ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JUNE 21, 2004

WASHINGTON - - If presidential nominees really did what they claim to do when picking a running mate, the task would be much easier.

Every presidential nominee says the same thing: The chief criterion for picking a vice president is “whether he or she is ready from Day One to become president of the United States.”

Because that is the only real duty (aside from occasionally breaking ties in the Senate) that a vice president has, you’d think it would far overshadow any other consideration in the selection process.

And if it actually did, then it would be fairly easy for John Kerry to pick from his alleged short list of finalists: John Edwards of North Carolina, Dick Gephardt of Missouri, and John Vilsack of Iowa. (There may be other names, of course, and surprises are always possible.)

Is there one name that leaps from that list in terms of being ready to be president from Day One?

Would it be John Edwards in his first term as a U.S. Senator from North Carolina, having previously been a personal injury lawyer?

Would it be Tom Vilsack, in his second term as governor of Iowa, having previously been an Iowa state senator and the mayor of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa?

Or would it be Dick Gephardt, in his 14th term as a U.S. Representative from Missouri?

Did you pick Edwards? If you did, you are probably a member of the media, who have been swooning over Edwards ever since he began campaigning for president last year.

By the end of his campaign, Edwards had won exactly one primary, his birth state of South Carolina. Edwards kept telling voters he could carry the South in the fall, but he was savvy enough to drop out the week before primaries in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. If Edwards had entered those primaries and lost, his southern support would have been exposed as mythical, which might have made it hard for him to run again.

Edwards proved himself to be a spirited and eloquent campaigner - - his “Two Americas” theme was one of the best the pack presented - - and he finished second in the Iowa caucuses behind John Kerry.

Edwards’s supporters believe his second-place finish never got the attention it deserved (it was overshadowed by the virtual collapse of the Howard Dean campaign) and they have gone around with huge chips on their shoulders ever since.

They have a sense of entitlement: John Edwards is entitled to be vice president because…well, because he is that’s all. He is handsome and articulate and exciting and Kerry better pick him if Kerry knows what’s good for him.

Never mind that Edwards and Kerry are not thought to be very close and never mind that Kerry looks at his own career - - nineteen years in the U.S. Senate preceded by being a lieutenant governor preceded by being a prosecutor - - and compares it to Edwards’s single term in office and finds, perhaps, Edwards a bit wanting in the experience department.

The Edwards forces have mounted a very vigorous campaign for his vice presidential selection. And so we see stories about how Edwards will not just carry states in the South (though they are rarely named) but also rural areas of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri. And we see stories about how trial lawyers will give huge amounts of dough to the Democrats if their fellow trial-lawyer Edwards is put on the ticket.

The campaign has been so vigorous in fact, that it has virtually painted Kerry into a corner, a place no nominee likes to be. I can guarantee you that if Kerry picks someone other than Edwards, the second question (if not the first) asked of Kerry at the announcement will be: “Why didn’t you pick John Edwards?”

John Edwards almost certainly has a brilliant career ahead of him in national politics. I can easily see him battling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination some day.

But is John Edwards ready to be president today? Over Dick Gephardt?

Can John Kerry really sell that one? With a straight face?

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JUNE 16, 2004

SIMON SAYS:
Admit it: You hate buffets as much as I do.

What's with all these thunderstorms? Did we have all these thunderstorms before George W. Bush was president?

I know you have always wanted to know which are stalagmites and which are stalactites. Stalagmites build up from the ground and stalactites hang down from the roof of the cave. How do you remember which is which? Stalactites hang “tight” to the roof. Tites/tight, get it? (Just another example of how my six years of high school were totally worth it.)

Anybody remember Beechnut gum?

When I saw the four living ex-presidents at the Ronald Reagan funeral they all looked like they were thinking the same thing: “When I go, I bet I’m not getting a send-off like this!”

If the administration really believes Saddam Hussein is linked to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, then we have every right to bring him to the United States and try him here rather than turn him over to the new Iraqi government. (And we could give them Michael Jackson in exchange.)

The Democratic Convention is $5 million over budget and it hasn’t even begun yet. And we’re supposed to trust these people with the economy? Three suggestions: One, cut the first day when nobody is paying attention anyway. Two, charge speakers $25,000 for every minute their speeches go long. Three, auction off the vice presidency.

Best Rat Pack member: Dean Martin.

