The Palpable Problem with Populism

George F. Will has a masterful article on the op-ed page of today's Washington Post. He takes to task the two leading populists of the Republican and Democratic parties -- respectively, Mike Huckabee and John Edwards -- for their ill-conceived political/economic philosophies.

Whenever I hear John Edwards' bugle call for class warfare, his self-loathing attacks on the rich (that is, the productive) people of this country, one thing repeatedly comes to mind: I have never been given a job by a poor person.

Whenever I hear Mike Huckabee make a similar appeal, I just think of that other politician born in Hope and realize he is a similarly empty vessel whose appeals to emotion and class hatred would embarrass anyone who could be self-reflective about them. He's not so much interested in doing the right thing as he is convinced that anything he does is right.

But George Will goes far beyond these visceral reactions of mine and grinds Huckabee and Edwards to dust with -- gasp! -- research and facts.

For instance:

[Huckabee] and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.

Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 -- because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled, from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder." Even as housing values declined in 2007, the net worth of households increased.

Any Republican planning to vote in the New Hampshire primary or in subsequent primaries should read Will's first paragraph about the winner of the Iowa caucuses and ask, Is Huckabee really one of us?

Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement's two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to "take back this nation for Christ," have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.

Huckabee's slick exterior has tricked a lot of people into thinking he shares their values. Radio talk-show host Monica Crowley hit the nail on the head this afternoon, when she compared Huckabee (and other candidates) to the hokum Wizard in her favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz. Huckabee can be be all things to all people because he does it with smoke and mirrors. His down-home, aw-shucks manner gives people the option to think, "He's just like us. Therefore he thinks like us, believes what we believe, and wants what we want. And we want him."

Laura Ingraham put it well on her own radio show Friday when she responded to that line of "reasoning": I don't want someone just like me to be President; I want someone better than me.

Will's op-ed piece, headlined "Iowa's Histrionic Hucksters," reminds us of the paradox of populism:

Although Huckabee and Edwards profess to loathe and vow to change Washington's culture, each would aggravate its toxicity. Each overflows with and wallows in the pugnacity of the self-righteous who discern contemptible motives behind all disagreements with them and who therefore think that opponents are enemies and differences are unsplittable.

The way to achieve Edwards's and Huckabee's populist goal of reducing the role of "special interests," meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money. But populists want to sharply increase that role by expanding the regulatory state's reach and enlarging its agenda of determining the distribution of wealth. Populists, who are slow learners, cannot comprehend this iron law: Concentrate power in Washington, and you increase the power of interests whose representatives are concentrated there.

I truly hope Will's Sunday opinion article is widely read and well digested. (And, while you're at it, check out George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan's Outlook section piece, "5 Myths About Our Ballot-Box Behavior," derived from his book, The Myth of the Rational Voter. Without saying so directly, Caplan explains why so many people would cast their votes for con men like Huckabee and Edwards.)

Lee Sherman Dreyfus, 1926-2008

One day when I was in high school, we MUHS students were herded into the auditorium to hear a speech by some public figure most of us had never heard of. We never, however, turned up our noses at a chance to skip homeroom, and this turned out to be an entertaining morning. The speaker was an imposing man wearing a red vest, and he turned out to be Lee Sherman Dreyfus, who a couple of years later would become governor of Wisconsin. An academic -- he was chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point -- he was a compelling speaker who held the attention of some one thousand teenage boys even when there would be no test of the material he presented. He was amusing, animated, and sharp-witted.

An obituary in today's Washington Post alerted me to the news that former Wisconsin Governor Lee Sherman Dreyfus passed away earlier this week, nearly 25 years after he left office, having served only one term and choosing to return to private life rather than seek his likely re-election. (He was a very popular Republican governor in a state tinted blue.)

For all the aspects of his long career in public life that it could have chosen, the Post obit honed in on one: Dreyfus was the first governor to sign a statewide gay-rights ordinance and see it implemented. He did so in 1982, saying:

"It is a fundamental tenet of the Republican Party that government ought not intrude in the private lives of individuals where no state purpose is served, and there is nothing more private or intimate than who you live with and who you love."

While I disagree with the concept of anti-discrimination laws, I can't help but agree with the sentiment of Dreyfus' remarks on that occasion. He represented a Republican Party that held strong to its libertarian roots: the Republican Party of Barry Goldwater, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, not the Republican Party of Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney (unless you mean the pre-2008 election cycle Mitt Romney). Dreyfus maintained his position about government intrusiveness through the rest of his life: He actively opposed the 2006 anti-gay-marriage amendment that was put on the ballot in Wisconsin. His side, unfortunately, did not prevail.

As you might expect, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's report on Dreyfus' death and life provides a fuller picture of the man's career. The Journal Sentinel describes his appearances on the campaign trail:

By temperament and training - Dreyfus earned his degrees in speech - he was the great communicator.

"Madison is 30 square miles surrounded by reality," Dreyfus declared during the campaign.

Although politicians and map-makers would debate the exact figure, no one seemed to argue with the premise.

"Lee Sherman Dreyfus is flamboyant, congenial and direct," read one profile in 1985. "As governor, he was like nothing the state had ever seen. He was the governor-as-after-dinner-speaker, crisscrossing the state to speak of the evils of big, out-of-touch government while leavening his message with a torrent of one-liners."

In 1978, Dreyfus defeated Democratic Acting Gov. Martin Schreiber, largely on a campaign against the state's large surplus.

"I saw that almost as an immorality," he said. "I thought it was wrong for the state to accumulate that money for programs they didn't have in place and take it from the people."

