Montana Headlines!

2011-03-19T20:00:00.002-06:00

What started out as a disinterested musing in the last post has turned into reality.

The Montana Headlines marketing team determined that adding an exclamation point to the blog title worked well in the 2-13, 20-21, and 85-92 demographics. These are key age ranges for us in working to expand market share, so it is time for a change:

Montana Headlines! it is!

About Town: Step Afrika!

2011-03-16T21:51:00.011-06:00

Well, the MH cultural correspondent didn't make it to Umphrey's McGee -- some mumbled nonsense about a long day at work and needing some rest. We had hoped for better.

Still, the month hasn't been a complete wash. Step Afrika! was in town tonight.

Aside: How exactly was the punctuation supposed to work in that last sentence? Maybe we should be Montana Headlines! if for no other reason than to confound critics who might want to quote us unflatteringly, but who would be stymied at trying to decide how to punctuate sentences like: "Montana Headlines! really outdid themselves (him/herself?) in publishing hopelessly silly drivel."

But we digress. MH has tended, over the years, to attend mostly Billings Symphony Orchestra concerts at the Alberta Bair (although this season it was hard to find any performances to get excited about attending, given the goofiness into which that organization's programming has descended... seriously...,) supplemented by other classical or traditional music concerts. But man cannot live by classical music alone, so off to the Alberta Bair to see Step Afrika! it was.

One of the most impressive feats of the performers was their ability to maintain their composure and good humor when attempting to get an audience that was 99.9% white (white with little or no personal exposure to black culture, no less) to do audience participation things that required rhythm. Really, if someone thinks that the opening scenes of the Steve Martin movie "The Jerk" are purely caricature, well, everyone is entitled to their little delusions. (Not a terribly funny movie, overall, it must be interjected.)

Actually, with patience and repetition, the performers actually did a pretty good job of getting the audience to clap, snap, shuffle, and exclaim things like "Hoo-ah" from the diaphragm in something that resembled rhythmic responses. Even more complex tasks like responding to the call of "alright!" with "OK!" and vice-versa began to be mastered toward the end. A couple of brave audience members who got up on stage to learn some rudimentary stepping even ended up playing bit parts in a Zulu village dance scene. We must confess to being jealous of the guy who got to carry a skin-covered Zulu shield and a tribal spear. One thought of asking if one could borrow it for Montana spear-hunting season, but then we recalled that unfortunately there isn't going to be one after all. Sometimes our politicians are so lacking in humor, a spirit of adventure, or both.

So, back to the performance. In a word, it was superb. Pace the name of the dance-troupe, stepping didn't begin as a distinct dance form in Africa, but rather in black fraternities and sororities in the early 20th century here in America. Like most American cultural currents, however, the roots are indeed from the old country, filtered through a century or more of the black American experience.

We recalled during the performance having read a grotesque Robert Ludlum novel called The Matlock Paper -- our 3rd and final try at another Robert Ludlum novel after having read and enjoyed The Bourne Identity. The Matlock Paper made a convincing case that Ludlum apparently only had the one good book in him (good as in a good airport or beach or ski-trip novel.) Anyway, in the book, a pretty caricatured black fraternity organization makes an appearance, and the white protagonist has the rare privilege (as we recall) of getting to see an initiation ceremony at the frat house. Ludlum's version had some dangerous use of spears or some other sharp weapons as part of the ritual, and thankfully nothing like that happened at the Alberta Bair. Of course, that Ludlum scene probably originated not in careful research, but rather in Ludlum's need to create some pulp excitement in a book that even he had to know was tedious enough to have airport readers reaching for a Barbara Cartland novel out of sheer desperation to escape boredom.

Where were we? Oh, yes. Black fraternities. One of the scenes in tonight's performance was a portrayal of the role of stepping in said fraternity ceremonies. Their version was far more artistic than we recall Ludlum's being. Another scene was a portrayal of stepping competitions that happen between fraternities and sororities. Tonight it was men vs. women -- we thought the men narrowly carried the day, but the audience called it a tie. But then, everyone is a winner these days, aren't they? Unless winners are being declared losers...

We've already mentioned the Zulu village scene. And then there was the South African miner scene, doing the gum-boot dance (See photo above,) done wearing "gum-boots" -- or what the Brits call "Wellies." We've liked Wellies ever since seeing Felicity Kendal in them in the old Good Neighbors episodes on PBS in our younger years. But one struggles to imagine even the lively Tom and Barbara
in that show being able to cut a rug in long rubber boots the way the Step Afrika! performers did in recreating this bit of South African culture.

Energy, style, considerable dance talent, a flair for cultural education and a little well-applied attitude -- all in all a great evening with a performing company that one hopes will swing through Billings again in the future.

Step Afrika!

Umphrey's McGee comes to Billings

2011-03-06T23:59:00.007-07:00

Didn't think Billings would ever make the Umphrey's McGee circuit, but here they are, playing two nights from now at the Babcock. Montana Headlines may just have to send a cultural critic to the concert to see if they are all they're cracked up to be by jam band aficionados.

Any band that claims King Crimson, early Genesis, and Led Zeppelin as major influences is bound to be serious. Their approach to presenting their music -- few albums, lots of live shows, and encouraging people to record their music in concert and distribute it for free on the internet -- has been unique and for the most part brilliant.

They are doing pretty well for themselves, and while playing as many concerts as they do has to be hard work, it can't be a whole lot worse than slaving in the recording studio and kowtowing to record company executives.

Anyway, we're glad to see someone in Billings got us on the tour, and hope to be able to report on the concert. Oh, and for the record, as far as jam bands go, Umphrey's McGee is to the String Cheese Incident what Johnny Cash is to Kenny Rogers in the country music world. This observation is based on watching and listening to extended video of the concerts of each.

When they go into a "Jimmy Stewart," it takes improvisation to another level. One critic puts it well:

This is what, in essence, sets apart Umphrey's from the major jam bands who've come before them; those cues keep the players on the same page even as they're freely improvising, a clear distinction from the aimless hippie jams of old.

Time for an update

2011-03-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

What a difference 2 years makes.

In our last post, Montana Headlines mused that "We're still making up our minds about Gov. Sarah Palin."

Well, that mind-making-upper process has finished, and the answer to the question of "whether Gov. Palin is the right person to spearhead the GOP's comeback 4 to 8 years from now" has been unequivocally answered to the satisfaction of Montana Headlines.

No.

The fundamental question, as noted in our last post more than two years ago was whether then Gov. Palin had "the intellectual chops" to cut it. As we noted then, by very definition, any conservative will be labeled by the opposition in the Democratic party and in the mainstream media as intellectually deficient. We conservatives are Neanderthals, knuckle-draggers, hicks, dolts -- go ahead and choose your label. The best that we can hope for is to be thought of as having a sort of perversely evil cleverness when we successfully advocate for ideas that are wrong (i.e. conservative.) And the only hope one has for being thought of in any other way by the left is to "evolve." That is to say, move left or at least to stop advocating for conservative postions with vigor.

So while the left has the luxury of saying, "see, we told you from the beginning that Palin didn't have it between the ears," we conservatives have to take the time to judge for ourselves and sort out those who are not intellectually up to the task of high-level political leadership from those who are.

Unfortunately, Sarah Palin falls into the former category. We say unfortunately, because of her many manifest talents (see John Sullivan's comments in the previous post.) But there it is.

So who can carry the banner forward? Certainly not Mitt Romney -- why waste e-ink listing the long list of reasons why even a limping Obama would mop up the floor with him. Mike Huckabee, about whom we have written positively in the past, probably can't do it either. Mitch Daniels? Doesn't seem to want it, and if one thing is necessary to get elected president, it is a primal drive to attain the office. Haley Barbour will run into the double prejudices against Southern accents and the girth police (Chris Christie's accent allows him to stay in the running.) Tim Pawlenty we like a lot -- but does he have the charisma that would be needed to unseat an incumbent?

One of two things will happen. The most likely is that Republicans will follow their old playbook and nominate the next guy in line -- Mitt Romney will go down in blazing defeat and join Bob Dole as a "well, of course he would lose" Republican candidate. To be fair to Republicans, our list of such candidates is much shorter than is the Democratic list of sure losers (Dukakis, Kerry, McGovern, Mondale...) An unresistable aside: If Romney had the financial resources of Huckabee, would he even be on anyone's radar? He has enough money to buy the Republican nomination, but unfortunately not enough to buy the presidency.

The other possibility is that someone will rise to the fore as an unexpectedly effective candidate and leader, and that a hungry Republican base will recognize this and nominate the guy (can't think of any likely women at this point.) An unlikely scenario? Of course. This is the Republican party after all.

John O'Sullivan on Gov. Palin vs. Mrs. Thatcher

2008-12-23T12:57:00.004-07:00

We're still making up our minds about Gov. Sarah Palin. Not, mind you, about whether she was a brilliant choice on McCain's part (she was,) whether she would have made a good VP and been capable of stepping into the Oval Office "on Day One" (she would have been at least as ready as many previous VP's and VP candidates in this century,) or whether she made McCain's uphill climb a harder one (on the contrary, she single-handedly got him back in the game, gave him a shot at winning until the economy went into melt-down, and probably saved him from a loss of 1964 Goldwater proportions.)

The question, rather, is whether Gov. Palin is the right person to spearhead the GOP's comeback 4 to 8 years from now. We must confess that since we are so steeped in the conservative movement's not inconsiderable intellectual heritage, our main question about Gov. Palin is whether she has the intellectual chops to make it happen. We unreservedly reject the condescending, haughty put-downs directed at her from her betters (after all, we heard the same sort of panicked attacks about Goldwater, Reagan, Thatcher, and Gingrich during their ascendencies, all of whom had intellectual chops far exceeding what they were then given credit for.)

But saying that the caricatures of elitist snobs (or of that even lower form of life, the elitist snob manqué) are grossly unfair is not quite the same thing as saying that Gov. Palin should be handed the Goldwater/Reagan/Thatcher/Gingrich mantle, post-haste.

In this vein, one of our favorite conservative writers, John O'Sullivan, has written a nice piece in which he comes to her defense:

Inevitably, Lloyd Bentsen's famous put-down of Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debate is resurrected, such as by Paul Waugh (in the London Evening Standard) and Marie Cocco (in the Washington Post): "Newsflash! Governor, You're No Maggie Thatcher," sneered Mr. Waugh. Added Ms. Coco, "now we know Sarah Palin is no Margaret Thatcher -- and no Dan Quayle either!"

Jolly, rib-tickling stuff. But, as it happens, I know Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher is a friend of mine. And as a matter of fact, Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin have a great deal in common.

O'Sullivan, of course, is one of American conservatism's British expatriates, and brings a depth of knowledge about Thatcher that the casual commentator lacks. He was a special adviser to Thatcher while she was PM, and he retained a close relationship with her after her time as Conservative Leader in Britain, specifically in working with her to found the New Atlantic Initiative.

As befits one of the best minds in the conservative movement today (O'Sullivan is no intellectual slouch, having been WFB's handpicked successor as editor of National Review, and writing regularly for high and mid-brow periodicals like the New Criterion, the London Spectator, Policy Review, and the usual suspects like the NYT and Washington Post) -- O'Sullivan's appraisal is one that comes with eyes wide open, as they say. He notes many of the differences in the political education of these two ladies.

But he also notes some of the similarities, and illustrates them with various (now) humorous stories about Thatcher's "ineptitude" in her days before she became the Iron Lady of Britain -- no longer misunderestimated by either friend or foe. A couple of samples:

Mrs. Thatcher's most senior position until then had been education secretary in the government of Edward Heath where, as she conceded in her memoirs, she lacked real executive power. Her political influence within that government was so small that it took 17 months for her to get an interview with him. Even then, a considerate civil servant assured Heath that others would be present to make the meeting less "boring."

...she became almost as "controversial" as Sarah Palin. Heath, for example, made it plain privately that he would not serve under her. And Sir Ian Gilmour, an intellectual leader of the Tory "wets," privately dismissed her as a "Daily Telegraph woman." There is no precise equivalent in American English, but "narrow, repressed suburbanite" catches the sense.

Mrs. Thatcher attracted such abuse for two reasons. First, she was seen by the chattering classes as representing a blend of provincial conservative values and market economics -- Middle England as it has come to be called -- against their own metropolitan liberalism.

We learn that Mrs. Thatcher got some help -- including coaching from Sir Lawrence Olivier in preparing for the regular face-to-face verbal sparring at which British opposition leaders must excel, unless they are resigned to leading only from the opposition bench forever. And again, O'Sullivan makes it clear that one only knows what someone is made of after they have met the tests put before them -- Thatcher met hers and became a legend, while Palin's tests lie ahead and may be failed. But he does have this to say about one of the many similarities he sees between these two women:

But she shares with Mrs. Thatcher a very rare charisma. As Ronnie Millar, the latter's speechwriter and a successful playwright, used to say in theatrical tones: She may be depressed, ill-dressed and having a bad hair day, but when the curtain rises, out onto the stage she steps looking like a billion dollars. That's the mark of a star, dear boy. They rise to the big occasions.

Mrs. Palin had four big occasions in the late, doomed Republican campaign: her introduction by John McCain in Ohio, her speech at the GOP convention, her vice-presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden, and her appearance on Saturday Night Live. With minimal preparation, she rose to all four of them. That's the mark of star.

If conservative intellectuals, Republican operatives and McCain "handlers" can't see it, then so much the worse for them.

Ayn Rand's relevance

2008-12-13T05:51:00.000-07:00

Ayn Rand's novels, especially her more mature works such as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, have been justly famous and influential. It is difficult to read those two books and look at the world in quite the same way again.

In a recent Newsweek interview, the current head of the Ayn Rand Institute discusses the alleged failure of free markets in our current crisis.

Traditional conservatism has a mixed relationship with Rand. On the one hand, her novels cut to the heart of socialism, collectivism, and government regulation in their various forms in a way that is readable and indeed gripping. A page-turner like Atlas Shrugged probably did more than the writings of a dozen prominent economists ever could, creating a healthy suspicion of "managed" economies and helping ordinary readers to understand the inextricable connection between the loss of economic liberty and the loss of all liberties.

Think of them as being similar to the recent, grittier movie adaptations of super-hero comic books such as the (quite impressive) Christian Bale Batman movies.

On the other hand, her hostility to traditional religion and her lack of any respect for tradition in general caused most thoughtful conservative thinkers, in the end, to reject her ideas as being just as flawed and potentially dangerous as were the communist and socialist ideologies she was mercilessly flaying in her writings.

That word -- "mercy" -- is actually apt, since the absence of anything resembling mercy and compassion in Rand's writings are one of their most striking features. Whittaker Chambers was perhaps being a little unfair in the most famous line of his justly famous piece in National Review (one that marked the "official banning" of Rand and her Objectivists from polite conservatism) when he wrote: From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To a gas chamber — go!"

Chambers did express appropriate sympathy for many of Rand's observations and sentiments, and he quite rightly concluded his essay with a more tempered statement: "the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything."

At the root of traditional conservatism's rejection of Rand is that her books are highly ideological, and as such, are inimical to how conservatism sees the world. Ideologies believe that they have arrived both at what is wrong with the world and at exactly how to fix it. The free-market supermen of Rand's novels portray her belief in the perfectability (or perhaps more precisely, innate perfection) of certain individual men, just as the Marxist thought she detested portrays the perfectability of human society.

By contrast, our American constitutional system of government is based, fundamentally, on the conviction that man is flawed (although without any hubristic notions that the exact nature of the flaws can be defined with precision, let alone remedied,) and must be restrained when governing others, lest too much power be placed in the hands of any individual or any interest. Conservative thought in the American context is likewise suffused with these ideas, and with the conviction that man's imperfections and limitations mean that radical changes will, by definition, bring radically unintended consequences that are at least as likely to be for ill as for good.

So where does this leave Rand's thought in these days of economic crisis? The Randian interviewed in the Newsweek article demonstrates a characteristic lack of humility regarding any possible flaws that the Objectivist strain of libertarian thought might have. But he (as we should also in fairness expect) has some acute observations, perhaps best summarized in this exchange at the end:

Q: With free markets now in disrepute, what's going to happen to the popularity of Ayn Rand's most famous book, "Atlas Shrugged"?

A: I think it's going to go up dramatically. I think it already has. [People] are saying, "We're heading toward socialism, we're heading toward more regulation." "Atlas Shrugged" is coming true. How do we get out? How do we escape?

Unfortunately, there is no escape. Businessmen are panicking, and I think they should be panicking. Many of them understand that this was not a crisis of free markets. There was no free market to fail. What we have is a regulated market, and the regulated market has failed. (Emphasis added)

This is unquestionably true. But at the same time, we have to understand that our economy has been regulated for a very long time, and there is no sense pretending that the path back to economic freedom could ever be a safe one, let alone easy.

Just as acts of regulation will have adverse unintended consequences that wise legislators will try to foresee, and then try to limit the damage, the same is true of deregulation. Deregulating a regulated sector of the economy is no less tricky than is detoxing a heroin addict, and one doesn't get the impression that our government adequately took that into consideration in some sectors of our economy. Freddie and Fannie, for example, knew they would ultimately get their next fix from the government if need be, so they didn't need to worry about taking ordinary precautions.

Which is why we should have been more cautious about getting our financial institutions addicted to taxpayer dollars and why we should be cautious about giving that first hit to the automakers. (Part of the current argument seems to run that automakers have just as much right to become addicts as bankers do -- out of a sort of twisted sense of fairness.)

Those of a progressive bent might seem to believe that the answer is just to call addiction normal, and make no attempt at withdrawal -- indeed that such "normality" should be expanded. Unfortunately, the Bush administration and the Republican Congress during their brief time in power couldn't decide whether to be Mr. Hyde the pusher or Dr. Jekyll the healer -- and all too often they were a hideous chimera combining the two.

Republican failures at the federal level have led to a situation where for the foreseeable future, we will have a government controlled by those who have no such confusion or internal conflict. As such, one fears that our economy will be made of industries and individuals who will resemble crack-house inhabitants scrapping over who gets the next fix while the dealers, lordlike, survey their realm, such as it is.

The duty of a rational human being in such a situation is, as much as is possible within the constraints of economic survival, to find little ways to "just say no."

Things are getting confused at LITW

2008-12-12T18:35:00.004-07:00

It's one thing to let the folks at Left in the West take a victory lap or two -- hey, the lefties had a pretty impressive year, and they have earned the right to gloat and strut like peacocks for awhile as far as we're concerned.

But let's try to keep the facts straight when we're throwing around accusations, shall we?

First, we learn that it is all the GOP's fault that the auto bailout failed. Fair enough, since GOP Senators led the charge on this one.

Only two problems:

1. Jay Stevens groups Denny Rehberg in with those who voted for bailing out Wall Street but against bailing out the Big Three. Was John Driscoll the only Democrat who noticed that Rehberg voted against the Wall Street bailout package -- or does Jay think we just won't notice that he's not telling the truth about Rehberg?

2. Jay also forgot to check how Montana's Democratic Senators voted until later -- something you'd think he'd do before titling his heavily-breathing post "GOP kicks auto industry to the curb." Do you think he might go back and retitle the post "GOP, joined by Democratic Sens. Tester and Baucus, kicks auto industry to the curb"? Maybe? Naw.

The truth is, the only Montanan who deserved to get attacked for having a double-standard was Sen. Baucus, but apparently when you're in a hurry to try to slime Denny Rehberg, and are grateful for all of Max's cash (much of which he shook down from the financial industry -- duh) in the last election, a little sloppiness doesn't hurt.

Meanwhile, Tester gets an "at least he's consistent" from his netroots buddies -- why doesn't Rehberg get one?

Final comment -- why would Baucus and Tester vote against this one? One thought is that they saw the P-Base polls about what Montanans think of the idea of taking the secret ballot away from workers in order to make things easier for union bosses.

Both Senators know they are going to vote to take away the right to a secret ballot and will vote to make public the preferences of employees (both their employers and union organizers will know) about unionizing their shop. In other words, both Senators will roll over for the unions, in spite of what Montana voters think. Casting this vote with the Republicans will give them something to point at, showing that they won't vote down the line with unions on every vote (and what better time to do it than in an industry where there aren't any auto manufacturing plants in Montana?)

Just a theory.

P-base polling

2008-12-11T21:14:00.002-07:00

Good stuff over at Montana Main Street Blog regarding the new P-base poll results. What sticks out?

1. ...a record 75% of Montana voters want the state to encourage more timber, mining, oil & gas development while only 14% are opposed. 63% believe Montana’s environment is currently well protected with existing laws.

(So will we see the governor and the legislature taking actions to cause an explosion of such development? Don't hold your breath waiting anything to change when it comes to saying one thing about energy development and doing another.)

2. When asked if they would support Congressional action to take away a worker’s right to a secret ballot in a union election (a provision in the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act”), an overwhelming 77% of Montana voters said no, while only 14% supported it.

(So will Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester vote to rob workers of the right to a secret ballot, in opposition to the overwhelming will of Montana voters -- and against the advice of long-time labor advocate former Sen. George McGovern? Probably. It's all about money -- if you have enough of it in campaign contributions from organized labor and its allies, you can overcome the pesky voters.)

3. ...a decisive 94% believe that all state and local government officials should be required to report all of their lobbying expenses just like other lobbyists.

(So will Democrats continue to protect state, county, and municipal employees and officials from having to divulge the extent of the time they spend lobbying the legislature? Almost certainly.)

Good stuff. Too bad it is unlikely to change opinions or behaviors on the part of our elected officials.

Moving off campus

2008-12-09T05:56:00.002-07:00

Victor Davis Hanson, who often brings a fresh perspective to commentary on contemporary politics and society because of his training and experience as a classicist, has a great piece in City Journal in which he elegantly describes the role that a classical college education (i.e. the kind where one learned Greek and Latin, and then read the literature of those languages) once played in the life of our republic.

At its most basic, the classical education that used to underpin the university often meant some acquaintance with Greek and Latin, which offered students three rich dividends. First, classical-language instruction meant acquiring generic methods of inquiry. Knowledge was no longer hazy and amorphous, but categorized and finite.

Classical languages, like their Western successors, were learned through the systematic study of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. Such philological study then widened to reading poetry, philosophy, history, and oratory. Again, the student learned that there was a blueprint—a structure—to approaching education. Nothing could ever be truly new in itself but was instead a new wrinkle on the age-old face of wisdom.

With the qualification "like their Western successors," Hanson of course betrays the hard truth that a genuinely classical education rooted in actually learning Latin and Greek is not something that even an autumnal classicist like himself actually remembers. It may not even be something that the professors he studied under as a college student remembers, but they in turn would have known scholars who had received that kind of intensive education while sitting beside future businessmen, lawyers, doctors, and public servants.

