I can’t defend Governor Easley’s comments about the N&O not being “nice” to him – and accusing the paper of a “hatchet job.”

 

In a recent term-ending interview, the Governor said he often avoids public events because he likes to have time to think things out. He should have thought this out better. He sounded small and petulant. I don’t know him well, but I never thought he was small or petulant.

 

Easley and Seth Effron said the N&O should have noted that the number of probationers who killed dropped 25 percent from the Hunt administration. They may have a good point. Why didn’t they make it before now?

 

Now that I’m done giving the Governor PR advice, I’ll give some to John Drescher, the N&O’s executive editor.

 

Drescher might have been better advised to defend the series with the-facts-speak-for-themselves terseness that Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post used during Watergate: “We stand by our story.”

 

Instead, Drescher said:

 

"Gov. Easley might be the only person in North Carolina who thinks our probation system is working well and that the state is monitoring probationers as it should. The correction secretary himself has acknowledged the state needs to do a better job."

 

That sounds like something a politician would say. It makes the argument sound personal and reinforces Easley’s criticism.

 

Drescher should have stuck by this statement:

 

"Our job is to dig, and we're going to keep digging. We'll do that in a professional way."

 

Period, paragraph, end it. Enough said.

 

The N&O will keep digging during the Perdue Administration. One wonders: What will the Drescher-Perdue relationship be like next January 1?

 

 

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People have been dying in our state mental hospitals for lack of care; our parole system is so broken criminals on parole have murdered 580 people – and, now, Governor Easley says, at the end of his term, that it’s a shame the mean ole News and Observer hasn’t treated him ‘nicer.’

 

The governor puts it this way: “My job,” he says, “Is to be nice to other people and their job is to be nice to me. Just because they're not doing theirs, doesn't mean I shouldn't do mine.”

 

Alright, let’s grant Governor Easley a surplus of personal politeness and charm – but, that said, his definition of ‘niceness’ seems to have an odd twist. After all, is letting a mental patient die after sitting in a chair for two days without care – ‘nice’?

 

The governor also says it’s a shame that after 33 years of government service, with three weeks left until his retirement, the News and Observer did a ‘hatchet job’ on his State Correction Secretary, Theodis Beck. One almost feels the governor could have been describing himself. But if we’re gonna define success in governing based on a standard of niceness – well, was the governor and Secretary Beck losing track of thousands of paroles ‘nice’ – or negligent?

 

N&O editor John Drescher was pretty diplomatic in his response to the governor. He could have simply paraphrased Harry Truman and said, They say we give ‘em hell, but we’re just talking about their records and they think it’s hell.

 

 

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The smoke’s clearing from the election and the voter statistics tell a simple straightforward story: Four years ago African-Americans were 19% of the voters – this year they were 25%.

 

Obama’s campaign said it was going to turn out 250,000 new African-American voters – and darn near did it. Thanks to Obama’s relentless ‘ground game’ this election, for the first time, African-American turnout (at 74%) was higher than ‘white’ turnout (at 69%).

 

The result: Before the election polls (projecting a slight increase in turnout among African-Americans) showed Obama needed 38% of the so-called ‘white vote’ to win. He successfully increased Black turnout to 25%, which meant he only needed 33% of the ‘white vote’ – he got just a smidgen more and won.

 

The bottom line: Obama won the old-fashioned way. He got his voters to the polls.

 

Where does this leave Republicans? I recently had an email from a Republican elected official who asked: Will Black turnout be this high again in 2010? Who knows. But in politics always assume the worst.

 

The Democrats have (or will have shortly, from the Board of Elections) the name of every African-American who voted in 2008. They’ll even know who voted the first time. And, with Obama in the White House, it stands to reason these new voters aren’t going to suddenly lose their interest in politics. It also stands to reason Democrats are smart enough to do everything (and more) in 2010 to turn out African-Americans – that Obama did in 2008.

 

To win in 2010 Republicans need a strategy that recognizes that 75% of the African-Americans are going to vote next election – just as they did in the last election.

 

If we assume otherwise we’re acting like ostriches – and sticking our heads in the sand.

 

 

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Carter’s recent post about Obama and Afghanistan reminded me of the remark that earned Bob Dole his hatchet-man reputation. In his 1976 vice presidential debate with Walter Mondale, Dole referred to the casualties America had suffered in “Democrat wars” in the 20^th Century.