He had a gift for the bon mot. David Blaska remembers in the Isthmus, a Madison newspaper:

Students on the campus at UW-Stevens Point, he would say, would give him the victory sign -- but forget to hold up the second, index finger. Pa-dumppp!

The story goes that Dreyfus adopted his signature red vest during the student protests of the Vietnam war, so he could be recognized in the fray. That story may be apocryphal, but it is clear he wore the vest so he could be easily recognized on campus. During the war, the Journal Sentinel recalls, Dreyfus made an important point that is generally forgotten about civil-military relations:

He was not always popular with students during the Vietnam War. Many students viewed the existence of an ROTC unit on campus as an endorsement of the U.S. military action. But Dreyfus argued that ROTC should be viewed as the presence of the university in the military instead of the presence of the military in the university.

My personal favorite is this zinger about how he got involved in politics.

In 1975, Dreyfus traveled to China as a representative of American colleges and universities. It proved to be a life-changing experience.

"That trip convinced me that the one-party system, whether it's a Marxist or a capitalist system or a military system. . . is not in the best interests of the people," he said.

Back home in Wisconsin, Dreyfus didn't like what he saw.

"In '76, I was getting more concerned about the fact that we were sliding into one-party power in this state, and I saw at that point what I viewed as. . . the absolute arrogance growing in the Democratic Party and a bunker mentality growing in the shrinking Republican Party."

So Dreyfus joined the Republican Party in 1978.

"My mother always taught me it was polite to join a party before you take it over," he quipped.

(Those independents and first-time voters who have joined the Ron Paul Revolution should remember that, and sign up to join their local GOP committees as activists who are in it for the long haul.)

Wisconsin has a long tradition of colorful and inspiring politicians, from Carl Schurz to Fighting Bob LaFollette to Frank Zeidler to Ed Thompson. They were Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, Libertarians, and -- believe it or not -- Socialists, but they were all effective in putting their aims into action. Lee Sherman Dreyfus belongs in their company.

Ed Crane's Cage Match?

Sometimes you come across a sentence in a newspaper article that is simply jarring.

Here's a sentence that would be unexpected in any newspaper article, but especially so in a movie review:

When Plainview and Sunday engage in a brief and amusingly sloppy bout of fisticuffs, it's like watching the head of the Cato Institute go mano-a-mano with Jimmy Swaggart.

That comes from Ann Hornaday's review in the Style section of Friday's Washington Post of There Will Be Blood, the new film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) and starring Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis (My Beautiful Laundrette, Gangs of New York) and up-and-comer Paul Dano (L.I.E., Little Miss Sunshine).

I had planned to see There Will Be Blood in any case, but the vivid image of Ed Crane and Jimmy Swaggart pummeling each other makes going to see the film even more compelling.

Pundits Give Hopeful Post-Iowa Marks to Ron Paul

Sean O'Brien, executive director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia (and soon to be head of the new Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier) was a guest on the 11:00 news on WCAV-TV in Charlottesville, commenting on the results of the Republican and Democratic caucuses in Iowa on Thursday. He had some positive things to say about Republican contender Ron Paul.

As everyone knows by now, the winner on the Democratic side was Illinois Senator Barack Obama. On the Republican side, it was former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

Interviewed by anchors Dan Schutte and Stephanie Hockridge (and transcribed by me), O'Brien noted:

There are candidates out there that people in New Hampshire or Virginia or California would love to have the chance to vote for, but will probably be forced to drop out because they won't be getting any money and people won't be paying attention to them. [The Iowa caucus system] really doesn't promote the democratic process....

On the Republican side, really the [television] graphic has shown four people [Huckabee, Romney, Thompson, McCain] but really five or six people are coming out on the Republican side in a good position. Giuliani never expected to do well in Iowa, so the fact that he's not in there is no big deal.

But Ron Paul, with his very fanatical fan base of supporters, coming out with 10 percent, that's going to make them feel really good, they're only just behind McCain and Thompson, who, at one time, McCain was the front runner and Thompson was seen as the savior. So they've got to be feeling pretty good. It's going to be very fascinating to watch into New Hampshire next week....

It's going to be very hard for Huckabee in New Hampshire, probably, because the "Huckaboom" phenomenon has really risen for him in Iowa. It's an evangelical state, he's an evangelical person, and so that may not play as well in New Hampshire, so it's going to be hard for him. But I'm sure he's on a plane right now.

On the other side of the country, Gambling911.com analyst Christopher Costigan saw reasons for Ron Paul supporters to "look on the bright side." Costigan made seven key points:

1. Ron Paul got 10% of the vote and was within striking distance of both John McCain and Fred Thompson, the later of whom is likely to drop out of the race after New Hampshire.

2. Ron Paul came in third place in Johnson County, which perhaps has the closest demographics to that of New Hampshire. It is home to the progressive college town of Iowa City, full of young voters who Paul's campaign is reliant on.

3. He beat Rudy Giuliani by a landslide and Giuliani is considered the frontrunner nationally. And like Rudy Giuliani, Ron Paul did not focus as aggressively on the state of Iowa.

4. Wolf Blitzer of CNN called Ron Paul's showing "impressive".

5. With McCain and Thompson tied for 3rd, Ron Paul technically came in 4th place.

6. There were some counties in Iowa where Ron Paul excelled.

7. Iowa is not an Internet state and the inquiries coming in for Ron Paul (and Internet traffic in general) is not very heavy from Iowa. The great news is that the most significant search inquiries for Ron Paul were coming in from Texas, California, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Tennessee, Massachusetts and California.

