Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who once described himself, quite flatteringly, as a buffoon, appears to have been elected Mayor of London, displacing the competent but unpleasant Ken Livingsone.
I never even thought he was that funny on the radio.
I predict that Londoners will regret this, although not as much as we regret Bush — but only because the Mayor of London doesn't have as much power as even the Mayor of New York.
John McCain famously supports the war in Iraq. Today he said that the war in Iraq was about oil. Even CNN recognized this for the huge gaffe that it is — you just can't say that in the US, especially if it might be true. So they called his campaign and offered McCain a chance to explain/retract. And explain it he did: making it much worse.
McCain's explanation? Despite the context which pretty clearly refers to the current Iraq War, McCain now says he meant the First Gulf War—when the US came to the rescue of Kuwait after Iraq invaded it.
In other words, McCain's explanation is that what he was saying is that in a world where the US had energy independence he'd use that freedom to abandon allies like Kuwait if they were invaded, but would support a policy of attacking and occupying countries like Iraq when they don't invade their neighbors.
I. Am. Not. Making. This. Up.
In any rational media ecology this would be a million times worse than something your ex-pastor said. Can I at least hope for a little box on page one promoting the article on A24?
Pop-Up Double Talk, Episode 2: Health Care
Bonus double-talk: Compare this statement at TPM:
Slowly but surely, Republican presidential candidate John McCain is putting some distance between himself and unpopular President Bush.
This week it was the ill-timed “Mission Accomplished” banner that the White House hung behind Bush five years ago when Bush declared major combat operations over in Iraq.
“I thought it was wrong at the time,” McCain said in Cleveland Thursday
With this video of what McCain actually said at “the time”:
CAVUTO: … Senator — after a conflict means after the conflict, and many argue the conflict isn't over.
MCCAIN: Well, then why was there a banner that said 'mission accomplished' on the aircraft carrier? … the conflict — the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished.
The Miami Daily Business Review ran an article yesterday about our Dean search, but it's behind their paywall so I can't link to it. Despite a couple obvious inaccuracies — as far as the faculty knows, for example, it's not clear if we know yet who all the candidates will be — it's a pretty balanced look at what's going on, at least as far as I can tell.
Along the way, the article reports on a view that I am not surprised to hear from some alumni:
But some alumni say the school’s next dean should have strong ties to South Florida’s legal community to support fundraising and create job opportunities for the school’s graduates. Departing Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul G. Cantero III and Miami lawyer Brian Spector were named as possibilities.
“People like Raoul Cantero or Brian Spector are probably the types of leaders that law schools need for the future,” said Miami forensic accountant and lawyer Lewis Freeman, an alumnus and booster of UM and its law school. It’s “going outside the box of academia for people with real world experience.”
I think it's understandable that smart people who live at some remove from the institution would feel this way. But I also think that as regards our short-term future they are — sorry to be so blunt — dead wrong.
A local lawyer is not going to have much of an edge in getting our students local jobs (and a former judge even less so). On the other hand, it's possible that right local lawyer might be an excellent fund raiser, maybe even better than the right academic (although in all honesty, I'm not actually sure that is true). Fund raising is undoubtedly a major part of a Dean's job. But at this time in our history, what we need as much as money is an administrator who knows law schools, understands how to run a construction project, and whom we don't have to train. Law schools are different from firms (and courts) culturally, politically, and administratively. Let's take each in turn.
The cultural problem is the easiest to overcome. There are practitioners and judges who get the academic mission, and who appreciate the central importance of scholarship in a law school. I certainly know some. So while this is a most critical of these three areas, it's also the one where the supply of qualified practitioner/judges is greatest. But because this is so important, it's the area where a faculty will be most wary: it's not enough for a candidate to talk the talk — they have to have done it. Any practitioner, and probably any judge, who hasn't written at least a few law journal articles or a book is not going to be a serious candidate, especially in this law school where the self-image, at least, is one of scholarship as well as teaching and service.
Which brings me to the second issue: politics. I don't mean left-right — although a far-right torture-loving Dean wouldn't work here — but rather personal politics. A University isn't like a law firm: most of the inmates have life tenure. You can't vote them off the island, or even cut their partnership share in any substantial way. It's the ultimate “herding cats” environment. People used to more hierarchical work environments, not to mention used to judicial independence, are with very very rare exceptions simply not prepared for what's in store. There are almost no whips to crack, and even if you do it, it usually ends up rebounding. Yet you can't go far without significant buy-in from the team.