 

As with most controversial remarks, there was truth to what Dole said. World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam all began under Democratic presidents. The only “Republican Wars” were the two Gulf Oil Wars begun by the two Bushes.

 

Child of Vietnam that I am, I worry that Afghanistan will turn into The Best and the Brightest Part II.

 

Obama has pledged to send more troops to Afghanistan. Was that a campaign ploy to show he wasn’t too soft? Like LBJ not wanting to be the first American president to lose a war, will the fear of looking soft lead to another losing war?

 

I had lunch not long ago with David Zucchino, a former N&O reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on South Africa. He’s been a foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times. (“I now work for a bankrupt paper,” he notes.)

 

Zucchino is based here, but he spends months at a time covering Iraq and Afghanistan. He was embedded in the military spearhead that liberated Baghdad.

 

He points out a big difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq is now relatively safe, but Afghanistan is wild and lawless. And that is the history of both countries. Iraq had a strong central government, albeit Saddam’s dictatorship. Afghanistan has for years been a roiling series of tribal wars and invasions with no central government.

 

Does Obama think he can change that with 20,000 more American troops? Is our mission to tame Afghanistan – or simply to cripple Al Qaeda? I’m no foreign policy expert, but I can read history. I hope Vietnam isn’t repeating itself.

 

 

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For Christmas, I usually ask for books. And I get some unexpected pleasures. Unexpected this year was Jacob Weisberg’s The Bush Tragedy, which I started reading Christmas night and found captivating.

 

I hadn’t read it before, because I had expected predictable Bush-bashing. But Weisberg – who makes the perceptive observation that journalistic insight often comes not from uncovering a great secret, but from simply paying attention to what is in plain sight – interprets George Bush’s failings through the lens of his relationship with his father and other strong men from both sides of his family.

 

The more I watch politicians, the more I believe that their relationship with their fathers is key.

 

Take both Bushes. W. has alternately tried to compete with and distinguish himself from “41,” who had to live up to his father’s rectitude and record.

 

Barack Obama wrote a book about searching for his father. So did a would-be President, John McCain.

 

Bill Clinton never had a father figure, and his life shows it. Reagan’s father was a drunk. Nixon’s dark personality was rooted in parental drama. Ford was adopted; Carter’s was a pillar of the community.

 

Then there was Joe Kennedy.

 

Most men spend their lives trying to live up to their fathers – or live them down.

 

Obama, unlike W., has spent a lot of time thinking about the meaning of his father and their relationship, or lack of one. And he wrote it down long before he got into politics. His self-examination may account for his remarkable self-assurance.

After sixteen years of Bush-Clinton psychodrama, we have a President who has made the effort to know himself.

 

 

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A Blue Christmas is a Merry Christmas for Democrats. Not so much for Republicans who are sure the end of the world is nigh. So let me offer a note of hope and cheer.

 

Yes, the news is bad. Retail sales are down. Home sales are down. Car sales are so down Toyota is losing money. The market is down. Our 401(k)s are down. Banks aren’t lending. Builders aren’t building. Confused consumers – who were blamed for the crash because they spent too much and saved too little for too long – are now told they’re to blame for the bad economy because they’re spending too little.

 

The only business that’s up, it seems, is war.

 

Even nature is bad to us. Half the nation is snowed in. Flying is a nightmare. Driving is down even though gas prices are down. Tax revenues are down and the roads won’t get fixed. But traffic is still a bear.

 

Of course, the news is always bad. That’s the nature of news.

 

Things could be worse. We’re not scrambling for corn on the side of the road like starving children in Zimbabwe. Unlike Putin’s Russians, we’re free to argue, demand change and denounce our leaders.

 

When I went to the mall Tuesday, there were plenty of cars. Plenty of people with plenty of shopping bags and apparently plenty of money to spend. Plenty of people who didn’t look like they had missed many meals.

 

But we must dig deeper to find the true meaning of this season.

 

My son, whose birthday is June 17, informs me that an astronomer has determined there was a bright star in the night day over Bethlehem on June 17, 2 A.D. So my son now refers to that as True Christmas, as opposed to False Christmas December 25.

