David Goodloe's Open Salon Blog

Goodbye and Good Luck

Thu, 31 May 2012 23:05:00 -0400

Five years ago, I was a John Edwards supporter.

I had one of his bumper stickers on my vehicle, and I believed he was the best hope for the country.

The economic meltdown hadn't happened yet, and my assessment at that time, in the summer of 2007, was that the American public simply wasn't ready to elect a black president — or a female president.

I was a Democrat at the time, and I did not think either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton was the answer for the nation.

I believed the time would come for that, but the time wasn't right. I still didn't think the time was right when the meltdown happened in the autumn of 2008, and the major parties had already nominated Obama and John McCain.

That meltdown completely changed the nature of the 2008 campaign — and I think it is clear that it will heavily influence the 2012 campaign as well. But that is another story.

The story today is about Edwards' acquittal on one count and the jury's deadlock on the other counts in his corruption trial in Greensboro, N.C.

Much of the post–trial discussion has concerned whether the prosecution will attempt to re–try Edwards on the other five counts.

I do not think that is going to happen. I mean, the prosecution spent a lot of money on this trial and came away empty–handed. Many of the jurors probably will be interviewed now, and the weaknesses of the case will be revealed — which could, conceivably, lead prosecutors to pursue a conviction again with a new strategy.

But a Raleigh defense attorney told the Greensboro News–Record that he, too, thinks that is unlikely — and for the same reason as I do.

"They got their best witnesses, their best evidence and the judge ruled in their favor on all major evidentiary issues," he said. "The jury didn't believe them."

The jurors clearly didn't go for the case presented on the third count, which dealt with money that was given to the campaign by a wealthy heiress. It was the only one on which they all agreed.

And the prosecution's case on that count was probably the strongest one it had — which really isn't saying much. I'm no lawyer, and I didn't watch and/or read every report on this case, but I never felt the prosecution established its case. And I'm dubious that it will be able to do so in a do–over.

When I was a reporter covering trials in the county where I lived and worked, I learned a lot about the judicial system, lessons that seem to be repeated over and over again.

One lesson I learned was that there is no reliable way to predict what a jury will do. Don't believe me? Ask the experts who believed O.J. would be convicted of a double homicide or who were convinced that Casey Anthony murdered her daughter and there was no way she would escape the long arm of the law.

But both were acquitted.

And there are other such cases, some that only get local attention and are not the subjects of national attention but are still astonishing when they result in unanticipated verdicts.

Veteran court watchers look at jurors' body language during testimony and closing arguments and try to interpret what they are thinking, whether they have made up their minds. And I remember that such veterans did not hesitate to tell me, when I was a reporter, what they thought a quick verdict meant or what one that took several days' worth of deliberations to reach meant.

But, at best, their conclusions were and are only educated guesses.

Prosecutors may one day bring Edwards before a new jury and charge him with the remaining counts, but don't look for that right away. Their gun is out of bullets and, unless they come up with a new bullet that is sure to bring down their prey, I don't expect to see him in court on these charges again.

Another thought struck me as I watched Edwards' press conference this afternoon.

He said all the right things. His problems were of his own doing, he said, no one else's. In spite of that, though, God is not finished with him yet, he said. "I really believe he thinks there's still some good things I can do."

Perhaps Edwards is right. Perhaps God is not finished with him.

But I am.

Open Up That Golden Gate

Sun, 27 May 2012 09:05:00 -0400

There are a handful of landmarks in the world that I can identify by sight, whether I have ever been near them or not.

For example, I know the Eiffel Tower when I see it. I think I was there once. I was born overseas, and my parents and I returned to the United States when I was about a year old.

I guess you could say we took the overland route back to the States. We traveled through Europe, and I think we were in Paris at one point. If we were, I'm sure we must have been in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower at some time.

But even if I have never been close to the Eiffel Tower, I know it when I see it.

I know the Egyptian pyramids when I see them, and I know we visited Egypt while we were making our way back to the States. I've seen pictures of myself in the Cairo Airport.

