The caucus chaos is a clear sign that the Conscious Conservative movement continues to grow. There are Neoconservatives, and President Bush tried to establish a Compassionate Conservative label, but it is the Conscious Conservatives who may represent the new power in the Republican Party.
Conscious Conservatives are those conservatives, mainly Republican, who have become compelled by the events of the past seven years to start putting some distance between themselves and George W. Bush as their political chief executive. They and he may still share some core ideologies and philosophies, but they have just become too conscious of Iraq and Katrina, cronies doing a heck of a job, executive power grabs, the word “terrorism” as a political tool, dangerous detainee policies, national surveillance practices and end runs on the Constitution. Unconscious Conservatives have witnessed these same things, and some of them may be nervous about Bush, but they wouldn’t give up his guarantees to pro-life, guns, and James Dobson, if Bush declared Congress unconstitutional and locked out the Supreme Court.
The irony is, they can have those things, and a competent chief executive, too, when the nation’s electorate becomes conscious-based, a consciousness that takes into account globalization, and terrorism, and the price of being lured into asymmetric warfare against the wrong enemy. No president may have been available, who could measure up to the demands on this country after 9/11, but President Bush’s record would not be too difficult to top. If consciousness, and not political railroading, had been a feature of the 2000 conventions and election, the nation may still have had a pro-life, evangelical Republican president, whose record today almost certainly would have to be preferable to that of George W. Bush.
Conscious Conservatives may be starting to realize something else. The administration points out, almost every day, that the nation has not been attacked by terrorists since 9/11. The emerging reality is that the 9/11 attack hasn’t ended yet. It was just the starting point, the place in Manhattan where the enemy plunged a syringe into the nation, injecting us with a fear-based virus that set into motion erosive events that are occurring still, unchecked. It is the source of much of the emotion in the immigration issue. Another is due process for detainees, and the law, signed in Fall, 2006, by President Bush, that deprives some people of the habeas corpus rule that is a cornerstone of United States jurisprudence.
Some of this new cadre of Conscious Conservatives enjoy high position. Every time you see a Republican office-holder trying to distance him- or herself from the president, you are looking at a Conscious Conservative. Their awareness became apparent before the November, 2006, elections, and will be a driving feature of the 2008 election.
The movement has had the effect of expanding the political middle. Not only Dubya-dubious Republicans, but independents and moderate Democrats have found Conscious Conservative appealing. I feel that I am one of those. I am pro-choice, but I am also pro-state’s rights, pro-less government, pro-taxes, as long as they are fair, pro-Constitution, pro-separation of powers, pro-business, pro-mom, pro-apple pie, pro-flag, a veteran, and pro-faith. If a person is pro-faith, how can he also be pro-choice? It is difficult, yes, but so is the woman’s position, and the decision she must make. Only she should have the right to make it.
Who would our candidate be? What a question that has become. Observers are astounded by this presidential campaign, say they have never seen another one like it. and it is only January. Hillary, Barack, Mitt, Mike and John have all won caucuses, and the two sides, in a stage change during one debate, even met onstage for some general back-slapping in the apparent notion that, whoever wins, things will be better. Who are these voters out there, creating this chaos? Democrats, Republicans, independents, evangelicals, united by the force of consciousness in unprecedented numbers.
January 23, 2008
A Patriots' Fan
On Sunday afternoon I became a Patriots fan. When Tom Brady got up from one knee and flipped the football to the referee, I put the great Chargers in my pocket and indulged in a moment of wondering just how good they will be this fall.
A great team lost to a great team, by a score that fairly measured the difference between the two. 21-12. As beat up as they were, it is not difficult to imagine the Chargers winning the football game. Under the conditions, it would have gone down as a victory for the ages. But there would have been sadness here, for the Patriots.
What a special team they are. They have been constant underdogs, for at least the last six weeks, against the achievement they sought. Football teams do not go 19-0 in the National Football League in the year 2007-8. Yet every week, the Patriots found a way. In his Boston Globe column after the championship game, Bob Ryan listed the scores of the Patriots' last seven games: 24-20. 31-28. 27-24. 20-10. 38-35. 31-20. 21-12. In that sequence, Ryan wrote, the Patriots embraced "all the classical virtues of just about every great team we've ever known."
The Chargers, a pretty great team themselves, who know something about being the underdog, understand that better than anybody. What other can I do, as a Chargers fan, but love the Patriots today?
