Joe Brucia has gone over, and following his spirit outbound is a sad exhalation from newspapermen who covered sports, particularly on the West Coast, and especially in San Diego.
Joe was a communications man. His job was to make sure the word – our words – got out, from press tents at sporting events, mainly golf and tennis tournaments. Joe was beloved by the greats and the grunts, whom he treated the same. I was a grunt, a lowly desk man in The San Diego Union sports department sent occasionally to cover the pro tennis circuits as they passed through town. Joe took care of me like he would Jack Murphy or Red Smith or Ring Lardner, whom Joe probably knew.
Joe was happy, and he was enthusiastic, and he was infectious. As far as I saw, nothing ever got him down. He is only the second man (Otto Bos was the first) I have ever said this about: Joe Brucia had a very low threshold of pleasure. His silver linings were a mile wide. He was there before you got there, and he was there when you left. He appeared to love it, every minute.
I don’t know what it’s like on the sports ramble anymore. I hope it’s as loose and collegial as it used to be, but I doubt it. Too many bottom-liners running newsrooms now. The old movies about newspapermen and women over-play the fun part. Not many I knew could ever be that quick or sassy, but I knew quite a few who were slow and sassy. Inside the press tent was a group as professional – sometimes more – than the athletes on the courts. They certainly were more interesting. Being a newspaperman fills up your head with history, and there’s no camaraderie quite like it, when guys sitting around the press tent start playing it back.
History? Joe Brucia was a Western Union operator for 48 years. He started out in the business taking sheets of copy from this or that famous writer at a golf tournament, and sending it out in Morse Code. His obit in The San Diego Union started out with a story, told by obit writer Jack Williams: “It was just a $33.33 check, presented to a promising young golfer at the 1962 Los Angeles Open. But Joe Brucia could see history written all over it. So he photocopied the check – the first of Jack Nicklaus’ storied professional career.”
Nicklaus will exhale at the news of Joe’s passing. Out goes another light in a fading world, so vibrant in its day that they made movies about it. Somebody should make a movie about Joe Brucia. It would start with his fingers tapping a telegraph key, and the camera pulling back and up from the room and the building, RKO-style, following telegraph lines, but faster, faster than speeding locomotives, to tell the speed of Joe’s dots and dashes traveling through the lines, then, appearing out of the air, floating towards us, newspaper pages, and all the dots and dashes morphed by linotypes into words again, words and sentences and paragraphs telling the distant cities what happened on a course or on a court or in a ring.
Nobody out there ever heard of Joe Brucia. Joe’s name never appeared on any of those stories, sent in Morse Code or teletypes or the machine-from-hell Trash 80s into which Joe fed pages when I knew him. But Joe was the story, really, of 20th-century newspapers. I wish I had had the sense to talk to him, get his stories down on paper. Maybe somebody did. Maybe the book is already started. Makes me mad. It would be such a fun book to write.
December 09, 2006
December 03, 2006
Anniversary music
I haven’t been here in awhile. Occasionally I get tired of my own stuff and just don’t want to think about it for awhile. I wish other bloggers did that occasionally. But of course I am not a blogger. Bloggers do stream-of-events or stream-of-consciousness. For that, the online environment is a must. I don’t want that. I still want to be picked up like a newspaper.
Karen and I celebrated our first anniversary this morning. We were married at home one year ago, out on the patio on the hillside, with its totally analog impression of being suspended between earth and sky. “We live in a treehouse,” Karen said, looking out the kitchen window last week. I am 63, she is 55. We are very lucky.
We celebrated at 8, the hour of our vows. Between us, champagne and tears flowed in morning December light in Southern California, light like no other, and a sharp Santa Anna wind out of the east. It all filled me up. In fact it overflowed. I lacked the capacity to hold all the feelings, and trying to do so, stretched me a little. I told Karen that: “You stretch me.” On our second anniversary, I will be able to hold a little more. Our third anniversary, a bit more still. And so on. I will always be too small to hold it all, and that is exciting.