I probably saw the pyramids when I was small, but I have no more memory of them than I do of the Eiffel Tower.

Nevertheless ...

When I was 13, my family spent the summer in Austria, and, at one point, we rented a car and drove through Yugoslavia to Greece, where we saw the Parthenon.

With all the economic woes the Greeks are facing these days, I'm not sure I would want to duplicate that trip today.

But, even before I saw it, I could identify the Parthenon.

I also know the leaning tower of Pisa when I see it.

Of course, how could anyone fail to identify that?

I've never been there, but my father and my stepmother have. They even brought me a coffee mug — which leans, of course. I keep it on my desk to hold my pens.

I know the Gateway Arch in St. Louis when I see it. I've been to St. Louis on a number of occasions, and I have even been inside the Arch a time or two.

And I could identify the Twin Towers in New York — until terrorists brought them down more than a decade ago.

Why all this talk about landmarks?

Well, 75 years ago today, the Golden Gate Bridge was opened in San Francisco (although the finishing touches were completed the next day).

Frommer's travel guide calls it "possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world."

It is certainly one of America's most recognizable landmarks — if not the world's.

Before the bridge was built, the only way to cross San Francisco Bay was by ferry. Construction of the bridge began in 1933, but it was not a new idea then. People had been talking about a proposal to build a bridge for years, but the estimated cost of the project was prohibitive at the time. Also, until the plan that was ultimately adopted — which called for a suspension bridge — was proposed in 1916, it was believed that winds and currents would be too strong to allow construction of a bridge.

The cost was still pretty high when construction began in 1933, but it has proven to be a great investment. Tens of thousands of vehicles cross the bridge every day.

I've never been to San Francisco, but I have friends who lived there, and I have at least one friend who lives there today.

And at least one of my friends used to commute across the bridge to go to work in the mornings and to come home in the evenings. She drove across it on the day in 1989 when the "pretty big one" struck during the World Series between San Francisco and Oakland.

I didn't know about that at the time. If I had, I probably would have been extremely worried. I didn't hear about it until much later.

And, when I did hear about it, I learned that I had the World Series to thank for my friend not having plunged into the bay when the earthquake hit.

A lot of businesses closed early that day, she told me, so that people could either go to the game or get home (or go to a bar or whatever) in time to watch it on television.

As a result, traffic on the bridge was much lighter than it normally would have been during rush hour — and she had been off the bridge for about five minutes when the quake struck. If it had been an ordinary day, she once told me, she would have been in the middle of the bridge when the earthquake occurred.

Last Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle observed the many ways that the bridge has inspired inner poets.

For example, a San Francisco Examiner editorial in 1925 wrote that a bridge across the bay would be a "perpetual monument that will make this city's name ring around the world and renew the magical fame which the Golden Gate enjoyed in the days of '49."

"The Golden Gate Bridge's daily strip tease from enveloping stoles of mist to full frontal glory is still the most provocative show in town," wrote Mary Moore Mason, editor of the British magazine Essentially America.

It's fair to say that the bridge, like most iconic landmarks, means different things to different people.

Paul Liberatore of the Marin (Calif.) Independent Journal writes that "[w]hen musicians look at its harplike towers and cables, they hear it as much as they see it.

"That's why Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart plans to celebrate the bridge's 75th anniversary by 'sonifying' the span."

Happy birthday, Golden Gate, and many more.

Why We Can't Have a Serious Talk

Thu, 24 May 2012 12:05:00 -0400

Last night, I read an article in the Washington Post about the recent electoral embarrassments that have been handed to Barack Obama in Democratic primaries in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky.

Obama, of course, is the incumbent, and he has drawn no serious opposition for the Democrats' nomination. Consequently, some people apparently believe, the Democrats in the primaries that are being held late in the process should line up like good Democrats and vote for the incumbent.

Even if they have objections.