I wrote a book about a winning streak. From 1954 into 1957, the Abilene High School Eagles won 49 straight games, including three Texas state championships, under coach Chuck Moser. I was not on those teams, but I played for Moser on the 1958 and '59 teams and later wrote about him in my tenure as a sports writer at The Abilene Reporter-News.
When the 1954-57 Eagles were named "The Team of the Century" in Texas high school football, I decided to write a book about the streak. The streak was the reason for the book, but the story that emerged was how they played the game. And that became the book's title: "Warbirds – How They Played the Game." Those teams had some great players, but how they played the game was mostly about the coach.
I feel that way today about the Patriots. They have some great players, but how they play the game is mostly about the coach. I am positive a book about Bill Belichick and the 2007-8 winning streak is already being written (Bob Ryan would be a good one) and will be published before summer, and I look forward to specific knowledge about him as a coach. From what I know, I believe I will be reading a few things that I will feel I have read before, somewhere.
I know that, first and foremost, Bill Belichick is organized. I know that Belichick commanded his team to play one game at a time. He still, in today's papers, refuses to rhapsodize on a winning streak. I know that his team will hit, and they will hustle. When you watch the Patriots, they run til the whistle blows. Sometimes it looks like they must have more than 11 players on the field.
What Belichick as a coach believes – and I am sure of this – is that his sole job is to provide his team its best chance to win. Everything he does strives for perfection. He knows perfection is not achieveable, but if his team can approach 75 or 80 percent of perfection, the team will have a distinct advantage over an opponent.
He didn't need to cheat. I think it will turn out not to have been his idea. He was responsible, as the head coach, and he knew he had to take the fall or lose an intangible, a bond with his players, that was more valuable to him than a $500,000 fine. The Abilene coach, Chuck Moser, said all good coaches had one thing in common: they could all develop aggressiveness in their players, yet be loved by the players. With the cheating behind him, Belichick's players in their organized, tight-knit community, went out and won their next 18 games in a row. That's the headline, but I'll be damned surprised if the book doesn't turn out to be about Belichick, and how his team played the game.
A great team lost to a great team, by a score that fairly measured the difference between the two. 21-12. As beat up as they were, it is not difficult to imagine the Chargers winning the football game. Under the conditions, it would have gone down as a victory for the ages. But there would have been sadness here, for the Patriots.
What a special team they are. They have been constant underdogs, for at least the last six weeks, against the achievement they sought. Football teams do not go 19-0 in the National Football League in the year 2007-8. Yet every week, the Patriots found a way. In his Boston Globe column after the championship game, Bob Ryan listed the scores of the Patriots' last seven games: 24-20. 31-28. 27-24. 20-10. 38-35. 31-20. 21-12. In that sequence, Ryan wrote, the Patriots embraced "all the classical virtues of just about every great team we've ever known."
The Chargers, a pretty great team themselves, who know something about being the underdog, understand that better than anybody. What other can I do, as a Chargers fan, but love the Patriots today?
I wrote a book about a winning streak. From 1954 into 1957, the Abilene High School Eagles won 49 straight games, including three Texas state championships, under coach Chuck Moser. I was not on those teams, but I played for Moser on the 1958 and '59 teams and later wrote about him in my tenure as a sports writer at The Abilene Reporter-News.
When the 1954-57 Eagles were named "The Team of the Century" in Texas high school football, I decided to write a book about the streak. The streak was the reason for the book, but the story that emerged was how they played the game. And that became the book's title: "Warbirds – How They Played the Game." Those teams had some great players, but how they played the game was mostly about the coach.
I feel that way today about the Patriots. They have some great players, but how they play the game is mostly about the coach. I am positive a book about Bill Belichick and the 2007-8 winning streak is already being written (Bob Ryan would be a good one) and will be published before summer, and I look forward to specific knowledge about him as a coach. From what I know, I believe I will be reading a few things that I will feel I have read before, somewhere.
I know that, first and foremost, Bill Belichick is organized. I know that Belichick commanded his team to play one game at a time. He still, in today's papers, refuses to rhapsodize on a winning streak. I know that his team will hit, and they will hustle. When you watch the Patriots, they run til the whistle blows. Sometimes it looks like they must have more than 11 players on the field.
What Belichick as a coach believes – and I am sure of this – is that his sole job is to provide his team its best chance to win. Everything he does strives for perfection. He knows perfection is not achieveable, but if his team can approach 75 or 80 percent of perfection, the team will have a distinct advantage over an opponent.