We put our wedding music on again: a CD of an Andre Rieu concert, live in Tuscany, turned up to semi-blast. At some point, they played Rossini’s “William Tell Overture,” just the Lone Ranger part, without the reflections-in-a-languid-pool buildup. I wished for the intro – it sets up the hellbent part so nicely – but I guess it would not have been practical, in an outdoor concert venue in Tuscany.
So there went the brass, sounding charge for the cavalry of horns and strings, escorting hearts and souls forward and upward into their own suspension between earth and space, and what I thought was, this music began as notes on paper. Rossini never heard the “William Tell Overture” until he wrote it. A man in a study, penciling music language onto paper, as I do now in my back-room office – or is that where I am, really? - connecting my mind to a page in essentially the same way, though I don’t have to crumple a page and start over.
I thought about how Rossini, at his work, was going to be filled up by what he was doing. His notes on paper were going to create a sound. On this page of mine, I have the liberty to go back to his study, before his overture joined the world’s sounds, and sit next to him in my mind, look at him scribbling away, and think: what is this work he is doing, going to do to him, when for the first time he hears the music it makes?
I shiver at the reality. Rossini, in a hall, the music cavalry onstage, swirling delicate figures in the lanquid pool, until it is time. Then: hi-yo, Silver. How did he stand it? How did Gioacchino Rossini, age 37, survive the evening of Aug. 3, 1829, at the Paris Opera?
Same way I survived the morning of Dec. 3, 2006. I filled up, overflowed, and had to stretch a little. And now I am connected to a page, and I wonder if it were translated into music, how would it sound? Now that it is finished, I hope I can hold at least a little more than I could when I started at the top of the page. And it would be great if people reading this for the first time felt different at the end. What if it stretched Rossini? Always there to shoot for. But you can’t do it every day.
Karen and I celebrated our first anniversary this morning. We were married at home one year ago, out on the patio on the hillside, with its totally analog impression of being suspended between earth and sky. “We live in a treehouse,” Karen said, looking out the kitchen window last week. I am 63, she is 55. We are very lucky.
We celebrated at 8, the hour of our vows. Between us, champagne and tears flowed in morning December light in Southern California, light like no other, and a sharp Santa Anna wind out of the east. It all filled me up. In fact it overflowed. I lacked the capacity to hold all the feelings, and trying to do so, stretched me a little. I told Karen that: “You stretch me.” On our second anniversary, I will be able to hold a little more. Our third anniversary, a bit more still. And so on. I will always be too small to hold it all, and that is exciting.
We put our wedding music on again: a CD of an Andre Rieu concert, live in Tuscany, turned up to semi-blast. At some point, they played Rossini’s “William Tell Overture,” just the Lone Ranger part, without the reflections-in-a-languid-pool buildup. I wished for the intro – it sets up the hellbent part so nicely – but I guess it would not have been practical, in an outdoor concert venue in Tuscany.
So there went the brass, sounding charge for the cavalry of horns and strings, escorting hearts and souls forward and upward into their own suspension between earth and space, and what I thought was, this music began as notes on paper. Rossini never heard the “William Tell Overture” until he wrote it. A man in a study, penciling music language onto paper, as I do now in my back-room office – or is that where I am, really? - connecting my mind to a page in essentially the same way, though I don’t have to crumple a page and start over.
I thought about how Rossini, at his work, was going to be filled up by what he was doing. His notes on paper were going to create a sound. On this page of mine, I have the liberty to go back to his study, before his overture joined the world’s sounds, and sit next to him in my mind, look at him scribbling away, and think: what is this work he is doing, going to do to him, when for the first time he hears the music it makes?
I shiver at the reality. Rossini, in a hall, the music cavalry onstage, swirling delicate figures in the lanquid pool, until it is time. Then: hi-yo, Silver. How did he stand it? How did Gioacchino Rossini, age 37, survive the evening of Aug. 3, 1829, at the Paris Opera?
Same way I survived the morning of Dec. 3, 2006. I filled up, overflowed, and had to stretch a little. And now I am connected to a page, and I wonder if it were translated into music, how would it sound? Now that it is finished, I hope I can hold at least a little more than I could when I started at the top of the page. And it would be great if people reading this for the first time felt different at the end. What if it stretched Rossini? Always there to shoot for. But you can’t do it every day.