But the voters in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky have thrown Obama an off–speed pitch when he was looking for a fastball. About two–fifths of the Democratic voters voted for token opposition — in West Virginia, that meant voting for an inmate who is presently incarcerated here in Texas — rather than for the president, who long ago secured his nomination.

The Post's Chris Cillizza writes that many Democrats have a ready excuse for the political resistance they have encountered within their own party — they "ascribe the underperformance by the incumbent to a very simple thing: racism."

Most Democrats speak disparagingly of George W. Bush. And I have no fondness for him, either.

But this is a tactic those Democrats share with Bush and his supporters — and they have been every bit as gleeful in its use and in anticipation of its power to squelch serious discussions.

Sure, it was disguised differently when Bush was president. In those not–so–distant days, anyone who disagreed with Bush on anything was labeled unpatriotic.

End of discussion. Once you have been tarred with that brush, you might as well stop trying.

No matter how strongly you may feel about the issue, no matter how many legitimate concerns you may have, no matter how many hours you may have spent arguing with yourself about it, if the other side has labeled you a racist or unpatriotic, there is nothing you can say to reverse that conclusion, no logic you can offer, no facts you can provide.

But that doesn't mean the allegation is true.

Oh, to be sure, there are people today who do permit race (or religion or gender or sexual preference or anything else) to determine how they will vote, just as there have always been people who were racist (or sexist or homophobic or whatever). And there are people among us who are not patriotic Americans — they have always been with us, too.

That's one of the drawbacks of living in a free society.

But it's not so easy to know who the racists and unpatriotic citizens are. In my experience, they usually don't advertise the fact or leave tell–tale clues behind. They might share their views with like–minded individuals, but they don't usually tend to share them with strangers.

"The problem with that theory," Cillizza writes, "is that it's almost entirely unprovable because it relies on assuming knowledge about voter motivations that — without being a mindreader — no one can know."

It's true that Obama lost all three of those states in 2008, and it is quite likely that he will lose all three in 2012. I don't see a racial backlash in these votes. I see a repeat of a phenomenon I have seen many times in the past — when a candidate locks up his party's nomination, disgruntled voters in the late primaries are emboldened to vote for any alternative on the ballot.

It's an electoral protest, and it should be taken seriously. My experience tells me Democrats shouldn't be dismissive about it.

In 1980 (when another Democrat president was running for re–election), I was living in Arkansas. Gov. Bill Clinton was seeking his second two–year term as governor. He looked like a sure thing. He was young and charismatic, and his only opponent in the party primary was a 77–year–old retired turkey farmer who barely scraped up enough money to pay the filing fee.

Clinton's opponent had no campaign staff or finances to speak of, but he received more than 30% of the vote when the Democrats held their primary.

The governor's staff and supporters insisted that it didn't mean a thing, and, in Arkansas, it was generally accepted that it really didn't mean much. Arkansans, after all, had elected only one Republican governor since Reconstruction.

But they elected another one that November — narrowly.

Both political extremes use the term fascism almost casually in their references to each other, which I find to be alarming — as well as an appalling display of an absence of knowledge.

Neither side is truly fascist — at least, not yet. But, with their blatant use of what Adolf Hitler called "the big lie," it is clear that it probably wouldn't take much to push either one over the edge.

"Make the lie big," Hitler said, "make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."

It was a lie when Bush's supporters accused his detractors of being unpatriotic. It's a lie when Obama's supporters accuse his detractors of being racist.

It has a chilling effect on dissent, and that makes it one of the most anti–democratic (that's democrat with a lowercase d) assertions imaginable.

Joe Biden Is Not the Problem

Wed, 23 May 2012 17:05:00 -0400

I first heard the rumblings nearly two years ago.

In August of 2010, I wrote about former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder's suggestion that Barack Obama should replace Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton in 2012, but my tendency then was to dismiss it as idle talk by people who really didn't know what they were talking about.

The topic reappeared last fall, and, when I heard it said that good ol' Joe Biden had to go, that he was a drag on Obama, I responded by writing that "too much emphasis is placed on the vice presidential nomination."