 

Of course, he is discounting the Christian tradition of incorporating pagan traditions into the True Faith. Like celebrating the winter solstice. And without the combination of Christmas and New Year’s Day, we would not have this wonderful two-week period every year in which the world of government and politics all but shuts down.

 

Unfortunately, the sun all but shuts down, too.

 

On top of all that, this year we have the quadrennial tradition of transitions.

 

Transitions can be melancholy. I remember Jim Hunt’s final December in 1984, leaving office after losing the Senate race to Jesse Helms. Those were heady times for Republicans, who couldn’t wait to seize power in Raleigh and Washington.

 

It was better in 2000. Hunt went out on top, with a Democrat succeeding him. But things weren’t so good in Washington.

 

Mike Easley’s last month does not seem to be a happy one, dogged by charges of nepotism and mismanagement and dodging The News & Observer.

 

Bev Perdue is spending her transition trying to wrap up her Cabinet in one big present. Delivery apparently has been delayed.

 

Then I get a personal letter from former Senator John Edwards asking me for contributions to the Wade Edwards Foundation, a worthy project.

 

I spent two years helping Edwards get to the Senate. So I might have been surprised that the letter uses my first name: “Dear James.”

 

But I wasn’t surprised.

 

The lesson is this: Christmas – like all of life – is about people. It’s all personal. We’re all in this together.

 

So this is my special holiday wish – and sincere thank-you – to all who read this blog. To Democrats and Republicans alike. To blue dogs and yellow dogs and red dogs alike. To those who worship, whatever your faith. To those who don’t worship, too; maybe one day this will no longer be a de facto test for public office in America. To those who love Obama and those who loath him. To those who admire Rick Warren and those who abhor him.

 

Buck up. The solstice has passed. The sun is coming back. Spring and summer lie ahead. Even the economy will come back one day.

 

A happy, health and prosperous New Year to you all.

 

 

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George Bush may have screwed up everything else in eight years, but even he knew better than to drive America’s automobile industry into bankruptcy at Christmas.

 

Not so with Tennessee Senator Bob Corker and some of his Republican colleagues in Congress.

 

All I have to say to them is: Keep driving, boys. Because – if they seize the wheel – they will drive the GOP off the cliff for years to come.

 

They will erase any memory of Reagan-era prosperity. They will make Herbert Hoover look like Santa Claus.

 

They will seal the Republican Party’s identity as a low-wage party. On one hand, they raised hardly a peep about banks and financial companies paying their executives millions, taking billions from the taxpayers and refusing to tell us what they’re doing with our money.

 

But when it comes to the hourly pay of autoworkers, Republicans are ready to go to war!

 

Now that we Democrats are in charge of fixing this mess, we need to get our story straight: The Republicans got us here, and they’re determined to keep us here. The only solution is to reduce them to permanent minority status. Just 40 of them in the Senate are too many for the sake of our country’s prosperity and well-being!

 

 

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Don’t those words have a startling ring – after all, Democrats loathe wars (and instead, at least, these days in Congress, seem to have fallen in love with bailing out Wall Street billionaires).

 

But, now, the Democrats have a war of their own – and they’ll own it lock, stock and barrel the moment Obama lifts his hand and takes the oath of office.

 

I’m not talking about Iraq – but Afghanistan. Because whatever happens in Iraq, Obama has pledged to stand and fight in Afghanistan – and the peace wing of the Democratic Party might ought to have paid closer attention.

 

Because things in Afghanistan don’t look too good. Right now.

 

For instance, Obama’s new Secretary of Defense (designee) just returned from Kandahar, promising he’d rush 20,000 more troops to Kabul before any Taliban spring offensive – which will bring the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan to 54,000.

 

Is Secretary Gates speaking for his old boss – George W. Bush – or his new boss – Barack Obama? Or both?

 

How far are we from victory? Opium production is higher than ever, the Taliban is stronger than it has been since 2001, air strikes have killed so many civilians even our puppet president – Hamid Karzai – is condemning us and in one week hauling supplies over the Kiber Pass we lost hundreds of trucks.

 

Obama’s Secretary of Defense to be says victory means a “sustained commitment for some protracted period of time” – then in the next breath compares Afghanistan to the Cold War, which lasted 45 years. Our generalissimo in Afghanistan, David McKiernon, is a little more optimistic. He says it will take – minimum – three or four years to get the Afghan army up to snuff so it can go toe-to-toe with the Taliban.

