Before Iraq, there was Vietnam.

 

Before America got bogged down in a war in the Middle East, we got bogged down in a war in Asia.

 

Before America had a President trying to prove he is tougher than his father, we had a President trying to prove he was tougher than his predecessor.

 

Before America had a know-it-all Secretary of Defense determined to remake the military his way, we had a know-it-all Secretary of Defense determined to remake the military his way.

 

After Vietnam, the President went back to Texas in disgrace to lick his wounds.

 

After Vietnam, the Secretary of Defense spent decades wracked by guilt.

 

After Vietnam, America went through shell-shock for decades.

 

After Iraq, what?

 

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Brace yourself. I have something good to say about George W. Bush.

But I’ll probably end up taking it back.

Bush went to Orange County, California, Monday.  He talked about immigration.  And he spoke out clearly against the anti-immigrant demagogues in his own party: 

 

“I know this is an emotional debate…but one thing we cannot lose sight of is that we’re talking about human beings, decent human beings.”

 

He’s right.  Right many Republicans have lost sight of that.  

Bush went on.  He dismissed one of the demagogues’ favorite proposals:

 

“Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic.  It’s just not going to work.”

 

Way to go, George.  I give you an atta-boy.

But here comes the part where I take it back.

It turns out he was talking to 300 business owners.  It turns out he was telling them they shouldn’t be penalized for hiring illegal immigrants.

In other words, this wasn’t a heartfelt speech about immigrants who are “decent human beings.”  It was about a key political constituency that makes decent political contributions.

Well, I tried to say something nice.

 

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How much trouble does President Bush think he is in over Iraq?

 

A lot. 

 

Witness three news items:

 

1. Bush’s photo op in California eating with GIs and their families.  A clear response to the generals’ criticism of Rumsfeld.

 

2. James Baker heading up a high-level group of review Iraq policy.  Which Condi Rice reportedly resisted.  I doubt VP Cheney and SecDeaf (that’s right, not SecDef but SecDeaf) Rummy are happy about it either.

 

3. The pathetic response Scott McClellan was given to mouth in response to Osama’s newest tape.  Scott (who’s not a bad guy, he just says what he’s told) mouthed:  “The al Qaeda leadership is on the run and under a lot of pressure.”  Well, they’re neither running so fast nor pressured so hard they can’t stop to make a tape for the world.

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I’ve posted several items about anti-immigration politics.  And immigrant-bashing clearly is the strategy of at least one wing of the Republican Party.

 

It may work.  Enough voters may be xenophobic enough – or even racist enough – to buy it.

 

But here is a history prediction: In decades to come (maybe even sooner), Republicans will be just as ashamed of what they are doing now as they are of their defense of legal segregation in the 1950s.

 

Even Jesse Helms won’t admit today what he believed then. 

 

I believe that down the road a lot more Republicans will be trying to rewrite today’s history.

 

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I remember when Republican Clinton-haters chortled over reports that military personnel privately didn’t like or respect that Commander-in-Chief.

 

Now that six retired generals – including commanders in Iraq – are publicly criticizing Don Rumsfeld (and, by logical extension, this Commander-in-Chief), we hear a different tune.  We hear how important it is to respect civilian authority in defense matters.

 

I’ll let the irony speak for itself.

 

But I’ll add: at least that draft-dodging Democratic President didn’t get us into a killing field the way this draft-dodging Republican President has.

 

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There are two ways to keep score in politics: polls and money.

 

By the money measure, Democrat Richard Moore and Republican Bill Graham should be the leading candidates for Governor in 2008.

 

Moore has raised $1.3 million to Beverly Perdue’s $1 million and Roy Cooper’s $760,000.

 

Graham reportedly is spending $1 million of his own money on a televised campaign against the gas tax.  That should lead Sue Myrick’s $680,000 and Fred Smith’s $433,000.

 

Here is the question: Have Graham’s ads worked?  Will GOP primary polls show that the $1 million campaign (if it’s really that much) has bought him a lead?

 

Moore is running TV ads too.  Public service ads that supposedly are related to his duties as State Treasurer.

 

Have those ads bought him a lead?

 

Public-service ads worked for Mike Easley in 2000.  I saw it first hand, because I ran Dennis Wicker’s unsuccessful primary campaign against Easley.

 

I don’t pretend to understand Republican primary politics.