But something approaching it, with required proficiency in a couple of modern European languages, a core knowledge of Western history, a familiarity with Western works of art, and deep reading in great works of Western literature -- that is within the living memory of many who still are with us.

Hanson notes that a classical education had a very practical effect on those who imbibed it:

..classical education —- reading Homer, Sophocles, and Aristotle, or studying the Delphic Charioteer and red-figure vase painting—conveyed an older, tragic view of man’s physical and mental limitations at odds with the modern notion of life without limits. Love, war, government, and religion involved choices not between utopian perfection and terrible misery but between bad and worse alternatives, or somewhat good and somewhat better options—given the limitations of human nature and the precarious, brief span of human life.

Humility permeated traditional liberal arts education: the acceptance that we know very little; that as frail human beings, we live in an unforgiving natural world; and that culture can and should improve on nature without destroying it.

But universities embraced the idea of being primarily places for acquiring technical knowledge and skills -- and today, under pressures of cost, alternative ways of acquiring much of that specialized knowledge and many of those skills are burgeoning. Interestingly, there remains a hunger for a classical education among many, and Hanson reviews the explosion in various forms of independent education in the classics that are attempting to fill the void in our educations -- probably mostly in those with college degrees or higher who now realize that they didn't get what they were supposed to get while at university. A lot of learning is moving off campus.

This is similar to a theme that Hanson and others have touched on when they talk about the fact that consumption of good works of biography and history has never been higher with the reading public -- but little of the writing is being done by the university professors who in theory should be best positioned to tell those stories.

But as he points out, these are poor substitutes for the real thing:

...the university living experience—on-campus residence, close association with professors at dinners, and attendance at university lectures—helped reinforce the abstract lessons of the classroom and promote a certain civic behavior. Students had a precious four years in such a landscape to prepare their intellectual and moral skills for a grueling life ahead.

The university was a unique place; it thrived because liberal arts in the holistic sense simply could not be emulated by, or outsourced to, private enterprise or ad hoc self-improvement training.

....

How ironic that the struggling university, in its efforts to meet changing political, technological, and cultural tastes and fads, willingly forfeited the only commodity that made it irreplaceable and that it alone could do well.

Again, all of this is acquiring the patina of ancient lore passed down in fireside stories told by the old ones. Meanwhile, lovers of classical learning today continue to pick through the rubble like so many WALL-E's -- knowing that something is missing that was good and beautiful and yes, useful, but not really having even tools and knowledge sufficient for comprehending the magnitude of the loss.

Newspapers -- in need of fiscal resuscitation?

2008-12-07T19:06:00.006-07:00

Ed Kemmick offers an elegy for the disappearing newspaper, a noble beast that once thundered in huge herds across this country.

We sympathize, although not to the point of believing that newspapers should receive government subsidies. Perhaps Kemmick was in jest, but as we pointed out some time ago, The Nation wasn't when it proposed just that. Exhibit A in why newspapers should be subsidized, including and perhaps especially in Montana, was the fact that Jon Tester became U.S. Senator Jon Tester.

It seems quaint now, with Democrats worrying in this past election cycle only about whether they could get a filibuster-proof majority, but The Fate of Humanity Itself hung in the balance here in Montana just a couple of years ago, and as The Nation describes it, Montana's newspapers delivered the goods for Jon Tester and made the difference in getting him elected. They almost helped deliver Montana for Obama (may his enemies cringe at the fearful sound of his name) in the last election cycle.

So why exactly do we sympathize, especially when the Billings Gazette endorsed Democrats in 5 of the 6 competitive statewide races this election season (and saved its most tepid "well if we have to say it we suppose there's no real reason to vote against him so OK go ahead if you really feel you need to maybe" endorsement for the lone Republican they endorsed -- Brad Johnson?

Well, just call us suckers for a lost cause -- that's what conservatives are good at, right?

It just isn't the same looking at news on the web -- it's that simple. Newspapers go deep in the MH psyche, seated somewhere near the brainstem, going back to the mists of time when the daily paper arrived two days late because it had to be delivered first by rail to the nearest town, and then via rural mail to a certain isolated homestead. A summary of any truly breaking news had already been learned by radio or by watching John Chancellor on a fuzzy black-and-white screen, but it somehow didn't seem like real news until that crackle of an opening grey newspaper said it was so.

In the days before digital recording allowed one to pause a program, or to rewind and listen to a particular piece again, only print news allowed that luxury. You could even cut out the clipping and show it to someone else who didn't get the paper, or even save it. Wow.

Then came the wonders of big city life and the magic of having a daily paper (for a while, even two daily papers -- morning and evening) delivered to one's door. While the sky might be clear, one really didn't know that the world wasn't coming to an end until one opened the morning paper and saw that the headlines were about something mundane like a superpower summit meeting or an energy crisis. Then came settling down over a cup of coffee for a more leisurely perusal. Death to any visitor who suggested turning on the television or radio in the morning -- like drinking alcohol, there is a time before which civilized people just don't do certain things.

Just because -- that's why.

So, while MH has heard many conservatives, like so many old warrior-athletes comparing scars, one-up each other by saying how long ago they cancelled their subscription to the Gazette, we've never been able to bring ourselves to do it, no matter how unhappy we might be over political coverage from time to time.

How, after all, can one be a conservative dinosaur if one doesn't spend a fair amount of time with the news medium that dates back to before the Founding -- for as long as it lasts anyway? This business of canceling newspaper subscriptions and going paperless sounds, well, like another example of undue influence by neoconservatives if you ask us. Besides, the sports section, the hunting and fishing section, and the comics can generally be relied on to be free of bias (or at least of bias that would hurt anyone.)

And how can an unhappy conservative throw the paper down on the table or into the fireplace, calling it a dirty rotten lying rag, if one doesn't actually hold a dirty rotten lying rag in one's hands? We're just too old around here to change -- been doing it for too many decades. We still remember how those dirty rags picked on Nixon over stuff for which they would have given LBJ a free ride. Now you see the point -- closing a browser window emphatically just doesn't have the same satisfying effect. And on TV or the internet, we can go to conservative sites for news -- only in the daily paper is there that complete lack of competition that makes for a good old-fashioned gnashing of teeth.

Still -- subsidize those remaining daily newspapers? You know, the ones who, in terms of circulation, endorsed Obama by a ratio of 3 to 1? (Wonder which ones would get the inside track on the subsidies?) On the face of it, though, it sort of makes sense. After all, another old-fashioned and eminently civilized thing to do is to travel by train, but doing so requires government subsidies -- (even though there aren't enough subsidies to bring a train through the parts of Montana where most people in the state live.)

In a time, however, when those powers that might agitate for subsidizing major newspapers are also agitating for shutting down talk radio stations even though they don't require subsidies to stay afloat, it seems it would take logical gymnastics too painfully twisted even for The Nation.

No, just like so many other good things that have disappeared (like the Eagles with Don Felder in the lineup, the Chicago Symphony with Solti conducting, the good old college football system whereby no-one had a clue who the national champion was some years, or a federal government that only does what the Constitution says it can do,) we just have to enjoy newspapers while they are here, then talk nostalgically about them after they are gone.

Where is Obama taking us?

2008-12-06T16:38:00.003-07:00

Medved is certainly right that the chattering class on the right needs not to go into automatic attack mode against Sen. Obama over the silliest little things.

One certainly hopes that the gushing Gerson is right in thinking that Obama's early Cabinet choices mean 4 years of centrist government.

But while MH will treat the President with the respect due his office, and while hope was a Christian virtue long before it became a partisan campaign slogan, we have to agree with Tony Blankley that it is only reasonable (and fair to Obama) to expect, well... the worst.

Or as Blankley puts it: "Brace for the change you do not believe in."

A question for the Billings Gazette

2008-12-02T12:46:00.006-07:00

Why wasn't this on the opinion page?

It advocates for a specific policy.

It is indistinguishable from the kind of information/opinion piece that is routinely published in the Op-Ed section.

It ends with a specific call to action.

So it belongs on the opinion page, doesn't it?

This is perhaps a picky point, since Dennison isn't subtle about his advocacy for a single-payer health-care system, which he straightforwardly says is the answers to all of our health-care problems. This isn't a sneaky piece of advocacy journalism in in which the message is contained in the form of a hard news story, where subtle subtexts, selective quotations, and unflattering pictures of the "bad guys" achieve the intended effect of persuading the reader.

So intelligent readers should be able to figure it out that Dennison is just spouting opinion -- opinion backed up by reasoned arguments, to be sure, but opinion, nonetheless. Reasoned arguments and facts are found in abundance in columns by George Will and Maureen Dowd, too. But they are still clearly labeled as opinion pieces.

Maybe we should actually be grateful that Gazette readers have a chance to see that yes, Virginia, some reporters do have agendas -- agendas that can at other times be pushed in less detectable ways. It will be hard to read any Dennison story -- certainly anything related to health-care -- in the same way again.

But still, these pieces by Dennison belonged on the Op-Ed page. They are a far cry from the kind of restraint that Chuck Johnson demonstrates in his "Horse Sense" columns, in which we get the benefit of Johnson's perspective and personality, but don't have his advocacy for a particular policy crammed down our throats.

Critiquing the Bush legacy

2008-11-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

When things head south electorally for Republicans (as they did in this most recent election,) it is important to look back critically on the ideas, political tactics, and personalities involved in the debacle.

A perspective that is often forgotten, especially when Republicans are in power, is that of the so-called "Old Right."

There is good reason why some of the self-appointed banner-carriers of the Old Right are ignored. Some are second-rate intellects, others are consumed with ancient grievances against the early neoconservatives (former leftists who jumped on board as conservatives when the Carter presidency was imploding and Reagan came to power,) while yet others border on being racist kooks.

But much of the conservative heritage is wrapped up in the intellectual work of old-time men of the right, most of which was carried out while the right was in its decades in the post-war wilderness. For an excellent primer, get a copy of The Superfluous Men.

But getting back to some modern-day voices of Old Right ideas, one can get glimpses in the pages of the American Conservative, edited by Pat Buchanan. A recent issue reviews the Bush presidency, and not favorably. Yes, we are aware of all of the dirt dished out against Buchanan, but even those on the left have to admit that he had it nailed when it came to Iraq. The costs of those wars (and we're not talking about money) have been incalculable. We say wars, because what first got Buchanan thrown under the bus was his opposition to Bush I's war in Iraq.

Those wars have cost the conservative movement any real chance at reducing the size and influence of the federal government. They have cost us, in short, our entire domestic agenda, which is now lost for a generation -- which means permanently. It has been painful to watch conservatives line up in support of the perpetual state of war we have been engaged in ever since Bush the elder took office. One wanted to shake them by the lapels and say, "don't you see that these wars are going to mean that government will only continue to grow in size and power, that the American people will tire of an unwinnable war when we finally hit one and throw Republicans out of office, and that by bankrupting the country through an LBJ-style "guns and butter" approach, it will be a long time before we are trusted fiscally as a party?

Of course, attentive students of history know that there were conservative writers and thinkers who were making exactly that same argument in the post-war era with regard to the Cold War. Many on the right believed that communism was so fatally flawed as a system of government that the best approach we could take toward it was to ignore it and to allow it to fall under the crushing weight of its myriad weaknesses.

While William F. Buckley, Jr. remains a hero around here, there is still a contradiction at the center of his project of "fusionism" that has perhaps never been resolved, and that made the modern conservative movement incapable of dealing properly with the threat of an expansionist Islam. WFB and others believed that the war against communism trumped everything else, and that if the Cold War meant the creation of a massive federal government to carry it out -- well, so be it. Sound familiar?

We can never go back and unfight a war. We can never know how an alternative path would have played itself out. We can never know what would have happened had Bush the younger just went and killed the Taliban, and maybe bombed Iraq for good measure (but skipping the occupation and nation-building part) in response to the 9/11 attacks. We certainly don't know what would have happened had Bush the elder simply let Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia work out their own differences on the battlefield by themselves during the 1990's. Would there even have been a 9/11?

But we can certainly see what is: a mind-numbing national debt, vastly expanded federal expenditures, and the prospect of complete Democratic control of the White House and Congress for the foreseeable future.

If things were really that bad, doesn't the prospect of a Democratic administration actually portend something good? It is possible, but still doubtful. For those who harbor doubts, read Alexander Cockburn's article in The American Conservative. For those who are surprised to see this old-time leftist and long-time Nation contributor in the pages of a conservative magazine, don't be. Just read the article, and you will understand:

If there’s one thing defenders of civil liberties know, it’s that assaults on constitutional freedoms are bipartisan. Just as constitutional darkness didn’t first fall with the arrival in the Oval Office of George W. Bush, the shroud will not lift with his departure and the entry of President Barack Obama.

And again:

President Bush was also a man unbound by law, launching appalling assaults on freedom, building on the sound foundation of kindred assaults in Clinton’s time, perhaps most memorably expressed in the screams of parents and children fried by U.S. government forces in the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. Clinton, too, flouted all constitutional war powers inhibitions, with his executive decision to rain bombs on the civilian population of the former Yugoslavia.

Bush has forged resolutely along the path blazed by Clinton in asserting uninhibited executive power to wage war, seize, confine, and torture at will, breaching constitutional laws and international treaties and covenants concerning the treatment of combatants. The Patriot Act took up items on the Justice Department’s wish list left over from Clinton’s dreadful Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which trashed habeas corpus protections.

What is sadly predictable about all of this is that outside of the crotchety pages of rags like the American Conservative and the likes of writers like Cockburn and Buchanan, there is a consistent pattern in critiques of abuses of power -- conservatives criticize Democratic Presidents who do it, and liberals criticize Republican Presidents who do it. And as a result, not surprisingly, the tendency of each incoming administration is to grab for itself all of the power that the outgoing administration gathered for itself and to nab a little more in the process -- which then the next party's President will also consolidate.

On gerrymandering and redistricting in Montana

2008-11-29T12:10:00.000-07:00

Matt Singer at LITW again repeats his argument that Republicans overperformed in the 2008 legislative elections, citing the total number of votes cast statewide.

As noted before in a previous post here, this is a deceiving number in the House races (we didn't analyze the Senate races) because the figures include races in which candidates ran unopposed.

There were more unopposed Democrats than there were unopposed Republicans in this year's elections, so this skews the vote totals towards the Democratic Party. There were additional factors that skewed the results (such as the large-scale Obama GOTV effort in heavily Democratic districts, which would include those unopposed races.)

There are a lot of ways to crunch the numbers, but we made the case that in the House races, Republicans underperformed in the number of seats they won, if anything. Singer is quite simply wrong in his claims that Republicans overperformed in the House.

One point on which we would agree: Singer says that the 2014 redistricting will "address" the problems in districting which he believes are keeping the Democrats from achieving the bicameral legislative majorities to which he seems to believe they are entitled.

(It is refreshing, by the way, that Singer straightforwardly refers to Democrats having drawn the current districts, without any pretense of it being a non-partisan or bipartisan exercise.)

With Mike McGrath on the Supreme Court, it is reasonable to suppose that we can again expect Democrats to refuse to agree with Republicans on a neutral 5th member of the commission, and it is reasonable to suppose that the Supreme Court of Montana will again appoint a partisan Democrat to that position, since our new Chief Justice has a far more partisan track record than the Chief Justice he is replacing.

Singer certainly seems to assume that the results of redistricting will favor Democrats, and he he probably right. Unless the Montana Supreme Court can be shamed into choosing a truly neutral 5th member, that is -- and that isn't particularly likely.

Christopher Hitchens on the Clintonistas -- Kudlow on the Obama economic team

2008-11-26T08:21:00.003-07:00

Christopher Hitchens is shocked! Specifically, he is dismayed at the choice of Sen. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. He recounts the mind-numbing list of ways in which the Clintons have, in his (quite reasonable) view, put themselves and their financial/political interests ahead of the national interest in their conduct with foreign powers.

He says this of the once and future President Obama's choice of her at SOS: "What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me."

But why on earth would someone as intelligent as Hitchens be surprised that Obama, whom he endorsed because McCain supposedly lacked the temperament and character to be President, would choose not only Clinton herself, but an entire administration shot through with Clinton administration veterans (the latest count is that about 2/3rds of high-level appointees are Clinton people,) given his proven lack of any allergies to unsavory behavior and associations?

The choice of Clinton and the filling of the Obama cabinet with Clinton administration veterans is actually somewhat reassuring. It shows that Obama understands that he is on perilous ground, and that he needs to be able to say that he reached out for experience.

There are worse things than the Clintons' venality that so offends Hitchens -- far worse. The Clinton administration was pretty predictable because of it (and because of President Clinton's desire to be liked by the public -- a trait GWB could have tried more to emulate.) Predictability brings stability of a sort, and stability helps promote prosperity.

On another front, Larry Kudlow holds out hopes that the fact that Obama's economic team is being packed with Clinton veterans means that tax hikes will wait at least until 2010.

When asked about tax hikes on Monday, Obama said the debate is between repeal and not-renewal. In other words, repeal the Bush tax cuts in 2009, thereby raising tax rates on capital gains and successful earners, or wait until the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. Investors want to hear the latter, and Mr. Obama said his team will make a recommendation.

Here’s my thought on his team. Summers, Geithner, and Romer will all recommend no tax hikes in a recession. Maybe for Keynesian reasons; maybe a nod to supply-siders.

We can only hope. Yes, we know the axe is coming to the neck, but doesn't the condemned prisoner always appreciate a reprieve?

Who won the state House of Representatives voting?

2008-11-09T17:16:00.004-07:00

Matt Singer notes that there were just under 230,000 votes for Democratic House members in Montana this year, compared to just under 220,000 for Republicans.

Where we would disagree with Singer is that he implies that Democrats just didn't get their votes in the right places -- i.e. that Democrats underperformed in terms of how many seats they won when compared to how many votes they won.

We'll trust him on the math, but it is important to point out that this figure includes unopposed races. There were, by the MH count, 7 unopposed Democrats and 4 unopposed Republicans.

Running quick sums on the competitive races using the Billings Gazette results page, our totals (which we didn't double-check, so they could be off a little) were 207,000 for Republicans and 189,000 for Democrats -- an 18,000 vote edge for Republicans in those districts where there was even token opposition. Third party and independents were included in the major party totals if they were the sole opponents (i.e. if a Constitution Party member ran against a Democrat, but no Republican, the Constitution Party votes were tabulated as Republican votes -- or if an independent ran against a Republican, his votes were tabulated as Democratic.)

There are a number of ways to crunch the numbers, but if one assumes that the 89 competitive seats were divided proportionately with that popular vote, Republicans would have won 46.6 of those seats. Adding in their 4 seats from unopposed races, that would give Republicans between 50 and 51 seats. As it is, Republicans won 50 seats, but several (four, as we recall) of those were nailbiters, some of which may be subject to recounts, while only one Democratic win in the House was close enough that recounting was remotely a possibility.

In addition, we can assume that those safe, unopposed seats were prime targets for the Obama campaign's massive GOTV effort, inflating the number of voters compared to those who would show up in an unopposed Republican district. That's just speculation, but not unreasonable speculation.

So, it was actually Republicans who underperformed in how many seats they won in proportion to how many votes Republican House members received statewide. This is exactly what one would expect, given the history of legislative elections since gerrymandered redistricting took over in 2004.

The wonder is that Republicans did as well as they did in spite of wading upstream in a torrential river of Obama and Baucus money this year.

Tony Blankley on the conservatism of tomorrow

2008-11-09T15:16:00.006-07:00

In his post-election post-mortem, Tony Blankley perhaps had the most pointed and convincing comments we have yet seen from a conservative.

Of course, Blankley hit a soft spot for Montana Headlines from the start by quoting from William Blake's haunting poem "Jerusalem," so that wasn't really fair of him. (Yes, we realize that one could make a deconstructive case that it was Hubert Parry's later musical setting that made this into an anthem redolent of English conservative sentiment, while Blake's lyrics hint at a "heaven on earth" idea that has more in common with the left. But leave us with our love for the final product.)

Still, it isn't enough to throw off some verse -- one has to follow with thoughts worthy of it, and Blankley does:

Conservatism always has been and always will be a force to reckon with because it most closely approximates the reality of the human condition, based, as it is, on the cumulative judgment and experience of a people. It is the heir, not the apostate, to the accumulated wisdom, morality and faith of the people.

Ah -- Russell Kirk's own heart would warm to those words. Blankley continues on by pointing out that "conservatism, like all ideas and causes, is hostage to the effectiveness of the party that carries its banner." Here, too, Kirk would agree, having experienced the ups and downs of being an intellectual conservative whose party, at various points, was either worthy or unworthy of the ideas he championed.

After listing the many ways in which the deck was stacked against Republicans this election, Blankley gives an cliff-top overview of the political battlefield in the plains below, making reference to the Goldwater defeat of 1964:

...the first explanation of losing causes and losing parties (liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans) almost invariably is to blame incompetent candidates, ineffective messages, and overwhelming events.

At a technical level, that is often true. But at a deeper, historical level, the failure was that the cause was not yet ready to lead. We conservatives were not ready to lead in 1964. By 1980 and 1994, under Reagan and Gingrich, we had figured out how to talk to a majority of the country with both principles and programs that gained a majority endorsement. We no longer were just standing on our high horse declaiming to a nation. We were on the ground, with the people, leading them into the citadel of power.

Most interesting is that Blankley turns, in this hour of darkness, to a brief discussion of Benjamin Disraeli, someone who has been kicking around in the back of the Montana Headlines brain for more than a year. Disraeli is a major figure in Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, and with good reason, as Blankley explains:

Disraeli envisioned the Conservative Party as the true national party, while the Whigs were merely the party of intellectual ideas. In that time, English intellectuals and progressives were fascinated with German ideas, just as today Democrats are enchanted with European ideas.

Disraeli judged: "In a progressive country, change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change, which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of the people or in deference to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines."

By championing the vote for the people in a century in which that was inevitable, Disraeli formed a conservative party that dominated British politics for 150 years.

John O'Sullivan, writing in the New Criterion almost a year ago made the following observation:

Making due allowance for national differences, conservatives win elections when they have the support of three groups—nationalists, moral traditionalists, and supporters of free enterprise.

This is pretty obvious, and has been true in a variety of Western European countries during the democratic era. Blankley points out that two of the three are for the most part non-negotiable for conservatives:

Today there are certain profound values -- free markets and respect for life -- that are renounced at the price of our soul.

What Blankley implies needs rethinking is what O'Sullivan calls the "nationalist" leg of the stool:

...a conservative agenda must, for example, learn to speak persuasively to a near majority of Hispanic-Americans, or we will be merely a debating society.

Looking back at the legacy of the recent conservative movement, one of the great failures of the Bush administration (and of John McCain,) was that while there are Republicans who understand that the Latino vote is essential to electoral victory, there was a failure to articulate a political message and an approach to illegal immigration that would help Hispanic and non-Hispanic alike find a common home for cultural nationalism in the Republican party.