The Iowa caucuses are a terrific throwback to a purer, more personable form of democracy. The caucuses are more than just early cogs in the presidential nomination machine. Watching C-SPAN tonight, one would have seen a Democratic precinct caucus in Des Moines debating various resolutions aimed at influencing the state Democratic party's platform, on issues like road maintenance, education, and health care.

Still, because they have arcane rules and attract so few participants, they are not an accurate bellwether for future primary contests. New Hampshire, as Sean O'Brien noted, is different from Iowa. And Virginia is different from New Hampshire. Whether they use caucuses, conventions, or primaries, there are fifty different contests (more, if you count D.C. and the territories) in each party leading to the presidential nomination. Iowa is just the first in line.

Changing Charlottesville Real Estate Market

Local blogger Jim Duncan, who has been kind enough to link to this blog on several occasions from his own RealCentralVA.com, was featured in a news report on WVIR-TV Thursday night, reported by David Douglas.

The text version of the report on the station's web site (which also makes the fuller video report available) notes:

Numbers from the Multiple Listing Service show end of year home inventory has climbed from December 2005, when there was just over five months of available inventory on the market. That climbed to nine months in 2006.

Today, there are 18 months of inventory on the market. But realtors caution sellers and buyers not to buy into the mentality that there's a nationwide housing slump. Instead, they say each market, is its own.

"Even within our market it's very localized, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, some neighborhoods are selling more rapidly than others," said realtor Jim Duncan.

Jim reacts to the television news report here. He calls it a "not-so-terrible story."

Schilling Returns to the Airwaves

Coy Barefoot mentioned it on his afternoon chat show today, and Bryan McKenzie wrote about it in a column in yesterday's Daily Progress, so the news isn't particularly fresh: Charlottesville radio personality Rob Schilling is returning to the air.

Schilling, a former Republican City Council member, served as temporary co-host of WINA's morning show for several months. He will now have his own daily gig, in between a more full-bodied Neal Boortz show (expanded to its former length of three hours, including the "Information Overload Hour" from noon to 1:00 p.m.) and Bill O'Reilly's 120-minute radio promo for his cable TV show.

Here's how Bryan McKenzie reported the WINA-AM schedule shift:

“The Schilling Show” will air from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Saturdays.

Mr. Schilling joined WINA’s morning show with Jane Foy as a temporary replacement for longtime host Dick Mountjoy, who left to battle cancer. Mr. Schilling left the show in September after management at the station decided to place program manager Rick Daniels in the position.

The new Schilling sandwich is courtesy of local listeners who wanted Mr. Schilling back. They called, cajoled and even blogged the station, begging for his return.

“I always knew that I was an interim host and I expected to be off the show in March [2007] but it lasted until September,” Mr. Schilling said. “There were a lot of people in the community who supported me being on the air and that’s very humbling.”

Schilling described his approach to his new radio program to McKenzie like this:

“It’ll have that watchdog approach toward government and issues and we’ll come at things less from a party view than from a commonsense view,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of experience on the inside and the outside and look at issues differently than they may be covered in the news. I have a lot to say based on my experience.”

Mr. Schilling, who took calls from constituents for four years, is again looking forward to a ringing phone.

“I think it will be a lot of fun. I would love to have a caller-driven show, but we’re only looking at an hour during the week and an hour goes quickly. On Saturday mornings we’ll have more time.”

Adding an hour of Boortz and an hour of Schilling each weekday means that WINA is giving UVa Law School grad Laura Ingraham the boot. (Frankly, I would rather that they had retained her instead of O'Reilly, who can be as grating and monotonous as Ingraham is cheeky and unpredictable.)

It is good to see that WINA is bucking the industry trend by reducing its syndicated talk-show hours in favor of more local hosts and topics.

Now if only the station would bring back Joey Reynolds.

New Candidate in 2008 Virginia Senate Race

William Redpath of Leesburg has announced his intention to seek the Libertarian Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate in Virginia this year. If he wins the party's nod, he will face likely Democratic candidate Mark Warner and likely Republican candidate Jim Gilmore in the November general election.

This is a partial rematch for Redpath, who ran against Warner and Republican nominee Mark Earley in the 2001 gubernatorial election. Redpath received 14,497 votes (or 0.77%) of the statewide total. His running mate, Gary Reams, who was seeking the Lieutenant Governor's job, received 28,783 votes, or 1.57%.

Currently national chairman of the Libertarian Party, Bill Redpath also was a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates in 1993, facing longtime incumbent Vince Callahan. (That year there were seven LP candidates for the House of Delegates, including five in contiguous Northern Virginia districts.)

First Post of the Year

Besides being the first day of 2008, today is also significant because it would have been Senator Barry Goldwater's 99th birthday.

In a memoir published in 1988, shortly after he retired from the U.S. Senate, Goldwater wrote of his early years in the Arizona Territory (pp. 34-35):

Three people -- my mother, an uncle, and a teacher -- finally convinced me that contributing something to the community was a lot pleasanter life than getting my britches burned in all kinds of trouble. My brother, sister, and some friends stood by my side when the going got tough.

My mother was a very individualistic woman, patriotic and dedicated to her community. Uncle Morris offered decades of public service to Arizona politics and the Masonic Order. Sandy Patch, one of my instructors at Staunton Military Academy, was one of the finest military officers this country ever produced.

My mother had a greater influence on my life than any other individual. It seems worth recalling some of those early years to see how and why the character of one person can leave such an impression on another. One of the things I remember best about Mun -- the three of us always called my mother that -- was our annual summer trip from Phoenix to the cool beaches of Southern California.