 

But, as for the Democrats, my sense is that Moore is running the most aggressive campaign.  Perdue and Cooper may need a wakeup call.

 

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Whether or not you agree with Congressman Walter Jones you have to admit he has a rare trait among politicians. There are many elected officials who are clever, intelligent or articulate – but there are not many whose courage matches their other skills.

 

Congressman Jones have has stood up and disagreed with his own President, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State about how the United States can best win the war on terrorism.

 

Today, the debate on the war in Iraq has boiled down to an argument between those who say we should stay the course and those who say we should get out. But one important question is not being asked: Why are we stuck in a war we should have won already?

 

Congressman Jones, in his own way, is looking for the question. He has asked for a full Congressional Debate on the war. And he is asking if Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, showed poor judgment as regards the war – poor judgment which may have included giving Congress inaccurate information.

 

I guess the point is, if you’re the Secretary of Defense and you advocate starting a war – you’d better have the judgment to win it.

 

Congressman Jones is not saying the war on terrorism is wrong. But he is saying is how we have fought it may have turned out to be wrong. He is asking who is responsible and he wants Congress to debate this issue.

 

These questions are important. The war on terrorism is not going to disappear, it is not going away – whether we pull stay in Iraq or whether we pull out. What is important – if we are to win the war on terrorism in the long run – is to learn from mistakes we have made in Iraq.

 

Congressman Jones is one of the few legislators raising those questions and he wants Congress to debate them. You, hopefully, don’t have to agree with him to concur that debate is important and the sooner it happens the better.

 

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The Charlotte Observer reports (3-9-06) there will be no election at all in almost half the 170 races for State House and Senate this fall.

 

In addition, in the races all but a handful of the races that are contested, practically, if not legally, the outcome is all but decided. Because of how legislators have drawn their districts. (In other words, the districts lean so heavily to either the Republican or Democratic Party, the opposing candidate has little or no chance of winning.)

 

In all, just 26 out of 170 races – 15% – are in districts where a Republican and Democratic candidate each have a roughly equal chance of winning.

 

That means 85% of the voters in North Carolina have no real choice in the elections this fall. 41% of them have no choice at all. None. Because the election is not even contested.

 

How does this happen? It happens because legislators get to draw the lines for the districts they run in.

 

This is also one reason we have so many scandals. How much is a legislator going to worry about the consequences – of say, ‘pay to play’ – if he or she is immune to being held accountable at the ballot box?

 

Why not give a government grant, or a job to a political ally, or a little ‘special’ say in a piece of legislation to a political friend or supporter if there is little or no possibility you’ll have to explain it to voters in the next election?

 

Getting legislators to agree to give up the power to determine their own districts is going to be almost impossible. But, while the legislature is considering ‘reforms’ to clean up politics, it would be hard to find one more important than making elections for State House and Senate truly competitive again.

 

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My old friend and adversary Jack Hawke sponsored a conservative gripe-a-thon in Durham last week.

"It is a travesty that North Carolina is controlled by the Democrats," U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx told the N.C. Conservative Leadership Conference.

I disagree, of course. I believe it's a credit to the good judgment of North Carolinians that Democrats hold the Governor's Office and both houses of the General Assembly.

But Jack had one thing right. The state GOP lacks a strong spokesperson. No star power, if you will.

In my view, Democrats have that quality of candidate on the bench for 2008. Berverly Perdue, Richard Moore, Roy Cooper, Bill Faison.

The Republicans have nobody. They're so desperate I hear talk about Senator Elizabeth Dole running for Governor.

But she's crawled into a hole so deep in Washington I doubt she can find her way back here.

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The Raleigh City Council has approved Mayor Meeker's new underground parking deck - to go with his downtown Hotel and Convention Center. This $45 million parking deck brings the total cost of Mayor Meeker's Center/Hotel complex to over $250 million.

What would taxpayers have saved if the Mayor had decided to build an above ground parking deck? $20 - $25 million.

That's enough to build a class high school.

This is a question Republicans should ask Meeker in the next election. Why is putting a parking deck underground more important than building a school?

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A few days ago I saw Republican Bill Graham’s TV ads blasting the state gas tax increase.  He and his ads are still running.

About the same time, I saw $3-a-gallon gas signs pop up.

Even the CEO of Chrysler has now accused the oil companies of gouging consumers.