We've heard much on the right about the unwillingness of Latinos to assimilate into American society. Perhaps. But when one looks at the secular and atomized society that is being rejected by those resisting assimilation, one can fairly ask the question of "exactly which side better reflects Western Christian civilization?" More often than not, one suspects that it isn't us gringos. And on a more mundane point, whose language more resembles the Latin of the great republican heroes of Roman Western civilization -- Cato and Cicero?

There is more to the conservative rethinking that lies ahead than the question of how to join forces with the Hispanic population of the U.S. But it is a telling example for Blankley to pick as an illustration.

After all, Disraeli's brilliance was that he recognized that the universal franchise was inevitable -- the question was which party would embrace it most convincingly, and how exactly the Conservative Party could embrace it while remaining conservative. What Disraeli did, of course, was to create a concept of England (was it any accident that it was a novelist who accomplished this for the Tories?) wherein the full cultural, political, historical, and economic heritage of England was the rightful possession of all British subjects -- not just those of a privileged class.

Likewise, a bi-lingual and bi-cultural (let's not pretend that it will be multicultural -- there are really only two at play) America is at this point inevitable. Conservatism will have to be reimagined within that context, and it will need to be conceived in an authentic and organic way, not in a spirit of tokenism and identity politics -- a game at which we will lose every time.

Will America's conservative leadership be up to this and other challenges? The answers to this question will in large part determine the length of our stay in the political wilderness.

Orwell on the patriotism of paying taxes

2008-10-27T11:46:00.003-06:00

This per John Derbyshire's internet radio program. As Derbyshire says, you can't go far wrong with a quotation from George Orwell. This is from August 1940, while the Battle of Britain was raging, and the fate of the free world hung in the balance:

I wrote a long letter to the income tax people... Towards the government I feel no scruples, and I would dodge paying the tax if I could. Yet I would give my life for England readily enough, if I thought it was necessary. No-one is patriotic about taxes.

The title of the book of collected essays whence the quotation comes is entitled My Country, Right or Left. A sentiment worth noting, and attempting to emulate.

What would Milton Friedman say?

2008-10-20T08:03:00.002-06:00

We have had occasion before to mention Peter Robinson, whose fine "Uncommon Knowledge" program is a successor of sorts to William F. Buckley's "Firing Line."

A fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Robinson recently had a small piece in Forbes, in which he sat down with two of his Hoover Institution colleagues, Thomas MaCurdy [yes, the spelling is correct] and Jay Bhattacharya [can't claim expertise on that spelling.] Both economists are "close students" of Friedman, so Robinson asked them to speculate on what that great economist would say about the current financial crisis, were he around. The whole piece is worth reading, but the answers to Robinson's question about what Friedman would have thought about government intervention were particularly interesting.

He would have approved of such efforts in Britain--but expressed grave reservations about those here in the U.S.

"Milton would have wanted the authorities to find very, very aggressive ways of expanding the money supply," says Tom. The Bank of England did just that, placing large deposits in banks throughout the British financial system. "What they did in England was quick, clean and direct."

Here in the U.S., by contrast, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's original bailout plan, under which the Treasury would have spent hundreds of billions of dollars purchasing subprime and other instruments from major banks, went at the problem backwards. "The government should take responsibility for the money supply, but not for setting prices," says Jay. "The problem with subprime assets is that nobody knows what they're worth. Friedman would have told you that bringing the government in wouldn't have helped that."

With his new plan, under which the Treasury has now taken equity stakes worth $125 billion in nine big banks, Paulson has finally begun to make sense. "Direct injections of capital into banks--Milton would have approved of that," Tom says. "But why did it take so long? Why did we have to wait for the Bank of England to set the example?"

Good question -- but watching "Prime Minister's Questions" on C-Span last night (watching that wonderful weekly exercise in parliamentary sparring reminds us of why even lowly British back-benchers have a verbal agility that virtually none of our major politicians do) the viewer was reminded of why it didn't happen. Labour back-benchers were pummeling Labour leadership (the PM was away, so a stand-in had to do the honors,) asking why the money had gone to the banks rather than to the people.

It is a sad day when the British Labour Party leadership has the strength to do what Friedman would have done, while here in America...

And finally, Robinson asks whether Friedman would have seen current events as a setback for capitalism. Their answer?

Only in the short term.

"If this election goes the way it looks as though it's going to go," says Tom, "then the political system is about to get a major overcorrection to the left. And that means the American people are about to get an extreme illustration of just how badly government intervention screws stuff up."

Ah, the advantages of the long, historical view. Grouchy conservatives are of course always correct when they say we are doomed, doomed, doomed. But optimistic conservatives (really the same people, just in different moods -- we are grouchy when we have just read the morning newspaper or made an unavoidable journey to the mall; but optimistic when we choose to marry and have children, when we start a business, or when we write a paragraph in the hopes that someone will read it and care) -- optimistic conservatives understand that after the ecliptic doom, the sun always comes out, even if it won't happen in our lifetimes.

Murchison on James Polk

2008-10-17T18:38:00.003-06:00

There are few art forms that are more enjoyable than reading a good book review. It is a sort of a cheap thrill (quite literally,) since one gets much of the benefit of a book without having actually to purchase and read it. Thus, for many of us who are addicted to reading book reviews, we are condemned to lives of having read many more reviews than books -- and of having the sum total of our knowledge of a given book filtered through the eyes of a reviewer.

So be it.

Wiliam Murchison (long-time columnist for the Dallas Morning News,) writing in the American Spectator, recently reviewed what sounds like a fascinating biography of President James Polk. Walter R. Borneman's book makes the case that Polk's was a transformative Presidency, and when you read the summary, it's hard to argue otherwise:

Polk got it done. He had promised that inside one term of office -- that was all he wanted and all he said he would accept -- he would assert American title to Oregon; he would bring Texas finally into the Union; he would acquire California; he would reduce the tariff; and he would provide for an independent treasury. Wondrous to say, he did it all. There was some howling: not enough to deflect the president from his chosen course.

Murchison lightly notes that Boston newspapers didn't much care for "Polk's war" (known today as the Mexican-American War.) In fact, we would go further and note that the war spawned the first serious secessionist movement since the founding of the Constitution. One of John Calhoun's later biographers (we can't recall whom,) noted that the South Carolina statesman received much of his education in New England under schoolmasters who were secessionists. While Calhoun's arguments for the right of a state to secede are today considered to be part and parcel of his Southern mindset, they were actually forged in the fires of New England's anti-war sentiment.

But back to the review. Murchison is a descendant of Polk, so admits to not being completely unbiased in his admiration for Polk's accomplishment. He notes that modern political biographies of more distant figures are invariably laden with outright or thinly-veiled parallels to current events (guess which ones in this case.) But one passage sticks out at the end, as Murchison doubtless intends, one that reminds us of what a uniquely golden time the early 19th century was in the life our our country (if you were lucky enough not to be a slave, of course):

An unfamiliar flavor can fill the mouth of an American reader of Borneman -- the flavor of success. We win! Goals, during the Polk administration, get set and met. The United States, in pursuit of objectives that to many moderns would seem prideful or arrogant, strides onto the stage, ready for action. It expands its borders, opens new lands to exploration and development. A United States shorn of its western portion due to political timidity would be a different place from the nation that took shape under James K. Polk.

"Shorn of its western portion" -- enough to make a chill run down the spine, isn't it?

A new director at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

2008-10-15T00:52:00.004-06:00

And the editors of The New Criterion are ecstatic. Readers have been listening to them fretting over the impending retirement of Philippe de Montebello -- someone who in their eyes had managed to be "a unique moral and aesthetic force in a museum world besotted by the meretricious glitter of a preposterously overvalued and trash-addicted art market." (Tell us what you really think, will you?)

In looking ahead to the next directorship, they didn't exactly use the traditional conserative lament of "we are doomed, doomed, doomed..." But the subtext, as they say, was clearly in that vein -- they were bracing for the worst.

Since most Montanans read little about what goes on at the Met, and visit it even less, why should anyone care about the appointment of Thomas P. Campbell? The answer is simple -- institutions like the Met influence art museums in every corner of the country through their example, just as what happens at the Chicago Symphony influences the approach that smaller regional orchestras take toward their programming, their choices of new music to commission, and their interpretations of classic works. If Campbell bears out the promise that TNC's editors see in him, the visual arts will benefit everywhere.

The editors tell us that Campbell was on no-one's "short-list," and that the trustees of the Met had seen fit to reach out and tap a man on the shoulder who hadn't sought the job. The new guy in charge is a scholar, has a keen aesthetic sense, and seems to lack hubris besides -- what's not to like about that?

The election is over

2008-10-10T17:14:00.004-06:00

No, that's not a prediction as to any outcomes -- it's just an existential decision on the part of the Montana Headlines editorial staff. It's not that we don't have any opinions about the ongoing campaigns and the various tussles and tangles of this election. It's just that it is just getting to be a gawd-awful bore. All of it. So it has been harder and harder to get worked up about this or that issue, controversy, or race. Certainly, it's been getting ever harder to write about it.

Since Montana Headlines is a virtual reality to begin with, we thought -- why not just declare that the election is over, at least as far as Montana Headlines is concerned? According to the self-imposed rules of this virtual political universe -- anything is possible. Suddenly, the world seems more interesting again. Free at last, as they say.

What has this election cost us? Well, no commentary on the Billings Symphony opener and the brilliance of Valentina Lisitsa's Rachmaninoff. No discussion of the disturbing cultural implications for Billings of having Ed Kemmick's band break up (OK -- we'll tell that part: It was the usual, per the word on the street -- nice kids they wanted to have more time to visit, wanting to enjoy good microbrews with friends rather than practice guitar, happy marriages that made them want to stay home -- the same sad story that afflicts every folk/blues band made up of straight-shooting, middle-aged guys with ordinary day jobs.)

No discourse on The New Criterion's issue on higher education that we picked up while traveling (the May issue -- that's how much this politics stuff gets in the way of life) -- let alone their annual poetry issue. No reflections on re-reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the first time since college, or on Montana Shakespeare in the Park's summer offerings. Or how about that gratifying New Yorker article on Sibelius -- how long ago was that?

And what of the opening of hunting season, the smell of fall in the air, and the smell of the fall of the Oakland Raiders? It's hard to be missing all of that -- and then the realization hits: one doesn't have to write about politics, just because the election is around the corner and the expectation is that a political blog has to be in the thick of the flying mud.

Wake us up when that November 4 thing is over and tell us who won what. We'll decide if we want to comment on it.

Camille Paglia on Palin

2008-10-08T22:33:00.005-06:00

One of the most enjoyable writers on Salon is Camille Paglia, a strong Obama supporter and feminist -- but who also has the unfortunately uncommon ability to view contemporary feminism through a relatively apolitical lens. This, of course, translates into an ability to admire Gov. Palin and her accomplishments -- and to acknowledge that politics will never be the same for women again after Palin. It will be better, and not just for Republicans:

The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin’s bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up.

Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition — without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She’s no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she’s pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite — which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey’s witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin’s cadences and charm, she can’t capture the energy, which is a force of nature.

She also raises the fascinating question of whether Gov. Palin, like her husband, is part Native American:

And where is all that lurid sexual fantasy coming from? When I watch Sarah Palin, I don’t think sex — I think Amazon warrior! I admire her competitive spirit and her exuberant vitality, which borders on the supernormal. The question that keeps popping up for me is whether Palin, who was born in Idaho, could possibly be part Native American (as we know her husband is), which sometimes seems suggested by her strong facial contours. I have felt that same extraordinary energy and hyper-alertness billowing out from other women with Native American ancestry — including two overpowering celebrity icons with whom I have worked.

One of the most idiotic allegations batting around out there among urban media insiders is that Palin is “dumb.” Are they kidding? What level of stupidity is now par for the course in those musty circles? (The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting. As a Yale Ph.D., I have a perfect right to my scorn.) People who can’t see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism — the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.

She even points out what millions of ordinary Americans already know -- those who don't speak as though their words have come filtered through the New York Times style book:

As someone whose first seven years were spent among Italian-American immigrants (I never met an elderly person who spoke English until we moved from Endicott to rural Oxford, New York, when I was in first grade), I am very used to understanding meaning through what might seem to others to be outlandish or fractured variations on standard English.

[]

Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment.

On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse — which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies). This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.

We have to admit that we prefer someone who can both: speak in "shapely and syncopated syllables" while consistently speaking in complete sentences as well. But having endured two Presidents Bush who could do neither, we'll take Sarah, gladly. And like Paglia, we have the feeling that Palin has the ability to learn, which is more than one can say for a great many politicians who are more greatly admired by the media and the left.

Impending economic doom -- another angle

2008-10-03T15:36:00.002-06:00

It's amazing that no one else had the foresight to anticipate this particular economic crisis. Watch:

As the man says, there is an urgent need to develop products for marginally politically active liberals to throw their money away on. Scary, but almost certainly true.

Can Palin climb the Ifill tower?

2008-10-01T18:33:00.004-06:00

By now, most everyone has heard that Gwen Ifill, moderator of this year's Veep debate, has a book timed to come out when the new president takes office in January that not too subtly celebrates the considerable political achievements of Sen. Obama -- and that this fact wasn't disclosed to the McCain campaign when negotiations were going on over debate formats, moderators, and rules.

Newsflash! Debate moderation is stacked in the Democratic candidate's favor! You don't say... Let's see, debate moderators are journalists, journalists are 90% Dem. Wow. What a shocker to learn that a debate moderator likes the Dem candidate!

Ifill is just as capable of getting snarky as any other television news personality (as she momentarily did with Cheney 4 years ago,) but she has had years of experience on PBS cultivating a liberal but even-handed approach, she has a keen mind, and she has absorbed a lot of the calm Jim Lehrer demeanor that generally serves about as well as any in these debates. Give us Gwen Ifill -- even if she is a rabid Obama partisan -- any day over some of the clowns on television today. Ifill is more capable than most of divorcing her personal views from her performance as an interviewer.

And, let's just say it: if Gov. Sarah Palin can't handle Gwen Ifill, then the McCain/Palin ticket has much bigger problems on its hands than who is moderating a debate. Part of being a Republican candidate (and officeholder) is knowing how to deal with a media that votes 90% Democratic and can't be expected to be able to keep their partisan leanings under wrap most of the time, let alone all the time.

Palin hasn't looked good in her first couple of major interviews -- she has seemed over-coached, like a college freshman who has been cramming for a final exam. And in many ways, the job of a Veep is harder than that of the candidate. John McCain knows what he thinks, knows how he voted, and just gets to say it -- and defend it however he likes. Sarah Palin has to memorize what John McCain thinks, how he voted, and has to defend it in the way McCain would defend it. And since she hasn't had months of experience at being a McCain surrogate on television face-offs (in the way that a Tim Pawlenty or Mike Huckabee has had,) she is needing to cover a lot of ground, fast.

John McCain's gamble was that she would be politically bright enough to be able to pull it off. We're about to find out. Fortunately, just as before her knock-out speech at the RNC, expectations have been lowered to the point where if Palin gets off the debate stage without drooling on herself, she will have succeeded. Palin isn't going to impress Ifill -- or any other journalist, Democratic activist, or university academic. She won't "win" the debate, and was never going to. She was selected to connect with the average voter, and her success in this debate (besides not drooling on herself or threatening to burn books about evolution) will be measured by how well she is able to climb right over the Ifill tower, communicating directly to those average voters.

Thanks, Congressman Rehberg

2008-09-29T16:10:00.002-06:00

This bailout bill was just too much to swallow, and we're glad to see that Rehberg didn't swallow it.

Yes, we have heard all of the arguments about how the economy will go into meltdown because of its failure -- isn't that called an "adjustment?"

It is true that many of the same people who are cheering on the destruction of the greedy fatcats on Wall Street might later be wishing that something had been done if they see that the rot has extended to their own apple-barrel. But what seems to be the case in our conversations with ordinary non-political, non-financier types is that they are resigned to a very bad spell in the economy no matter what is done.

The question is whether we are heading into bad times with Wall Street multi-millionaires federally insulated from much of the pain. Amazingly enough, people would seem to prefer that the greedy types on Wall Street start jumping out of windows. We don't like the idea of suicide -- we would recommend that those who have lost their gazillions put on sackcloth and ashes and head down to Washington to start fingering the Congressmen and bureaucrats who were complicit in this mess. We suspect they will, and it can't happen soon enough.

Call it Schadenfreude, call it what you will. But you don't have 228 Democrats and Republicans voting against a bill that has widely been billed as vital for our nation's financial health unless their phones are ringing off the hook by angry ordinary taxpayers who vote -- and the only thing that Congressmen fear more than bad relations with their campaign contributors is getting voted out of office.

Workers' Comp -- more than you might like to know

2008-09-25T17:42:00.003-06:00

To check out what would appear to be the rather sorry state of the Worker's Compensation Program in Montana when compared to, well, just about any other state, go to Montana Main Street Blog to take the quiz.

The last question is the kicker: our state Supreme Court, unless it fails to be true to form, will probably put us in an even worse position in the national rankings. Cheery thoughts in a week filled with cheery events.

Victor Davis Hanson on wisdom

2008-09-24T17:13:00.002-06:00

One of MH's favorite authors is Victor Davis Hanson -- farmer and professor of classics, conservative political pundit and military historian. What's not to love (other than his excessive enthusiasm for the Iraq War?)

He recently wrote a column that, in a much more elegant way, touches on some of the same themes as our recent piece on Democrats being smarter and more sophisticated than Republican stumblebums.

A sample from Hanson:

I spent nine years as an undergraduate and graduate student — three at UC Santa Cruz, four at Stanford University, and two in Athens, Greece. In that near decade, I met all sorts of supposedly brilliant professors, undergraduates, and graduate students in the humanities — Ivy-League Ph.Ds, whiz-kids with Oxford and Cambridge degrees, Rhodes Scholars, famous archaeologists, accomplished classicists and historians, well-know humanities scholars, and Oxbridge Dons with landmark books on history and philology. In addition, the last five years I have worked at Stanford again, and often have met another array of brilliant entrepreneurs, in fields as diverse as finance, law, medicine, engineering, and computers.

I contrast all this with growing up my first 18 years in southwestern Fresno County on a 120-acre tree and vine farm, where for most of my life I knew only neighbors who worked the soil, and survived the tough environment of the local schools. And then once again from age 26 to my mid-forties, I farmed as well as taught, and so I had a good idea of what the highly educated did during the day, and what the farmers and small businesspeople did on weekends and late afternoons.

Two conclusions I drew from all of this. While civilization advances on the shoulders of the educated, it is carried along by the legs of the muscular classes. And the latter are not there by some magical IQ test or a natural filtering process that separates the wheat from the chaff, but rather by either birth, or, as often, by their preference for action and the physical world.

Second, I have seen no difference in intelligence levels between those who inhabit the world of the physical and those who cultivate the life of the mind. That is, the most brilliant Greek philologists seemed no more impressive in their aptitude than the fellow who could take apart the transmission of an old Italian Oliver tractor, fix it, and put it back together — without a manual. And I knew three or four who could. The inept mechanic seemed no more dull than the showy graduate student who could not distinguish an articular infinitive from an accusative of respect.

Take a wild stab at how Hanson applies his insights to the current political field...

PSC Commissioner Brad Molnar -- Montana Headlines interview (Full text)

2008-09-24T05:00:00.001-06:00

MH: Commissioner Brad Molnar, welcome to Montana Headlines -- thanks for taking the time to do this interview.

First, we've got to ask this question: are you related to Thomas Molnar…

Brad Molnar: Yes. First cousin.

MH: Hold on, wait for the rest of the question. Thomas Molnar, the famous Hungarian conservative philosopher and historian/political theorist?

Brad Molnar: No. Wrong Hungarian, sorry. Cousin Tom runs a septic pumping service in South Bend, Ind. I don't think that he is very philosophical about it. Don't suppose he thinks it's a political statement either. I could be wrong about that though.

MH: Well, we’re off to quite a start, aren’t we? So let's start with a simple but crucial question: what exactly does a PSC Commissioner do?

Brad Molnar: All fifty states have some form of Commission. Fed regulators (FCC and FERC) share responsibilities with us. If state or federal legislation grants monopoly power we act as a brake to make sure the customer get the value as if there were competition. I'm pretty sure the brake is broke.

MH: Correct us if we're wrong, but you seem to enjoy your job as a PSC Commissioner immensely.

Brad Molnar: Yup.

MH: Put differently, a lot of public office holders enjoy the attention, the power, or the potential for future political ambitions that go with their jobs (yes, that was a little side-swipe at your opponent) -- but don't necessarily seem to enjoy the day to day grind of their lives in public service. You seem, more than most, to just plain enjoy doing what you do. Do we have that right, and is this typical for PSC Commissioners?

Brad Molnar: I truly enjoy the job. Like most before me I am amazed at how different it is from how it is perceived. I would say that all five of us are very dedicated to doing the job as best we can. Even Toole, which surprises me. But he is so political and infecting the Commission that he overshadows the good he can do. Raney and Jergeson have become far more political since Toole got elected.

MH: What is it that you find so enjoyable or satisfying about this job?

Brad Molnar: The total and ongoing exposure to new problems and various solutions in a room filled with very intelligent people and very different ideas. The fight for individual liberty and against runaway liberalism is fought here every day. But it’s not like in the legislature -- you can't go back to your caucus at the mid-day break or go home. You are in for four years. I've actually had to develop people skills...

OK "try" to develop people skills.

MH: We've heard it said that PSC Commissioners have a more direct impact on the daily lives of Montanans than do many state-wide positions that are higher profile. Is that true, and if so, could you explain?

Brad Molnar: We make the Appropriations Committee look like a bunch of panty-waists. Schweitzer talks (and talks and talks,) about energy but we analyze myriad proposals constantly. We recently implemented an additional 50 MW of QF wind (never mind the jargon just catch the drift.) If history holds that will cost consumers over a billion dollars more than the electricity is worth.

And we have zero capacity for ancillary services to firm it. NWE was against it. Montana Consumer Council was against it. I was the only no vote. The press never reported it (Who would write the story and who would understand it?). Only lobbyists and special interest liked it. By the time it kicks in no one will remember it and those that voted for it will be retiring from their new jobs as lobbyists for the same special interests. (Least ways that's my humble opinion)
On a 3-2 vote we OK'd sending 2,000,000 of NWE ratepayer dollars to Portland and Seattle to help spread the word about energy efficiency in the wood pulp industry. I'm sure that most of that money will find its way back to Montana via liberal PACS. Not one word in the daily press. TRY THAT in the legislature.

