ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FEBRUARY 25, 2003
WASHINGTON - - I called my sister to explain that I was now qualified to be president of the United States.
“Oh, did they change the Constitution?” she said. “Is being a dork now a qualification for president?”
How very droll, I said. Listen to this. This is from a Dick Gephardt speech: “I am the son of truck driver.” This is from a John Edwards speech: “We believe that the son of a mill worker can beat the son of a former president.” Joe Lieberman tells the crowds that his father ran a liquor store and Al Sharpton tells people he is the son of welfare mother.
“Is there a point to all this or is this one of your columns?” my sister asked.
The point is this, I said. What did our father do for a living his entire life?
“Lay on the couch and snore?” she said.
What did he do for a living? I asked. Not what did he do in his leisure time.
“Our father, as you well know, drove a truck his entire life,” she said.
Exactly! I said. Which means I can claim the same lower-class origins as the Democratic candidates! Which means I could run for president!
“I don’t think the other candidates for president ever ate an entire rubber lizard,” my sister said.
That was in the second grade! I said. That is ancient history.
“Which is what Mike Dukakis said about Willie Horton,” my sister pointed out. “Besides, did the other candidates wet their sleeping bags during camping trips?”
One trip, I said. And I swear there was a bear outside the tent trying to get in.
“Who cares what our father did?” my sister asked. “Why does that qualify anyone to become president?”
An excellent point, I said. But as the nation grew, as voting rights were extended to more people and the “common man” began having real political power, politicians decided that humble origins were an advantage.
In the presidential election of 1840 incumbent Martin Van Buren, a Democrat, was pitted against William Henry Harrison, a Whig. Before 1840, campaigns emphasized American symbols. But Harrison's forces were out to create a good-old-boy image: They used the symbols of the log cabin and cider barrel to make Harrison appear to be a backwoodsman.
In reality, Harrison lived in a Georgian mansion. He owned 2,000 lush acres farmed by tenant farmers. And he had been born not in a log cabin but in Virginia's beautiful Berkeley Plantation. He was the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and no rustic. And the Democrats exposed him as a fraud.
“But Harrison won anyway,” my sister said.
Exactly! I said. Americans love a good fraud!
“But he got his,” my sister said.
Well, yes. On March 4, 1841 Harrison gave one of the longest inaugural addresses ever delivered and promised not to run for a second term. One month later he died.
“As least he kept his promise,” my sister said.
We are getting away from the point, I said. The point is that anyone with lower class origins, anyone whose father drove a truck, for instance, is now fully qualified to run the nation.
“Which means I could run for president, too,” my sister said.
Well, yes. I guess that’s true, I said.
“Excellent,” she said. “I already have my campaign motto: ‘Vote for Me: I Never Ate A Rubber Lizard.’ ”
I don’t think you are taking this election seriously, I said.
“Why should I be the only one?” she said.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FEBRUARY 24, 2003
WASHINGTON - - Democrats are getting so confident that their 2004 presidential nominee will be something other than a punching bag or a sacrificial lamb, that they are starting to recycle an old joke:
Q: Will George Bush be a one-term president?
A: Yeah - - I think he’ll last that long.
It has been a rough couple of weeks for Bush: Abroad, a chunk of the free world seems to think it is a toss-up between Bush and Saddam Hussein as to who is the greater threat to world peace and at home Bush hardly seems to be the political juggernaut he once appeared to be.
(Even those reporters who worship at the feet of his political guru, Karl Rove, may be forced to admit that losing an election by 500,000 popular votes to Al Gore is not a sign of genius.)
This could all change very quickly - - a successful war, the death or capture of Osama Bin Laden (remember him?), and a booming stock market would help - - but, still, Democrats sense that they have a chance.
Only one problem: They need a candidate. Scratch that: They need a winner; they have plenty of candidates.
A slew of them spoke at the Democratic National Committee meeting last week and while it was hard to pick a winner, there seemed to be one big loser: Joe Lieberman, who is currently leading in the national polls.
As has been said many times, early polls are based almost entirely on name recognition and so it is no surprise that Lieberman led the field in a recent national poll with 16 percent, followed by Dick Gephardt at 13 percent, John Kerry at 8 and John Edwards at 7.