November 08, 2006
Fourth quarter, first Wednesday
The Tuesday elections have proven to be a repudiation of George W. Bush and his administration. Democratic and independent candidates carried the day, and Republicans no longer possess a conservative majority in Congress.
Either way, the nation was going to lose. We’ve lost already, and it’s only the first days after Election Day. Bush has a team that knows how to get around Congress, if it has to. If the Bush team doesn’t have a Republican Congress to “work with,” then the team will work without Congress. Loss of a Republican congressional majority has been a repudiation, but only a vocal one. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales will continue on their same path, maybe with more machete work to do on balances of power put in place in 1789, but continuing all the same.
It is this inevitability that is so depressing. It’s like the nation is behind, 100-0, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there’s no mercy rule, and nobody can leave until the fat lady sings. If the Congress had remained Republican-controlled after the elections, who knows what the final score might have been? Now that Republicans have lost control – I don’t say, “Democrats have gained control,” because it’s not that black-and-white (or red-and-blue) – but now that Republicans have lost control, the final score, when Bush is finally carried off the field in 2008, may be 150-14.
Surely a non-Republican Congress can scratch out a couple of scores in two years, but most of the drives won’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.
And all we can do is sit in the stands and watch. Can’t leave, can’t get away, can’t go home and fix a martini and turn on the TV and try to forget. Wait til next year? Sheesh. Who wants to watch 2007 in America?
The Bush team has already won. The new Congress, in red jerseys or blue, will be the scrubs, playing out its worst loss in history against the Bush first-string, still sending in a new play every day with a new way to hide the ball until it’s too late. You almost hope all the Republicans had won on Tuesday. Go ahead and shudder at the thought. Or you can shudder at the thought of what the Bush team can do in the fourth period, even ahead 100-0, if it is motivated by a Congress wearing blue jerseys. It would be better to lose, 150-0, with a red congress, than 250-14 with a blue one. Wouldn’t it? Talk about the blues. I got ‘em, baby.
We take what distractions we can find, from the carnage on the field below. The other day a vendor came up the aisle with copies of The New York Times. I bought one, and in it found a column by Thomas L. Friedman, under the headline, “Insulting our troops, and our intelligence.” I have nothing against Republicans, or Republican or conservative philosophy and ideology, or honest Republican elected representatives, or evangelical Christians gay or straight, and I am not energized by the prospects of a party that counts John Kerry among its leaders. I am just an American, sitting in the stands, rooting for a country that is behind 100-0 with a full quarter left to go, reading a Friedman column that is the most succinct expression I have seen, of the way that I feel. Only Friedman is more optimistic than I. He believes Tuesday could make a difference. Remember Andy Griffith’s funny monologue, “What it was, was football”? Well-oiled fellow next to him slaps him on the shoulder and says, “Buddy, have a drink,” only Andy says, “drank.” To you, my seatmates in this stadium from hell, I slap you on the shoulder and say, “Buddy, read Friedman’s column. And have a drank. Have several.”
Either way, the nation was going to lose. We’ve lost already, and it’s only the first days after Election Day. Bush has a team that knows how to get around Congress, if it has to. If the Bush team doesn’t have a Republican Congress to “work with,” then the team will work without Congress. Loss of a Republican congressional majority has been a repudiation, but only a vocal one. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales will continue on their same path, maybe with more machete work to do on balances of power put in place in 1789, but continuing all the same.
It is this inevitability that is so depressing. It’s like the nation is behind, 100-0, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there’s no mercy rule, and nobody can leave until the fat lady sings. If the Congress had remained Republican-controlled after the elections, who knows what the final score might have been? Now that Republicans have lost control – I don’t say, “Democrats have gained control,” because it’s not that black-and-white (or red-and-blue) – but now that Republicans have lost control, the final score, when Bush is finally carried off the field in 2008, may be 150-14.
Surely a non-Republican Congress can scratch out a couple of scores in two years, but most of the drives won’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.