He didn't need to cheat. I think it will turn out not to have been his idea. He was responsible, as the head coach, and he knew he had to take the fall or lose an intangible, a bond with his players, that was more valuable to him than a $500,000 fine. The Abilene coach, Chuck Moser, said all good coaches had one thing in common: they could all develop aggressiveness in their players, yet be loved by the players. With the cheating behind him, Belichick's players in their organized, tight-knit community, went out and won their next 18 games in a row. That's the headline, but I'll be damned surprised if the book doesn't turn out to be about Belichick, and how his team played the game.
January 07, 2008
The Change Campaign
Barack Obama has hit an American nerve with the word, "change."
It started in the speeches the night of the Iowa caucuses. He had used the word before, of course, but not as a candidate acknowledging a caucus victory that gave his words new prominence, new credibility, new promise.
In the days since, the word has taken off. The media is offering up complete reports about the sudden significance of the word "change" to the presidential campaign. No longer is Hillary the campaign's VIP. Over the weekend, Obama shot ahead of her in the New Hampshire polls. He is achieving, as a presidential candidate, invaluable name identification based on that one word. As soon as they can, his campaign managers should start distributing blue campaign buttons, and on the button that word: "Change." Anyone seeing it would know instantly which candidate it represented.
It is working so well because the country is so far behind. I remember feeling such an indifference to the 2006 mid-term elections because it didn't make that much difference whether Republicans lost control of Congress to the Democrats. After six years of George W. Bush leadership, I felt like a spectator in a stadium, watching the Bush Administration vs. the Nation. It was like the nation was behind, 100-0, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there was no mercy rule, and nobody could leave until the fat lady sings. If Republicans lost control, the final score, when Bush was finally carried off the field in 2008, might be 150-14.
Surely a non-Republican Congress could scratch out a couple of scores in two years, but most of the drives wouldn’t get inside the 40-yard line, against an opponent that knows how to use the rules so well.
But who cares? What good are 14 points in the last quarter of a game that was over at the half? In the Congressional locker room, what will the coach say? “Folks, you did your best.” Well, rah rah rah. The stories in the morning papers, when the gun finally sounds in 2008, will be about which nation is bloodied the worst, Iraq or America.
I am just an American, sitting in the stands, rooting for a country that is behind 100-0 with still at least half a quarter to go. You think I'm ready for change? Barack Obama does. People in the stands are so ready for change that last week they started to cheer. Sen. Obama, brother, you have hit our button. The main kind of experience we want in a candidate is the experience of change.
In the months before Iowa, he kept talking about hope, but shoot, who cares about hope, behind 100-0, in a game that was over at the half? Now he starts talking about change, and hey, our hopes are going up. Change may be as futile as hope, in the long run. I'm not sure there is a candidate available in this country who in a single term can repair the gashes made by an expert eight-year assault on the nation's balances of power.
But it's only getting elected that matters at this point, and "change" is exactly the right word. When the other candidates see the clout it brings to Obama, it may get them to stop talking about themselves, and start thinking about us. Get those buttons out there, Obama managers.
It started in the speeches the night of the Iowa caucuses. He had used the word before, of course, but not as a candidate acknowledging a caucus victory that gave his words new prominence, new credibility, new promise.
In the days since, the word has taken off. The media is offering up complete reports about the sudden significance of the word "change" to the presidential campaign. No longer is Hillary the campaign's VIP. Over the weekend, Obama shot ahead of her in the New Hampshire polls. He is achieving, as a presidential candidate, invaluable name identification based on that one word. As soon as they can, his campaign managers should start distributing blue campaign buttons, and on the button that word: "Change." Anyone seeing it would know instantly which candidate it represented.
It is working so well because the country is so far behind. I remember feeling such an indifference to the 2006 mid-term elections because it didn't make that much difference whether Republicans lost control of Congress to the Democrats. After six years of George W. Bush leadership, I felt like a spectator in a stadium, watching the Bush Administration vs. the Nation. It was like the nation was behind, 100-0, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there was no mercy rule, and nobody could leave until the fat lady sings. If Republicans lost control, the final score, when Bush was finally carried off the field in 2008, might be 150-14.
Surely a non-Republican Congress could scratch out a couple of scores in two years, but most of the drives wouldn’t get inside the 40-yard line, against an opponent that knows how to use the rules so well.
But who cares? What good are 14 points in the last quarter of a game that was over at the half? In the Congressional locker room, what will the coach say? “Folks, you did your best.” Well, rah rah rah. The stories in the morning papers, when the gun finally sounds in 2008, will be about which nation is bloodied the worst, Iraq or America.