Then there's the administrative side. From what I can tell, a lot of being a good Dean is making sure that other people have the details covered. To do that, you have to know what they are. On-the-job training is possible, but the learning curve for a person new to law school administration, who hasn't even had a ringside seat as a professor, is frighteningly steep. I'm fairly sure that right now — in a school with a US News deficit and some substantial construction projects likely in its near future — isn't the best time to undertake that training project … if it can be avoided.
I do agree that practitioners have a lot to offer a law school as teachers and members of our community. I've consistently supported ideas such as “practitioner in residence” and the hiring of academically oriented practitioners for various types of faculty posts, including in one case full tenure, depending on their writing experience. But teaching what you know is very different from managing what you don't know.
The key mistakes that the practitioners quoted by the DBR make is thinking that law schools are not part of the “real world” and that being in or even running a law firm gives you easily transferable management skills. Law schools today are in fact complex organizations with tight budgets, unusual rules, peculiar labor forces, diverse and active constituencies, extensive relations with the greater University, and complex goals. They are hard to administer — much harder, I'd think than a court (at the end of the day, there's always a bailiff…), and very different from a law firm. There are very few non-lawyers who you should trust to argue a case for you without some specialized training first; similarly, there are very few non-academics you should trust to be a Dean of a law school without some acculturation and experience first. And all of them see law schools as very 'real world' indeed.
It seems you can get thrown out of a town meeting and questioned by the Secret Service for asking a Republican candidate to deny a published story that he once lost his temper and called his wife a bad name.
Ask a rude but nonetheless legal and reasonable question, get thrown out of a public meeting. Such is 'democracy' in these United States.
(Note, incidentally, that McCain didn't deny it.)
It sounds as if McCain is trying to get into a Bush Bubble, where he'll be protected from anything he doesn't want to see or hear. Which makes sense if you consider he's running to serve Bush's third term. But definitely makes you wonder who he'll find to reprise the Cheney role as veep….
The Taddeo for Congress (Florida's 18th District) campaign had a party yesterday evening to celebrate the opening of its new headquarters and I went along to see … partly because they invited local bloggers, partly from nostalgia — back in the day I worked on three different Congressional campaigns, topping out as the press secretary for one in Northern Virginia.
It was a good event, and marks a hopeful start for what must be, despite everything going for it, an uphill campaign. The Taddeo for Congress office is located at 11509 S. Dixie Highway, in the Suniland Shopping Center. It's not visible from the street as it is tucked behind a giant Starbucks. (Back in the day, you sited your campaign HQ near donuts so you could feed the volunteers. Now I guess they buy their own lattes.) The offices occupy a space bifurcated by the pleasant pedestrian alley that runs down the side of the Starbucks. They've set up one side for volunteers, and the other side is for the staff offices. (The volunteer side used to be occupied by my favorite local computer repair shop, Get Your PC Back, which has moved inconveniently further south.)
So far there are six paid staff members on the Taddeo campaign: Anastasia Apa, the campaign manager, who I gather grew up in the area and has done political work in Florida and elsewhere; Ross Cohen, the Deputy Campaign Manger, a recent veteran of Afghanistan but still very young-looking, two finance people who seemed on the ball, a PA for the candidate, and Mario, the first campaign intern. They've also got some energized volunteers, including one formidable young lady who Taddeo in her speech recognized as being almost full time and who indeed had an admirably proprietorial air towards the HQ.
I saw a lot of good things: the crowd was enthused, the Herald and one TV station showed up, the candidate did well (more on this below), the offices seem usable, and the location is as good as anything for this unbelievably spread out gerrymander of a district that runs from the southernmost tip of the Florida Keys, up through Homestead, a bit of Kendall, some Pinecrest, grabs my neighborhood near the University of Miami, keeps running north to hit some of the more traditional Cuban blocks to north of the Tamiami Trail, and then zooms east to include some of Miami Beach.
I also saw some signs of an office that is still teething: they have stickers but not buttons or yard signs (I want a yard sign!) and they don't have a press person, so the TV camera filmed the candidate against a blank background instead of one with a flag and/or a big campaign sign. (And all you find under the “issues” tab on their web page is “coming soon” — couldn't we have at least a set of bullet points? I'll even offer to write them.)