And all we can do is sit in the stands and watch. Can’t leave, can’t get away, can’t go home and fix a martini and turn on the TV and try to forget. Wait til next year? Sheesh. Who wants to watch 2007 in America?
The Bush team has already won. The new Congress, in red jerseys or blue, will be the scrubs, playing out its worst loss in history against the Bush first-string, still sending in a new play every day with a new way to hide the ball until it’s too late. You almost hope all the Republicans had won on Tuesday. Go ahead and shudder at the thought. Or you can shudder at the thought of what the Bush team can do in the fourth period, even ahead 100-0, if it is motivated by a Congress wearing blue jerseys. It would be better to lose, 150-0, with a red congress, than 250-14 with a blue one. Wouldn’t it? Talk about the blues. I got ‘em, baby.
We take what distractions we can find, from the carnage on the field below. The other day a vendor came up the aisle with copies of The New York Times. I bought one, and in it found a column by Thomas L. Friedman, under the headline, “Insulting our troops, and our intelligence.” I have nothing against Republicans, or Republican or conservative philosophy and ideology, or honest Republican elected representatives, or evangelical Christians gay or straight, and I am not energized by the prospects of a party that counts John Kerry among its leaders. I am just an American, sitting in the stands, rooting for a country that is behind 100-0 with a full quarter left to go, reading a Friedman column that is the most succinct expression I have seen, of the way that I feel. Only Friedman is more optimistic than I. He believes Tuesday could make a difference. Remember Andy Griffith’s funny monologue, “What it was, was football”? Well-oiled fellow next to him slaps him on the shoulder and says, “Buddy, have a drink,” only Andy says, “drank.” To you, my seatmates in this stadium from hell, I slap you on the shoulder and say, “Buddy, read Friedman’s column. And have a drank. Have several.”
November 04, 2006
Fourth quarter
The Tuesday elections may prove to be a repudiation of George W. Bush and his administration. Or the Republican candidates may carry the day and maintain the conservative majority in Congress.
Either way, the nation is going to lose. We’ve lost already, and it’s only the weekend before Election Day. Bush has a team that knows how to get around Congress, if it has to. If the Bush team doesn’t have a Republican Congress to “work with,” then the team will work without Congress. Loss of a Republican congressional majority will be a repudiation, but only a vocal one. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales will continue on their same path, maybe with more machete work to do on balances of power put in place in 1789, but continuing all the same.
It is this inevitability that is so depressing. It’s like the nation is behind, 100-0, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there’s no mercy rule, and nobody can leave until the fat lady sings. If the Congress remains Republican-controlled after Tuesday, who knows what the final score will be? If Republicans lose control – I don’t say, “If Democrats gain control,” because it’s not that black-and-white (or red-and-blue) – but if Republicans lose control, the final score, when Bush is finally carried off the field in 2008, may be 150-14.
Surely a non-Republican Congress can scratch out a couple of scores in two years, but most of the drives won’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.
And all we can do is sit in the stands and watch. Can’t leave, can’t get away, can’t go home and fix a martini and turn on the TV and try to forget. Wait til next year? Sheesh. Who wants to watch 2007 in America?
The Bush team has already won. The new Congress, in red jerseys or blue, will be the scrubs, playing out its worst loss in history against the Bush first-string, still sending in a new play every day with a new way to hide the ball until it’s too late. You almost hope all the Republicans win on Tuesday. Go ahead and shudder at the thought. Or you can shudder at the thought of what the Bush team can do in the fourth period, even ahead 100-0, if it is motivated by a Congress wearing blue jerseys. It would be better to lose, 150-0, with a red congress, than 250-14 with a blue one. Wouldn’t it? Talk about the blues. I got ‘em, baby.