I am just an American, sitting in the stands, rooting for a country that is behind 100-0 with still at least half a quarter to go. You think I'm ready for change? Barack Obama does. People in the stands are so ready for change that last week they started to cheer. Sen. Obama, brother, you have hit our button. The main kind of experience we want in a candidate is the experience of change.
In the months before Iowa, he kept talking about hope, but shoot, who cares about hope, behind 100-0, in a game that was over at the half? Now he starts talking about change, and hey, our hopes are going up. Change may be as futile as hope, in the long run. I'm not sure there is a candidate available in this country who in a single term can repair the gashes made by an expert eight-year assault on the nation's balances of power.
But it's only getting elected that matters at this point, and "change" is exactly the right word. When the other candidates see the clout it brings to Obama, it may get them to stop talking about themselves, and start thinking about us. Get those buttons out there, Obama managers.
January 03, 2008
Kenosha Christmas
Karen and I were married two Decembers ago.
Her son Bill, and his wife Erika and children Andrew, 10, and Caitlin, six, live in Kenosha, Wisconsin, an hour north of Chicago. My daughter Jessica, with her husband Kevin and kids Mason, Davis and Evie June, live in Blue Lake, CA, just inland from Arcata, which is just north of Eureka. My son Tyler lives in Nashville. My stepdaughter Branan lives in San Diego but her brother Parrish, with his family, lives in Salt Lake City.
Please tell me how are we going to get all these kids around the same Christmas table? And of course other sets of parents and grandparents wonder the same thing, about these same kids.
This year, special reasons guided the gatherings. Jessie and her crew traditionally came to San Diego for Christmas. Then they realized, during the last year, that Mason, who is 12, has never had a Christmas at home. So they visited here for Thanksgiving and stayed home for Christmas. Bill and Erika, meanwhile, bought their first home and moved in last summer. Obviously that's where they wanted to be, this Christmas. We thought it would be fun to watch this passage and promised not to be too much trouble if they said we could come. And so we spent Christmas in Kenosha.
It was 26 degrees and cloudy when we arrived on Christmas Eve afternoon. Snow on the ground. Strange. Christmas Day is supposed to be a time for brunch on the patio. Their house was impossibly cozy. Kenosha at Christmastime is a collection of impossibly cozy dwellings organized in streets and grids across a frigid tundra bumped up against Lake Michigan. From their windows, the homes let glowing light out into the gray chill, as attractive and emotionally connective as a Disney Christmas movie, or a model train village. The prevailing wind is from the west, and on any given December day, the wind prevails. Kids go outside and play in these conditions; I watched them do that very thing, from the warm glow of the kitchen window. There is a new Labrador puppy, Rocky, at Bill's house, and parents and children willingly escorted Rocky outside on frequent back yard training missions, and then at least twice a day took him on long walks along streets lined with piled snow.
Gifts were piled high as a 10-year-old's eye under the tree at Erika's parents, where we went for Christmas Eve as Rockwell might have seen it. We ate plates of Christmas specialties (lefse!) flowing from Erika's mom's kitchen while kids made pretty toys and huge mounds of wrapping paper appear. To see Andrew, imagine Brett Favre at age 10 with an Opie grin and the energy and attention span of a Labrador puppy. Caitlin is blonde, favors pink, knows what she wants when she wants it, and showed her California grandma what she had learned in ballet. They were the stars of the show.
Note to AARP members: do not rent a Pontiac Grand Prix unless you are short, very flexible, and don't stuff yourself on Christmas Eves. I am none of these, but we made it back home anyway, shooed the kids to bed, and wrapped presents until 1 a.m. Coolest gift (I thought): Erika gave her son her old microscope set, which she had kept amazingly intact. Grandma and I collapsed upstairs in Andrew's bedroom, that he let us use, and which was fun and nice except for all the Green Bay Packer stuff. Cold! But cuddly, with I in my cap and she in her kerchief, cap, pajamas, socks, four sweatshirts, scarf and robe, when the children found us at first light and escorted us downstairs to the tree.
