support he did not want to jeopardize.

He gave one impressive speech a few months ago at the annual show-and-tell meeting of the conservative action committee, CPAC, and that propelled him into the lead among the other 15 to 16 Republican candidates. But since that time, because he dawdled about getting into the race officially, Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, and perhaps Ben Carson jumped into the lead in the polls and the big GOP money began to drift elsewhere.

So his formal announcement last week that he's running was awaited with considerable interest since some pundits feel that his blue-collar, evangelical roots and lack of formal education are assets in this discombobulated time and that he, or Marco Rubio, might be the two best Republican candidates to do well against Hillary. Since by their age and grayless hair if not their ideas and ideology they claim they are from the next political generation.

Walker's announcement was noteworthy for a least three reasons--the first and most predictable and boring was that in his 40 minute speech he ticked off literally every conservative Republican talking point from his call for the repeal of Obamacare to tax cuts for the affluent to prime the trickle-down pump to opposing the deal with Iran (even before it was struck or read) to opposing same-sex marriage and abortion.

Second, in this era where only he and Ben Carson speak without teleprompters or notes, he droned on in his jeans and tieless shirt not making any gaffs (he is prone to them) nor stumbling for words. This gave what he had to say a tincture of authenticity.

But, third, and most interesting, he began by saying, and repeating that he is an American and loves being an American. As if he is running against a Kenyon president who hates America but loves it enough to want to overthrow the Constitution by invading Texas and after that turning the USA into a socialist dictatorship.

Stories about veterans he knew when growing up were laced as a motif throughout his remarks. First, he told of an old fellow who served in both world wars. And subsequently a neighborhood Vietnam vet who taught little Scott about liberty and patriotism and love of country.

Virtually wrapped in the flag they both fought to defend, Walker did not say anything about why, so inspired by these two remarkable veterans, he himself never showed up at the recruiting office or why he decided not to serve. He and The Donald and Jeb and Marco share that gap in their resumés.

He also didn't mention that, though anti-governement by choice and nature, he has never had a job other than as a taxpayer-supported government official. Beginning from when he was just twenty-two. So, ironically, he has been on a public payroll of one sort or another for more than any other candidate. For fully 26 of his 48 years.

Considering his lack of foreign policy experience, in March, when he was an all-but-declared candidate, at an event in Phoenix he was pressed to explain what qualifies him to serve as commander in chief.

By a friendly interlocutor he was asked--

"Does the prospect of being commander in chief daunt you?"

Before reminding you what he said at that time, earlier in March, at the CPAC gathering, on the same subject, he said he was prepared because he had stared down union workers and their supporters. He said that, "If I can take on 100,000 protestors, I can do the same across the world." He was referring to ISIS, claiming he could do the same thing to them he did to drivers license bureau workers, tax collectors, building inspectors, and such.

This did not go down well so a few days later in Phoenix, in regard to the commander-in-chief question, he was better prepared--

"That's an appropriate question," he acknowledged, "As a kid, I was in Scouts. And one of the things I'm proudest of when I was in Scouts is I earned the rank of Eagle."

That did not seem to qualify him to hawkish voters so last week, to emphasize his social conservatism, and change the subject, he criticized Boy Scouts of American for voting unanimously to allow gay men to be Scoutmasters. Though when confronted about that he again backtracked.

Clearly, going forward he needs to get his act together or the Iowa caucuses, where he needs to come in in the top tier, may be the first and last stop for him. I feel certain that the Koch Brothers are watching closely and if they haven't already, will soon be moving on.

July 16, 2015--TRUMP

Is Donald (all caps) TRUMP just a joke? In the front seat in the Republican clown car?

Pretty much all Democrats agree that he is someone to make fun of (even David Letterman came out of retirement to make fun of him) and most of the other Republican pretenders to the 2016 nomination hope he is just an egotistic entertainer who can't live without the spotlight and will soon move on.

He may be cartoon like, but in other important ways he is resoundingly not. If he stays in the race for the GOP nomination after the current blast of publicity fades (as it most likely will) and spends a few hundred million of his own money (not likely--he is a tightwad and exaggerates his wealth) not only will he help define the future Republican Party but also give the other front runners fits since he actually has a chance to become the nominee.