 

How will Obama sell that to the antiwar Democrats whose tolerance for fighting any war that lasts longer than a Super Bowl party is non-existent?

 

If General McKiernon is right we’re still going to be fighting in Afghanistan about the time Obama runs for reelection. Who’d have expected that?

 

 

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The Washington Post said last week that the one group largely unrepresented in Obama’s key team is Southerners.

 

As Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise, surprise!”

 

The story didn’t mention that the official voice of the White House will have a Southern accent. That’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who grew up in Alabama, went to N.C. State and worked for N.C. Congressman Bob Etheridge.

 

Obama’s picks reflect his background and his inner circle. That’s true with all presidents. JFK brought in Bostonians and Harvards. LBJ and both Bushes brought Texans. Nixon and Reagan, Californians. Carter, Georgians. Clinton, Arkansans.

 

Besides, who from North Carolina – or anywhere in the South? – was out front for Obama early on? Mostly it was younger people who aren’t Cabinet-level picks.

 

There were no replays of Terry Sanford breaking ranks to endorse JFK in 1960, a risky move that paid off big for the state. Luther Hodges got Commerce, and the Research Triangle got the national health institutes.

 

Obama might have picked Jim Hunt for Education. But at 71, though still going full tilt, the Eternal Governor is not at a point in his life when he wants to spend four years in Washington. Not that he will hesitate to tell the new administrations in Raleigh and Washington what they should be doing, of course.

 

Given the flak he has taken over mental-health and probation, Governor Easley is not exactly a hot draft pick right now. And he endorsed Clinton in the primary.

 

Who else is there? Kay Hagan won. The Democrats in Congress all won. Erskine Bowles has a job. Richard Moore somewhere at Treasury, maybe?

 

Of course, one big name is missing: John Edwards. With his endorsement of Obama in the primaries, Edwards was positioning himself for something big. Poverty czar? Labor? Even attorney general?

 

Always, in the end, politics is personal.

 

 

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The political world is in a frenzy of moral dudgeon over the alleged high crimes and moral misdemeanors of Governor Rob Blagoyevich. The nerve of him! Wanting to make money off the appointment of a new Senator!

 

Besides, get a load of his hair.

 

Then I read a story about Governor David Patterson of New York considering Carolyn Kennedy for appointment to another vacant Senate seat. One of Kennedy’s strengths, New York politicos say wisely, is that she can raise a lot of money for the Kennedy-Patterson ticket in 2010.

 

I am confused. Someone explain the difference to me.

 

Blagoyevich is charged with wanting a couple of hundred thousand dollars for himself and his wife. Patterson apparently wants about $15 million for his reelection campaign.

 

I understand the law. It is illegal for a public official to take money in exchange for an official action. As in the notorious pay-to-play scandals that sent several of North Carolina’s finest public officials to the pokey.

 

But apparently it is not illegal to take campaign contributions in exchange for an official action. At least so long as it’s done with a Monty Python wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

 

As Michael Kinsley once famously said, the real scandal in politics is not what’s illegal, it’s what is legal.

 

No wonder people are cynical.

 

 

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The rumor this week has been that Governor-elect Perdue will appoint her Cabinet Friday. Other rumors have it that she’s still having trouble filling some key positions, like DENR and DHHS.

 

Dumping the whole load at once is a different media strategy from past Governors. Most rolled out their appointments one by one. Each secretary got his or her day in the sun, and the Governor-to-be got to set out public goals for each department.

 

When I prepped Governor Hunt’s appointees for the announcements, I always told them it would be the easiest session they would ever have with the press: They hadn’t screwed up yet.

 

But what does this mean for Perdue’s media strategy and relations the next four years?

 

Friday is the last live news day until Monday, January 5. That’s the week of her inauguration.

 

Another leading indicator: Perdue reportedly told a big conference call this week to call her when they want to send her a message. Don’t send emails, she apparently said: You saw how much trouble Mike Easley got into with the media over emails.

 

The question: Does she view the media as the enemy?

 

One thing is for sure: If she treats them like the enemy, they will be.

 

The media has to be viewed through the lens of a governor’s powers. And one of the office’s biggest powers is that it commands a big microphone.

 

Rachel Perry, communications director for Hunt III and IV, always called it the “bully pulpit.”