I wrote that "I don't think replacing Biden with anyone, Hillary or anyone else, is the answer for what ails Obama."

And I still believe that, even though I read articles at least once a week now suggesting that Obama needs to drop Biden.

It seems to me that, whenever incumbent presidents have been preparing to run for a second term, this kind of talk always seems to surface.

Sometimes it makes sense. In 1992, for example, there was a lot of talk about how George H.W. Bush needed to replace Dan Quayle on his ticket. Quayle had gained a reputation, whether fairly or unfairly, for always saying something stupid, and some people felt he was a drag on the ticket.

Now, in 1992, I was never going to vote for Bush, anyway, but I could sympathize with the sentiment. Quayle was ridiculed so much in those days that it really didn't take much persuading to convince anyone that Bush was bound to do better with someone else on his ticket.

Bush wound up keeping Quayle on the ticket, though, and, in hindsight, it is hard to imagine anyone who could have helped Bush win more than 100 electoral votes from Clinton. I think the challenger was going to win that election.

Some years are like that. I have to say that 1980 was like that. President Jimmy Carter was on shaky ground in all aspects of his presidency, and the talk that surfaced during his battle with Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination about dropping Vice President Walter Mondale probably had a lot to do with strategy and little, if anything, to do with Mondale's actual performance in office.

Mondale remained on the ticket, and I can't see how any other Democrat could have helped Carter avoid his landslide defeat to Ronald Reagan.

Usually such talk is frivolous. I don't know where it comes from. Perhaps it is a trial balloon to see if there is any way the incumbent can ratchet up his vote total with a fresh face.

If that is what it is, the conclusion usually is that changing the running mate won't make that much difference. Voters judge incumbent presidents on their records, and the voters' sense of fairness (to which Obama ceaselessly, relentlessly, seeks to appeal) tells them that, unless a vice president is guilty of some egregious offense — that if he has been doing his job (which, constitutionally, only requires him to preside over the Senate and break ties when they occur) — he does not deserve to be dropped.

So Reagan kept George H.W. Bush in 1984. Clinton kept Al Gore in 1996. George W. Bush kept Dick Cheney in 2004. Each was, at some point in those re–election campaigns, the focus of a drop ______ movement.

If Obama does drop Biden, my sense is that the voters, many of whom have become super sensitive to workplace fairness in recent years, would demand to know the reason — and, of course, there are few things that the administration could plausibly blow out of proportion to justify such a move.

The truth is that there is precious little that Obama can point to that will validate his claim that he needs and deserves a second term.

He can't run on his economic record. Unemployment was 6.5% nationally when Obama was elected in November 2008. It has been well above that level throughout his presidency.

His signature achievement, Obamacare, is likely to be overturned by the Supreme Court in the next few weeks.

Instead of bringing people together, Obama has polarized this nation to a greater extent than it was before he was elected.

None of those things can be blamed on Biden. Democrats knew when he was chosen to be Obama's running mate in 2008 that he was gaffe prone — but, for the most part, he's been a good soldier, doing the heavy lifting when he was asked to do it and generally keeping his tongue in check.

Gallup reports that Americans are divided on Biden. The latest survey is, as Jeffrey Jones observes, "the first time opinions of Biden have tilted negative since he became Obama's vice presidential pick," but the numbers are "not materially different" from the public's assessment of him from 2009 to 2011.

And this survey was conducted after both Biden's comments about same–sex marriage on Meet the Press and Obama's comments in an interview a few days later in which he said he supported the legalization of such marriages.

In the week that has passed, Biden has been criticized for forcing the president's hand. But I think it was done deliberately. Obama knows that the polls have shown a general softening in public opposition to gay marriage, and I believe this was an excuse for Obama to give lip service to an issue that he believes will energize groups who helped him win last time.

And, with the last president's experience fresh in his mind, Obama is doing the same thing — he's using gay marriage to distract attention from the real issues.