We take what distractions we can find, from the carnage on the field below. Yesterday a vendor came up the aisle with copies of The New York Times. I bought one, and in it found a column by Thomas L. Friedman, under the headline, “Insulting our troops, and our intelligence.” I have nothing against Republicans, or Republican or conservative philosophy and ideology, or honest Republican elected representatives, or evangelical Christians gay or straight, and I am not energized by the prospects of a party that counts John Kerry among its leaders. I am just an American, sitting in the stands, rooting for a country that is behind 100-0 with a full quarter left to go, reading a Friedman column that is the most succinct expression I have seen, of the way that I feel. Only Friedman is more optimistic than I. He believes Tuesday will make a difference. Remember Andy Griffith’s funny monologue, “What it was, was football”? Well-oiled fellow next to him slaps him on the shoulder and says, “Buddy, have a drink,” only Andy says, “drank.” To you, my seatmates in this stadium from hell, I slap you on the shoulder and say, “Buddy, read Friedman’s column. And have a drank. Have several.”
Either way, the nation is going to lose. We’ve lost already, and it’s only the weekend before Election Day. Bush has a team that knows how to get around Congress, if it has to. If the Bush team doesn’t have a Republican Congress to “work with,” then the team will work without Congress. Loss of a Republican congressional majority will be a repudiation, but only a vocal one. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales will continue on their same path, maybe with more machete work to do on balances of power put in place in 1789, but continuing all the same.
It is this inevitability that is so depressing. It’s like the nation is behind, 100-0, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there’s no mercy rule, and nobody can leave until the fat lady sings. If the Congress remains Republican-controlled after Tuesday, who knows what the final score will be? If Republicans lose control – I don’t say, “If Democrats gain control,” because it’s not that black-and-white (or red-and-blue) – but if Republicans lose control, the final score, when Bush is finally carried off the field in 2008, may be 150-14.
Surely a non-Republican Congress can scratch out a couple of scores in two years, but most of the drives won’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.
And all we can do is sit in the stands and watch. Can’t leave, can’t get away, can’t go home and fix a martini and turn on the TV and try to forget. Wait til next year? Sheesh. Who wants to watch 2007 in America?
The Bush team has already won. The new Congress, in red jerseys or blue, will be the scrubs, playing out its worst loss in history against the Bush first-string, still sending in a new play every day with a new way to hide the ball until it’s too late. You almost hope all the Republicans win on Tuesday. Go ahead and shudder at the thought. Or you can shudder at the thought of what the Bush team can do in the fourth period, even ahead 100-0, if it is motivated by a Congress wearing blue jerseys. It would be better to lose, 150-0, with a red congress, than 250-14 with a blue one. Wouldn’t it? Talk about the blues. I got ‘em, baby.
We take what distractions we can find, from the carnage on the field below. Yesterday a vendor came up the aisle with copies of The New York Times. I bought one, and in it found a column by Thomas L. Friedman, under the headline, “Insulting our troops, and our intelligence.” I have nothing against Republicans, or Republican or conservative philosophy and ideology, or honest Republican elected representatives, or evangelical Christians gay or straight, and I am not energized by the prospects of a party that counts John Kerry among its leaders. I am just an American, sitting in the stands, rooting for a country that is behind 100-0 with a full quarter left to go, reading a Friedman column that is the most succinct expression I have seen, of the way that I feel. Only Friedman is more optimistic than I. He believes Tuesday will make a difference. Remember Andy Griffith’s funny monologue, “What it was, was football”? Well-oiled fellow next to him slaps him on the shoulder and says, “Buddy, have a drink,” only Andy says, “drank.” To you, my seatmates in this stadium from hell, I slap you on the shoulder and say, “Buddy, read Friedman’s column. And have a drank. Have several.”
October 19, 2006
Conscious Conservatism
There are Neoconservatives, and President Bush tried to establish a Compassionate Conservative label, but the development that may ease us toward the light at the end of this national sewer we are in is the growing Conscious Conservative movement.
Conscious Conservatives are those conservatives, mainly Republican, who have become compelled by the events of the past five 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. One such event is the immigration wall measure, that James Goldsborough wrote about last week. Another is the signing yesterday, by President Bush, of law that deprives some people of the habeas corpus rule that is a cornerstone of United States jurisprudence.