Mun and her three desert rats drove to California every summer because Phoenix was too hot. The trip across the Arizona and California deserts took about a week.... We had about two dozen flat tires each way. My brother, Bob, and I patched the innner tubes in mostly 120-degree heat.

Mun wore knickers, leggings, and a beat-up old hat that she'd tilt at odd angles to make us laugh. She was about five feet four inches tall and a hundred pounds of double-barreled action. Mun was a tomboy who loved the outdoors -- camping, hunting, fishing, and climbing. She was spunky and spontaneous, and she spoiled us rotten.

Dad was home minding the store. Outdoor exercise was not his game.

Mun had the uncanny ability of having fun and teaching at the same time. She kept her rifle cocked along the meandering route for coyotes, rattlesnakes, or any other critter that might bother her brood. We learned a lot about guns, camping, and protecting one another. Learning from her was never boring. None of us ever forgot those adventurous treks across the desert because she had so much time to pepper us with her wit and wisdom....

She stitched the forty-seventh and forty-eighth stars on our flag when New Mexico and Arizona entered the union. I was only three years old at the time. She talked about that day for years.

My mother spoke a lot about our country when we were kids -- our heritage of freedom, the history of Arizona, how individual initiative had made the desert bloom. Mun was a conservative Republican and proud of it.

You may have noticed a brief reference to "Staunton Military Academy" in the second paragraph quoted. That is Barry Goldwater's connection to Central Virginia: He spent his high school years in the Shenandoah Valley, just across the mountain from Charlottesville. (Of course, in the early 1920s, traveling between Charlottesville and Staunton was a lot harder than just hopping on Interstate 64 and heading west for about 40 miles.)

Goldwater recalls his years in Staunton on pages 51 through 55 of his eponymous memoir:

My father was always fashionably dressed. Some people called him a dandy because he wore pince-nez glasses and was elegant even when playing poker and billiards at the Arizona Club. However, fashion and elegance were his business. Goldwaters [department store] had a reputation for quality -- the latest and best fashion, especially for women.

Dad was also a very private person. He confided in few people apart from our mother. However, he didn't always hide his feelings, especially about my comportment in high school. One evening at family dinner, he was looking down at me over his pince-nez like I was the two of spades. Dad may have liked cards, but not wild ones.

He didn't care that I'd been elected president of the freshman class or that I was good enough for both the football and basketball teams. His voice lowered as his eyebrows raised. My father said sternly that I was going to Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, and there wasn't going to be any back talk. I felt as though I'd just been sentenced to the state pen. It seemed the whole family was ready to form a firing squad -- except my mother. She was worried about my being so far from home. Dad appeared to say, the farther away, the better -- until I learned some discipline. Then I could come home and return to school in Arizona.

In a long passage about his year as a "Rat" (a first-year student) at the Academy, Goldwater has this minor digression, which should raise a chuckle among certain Ron Paul supporters:

I only had one fight. That was with my first roommate. I owed him money for something and paid him in silver dollars. He'd never seen a silver dollar and said it wasn't U.S. money. I'd never seen paper money, although we talked about it at home. So we put up our dukes and fought a financial war.

True to Goldwater senior's wishes, young Barry did learn discipline:

In my senior year at Staunton, I won the outstanding cadet award and was offered an appointment to West Point. However, my father was not well, and Mother thought it best that I return home.

It was a big mistake. I should have gone to the Point. To this day, I believe I was better equipped, psychologically, to be a military officer than a politician.

Politics is a life that is often out of focus, that rises and falls with the tide of events and everchanging public opinion. For the most part, the military has clear, singular goals. If I had my life to live over again, I'd go to West Point.

The concepts of duty, honor, and country are genuine to me. Patriotism is real. There's no greater service to this country than the defense of its freedom.

Barry Goldwater was a military officer, of course, as well as a politician. And his country is better off because he chose that latter course. (And whether, in the 21st century, the "military has clear, singular goals," is a question quite worthy of exploration -- and doubt.)

On his 99th birthday, let us salute Senator Barry Goldwater. What a celebration we shall have in the centenary year of 2009!

Ron Paul Blimp Greets 2008 in Charlottesville

Last Friday on his new blog, veteran political reporter Bob Gibson of the Charlottesville Daily Progress wrote about the Ron Paul "mini-blimp" that has found its portable home in Central Virginia:

The size of a small whale, Ron Paul’s Charlottesville blimp has been lighting the night skies along Rio Road and, as of today, Fontaine Avenue.

The white blimp—asking who the heck Ron Paul is—was trucked from its home base on East Rio Road late today to its new home in the sky near the Interstate 64 intersection with U.S. 29 just south of Fontaine Avenue.

The lighted blimp adds a new dimension to the surging Paul effort and appears not to be floated on hot air, but that other Washington staple—a shot of noble gas.

The GOP’s Paul, a Texas congressman and libertarian, is the first of 12 presidential candidates on the Feb. 12 Virginia primary ballots, six in each party, to get his blimp floating over the outskirts of the liberal enclave of Charlottesville.

That blimp is no longer on the outskirts. In a brilliant marketing move, the blimp's mover and shaker, Jack Faw, placed it right in the heart of Charlottesville for New Year's Eve. The blimp is parked near the corner of Main Street and McIntyre-Ridge Road. Lit up, it can be seen for quite a distance from all directions.

Faw, a retired goat farmer, and his blimp have already been the subject of feature stories on two local TV stations. In fact, the Christmas Eve story by Matt Holmes on WCAV-TV's web site is the number-one most accessed story among the station's recent archives. Holmes wrote:

Faw says Central Virginia's going to see a lot of that blimp.