A rate increase of $15M got big press but the $60M "tracker" we passed several weeks later never got a mention. I was the only no vote and will soon show the world why. But the "why" is a twenty year deal. Legislative actions are only good for two years. Our mistakes can't be undone, are under analyzed, and in the billions of dollars. That is why we have more impact.
And the obvious. You get an energy bill every month. All business and government entities get a utility bill every month -- so you actually pay all three.

MH: Readers of Montana Headlines know that we find your opponent, Billings Mayor Ron Tussing, to be... well, let's not go there.

From a public-interest perspective, we were definitely rooting for Curry in the Democratic primary, but as we wrote in an earlier post, "From a punditry perspective, Molnar vs. Tussing would be a dream: sort of a to-the-death political cage match."

You don't seem like someone to back down from a fight, and you're certainly in one. We haven't seen a lot of fireworks yet -- when will it start, and what shape will it take?

Brad Molnar: It's definitely started. The state Demo party has filed grievances against me with the Office of Political Practices about the Billings Brownout. They were thrown out because Noonan tried twice to get the form right but couldn't quite grasp the concept. Mary Jo Fox (formerly with Raciciot then Martz -- now Tussing's campaign manager) has filed and amended several, also on the Billings Brownout, and of course the D's on the Commission have asked for a ruling from the AG also stemming from the Billings Brownout.

Plainly they feel the Billings Brownout is a good thing in need of attack to try to drown out Tussing's enormous negatives by creating some for me. Pretty stupid. EVERYbody I have talked to about it sees right through it. Does anybody think Tussing could even win Mayor again? The last three days of his campaign for Mayor were a gathering of some of the slimiest people in Montana politics. How they escaped prosecution I have no idea. I expect I'll get some on me as all the old ones are back plus a few new faces.

Because they are issueless they have really tied me up with all the work I have to do on their inane complaints. It is very consuming of emotional capital, money and time. IS this really the best way to form a new government every two years? The Tussing campaign (Led by Mary Jo Fox and Joe Gunthals) is the spiritless fate we must now suffer for failing to rein in crap-mongers during so many campaign cycles. Especially the last mayoral campaign in Billings and the Fox v Cooney for Senate. I fully expect a repeat of the final days of the mayor’s race with enough crap slung by "independent expenditures" to make me vote for Tussing. Tussing’s name is so negative that they can't raise him up. They need to try to bring me down.

MH: One war that you are definitely winning, from what our eastern Montana readers tell us, is the Burma-Shave sign war. Do you expect to maintain your commanding Burma-Shave lead over Tussing -- and so our readers who don’t make it onto the roads of PSC District 2 can know what on earth we're talking about, could you share a couple of your favorite Burma-Shave campaign sign sequences?

Brad Molnar: Displaying all the creativity and originality that Tussing can muster on energy and telecom issues ("I want to explore options and "look for"...never mind) -- Ron Tussing has copied my signs.

MH: Mayor Tussing really is shameless, isn’t he? But in all fairness, he did manage to compose a puerile ditty about the city administrator he was in a fight with -- readers can look that monumental act of creativity up in the MH archives (search for "The House that Ron Tussing Built") -- or in the court records from when the City of Billings was being taken to the cleaners for millions in no small part because of Tussing.

We digress shamelessly -- go on...

Brad Molnar: Of course I copied them from the Burma Shave idea but let’s admit that I took them to a new level in Montana politics. The people that have mentioned Tussing's signs, regardless of party leanings, all use the word "copy cat".

What else did he think people would feel? That he was clever? The rest of us learned in fourth grade that "copycats" were to be shunned on the playground. He has a right to do it but it's dumb and again raises all of his other myriad ethics issues.

But for the unenlightened they are signs with jingles on them rather like the old Burma Shave signs. Some are silly but all fit my theme.

Those Liberal Fellas / Sound Real Clever / Do their ideas work / Never Ever / Molnar for Public Service Commission – (This is the only sign to be stolen so far; last cycle it was the only one to be driven over.)

Mine it now / Drill it now / Don't need Arabs / To show us how / Molnar for Public Service Commission – (This one is very popular. Got me labled a racist. Sheesh.)

When near a school / Drive real slow / Let those little / Voters grow / Molnar for Public Service Commission -- ( This is also a carryover from last cycle. Actually from an original.)

Can't make him run / Can't make him cry / Molnar is / A stand up guy / Molnar for PSC Molnar for PSC -- (In case they were wondering.)

MH: These are, of course, 5 separate signs in a row, and you have to wait a bit for the next line -- very effective. As noted before, you are crushing the opposition in the Burma-Shave wars. Turning to more serious topics on the campaign front, where is this election going to be fought and won?

Brad Molnar: I think that I have to play a heads up game but it is already decided. In redistricting my area was designed to be Republican and Jergeson’s was designed to be Dem. The others are plus or minus 6%.

But 140,000 of my 200,000 voters all live in Yellowstone County. Obama people are really registering a lot of people here but we don't know how many of those will actually vote. That and the Baucus money thing are the only two unknowns.

Other than that the Gazette is the paper of record for the district and everywhere I go people are well aware of Ron's reneging on the $160,000 pay to leave, shoving the reporter and claiming self defense, the law suits, the multiple ethics violations, voting money for his wife’s projects, subordination violations, lying under oath, being already bought and paid for by lobbyists, etc.

Getting yard or Burma sign locations is easy. I just have to say that Tussing is my opponent. I think that the majority of people have already made up their minds about us. If he is the kind of guy (with the kind of followers he has) they want on the PSC they can have him. But plainly even those that supported him for Mayor have come to see that the City Manager was right and Tussing had to go to protect the people of Billings and now they have buyer’s remorse.

I think the primary numbers show that. Curry's campaign was nonexistent (I saw just two yard signs). The Curry votes were not Pro Curry. They were anti-Tussing. No idea what that means in the general. People should wonder why the Dems and liberals are so willing to debase themselves to get Tussing on the PSC when they already have a majority and the odds of Repubs sweeping all three open seats are long.

MH: You mentioned the Gazette as the paper of record in your PSC district. Do you believe that the Montana press in general and the Billings Gazette in particular has given you fair and balanced coverage during your tenure as commissioner and during this campaign?

Brad Molnar: In general "no." But, in truth, I think it is improving. Dennison and I have a respect for each other and trade barbs without ongoing animosity. Actually a healthy reporter/reportee relationship.

I miss talking with Chuck Johnson. He was very unfair to Judy Martz but always fair with me. I think, and hope, that my chagrin with LEE lies with the editors. I know it is with AP. Gouras is OK. Hergenrider in Billings tries to be fair but Lutey is nothing but a partisan hack. The new Capitol Correspondent for the GF Tribune has definite Democrat leanings. Sometimes he overrides them sometimes not. The jury is still out on him.

What's her name, the old GF Capital correspondent, was great. Very unbiased writing but she went to work for Lee in Missoula. Lucky Missoula. AP should have picked her up for Helena. Assume I will have between 45 days and 4 years to regret these comments.

MH: How about being a little more specific and forthright in answering the rest of these questions!

Anyway, while we're on the press, tell us about your working relationship with the Billings Outpost and its editor, David Crisp. Crisp at Billings Blog and Montana Headlines are the totality of the political blogging scene here in this part of the state, so we take a keen interest in the success of the Outpost.

Brad Molnar: I have total respect for David as a person, for his intellect, his ethics, and his journalistic capacities.

MH: While he often describes himself as a conservative, it would seem that you and he would probably have slightly different conceptions of what that word exactly means.

Brad Molnar: I think that David is more like a European style "liberal/conservative" and I am perhaps "right" of that sniveling, teary eyed, limp wristed, panty-waist that wrote Genghis Khan’s prisoner policy.

Dave's and my differences are probably more specific – for example, where we might both agree that the Full Faith and Credit clause of the US Constitution would require all states to recognize a gay marriage from any state, I would argue that it should not because of the 10th Amendment but he would challenge my conservative credentials for making such an interpretative argument after standing on fundamentalist interpretation ideals for so long. Hope that is not too obtuse; and that Dave concurs.

MH: I imagine that we’ll find out, since Billings Blog and MH regularly engage in good-natured, yet substantive disputes.

Anyway, in spite of your differences, your column was a staple at the Outpost for some time.

Brad Molnar: It was very popular. Even in Wyoming. But the #1 comment I got was from Dem's telling me how surprised they were that they actually agreed with me. Dave paid me $30 per column and never tried to censor me. People still tell me they miss it; but alas.

And I miss writing it. Actually the column appeared in several papers off and on.

MH: Let's touch on a few specifics, starting with your public comments condemning the "right to work" plank inserted into the platform at the recent GOP convention. For the record, MH opposes such laws, too. What on earth happened up in Missoula that this plank got shoved into the party platform?

Brad Molnar: That is what happens when people do not pay attention. I was not on the floor when it took place and it is so cloaked that...well, it happened. True conservatives cannot accept government intervening in private sector contracts. Period.

MH: Agreed. How do PSC Commissioners affect the interests of labor union members, and what specifically have you done to look out for them while on the PSC?

Brad Molnar: As you know I was the first Republican in the history of Montana to represent Laurel in the legislature. Some said that the union influence made it impossible. I figured that railroaders did not have enough money to be liberal so talked about what we had in common (which is most things) and they kept me in till term limits.
I actually enjoy working with union guys. They are long on doing and short on pussy footing. But more directly, when the Judith Gap wind farm was being started they wanted to use out of state, non-union contractors. There are no in-state non-union contractors that could have built the project.

At the PSC level I made a motion to place in our docket that "Little Davis Bacon" would apply. Still not sure if it would have applied but I tried. Only got one vote, Raney's. The other D's took a powder.

MH: "Little Davis Bacon?"

Brad Molnar: State version of Federal "prevailing wage."

MH: Got it. So is it possible that Republicans, if they don't insist on blowing it, have the opportunity to win the support of traditional unions in Montana and elsewhere?

Brad Molnar: Of course. Under Jerry Driscoll the AFL-CIO dropped their participation in slime ball politics and focused on jobs for their people. Republicans tend to like that concept so it was symbiotic.

I have encountered a strong union sentiment to that in my PSC campaign. The trade unions pulled Tussing's endorsement to fight for me. (No resolution of that yet. Railroaders in Forsyth recognized me at a cafe, and walked up to offer their support).

Union workers are just individuals. Approach them as such and all things are possible. Don't attack their union. After all it is their union. Let them change its policies if they so desire. They vote on this stuff and their leaders. If you don't like it then join and vote.

How tough is this? It's called freedom. Not every fight requires war. I have noticed that Republicans that complain about union money and "bus loads" of volunteers have not donated a dime to local candidates or even a few afternoons stumping for a candidate.

If we are being out-organized, out-donated, and out-volunteered by a minority, why do we have the right to be critical of others for digging out their pocketbooks and getting off the couch?

MH: You’re preaching to the choir. No whining about unions allowed around here.

Next up is energy deregulation.

Brad Molnar: OH BOY!!!

MH: Well, you knew it was coming. Listening to your opposition, the evil state legislator Brad Molnar was single-handily responsible for deregulation, ensuing high energy prices, and general chaos, mayhem, and destruction. Did we leave anything out?

Brad Molnar: And I did it at the request of my corporate masters....

I was such a powerful legislator that Bob Gannon handpicked me. I didn't even have to show up at the hearings. If you have nothing to say, but an election to win...make it up.
Considering Tussing's history why would this surprise anyone?

MH: You’ve got a point there. But leaving aside the fact that this argument is so… so 1990, are we correct in suspecting that this is, just maybe, a bit of over-wrought election year shrillness?

Brad Molnar: Actually since they have decided that conservation efforts are the root of all evil they have pretty much left this cut and paste argument alone. But I'm sure we will see more of it.

It's really a stupid argument to raise. I'm the one that took my own time and money trying to sue to get it overturned. The D's on the Commission actually took a public vote to try and block the suit to keep the facts from coming to court.

The facts are clear. The PSC acted in collusion with MPC and PPL, and lied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to facilitate the sale of MPC generation assets as quickly as possible. They had to ignore a dozen brakes put on them by the legislature. The document they did this with is the first one under my pic on the PSC website.

Notice that they clearly state that the federal government does not allow states to deregulate –rather, only a Commission can request the state's generation be granted (EWG status.)

MH: Is there a "rest of the story?"

Brad Molnar: I was absolutely shocked when the Repub party did not even ask if they could help. I was shocked when the Demo party refused to even discuss how to reregulate and I was shocked when my fellow Commissioners ordered our legal staff to stand with the PPL attorney (He has donated to Tussing) and defend our deregulated status.

I never asked them to help or give money. Just stay out of the way. When Raney switched to oppose the reregulation effort he publicly stated it was for "partisan political considerations" from the bench. (last entry below my pic on the PSC website).

Not a word in the press. An unbiased study of the causations, the issue, the process are a gold mine on how to have a better future and not make the same mistakes again (state and federal) but alas, the issue is better political fodder. Geez, it even happened before Tussing moved to Montana to claim the title Most Failed Chief of Police/Mayor Billings Has Ever Known...but it seems to be the only thing he knows anything about.

MH: Let’s turn to some more dirty stuff. We've had an annoying commenter who periodically shows up on MH threads that deal either with you or Ron Tussing, saying that you were convicted of felony assault and battery.

Knowing how devoted Mayor Tussing's fawning admirers are, this sort of anonymous charge will probably continue to appear on various blogs and in the comments section of the Gazette during this campaign. Would you like to enlighten MH readers regarding your past felonious activities?

Brad Molnar: I would rather talk about my future felonious activities but my compatriots would prefer that I not. Such stories will probably continue to surface in the blogosphere but not on the editorial page because they would be actionable and could not muster a defense onnaconna taint true.

Actually a felony would preclude me from serving would it not?

MH: We tried making that logical point, along with pointing out the absence of anything in the press about it in the last election cycle, but some people are logically challenged.

Brad Molnar: Yes, I've had a few scrapes but never seen a judge... plainly self defense.

Sorry, but I can't match Tussing man-handling a reporter at his announcement for mayor when he dared ask why Tussing thought he could break the $160,000 settlement agreement. Apparently Tussing claimed self defense and said he was afraid the man was armed (he had a camera and is 1/3 the size of Tussing)

He has not assaulted anyone for carrying a camera before or since. Charges dropped. Had that been me I would still be in the clink. It amazes me when they know they are vulnerable yet go forward with their cowardly attacks. They don't even care if they hurt their own candidate. Very poorly thought out. Tussing should be avoiding these issues like sumac.

MH: Enough on that – if we continue, our readers will be forced to go take a shower and won’t be able to finish reading this most engaging interview.

Let’s talk some specifics of how the PSC works. How do PSC commissioners interact with the state legislature -- do you have an advisory role in the crafting of legislation?

Brad Molnar: We often craft our own. For example the PSC crafted the legislation to increase the USB (consumer tax) on natural gas by 300%. I was the only commissioner to oppose it.

MH: Do you testify before committees?

Brad Molnar: There is at least one Commissioner present for just about any piece of legislation that concerns what we do. Often just to answer technical questions. Just as often we offer pro and con positions as determined by our votes to support or oppose various pieces legislation.

For example Mood (the other R) and I have, for the past two sessions supported legislation to mandate that the PSC put together a "lowest cost possible" energy portfolio for utility customers with the option for "green power" aficionados to pay more for their chosen color of electrons.

The three Democrat commissioners have always stood with the enviro lobby and opposed same. All of us agreed that Gov. Schweitzer’s HB3 Special Session was patently illegal. Ergo none of the D's went to testify so they could not be questioned.

MH: Most interesting – we’ll have to pay attention in the next session to see who testifies and when.

Can you give examples of laws that have passed or nearly passed in the legislature in the last couple of sessions that were injurious to Montana citizens -- ones that a Republican legislature should overturn in the coming session?

Brad Molnar: Of course the aforementioned 300% increase in USB taxes (it was made far worse in committee at the request of MDU).

HB 25 has a moratorium on new coal-fired plants and created a new 3.5% tax on energy. If we repeal the Renewable Energy Portfolio (SB 415 Schweitzer/Tester) we could save about $50M immediately and millions more per year.

MH: How about any that need to be fought and kept from passing in the next legislative session?

Brad Molnar: Have been a little preoccupied with the next couple of months to worry about the next session but I assume that everyone agrees that the people of SE Mont would be represented very differently before legislative committees if Tussing should win.

MH: Fair enough, but still, is there legislation that you as a PSC Commissioner would like to see introduced and debated in the next legislative session?

Brad Molnar: Along with Rep Everett I tried to make fraud by, or before, the Commission the same as fraud anywhere (punishable up to two years after discovery) rather than you have thirty days after a ruling to file an action.

Only the three D's on the Commission and NWE opposed it in committee. It got clobbered in Committee and twice on the floor just to get a rehearing.

Listen to the tapes. Jergeson went berserk to kill it. Totally berserk. It was amazing. My jaw dropped. It would have allowed the Commission to be held responsible for the fraud and collusion they committed (and admitted to) when they asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to deregulate Montana Power and PPL.

Dems really hate the truth on this subject. I'll bet they quote Justice Nelson on this topic when they blog. Four justices refused to sign his dissent so they naturally quote him like he actually represented someone other than himself and his loathing for my conservative politics and our many years running feud over his judicial activism.

MH: Well, that spares us from having to ask for a comment or two about the role of the judiciary.

Next up, what kind of a grade would you give the current governor when it comes to the basic pocketbook issues of utility rates?

Brad Molnar: A+ for taking credit for the efforts of others.

D-minus for what he has done to consumers and the cost causers he has planted.

When I nailed him on imploring us to help low-income ratepayers with their increasing utility bills, when he promoted every cost causer in the legislature he said, "Yes, but my concern was for the jobs it creates."

Six months building wind mills and 20 years of higher rates. Make that an "F."

Same, exactly the same, answer from his transmission guy (Tuttle) at the Colstrip meeting of the interim ETIC when he was asked by Weisman (D-Great Falls) about the impact of the Montana Idaho Intertie.

So it is definitely Schweitzer’s policy to ignore costs if he gets a good headline about jobs. He is a very bright guy so I assume he knows he is guilty. It's just that the press prefers to not ask any follow up questions. Just quote the press agent...or they might not be invited to the next wine tasting.

Same thing when Barret told legislators to resist my amendment to HB 3 (special session) that would have saved consumers $38.85M on electricity bills (That reminds me. We should try that one again.)

ZERO dems voted for it. Why doesn't Schweitzer say what he has done to lower energy bills (not counting subsidizing the poor with other people’s money)...make that F-minus.

Republicans put price caps on the renewables in SB 415 2005 in House Committee. The amendments to pull off the consumer protections were called the governor’s Amendments...mainly because they were. Hell of a floor fight. Nothing in the press.

What is lower than F-minus? Add $10,000 to the war chest against me.

MH: Let us know if there is a spike in fundraising from Helena after this interview appears.
Let’s move on to a different intra-governmental relationship. How do PSC commissioners interact with the federal government?

Brad Molnar: Constantly. Directly via meetings with FERC and FCC top personnel at NARUC meetings and teleconferences and through regional stake holder issues (BPA) and transmission issues to the east. The commissioners you must work with are "no nonsense" professionals. They Googled me before I got there and judged if I had anything to add to the issue.

If not, you will just be a placeholder and cannot represent Montana. Very judgmental and very hard working group. They wouldn't let Tussing carry the donuts.

MH: As entertaining as it is to pull a visual of Mayor Tussing fetching donuts and coffee for the big boys, let’s hope we don’t have to deal with that. How has the change to Democratic control in the U.S. Congress affected things in the last couple of years?

Brad Molnar: It appears to me that the people voted to end the war. They still have the war but got stuck with a freshman congress controlled by a bunch of enviro zealots that simply refuse to have a holistic approach to energy and the environment.

I never thought that there would be a working majority in congress that was willing to perform great violence on families in the US via their utility bills (Cap and Trade/carbon tax) (a crafty tax hidden in utility bills that we will never get rid of.). I must now concede the possibility and work to mitigate the harm.

MH: Will the outcome of the Presidential race this year affect what you do at the PSC?

Brad Molnar: Both Obama and McCain have signaled that they will sign Cap and Trade. They are both willing to sell this country down the river for a sound bite.

Maybe Sarah can get McCain to moderate but I doubt it. Before it was Warner-Lieberman it was McCain-Lieberman. Either way we are screwed and, if I am in the majority, will write rules to mitigate the damage they will do.

If not in the majority I will use the position to inform consumers....actually a pretty good weapon....which is why I am so heavily targeted.

Add another $10,000 to Tussings war chest. I'm joking -- it will be independent expenditures.

MH: We’ll look forward to getting those mailers. Let's turn back to the specifics of energy for a final question. Is it safe to assume that we are in agreement that for now, drilling for more oil, building more oil refineries, and mining and using more coal are the irreducible minimum in relieving the burdensome cost of energy?

Brad Molnar: Those that argue against more drilling are just plain goofy....but may get elected president. It's a purist environmentalist argument..."No carbon at any cost -- but confuse the issue at every turn."

MH: And would we also be in agreement that the "all of the above" approach to attacking the energy supply issue on every front is essential to meeting our energy needs in the long run?

Brad Molnar: And the short run. Look how fast Bakken turned the argument. Even Tester is taking credit for it now.

MH: Moving on from that, what alternative energy source is the most promising for Montana -- and what makes it the most promising technology?

Brad Molnar: Wind, though not as a stand-alone generation. But wind with compressed air storage (still in R&D), tied to hydro, tied to EXISTING natural gas.

As a nation we have 205,000 megawatts of natural gas baseload. We would be generations tying it to wind and the results would be astoundingly good. Building gas generation to support wind....totally political and wildly anti-consumer.

And when you say "for Montana"...the only winners are those that sell wind power. That's why people have to be forced to buy it i.e. thru renewable energy portfolios etc and that's why they are forced to pay a $16 BILLION dollar subsidy. Montana is often called the Saudi Arabia of wind (so is No Dak. So Dak. Texas etc etc...it's what people say when they think a vacuous statement will work better than facts...usually on the 6 o'clock news).

Do the Arabs have to mandate the use of oil? Do Arabs subsidize its sales to help hide the true costs? If wind is mandated why subsidize it? The least complicated to authorize is "cogeneration" on a case by case basis as long as it is not a Qualified Facility. We have plenty of affordable/reliable energy in Montana. Why we are convincing ourselves that greater investment in subsidized/unreliable energy is a winning argument is beyond me. We have not and cannot curtail one megawatt of electricity from Colstrip since we built Judith Gap with its 135MW capacity. Know why?

MH: I think that is pretty obvious, and can be summarized in one word: demand -- which is only going up.

Brad Molnar: And you would be wrong. Have a nice day.

MH: That's a cliffhanger of a note to end on. We'll have to find the real answer to that one another time, then.