Whatever their validity, these polls are helpful in raising money and Lieberman can put together a impressive packet of them. He is expected to be at the top or near the top in terms of fundraising and even though running for vice president is almost nothing like running for president (it is a two month sprint with much less media scrutiny) it still gave him experience at being in a national campaign.
There is a problem, however: Even though presidential politicking is made up of many elements, public speaking is the primary one. You can have nifty issue papers, super TV commercials and a crackerjack staff working behind the scenes, but getting votes is still largely a matter of giving speeches.
Whether people access those speeches in person or via the media, they still get their impressions of candidates exactly as they have since the time the Republic began: by hearing the candidates stump.
And Lieberman suffered in comparison to the other Democratic speakers at the DNC meeting.
Lieberman was quiet, reasoned, and substantive - - everything he is in real life - - but his speech did not excite or inspire. When he was done, there was applause, but the “wow” factor was near zero.
Unfortunately, for him, others did wow. Dick Gephardt gave one of the best speeches he has ever given. The content was not new, but the delivery was. Gephardt has learned how to work a crowd from the podium, milking a laugh-line here, extending the cheers there, and passionately gripping the front of the lectern exactly as Bill Clinton once did.
Gephardt got a couple of standing ovations (Lieberman got none) and after the speech people came forward to shake his hand and embrace him.
Gephardt was followed by Howard Dean, whose high-energy, staccato-style can bring down the house. On Friday, audience members beat their hands together and roared their approval so loudly that they sometimes drowned out Dean entirely.
It is important to remember, however, that the crowd was not made up of average citizens or even average Democrats. The audience was made up of members of the Democratic National Committee, who are politically savvy and are quite capable of roaring for one candidate and supporting another.
Why would they do that? Electability. They are not going to support the candidate who can speak best; they are going to support the candidate who has the best chance of beating George Bush.
The two qualities may be linked, however, and those candidates who claim they can win over the nation are first going to have to show they can win over an audience.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FEBRUARY 19, 2003
MANCHESTER, N.H. - - With the original Democratic presidential Six Pack now having grown to the Crazy Eight, and soon to be the Starting Nine, Dick Gephardt thought it was about time he started reminding people that he was running for president.
He has been officially running since last month, but he made his formal announcement Wednesday, when he went back to his grammar school in South St. Louis to speak to a few hundred people gathered on the white, linoleum-tiled floor of the gymnasium at Mason Elementary.
It was 11 months to the day before the Iowa caucuses that will mark the beginning of the 2004 campaign and there were several reasons Gephardt decided to do his formal announcement so early.
“Democratic voters are at the stage that they have decided George Bush has to go, but they are uninformed about who they will rally around,” Edward Reilly, Gephardt’s pollster, says his polling has discovered. “They don’t know a lot about Gephardt, Lieberman, Kerry, and certainly not Edwards. It is important that Gephardt introduces himself to the voters.”
There is another reason for the four-state adventure, which started in Missouri, flew the first chartered jet of the campaign to Iowa with about 20 reporters, went on to Manchester with about 10 reporters and is scheduled to go to South Carolina with two reporters: Gephardt has not generated much positive news coverage since last fall.
His campaign started under the cloud of the Democratic failure to regain the House last November and has been plagued by a series of news stories saying that a.) Gephardt simply must win Iowa next year and b.) he might have a hard time doing it.
He has never been the media’s candidate of the moment and generating some upbeat stories would y help him not only with potential supporters, but with campaign donors.
So, having rehearsed it three times and using teleprompters, Gephardt gave a well-written, 42-minute announcement speech that he delivered in a fine, if not rafter-rattling, style.
The truth is that that the Democratic top tier of Gephardt, Lieberman, Edwards and Kerry - - the Fab Four - - all have roughly the same speaking skills: They are not great, they are not bad, and they all suffer from PDD: Passion Deficit Disorder.
Even though taken as a group they have delivered thousands of speeches, giving a presidential speech is different: the audience expects more. The audience wants to be stirred and moved. They wants a little grandeur, a little excitement. They want a rousing candidate to fill them with inspiration.