"Staunton has already asked. Harrisonburg has asked. Lynchburg's interested. Richmond is interested. I-64 in Fluvanna County, some of our members down that way would like to have it."

The 72-year-old Paul has raised $19 million so far this quarter and he won the Virginia Straw Poll earlier this month. Still, the Texas congressman lags significantly in the national polls.

Annie Scholz of Channel 29 filed a story on the Ron Paul blimp on Christmas Day. She reported:

Faw special ordered the big balloon online and says it was worth it to take the campaign to new heights.

"I found a dealer and a manufacturer in California and with a lot of phone calls over a couple days is all. By the second day I had ordered it and paid for it," shared Faw.

Faw plans to take the balloon to different locations across Albemarle County. He says he'll put anywhere anyone will let him.

Faw won't tell us how much he spent on the balloon or the rest of his Ron Paul paraphernalia. He'll only say it's the price he's willing to pay for freedom.

With thousands of people streaming into Charlottesville tonight for First Night Virginia, to see the fireworks, or to dance the night away at Club 216, the Ron Paul blimp will be seen by many people heretofore unfamiliar with the presidential candidate from Texas. No doubt the question, "Who is Ron Paul?," will be on many lips this evening.

Talk about being lit up for New Year's Eve!

Update: I just received an email with a link to this story from Central Florida, where the official Ron Paul blimp -- not official in the sense of being connected to the campaign, but official in the sense that it's the original, full-size blimp that has spawned (through inspiration) the mini-blimps around the country, including Jack Faw's -- is slated to fly over the Capital One Bowl (a football game):

The Capitol One Bowl Tuesday was set to pit Florida against Michigan.

Besides their teams in the big game, the two states have one other thing in common: both are holding presidential primaries in January.

At least one candidate has taken advantage of having all those voters in one place.

The Ron Paul campaign planned to put a blimp up over the Citrus Bowl Tuesday before the game, so more than 70,000 fans attending the Capital One Bowl would be able to see it pass by the arena.

Presumably, a blimp flying over the stadium will also end up on TV screens across the country, and seen by far more than the 70,000 people in the stands. And CFNews13 was first with the story.

Martyr for Democracy

Benazir Bhutto was one of the most authentic political leaders I have ever met.

Our single meeting lasted only about two hours, but in that brief time I came to know Mrs. Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan who was assassinated by a terrorist earlier today, as warm, intelligent, and fervently dedicated to the restoration of democracy in her homeland. What's more, she was both modest and unassuming despite her clear intellectual and emotional strengths.

Her modesty was apparent, if through nothing else, then through the setting of our meeting. A colleague and I were invited to meet with her in the living room of a Fairfax County townhouse. She graciously offered us tea, which she served herself; there was no entourage present, no servants, no hangers-on. In the adjacent kitchen, a supporter made dinner while a couple of toddlers watched cartoons on television. Our conversation was periodically punctuated by giggles from a few feet away, and the atmosphere was enhanced by the aroma of a homemade Pakistani meal in the oven.

Through the course of our conversation, Bhutto displayed a firm grasp of international affairs and of U.S. government policy toward the Middle East and South Asia. Her commitment to democracy and her refusal to concede that the Muslim world lacks the capacity to participate in modernity were apparent. She was quiet and reflective yet firm in her well-informed opinions.

Although Pakistan is not my regular "beat" as a writer or consultant, I had been following Bhutto's election campaign with particular interest. Just yesterday, I was part of a team that launched a web site for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party to raise campaign funds world wide. Less than 18 hours ago, I was distributing a news release that contained an optimistic statement from her with regard to her party's January 8 election prospects.

Needless to say, waking up to the news this morning of Benazir's murder was emotionally numbing. My colleagues and I are still trying to process the information, much of which arrived in chaotic bits and pieces through CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.

Benazir Bhutto -- the first female leader of a government in a Muslim country, Harvard-educated, Western-oriented, wise, and warm -- was truly a martyr for democracy. Her loss is a loss for her family, for the people of Pakistan, and for the world.

Ron Paul Rising

It doesn't come from one of the key states of Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina, and it's not strictly an endorsement. Still, an editorial in Sunday's Colorado Springs Gazette comes as a very strong recommendation for Ron Paul as a choice for Republican presidential primary voters.

The newspaper, located not just in one of the most conservative communities in the mountain states but in James Dobson's back yard, has this to say about the congressman from Texas:

Ron Paul, the libertarian-oriented and commendably antiwar 10-term Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate, has in some ways been the most interesting phenomenon of the early going in the campaign, although a case can be made for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Paul’s Internet-oriented supporters are not only fervent, they have supported him with record-breaking amounts of money, most notably in two single-day fundraising “bombs” of more than $4 million and $6 million respectively.

Few observers would have predicted last summer that Paul, little known outside Texas, would be a financially viable candidate long after former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo had dropped out.

Now, Paul’s enthusiastic support is starting to show up in poll numbers. We’ll soon see if it translates into actual votes....

In Congress, Paul has consistently voted against tax increases and against spending that he doesn’t believe is authorized by the Constitution. As a small-government proponent who also advocates a more modest non-interventionist foreign policy, he speaks to what many voters used to think the Republican Party stood for. His positions also appeal to a substantial number of younger people.

The Paul campaign is already the most significant pro-freedom mass movement of recent times. It’s time to find out if it brings him enough votes to at least give him a seat at the table when future policies are determined — and perhaps more.