Buying a computer has become very, very easy as computer companies have put huge resources into the training of their salespeople. But getting a computer problem solved is very, very difficult, because computer companies don’t put resources into fixing what they have sold. In other words, once a computer company has your dough, it doesn’t really care about you any more.

Memo to the Los Angeles Lakers: Did I forget to mention defense?

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, 31 percent of all adults and 17 percent of all children in the United States are seriously overweight. And they always sit next to me on airplanes.

I’ll bet there are at least three pairs of shoes in your closet that you have not worn in the last three years.

Wonder why the nightly news is filled with all those pharmaceutical ads? Could it be that mostly older people watch the news?

Three things you can do to get out of jury duty: Pretend you only speak French. Tell the judge all left-handed people are guilty. Claim you died five years ago and forgot to report it.

President Bush announced Wednesday that talk radio is being introduced in Iraq. This is a good thing?

Wonder what happened to all those aluminum siding salesmen? They became home security salesmen.

The top three things travelers need in their hotel rooms these days: Power outlets, power outlets, and power outlets. (And it would help if you didn’t have to crawl behind the TV set or the bed to find them.)

How young is too young to own a cell phone? Do 10-year-olds really need them? And how do you keep the kids from using them to call their bookies?

I should never be allowed to wander alone in a Home Depot. Last week I came home with an air compressor. Now, I have no idea what to do with all this compressed air. (No, I do not want suggestions.)

Have I mentioned recently that you are never to put ketchup on a hot dog? Hot dogs are meant for mustard. Pickles are also OK on a hot dog, but the pickles must be cut lengthwise. Consider yourselves warned.

Does anybody still wax his own car?

Delta Airlines announced Wednesday it cannot survive “as is.” Gee, I wonder why. It couldn’t be because passengers have finally gotten fed up with lousy airlines that provide unfriendly service at high prices, could it?

Paperback Pick of the Month: “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon.

Remember: If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JUNE 14, 2004

WASHINGTON - - You can stomp it, you can beat it, you can drive a stake through its hear, but it will not die: The media will not let go of the John McCain for vice president story.

John McCain has said he does not want to be John Kerry’s running mate so many times, he probably figures that someday, somebody will believe him.

Maybe, maybe not.

The media love John McCain. We would love him to be on a national ticket so we could ride on his bus again, recount his saga and just hang out with him.

Most candidates will not hang out with reporters. (And can we blame them?) But McCain is different. I went with McCain and a small group of reporters to Vietnam in 2000 after he had lost his presidential primary fight against George W. Bush and McCain hung out with us all the time.

We all flew over together and landed in Hanoi. McCain headed for the lake that he fell into on Oct. 26, 1967 when a SAM missile took off the right wing of his Skyhawk dive bomber.

"It was over there," he said, pointing. "The power plant. That's what we were trying to hit."

McCain and his fellow flyers were carrying out the first U.S. raid on central Hanoi. Hanoi at that time was the most heavily defended city in the world, and you today can still see the SAM missiles in place here and there, crowded by shops selling cellular telephones, sportswear and T-shirts honoring Ho Chi Minh.

When the wing came off, McCain ejected from his plane, breaking both arms in the process. He fell into a lake, was captured and spent the next five and a half years in prison.

The story is, by now, well known and on this trip McCain would visit the prison, the Hanoi Hilton - - again - - visit the lake he fell into - - again - - and talk to reporters almost endlessly as Vietnam got ready to celebrate "Reunification Day", the day 25 years before when Saigon fell to the invading forces of the North.

McCain had made this trip no less than seven times before. This time NBC was picking up the tab for him, his wife, Cindy, and his 13-year-old son, Jack, so that McCain could do the "Today" show live from Ho Chi Minh City, which just about everybody still calls Saigon.

Some 53 percent of the Vietnamese population and 35 percent of the U.S. population were born after the war ended. Yet the war remains a defining moment in American history and one reason that John McCain remains an appealing figure is because of his war-time experience.

McCain's story is a powerful one and one he has used very effectively throughout his career. When John McCain goes to Vietnam, he is going back to his future.

"I miss the (presidential) campaign, I really do," he said. "I miss the excitement. It was great. And then it just...stopped."

Primary campaigns are usually meat grinders, turning the losers (and often the winners) into hamburger. McCain came out as prime filet.

One hundred Republican candidates asked him to come campaign for them, and his best-selling book - - "People waved it at me from the crowds like the Chinese holding up Mao's Little Red Book," McCain joked - - is being turned into a movie.