He has a chance because his brand of anger and racial hatred appeals to at least a third of the GOP primary-voter base. This is different than the general-election Republicans who are a bit more nuanced and tolerant. But it may be enough to get him very close to or all the way to the nomination since his people tend to come from the activist wing of the party.

People are frustrated and angry about their own prospects and what they rightly see to be the decline of America's standing in the world. This began during the inconclusive Korean War and was brought home to American's consciousness when we lost in Vietnam, the first war in our history in which we were defeated. And more recently we are perceived to be ineffectual in the Middle East and, as many feel, are losing to ISIS.

But TRUMP's appeal, though based on this feeling of national decline, is more the result of stagnant income for most Americans and the haunting belief that the American Dream is over for the middle class, whose children, for the first time in history, are not doing as well as their parents.

Rather than blaming structural causes for these frustrating circumstances (an unfair tax system, a weak regulatory environment, the decline of unions, and the resulting rising rate of inequality), TRUMP's people blame government (especially Obama and liberal Democrats), social welfare programs that they feel encourage and underwrite dependency on the government, and above all else, for these angry folks, the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country and the alleged continuing flow of Latin Americans--Mexicans--across our porous boarders.

And then how lucky can The Donald get--escaped Mexican drug lord, El Chapo's son two days ago threatened his life, tweeting--

"Keep fucking around, and I'll make you eat all of your goddamn words."

This gave TRUMP the opportunity to act the selfless tough guy--

He tweeted, "I'm fighting for much more than myself. I'm fighting for the future of our country which is being overrun by criminals. You can't be intimidated. It's too important."

In addition, most Americans are frustrated that we as a people, our governments, cannot accomplish big things.

The country that built the interstate highway system in the 1950s and 60s can't fix our rusting bridges and crumbling roads. Many may ask, Who do you think is more likely to fix our roads--Scott Walker or Donald TRUMP? Who more likely to rebuild our bridges--Jeb Bush or Donald TRUMP? And what about Hillary Clinton? Do you think she could do a better job than TRUMP in making sure our weapon systems work?

So TRUMP may be a joke, but a potent one at that. And, ultimately, perhaps not a joke at all.

June 8, 2015--On, Wisconsin

At football games the University of Wisconsin Badgers' fans sing this song--

On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Plunge right through that line!
Run the ball clear down the field,
A touchdown sure this time 
(U rah rah)
On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Fight on for her fame
Fight! Fellows!--fight, fight, fight!
We'll win this game.

Ah, if only Scott Walker, Wisconsin governor and for the moment the front-runner for the GOP nomination, could appropriate this song instead of trying again to get John Mellencamp to let him use "Small Town"--

Well I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town,
Prob'ly die in a small town
Oh, those small communities.

Liberal Mellencamp told him, No way!

But with the governor recently turning his attention to undermining the quality of one of his state's institutional crown jewels--the University of Wisconsin--even he doesn't have the audacity to use the Badgers' fight song.

He finished off the state's municipal unions--his claim to national fame--survived a recall election, then reelection, and now is moving to take on the state's professors. A soft-touch group of opponents if there ever was one who are more used to taking sabbaticals than fighting a hyper-ambitious governor.

His plan for the university is to eliminate tenure.

Currently at UW, and almost all other private and public colleges and universities, tenure is universally available. Typically, anyone who holds the rank of associate or full professor who is rehired over three to five years is eligible for tenure, which, if awarded provides lifetime employment.

We could debate whether tenure is necessary or even a good idea. Advocates claim it allows professors academic freedom--to hold and teach any views they wish, very much including controversial ones. It protects faculty, they say, from being fired for their views, which has occurred at various times in our history, including the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy led a campaign against alleged communist penetration of our government and universities. Scores were intimidated and others fired for their supposed beliefs.

Others say tenure causes professors to lose their intellectual edge and too often, no longer interested in teaching but protected, to phone in their lectures.