The enthusiasm of Ron Paul's supporters has become legendary in Republican circles. Recall three weeks ago, when Dr. Paul trounced all of his opponents in the Virginia GOP straw poll. That unexpected victory led to this above-the-fold, front-page headline in the Charlottesville Daily Progress on the day after the event:


This morning on Meet the Press, despite hectoring questions from Tim Russert -- to be fair, it is Russert's job to be hectoring, and one would be disappointed in him if all he did were to lob softballs -- Dr. Paul more than held his own. He kept on message, coming back again and again to the need to cut spending and to shrink the government to Constitutional size. It is no wonder he is gaining praise and garnering more support around the country.

How Many Words Does a Picture Speak?

There has been a minor brouhaha in the blogosphere. This tempest in a teakettle involves several bloggers who are trying to smear Ron Paul with the "racist" label, based upon a photo of him and a white supremacist leader. The photo was taken at an event attended by hundreds of people. Both the Daily Kos and Little Green Footballs, among prominent bloggers, state that this photograph provides dispositive proof that, since Ron Paul appears in the same frame as a white supremacist, Dr. Paul must himself be a white supremacist.

By that logic, any two people appearing in a photograph together must hold the same views, have the same aspirations, and perhaps even share the same occupation.

Let's test this assumption, which I believe constitutes nothing less than jumping to conclusions.

Here are some photos that I have taken over the years, along with some photos that feature me. (If I appear in one of these photographs, it was taken with my camera.)

Here's my first example. This snapshot was taken at Cape Canaveral, Florida:



According to the logic described above, I must be an astronaut.

Here's another one. In this one I am alone, but I am studying something on the steps of the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond:


Apparently, I must have been elected to the House of Delegates in 1993, because there I am at the State Capitol. My election was due in no small part to this campaign advertisement, which appeared in Michael's, the predecessor publication to Metro Weekly in Washington. (I did not take the photo in this ad.)



(Believe it or not, we got calls at campaign headquarters asking if I was the hot guy in the ad. Sadly, no.)

OK, maybe I wasn't elected to the Virginia General Assembly. I was, however (following LGF's logic), elected to the British House of Commons. Look:



I'm standing in front of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. Surely that must mean I won a seat. (No doubt I'm still a backbencher.)

Now here's something that will get the right-wing blogosphere roiling. I took this picture about 15 years ago:


Your eyes do not deceive you. That's Ambassador Joseph Wilson (husband of Valerie Plame) with Congressman William "Cold Hard Cash" Jefferson of Louisiana. Why do they look so happy? What shenanigans are on their mind?

Of course, I could ask the same question about this picture:



Yep, that's me with the same Congressman William Jefferson. Both of us have a satisfied look on our faces. I wonder where our hands -- and pockets -- are?

Let's jump to some more conclusions. Here's me with former Governor (now Mayor) L. Douglas Wilder:


I guess that makes me a Richmond Democrat.

Speaking of Democrats, what am I doing in this photograph with then-Congressman Tim Penny of Minnesota?



I guess that makes me a Vikings fan.

Turning away from politics, check this out:


That's me eating sushi at Yo! Sushi, a Covent Garden restaurant, with actor Daniel Brocklebank (Shakespeare in Love, Merlin). That must mean I'm a Japanese-speaking, classically-trained, British actor. The photo proves it!

Here are two former mayors:


That's then-D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams with former French President Jacques Chirac. Since Chirac was once mayor of Paris, then -- logically, remember -- Williams must have been mayor of Paris, too. After all, they're in the same photograph.

And here, from the same event, the proof that Virginia conservatives knew was there but didn't know where to find it:


That's Virginia Senator John Warner on the left, with President Chirac in the center and former Senator Chuck Robb on the right. Notice that both Chirac and Robb are talking with their hands. Obviously, Chuck Robb is French. Q.E.D.

When speaking conspiratorially, one cannot ignore these images:





Ron Paul is from Texas. So is the Texas Book Depository. If Ron Paul wasn't in the building, he must have been on the grassy knoll. Logic demands it.

I've been saving this shot for last:



That's me with Congressman Paul. Since I'm gay and Ron Paul is in the same photograph as me, following the logic of Daily Kos and Little Green Footballs, there is only one conclusion: Ron Paul is gay.

I wonder if Tim Russert will ask about that on Meet the Press today, when Ron Paul is his featured guest.

Norris to Be Charlottesville Mayor

The news broke today on Coy Barefoot's radio program on WINA-AM: Charlottesville City Councilor Dave Norris will be our new mayor.

Norris himself announced on the air this afternoon that Mayor David Brown will pass the gavel, after two terms, at the next scheduled City Council meeting on January 7.

Brown and two new councilors, Holly Edwards and Satyendra Huja, were sworn in yesterday. They were elected in November. Norris was elected in May 2006 along with Julian Taliaferro.

If you didn't hear Coy's show, you read it here first: Norris has not even posted this news to his own blog yet, although he indicated interest in the job last month.

Ron Paul Wins Top Spot on Virginia Primary Ballot

The State Board of Elections met in Richmond this morning and drew lots for the ballot positions of the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties for their respective primaries on Tuesday, February 12, 2008.

The candidates who will be listed first on the ballot are Ron Paul for the Republicans and Barack Obama for the Democrats.

Reports the AP:

Regardless of where they stand in the polls on Feb. 12, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Ron Paul will be atop their parties' presidential primary ballots in Virginia.

The State Board of Elections on Thursday selected the order in which the names will appear on the ballots for the February primary. The names were drawn at random from sealed envelopes in a bowl.

Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, is followed on the Democratic ballot by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Paul, a Texas congressman, is followed by Arizona Sen. John McCain, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Update: Here is the official certificate issued by the State Board of Elections, listing the candidates and their position on the ballot.

Last-Minute Christmas Shopping Ideas

The busy folks at Amazon.com took the time to send me an email reminder about last-minute Christmas shopping, saying

Order now and have your packages shipped fast.
For Two-Day Shipping, order as late as
3 p.m. PST (time varies by item) on Thursday, December 20.

For One-Day Shipping, order as late as
1 p.m. PST (time varies by item) on Saturday, December 22.

Taking a cue from that, I thought I might revisit some of the books that I have discussed here over the past year or so, since blog readers tend to be readers first and surfers second.

For example, in June, under the heading "Scenes from a Debate Season," I quoted a long passage from Gary Alan Fine's book, Gifted Tongues: High School Debate and Adolescent Culture -- which might make a nice gift for anyone who enjoys the new Golden Globe-nominated film, The Great Debaters, starring (and directed by) Oscar-winner Denzel Washington.

Also in June, in a post called "Judy Garland and Homosexual Identity," I highlighted what I called "a darling coffee table book," When I Knew, edited by Robert Trachtenberg and illustrated by Tom Bachtell, saying:

When I Knew is a compilation of memories from gay men and lesbians from all walks of life (though a disproportionate number of them, it seems, are somehow connected to the entertainment industry), with a specific reference to the identifiable moment of their discoveries of being gay. It's a quick read, with only a handful of entries longer than a page. Many of the authors are well-known as adults and their childhood memories are sweet, bittersweet, sometime campy, sometimes wry, and always illustrative of what it is like to grow up gay in a straight world.

In March, I reported on two events featuring authors. The first, at the Cato Institute,

Brian Doherty summarized, in about ten minutes, his 800-page retrospective, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.

At the other, in Charlottesville,

syndicated radio talk-show host Neal Boortz spoke to about 200 fans and signed copies of his new book, Somebody's Gotta Say It.

(Boortz is also co-author of the best-selling The Fair Tax Book.)

In April, under the headline, "The Pope's Medieval Economics," I wrote:

Pope Benedict XVI, in a new book scheduled to be published next month, condemns the West for exploiting the Third World. News reports about the book -- called Jesus of Nazareth and excerpted earlier this week in the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera (which happens to be owned by Rizzoli, the publishers of the book) -- do not indicate whether the pontiff similarly condemns the rulers of Third World countries for their kleptocratic practices that serve to keep their subjects in poverty while the government elites party like the wealthy title character in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

Somehow I doubt he does, since -- whatever the Pope's merits as a theologian and rhetorician, which are considerable -- he lacks an understanding of basic economics.

I followed that up the next month with a post entitled "Jesus, the Pope, and a Rabbi," noting:

Rabbi Jacob Neusner, a professor of the history and theology of Judaism at Bard College, explains how a 14-year-old book of his ended up playing a central role in a new book by Pope Benedict XVI called Jesus of Nazareth.

Rabbi Neusner writes:

In my 1993 book “A Rabbi Talks With Jesus,” I imagined being present at the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus taught Torah like Moses on Sinai. I explained why, for good and substantial reasons based in the Torah, I would not have followed Jesus but would have remained true to God’s teaching to Moses. Much to my surprise, Pope Benedict XVI, in his new book “Jesus of Nazareth,” devotes much of his chapter on the Sermon on the Mount to discussing my book.

“More than other interpretations known to me, this respectful and frank dispute between a believing Jew and Jesus, the son of Abraham, has opened my eyes to the greatness of Jesus’ words and to the choice that the gospel places before us,” the pope writes.

He ties this exchange of ideas to a lamentably lost tradition of disputation between religions, a tradition that was lively in the Middle Ages but began to decline during the Renaissance and nearly disappeared during and after the Enlightenment, when theories of religious tolerance gained ground (a good thing in comparison to the persecutions and pogroms that preceded it).

When discussing books, it simply is not possible to avoid the topic of Harry Potter. In a post called "Harry Potter: Economic Dynamo," I quoted extensively from a report about the business generated by the Harry Potter empire. The quotation said in part:

Here is a unique look at the Harry Potter effect.

— Book sales (Nielsen BookScan) - Since 1998, when Nielsen began measuring book sales in the United Kingdom, the six Harry Potter books have sold more than 22.5 million copies in the UK alone. In the United States, the Harry Potter titles published after 2001 have sold more than 27.7 million copies.

— Box Office sales (Nielsen EDI) - Combined, the first four Harry Potter films have grossed more than $3.5 billion worldwide. The first film, “Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone,” is the fourth all-time highest grossing film worldwide.

— Advertising (Nielsen Monitor-Plus) - In the U.S., ad spend for all Harry Potter branded merchandise (including books, movies, DVDs and other promotional products) totals $269.1 million from 1998 to date. Outside of the U.S. from 2000 to date, $119.3 million was spent on total advertising for all Harry Potter branded merchandise in Canada, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, and the U.K.

The Harry Potter phenomenon now consists of seven books, five movies, and countless spin-off products, among them:


Changing directions completely, one cannot forget "Mormon Beefcake," sparked by a Washington Post story about a new 2008 calendar featuring hunky (male) Mormon missionaries. The 2008 Men on a Mission Calendar generated a lot of buzz and has turned into a best-seller. Whether it is an effective proselytizing tool remains to be seen.