But Graham, good Republican he is, has no problem swallowing oil executives lining their pockets.  He only chokes on the few pennies we spend for better roads.

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Sometimes politics seems to slip from the unusual to the absurd.

The Lottery Commission is spending $10 million on advertising.

But, according to the Winston-Salem Journal (3-15-06), under state law “No advertising may have the primary purpose of inducing persons to participate in the lottery.”

So why is the Lottery Commission spending $10 million on advertising? Alice Garland, lottery spokesperson, had a hard time answering that question. Ms. Garland said, “We believe you can educate people about the game and make it appear fun and entertaining, without enticing people to play.”

So, we’re going to show people the lottery is fun and entertaining – but that’s not enticing them to play.

It seems to me the lottery has turned out to be a can of worms in an unexpected way. It has brought more dishonesty to North Carolina politics than any government program in memory. And that’s saying a lot.

First, the Governor and the leaders in the legislature promised all the money would go to pay for new education programs. Then that turned out not to be true. Governor Easley has taken half the money to spend on other things. We’ve had what appears – we won’t know for sure unless the Attorney General indicts someone – to be illegal lobbying to pass the Lottery Bill. We’ve had the paid agent (who, apparently, no one knew was paid) of one of the gaming venders appointed to the Lottery Commission itself  – where, if it had not been for the newspapers, he would have been voting on who got lottery contracts. And we have Lottery advertising – but ‘not’ to get people to play the lottery.

The lottery is beginning to look like ‘Typhoid Mary.’ Maybe at first glance she looks harmless, but there are a lot of unexpected consequences.

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President Bush’s poll numbers are tanking because he forgot how he got to the White House.

 

The background is summed up well in an excellent piece in Time magazine this week by Joe Klein.  Klein is one of the best political reporters going.

 

Klein’s article – in which he says consultants have ruined politics – says Bush’s campaign understood something about 2004 race that Kerry’s campaign never understood.  The race wasn’t about issues.  It was about who voters trusted.

 

Bush’s message was “you may not agree with me, but you know where I stand.”  Plus: “You can’t believe anything Kerry says.”

 

(This, of course, will sound familiar to Carter and everyone who remembers the 1984 Hunt-Helms race.)

 

Well, that strategy worked for Bush.  Unfortunately, he forgot it once he was sworn in.

 

Here is why voters don’t trust him:

 

• He said Iraq would be easy, and he knew – or should have known – it wouldn’t.

 

• When the trailers were found (read today’s Washington Post story), he said we had found the weapons of mass destruction.  We hadn’t.

 

• He said that revealing classified information put America at risk.  Then he declassified information himself to get back at a political critic.

 

Now Bush is at the point – like Kerry – where nobody believes anything he says.  Not a good place to be.

 

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To me, there are two mysteries in the debate over Raleigh’s impact fees:

1. Who paid for the calls supporting higher fees?
2. Why would downtown development be exempt from higher fees?
   

First the calls.

The News & Observer says this is a partial text of one call:

Hello. If you are a taxpayer, it is urgent that you attend the Raleigh City Council hearing tomorrow, Tuesday, 6:30 p.m. It’s about impact fees and who is paying for our growth. Right now, you are — about 90 percent of it — while developers — who pay only 10 percent — are getting a huge subsidy from every taxpayer for the new roads and parks that impact fees should pay for.

Raleigh's fees on new development have not changed since 1987 and now the City Council is finally considering an increase. But the plan on the table would still leave taxpayers holding the bags for about $30 million every year.

We need to kill this weak proposal and put a better plan forward, as Mayor Meeker says. It is time that developers paid a fair share: No more taxpayer subsidies.

It is Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall. The developers will be there; we need to be there too. Come early and bring your friends. Let's get it done before another 20 years passes.

But The N&O said the call did not identify who is paying – and, thus, who stands to gain from higher fees.

Do Mayor Meeker and Bob Geary know?  If so, would they tell us?

Footnote: the Wake County Homebuilders, who paid for ads against higher impact fees, maintain that such anonymous calls may not be legal.

Second, downtown’s exemption.

As I understand an earlier comment on this site from Bob Geary, the higher fees would not be imposed on downtown development.  Apparently, as I understand Bob, that’s because downtown development requires no additional infrastructure.

Really? No road widening? No more water and sewer? No more police or fire protection? No more people using all manner of city services?