Commissioner Brad Molnar, thank you again for taking the time to talk with us here at Montana Headlines. Good luck in your campaign – and while we may regret this, you can have the last word.

Brad Molnar: Luck? I'm up against a discredited cop, that became a discredited mayor, that admits he would be a know-nothing Commissioner. How tough could it be.....INCOMING!!!!

Biden -- "no coal plants here in America" (Sorry, Montana)

2008-09-23T12:35:00.004-06:00

So much for the 50-state strategy. According to our governor, we are the "Saudi Arabia of coal" (just when the plans to dig it up and turn it into electricity are going to materialize is quite another matter) -- but it sounds like the Obama-Biden team is saying one thing in Montana and another in urban Ohio (sound like a familiar pattern?):

Then again, this is a part of why Presidential campaigns traditionally keep Veep candidates in quiet and subordinate roles when it comes to making policy statements -- there can only be one person in the driver's seat. Ed Rollins, before either of the Veep candidates were announced, said that a campaign manager wants only to hear from the Veep three times: at the announcement of the pick, in the convention acceptance speech, and at the debate.

Of course, Rollins was having to deal with then Veep Bush Sr., so perhaps his view on the subject is understandably jaded. Still, knowing Biden's history, the Obama campaign would have done well to follow the Rollins diet -- cutting back on Veep soundbites.

PSC Commissioner Brad Molnar -- Montana Headlines interview (Part 2 of 2)

2008-09-23T05:00:00.006-06:00

Read Part I here.

_____________________________

MH: Let's touch on a few specifics, starting with your public comments condemning the "right to work" plank inserted into the platform at the recent GOP convention. For the record, MH opposes such laws, too. What on earth happened up in Missoula that this plank got shoved into the party platform?

Brad Molnar: That is what happens when people do not pay attention. I was not on the floor when it took place and it is so cloaked that...well, it happened. True conservatives cannot accept government intervening in private sector contracts. Period.

MH: Agreed. How do PSC Commissioners affect the interests of labor union members, and what specifically have you done to look out for them while on the PSC?

Brad Molnar: As you know I was the first Republican in the history of Montana to represent Laurel in the legislature. Some said that the union influence made it impossible. I figured that railroaders did not have enough money to be liberal so talked about what we had in common (which is most things) and they kept me in till term limits.
I actually enjoy working with union guys. They are long on doing and short on pussy footing. But more directly, when the Judith Gap wind farm was being started they wanted to use out of state, non-union contractors. There are no in-state non-union contractors that could have built the project.

At the PSC level I made a motion to place in our docket that "Little Davis Bacon" would apply. Still not sure if it would have applied but I tried. Only got one vote, Raney's. The other D's took a powder.

MH: "Little Davis Bacon?"

Brad Molnar: State version of Federal "prevailing wage."

MH: Got it. So is it possible that Republicans, if they don't insist on blowing it, have the opportunity to win the support of traditional unions in Montana and elsewhere?

Brad Molnar: Of course. Under Jerry Driscoll the AFL-CIO dropped their participation in slime ball politics and focused on jobs for their people. Republicans tend to like that concept so it was symbiotic.

I have encountered a strong union sentiment to that in my PSC campaign. The trade unions pulled Tussing's endorsement to fight for me. (No resolution of that yet. Railroaders in Forsyth recognized me at a cafe, and walked up to offer their support).

Union workers are just individuals. Approach them as such and all things are possible. Don't attack their union. After all it is their union. Let them change its policies if they so desire. They vote on this stuff and their leaders. If you don't like it then join and vote.

How tough is this? It's called freedom. Not every fight requires war. I have noticed that Republicans that complain about union money and "bus loads" of volunteers have not donated a dime to local candidates or even a few afternoons stumping for a candidate.

If we are being out-organized, out-donated, and out-volunteered by a minority, why do we have the right to be critical of others for digging out their pocketbooks and getting off the couch?

MH: You’re preaching to the choir. No whining about unions allowed around here.

Next up is energy deregulation.

Brad Molnar: OH BOY!!!

MH: Well, you knew it was coming. Listening to your opposition, the evil state legislator Brad Molnar was single-handily responsible for deregulation, ensuing high energy prices, and general chaos, mayhem, and destruction. Did we leave anything out?

Brad Molnar: And I did it at the request of my corporate masters....

I was such a powerful legislator that Bob Gannon handpicked me. I didn't even have to show up at the hearings. If you have nothing to say, but an election to win...make it up.
Considering Tussing's history why would this surprise anyone?

MH: You’ve got a point there. But leaving aside the fact that this argument is so… so 1990, are we correct in suspecting that this is, just maybe, a bit of over-wrought election year shrillness?

Brad Molnar: Actually since they have decided that conservation efforts are the root of all evil they have pretty much left this cut and paste argument alone. But I'm sure we will see more of it.

It's really a stupid argument to raise. I'm the one that took my own time and money trying to sue to get it overturned. The D's on the Commission actually took a public vote to try and block the suit to keep the facts from coming to court.

The facts are clear. The PSC acted in collusion with MPC and PPL, and lied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to facilitate the sale of MPC generation assets as quickly as possible. They had to ignore a dozen brakes put on them by the legislature. The document they did this with is the first one under my pic on the PSC website.

Notice that they clearly state that the federal government does not allow states to deregulate –rather, only a Commission can request the state's generation be granted (EWG status.)

MH: Is there a "rest of the story?"

Brad Molnar: I was absolutely shocked when the Repub party did not even ask if they could help. I was shocked when the Demo party refused to even discuss how to reregulate and I was shocked when my fellow Commissioners ordered our legal staff to stand with the PPL attorney (He has donated to Tussing) and defend our deregulated status.

I never asked them to help or give money. Just stay out of the way. When Raney switched to oppose the reregulation effort he publicly stated it was for "partisan political considerations" from the bench. (last entry below my pic on the PSC website).

Not a word in the press. An unbiased study of the causations, the issue, the process are a gold mine on how to have a better future and not make the same mistakes again (state and federal) but alas, the issue is better political fodder. Geez, it even happened before Tussing moved to Montana to claim the title Most Failed Chief of Police/Mayor Billings Has Ever Known...but it seems to be the only thing he knows anything about.

MH: Let’s turn to some more dirty stuff. We've had an annoying commenter who periodically shows up on MH threads that deal either with you or Ron Tussing, saying that you were convicted of felony assault and battery.

Knowing how devoted Mayor Tussing's fawning admirers are, this sort of anonymous charge will probably continue to appear on various blogs and in the comments section of the Gazette during this campaign. Would you like to enlighten MH readers regarding your past felonious activities?

Brad Molnar: I would rather talk about my future felonious activities but my compatriots would prefer that I not. Such stories will probably continue to surface in the blogosphere but not on the editorial page because they would be actionable and could not muster a defense onnaconna taint true.

Actually a felony would preclude me from serving would it not?

MH: We tried making that logical point, along with pointing out the absence of anything in the press about it in the last election cycle, but some people are logically challenged.

Brad Molnar: Yes, I've had a few scrapes but never seen a judge... plainly self defense.

Sorry, but I can't match Tussing man-handling a reporter at his announcement for mayor when he dared ask why Tussing thought he could break the $160,000 settlement agreement. Apparently Tussing claimed self defense and said he was afraid the man was armed (he had a camera and is 1/3 the size of Tussing)

He has not assaulted anyone for carrying a camera before or since. Charges dropped. Had that been me I would still be in the clink. It amazes me when they know they are vulnerable yet go forward with their cowardly attacks. They don't even care if they hurt their own candidate. Very poorly thought out. Tussing should be avoiding these issues like sumac.

MH: Enough on that – if we continue, our readers will be forced to go take a shower and won’t be able to finish reading this most engaging interview.

Let’s talk some specifics of how the PSC works. How do PSC commissioners interact with the state legislature -- do you have an advisory role in the crafting of legislation?

Brad Molnar: We often craft our own. For example the PSC crafted the legislation to increase the USB (consumer tax) on natural gas by 300%. I was the only commissioner to oppose it.

MH: Do you testify before committees?

Brad Molnar: There is at least one Commissioner present for just about any piece of legislation that concerns what we do. Often just to answer technical questions. Just as often we offer pro and con positions as determined by our votes to support or oppose various pieces legislation.

For example Mood (the other R) and I have, for the past two sessions supported legislation to mandate that the PSC put together a "lowest cost possible" energy portfolio for utility customers with the option for "green power" aficionados to pay more for their chosen color of electrons.

The three Democrat commissioners have always stood with the enviro lobby and opposed same. All of us agreed that Gov. Schweitzer’s HB3 Special Session was patently illegal. Ergo none of the D's went to testify so they could not be questioned.

MH: Most interesting – we’ll have to pay attention in the next session to see who testifies and when.

Can you give examples of laws that have passed or nearly passed in the legislature in the last couple of sessions that were injurious to Montana citizens -- ones that a Republican legislature should overturn in the coming session?

Brad Molnar: Of course the aforementioned 300% increase in USB taxes (it was made far worse in committee at the request of MDU).

HB 25 has a moratorium on new coal-fired plants and created a new 3.5% tax on energy. If we repeal the Renewable Energy Portfolio (SB 415 Schweitzer/Tester) we could save about $50M immediately and millions more per year.

MH: How about any that need to be fought and kept from passing in the next legislative session?

Brad Molnar: Have been a little preoccupied with the next couple of months to worry about the next session but I assume that everyone agrees that the people of SE Mont would be represented very differently before legislative committees if Tussing should win.

MH: Fair enough, but still, is there legislation that you as a PSC Commissioner would like to see introduced and debated in the next legislative session?

Brad Molnar: Along with Rep Everett I tried to make fraud by, or before, the Commission the same as fraud anywhere (punishable up to two years after discovery) rather than you have thirty days after a ruling to file an action.

Only the three D's on the Commission and NWE opposed it in committee. It got clobbered in Committee and twice on the floor just to get a rehearing.

Listen to the tapes. Jergeson went berserk to kill it. Totally berserk. It was amazing. My jaw dropped. It would have allowed the Commission to be held responsible for the fraud and collusion they committed (and admitted to) when they asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to deregulate Montana Power and PPL.

Dems really hate the truth on this subject. I'll bet they quote Justice Nelson on this topic when they blog. Four justices refused to sign his dissent so they naturally quote him like he actually represented someone other than himself and his loathing for my conservative politics and our many years running feud over his judicial activism.

MH: Well, that spares us from having to ask for a comment or two about the role of the judiciary.

Next up, what kind of a grade would you give the current governor when it comes to the basic pocketbook issues of utility rates?

Brad Molnar: A+ for taking credit for the efforts of others.

D-minus for what he has done to consumers and the cost causers he has planted.

When I nailed him on imploring us to help low-income ratepayers with their increasing utility bills, when he promoted every cost causer in the legislature he said, "Yes, but my concern was for the jobs it creates."

Six months building wind mills and 20 years of higher rates. Make that an "F."

Same, exactly the same, answer from his transmission guy (Tuttle) at the Colstrip meeting of the interim ETIC when he was asked by Weisman (D-Great Falls) about the impact of the Montana Idaho Intertie.

So it is definitely Schweitzer’s policy to ignore costs if he gets a good headline about jobs. He is a very bright guy so I assume he knows he is guilty. It's just that the press prefers to not ask any follow up questions. Just quote the press agent...or they might not be invited to the next wine tasting.

Same thing when Barret told legislators to resist my amendment to HB 3 (special session) that would have saved consumers $38.85M on electricity bills (That reminds me. We should try that one again.)

ZERO dems voted for it. Why doesn't Schweitzer say what he has done to lower energy bills (not counting subsidizing the poor with other people’s money)...make that F-minus.

Republicans put price caps on the renewables in SB 415 2005 in House Committee. The amendments to pull off the consumer protections were called the governor’s Amendments...mainly because they were. Hell of a floor fight. Nothing in the press.

What is lower than F-minus? Add $10,000 to the war chest against me.

MH: Let us know if there is a spike in fundraising from Helena after this interview appears.
Let’s move on to a different intra-governmental relationship. How do PSC commissioners interact with the federal government?

Brad Molnar: Constantly. Directly via meetings with FERC and FCC top personnel at NARUC meetings and teleconferences and through regional stake holder issues (BPA) and transmission issues to the east. The commissioners you must work with are "no nonsense" professionals. They Googled me before I got there and judged if I had anything to add to the issue.

If not, you will just be a placeholder and cannot represent Montana. Very judgmental and very hard working group. They wouldn't let Tussing carry the donuts.

MH: As entertaining as it is to pull a visual of Mayor Tussing fetching donuts and coffee for the big boys, let’s hope we don’t have to deal with that. How has the change to Democratic control in the U.S. Congress affected things in the last couple of years?

Brad Molnar: It appears to me that the people voted to end the war. They still have the war but got stuck with a freshman congress controlled by a bunch of enviro zealots that simply refuse to have a holistic approach to energy and the environment.

I never thought that there would be a working majority in congress that was willing to perform great violence on families in the US via their utility bills (Cap and Trade/carbon tax) (a crafty tax hidden in utility bills that we will never get rid of.). I must now concede the possibility and work to mitigate the harm.

MH: Will the outcome of the Presidential race this year affect what you do at the PSC?

Brad Molnar: Both Obama and McCain have signaled that they will sign Cap and Trade. They are both willing to sell this country down the river for a sound bite.

Maybe Sarah can get McCain to moderate but I doubt it. Before it was Warner-Lieberman it was McCain-Lieberman. Either way we are screwed and, if I am in the majority, will write rules to mitigate the damage they will do.

If not in the majority I will use the position to inform consumers....actually a pretty good weapon....which is why I am so heavily targeted.

Add another $10,000 to Tussings war chest. I'm joking -- it will be independent expenditures.

MH: We’ll look forward to getting those mailers. Let's turn back to the specifics of energy for a final question. Is it safe to assume that we are in agreement that for now, drilling for more oil, building more oil refineries, and mining and using more coal are the irreducible minimum in relieving the burdensome cost of energy?

Brad Molnar: Those that argue against more drilling are just plain goofy....but may get elected president. It's a purist environmentalist argument..."No carbon at any cost -- but confuse the issue at every turn."

MH: And would we also be in agreement that the "all of the above" approach to attacking the energy supply issue on every front is essential to meeting our energy needs in the long run?

Brad Molnar: And the short run. Look how fast Bakken turned the argument. Even Tester is taking credit for it now.

MH: Moving on from that, what alternative energy source is the most promising for Montana -- and what makes it the most promising technology?

Brad Molnar: Wind, though not as a stand-alone generation. But wind with compressed air storage (still in R&D), tied to hydro, tied to EXISTING natural gas.

As a nation we have 205,000 megawatts of natural gas baseload. We would be generations tying it to wind and the results would be astoundingly good. Building gas generation to support wind....totally political and wildly anti-consumer.

And when you say "for Montana"...the only winners are those that sell wind power. That's why people have to be forced to buy it i.e. thru renewable energy portfolios etc and that's why they are forced to pay a $16 BILLION dollar subsidy. Montana is often called the Saudi Arabia of wind (so is No Dak. So Dak. Texas etc etc...it's what people say when they think a vacuous statement will work better than facts...usually on the 6 o'clock news).

Do the Arabs have to mandate the use of oil? Do Arabs subsidize its sales to help hide the true costs? If wind is mandated why subsidize it? The least complicated to authorize is "cogeneration" on a case by case basis as long as it is not a Qualified Facility. We have plenty of affordable/reliable energy in Montana. Why we are convincing ourselves that greater investment in subsidized/unreliable energy is a winning argument is beyond me. We have not and cannot curtail one megawatt of electricity from Colstrip since we built Judith Gap with its 135MW capacity. Know why?

MH: I think that is pretty obvious, and can be summarized in one word: demand -- which is only going up.

Brad Molnar: And you would be wrong. Have a nice day.

MH: That's a cliffhanger of a note to end on. We'll have to find the real answer to that one another time, then.

Commissioner Brad Molnar, thank you again for taking the time to talk with us here at Montana Headlines. Good luck in your campaign – and while we may regret this, you can have the last word.

Brad Molnar: Luck? I'm up against a discredited cop, that became a discredited mayor, that admits he would be a know-nothing Commissioner. How tough could it be.....INCOMING!!!!

___________________________

Tomorrow -- Full text of the entire interview for convenience in linking.

PSC Commissioner Brad Molnar -- Montana Headlines interview (Part 1 of 2)

2008-09-22T05:00:00.002-06:00

The one you've all been waiting for -- Brad Molnar's Montana Headlines interview starts tomorrow

2008-09-21T17:14:00.004-06:00

Things have been a little quiet around MH, as readers may have noticed, but we've not been idle. We've still got some good interviews coming up, starting with PSC Commissioner Brad Molnar this week.

We hope that this coincides with one of Wulgar's periodic ratings sweeps-weeks for right-leaning Montana blogs, because traffic should be high...

And as anyone who knows Molnar might suspect, the interview has its -- shall we say -- candid moments. Join us.

Part 1 tomorrow: Molnar on the PSC, the state of the campaign, Burma-Shave, the press, and more...

Wiki-wipe -- Or... remember when it wasn't acceptable to do politics using the state's equipment?

2008-09-17T16:55:00.006-06:00

Remember when $50 worth of phone calls related to fundraising for a 527 group made by staffers from Gov. Martz's office was enough to cause a major upheaval that administration?

Well, then, you perhaps remember when the Montana press cared deeply about keeping the political operation separate from the governing side of the governor's office. And rightly so.

Montana Headlines quite agrees with Electric City that "outrage, OUTRAGE!" over relatively minor stuff is off-putting, so we won't express any.

But we also do agree with Electric City that it is at least worth taking note of the Wiki-wipe operation apparently being carried out on state-owned computers to keep any information about the governor's (joking?) boasts of election-day shenanigans off the Governor Brian Schweitzer Wikipedia entry.

A "high crime?" Hardly.

Part of a pattern of an operation that can't or won't acknowledge the difference between what belongs to the state and what should be done by political campaigns using their own time, money and equipment? It would seem reasonable to at least explore the concept.

Given that it was newsworthy when someone back in 2006 used a Senate computer to edit out a report of something embarrassing that Conrad Burns had said -- will it now be newsworthy to learn that someone in state government is using state-owned computers and servers to wipe Wikipedia of references to the governor saying that he used his power as governor to "turn some dials" to make Sen. Jon Tester's election happen?

Just curious -- we'll wait and see.

SNL skit with Palin

2008-09-15T11:41:00.003-06:00

It was brilliant.

Again proving that SNL continues to be one of the most keen and (dare we say it?) fair and balanced observers of the political cultural scene.

Give us more.

OK, we give -- Democrats are smart and sophisticated, Republicans are stumblebums

2008-09-14T17:06:00.005-06:00

It has been a fairly regular feature of Montana Headlines to engage in honest self-analysis of the right side of the political spectrum. After all, does it really hurt to admit that those on the left are smarter, better educated, more sophisticated, better read, more widely traveled, etc.? Why argue with the obvious, after all? Certainly here at Montana Headlines, with manure still clinging to our boots, we know our place.

A commenter in the last post compared Republicans to Nazis, but then really decided to get serious and go for the jugular, shaming us for our "reflexive" support for a "beauty queen" who is "dumb as can be." The Nazi thing hurts, but really, to that last part all we can say is an emphatic "ouch!"

It must be acknowledged that it has been some time since Montana Headlines has forthrightly confessed our intellectual inferiority, so it is time for one of our periodic exercises in verbal self-flagellation for our sins against reason.

After all, what are we thinking when we support someone who went to North Idaho College and then made the big move up to the (drum roll, please) University of Idaho (using scholarship money from the Miss Alaska pageant -- how embarrassing is that?) Especially when we could have as our next President someone who graduated from Columbia and from Harvard Law? With a choice like that, there really shouldn't be any point to even holding an election. Oh yeah, that white-haired guy went to the Naval Academy (a reactionary thing to do in and of itself,) but graduated near the bottom of his class, so he really doesn't help.

After all, as Bob Herbert decrees in the august pages of the New York Times, Palin is "dimwitted." Well, that settles it.

Actually, Herbert and the many others who heap scorn on Sarah Palin (and by association, all of us Neanderthals on the right) could just as well save their breath. After all, we already know that we aren't as bright, educated, and sophisticated as our peers on the left (or perhaps it is being presumptuous to call them our peers -- perhaps "counterparts" would be a more appropriately humble word.)

We just tend not to be paralyzed by insecurity, even though we probably should by all rights be crawling into corners in shame because of our paleolithic mindsets. We've seemed somehow to figure out that our lack of intellectual sophistication doesn't have to keep us from becoming productive citizens -- running businesses that keep people employed, becoming successful professionals, achieving financial security for our families, reaching positions of leadership in the military, or even (most shocking of all) winning elections and effectively governing. In this enterprise, we are of course aided by our counterparts, as Tony Blankley recently put it when quizzed by the 3 left-leaning members of a public radio talk-show panel:

One of the reasons the Republicans have done so well in national elections over the last 30 years is that we’ve been blessed with a liberal media and a liberal Democratic party that cannot help but sneer at about, you know, 65 percent of American culture, the people of small town America.

So we benefit from that, and even the stumblebums can figure out how to take advantage of snobs who are our opponents. And it’s sort of remarkable that they can’t restrain themselves even for a season.

We as stumblebums nevertheless keep getting re-elected...

One of his lefty opponents on the panel protested loudly when Blankley made the point that Sarah Palin's experience level was comparable to that of Barack Obama. The evidence that he cited for Obama's superiority? Why, Obama's impressive education and travel experience. Seriously. Well, that really settles it.

But when you look at it historically, he has a point. After all, if you took a poll of university professors, who would be consdidered to be smarter and more intellectually sophisticated, and which was was the hapless bumbler?

Ike or Adlai Stevenson?
Kennedy or Nixon?
Johnson or Goldwater?
Nixon or Humphrey?
Nixon or McGovern?
Carter or Ford?
Carter or Reagan?
Reagan or Mondale?
Bush I or Dukakis?
Clinton or Bush I?
Clinton or Dole?
Bush II or Gore?
Bush II or Kerry?
Obama or McCain?

Really isn't very fair, is it? I'd like to hear from anyone on the left who wouldn't choose the Democrat in every single one of those elections -- or at best declare certain matchups to be more or less a tie. (Diabolically shrewd doesn't count -- we're just talking intellectual depth that would make the faculty club swoon.) After all, if the Republican in question were all that bright, he wouldn't have been a Republican, correct? And to be fair, while we would probably choose or defend the Republican in each of those races, it wouldn't be because of a belief that he would conduct a better graduate seminar in the philosophy of conflict resolution.

And yet, the electoral history is, in spite of it all, surprisingly impressive for those inferior Republican candidates.