Andrew and Caitlin played Santa Claus until every gift was opened. We restored our strength with homemade muffins and Butter Braid (a local delicacy), followed by French toast and sausage, which may well have been invented in a Wisconsin kitchen on Christmas Day. Bill, who loves to cook, fed us all pretty well during the week. Chicken Parmigiana, paninis, apple pancakes, barbecued ribs, hominy casserole, Tex-Mex enchiladas and German Chocolate Cake. We watched movies, played Uno and Trivial Pursuit (Andrew wanted to play Monopoly, but we said no way), had several furious gunfights with quickly broken-in Nerf Bullet weaponry, dodged, or collided with, Rocky, watched Caitlin's impromptu dance recital and took a million pictures. If the walls could talk, the house would tell you that the new family in residence had a pretty good first Christmas there. Grandma and I would second that.
Her son Bill, and his wife Erika and children Andrew, 10, and Caitlin, six, live in Kenosha, Wisconsin, an hour north of Chicago. My daughter Jessica, with her husband Kevin and kids Mason, Davis and Evie June, live in Blue Lake, CA, just inland from Arcata, which is just north of Eureka. My son Tyler lives in Nashville. My stepdaughter Branan lives in San Diego but her brother Parrish, with his family, lives in Salt Lake City.
Please tell me how are we going to get all these kids around the same Christmas table? And of course other sets of parents and grandparents wonder the same thing, about these same kids.
This year, special reasons guided the gatherings. Jessie and her crew traditionally came to San Diego for Christmas. Then they realized, during the last year, that Mason, who is 12, has never had a Christmas at home. So they visited here for Thanksgiving and stayed home for Christmas. Bill and Erika, meanwhile, bought their first home and moved in last summer. Obviously that's where they wanted to be, this Christmas. We thought it would be fun to watch this passage and promised not to be too much trouble if they said we could come. And so we spent Christmas in Kenosha.
It was 26 degrees and cloudy when we arrived on Christmas Eve afternoon. Snow on the ground. Strange. Christmas Day is supposed to be a time for brunch on the patio. Their house was impossibly cozy. Kenosha at Christmastime is a collection of impossibly cozy dwellings organized in streets and grids across a frigid tundra bumped up against Lake Michigan. From their windows, the homes let glowing light out into the gray chill, as attractive and emotionally connective as a Disney Christmas movie, or a model train village. The prevailing wind is from the west, and on any given December day, the wind prevails. Kids go outside and play in these conditions; I watched them do that very thing, from the warm glow of the kitchen window. There is a new Labrador puppy, Rocky, at Bill's house, and parents and children willingly escorted Rocky outside on frequent back yard training missions, and then at least twice a day took him on long walks along streets lined with piled snow.
Gifts were piled high as a 10-year-old's eye under the tree at Erika's parents, where we went for Christmas Eve as Rockwell might have seen it. We ate plates of Christmas specialties (lefse!) flowing from Erika's mom's kitchen while kids made pretty toys and huge mounds of wrapping paper appear. To see Andrew, imagine Brett Favre at age 10 with an Opie grin and the energy and attention span of a Labrador puppy. Caitlin is blonde, favors pink, knows what she wants when she wants it, and showed her California grandma what she had learned in ballet. They were the stars of the show.
Note to AARP members: do not rent a Pontiac Grand Prix unless you are short, very flexible, and don't stuff yourself on Christmas Eves. I am none of these, but we made it back home anyway, shooed the kids to bed, and wrapped presents until 1 a.m. Coolest gift (I thought): Erika gave her son her old microscope set, which she had kept amazingly intact. Grandma and I collapsed upstairs in Andrew's bedroom, that he let us use, and which was fun and nice except for all the Green Bay Packer stuff. Cold! But cuddly, with I in my cap and she in her kerchief, cap, pajamas, socks, four sweatshirts, scarf and robe, when the children found us at first light and escorted us downstairs to the tree.
Andrew and Caitlin played Santa Claus until every gift was opened. We restored our strength with homemade muffins and Butter Braid (a local delicacy), followed by French toast and sausage, which may well have been invented in a Wisconsin kitchen on Christmas Day. Bill, who loves to cook, fed us all pretty well during the week. Chicken Parmigiana, paninis, apple pancakes, barbecued ribs, hominy casserole, Tex-Mex enchiladas and German Chocolate Cake. We watched movies, played Uno and Trivial Pursuit (Andrew wanted to play Monopoly, but we said no way), had several furious gunfights with quickly broken-in Nerf Bullet weaponry, dodged, or collided with, Rocky, watched Caitlin's impromptu dance recital and took a million pictures. If the walls could talk, the house would tell you that the new family in residence had a pretty good first Christmas there. Grandma and I would second that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)