Is this justified? Or is Raleigh's government favoring downtown at the expense of the rest of the city?

This could become a lovely political fight in next year's elections.

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Supporters of former State Representative David Minor on the Wake County Board of Commissioners, ambushed their Commissioners on Monday (April 13) to get Minor hired as the county lobbyist.

 Earlier, Commissioners had decided not to retain Minor after several Raleigh legislators – the people Minor would be lobbying – said, in effect, ‘This isn’t going to make you any friends in the Legislature – it’s going to make you enemies.’

Commissioner Herb Council led the ambush to reinstate Minor. He made a surprise motion to give Minor $5,000 a month (through 2007) and it passed by a vote of 4 to 3.

So, now, Wake County has a lobbyist, lobbying people who are – shall we say – unfriendly to him.

With all the millions the County Commissioners spend each year, Minor’s $5,000 a month is a drop in the bucket. But a dollar here, a dollar there, and it adds up. But did we really need a lobbyist more than, say, a teacher – or to pay some of those bills the School Board says it so desperately needs money for.

 

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My Democratic friends are not only ecstatic about Tom DeLay’s fall, they are certain it presages the fall of the Evil Empire.

They’re convinced a Democratic “tidal wave” is about to engulf Washington and restore our party to its rightful majority in Congress.

I’m afraid they’re wrong. Three reasons:

1. Voters don’t believe Democratic politicians are any less corrupt than Republican politicians.

2. As I’ve said before, my party has an Achilles heel on protecting America against terrorists. Every day I wake up in fear that Howard Dean will start screaming that Saddam Hussein isn’t getting a fair trial.

3. Democrats – unlike the Republicans in 1980 and 1994 – don’t have a clear message for change.

“Had enough?” is sometimes enough to win. But not this year.

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Three Republican legislators have a remedy to the scandals in the State House. Representative Nelson Dollar, Paul Stam and Russell Capps say each party’s Caucus should appoint its members of House Committees. That the Democratic Caucus should appoint the Democrat members, and Republicans the Republicans. Instead of every Committee Member being picked by House Speaker Jim Black as is done now.

I mentioned Raleigh writer-activist Bob Geary in an earlier post. And he’s been kind enough to read and comment on our blogs.

The News and Observer (4-4-06) reports the ‘buzz’ in Washington is that John Edwards is running second in the Democratic race for President – behind Hillary Clinton. According to the Washington Newsletter Hotline, Edwards is “the only major candidate who seems comfortable going to Hillary’s left.”

The current debate in Raleigh over higher impact fees reminds of a political-consultant friend who liked to tweak his politician clients. When the politicians agonized about whether to support any tax increases, my friend would suggest – with a straight face:

“Tell them you support higher taxes on foreigners who don’t live in the United States.”

Impact fees, in other words, have become the sure-fire easy solution to raising money without making anybody mad.

I wonder if the business-development community will figure out a way to fight this political gorilla.

Here is what my friend Bob Geary – who is an excellent writer, fellow blogger and local political activist – said in a comment on my earlier post:

“Gary, I know you’d want to say in your attack ad that an impact fee is just another cost the city is putting on you IF YOU ARE BUYING A NEWLY CONSTRUCTED HOUSE OR CONDO ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN. (Emphasis in original.) Because, of course, impact fees are only levied on NEW developments, not on an existing “house or condo or any property.”
And the competing plan would exempt development downtown where the infrastructure already exists to support it.”

In other words, the only consumers who will pay more are people who buy a house or condo that isn’t downtown.

Bob and his allies on the Council are betting – politically – that these people are not going to be an effective political factor in the 2007 Raleigh races.

And the pro-fee crowd is betting heavily. I understand they paid for a lot of phone calls to Raleigh voters supporting higher fees – as an alternative to higher taxes.

I know the Wake Homebuilders are paying for anti-fee ads. Does anybody know who is paying for the pro-fee calls?

 

 

Last year, Democrat leaders in the General Assembly put $400,000 in the budget to give to the Sparta Teapot Museum.

Three Republican House members from Wake County waxed indignant this week about Speaker Jim Black. According to The News & Observer, the Three Musketeers “rolled out a list of reforms Wednesday that they say would limit the speaker’s power and open up how the chamber operates.”

No wonder President Bush is now telling Iraqi politicians what to do. His own party in Washington won’t listen to him.