"We struck a chord," McCain said. "It surprised all of us, including me. We struck a very deep chord, it lingers on and it continues to resonate."

Not since Ronald Reagan lost to Gerald Ford in 1976 has a losing candidate so enhanced his personal image. Reagan made 75 speeches the following year, never stopped campaigning and won the presidency four years later when he was 69.

Now McCain is trailing reporters around the world, as on this day when he went to Hanoi's Truc Bach Lake, which he fell into after his plane was shot down.

Today it is a peaceful setting in a city filled with motorcyclists madly honking their horns and filling the air with gray exhaust fumes. McCain stood next to the bizarre memorial to his capture, a tan concrete slab that pictures him falling from an Air Force jet.

"That is the greatest insult of all," McCain, a Naval aviator, says. "But it looks better than last time I was here. It was all overgrown with grass and there was bird crap everywhere."

He points to burnt sticks arrayed around the memorial and says he has been told that people are now coming and lighting incense to him.

I asked him if people are now worshipping him as a god.

"Damned if I know," he replied.

Next came a visit to the infamous "Hanoi Hilton", most of which has been torn down to make room for an office and hotel complex. McCain lead reporters through the small, dank cells, where his captors tortured him and killed some of his fellow POWs.

"I still bear them ill will," he said. "Not because of me, but what they did to my friends."

I asked him if searches for the faces of his captors on the streets when he comes to visit and if he contemplates taking any revenge.

"No," he said quietly. "I don't want to see them. Would I do something to them?" He paused. "I don't know."

Then his face split into a grin. "I mean, after the war, I went on to a great life! And they're in Vietnam!" he said.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JUNE 9, 2004

WASHINGTON - - “It is never too late,” George Eliott once wrote, “to be what you might have been.”

Ronald Reagan very much believed in that. He refashioned himself any number of times, always keeping track of the goal, never keeping track of the clock.

As was often pointed out when he ran for president in 1980, he would become 70 within a few months of being inaugurated. Only William Henry Harrison had been that old upon taking office and he had died of pneumonia six weeks later.

Ronald Reagan did not care. Things had always worked out for him. Which was one source of his optimism: He had always achieved everything he set out to achieve. He had gone from humble beginnings - - he had grown up poor in central Illinois and remembered hauling his alcoholic father from the snow banks where he had passed out - - to become a sportscaster then an actor then a governor and then president.

He had always attained his goals, had always lifted himself up by his own bootstraps, and saw no reason others could not do the same - - once he lifted the burden of the welfare state from their shoulders, that is. “The real destroyer of the liberties of the people,” Reagan said in his famous 1964 televised speech on behalf of the Republican Party, “is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits.”

Such things were not needed. Not only did his own life prove it, he felt, but so did the other great influence on his thinking: the movies. In the movies, things almost always turned out for the better. Things almost always turned out just swell.

Reagan knew the movies were fantasy, but he knew that Americans loved fantasy and it was a world in which he liked to dwell, a world where America was always right, where good always triumphed over evil, and where a sunny, can-do attitude and a bright smile were better than a pocketful of gold. “For Ronald Reagan, the world of legend and myth is a real world,” said Patrick Buchanan, former White House communications director, in 1988. “He visits it regularly, and he’s a happy man there.” Buchanan meant it as a compliment.

Presidents we now associate with hope and optimism - - John F. Kennedy, for instance - - often were quite somber in their speeches. In his inaugural address Kennedy had pledged to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

This was not the language of Ronald Reagan. He promised peace and prosperity, guns and butter, a triumphant America and a vanquished Soviet Union - - all without any real sacrifice on the part of the American people.

“Let’s make America great again!” he would say. (Simplicity, in life as in the movies, was always a virtue with Reagan.) And his “morning in America” was designed to be in marked contrast to the gloom and doom of Jimmy Carter’s “malaise.”

Things would work out because they always did, they always had. All Americans needed was a leader who could give them a sense of confidence, inspiration and hope. Just as he had done in the movies. Just as he had done when he played a dying football player and asked his team to “win one for the Gipper.” As Reagan told David Brinkley near the end of his second term, “There have been times in this office when I’ve wondered how you could do the job if you hadn’t been an actor.”