Gephardt’s son, Matt, introduced him to the crowd Wednesday, saying, “He taught us to work hard, to never give up, to be passionate…and most of all to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
The latter point, often called the Golden Rule, is mentioned in many of Gephardt’s speeches. But it symbolizes both his strength and his challenge: The Golden Rule is a wonderful thing and what a fine nation this would be if everybody - - or even every president - - followed it. But how do you turn it into an exciting political concept?
Well, maybe the answer is that you don’t. Maybe exciting is not what the people want these days. Maybe they feel what with terrorism, Iraq and North Korea their lives are already exciting enough.
“I’m not the political flavor of the month,” Gephardt said near the end of his speech, his voice thick with emotion. “I’m not the flashiest candidate around. But the fight for working families is in my bones. It’s where I come from; it’s been my life’s work.”
Later, in Des Moines, Gephardt sat down with reporters and put it this way: “Politics in the end is about human relationships. The candidate is the product. If people like you, know you, trust you and believe in you, they will vote for you.”
So in the weeks and months ahead, like, know, trust and belief is exactly what Dick Gephardt will be selling.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FEBRUARY 17, 2003
WASHINGTON - - My hand shook as I dialed the number for the Department of Homeland Defense.
I never thought it would happen. I was the one who made fun of my friends when they rushed out last weekend to buy duct tape.
When you wrap yourself in the tape, be sure to leave some air holes! I told them.
My friends did not laugh. Instead they ran to the grocery stores and emptied the shelves. Those items with long shelf-lives - - Twinkies baked at the time of the pharaohs are still perfectly good today - - were the first to go.
“The nation is at Code Orange!” one friend yelled at me. “Does that mean nothing to you?”
What code had we been at? I asked.
“Code Yellow,” my friend said.
And what does that mean?
“Nobody knows exactly, but it seems to mean that an attack can come at any time,” my friend replied.
And what is Code Orange?
“Nobody knows exactly, but it seems to mean that an attack can come at any time,” my friend replied.
And what is the highest color of all?
“Code Red,” my friend said.
And it means?
“It means, ‘If you hear it’s Code Red, it’s already too late,’ ” he replied.
And at what point are we supposed to run out and buy all food and water on the shelves so nobody else can get food and water? I asked.
“Oh, you can do that any time,” he said. “Hoarding is very American.”
So I did not panic. I did not hoard.
True, I went out and rented the first three seasons of “The Sopranos” on DVD, just in case I had to stay home for a month, but I didn’t really expect that to happen.
And then I awoke on Sunday morning and faced the grim reality: The terrorists had struck.
Nothing moved on the streets. Not a car, no a person, not even a dog or cat. The entire world was silent.
As I reached for the phone to call Homeland Defense to report the attack, I was fearful I might be the last person alive.
So I felt no small amount of relief when somebody answered on the other end.
“Can you describe the attack?” the Homeland Defense guy asked.
Tiny white flakes are falling from the sky by the millions, I said, my voice shaking. They are quite cold, but when you take them inside to examine them, they melt! Yet, outside, they stick together in great, impassable heaps. I never realized that Iraq had such technology!
“Sir,” the Homeland Defense guy said, “I think you are experiencing snow.”
Impossible! I said. This is everything the terrorists wanted: the complete paralysis of the Eastern Times Zone of the United States! No planes, trains, buses or cars are moving! People are not only afraid to leave their homes, they are unable to leave their homes! This is the very definition of terrorism! If it was not Iraq, it must be al Qaeda.
“Actually, we are treating it as an act of God,” the man at Homeland Defense told me.
Blasphemy! I said. God is on our side!
The Homeland Defense guy said he would file a report, but he didn’t think there was much he could do. “Every now and then, these things happen,” he said. “We call them blizzards.”
You should have issued a Code White alert! I said to him. We must prepare to meet our enemies!
He hung up.
But let me assure the rest of you that as soon as the East Coast digs out from this latest attack, we will take the offensive.
I have studied the problem and have prepared a list of our most dangerous foes.
At the top of the list, right after snow, we face an enemy nation that is smug and dangerous, arrogant and insidious, sneering and contemptible.
But we will engaged it and destroy it.
And as soon as we’re done with France, Iraq better watch out.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FEBRUARY 12, 2003
WASHINGTON - - One of the things I look for in evaluating a presidential candidate is whether he can take a punch.