Last month, in "Geography and Literature for $400, Alex," I noted how the books of Kurt Vonnegut are still selling well, months after the author's death and often decades after they were first published, and selling much better than books by his contemporaries, Norman Mailer and William Styron. I cited an AP story that reported:

While Mr. Vonnegut's death in April led to a significant jump in sales for his books, the change was far smaller for the works of Mr. Mailer and Mr. Styron, both of whom, unlike Mr. Vonnegut, won Pulitzer Prizes. Books by all three writers are still used in classrooms, but Mr. Vonnegut's are read more both on and off campus.

"I think it has something to do with the fact that Vonnegut has more of a word-of-mouth following. He's a little more pulpy and countercultural," says Keith McEvoy, general manager of Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers in downtown Manhattan. "We had a huge spike after Vonnegut died, but I didn't see anything like that for Mailer or Styron."

Other books by Mr. Vonnegut are also strongly outselling his contemporaries. "Cat's Cradle" has sold nearly 130,000 copies since 2006, according to Nielsen BookScan, and "Breakfast of Champions" totals 74,000. Meanwhile, Mr. Styron's "The Confessions of Nat Turner," winner of the Pulitzer in 1968, has sold less than 2,000 since 2006, while Mr. Mailer's "The Armies of the Night," a Pulitzer winner in 1969, sold just 3,000.

In one of my several vblog-posts (vblog = video blog) about the Virginia Film Festival, I reported about screenwriter Stewart Stern's lifelong love for Peter Pan in all its incarnations -- book, play, movie, musical, and more. Stern's uncle was Adolph Zukor, who produced the first film (silent) version of the classic children's story, and his remembrances were charming. (One might say as enchanting as fairy dust.)


There are plenty more books (including plays) that I discussed this past year that are not mentioned here. To my surprise, this has turned into a retrospective of this year's blogging, although it may seem a bit mercenary. Really, I will not complain in the least if, while reading this, you choose to buy something from one of my advertisers -- if not Amazon.com, then TLA Video's online store (see "Christmas Shopping List"). Or, if you're really pleased, there's always the tip jar.

Green Chri$tma$, indeed -- but a merry one, too, followed by a happy new year!

Blogoversary

Tonight on the public-radio show, Marketplace, host Kai Ryssdal noted:

The blog is celebrating an anniversary today. Ten years ago a guy named Jorn Barger coined the term "weblog" to describe his website Robot Wisdom. It was shortened to "blog" two years later by someobody else.

Back then only about 23 websites were properly considered blogs. These days, whether you write them or read them, blogs are a pretty common pursuit.

Estimates are that 120,000 new ones are created everyday. No word, though, on how many are actually read.

By sheer coincidence, today is also the third anniversary of my first blog post. It was a Friday evening and I had nothing better to do. Now look where it's led.

I swear, however, that I was not influenced by the date that Jorn Barger came up with the word "weblog." In fact, until a few minutes ago, I never visited Robot Wisdom (and then only to get the correct link). But you have to appreciate these accidents of history.

Deck the Halls with Ron Paul and Kin

The Ron Paul for President campaign has prepared a holiday greeting to be used on television in lieu of a typical political commercial:

Who knew that the Paul family lived in the Brady Bunch house? (Check out that staircase!) The familiar melody sung by Ron Paul's revelers is, of course, "Deck the Hall." How many people know the origin of this Christmas carol? How many know it is not a "Christmas" carol at all, but rather a Welsh new year's carol? Or that the familiar, "ancient Yuletide" lyrics are not so old as one might imagine? I found this out while perusing The Daily Telegraph Book of Carols, a fascinating collection researched and written by Ian Bradley, which was published last year and sat on my bookshelf for months before it called out to me late last night. Bradley gives us the background:

'Deck the hall' is a very free translation of a Welsh dance-carol traditionally sung at New Year's Eve. It belongs to the distinctive Welsh tradition of canu penillion in which merrymakers would dance in a ring around a harpist. Verses, either extemporized or remembered, would be thrown in by the dancers in turn with the harp playing the answering bars now made up with the 'fal, la la's'. Those who failed to come up with a new verse would fall out of the dance. 'Nos Galan' is first found in Musical and Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards published in 1784 by the harpist Edward Jones but the melody almost certainly goes back before that. Despite the fact that Jones heads the song 'Nos Galan' (New Year's Eve) the text in his version is a love song. In fact, the tune seems to have carried many different words before becoming specifically associated with New Year festivities.... The original Welsh New Year carol seems to have been turned into an English Christmas song in the latter part of the nineteenth century as part of the Victorian re-invention of Christmas. The first known appearance in print of 'Deck the hall' is in The Franklin Square Song Collection edited by J. P. McCaskey in 1881. The authorship of the English words, which, apart from the reference in the third verse to the passing of the old year and the coming of the new, bear no relation to the Welsh original, has never been established. Numerous variations are found in all three verses. The third line of the first verse is sometimes rendered 'Fill the mead cup, drain the barrel' or 'Fill the beer up, drain the barrel'. In the second verse the first line is often 'See the flowing bowl before us' and the last 'While I sing of beauty's treasure'. Several versions of the song extol singers at the end of the first verse to 'Troll the ancient Christmas carol'. In the third verse, the third line is often rendered 'Laughing, quaffing, all together'. Essentially this is a carol where the words don't really matter too much. The great thing is the tune and all those fa, la, las which according to the erudite editors of the New Oxford Book of Carols seem to have begun as substitutes in the original dance tune when no harp was present. It is not known what steps were danced to the original Welsh carol.

I would really like to hear someone sing the line, "Laughing, quaffing, all together." What's that old saying? "If it laughs like a deck, and it quaffs like a deck... then deck the halls."