 

Today it’s an electronic pulpit. Governors can communicate directly with voters online. At the same time that newspapers and broadcasters are cutting back their coverage.

 

The media is neither friend nor fee. It’s a beast. And it must be fed. Or it will eat you.

 

 

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A group of my friends have been having a more or less ongoing debate between ‘Decliners’ and ‘Optimists.”

 

The ‘Decliners’ take one look at, for instance, the governor of Illinois and say, You see, look, one more proof virtue is kaput. The country’s headed downhill and there’s no turning back – the American Republic has more or less reached the state of the Roman, Spanish, British and French Empires in their twilight and the question is how long we stagger on until we become, say, the modern day equivalent of Sweden.

 

The ‘Optimists’ take the exact same view of our current state but steadfastly see a light at the end of the tunnel: To them the nation’s virtue, while in retreat, is still intact and rebirth is imminent.

 

Of course, since this is essentially a debate among Republican males no one is inclined to see Obama as representing any sort of source of hope;—we see our own, Republican, politicians as little better than snake oil salesmen so you can imagine how we see Obama.

 

Now I’ve been favoring the Optimists but trying to keep an open mind to the proposition the world is ending and the other night I saw something on TV that said loud and clear the ‘Decliners’ may be right: A promo for a new reality show.

 

To entertain the American masses Hollywood is putting three hunky bachelors (who look like they may have been ballroom dancing instructors on Dancing with the Stars) and thirty-six babes (who look like they may have been playboy pinups) in a chateau – it’s a seraglio with thirty-six geishas and three caliphs and as the cameras roll they’re going to let nature take its course – the promo ended with a guy and doll in a steamy hot tub blissfully clinking Champaign glasses.

 

But that’s not what’s shocking.

 

What’s shocking is the very last scene of the promo – these entertainment wizards have put the girls’ mothers (the hunks’ prospective mothers-in-law) in the castle with them and the last scene shows a prospective mother-in-law who looks like she may be related to Dick Butkins marching grim-faced toward the hot tub, dropping her towel as her daughter is luxuriating with the hunk of the day.

 

Think of it: A harem of nubile females, a trio of lusting males and a battalion of harridans (mothers-in-law) locked up in a castle to entertain three hundred million Americans – which, I guess, is our modern day equivalent of Nero’s feeding people to the lions to entertain the Roman masses.

 

We’ve come a long way since All in the Family, just thirty years ago. And, oh, yes, the next promo I saw was for a program called Wife Swap.

 

 

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I take a back seat to no one when it comes to being a John F. Kennedy hero-worshipper. I shook hands with him in 1960. I was 11 years old. He was campaigning with Terry Sanford, and they stopped at Glenwood Village to change cars. JFK was to me what Obama is to my kids.

 

So why am I not enamored with the idea that Caroline Kennedy should be a United States Senator?

 

Yes, it would certainly be nice to continue the 56-year-long tradition of a Kennedy in the Senate.

 

But what – beyond her name and star power – does the late President’s daughter offer?

 

She was never publicly active in politics until she endorsed Obama this year. She has spoken out vaguely in favor of non-controversial things like the arts, public service, the Bill of Rights and the need for more profiles in courage. All good, that.

 

But – unlike, say, Hillary Clinton – Caroline has shown no appetite for the hard, grueling work of politics. No listening tours through upstate New York. No gritty, day-to-day work winning over real politicians, building coalitions and passing real legislation.

 

One Democratic friend of mine – a Hillary supporter who came around to Obama – sees something hypocritical in the Kennedys objecting to another Clinton in the White House, but now mounting a campaign to put another Kennedy in the Senate.

 

Sour grapes, maybe. But, more and more, Senate seats seem to go only to those with Big Names or Big Money – or both.

 

Is the Senate becoming a de facto House of Lords?

 

 

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A year ago Democrats couldn’t dredge up a candidate against Liddy Dole – now they’ve got ‘em coming out of the woodwork to take on Richard Burr.

 

Burr has a litany of problems. For instance, he’s not nearly as strong a candidate as Mrs. Dole and he needs to get that fact clearly in focus – and do what she didn’t. Run like he’s ten points behind from Day One.