The race has to be the most uphill of the three South Florida Congressional races in which serious Democratic challengers are taking on Republican incumbents. Joe Garcia — who turned up to lend his support — has the most national glitz, and maybe the best chance of the three given the limited popularity of his opponent in FL-25. Raul Martinez (FL-21) has his machine. What does the Annette Taddeo campaign have? It's got the American Dream, the idea that there comes a time when regular folks stand up and run for Congress because the nation is running in the wrong direction. And it has a photogenic candidate with a great personal story.
Taddeo's speech was pretty good, and perhaps more affecting for seeming a little unscripted. It started strange to my campaign-practiced ear — rather than launching right in, Taddeo sounded almost tentative at first, saying that the decision to run had not been easy. She had wondered about whether “to go against someone who has, in some cases, done a good job”. (What's this, praising the arch-villain?) But, Taddeo said, “I saw some things that were just not going in the right direction.” As a businesswoman, she became concerned about the economy; and then there was the war — and here's where Taddeo energized the crowd. Ros-Lehtinen, she said sadly, supported the war every step of the way. Then, her voice emotional rather than angry, Taddeo said “we need to get out of Iraq and get our soldiers out of Iraq.” The crowd clapped loudly.
Any Democrat running against a die-hard Bush supporter like Ros-Lehtinen can expect to be pilloried by the right wing for urging a pullout. But Taddeo has a pretty good comeback: her late father, she said, fought in WW2 and Korea. “I recall how angry and upset” he was about the war and about the use of WMDs as an excuse for the invasion. “I'm sure he would be proud of me now” for stepping up to oppose this war. “I know he is watching me.”
Anyone who tries to wrap themselves in the flag against this woman will have to contend with her father's approval beaming down from Heaven. It could work.
Sounding angry for the first time, Taddeo said that the thing that ultimately convinced her it was her turn to try to give something back to the country was “when my opponent voted against children.” (Note to the campaign: this is a good line. Use it often. Find a half dozen other sound bites like it.) This third issue is — or should be — a major one for this district which, while it has a few rich neighborhoods also has more poor ones. Ros-Lehtinen voted again and again against SCHIP. How can we spend $250 million a day for the war and not provide health care for poor children, Taddeo asked. How can a rich country like ours put parents to the choice of paying the rent or buying medicine, or paying for their child's hospital bill.
Here again, Taddeo had a good personal story: she was born with a cleft palate. Her parents cared for her; and she can feel what it must be like for a parent to not be able to help a child. (It didn't hurt that a very pretty little girl of two or three, who I took to be Taddeo's daughter, had been upstaging the candidate earlier as she chatted with attendees.)
Then we got the pitch. And while this candidate may be a beginner, she's got that part down very well. The current gimmick is to ask 209 people to give $20.09 — to show that people who can't afford more still care about the campaign for the country's future. And, of course, those who could Contribute $2009 or even to max out were encouraged to do that too.
Joe Garcia said something about how he envied the nice offices, and Taddeo shot back, “That's what happens when you put a businesswoman in charge!” It was nice to see a hint of steel. Dave Patlak, who ran in 2006, was there (sporting an Obama pin), and he led the crowd in chants of “Taddeo Today, Taddeo Tomorrow” which got a laugh at first, then had everyone joining in.
The Taddeo campaign officially kicked off on February 26th, and in less than five weeks it took in more than $325,000 — although looking at the numbers, I have to think that a serious chunk of that came from the candidate herself rather than donations. For comparison, Raul Martinez , who got an earlier start, raised $615,000; Joe Garcia raised about a third of a million from donations.)
Unfortunately, at the close of the most recent reporting period, Ros-Lehtinen reported $1.72 million cash on hand after raising $880,000 since the last election. That's a cash mountain. Make her spend it all, Annette!
The 18th is reputed to be a safe seat for the GOP; it was certainly drawn that way. But is it really so safe any more? Our district has changed in the last decade. The Cuban vote is not monolithic, generationally or attitudinally. My Cuban neighbors hate the war. Ros-Lehtinen has an opponent who is articulate, passionate without being hostile, Hispanic, female, and raised six figures in four weeks. Uphill, yes, but a real contest to look forward to.
Jotwell Blenderlaw