The link escapes us right now, but someone recently wrote that for the first time in his life, Sen. Obama is running against actual Republicans -- and he is shocked to be up against opponents who don't care what the editors of the New York Times or Washington Post think. He also has the simultaneous misfortune of encountering, also for the first time in his political life, an electorate where well over half of the voters will be people who likewise really don't care what smart set thinks.

That has to be a disconcerting experience for someone who believes that a 100% ADA rating is a path to post-partisan politics. Maybe on the south side of Chicago -- but in the rest of the country, not so much.

We hayseeds have an annoying habit of showing up to vote, and perhaps that is why a Democratic candidate has only reached the 50% mark in the popular vote exactly twice since WWII. Wouldn't it be something, in a year that was supposed to be a Democratic landslide of 1964 proportions, if the Republicans stumblebummed themselves to yet one more victory?

Gov. Palin and the Bush Doctrine

2008-09-12T11:35:00.005-06:00

Not having watched the interview, and only having heard some indirect chatter about Gov. Palin hesitating about the "Bush Doctrine," it was irresistable to want to avoid studiously following any more of the chatter until having the chance to go through the exercise of how one would have answered that question if asked.

The first thing, of course is to know what the "Bush Doctrine" actually is. Palin is being talked about as though she is some sort of class dunce for giving the appearance of not knowing what it is. But is it really all that easy? Off the top of one's head, there are at least a couple of choices:

1. Pre-emptive strikes on terrorists who might attack America -- i.e. "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here." One can agree with that, applied judiciously.

2. Proactively deposing hostile regimes in other countries and replacing them with ones that are more democratic, on the theory that creating stable democracies in previously hostile countries will decrease the chances of future aggression against the U.S. -- in terror or otherwise. i.e. the kind of nation-building that Bush said in 2000 that he wouldn't engage in. Not good, we would humbly submit.

Maybe both of these would fail a purist's test, and maybe it means something even more. Readers can write MH and critique these impromptu definitions.

But suffice it to say that Bush's foreign policy -- not to mention the perceptions and portrayals of that policy (to which Gibson could just as easily have been referring) -- is complex and multifaceted enough that it would be foolish simply to say categorically that one rejects or embraces it. It would be best, especially when being interviewed by someone like Charlie Gibson, who is himself not a foreign policy expert, to ask for a more precise question. Which is pretty much what Palin apparently did.

Palin's reported hesitation in answering that question is actually relieving to this conservative. Leaving aside the fact that it is never wise to commit to any theoretical doctrine, not knowing exactly where real-world circumstances will logically lead that doctrine, what exactly would Palin have been saying yes or no to in answering that question? Given the expansive reading that has been given to the Bush doctrine by some overly-enthusiastic neoconservatives, it is relieving that that Palin would demur from giving it carte blanche, even while generally speaking in support of the need to be aggressive in the war on terror.

There are parts of the Bush foreign policy that are rational and have probably made us safer -- there are parts that have been very ill-advised and that, if pushed to logical conclusions, could lead us to disastrous over-reach and to being militarily embroiled in every politically unstable hell-hole around the planet. Sarah Palin surely knows it, and in light of that, she gave the right and cautious response. That hesitation to give a broad, sweeping foreign policy pronouncment is actually about what one would expect from the conservative governor of a libertarian-minded state.
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Note: Now, having taken the time to look around a little, the sense that the "Bush Doctrine" is complex and means different things to different people is confirmed. This piece gives a nice summary of the various pillars and facets of the "Bush Doctrine," demonstrating that it can't be summarized in one sentence. Gibson only was asking about one facet of that doctrine.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as Gibson showed at that point in the interview.

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Update: Charles Krauthammer (who knows a thing or two about the term "Bush Doctrine," since he was the first to use it) basically backs up the above MH analysis of this question and why Palin's response was the correct one. We would disagree with Krauthammer, one suspects, on whether the most expansive, democracy spreading, form of the doctrine is something that is good foreign policy. But he is spot-on in his analysis of that moment between Palin and Gibson:

Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted.

In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.

Dem. Attorney General McGrath plays politics with the law -- and he wants to be our Chief Justice?

2008-09-11T19:10:00.004-06:00

Read the outstanding Electric City summary of just how wrong-headed (and downright contrary to basic legal principles) McGrath's decision not to investigate the govenor is.

Remember, the Montana Supreme Court has twice in the last decade made crucial and direct partisan interventions on behalf of the Democratic Party.

First, in the redistricting fiasco following the 2000 census, the Montana Supreme Court appointed a highly partisan Democrat to be the fifth member of the commission -- which then in a series of endless 3-2 votes threw out all of the reasonable plans drawn up by responsible parties in state government and replaced it with a gerrymandered district plan drawn up by one Joe Lamsen, designed with the sole aim of creating a Democratic majority.

Second, in the 2004 election, when Rick Jore's three-way race ended up in a tie between him and his Democratic opponent, and then Gov. Martz appointed Jore to the seat, following Montana law -- well, the Montana Supremes threw out the election results and handed the seat to the Democrat, and with it, control of the state House of Representatives.

Anyone who thinks that we won't be in for more of the same -- and apparently worse -- with McGrath on the Supreme Court needs to pay attention to this little episode, where he refuses even to investigate wrong-doing admitted to (even bragged about) by the governor.

As Electric City points out, generally a declaration of innocence comes after evidence is gathered, not before.

In his speech to the trial lawyers, the governor made disparaging references to the Republican counties in Montana, implying that in a recount, their officials would have cheated and stolen the election for Conrad Burns. He said something to the effect that it would be like Florida, or some other third-world place like that.

Sadly, he may be right that Montana is becoming a banana republic -- run by Democrats, with the top law enforcement officer's highest oath apparently being "I promise not to investigate Democratic wrongdoing."

Meddling with the election process -- a laughing matter? Apparently the governor thinks so

2008-09-10T19:19:00.004-06:00

Read it and laugh -- if you think that sort of thing is funny.

McCain up big in new Montana poll

2008-09-09T15:36:00.006-06:00

As Montana Headlines has pointed out, the selection of Sarah Palin for Veep should make Montana a wrap for Sen. McCain, even in a worst case scenario. The most recent Rasmussen poll shows McCain leading 53% to 42%

More importantly, 70% of McCain supporters in Montana say that they are enthusiastically voting for McCain, while only 28% say that they are primarily voting against Sen. Obama. This is quite comparable to the 79% and 18% numbers among Obama supporters in Montana -- the enthusiasm gap appears to have been largely erased. Based on anecdotal MH experience talking to Republicans, this is an accurate assessment of the right-leaning part of the Montana voting public. It is also a phenomenal turn-around for McCain, and has to be in large part attributed to Gov. Palin's addition to the ticket, not to mention the new general excitement around the McCain campaign.

With the addition of Ron Paul to the ballot, it is said that this could turn the state to Sen. Obama, but this is far from certain. The Montana GOP treated Ron Paul supporters very well, especially when compared to other state organizations. Several former Ron Paul supporters that MH has spoken to have made up their minds to vote for John McCain, in large part because he chose a conservative running mate. Is this representative? Only time will tell, but the wisdom that Erik Iverson showed in welcoming Paul supporters into the party and treating them warmly at the state convention should pay off by at least not having made them hostile to the party organization (other than the malcontents that tend to attach themselves to fringe movements of any kind, who are never satisfied.)

Not that Paulinistas are going to become raving McCainiacs -- but at the very least there isn't the animosity that would have come had Ron Paul's people not been allowed to have their say and to have a genuine, fair shot at nabbing Montana's delegates.

As the choice becomes clear on the differences between McCain and Obama, it would be suprising if Paul and Barr together break 5% in the final vote tally.

__________________

Update: We can perhaps expect the coming state-by-state polls in Western states to follow this trend. The grand "Western strategy" of the Obama campaign may be coming to an ignominious end. Or at least we can hope -- and continue to watch the polls.

Election Day Shenanigans by the governor?

2008-09-09T10:55:00.000-06:00

The governor apparently told a lot of east-coast trial lawyers with fat wallets that he used his authority as governor to grease the wheels on the Tester express.

Since the media is currently obsessed with questions about the activities of a certain Alaska governor, we can surely expect that the Montana press will listen to the recording of this speech and do some hard-nosed investigating of things of interest in their own backyard, right?

Maybe there's nothing to it -- or more specifically, nothing illegal to it, but we won't know until the press has thoroughly checked it out. It's not like this is an internet rumor -- the governor's words are on tape.

Have at it, Montana press. Good job to the Montana blogs that have been writing about it.

Apologia

2008-09-09T09:24:00.003-06:00

David Crisp at Billings Blog is displeased with the updated response offered on a disputed MH post, calling it "even by blogsphere standards, remarkably ungracious."

One one word of self-defense before moving on: It is important to point out that the word "Olympian" was intended in the sense in which it is attached to superior and lofty human feats and abilities -- not in the sense that Obama has literally descended as a god from Mt. Olympus. By definition, using the word "Olympian" is literary hyperbole.

But that is not the point to this post. Mr. Crisp, as a longtime MH reader, is doubtless aware that given the emphasis on this site of maintaining an atmosphere of civility and fairness (while trying not to be boring in the process,) few accusations could have cut deeper.

One suspects, given the content of his most recent response, that part of Mr. Crisp's strong reaction to that particular Montana Headlines post is perhaps the result of his reading the full weight of the vile temper of Sean Hannity into certain MH words, when the truth is that unlike Mr. Crisp, no-one in the Montana Headlines household is constitutionally capable of listening to that man for longer than about 3 to 5 minutes. Pretty much the entirety of MH knowledge of the content of Hannity's radio show comes from reading Billings Blog.

While the post in question seemed like standard blogosphere give-and-take at the time, it obviously failed in that regard, and rather than rehashing the entire discussion, it is preferable to do what this post is intended to do: offer a full and unqualified apology for mischaracterizing Mr. Crisp's words and opinions in the post in question.

Given that the eastern Montana political blogosphere currently consists of exactly two active sites -- Billings Blog and Montana Headlines, any sort of unpleasantry in the neighborhood is undesirable. MH would like to offer an olive branch, pledging to take particular care in future posts when making reference to Billings Blog posts.

The New York Times editors weigh in with surprising opinions on the issue of experience in the Vice Presidency

2008-09-08T18:06:00.005-06:00

From the Gray Lady herself:

Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become President? . . . Or where is it written that mere representatives aren’t qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens? . . . Where is it written that governors and mayors... are too local, too provincial? . . .

Presidential candidates have always chosen their running mates for reasons of practical demography, not idealized democracy. . . . What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen. . . .

Why shouldn’t a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow?

Why not, indeed? We are so excited to see that the NYT is rising to the occasion and that we can agree with her editors....(insert sound of engine growling and whining to a dead stop and silence.)

Whoops, sorry... that was from 1984, defending the choice of little-known Geraldine Ferraro for the Democratic Veep spot, someone who hadn't run in a campaign outside her NYC borough, and who was in only her second term in Congress.

I guess that the standards are different when it's a (gasp) conservative Republican woman we're talking about. One suspects that we'll see conservatives digging up all sorts of similar quotations dating to 1984, set side by side with snide Palin put-downs from the same liberal house organs (and perhaps the same individuals.)

Meanwhile, Ms. Ferraro is on record, not surprisingly, as scoffing at the idea that Palin is unqualified to be Vice President. In fact, her studied silence is raising questions about whether she is contemplating joining some other feminists in supporting Palin:

On the day McCain announced her selection as his running mate, Palin thanked Clinton and Ferraro for blazing her trail. A day later, Ferraro noted her shock at Palin's comment. You see, none of her peers, no one, had ever publicly thanked her in the 24 years since her historic run for the White House. Ferraro has since refused to divulge for whom she's voting.

(Thanks to Jay Nordlinger at NRO for the compilation, which is apparently making the rounds.)

Now that's what a real convention bounce looks like! McCain up 10 pts. in USA/Gallup

2008-09-07T23:01:00.006-06:00

USA Today/Gallup has McCain/Palin leading Obama/Biden by a whopping 10 percentage points -- 54% to 44% -- among likely voters. The lead among registered voters polled was 50% to 46%

The shift from pre-convention to post-convention was 8 percentage points among registered voters and 13 points among likely voters.

McCain actually is leading in the RCP Average for the first time since the race narrowed to McCain and Obama.

Who is to thank for this? Gov. Palin, of course. And Sen. McCain for having the guts to pick her in the first place and the nerve to stand steadfast by his choice while the lefty bloggers, the media, and the Democratic attack machine did its worst. And of course we have to thank the Obama fan-club in the media itself for incessently attacking Palin, which drove the ratings for her -- and then McCain's -- speeches through the roof.

They were thus able to go right over the heads of the media and make their case to the American people. It's a long way to November 4th, but for now things look just a little brighter.

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Update: For a candid assessment of how Obama's supporters -- the party and in the press -- shot themselves in the foot this past week, read Nick Cohen in The Guardian. Here's the first bits, to whet the appetite:

My colleagues in the American liberal press had little to fear at the start of the week. Their charismatic candidate was ahead in virtually every poll. George W Bush was so unpopular that conservatives were scrambling around for reasons not to invite the Republican President to the Republican convention.

Democrats had only to maintain their composure and the White House would be theirs. During the 1997 British general election, the late Lord Jenkins said that Tony Blair was like a man walking down a shiny corridor carrying a precious vase. He was the favourite and held his fate in his hands. If he could just reach the end of the hall without a slip, a Labour victory was assured.

The same could have been said of the American Democrats last week. But instead of protecting their precious advantage, they succumbed to a spasm of hatred and threw the vase, the crockery, the cutlery and the kitchen sink at an obscure politician from Alaska.

________________

Update 2: Apparently NBC has decided that Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews have gone too far in their rank partisanship -- until now, they've been Exhibit A of what Nick Cohen was talking about. But now, they've just been fired from anchoring election coverage. They will still be there, Olberman with his tiresome sanctimony and Matthews with chills running down his leg whenever Obama speaks -- but they will henceforth be in pundit roles.

Why the naysayers are wrong about Palin's experience (and McCain's "experience argument")

2008-09-06T00:47:00.003-06:00

Conventional wisdom was that in choosing Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain had forfeited the "experience" argument that was supposedly the only possible argument that someone as unworthy as McCain could make for being more deserving of the White House than the Olympian Sen. Obama.

That complaint was wrong from the beginning, whether it was being made by supposed like Charles Krauthammer or by Democrats and their support staff in the media. Those of us who weren't made rabid at the thought of a socially conservative, gun-toting woman being Veep knew this argument was poppycock from the beginning, and a few pundits are starting to grasp the canny nature of McCain's choice.

David Von Drehle at Time understands and articulates exactly why this analysis is wrong:

When McCain sprang his surprise choice on the public, the initial analysis held that by putting the rookie Governor of Alaska on the ticket he had erased the issue of experience.

But like a lot of early thinking, that was wrong. Palin put the experience issue front and center, because suddenly America was seriously weighing the relative qualifications of the Democratic nominee versus the recent mayor of Wasilla.

That's a comparison Obama loses simply by being involved in it.

Exactly. While arguments are going on over the proverbial watercooler around the country comparing Obama's experience to Palin's (and in our humble opinion, it is at least a tie -- perhaps with the edge going to Palin, since she has spent the last couple of years doing her job rather than running for President,) McCain looms over the rest of the field as a man apart.

Meanwhile, unlike Obama, McCain had the privilege of adding someone who amplifies his stengths -- "maverick McCain," so to speak -- while galvanizing the party base and providing the only person whose working class connections are anything other than sentimental and distant memories.

In summary, by choosing Palin, McCain actually highlights how lopsided his experience edge actually is, and he also gets to open several new and unexpected fronts in the battle for the White House -- something that neither the "safe" choices nor the "liberal maverick" choices would have given him. In retrospect, while MH would have been happy with any of the young, forward-looking, reform-minded governors that the GOP is currently blessed with (Pawlenty, Jindal, Sanford, or Palin,) it is becoming clear that John McCain's gut-instinct guided him far, far better than any theoretical analysis of the field might have done.

And given that a primary significance of the Veep choice to most Republicans has always been the matter of what kind of Republican will be at the center of the party 4 or 8 years from now, the choice of Palin (whether she herself turns out to be the beneficiary of this welcome sea-change in the party) gives us the possibility of a fresh and forward-looking conservatism that is rooted in traditional thought and principles but not frozen in the conservative movement's questions and debates of the 1970's and 1980's and paralyzed by imponderable questions of "what would Reagan do?"

John McCain to the rescue of the conservative movement? Accidental or intentional as the case may be, yes folks, it may actually be true -- learn to live with it.

___________________

Update: Mr. Crisp at Billings Blog wants the MH "errors" corrected. OK, here goes. He did not say that McCain is unworthy or that Obama is Olympian. That was a bit of hyperbole, something we expected readers to pick up on, but it is always wisest to spell these things out.

What Mr. Crisp actually has said about Obama are things like these:

...he has done all that a human being can do in so short a time to prepare himself for the world's most demanding job.

He has accomplished what no politician in American history has ever managed to pull off.

Perhaps not Olympian, but hardly damning him with faint praise as he does with McCain by essentially saying that McCain was the best of the Republican field, but that he isn't as acceptable as he was in 2000 (at which time, Mr. Crisp tells us, he also decided that he wasn't temperamentally fit to be President -- except, at least in retrospect, by comparison to the even more odious George W. Bush.)

Does this mean that he is saying that Sen. McCain is "unworthy" of being President? No, it isn't stated in so many words, but we'll let the readers decide on the general intent.

Finally, Mr. Crisp wants the record further corrected, saying that he never stated that "the only possible reason one might vote for McCain is because of his experience." As satisfying as it would be to retract this statement fully, that is more difficult (and keep in mind that while Billings Blog was the only site linked to in this post, it was intended as a general critique of similar pieces throughout the media written by reporters, editors, and pundits who have publicly made up their mind that Obama is to be preferred to McCain.)

We will reprint the entire passage in question, and readers can decide whether Mr. Crisp believes that there is another argument other than experience that Republicans can legitimately make in favor of John McCain.

Obama's campaign is based on the argument that he can be a good president without vast experience. And Republican opposition to his claim is based on the argument that he can't -- that he is vastly underprepared and naive and would endanger the country during a time of grave international threats. So putting up someone against him who is at best only marginally more experienced than he is betrays the whole Republican argument. (MH's emphasis)

Palin's supporters can argue until they turn blue -- and they probably will -- that her experience trumps Obama's. But what it really does is undermine the case that experience should be an issue at all. I don't see how that can be good for Republicans.

While Mr. Crisp is arguably only repeating what he perceives the entire Republican argument to be, if he is able to spell out other reasons which Republicans might possibly use to sway moderates like him away from Obama to voting for Sen. McCain, he keeps them to himself.

The point to this post was not to do a line-by-line critique of Billings Blog opinions on the McCain/Palin ticket (which would be difficult, given that there have been 11 posts on that site critical of Gov. Palin over the course of about a week -- compared to 8 posts supportive of Gov. Palin on MH, a pretty openly partisan site.)

The point was rather to demonstrate that while at one point in the campaign, the McCain team may have been trying the "experience argument" on for size, it was never the only good argument to be made for Sen. McCain and one doubts that the McCain team ever thought that it alone would be able to carry a Republican to office in a year like 2008.

And our purpose in bringing Billings Blog directly into it was simply that the post linked to was a Montana example of someone having bought into the erroneous thinking that McCain's choice of Palin undermined the "experience" part of the Republican argument (which is still real and potent) -- when actually it highlights and helps it in the ways noted above.

Some notable praise for Gov. Sarah Palin

2008-09-04T19:34:00.002-06:00

First, Michael Reagan pays her the biggest compliment possible -- saying something about her that he has steadfastly refused to say about anyone else.

Second -- leave it to the Brits to praise Gov. Palin in a particularly entertaining way.

Gov. Sarah Palin hits it out of the park -- now when is she coming to Montana?

2008-09-04T00:02:00.001-06:00

As noted in the last post, for the choice of Gov. Sarah Palin to be proven wise, Palin is going to have to show that she can perform on the national stage. She will have to do more than survive -- she will have to thrive.

If tonight's spectacular performance is any indication, Palin's critics may not have the easy sledding that the unopposed mauling of the last week has perhaps led them to expect. The McCain camp was wise to let the media swirl all week, and let the soft bigotry of low expectations work its wonders.

Numerous hardened commentators deemed it on the spot to be one of the most effective political speeches they had ever heard -- and with good reason. We hope to have the chance to hear Gov. Palin in Montana sooner rather than later.

There's probably nothing quite like watching a speech like this live, first wondering if she will do OK -- and then slowly having the realization dawn that she was going to do a whole lot better than just OK, and finally that she was on her way to delivering the best speech of either convention (yes, including that very effective Greek temple speech by The One.) Still, if you didn't get a chance to watch it live, enjoy.

Rich Lowry nails it regarding the left's reaction to Gov. Sarah Palin

2008-09-03T09:51:00.005-06:00

Great article. Read it.

The virulence of the reaction of the left and the personal tone that the feeding frenzy has taken is indeed largely culturally-based. Even out here in fly-over land (Lowry notes that Palin is in a part of the U.S. so remote that it technically isn't even in fly-over country,) the criticism seems to reflect a desire to want to mimic the rhetoric of the coastal leftish political smart set.

All of this is irrelevant, though. Can Sarah Palin do the job of being Vice President, and President if need be? Absolutely. One need go no further back than the most recent Presidential election: she is far more ready than John Edwards was in 2004, a man who had one undistinguished term in the U.S. Senate and who hardly showed up for that job, since he was too busy running for President.

Now that we think about it, John Edwards in 2004 was more qualified to be President than Barack Obama is in 2008 -- he had spent 6 years in the Senate with his primary job being running for President, while Sen. Obama has only spent 3 1/2 years in the Senate with his primary job being running for President.

The real question is this, and Lowry is not alone in pointing it out: can Gov. Palin withstand the rigors of the campaign trail in a national campaign? No one knows, and there is no way that anyone can know, until we see how she performs. If she handles herself with poise and confidence and if the McCain staff does a good job of running her part of the campaign, then the McCain/Palin ticket has an excellent chance of winning the election.

If she tanks, they could be on the receiving end of a blowout. Montana Headlines, like conservatives across the country, is rooting for her, but sympathy isn't enough -- she will need to perform well. Somehow, we suspect that she will. Much is made of whether the McCain camp vetted Palin sufficiently. They did, and they knew exactly what they were getting. Taking a chance? Absolutely, but McCain's team was smart enough to know that they weren't going to win this election if they played things safe. Good for them.

Update: a commenter brought attention to this piece by Peggy Noonan, who likewise nails it. Out of many great passages in this piece, one of the best is this, where after listing many of her manifestly attractive qualities, Noonan continues:

...conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

And it's going to be brutal. It's already getting there.