Some candidates are good at taking a hit - - has anyone ever been better than Bill Clinton, who, accused of draft-dodging and womanizing in 1992, simply shrugged, lied and slogged forward all the way to the White House?
And some candidates are very bad at taking a hit - - I still maintain that Michael Dukakis’ response to Bernard Shaw’s question about whether he would favor the death penalty for the imaginary rapist and murderer of Dukakis’ wife was a principled reply, but hardly anybody else saw it that way.
Sometimes, the punches are beyond one’s control: Last Christmas Eve, Sen. John Kerry, who currently appears to be the very early consensus front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, got the news that his prostate was cancerous.
Aside from the personal impact, which must have been considerable even though prostate cancer is common and curable, Kerry and his campaign staff had to assess the political impact.
They had (mostly bad) examples to study: John F. Kennedy hid all kinds of serious maladies from the press and public both as a candidate and as president. Everyone knew that Paul Tsongas was a cancer survivor when he ran for president, but the true state of his health was not revealed during his campaign. And Bill Bradley did not disclose his three years of heart problems until he was forced to do so during his campaign.
And even though the answer to almost all political crises is the same - - don’t conceal, reveal - - campaigns are notoriously reluctant to follow this path.
Two major decisions were made by the Kerry campaign which minimized the political fall-out, however: First, the campaign decided to announce Kerry’s condition the day before his surgery.
This meant that the press would have “Kerry Has Cancer” headlines for only one day until the story turned to, “Kerry Has Successful Surgery.”
Secondly, Kerry aides flooded the press with information. On Tuesday, the day Kerry had a press conference to announce his own illness, press kits were e-mailed to reporters that included not only a statement from and biography of his doctor, but publicity about the doctor’s book. (“The ultimate book…should be in every man’s home,” - - Larry King.)
There was also a list of “Prominent Americans Diagnosed and Treated for Prostate Cancer,” “Facts About Prostate Cancer,” and a time-line of Kerry’s illness.
At the press conference, reporters were handed more material including the statement from Kerry’s doctor that Kerry “is as strong as an ox.”
There was one hitch: Two weeks ago, a Boston Globe reporter asked Kerry if he was sick and reportedly Kerry said no.
At the press conference, the reporter asked Kerry why he had lied and Kerry said first because his doctor was away and would not have been around to provide information to reporters, and second, “Because members of my family, most importantly, had not yet been told…I believe that members of my family deserve to learn -- not reading the newspapers but deserve to learn from me. And that's why I made that decision. I could parse the word ‘sick’; I'm not going to. But I thought my family came first.”
That was, to my recollection, one of the few times in political history that a candidate admitted having lied to a reporter.
The Kerry campaign did not know how the press would take this - - would reporters say Kerry’s credibility had been irreparably damaged? - - but judging by the first 24-hour news cycle, Kerry has skated through unscathed.
The Boston Globe, which might have been expected to harshly criticize Kerry in its editorial, instead praised him for “dealing forthrightly with the diagnosis and impending surgery.” No mention was made of lying to the Globe reporter.
Kerry is now recovering from successful surgery. And though his aides fully expect some of the other Democrats to launch a “whispering campaign” about Kerry’s cancer, Kerry’s staff believes it will be a non-issue.
After all, even though Kerry today is lying down in a hospital bed, in another sense he has taken a punch and is still standing.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FEBRUARY 10, 2003
SIMON SAYS:
In terms of pure design, nobody has ever improved upon the waffle.
Anybody who answers a ringing pay phone deserves what he gets.
Nobody can be melancholy like a Frenchman.
There is a special place in hell reserved for those people who kept pieces of the space shuttle Columbia. In my book, they are not souvenir hunters, they are looters. If I were president (a scary thought, I admit) I would have federalized the national guard in each state to protect the wreckage.
Another thing I would do if I were president: I would send all convicted spammers to prison for at least 5 years. For a second offense, I would make them eat every piece of spam they sent out on an actual piece of Spam. In other words, the penalty would be death.
I have never been any good at skipping stones.
Most problems solve themselves within 36 hours. The rest require immediate attention.