 

Second, the money equation in a Senate race has changed. Democrats have upped the ante. Burr’s facing raising $15 million – and that’s a mountain to climb. And he ought to count on Charlie Schumer upping the stakes, say, another five million.

 

The Democrats also just plain old outpunched Elizabeth Dole. Burr will face a similar blitzkrieg – he’d better be ready for a tough campaign and he’d better figure one slip like Elizabeth Dole made at the end of her campaign and he’s done for.

 

He also can’t sit back and let himself be a punching bag – Mrs. Dole demonstrated the time to fight back is while you’re ahead, not after your lead vanishes.

 

And don’t count on 2010 being a ‘good year.’ Count on it being a bad year. No party had swept two straight elections in seventy years – but the Democrats did it in 2008. Seventy years ago – in 1936 – they swept the third election too.

 

Finally, Republicans have had a long dry spell. They need something to cheer about – or at least to get their fighting blood up. I expect for Burr, like most Senators, controversy is a shoe that does not fit too comfortably. But he needs to pick a fight and dive right into it – and it’s not voting for bailouts for Wall Street (or Detroit). He needs to give his own troops something to fight for.

 

Bottom line: Assume all the bad news is true – in fact, assume it’s twice as bad as it seems and run scared. Burr’s got plenty of reason to be and it’s the surest way to win.

 

 

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Governor-elect Bev Perdue has done a lot of listening lately. Maybe too much.

 

The highly publicized public forums that her transition team held – and the 14 reports that were generated – may not help her a bit when it comes time to stop listening and start governing.

 

They may make her job harder.

 

The team heard a litany of complaints and problems, along with pleas for more tax money. If there is one thing Governor Perdue will not have, it is money. And did a single problem or issue come up that she had not heard already during the campaign?

 

Yes, I know: people supposedly love it when government listens to them. But Perdue has already said her decisions will make a lot of people mad. Her transition process may have raised more hopes and expectations that she can’t meet.

 

 

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Republicans today remind me of Democrats after Reagan won in 1980: Determined to become a permanent minority party.

 

If I could be a mole and dupe the GOP into a sure-fire strategy for self-immolation, I would keep them doing what some Republicans seem determined to do anyway:

 

• Drive GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy.

 

• Ignore the economy and focus on tying Obama to Governor Blagojevich.

 

Most important, go all out to cut autoworkers’ pay – but don’t make a peep about the salaries of the financial executives who are getting bailed out.

 

I’m no economist. I have no idea whether bankruptcy is the best or the worst solution for the automakers. I do know what the news coverage will be like if the car companies go under. It will be a firestorm about jobs lost, plants closed and lives devastated.

 

Certainly, I would want the Republicans to get full credit. Just like after 1932, they would spend the next 20 years living down their reputations as modern-day Herbert Hoovers.

 

Given how bleak the landscape is for the GOP, I understand them going after Obama: “He’s from Illinois, too!” “Rahmbo and Blago talked to each other!” “What did the President-elect know and when did he know it?”

 

It’s a form of temporary insanity. They can’t abide Obama’s 70 percent approval ratings. And, hey, a drumbeat of hysterical attacks and conspiracy-theorizing worked with Bill Clinton.

 

Well, sort of.

 

Now, if they will only make Sarah Palin the presidential nominee in 2012.

 

Good work, fellows. Keep it up.

 

 

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After the election, people would ask me: “Aren’t you glad the campaign is over?”

 

Hell, no. I miss it. I miss the wall-to-wall attack ads. I miss the overheated blogs. I miss the sound and fury.

 

Now all we have to talk about is policy and personnel. Yawn.

 

So let’s get on with the 2010 races!

 

Public Polling Policy says Roy Cooper leads Senator Richard Burr 39-34. Will Burr continue the string – dating back to Jesse Helms in 1996 – of no Senator from North Carolina winning reelection?

 

Why is Burr’s approval rating so low? Two reasons: He’s a Republican in a bad time for Republicans. And he has kept a low profile.

 

Cooper makes sense as a Senate candidate. His consultants are talking him up, as consultants will. He was the top vote-getter in 2008. And he can run without stepping down as AG.

 

I also hear Richard Moore. He and Cooper are jockeying. But did Moore hurt himself with his Confederate-flag attacks on Bev Perdue? Even Governor Hunt called down Moore, who served in Hunt’s Cabinet.