Walker is not making similar claims, not demonologizing the faculty, merely asserting that tenure allows faculty members too much say about how universities are governed--it diminishes the power and control of the central administrations. In effect, he is saying, tenure and its privileges give too much authority to employees and too little to those that are expected to lead them--university management.

So much for right-wing Walker being true to his anti-government, anti-institution posture.

But Walker has a point. His real agenda is not university governance but to grab headlines by bully-style beating up on, in truth, rather powerless state employees who are stereotypically portrayed as absent-minded, lazy, and over-privledged. They typically "work"--teach--three days a week, at most nine months a year, and every seven years or so get the year off while receiving either half or full pay.

A pretty good deal by any measure.

As with other state workers, whose union he busted and from whom he then demanded and secured various financial givebacks, Walker is now going after another subset of Wisconsin employees who have little support among Wisconsinites, many of whom struggle to get by, not infrequently working two or three jobs just to stand still. How many trying to stay above water have any sympathy for others who they feel are less deserving of an easy ride? Walker is betting many and that that discontent, that anger, will propel him to the presidency.

Wisconsin has traditionally been a liberal state. Progressivism, liberalism has deep roots there. But now three times voters have turned out to keep Walker in office. He has been able to attract big Koch-brothers money likely because they see in Wisconsin's political transformation their hoped-for vision for America's future. If it can happen in the home state of La Follette, Proxmire, and Feingold, it can happen anywhere. But, we need to remind ourselves, Joseph McCarthy was also from the Badger State.

And, yes, Governor Walker is a college drop-out.

April 24, 2016--Someone Other than Hillary

The about-to-be-published Clinton Cash, Peter Schweizer's critical examination of the nexus between the cash pouring into the Clinton Foundation; their out-of-sight speakers fees; and, the politically most damaging allegation--that by contributing to the foundation big donors could not only "buy" access to Bill and Hillary but could also influence her official behavior when secretary of state, what is revealed in the book may wind up destroying her campaign for the presidency.

As my grandmother used to say, with yesterday's detailed disclosure in the New York Times that major Canadian donors to the foundation were able, with Hillary's support, to sell their uranium company to Russia even though that gave them control of 20 percent of America's access to enriched uranium, as she would say, "Something about this stinks to the high heavens."

Hillary may still manage to win the nomination (more about this in a moment) but with detractors such as the Koch Brothers willing to spend many hundreds of millions to tear her down and support their current favorite, Scott Walker, she may be seriously vulnerable.

Vulnerable because many of the allegations may be true, vulnerable because even if only half-true they support the narrative that the Clintons play by their own rules, are secretive about things that the public has a right to know, and that they have only self-interest at heart while posing as public servants and concerned citizens of the world.

Recall, when leaving the White House after eight years, they were "caught" loading moving vans with furniture that belonged to the American people. It was a metaphor at the time about what they at essence were. And perhaps continue to be.

Clinton Cash is no Whitewater (an insignificant though phony Arkansas real estate deal) or cattle-futures scandal (where Hillary netted $100,000 with a $1,000 "investment"). It's not Travelgate (where the Clintons purged the White House travel office staff so they could install cronies in the vacant jobs). It is not even Benghazi or e-mail-gate. It may turn out to be much more serious than any or all of these small tempests. What is apparently about to be revealed in the Schweizer book goes to the heart of the Clinton problem and may have enough smoking guns to bring her down.

So rather than Democrats waiting around to see where all this may lead, isn't it time for someone to step forward to challenge her for the nomination? Someone like a Eugene McCarthy who challenged Lyndon Johnson for the 1968 nomination. And ultimately drew Bobby Kennedy into the race. For Democrats then, they offered an alternative to LBJ who otherwise would have secured the nomination without a struggle, without any opposition, and then would have gone on to be defeated because of the public's disenchantment and lack of support for his Vietnam policies.

Democrats not ready for Hillary need a place to register their dissent from yet another Clinton, especially a Clinton who could realistically be defeated by Scott Walker or Jeb Bush.

Those disaffiliated Democrats include me. My problem, our problem is as always the who. Joe Biden? A certain loser. Elizabeth Warren? Plausible but timid. Jim Webb? Who's he? Andrew Cuomo? No chance. Bernie Sanders? Dream on.