You can always tell when you are in a mob-owned restaurant: They serve broken leg of lamb.
Turning 45 is one of the most depressing birthdays you can have. Turning 40 or 50, on the other hand, is quite pleasant.
Sad but true: Hardly anybody plays the concertina any more.
You can never get rid of dust; you can only move it from one place to another.
Nobody has ever come up with a better candy than Milk Duds. (Though Good & Plenty runs a close second.)
And You Can Get Your Chauffeur’s License When You’re 10: From the front page of the Feb. 3 New York Times: “In Plainview, Tex., Tammy White’s three sons - - 4, 6 and 8 - - were riding a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle when they came across a charred leg.” We can only hope the 8 year old was driving.
The new SUVs look so much like station wagons that it makes you wonder what all the fuss is about.
I finally broke down and got a DVD player. But now I wonder: How many times can I really watch “The Parent Trap?”
Why do so many restaurants serve halibut and so few serve grouper?
You know you’re getting old when snow stops being fun.
People who say they aren’t introspective really mean they’ve got a lot to hide.
Why do I get the sinking feeling that when the history books are being written decades from now, the chapter on 2003 will begin: “Tragically underestimating the maliciousness of North Korea, the United States allowed itself to be distracted by Iraq.”
I have never really understood the purpose of weathervanes. So you know when the wind is blowing from the southwest. What then?
I know a mother so sensible that she asks people “Do you have guns in your house?” before she will let her child go play there.
More relationships have broken up on Valentine’s Day than have ever been started on Valentine’s Day.
The two saddest words in the history of modern investing may be these: fiber optics.
“Kingpin” as good as “The Sopranos?” Don’t make me laugh.
Following the Columbia crash, there has been some terrific reporting done on the vulnerability of the space shuttle. Maybe someday we’ll see such reporting done before a tragedy.
I don’t want to change the world. I just don’t want the world to change me.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FEBRUARY 5, 2003
WASHINGTON - - Shock gives way to grief and grief to anger. And there is going to be a lot of anger, I predict, over the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia.
Sometimes tragedies are acts of God and sometimes tragedies are acts of man and so far this tragedy has all the earmarks of a man-made failure.
But let us not pre-judge. After all, NASA says it really, really wants to get to the bottom of things, right?
And just look at how NASA behaved last time seven astronauts were incinerated.
On January 28, 1986, the Challenger space shuttle developed a problem in its propulsion system. The right rocket booster sprang a leak in the frigid air and 73 seconds after takeoff, the shuttle exploded killing all on board.
A company called Morton Thiokol made that faulty booster.
That explosion was investigated by something called the Rogers Commission, named for its chairman William Rogers, former attorney general under Dwight Eisenhower and former secretary of state under Richard Nixon.
The Rogers Commission eventually found that the seven were not killed by divine intervention or by the inherent dangers of space flight. No, it found the astronauts were killed by massive human foul-ups.
This is the way the New York Times put it: "In a low-key but stern indictment, the commission's 256-page final report chronicled a long history of engineering and managerial mistakes, of refusing to recognize the serious problems with the solid-fuel booster rockets, of a breakdown in quality control programs and of repeated failures to pass vital safety information along from lower levels to key decision makers.
"The report also said that Morton Thiokol Inc. had designed a faulty rocket joint, had taken no appropriate action to fix it and had opposed suggestions made by NASA engineers in the late 1970s that the joint be redesigned."
Not that the Rogers Commission blamed Thiokol for anything. No, the commission was very careful not to blame anybody. As Rogers said in a Rose Garden ceremony: "We were not asked to assess blame, and we have not assessed blame."
Rogers said that in a sense "a lot of us are to blame" for the accident, including the Ronald Reagan administration, Congress and the media, "all of whom made the optimistic assumption that the space shuttle had become operational instead of remaining a risky developmental program."
Got that? Anyone who was bamboozled into believing that the space shuttle was safe was just as guilty as the people who failed to make sure it was safe.
Me, I don't quite buy that argument.
But in December 1986, the federal government and Morton Thiokol agreed to pay more than $10 million to the families of the Challenger astronauts.