Perhaps his greatest skill as a candidate and a president was to believe utterly in whatever he was saying at the time he was saying it. Reagan never stopped acting and never saw anything wrong with that.

“Do you think of yourself as a politician?” a reporter once asked him.

“No,” Ronald Reagan replied. “Ex-actor.”

But he also had the actor’s flaw of wanting to win over his audience whenever and however he could: According to historian Garry Wills, in 1983 Reagan told the Israeli prime minister he had served in an Air Force unit that had filmed Nazi death camps. It was not true; Reagan never left the United States during his military service. But it was right for the moment. The scene played.

On the eve of his election in 1980, a reporter asked Reagan what people saw in him. “Would you laugh if I told you that I think, maybe, they see themselves and that I’m one of them?” Reagan replied. “I’ve never been able to detach myself or think that I, somehow, am apart from them.”

It was true. He and his audience were one. He had no doubts about the future of this country. None. And neither did those who supported him. At the end of his second term he said, “And whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts.”

And when that sad day came in 1994, when he wrote a letter to the American people announcing he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, even then, he chose to focus on what was bright and hopeful and good.

“When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be,” he wrote, “I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.”

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JUNE 7, 2004

WASHINGTON - - I first began covering Ronald Reagan in 1976, when he ran for the Republican nomination against Gerald Ford. Reagan lost, but ran again in 1980. That year he not only won the nomination, but went on to defeat Jimmy Carter for the presidency.

The following column appeared on March 16, 1980 and carried a dateline from Belleville, Ill.:

The girls lean forward on their knees, looking up at the stage. They are wearing white blouses and blue slacks and bright red ribbons that say REAGAN in white letters.

Their home-permed curls are crushed beneath straw hats that repeat his name in blue letters. In each hand they hold a pom-pom.

Their incredibly young faces - - uncreased by care, unmarked by worry - - follow the candidate’s every word with unblinking devotion.

Ronald Reagan stands above them flanked by an American flag and a local politician. He is wearing a blue-black houndstooth jacket reminiscent of a forties dance band or a fifties bar mitzvah. On his right lapel he wears a white rose surrounded by baby’s breath. His dark hair glistens under the shopping center lights.

He is in one of those shopping centers that has destroyed 10 acres of countryside greenery to re-create 10 acres of countryside greenery. There are trees and plants, walkways of fake brick and lighting that conveys a faint Main Street, good-old-days air.

Reagan is concluding his speech. “I just hope,” he says, pointing down to the crouching girls in front of him, “that these children will know the freedom we once knew.”

The applause is warm. Members of the crowd hold up signs saying, “Thank You For Opposing ERA.” A four-year-old girl, sitting petitely on a chair, waves a sign saying, “We Love Ronnie,” back and forth over her head with two hands.

The Collinsville High School Band strikes up “When The Saints Go Marching In.” People cheer and press close to the restraining ropes to shake his hand. He works the crowd slowly, enjoying the crush.

Although Reagan left Illinois more than 45 years before, he likes it here and in a sense he is home. His speech works, the laughs work, the lines work, the theme works.

And the theme these days is good times for all.

“How many times has Jimmy Carter come before us and acted as if this economy were our fault,” he says. “As if it were some kind of plague that came out of the air because you and I we’re spending too much, we’re buying too many things, we’re living too well.

“Carter says we’ve got to get used to austerity and sharing and scarcity and give up luxury,” Reagan says. “Well, I don’t believe that! I think we should cover our children’s ears when they hear that kind of talk!”

And who could be a more perfect candidate to sell this? This guy is happy. Let others should you how the glass if half empty. Ronald Reagan will show you how it is half full and will promise to fill it up until it slops over on your shoes.

He says he wants to slash the budget and the applause is tremendous.

He says he wants to increase military spending and the crowd goes wild.

He says he wants to stop inflation and he brings down the house.

He says he wants more luxury and everyone cheers. What the heck. Why not more guns and butter? And not only guns, but the biggest guns, the best guns. And butter? We’re talking the high-priced spread, prosperity like you’ve never seen.

Why not? Let others promise you less: Ronald Reagan promises you more.

“The president is trying to tell you we’re energy poor!” he shouts. “He’s trying to tell you to give up driving or drive less or dial down your thermostat or turn it off or wear blankets!”

The audience is laughing with him now at that crazy ol’ Jimmy Carter. What an old lady that guy is!

“We’re not energy poor,” Reagan tells them. “We’re rich. Rich!”