Read the whole thing. Especially her plain-spoken words to those who are dragging Palin's daughter through the mud.

Gov. Palin understands federalism?

2008-09-01T10:49:00.005-06:00

It's just a little thing, and perhaps we're reading too much into it, but browsing through old video clips of Gov. Sarah Palin, it caught our attention in this interview with Charlie Rose, that Gov. Palin twice used the phrase "these United States."

Again, it is just a small thing, it's just not a phrase that we commonly hear anymore. Sometimes, those who are attentive to the importance of decentralized government will occasionally refer to the United States in the plural -- something that was, in older (and to curmudgeons like MH, often better) days, more the rule than the exception. In fairness, it isn't just conservatives who use this older phrase, so it doesn't necessarily carry political connotations.

Still, as the idea that the federal government should be supreme and that the states should be little more than administrative units of that centralized government has slowly penetrated the American consciousness, we have come to say "the United States of America is," rather than "these United States of America are."

Yes, we're aware that the venerable Shelby Foote, among others, have stated that the Civil War was the watershed between "the United states is" and "the United States are" -- but there has been good documentation of extensive use across the political spectrum and across the country of use of the singular and plural both before and after the Civil War. So don't anybody get the idea of labeling Palin a neoconfederate or something like that -- although we'll doubtless have things much worse than that said about Palin from the left.

Much of the debate over the plural vs. singular usage regarding the United States has been grammatical -- especially since the Constitution refers to the United States, Congress, etc. in the plural.

Maybe it's an Alaska thing, but is it too much to hope that in Gov. Palin, a true believer in federalism has been vaulted to the center of the Republican party and the American political scene? Or maybe she's just a little schoolmarmish about her grammar and knows that the word "states" is a plural. After the way those of us who are particular about the niceties of language have suffered over the last 8 years, can even that be all bad?

Speaking of schoolmarmish, that reminds us of this classic Gov. Palin TV appearance with Craig Ferguson on the Late Late Show. (Yes, it will be coming out that Montana Headlines has been following Gov. Palin's career with interest for quite some time -- we just didn't think she had a real chance in the McCain Veepstakes.)

McCain - Palin ticket is a sure winner in Montana

2008-08-31T01:38:00.004-06:00

While the Obama campaign doubtless still harbors dreams of a Montana upset, the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska should shatter them and cause them to move on to truly battleground states. We now better understand why the McCain campaign, in spite of the polls, has elected not to spend precious resources in Montana -- they have known for some time (unless Obama had surprised the world by choosing Sen. Clinton for his Veep) that the presence of Gov. Sarah Palin on the ticket would seal the deal in Montana.

Gov. Palin is from the northwest, hunts moose, yet probably knows better than to carry live ammunition around in her pocket as an attention-getting prop, has a husband who is a member of a steelworkers' union, hates pork-barrel spending, loves developing natural energy resources (i.e. oil) in an environmentally-sensitive way (and unlike our own governor, actually got infinitely more done in less than half the time,) and is in general a libertarian-minded conservative with a soft touch.

All we have to do is get Palin to Montana a time or two, and this state will be out-of-reach for Obama. She probably doesn't even need to show up. Although we want her to!

Yes, we realize that there are those who are concerned about putting a first-term governor "a heartbeat away from the Oval Office." And yet Dems. had serious talk about Gov. Kaine of Virginia, and even the Montana governor (first-termers, both) as legitimate VP contenders. Is the problem that Palin is a woman, while they are men? (We saw that ugly sexism rearing its head in the Obama campaign against Hillary, and it came pretty naturally to them, much to the dismay of many women.)

But more to the point, if one wants to fault McCain for choosing to put a first-term governor in the backup slot, then what on earth are we to think about the Dems putting someone of Obama's paper-thin qualifications in their first position? The election of McCain-Palin would indeed raise the theoretical possibility of McCain dying shortly after arriving in office, and having a relatively inexperienced person rise to the Presidency.

The election of Obama-Biden would bring the certainty of an immediate elevation to the Presidency of a man with neither the executive experience that Gov. Palin has nor the real Senate experience that McCain has (and, to be fair, that Joe Biden and Chris Dodd and even Mike Gravel had.) It will make certain putting a man into the Oval Office who won an essentially uncontested U.S. Senate election in an overwhelmingly blue state less than 4 years ago -- and who has spent all of those last 4 years running for President rather than tending to the business of learning how to be a good Senator.

As Kirsten Powers notes regarding those who are shrieking about McCain choosing a running mate who has been governor for two years:

Where were they when Obama, two years into the Senate, announced his candidacy for president?

Indeed. If we are to fear inexperience, then we should run, screaming in terror, from the thought of an Obama presidency. Obama's election would mean the election of a man who has neither extensive Washington experience as a Senator (such as McCain has) has nor executive experience at the state level (such as Palin has.)

This whole "experience" thing that Democrats are desperately trying to make stick will only backfire, since ultimately, people vote for the top of the ticket -- the more the Obama team highlights the issue of experience, the worse it is for them.

We believe that Montanans will take to heart the words of Sen. Hillary Clinton herself, waxing eloquent, " I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

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Addendum: For those who haven't gotten enough of photos of Gov. Palin and her beautiful family, click through the Post's photo gallery.

Someone to energize the base and to look to the future -- VP Sarah Palin

2008-08-29T14:02:00.002-06:00

One of our faithful readers and favorite commenters -- the venerable Dave Rye -- commented some time ago on a Montana Headlines post that Sarah Palin was the perfect conservative pick. He also worried that because she was so perfect, it probably doomed her to being ignored by the McCain campaign.

We agreed, and were concerned that Gov. Palin, being in her first term as governor, would probably be passed over in favor of someone with more experience -- such as our favorite among the press's "finalists, Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Palin has never been prominent on most lists, so we had long ago given up hope that she would be chosen. Are we ever glad to be wrong!

Palin is perfect -- a reform-minded governor, young and with fresh ideas and attitudes, pro-life, libertarian, a gun nut and hunting enthusiast. And the more America gets to know her, the more they will love her.

The One has chosen Biden as the one -- McCain choice of Pawlenty now imperative

2008-08-23T10:33:00.002-06:00

Not that conventional wisdom is infallible, but every news report seems to boil down McCain's choices (leaving aside the pro-choice headfakes) to Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Gov. Mitt Romney.

There is no point in belaboring all of the reasons for Pawlenty being the obvious choice, but it shouldn't take a rocket-scientist to figure out that the addition of a guy with blue-collar roots and an Everyman touch will bring just the right stuff to the McCain ticket.

The demographic that is up for grabs in this election is clear -- and it isn't Mitt Romney's. Nuff said.

Another good commentary on Obama and the state of the race from Gerard Baker

2008-08-22T21:03:00.002-06:00

From the guy who brought us one of the finest parodies of Obama-mania, again, courtesy of the London Times.

More reaction on the governor breaking the law

2008-08-22T17:27:00.003-06:00

What Western Word said.

LITW comments on the above "crowing" post. (Did Jay read the same post that everyone else did? Or do crows sound different in Missoula than they do in Billings?) A point that should be clarified is that Jay read the MH post to mean that we believe the governor knew in advance that he was breaking the law. That would be a serious charge, and it is not at all what was meant.

A review of MH coverage of this imbroglio will reveal that our position from the beginning was that this was probably an oversight on the part of the governor, and not intentional:

...it seems as though this is probably the result of carelessness on the governor’s part, or on the part of one of his state employees. It probably didn’t even cross anyone’s mind that the governor couldn’t just do what he wanted to — which is a problem in and of itself.

Jay also comments on the very real phenomenon of "weird and obsessive hate" on the part of some Republican stalwarts vis a vis the governor. He seems to realize that it has something to do with the governor's talent for sticking his finger in the collective eye of the Republican Party -- but hey, this is politics, so there is no need to get bent out of shape over that sort of thing.

Anyway, we would note that in our next post on this matter, we specifically criticized the tendency to overblown rhetoric and over-reaction when it comes to the GOP talking about the governor. When the Montana GOP accused the governor of "arrogant, heavy-handed tactics" and implied an intentional breaking of the law, we had this to say:

There is a difference between intentionally arrogant actions in which one knowingly flouts the law and the kind of passive arrogance that is shown by not bothering to think about the fact that there might be rules to be followed. Montanans will understand the difference, and if it is clear that the governor was just being careless, then overstating the case isn't going to help the overall GOP message about the governor and the unsuitability of his style of governance.

Jay still would likely think that this was too harsh, but the point is that while MH still takes a dim view of carelessness or, at worst, "passive arrogance" in the apparent failure of the governor's office in neglecting to notice that maybe Dem. Sen. Joe Tropila's law might just apply to the governor, at no point did we take the view that the governor intentionally set out to break the law.

After it had been drawn to the governor's attention, however, it should have been a no-brainer, upon even the briefest reflection, for the governor and his staff to know they had broken the intent of the law as Sen. Tropila drafted it, even if it was broken unintentionally. What MH criticizes -- unapologetically -- is the inexplicable unwillingness on the part of the governor, after having time to think about it and to review the discussion that surrounded Tropila's legislation, to say "I made a mistake, you're right, my bad, won't happen again."

While the LITW commentary is reasonably thoughtful, the Lamnidae commentary was simply silly, implying that the dastardly Erik Iverson's intent in bringing this complaint forward was to bring Montana economic development grinding to a halt. It couldn't have had anything whatsoever to do with the governor using public employees and state-owned equipment to put out an ad that contained his re-election campaign slogan? Naw...

Seriously, we Republicans should be flattered that Lamnidae credits us with thinking on such a big-picture scale: "Hm, without the governor's PSA's, Montana's economy will come to a standstill, people's bank accounts will empty, they'll blame the governor, Roy Brown will be elected!" (Cue evil, haunting laughter.)

Following Lamnidae's argumentation, such as it is, it is apparently OK to break state law whenever it seems like it would be a good idea to do so. (Or is it only that Democrats can break the law if Democrats think it is a good idea -- it is easy to get confused.) If Lamnidae has a problem with the existence of this law, the complaint should be taken to the guy who drafted it (a Democrat,) the legislature that passed it (controlled by Democrats,) and the guy who signed it into law (also a Democrat.)

And that law can be overturned by any future legislature. But until then, good idea or bad, it is the law that everyone has to adhere to.

Sec. State Brad Johnson's office has done plenty of PSA's, but hasn't used his name, voice or face. If Johnson is bright enough to figure out how to get his job done within the law, surely the governor -- widely acclaimed by his fans to be one of the most brilliant politicians in Montana history -- should be able to manage to figure out how to promote Montana in spite of being hamstrung by what must seem like an eternity of an 8 month blackout on taxpayer funded ads.

It's official -- the governor broke the law

2008-08-21T20:55:00.003-06:00

It shouldn't have taken the skills of a law professor, months of dragging things out, hours of testimony, and thousands in legal fees to know that the governor broke a law that he himself signed into law when he had state-funded employees using state-owned equipment make public service announcements that included his re-election campaign slogan of "Montana is on the Move."

But, even if the wheels of justice turn slowly, one hopes that they grind exceedingly fine, as the saying goes. And indeed the final judgment was against the governor and a fine was levied. He got off lucky, since he could have been fined $1000 per occurrence, and the ads were sent to multiple radio stations and presumably aired more than once.

The point was whether the governor was wrong -- and the official judgment is that he was. He of course knew he was, and yet he first attempted to bluster his way out of it, and then it appears that he tried some back-door communication with the Political Practices office to mitigate the disaster he saw coming. If so, those efforts may have been successful, since the final judgment was for a symbolic amount of money that will appear to many to be a mere slap on the wrist -- and since the final judgment includes language that refers to ambiguity in the law (although in the final analysis, the legislative intent was not found to be ambiguous.)

The governor gets some ammunition with which to blow more smoke screens to obfuscate the fact that he broke the law. As we have stated before, this could all have gone away with a little humility on the part of the governor and his staff, but they decided to go for broke -- which was a mistake. The worst part of this for the governor was not that he made the ads, it was rather that he attempted, in essence to cover it up by claiming that he really hadn't broken the law, even though the plain and obvious language of the law as interpreted by an ordinary non-lawyer was, well, plain and obvious.

This is the first time that the governor has not been able to skate smoothly around a controversy. This was never going to be a scandal that would break the governor's political fortunes, but it has put a little tarnish on his gleaming armor which had seemed so untouchable. Political death by a thousand cuts starts with a single nick...

Bipartisan consensus -- or lack thereof

2008-08-13T17:30:00.005-06:00

It seems that this is the week for Billings Blog and Montana Headlines to write about the other's posts.

Today, Mr. Crisp reports on the new ad from the governor touting their "bipartisan ticket." He correctly notes that the governor "has been working this line for four years, and Republicans still haven't found a way to react except by sounding pissy about it."

Fair enough -- hard to argue with either contention. But then Crisp goes on to say this:

But voters' desire for bipartisan consensus is real, and the GOP ignores it at its peril.

Point well taken. But proper responses to this statement include some pointed questions, first among which is this: On exactly what did the governor "work across party lines" (as the ad claims) in the last couple of legislative sessions? Montana Headlines was following it pretty closely, and if there were any significant bipartisan compromise solutions, they must have been done in the dead of night without the press watching.

Far from being engaged in bipartisanship, the governor has basically gotten everything he has wanted, and prevented any meaningful Republican legislation from passing.

Crisp is right that the Republican approach to the Lt. Gov. has been ineffective. There has been little creativity in dealing with the situation, but rather a bit too much public bitterness at the perceived betrayal. Showing anger or spite in public is a sign of weakness.

What creativity there has been has been too little -- or rather too much (wasn't the first suggestion an "invitation" to have Bohlinger endure 90 minutes of public grilling at the Republican Winter Kickoff?) -- or too late (such as inviting Bohlinger to debate Steve Daines at the Republican convention.)

Trying to play the "John Bohlinger isn't a real Republican" card was doomed to failure from the start in a state that doesn't even have voter registration by party and where about a third of voters (a significant majority of whom vote mostly Republican) consider themselves to be independent. It has played into the governor's hands by keeping the Republicans busy trying to chase a rabbit they really don't want to catch with a dog that won't hunt.

What Republicans have failed to do is to demonstrate what real compromise in Montana could have looked like over the last 4 years -- and then compare that vision to what actually did happen.

If there is a single thing that John Bohlinger has done that has had the effect of bringing Republican ideas into the current administration, its has been well hidden. If there is a single example of Bohlinger's presence in the administration affecting policy in a way that middle of the road Montana Republicans would recognize as reflecting their party's ideals, can we hear about it? And if there is a single example where the presence of the Lt. Gov. helped forge any sort of improved relations between Republicans and Democrats, it has escaped notice.

Bohlinger has not been a force for bipartisanship -- he has been a tool of a peculiar sort of triangulation, and a pretty useful one at that. The strategy has worked, and as with most triangulation, the goal is not bipartisanship -- it is the neutralization of the opposition in order to promote the triangulator. There is a difference.

It isn't easy to fight triangulation, but if Crisp is right that Montanans are hungry for "bipartisan consensus," then at least part of the answer for Republicans would have to lie in demonstrating that there is nothing bipartisan about the current administration -- and in articulating specific policies on which Republicans sought compromise from the governor, only to be rejected. It may even involve quietly reminding Democratic legislators that they received offers for discussion and compromise from Republican legislators -- but only marching orders from the governor's mansion.

How to know when Sen. Tester is listening intently

2008-08-11T19:04:00.005-06:00

(Image courtesy of Sen. Tester's office, advertising a listening session in Billings.)

The visual, complete with a trademark Bill Clinton lip-bite, conveys the seriousness of his concern. We're truly relieved. Perhaps readers will have different interpretations of the photo, however.

And you thought MH was mean about John Edwards...

2008-08-11T18:38:00.001-06:00

Maureen Dowd's priceless piece in the NY Times was lethal on John Edwards's admission of being self-centered (but only for the brief time of the affair, mind you):

Even in confessing to preening, Edwards was preening. His diagnosis of narcissism was weirdly narcissistic, or was it self-narcissistic?

The creepiest part of his creepy confession was when he stressed to Woodruff that he cheated on Elizabeth in 2006 when her cancer was in remission. His infidelity was oncologically correct.

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Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post: There is some sincerity and some snake oil in every politician, but John Edwards exudes both in almost freakish measure.

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USA Today: Yet Edwards' transgression — indeed, his excuse — would test the patience of his most ardent supporter: I did it, but only while my wife's cancer was in remission. This suggests that the one-time rising star of the Democratic Party has not yet made contact with human reality...

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The Seattle PI: ...that's what happens when one is caught with his sanctimony hanging out.

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From The Nation: I supported Edwards because he was the only candidate who talked seriously about inequality, but the truth is I never liked him -- the 28,000 square foot house, the canned son-of-a-millworker routine, the endless parading of his family and its perfections, the (as it seemed to me) politically manipulative use of his son's tragic death and his wife's cancer.

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Gail Collins in the New York Times: If Edwards’s political career is toast, it will be because he has always seemed to be less than a sum of his parts: the position papers, the “Two Americas,” the photogenic grin, the supersmart wife. The only piece of the package that consistently disappointed was the man himself. He wasn’t a very good running mate for John Kerry, and as a presidential candidate, he always struck me as being about 2 inches deep.

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And of course, MH's favorite, Kirsten Powers with "He was always a fake.:" If it looks like a phony, walks like a phony, quacks like a phony, it's a phony.

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And we didn't even have to bother with quoting any conservative Republicans.

One thing that has been noted by a few columnists is that Edwards did his confession alone, rather than having his wife sitting gamely by his side holding his hand. There's indeed something to be learned from this observation, but as Henry Adams said about so many things in the account of his own Education, if only we could know what it is...

"Praising McCain" -- another great ad

2008-08-09T15:38:00.003-06:00

The McCain campaign continues on its roll, while Sen. Obama is sunning and relaxing on the beaches of Hawaii.

The closing line by Sen. Hillary Clinton is the most priceless of all. And of course, the subtext of the ad is that Sen. Obama, for all of his talk of post-partisanship, has absolutely no record to back up the talk. John McCain is willing to buck his party line for what he thinks is right, and has years of scars inflicted by his fellow conservatives to show for it. Sen. Obama simply couldn't put together a similar ad, because he has no record of working across party lines.

The ad may, of course, remind some conservatives of why McCain wasn't their favorite guy in the primaries, but polls are showing that the Republican troops are coming home to McCain, now that they are faced with the alternative prospect of an Obama presidency.

This ad is flat-out effective -- don't be surprised to see it getting some airplay in addition to the usual internet circulation that has been working so well for the McCain campaign of late. Whoever the McCain camp hired as consultants are earning their keep.

How can you tell when John Edwards is lying?

2008-08-08T21:38:00.003-06:00

See if his lips are moving, of course. And of course there is that textbook slick-liar look in his eyes every time he talks. Besides the temporary satisfactions of schadenfreude, the other benefits of the Edwards implosion are that we will never have to endure this shyster as President, Vice-President, or Attorney General.

The bad parts are that doctors and businesses in North Carolina will have to endure his ambulance chasing ways. But it is a small price to pay. Maybe President McCain will do the American people a favor and appoint him ambassador to Zimbabwe.

It was hard to find someone more loathsome in the Democratic presidential field this year than John Edwards. In fact, it was impossible. Even an oddball like Mike Gravel at least provided entertainment value.

Pathological liar? Watch this clip of Edwards being interviewed by Katie Couric in 2007 on the subject of marital fidelity, watch his eyes, and be amazed at how many lefties actually thought this guy was the best in the field.

George McGovern agrees with Republicans on the importance of the secret ballot

2008-08-08T14:52:00.003-06:00

One of the litmus tests for labor unions across the country right now is whether a politician supports them in their bid to eliminate secret ballot elections for workers.

That we should even have to be debating whether secret ballots are a good idea gives an indication of how aggressive labor unions are in trying to protect their shrinking power base -- and how craven the Democratic Party is in the face of this offensive.

But if you don't believe Montana Headlines because of our primitive and reactionary ways, then maybe you might believe ur-liberal George McGovern?

As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor.

The legislation is called the Employee Free Choice Act, and I am sad to say it runs counter to ideals that were once at the core of the labor movement. Instead of providing a voice for the unheard, EFCA risks silencing those who would speak.

The key provision of EFCA is a change in the mechanism by which unions are formed and recognized. Instead of a private election with a secret ballot overseen by an impartial federal board, union organizers would simply need to gather signatures from more than 50% of the employees in a workplace or bargaining unit, a system known as "card-check." There are many documented cases where workers have been pressured, harassed, tricked and intimidated into signing cards that have led to mandatory payment of dues.

Under EFCA, workers could lose the freedom to express their will in private, the right to make a decision without anyone peering over their shoulder, free from fear of reprisal.

It doesn't get much plainer than that. The entire editorial is worth reading.

Long-time readers of Montana Headlines know that we are supportive of the role of labor unions and the ability to unionize. It is essential to the working of a free society for management and labor to be able to come to private agreements -- which is why much "right to work" legislation is worth opposing.

Lefty bloggers here in Montana have given our own Congressman Denny Rehberg grief for refusing to deny American workers the right to a secret ballot. We're glad to see that St. George has joined Denny and most Republicans, and is now riding in to help slay the particularly odious dragon of EFCA.

McCain's YouTube dominance

2008-08-07T23:15:00.000-06:00

Montana Headlines was recently taken gently to task over at Billings Blog for having acquired a taste for some of the more recent McCain ads mocking Obama's greatness and celebrity.

While Montana Headlines very often disagrees with David Crisp's opinions, they are always worthy of consideration and response.

To be sure, these recent McCain ads aren't on the artistic level of a Fassbinder trilogy, but then, they aren't supposed to be. Nor are they intended to be wonkish pieces with voices droning on about serious policy proposals.

John McCain is running against an opponent who has been basking in an aura that a very astute Obama campaign has assiduously worked to create. A big part of this has been the way that this aura is passed virally to susceptible hosts, as it were.

The job of a good political campaign faced with battling an opponent who floats in the clouds is to turn on a very strong fan an point it at said nebulous construction. And that is what the recent spate of McCain ads were intended to do. Hillary Clinton tried to pierce the Obama bubble, but unsuccessfully -- mainly because it was impossible for the Clintons to deal with such an upstart with a sense of humor. And it does take a sense of humor to deflate hubris of the Obama magnitude.

These niche videos were never to be broadcast on television to a broad audience -- they were intended to go viral, and that is exactly what they have done.

Mr. Crisp says that the McCain videos aren't particularly funny and are an "acquired taste," but it is apparently a taste increasingly shared by many:

Writing in the Washington Times, Stephan Dinan notes that McCain has solidly taken the lead in the YouTube wars.