That sounds like a lot of dough but is averages out to only about $1.4 million per family. That same year, a judge in New York awarded $7 million to a baby who was treated negligently at birth. In Florida, a couple got $7.2 million because their insurance was wrongfully canceled. In Maryland, a 17-year-old boy was awarded $4.1 million in a diving accident.
What happened to Morton Thiokol? In the months following the tragedy, Morton Thiokol, which admitted no wrongdoing in the Challenger explosion, was paid $34.1 million in "bonus incentives" for its "superior performance."
And in 1992, the George M. Low Trophy, which is NASA's annual "quality and excellence" award, was bestowed on Thiokol's Space Operations division.
So don't expect a whole lot from the current investigations into the Columbia disaster and into the private contractors that currently run the shuttle operations.
Because when it gets right down to it, NASA believes in letting bygones be bygones.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FEBRUARY 3, 2003
WASHINGTON - - It seems as if we cannot catch a break. It feels as if our luck has run out. It appears that to live in the land of the free, you really do have to dwell in the home of the brave. September 11. Iraq. North Korea. And now Columbia. Murder, terror, dread and loss. The four horsemen of our daily apocalypse.
But we are at risk because we will not change. After September 11, we did not trim our sails; instead, we spread our wings. We could have cut back on our high-risk adventures, the things that make us look bad when they go wrong and give our enemies comfort. (In Baghdad on Saturday, they were calling the Columbia disaster "God's retribution on Americans.") We could easily have ended our space program and shifted the money into our national defense. But where others might have hunkered down, we continued to soar. We continued to be out there, pushing the boundaries.
Why do we do it? Because we can. To be an American is to dare. We will sometimes fail because failure is part of being human. But our failures do not define us. Our daring does. We do not shirk from our duties nor turn from our destiny. As Theodore Roosevelt once said: "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
We do not live in the gray twilight. We live in the world's spotlight, where our every success and every failure can be seen.
The seven who lost their lives on Saturday were not heroes in this country while they lived or superstars or even household names. The space shuttle, the most complicated machine ever constructed, was little thought about any more. Few knew it had taken off, few knew it was about to land. Today, the technology that captivates us is the technology that entertains us: MP3 players, DVD burners, TiVo.
But there are still those, only a few perhaps, who see technology as the machinery of pure science. Practical applications can come from shuttle missions, and NASA has to emphasize those applications to justify the huge cost. But on board Columbia for 16 days, the astronauts - - and even the term seems dated - - were carrying out scientific experiments that might never bear fruit or perhaps add only a minute particle to the sum total of human knowledge.
And that is why we did not know the crew. They were scientists; they were dreamers of the dream. They flew, they explored simply for knowledge, simply to push the boundary.
"As difficult a situation as this is, we are moving forward," Ron Dittemore, the shuttle program manager, said hours after the Columbia exploded. "We are preserving data. We are beginning thorough and complete investigations. We are mobilizing our forces, our engineers, our technicians, our safety and quality, our best experts to try and understand what went wrong."
Mobilize. Understand. Move forward. Pure America. By Saturday afternoon, something else that was pure America took place: CBS switched from disaster coverage to the Bob Hope Chrysler Golf Classic. ABC carried snowmobile racing. Relentlessly, even remorselessly, life in America was moving on.
Still, there were those who found it harder to let go. In Titusville, Florida, eight miles from where the shuttle was to have landed, those waiting for the sonic boom of its return heard only silence. "I didn't hear the boom," said Dorothy Geiser, 74, who has lived in Titusville for 33 years. "It brought me to my knees. I always wait for the boom and give a prayer that they are on their way back, ready to land. I didn't hear the boom, and I was in disbelief."
We are getting good at disbelief, adept at shock, perhaps more inured to pain. Americans, it is said, are different from others because we actually expect things to turn out all right, we believe that happiness will be the norm and tragedy the interruption.
And we do not like looking back for fear that it will keep us from moving forward. "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow," Franklin Roosevelt said in his last, undelivered speech, "will be our doubts of today."
We fear, we grieve, we sometimes feel as if we are at the breaking point, but we do not break and we do not doubt. We are a nation with its face perpetually turned toward the light and not the darkness.
And if these days our sunny optimism has been replaced with a grim resolve, the resolve will see us through until the sun shines once again.