 

The Great Mentioner has also mentioned Congressman Heath Shuler. Other Congressmen – David Price, Bob Etheridge and Brad Miller – also get mentioned. But they’d be giving up all-but-guaranteed lifetime passes to Congress.

 

What’s missing, so far, are any female candidates. If I was looking for the perfect Democratic challenger – given what happened this year – my first priority would be a woman.

 

Say, Elaine Marshall. Or the next Kay Hagan in the legislature.

 

History would say the calendar favors Burr. It will be Obama’s first off-year election. But the Obama Boom may be kicking in then.

 

There. Doesn’t feel good to get back to some real fun?

 

 

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Well, the parole system is broken and according to the News and Observer all kinds of parolees have been running around unsupervised and literally killing people – so which political party is howling bloody murder and up in arms to solve the problem?

 

The Democrats.

 

Senate Leader Marc Basnight, it turns out, is about the only major elected official who’s lifted a finger to do anything.

 

After reading yesterday’s newspaper, I called a state legislator and asked, How did the Department of Crime Control get in this mess? He said, Well, the problem is that, basically, the people running the Department are all chosen for politics.

 

In other words, they get their jobs because of politics. They’re holding a political sinecure – not a real job. And it’s the politics that matter – not their performance. If the system’s broken, so what – it’s not their efficiency at keeping track of dangerous parolees that determines their continued employment; it’s their adroitness at politics.

 

Until, to their surprise, the News and Observer put them on the front page of the newspaper. Then they all started pointing fingers at their subordinates. So, where does the buck stop? Well, on the desk of our absentee-missing-in-action Governor Mike Easley.

 

Which leads to a troubling question – why are Democrats doing all the howling? Where are the Republicans? Why are they missing in action too?

 

We’re watching another government meltdown ultimately caused by the mistakes of a Democratic administration and legislature – so why aren’t Republican leaders holding them accountable – instead of talking about how building offshore drilling rigs are going to attract tourists?

 

As odd as it sounds when it comes to cleaning up the mess and getting dangerous parolees off the streets it’s not Republicans in the legislature who’re offering solutions – it’s Marc Basnight.

 

 

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Andy Jackson would roll over in his grave.

I just read Jon Meacham’s new biography, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. Meacham shows how Jackson saw himself not just as the executive head of government, but as the true voice of the people. He, not Congress, would chart the nation’s course.

What would Jackson make of this morning’s News & Observer, which reported state leaders’ reaction to revelations the probation system lost track of 14,000 criminals.

The lead quotes were from Marc Basnight. Coming in second was Governor-elect Perdue. Missing – again – was Governor Easley, who promised the N&O a phone call but didn’t dial in.

Maybe it was because Basnight’s quotes were pithier. He may not be a college graduate, but he knows how to express outrage: "a rotten performance." "They have failed all of North Carolina." "Who in the hell did that?"

The words North Carolinians want to hear from their elected leaders.

Perdue wasn’t nearly as colorful: "The whole system is in need of repair…. There is a disconnect that has to be fixed, and I'm going to fix it."

It could be that, after eight years of Easley’s laid-back style, the media looks first to the legislature as the center of action.

Will Perdue change that?

When Jim Hunt was governor, he was always the lead in the story. But, when he returned to the office in 1993, he faced a Democratic legislature that had become accustomed to being in charge with a veto-less Republican in the governor’s office.

Like Jackson, Hunt saw his role as being the primary person who could speak for all North Carolinians.

On issues like probations reform, everybody will be pulling in the same direction. The real test comes when there is something unpopular to be done – like, say, raising taxes. Hunt had to take the lead in 1981 when he raised the gas tax. Easley, Basnight and Jim Black joined hands in 1993.

Bev Perdue is the first true creature of the legislature to be elected governor since Jim Holshouser in 1972. Being the first Republican governor since the Stone Age, he did not have a happy experience with the legislative branch of government.

What approach will Perdue take?

 

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After I read Gary’s blog yesterday I called and asked for a copy of the article where Rep. House Republican Leader Paul Stam declared offshore oil derricks would be tourist attractions; it turns out Gary gave a speech to a Chamber of Commerce group Stam also spoke to – so Gary heard it with his own ears.