Get the point? That's why, help us, I continue to predict Walker in 2016.

April 8, 2015--Finally the Final Four

Others can focus on the last few games where Wisconsin defeated odds-on-favorite Kentucky and then lost to Duke in the final. I will continue to pay attention to the hypocrisy surrounding big-time college sports and the money that doesn't get to the student-athletes without whom there would be no show.

Most of the money--mainly TV money--goes to fund the schools' athletic programs and the coaches. Especially coaches such as Kentucky's John Calipari and Duke's Mike Krzyewski, Coach K.

Coach K pockets a cool $7 million plus tons more for endorsements and bonuses for getting his team to the Final Four. In Duke's case, almost an annual event.

Coach Capillary (as I'm sure my mother would call him) does even better. He gets about the same base salary as Krzyewski and then receives another $3 million or so for going along with the university's endorsement contracts. Endorsements for everything from sneakers to "official" beverages. Using and not paying for campus facilities, he runs an annual summer basketball camp in a deal that allows him to keep all the income. His Final Four bonus is close to another half mill. Then he gets annual signing bonuses of $1.25 million when he agree to return for another season.

Not bad for a job that involves coaching overgrown boys to run around in their underwear while tossing or slamming a ball through a hoop.

Do not despair for the Wisconsin coach, Bo Ryan. In a state where the governor, Scott Walker, has turned himself into a national political figure by beating up on state employees, state employee Ryan pockets at least $3 million a season. The university chancellor? She makes about $500,000. She obviously needs a new agent.

Something is out of whack. What did the Romans call it? Panem et Circenses? Bread and Circuses? They had it about right.  As a nation we're doing pretty well with the circenses, less good with the panem.

John Calipari

March 17, 2015--Scott Walker: Take One

By some accounts, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is the GOP front runner for the 2016 presidential nomination. Jeb Bush, with his last name and all the money has been able to extract, is close behind.

To some this is shocking--how could a politician whose claim to fame is that he took on the state's municipal unions, but is unsure where Iraq is on the map, how could he be the front runner when someone as senior and well-bred, as well-tutored and well-financed as Jeb be barely hanging on to second place?

Perhaps precisely because Walker is not senior, not well-bred, not well-tutored, and not yet well-financed. He's the "not" candidate.

The Republican base, which Walker primarily appeals to, is fed up with the well-educated and well-sired, and like the appearance that he is running on the cheap without the help of the Adelsons and Kochs. They also love the fact that Walker took on the unions. So much so that they jumped with glee the other day in a speech to CPAC when he claimed that confronting the unions prepared him to battle ISIS.

Members of the permanent government and the remnants of the mainstream press were aghast while in Peoria and all over Iowa the base ate it up. To them it was red meat. And though red meat will kill you, they still can't get enough of it.

Members of the Establishment don't get the emotional power of this anti-union thing. Especially the particular animus Walker and his coven have toward municipal workers--benign folks such as teachers, the police, firefighters, sanitation workers, county clerks, EMS responders.

Most of them aren't making out-of-line salaries and they are often provide vitally needed services. So what's the story?

With the economy uncertain, with people who have basic private sector jobs worried about their declining pension savings and whether or not their jobs will be off-shored to India, with their cost of health care continuing to rise (though at a slower rate thanks to Obamacare), with their kids more and more in debt with student loans, they look at how tenured teachers are doing, how firefighters are faring, how cops in their neighborhoods are retiring after 20-25 years of service at 80 percent of their last year's salary (bulked up by overtime), retiring at 50-55 with guaranteed pensions and lifetime healthcare coverage, and it makes them resentful, envious, and mad as hell.

Walker, who never even entered college, embodies all those frustrations and provides the delicious spectacle of beating up on these workers and their unions.

So he's number one in the current polls, but of course last time around even Donald Trump was in the lead. For about a week. As was Michele Bachmann. Also for a week. And we know what happened to them. The smart money (or the big money) may be on Jeb Bush but the action and passion on the ground is with Scott Walker.