I knew several women who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries. When John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate, it was mostly a ploy to attract Hillary's supporters, many of whom were thought to be up for grabs in the early fall of 2008.

That ploy failed for several reasons. Polls were showing a pretty close race between Obama and McCain until the economic collapse in September 2008. That, combined with Bush fatigue, pretty much assured that Obama would win.

Ironically, though, Obama had chosen his running mate in large part to bolster his ticket's foreign policy credentials. Biden was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time he was chosen to run with Obama, and there had been some international tensions that summer.

But foreign policy is way down the list in 2012. And, even if it wasn't, Obama has been trumpeting his role in the killing of Osama bin Laden last year. He doesn't need Biden's help in that category anymore.

Of course, Hillary has been secretary of state under this president so her greatest selling point — other than her gender — is her expertise in foreign policy.

And foreign policy is not on most voters' minds this year.

All that Obama has left is class warfare, which is hardly the inclusive, hope and change banner under which he campaigned four years ago. It is the divide and conquer politics that people have been complaining about for years.

Changing running mates won't alter the fundamentals of this campaign. The voters will do what they always do when an incumbent is on the ballot — they will assess the incumbent's record and decide if they want four more years of it.

The First Time

Sun, 20 May 2012 21:05:00 -0400

Eighty–five years ago, I suppose Charles Lindbergh may have been the most unlikely of the world's qualified pilots to complete the first nonstop transatlantic flight.

Lindbergh was virtually unknown, even though his father had represented Minnesota in the U.S. House for 10 years.

He flew for the first time — as a passenger — about five years before he flew from New York to Paris. Shortly thereafter he took his first flying lesson, but he would not be allowed to solo because he could not afford to post a bond that he was required to provide in case he damaged the airplane — it was the flying school's only one, you see.

Eventually, of course, he did solo, and that opened the door to his career.

Lindbergh delivered mail by air until a few months before his historic flight, when he went to California to oversee the production of the plane he would fly to Paris, the Spirit of St. Louis. He had been drawn into an international competition for the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 prize that had been offered by hotelier Raymond Orteig to the first person to complete a nonstop transatlantic flight.

It really was the great race of its day, but you couldn't tell that initially. Most of the contenders' planes had trouble getting airborne; the first that did, less than two weeks before Lindbergh's flight, made it from France to Ireland, but contact was lost, and no one ever heard from the pilot or his navigator again.

Half a dozen pilots, consequently, had perished in the attempt by the time Lindbergh was ready to take his shot, and he took off shortly before 8 a.m. on May 20, 1927. He had anticipated that his flight, if successful, would take about 40 hours; he completed it in 33½ — in spite of fog, storm clouds, icing and having to navigate by the stars when they were visible (and by dead reckoning if they weren't).

Lindbergh was an American pioneer. He didn't take on the challenge of flying nonstop across the Atlantic for the fame it would bring; he did it for the same reason other pioneers climb mountains that have never been climbed.

But it did bring him fame, as well as the Orteig Prize, and he used that fame to do things he probably never dreamed he would be able to do. He became a writer, an explorer, an inventor, a proponent of environmental causes.

It also brought some unwanted attention — in particular, from an immigrant named Bruno Hauptmann, who was convicted of the 1932 abduction and murder of Lindbergh's infant son and sentenced to death. Between the time of Hauptmann's conviction and execution, Lindbergh, his wife and their second son left America for Europe and remained there for the rest of the 1930s.

As I say, Lindbergh was a pioneer, but pioneers are people, and they have their flaws. Lindbergh is admired for his accomplishments in aviation, but he was far from perfect. His statements and writings suggested that he was a racist, and it was revealed, after not only Lindbergh but also his wife had died, that he had long–term affairs with three women, producing seven children.

Heroes have their weaknesses, all right, but they seldom take anything away from what a pioneer, mostly through courage, has achieved. And Lindbergh's weaknesses certainly don't take anything from what he accomplished 85 years ago today.