 

So within days of his unanimous reelection as Republican leader, ‘Skip’ Stam has announced he favors building offshore oil derricks to attract tourists – what will Republicans come up with next? The party of Lincoln’s ‘soaring new birth of freedom’ and Reagan’s ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ has become the party advocating oil wells as tourist attractions.

 

Yesterday an elected official sat down in my office and said, You know, I’ve been a Republican thirty years but I’ve got to admit I’m pretty discouraged about the state of my own party. I’m sure Skip meant well and, in all likelihood, just slipped and got his lips moving before his brain clicked into gear – which we’ve all done.

 

Democrats are riding pretty high these days with Obama filling his cabinet with a Team of Rivals – maybe he ought to consider Skip for his press spokesperson.

 

 

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Obama’s now sailed into the seas called the Terrors of Victory;—after a fellow wins something as grand as a presidential election he’s just naturally tuckered out and feels he’s earned a few days rest. That’s when the trouble starts. While he’s resting, since he can’t personally appoint all the under-secretaries and deputy secretaries and assistant secretaries in his government, he’s got to find someone to do it for him.

And you can bet every one of all those jobs matters to someone – say, like the deputy secretary of FDA matters to a pharmaceutical company. So, while he’s resting and delegating they’re figuring out how to get their friends appointed and, of course, if that name ever reaches Obama’s desk it won’t have stamped on it ‘nominated by Pharma’ – it will have a resume with a long list of credentials and accolades, probably – given Obama’s background – including degrees from Ivy League universities.

So a lot of times the seeds of a political movement's – say, Obama’s crusade for change – defeat are sewn right there alongside its victory.

Richard Morgan’s got a funny story about this in his memoir, The Fourth Witch. Here’s how Richard first encountered the terrors of victory:

In 1978, I signed on to another campaign and learned one more lesson: Winning can be as treacherous as losing. I ran Jerry Whipple’s campaign for sheriff and in a minor miracle for the first time in a hundred years Moore County elected a Republican.

The cause of the treachery was love.

Not Romeo and Juliet love but what I once heard a Baptist preacher call other woman love.

About as soon as Jerry got sworn in he fell head over heels in love with the dispatcher in the sheriff’s office. Only no one knew it. Not his wife. Or her husband.

Then one morning Jerry and the dispatcher disappeared. They just vanished. We had a jail full of criminals and no sheriff in sight. Worse, since we couldn’t find Jerry we couldn’t replace him. He hadn’t officially resigned and, legally, he was still the duly elected sheriff.

The blessing that followed that bit of sinning was odd.

As a result of blind dumb luck we finally found out Jerry and the dispatcher had run off to New York and the party leaders got in touch with him long enough for Jerry to say even if we were short a sheriff he wasn’t coming home – which everybody took as a back-handed resignation.

We picked the Pinehurst police chief, a Democrat, James Wise, who’d attended the FBI Academy to replace Jerry. Jim Wise was the most popular sheriff ever in Moore County and served for sixteen years, until he retired.

You can purchase a copy of Richard’s book here.

 

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Joe Biden warned us that Barack Obama would be tested. We just didn’t realize the test would come within six weeks and would come from crooks at home, not terrorists abroad.

 

The “pay to pick” scandal in Illinois is getting so much attention we’re all going to learn how to pronounce Gov. Blagojevich’s name. Republicans and Fox News are in full cry, sensing the first chink in Obama’s armor.

 

I think Obama will pass the test. Here’s why.

 

• He has astoundingly high positive ratings right now. He has a big credit balance in the public’s mind – if he handles the next few days and weeks right.
• He has been famously at odds with Jesse Jackson, Sr., who was caught during the campaign wishing to cut Obama’s nuts off.
• Obama and Rahm Emanuel knew that Blagojevich was radioactive – and they apparently kept their distance.
• What some people see as Obama’s “cool” always struck me as cold political ruthlessness – an essential quality in a successful politician. He’ll cut their nuts off.

 

There is an uncomfortable racial aspect to this story. Black politicians always believe they are unfairly targeted by white media and prosecutors. But there is a tradition of “street money” in black politics. There has always been a hint of the corporate shakedown in Jesse Jackson, Sr.’s civil-rights activities. In North Carolina, we saw the conviction of Rep. Thomas Wright. The Legislative Black Caucus got enmeshed in ethical questions.

 

Obama has always kept his distance fr