As my grandmother used to say, "We'll see."

March 5, 2015--Joe Biden Time?

Just when it looked as if the Democrats were going to have a coronation rather than a slugfest for the 2016 presidential nomination, there was another Clinton implosion.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that while she was Secretary of State, rather than using the required government e-mail system, Hillary Clinton used her own personal one.

This means she may have inappropriately (not illegally) communicated in this way about the nation's highest and most sensitive diplomatic issues. Additionally, all correspondence engaged in by public officials is considered public property and Clinton, by using a private system for all her e-mailing, would give her much more control of access to what she wanted known than if she had used the State Department system. About political hot-button Benghazi, for example. But by bypassing the government system, she could limit just how transparent she wanted to be.

It is now being suggested, considering how the Clintons (plural) have been prone to play fast and loose with various regulations and even legal requirements, that Hillary's use of a private e-mail account is outrageous. So much so that regulars on MSNBC are either dumbfounded or full-throttle joining the criticism.

This undoubtedly means that other potential 2016 Democrat candidates are delighted and thus stirring about, reconsidering their reluctance to contest for the nomination.

The pressure on Elizabeth Warren will inevitably build. Former governor of Maryland, Martin O'Malley and Jim Web, former Virginia senator, who have had toes in the water already will probably be making discreet calls to sound out potential funders, being careful to use non-governmental phones.

And of course Joe Biden must be ordering up more hair transplants.

Expect to hear rumblings from Andrew Cuomo (New York governor) and Virginia senator Tim Kaine. There will likely be stirrings from the other Virginia senator Mark Warner, and heavy breathing from Al Franken (Minnesota senator) and his colleague, Amy Klobuchar. All will begin to make plans to visit London and Israel to bulk up their foreign policy cred.

And then there is John Kerry. If he pulls off a decent deal with Iran, don't be surprised to see him in the race after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. He's only 71, has hundreds of millions of his own money, is tall, and has a full head of hair. But this time around, don't expect to see him windsurfing.

There is even talk about George Clooney. Yes, that George Clooney. He's settled down now that he's married and what a First Lady Amal would make. She already had the gloves for the job.

As a political junkie, I'm excited that a Democrat clown car might soon be revving up.

Sadly, the candidates truly qualified to be president beside Hillary are John Kerry and Joe Biden. They are the only ones who know anything about the larger world. But both are elderly and wired into the Washington establishment and thus would be weak candidates in an antigovernment era. If the Clinton candidacy collapses, as I think it will, neither Kerry nor Biden is likely to win enough primaries to be nominated since they will not be able to make a persuasive case that they represent the future.

I say, therefore, start getting ready for Democrat nominee Elizabeth Warren and, after a close election, President Scott Walker.

January 20, 2105--Mitt Redux

Just as I was slipping into despair that my favorite sitcom would not return for another season--the Republican Clown Car--what with no Herman (Pokemon) Cain and no Michele (pray-away-the-gay) Bachmann, how would I spend the next two years? Stuck with House of Cards, Shark Tank, Dancing With the Stars, and God help me, Girls? I might even have to develop a taste, I moaned, for the Home Shopping Network.

But I can calm down. Things are beginning to shape up.

No only are Bachmann and Cain making noises that they might in fact run for the 2016 nomination but there is also Rand Paul (who looks like a clown), Ted Cruz (who looks like Joseph McCarthy), Jeb Bush (who looks like George W. Bush), Scott Walker and Paul Ryan (both of whom look like Eddie Munster from the Munsters), Chris Christie (who, in spite of his lap-band surgery, still looks like he belongs more in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade than the White House), Donald (you're fired) Trump, and who can forget Rick (love-the-new-glasses) Perry, especially if he's on the same meds he was using in 2012 when he reminded us that the American revolution occurred during the 16th century.

Then, of course, thank you Mitt Romney who is back for a third run. Etch-A-Sketch Mitt who this time around promises to run a campaign devoted to "lifting people out of poverty." The same Mitt who three years ago called this same 47 percent of the population "takers."