Such events don’t affect most of us directly, but they create a climate. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about loving airplanes. I also love anticipating trips on airplanes. We are going on a trip soon, and I was online at the airline Website, looking at the planes we will be on, looking at our seat assignments, looking at maps of our destination airports, and suddenly I stopped and stared at the screen. I could feel somebody out there in the government, feel what it would be like if somebody was watching my clicks, and wondering what I was doing. I remembered what a student told me recently. At the library he checked out a book for a paper he was writing on terrorism. A few days later, the FBI showed up at his door. President Bush likes to ask: do you feel safer than you did five years ago? At that moment, looking at a map of DFW, I had to respond: No. I felt watched. This is an erosive climate. I can feel the fear.
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. With the November elections close by, their awareness is apparent. As they reassure their district and state voters that they are not in lock-step with Bush Administration policy, the Conscious Conservative movement grows.
The movement should have the effect of expanding the political middle. Not only Dubya-dubious Republicans, but independents and moderate Democrats could find 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? I have a feeling he or she would come from the conservative side. I can’t think of any particular Democrat smart and tough and willing and aggressive enough to lead the country at this uniquely difficult time. John Kerry couldn’t even rise to keeping himself from getting swift-boated in 2004, and good old avuncular Al Gore lacks the charisma to galvanize the millions away from the margins of the staunch, even on the left. I’m not sure there is an American alive, Republican or Democrat, who after six years of Bush leadership could step in and do anything but sink up to his or her knees in the Bush muck. Colin Powell is tall, and John McCain has been in very deep muck before, so one of them might be able to find some useful footing.
What we really need is a Dave, like in the movie. Good old Dave. I have been thinking about him ever since Bush turned his back on New Orleans. If indifference were an impeachable offense, Congress could send George Bush winging off to Texas at just about any time. But it’s not, and George W. Bush will be President of the United States for more than two years. The best that Conscious Conservatives can hope for is for Dave, a stand-in with affection for the country and a reasonable idea of what to do next. Where have you gone, George Washington? Wow. George W: from first to worst.
Conscious Conservatives are those conservatives, mainly Republican, who have become compelled by the events of the past five 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. One such event is the immigration wall measure, that James Goldsborough wrote about last week. Another is the signing yesterday, by President Bush, of law that deprives some people of the habeas corpus rule that is a cornerstone of United States jurisprudence.
Such events don’t affect most of us directly, but they create a climate. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about loving airplanes. I also love anticipating trips on airplanes. We are going on a trip soon, and I was online at the airline Website, looking at the planes we will be on, looking at our seat assignments, looking at maps of our destination airports, and suddenly I stopped and stared at the screen. I could feel somebody out there in the government, feel what it would be like if somebody was watching my clicks, and wondering what I was doing. I remembered what a student told me recently. At the library he checked out a book for a paper he was writing on terrorism. A few days later, the FBI showed up at his door. President Bush likes to ask: do you feel safer than you did five years ago? At that moment, looking at a map of DFW, I had to respond: No. I felt watched. This is an erosive climate. I can feel the fear.
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. With the November elections close by, their awareness is apparent. As they reassure their district and state voters that they are not in lock-step with Bush Administration policy, the Conscious Conservative movement grows.
The movement should have the effect of expanding the political middle. Not only Dubya-dubious Republicans, but independents and moderate Democrats could find 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? I have a feeling he or she would come from the conservative side. I can’t think of any particular Democrat smart and tough and willing and aggressive enough to lead the country at this uniquely difficult time. John Kerry couldn’t even rise to keeping himself from getting swift-boated in 2004, and good old avuncular Al Gore lacks the charisma to galvanize the millions away from the margins of the staunch, even on the left. I’m not sure there is an American alive, Republican or Democrat, who after six years of Bush leadership could step in and do anything but sink up to his or her knees in the Bush muck. Colin Powell is tall, and John McCain has been in very deep muck before, so one of them might be able to find some useful footing.
What we really need is a Dave, like in the movie. Good old Dave. I have been thinking about him ever since Bush turned his back on New Orleans. If indifference were an impeachable offense, Congress could send George Bush winging off to Texas at just about any time. But it’s not, and George W. Bush will be President of the United States for more than two years. The best that Conscious Conservatives can hope for is for Dave, a stand-in with affection for the country and a reasonable idea of what to do next. Where have you gone, George Washington? Wow. George W: from first to worst.
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