What, us worry? Not us. Not America. We’ve got so much, why, if big government would just get out of our way, the goodies would flow from the cornucopia like milk and honey.

And it goes over here. He shakes hand after hand, the press trailing along behind.

And when we go back to the press bus, there, next to the driver is a plastic garbage pail filled with ice and studded with glorious cans of Stag and Budweiser beer. Cans so glistening and cold that the beads of water on them look like dew on a mountain flower.

And on each of our seats, a box lunch of fried chicken! With cole slaw and potato salad and a shiny red apple. And do we tear into it! Fifty reporters rippin’ into that old chicken, sippin’ down the suds, and lookin’ and noddin’ at each other with big, greasy smiles.

And it strikes me that we have found a metaphor for the Reagan campaign.

Ronald Reagan - - For the Good Life!

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JUNE 2, 2004

WASHINGTON - - According to a recent article in the Boston Globe, the George W. Bush campaign is "counting on" Laura Bush to "energize the party faithful and shore up the president's eroding support among suburban women and soccer moms by humanizing him as a caring family man, softening his tough-guy image while emphasizing his steady hand in scary times."

This might seem like a lot. After all, we rarely listen to vice presidents, let alone First Ladies.

But Laura Bush is a potent campaigner. And I am not talking about when she is giving speeches scripted by the East Wing (which is where First Ladies have their offices these days.)

As it turns out, Mrs. Bush does really well in live TV interviews, such as her appearance not long ago on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

She was very funny. How funny was she?

Here are some excerpts:

Leno: Now, you have discussions with your husband, obviously. Do you offer opinions?

Mrs. Bush: Actually, when he was running for Congress the very first time, his mother told me -- Barbara Bush said - - never criticize George's speeches. So I really took her advice to heart and never criticized any of his speeches.

I knew there were plenty of other critics without me being one of them. Until one night, we were driving into our driveway and he said, “Tell me truth, how was my speech?” And I said, “Well, it wasn't that good.”

And with that, he drove into the garage wall. (Laughter and applause.)

Leno: Wow.

Mrs. Bush: That's really true.

Leno: Now, you were in Las Vegas last night, I imagine partying until dawn? Did you gamble at all while you were there? Did you pull a slot machine? Did you go to a Chippendales show? (Laughter.)

MRS. BUSH: Jay, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. (Laughter and applause.)

Leno: Wow, that's the last answer I expected to hear. (Laughter.) Let's hope the President went to bed early. (Laughter.)

Mrs. Bush: He did; he was in another time zone.

Leno: Sometimes the President will say something and do you ever say to him, why did you put that word in the speech or why did you say - - because there were certain - - like I remember there were a couple of phrases that really got to be - - axis of evil and evildoers and these type of things.

What is your opinion on that? Do you ever say, that seems a little strident, that seems a little - - you know?

Mrs. Bush: Sure. But not in time, usually. (Laughter.) He's already said it.

Leno: Wow. How does one unwind in the White House? Do you have a guilty pleasure? Have you ever watched a reality show?

Mrs. Bush: We watched the very first Survivor a lot during the 2000 campaign in motels across the United States, a lot of them in New Hampshire and Iowa and other places. But, no, we watch baseball.

Leno: Baseball, okay. Are you a big fan?

Mrs. Bush: I'm a huge fan. When he owned the team, we went to about 60 games a year, and I loved that. Baseball is very relaxing. It's long and it's slow and you have plenty of time to watch and daydream and do everything else. (Laughter.)

Leno: There you go. Now, obviously, the convention is coming. Is it me, or does this campaign seem like the nastiest in a while? It seems like they start earlier and earlier. It seems to me, where we are now would have been maybe July or August a number of years ago. I mean, the intensity, the amount of money. Does it seem that way to you? From your side, how does it seem?

Mrs. Bush: Well, you know, I don't know how to say that. I think the fact is, campaigns are always like this. They are always alike in one way which is, of course, you want to make your opponent look the worst you can possibly make them look, I guess. I think that's what happened. (Laughter.)

Leno: Well, thank you. I know you have to run. I want to thank you very much for coming by. I didn't even get a chance to ask you if George was a good salesman when he was at Sears.

Mrs. Bush: He was a very good salesman at Sears.

Leno: How far do you think he could have risen at Sears if he hadn't become President?

Mrs. Bush: President. (Laughter and applause.)