I'm sure some of his Republican opponents will remind us that this is the same out-of-touch Romney who drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of his car, offered to bet Perry $10,000 about his position on health care reform, and in his new zillion-dollar California house has an elevator for one of his wife's Cadillacs.

He may have been a gaff-prone candidate (I confess to looking forward to the inevitable new ones) but every poll of likely GOP voters shows him doing much better than even Jeb Bush when it comes to a potential race against Hillary Clinton.

If Mitt and the rest of the cast of the nomination-seeking candidates don't do it for you, there is also now a new rising star--African-American neurosurgeon Ben Carson who already has a long list of fun quotes, including a recent one that claims that "Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery."

It continues to amaze me how Republicans manage to find black politicians who are as regressive on race as their GOP country-club colleagues. It's clearly a comfort to the Fat Cats and the source of mid-winter amusement to me.

November 6, 2014--What Won On Tuesday?

It is much easier to understand who won on Election Day than to think about and describe what won.

First, the who--

With the single exception of Pennsylvania's's gubernatorial race, every governors race, every Senate race in which an incumbent was defeated went to Republicans.

Of the gubernatorial contests, again except in Pennsylvania, 4 of 5 incumbents were defeated--all Democrats, including in traditional Democratic strongholds such as Massachusetts and Illinois.

And in the Senate, where two additional incumbent Democrats could still be defeated in a runoff in Louisiana and at the end of the vote count in Alaska, of those not reelected, all seven were Democrats. Republicans held on to all their seats, mostly easily, and thereby ran the table.

And now what won--

The conventual, instant-analysis wisdom has it that this tide of victories for Republicans is the result of Barack Obama's unpopularity. That this midterm election was a referendum on his presidency.

True, but not the whole truth.

Added to the widespread frustration and anger at Obama's incompetence (less, his race), anyone with a sense of history knows that on average, since 1946, incumbent presidents' parties lost on average six Senate seats; and so, losing at least seven this time, is pretty much the norm.

True, but not the whole truth.

And then, inside-the-Beltway-think has it that more than anything else, this election revealed the breadth and depth of voter anger and frustration with Washington and, more broadly, government in general. It was a throw-them-all-out election.

True, but not the whole truth.

Not the whole truth because this analysis fails to note that both the governor who was most controversial in his governing and the senator up for reelection who most symbolized Washington and congressional gridlock, won handily.

Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, targeted for defeat by traditional Democrat constituencies, got 54 percent of the vote and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell in Kentucky received a whopping 56 percent.

That in a state where Bill and Hillary Clinton made a huge personal commitment to elect his opponent. Take note Democrats as you think about 2016.

If this was an anti-incumbent election, McConnell and Walker would have been among the first to go.

What then is going on? What then won yesterday?

The short answer--a certain kind of governing.

The kind that wants government to get governing out of the business of governing.

The big victors at the state and national level have at least one thing in common beyond party affiliation--a skepticism that government can or should be involved in people's lives (except their reproductive lives), a resistance to the country's involvement in overseas ventures (except to exterminate  with drones ISIS forces), or that government should look to solve social problems. Even to the point of denying that the problems Democrats embrace as problems are problems. These, most Republicans believe, should be left to the invisible hand of the market to sort out and resolve.

In addition, the form resentment and fear take that explains what won yesterday is the resentment that government selectively chooses who to take care of--poor people, minorities, immigrants, and incompetent union-protected government workers. This is at the heart of Governor Walker's appeal. As it is with two of my three governors--Scott in Florida and LePage in Maine, both of whom were reelected. At a time when middle-class people are struggling, they have little empathy left over for others who they perceive to be lazy and undeserving. And so they vote for those who promise to do little or, better, nothing.

Obviously, there is much to be thought about.

Minimally, freed of Tea Party pressure (this was an election that saw the resurgence of the current version of the Republican establishment), expect to see Mitch McConnell and John Boehner actually make some small deals with Obama to show that they can govern at least enough to retain their majorities, and expect Democrat candidates other than Hillary Clinton to emerge as it sinks in that she could easily lose in 2016 to a Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, and even more likely, Mitt Romney.