Mr. McCain has pumped out a series of brutal yet entertaining attack ads and Web videos mocking the press and Mr. Obama, and the combination of wit and insult has pushed his YouTube channel to the sixth most watched on the site this week.

Mr. McCain has beat Mr. Obama's channel for seven straight days and 11 of the past 14 days, in a signal he intends to compete for the YouTube vote.

That is a giant reversal. Mr. Obama had been quadrupling Mr. McCain's YouTube views and beat him every day since February, according to TubeMogul, which tracks online video viewing.

Do we political types want to sit around and debate the finer points of policy? Absolutely. Has McCain sunk to a low level, as Mr. Crisp contends? Perhaps. But it is in the soothingly warm sunken jacuzzi of nebulous feel-good imagery that Sen. Obama has been basking during this campaign -- casually putting away a field of quite distinguished Democratic contenders, most of whom were superior to him in political and governmental experience.

Since then, he has been just patiently waiting, it seems, for the boring routine of having the people vote to annoint him President.

Willie Sutton famously answered the question of why he robbed banks with a simple answer: "because that's where the money is."

And in any war -- real or metaphorical -- at some point you have to chase down the opposition where it is living and destroy it. That's all that McCain is doing with ads like "Celebrity" and "The One."

The world of the internet video is not the only front in this campaign, but it is an essential one in 2008, one where until now Sen. Obama has had the field largely to himself, reaping huge benefits in the process. As a result, we now face the improbable situation of putting a man who only 4 years ago was an undistinguished Illinois state senator (and who has done little during 4 years in the U.S. Senate but run for President) into the most powerful elected position on the planet.

Oh yes, not only is it allowable for John McCain to enter this particular fray -- it is his duty.

Denny Rehberg, Electric City, Energy for Montana

2008-08-06T16:43:00.003-06:00

Major congratulations are in order to Gregg over at Electric City for his live interview of Congressman Denny Rehberg from the U.S. Capitol, where he is involved in efforts to force Speaker Pelosi to call Congress back into session to take action on our current energy crisis.

The "all of the above" approach is the sort of full-court press that is needed to achieve energy stability and, eventually, energy independence.

That means pushing full speed ahead on all alternative energy sources while also forging ahead on getting domestic oil, coal, and gas development moving. Pretty common sense -- even Paris Hilton seems to grasp the concept.

Polling recommendations

2008-08-05T22:14:00.002-06:00

If the "leak" of a memo based on internal polling was intended somehow to embarrass the Montana GOP, it is unlikely to have that effect.

The supposed "bombshell" of the memo was that GOP legislative candidates were advised not to attack the governor. Far from being some unusual recommendation, it is something that should be common sense -- and from reading Republican legislative candidate literature, it is something that at least in the Billings area, legislative candidates have already been doing for months.

As Chairman Erik Iverson pointed out, this polling data only confirms what has already been a change in direction for the Montana Republican Party, where in the past everyone's fortunes depended on the outcome of major statewide races such as a Presidential race or Senate race. It was never probably a very good strategy in a state like Montana, where voters are noted for their independence and cross-ticket voting. And in the current state of voter flux nationally, it makes even less sense now.

And again, this is a turn that the Montana GOP had already taken some time ago. The silly days of thinking that there were major political gains to be made by repeatedly calling the governor a "mint farmer" or by criticizing him for letting Jag climb on tables and chairs in the state Capitol are long gone.

To be sure, many of the governor's policies deserve criticism -- and alternative visions need to be presented. Some might interpret this as attacking the governor, but of course such straight-forward critiques and contrasts are the legitimate stuff of campaigns.

It is, however, the job of the Roy Brown campaign to do that, and the pollster was stating the obvious by noting that legislative and local candidates aren't going to gain any ground by personal attacks on the governor. The governor has a singular talent for getting under the skin of Republicans -- as we have noted before in these pages, the governor is very Clintonesque in that respect. But we must resist the urge to fire verbally at will, no matter how tempting and even pleasing the prospect might be at any given moment.

Montana Headlines has made these same points before, and while we don't shy away from criticizing policies or actions of the governor, we try to do so on points of substance -- such as our continuing coverage of the governor's refusal to follow a rule that he himself signed into law, or our critiques of how the budget surplus was wasted.

If the memo wasn't intentionally leaked by the GOP (which we suspect it was,) it should have been, because it only serves to highlight for Montana voters the new direction of the Montana GOP, with its emphasis on having local and legislative candidates run their own campaigns on their own merits -- with the benefits percolating up to benefit statewide candidates. It is good long-term strategy, and will pay dividends. Kudos to Erik Iverson.

The governor: "Take responsibility when you're wrong..."

2008-08-04T13:12:00.005-06:00

The governor's new ad is out, and it is a pretty good one. It is straight from the current Democratic playbook -- the governor on the back of a horse, bawling calves in the background, etc.

The ad is all about symbolism, which is a big part of what an effective television ad is about. Just ask Barack Obama, who has been schooled by the McCain camp on that front recently with an effective, hilarious, mocking viral ad campaign that conveys the sense that Obama is an empty suit with nothing much behind the high-flown messianic rhetoric and worshipful fan-base.

But one should be careful, when massaging the symbolism, not to say inconvenient things that can bite you with sharp-toothed facts, and the governor did just that, when he said that he had "learned as a rancher" a list of good American, apple-pie things that included "taking responsibility when you're wrong."

The irony is that in at least one high-profile example to be found in the real world, the governor continues to refuse to take responsibility for breaking the law by doing Public Service Announcements (PSA's) -- using public funds to produce and distribute them -- while a declared candidate for public office.

There isn't much debate over whether the governor broke both the spirit and the letter of the law that he himself signed. The Democratic legislator who wrote the bill has confirmed that the Republican interpretation (i.e. the plain as the nose on your face interpretation) is what he intended. In other words, the law was intended to prevent public officials from doing exactly what the governor did with his "Ag Month" PSA's -- in this case, the governor even had the chutzpah to include his "Montana is on the Move" official campaign slogan in the "public service" announcement.

Ongoing coverage is on YouTube for those who want to listen to all the details of the special hearings now ongoing. One thing is clear -- the governor is refusing to accept responsibility for something he and his employees did that was wrong. As we have noted before, it would have been simple for the governor to say -- oops, we goofed and weren't watching the calendar closely enough. The matter would have blown over in days. It is precisely the governor's intransigence in admitting a relatively minor mistake that has turned this into much bigger matter of whether the governor considers himself to be accountable before the law or not.

We again note that the governor has made no more such PSA's -- if he were so certain that the intent of the legislation was not to ban the activity, why isn't he continuing to "serve the people of Montana" by making lots more PSA's?

We would also note that as Sec. State Brad Johnson told us in his Montana Headlines interview, it is perfectly possible for a government department to put out PSA's without using the name, face, or voice of the person in the department who is running for office.

The governor could have had the head of the Dept. of Agriculture or a volunteer announcer do the ads, could have left out the governor's campaign slogan "Montana is on the Move," and everyone would have been happy and unquestionably within the law.

If Sec. State Brad Johnson has no problems understanding and following the law -- and still manages to do the part of his job that requires putting out necessary PSA's -- why is is so difficult for the governor to do so?

The joke goes that one of the most dangerous places to be standing in Montana is between this governor and a television camera. Now, we have to add a radio microphone to the list of danger spots, it would appear.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, RIP

2008-08-03T23:24:00.001-06:00

It is difficult to underestimate the effect that Alexander Solzhenitsyn had on his time. With the Gulag Archipelago, he pulled back the veil and forced Western leftist fellow-travelers to confront the reality of Soviet communism.

He was hardly an uncritical observer of the West. He had the temerity to address a Harvard University commencement in the late 1970's, and remind the gathered elite that the motto of their university was Veritas -- proceeding to point out that a purely secular and humanistic pursuit of the truth, such as he knew was the norm at Harvard, is doomed to failure.

...we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.

In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

Solzhenitsyn's critiques of the West, however, usually came in one of two forms -- he harshly criticized the West's increasing rejection of traditional religion, and he criticized the West for not being willing to stand up for itself in the face of Communism. While he noted "the similarity of the disease" rotting the West to that which had destroyed humane (as opposed to humanistic) culture in the East, Solzhenitsyn never bought into the idea of moral equivalence between the free world and the communist world. He knew too much, and knew better.

His critiques of the Soviet bloc were one's designed to help bring those regimes crashing down -- his critiques of the West were the "faithful wounds of a friend," as the Scriptures put it.

Solzhenitsyn was a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, and it is perhaps telling that he died on the feast day of the prophet Elijah on the Russian calendar. Like Elijah, Solzhenitsyn was reviled for telling truth that the rulers of his time didn't want to hear. Both men were exiled to desert places, and remarkably survived. At one point, Elijah tells God that those who persecute him "have digged down Thine altars, and have slain Thy prophets with the sword; and I only am left alone, and they seek my life to take it." Could this not have been the story of Solzhentisyn's own life in which he must have felt as though he was a lone voice in the wilderness?

Of course, God reminded Elijah that there were yet 7000 who had not "bent the knee" to the false gods of his time, and one can be sure that Solzhenitsyn likewise learned over time that he was hardly alone. But his stances won him few friends among the elite intellectuals in the West, the longer he stayed here.

One recalls Malcolm Muggeridge, appearing on William F. Buckley, Jr.'s "Firing Line." The Oak and the Calf had recently been published, and Muggeridge (no stranger to the vicious attacks of former admirers) predicted that Solzhenitsyn's book, because of its unapologetically Christian character, would result in "the hounds being set on him" by the secular-minded Western press and intellectual world. Muggeridge was certainly right about that.

Solzhenitsyn was, like all great writers, someone for whom a mere reference to his "complexity" hardly suffices. While the different phases of his life and work can be categorized and parsed endlessly, what should ultimately be remembered are books like The First Circle -- still as fresh and piercing today as they were when they were written 40 years ago.

Just one scene in that book illustrates what Solzhenitsyn brought to his fiction: The scientist (and political prisoner in a forced labor camp for high-level scientists) Gleb Nerzhin sits across the desk from a man who assumes that Nerzhin will be trembling with fear. Instead Nerzhin calmly tells the official that when the state takes everything away from a man, it has unintentionally set him free again, since there is nothing left for that man to lose. In that moment, the official realizes that it is he who is actually feeling fear, something from which Nerzhin is paradoxically free.

Solzhenitsyn wrote with the power of someone who had experienced losing everything -- and who had also experienced the freedom that comes with having nothing left to lose. At the heart of his writing and his life was a simple principle: do not take part in "the lie." Not bad advice for anyone living in any country in any time. And never is it easy advice to follow.

Like great writers who are more attentive to their pursuit of the truth than to cultivating popular celebrity, he was no stranger to controversy. But that voice speaking the truth as he saw it will be missed. The Nobel Laureate will long be read. The visionary will be remembered. Prayers will be said around the world for his soul and for his family.

As the Russians would say, "Vechnaya Pomyat!" Memory Eternal...

________________________

Update 8/4/2008 -- Read the fine editorial that appears in National Review today -- the beginning of what is sure to be a great outpouring of gratitude and praise.

Gerard Baker reading his tour de force send-up of Sen. Obama the Great

2008-07-30T12:25:00.000-06:00

If you haven't read Gerard Baker of the London Times and his hilarious satire of Sen. Obama's world salvation rock tour, you've been in a hole someplace or perhaps have been up above the treeline with Gregg.

Read it first to enjoy the prose. Then enjoy listening to Baker reading it as a narrative accompanying video of Obama on World Tour.

McCain is very much in it

2008-07-30T08:25:00.002-06:00

This should by all rights be a Democratic equivalent of 1984 or 1988 for the Democrats -- a blow-out that would put McCain's name alongside Mondale and Dukakis in the collective American political memory.

Conventional wisdom has been that Sen. McCain would have to run a campaign of W-esque perfection in order even to be in the game at all. And yet, in spite of a campaign that has, to put it kindly, been less than perfect, Sen. McCain is very much in it. He has never trailed by much in any poll, and the most recent Gallup poll -- an outlier, to be sure -- put him in a narrow lead.

Perhaps the most interesting finding in the most recent Rasmussen tracking poll is that the number of undecided voters seems to be growing, and that 33% of those undecided voters are Democrats, while only 19% are Republicans.

This bodes well for McCain, since it indicates that the Republican base is more solidified in their determination to vote for him than might have been expected. Of course, McCain is only a Tom Ridge, a Mitt Romney, or a Joe Lieberman away from blowing that unity to smithereens, but for now it remains true that unless McCain sticks his finger in the collective eye of a major constituency of the conservative base, Republicans will be very united this fall against Barack Obama. This should prove true in Montana no less than anywhere else.

Many Republican conservatives may not find Sen. McCain to be their ideal potential President. But in 2008, he still looks like the only guy we had in the stable who ever had a chance at winning.

It is up to McCain to make his case to the swing independent voters and the Democrats who voted in droves for Hillary Clinton's (quickly invented) rural/working class populist message. Maybe it is time for Tim Pawlenty.

Charles Johnson on the Dem convention

2008-07-29T16:52:00.002-06:00

For some entertaining reading, try this week's "Horse Sense" column by Lee reporter Charles Johnson. As always, it is an understated piece of art, just telling the facts without any commentary -- often more damning to the officious, the sneaky, and the silly than is the editorializing that passes for journalism in much of the main-stream media today.

We read about Democratic Congressional candidate John Driscoll saying "You're looking at a guy that will absolutely end coal burning. I'd shut it down in a heartbeat" and suggesting that there are other uses for the coal. Sure. But how many parents still put coal in the Christmas stockings of their naughty children? The market may be limited for uses that don't involve burning it. It didn't go well with the lip-service that other Democrats, such as the governor, were trying to pay to the coal industry. At least Driscoll is honest about his obstructionism.

We have the chairman of the Montana Democratic Party -- Dennis McDonald -- a California trial lawyer who moved to Montana and bought some cows. Perhaps whoever sold him the cows had a sense of humor, and threw in a gigantic cowboy hat with the deal, just to see if McDonald would wear it. And he does, everywhere he goes.

Without commentary and with a straight face, Johnson reports that McDonald made bold to ridicule "pretend cowboys" in the Republican party, comparing them unfavorably with our Democratic governor, "the real cowboy, the third-generation cattle producer from Geyser." McDonald singled out Denny Rehberg (a "goat-herder") and Taylor Brown (a "disk jockey for the Northern Ag Network.) Did someone forget, by the way, to tell McDonald that this is not a good year for Democrats to be making fun of goat herders? Maybe he didn't get the memo -- but we suspect he will, since a certain Presidential campaign seems not to have a sense of humor.

Last we checked, Denny Rehberg is at least as much a rancher as McDonald is, and he grew up in an Montana agricultural family. Taylor Brown was working cattle on the family ranch in Montana at an age when McDonald was probably goofing off in California. Taylor was working to serve the Montana ag community when McDonald was making a living by filing lawsuits in California (and pocketing more than a third of the plaintiffs' awards.)

But of course, the real irony (which Johnson leaves out on the table, unspoken, for everyone to contemplate) is the idea of Dennis McDonald being some sort of arbiter of who is and isn't a "real cowboy."

Moving on from fake cowboys like Dennis McDonald, there were other goodies, like McDonald citing Linda McCulloch's presence on a powder-puff football team as a job qualification for Secretary of State. And the governor making sure that the governor's office staff turned out for the convention to boost its meager attendance. And the fact that few Democratic state legislators bothered to show up.

Perhaps most amusing was the fact that Democratic AG Mike McGrath, who is running for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, sanctimoniously said that it "violated the judicial ethics code for judicial candidates to attend political party conventions." His opponent, Ron Waterman (also a Democrat,) showed up and spoke at the Democratic convention, just as he had at the Republican convention (where he was warmly received, by the way.)

The amusement comes from the fact that the McGrath campaign had a huge banner sign up for him at the Democratic convention. Funny thing -- McGrath didn't have any presence at the Republican convention. It seems that Ron Waterman is the only one who is in a position to treat this non-partisan Supreme Court race with the dignity and, well, non-partisanship that it deserves.

Dr. No in a showdown

2008-07-28T12:35:00.005-06:00

MH has made no secret about the fact that Sen. Tom Coburn is one of our personal favorites in the U.S. Senate. He is famous for using the power of refusing to go along with the procedure of "unanimous consent" -- making him a one-man Senatorial veto on legislation that would otherwise be shuttled through the Senate without deliberation or debate.

Steps are being taken to try to "deal with Coburn" by Majority Leader Reid. Defeat is inevitable, but as Coburn knows, such defeat is only going to take place on bills that sponsors are willing to have public debate over.

Coburn's techniques may seem extreme to some, but suffice it to say that if Republicans had acted more like Tom Coburn during their last 4-6 years in control of Congress, rather than becoming big spenders that would make 1970's liberal Democrats blush, they might still be in the majority.

Coburn should also be quoted by Sen. Obama on a regular basis, since Coburn's transparency legislation is the one and only bi-partisan legislation of significance that Obama has participated in during his (admittedly very short) Senate tenure.

That state surplus

2008-07-24T17:45:00.002-06:00

So, we have an even bigger surplus than projected. It looks like a quarter is directly attributable to oil and gas revenues, and one suspects that even more is responsible indirectly. This shows us just a bit of what Montana could have if we were to get serious about energy development.

Not surprisingly, Sen. Roy Brown had one of the most trenchant comments about the "underspending" by state government -- spun by the governor as intentional "belt-tightening." Yeah. Right.

Brown: "The fact that state agencies were unable to spend at least $14 million should tell Montanans just how bloated the last budget was. The budget is growing so fast that state agencies couldn't keep up and spend it all, and that's not something to be proud of."

Religious intolerance for Gov. Jindal?

2008-07-23T16:19:00.005-06:00

Montana Headlines thought it a bit suspicious when a leftie dropped by on the last post, indicating agreement with our plug for Gov. Bobby Jindal as McCain's Veep choice.

But Wulfgar let the (black?) cat out of the bag: Dems apparently see Gov. Jindal, a devout convert to Catholicism, as being vulnerable because he witnessed an exorcism while in college and (gasp) prayed the "Hail Mary" while it was going on. He wrote an article about the experience in the New Oxford Review -- a journal that was started by Episcopalians of the Anglo-Catholic persuasion, but whose editors likewise converted to Catholicism subsequent to the theological and moral turmoil in their former denomination. And the article included a passage about the exorcism.

Whatever the phenomenon was that the youthful Jindal observed, the net effect was that it left him believing in "the reality of spirits, angels and other related phenomena..." Shocking, truly shocking, that any Christian might believe in the reality of the spirit world.

While the event Jindal relates appears to be from his early days of being a Catholic, and took place within the loose structure of a generic college Christian organization, it is worth noting that exorcisms are, unless things have changed recently, a standard part of every Catholic baptism. Pope John Paul II approved a specific rite for exorcisms in the late 1990's. A belief that there are demonic forces that can specifically oppress an individual, and that prayer has efficacy in dealing with it is not something that comes from the fringes of Christianity.

Anything that a politician has written in the past is, of course, fair game. What church a candidate chose to attend for decades is fair game. Pretty much everything is fair game in politics. Voters can and will decide whether something makes them more or less likely to support a candidate.

But what if Jindal were still a Hindu, and believed in reincarnation and karma? Or if he had dabbled in Buddhism in college rather than Catholicism? Or if he had smoked peyote as part of a spiritual search that included an exploration of Native American religion? Would he be just as scary and excrable as he apparently is for having been a part of an unusual prayer service held by a campus Christian organization at Brown University, back when Christianity was still a new thing for him? Would he be mocked for these experiences on leftie blogs?

But in a nation where 62% of Americans reportedly believe that there is such a thing as the devil, we're not sure how much ground will be gained by Democrats ridiculing Jindal about the fact that a very strange college experience convinced him that there is more to the spiritual world than meets the eye.

A recent Gallup poll indicates that nearly 3/4 of Americans believe in the reality of paranormal phenomenon (75% for Christians, 66% for non-Christians). For that matter, 64% of Americans believe that aliens have contacted humans and nearly half apparently believe that aliens have abducted humans... Now, just because 31% of Americans believe in telepathy doesn't mean that there is a 31% chance that it is true -- a majority of people can believe something and have it be wrong. But in America today, someone who doesn't believe that paranormal phenomena exist is actually the odd man out.

If Democrats decide to go down the road of religious ridicule toward Gov. Jindal, it will only reinforce the perception that their party is a hotbed of religious intolerance -- a party where it is acceptable (cool, even) to have dabbled in just about anything in college... other than Christianity.

Please let it be Jindal

2008-07-22T13:56:00.003-06:00

The Veepstakes continue -- while for Obama the choice is not terribly important, for McCain it is critical that he get it just right. Newt Gingrich, among others, has been emphatic that Bobby Jindal is the only rational choice for McCain to make, and McCain and Jindal are talking this week.

While not long ago, MH would have dismissed the possibility of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal as the VP candidate because he is still in his first year as governor. But when running against Sen. Obama, whose accomplishments that he lists in TV ads have to dip into legislation he voted for as a state senator in Illinois, this isn't a year when experience matters that much. With several terms in the U.S. House under his belt and extensive executive experience at both the state and federal level, Jindal is more ready to be President than is Sen. Obama.

The most important reason for McCain to choose Jindal is, however, pretty simple: he is the smartest, most reform-minded, and most exciting governor that the Republican Party has right now. Quite frankly, we need to have him engaged at the national level. His selection would pump up every segment of the grassroots in the Republican Party. He wouldn't be threatening to anyone except those who are scared of any conservative shadow.

And win or lose, Jindal's selection would put him at the center of national Republican politics. Anything that accomplishes that is a good thing.

Wolves in Russia (Updated)

2008-07-21T17:51:00.006-06:00

While the wolf-loving responses in the comments are predictable, it is worth reading a little about the experiences with wolves in Russia. Hint -- there's not the same sentimental love affair with wolves there that environmentalists have here. Wolves eat lots of livestock, have been known to attack humans in rural Russia (something that is said never to have happened in America,) and spread diseases. Who'da thunk it?

While most of us have come to terms with wolf re-introduction, it is more than high time for active control to begin, including a hunting season. It is too bad that those in favor of wolf re-introduction haven't kept their end of the bargain, and have instead chosen to use the courts to stop the active process of de-listing. One wonders how successful they would have been in pushing through re-introduction if they had told us that they wouldn't hold to the recovery benchmarks that they themselves set?

____________________

Update:

Ed Kemmick asks the question about documentation of wolf attacks in Russia. A simple internet search reveals a few links -- consider the source on each. For instance, while this is a very interesting article, the inclusion of attacks by domesticated or confined wolves seems like unhelpful piling on. What does seem clear is that wolves have historically been much more aggressive toward humans in the Old World than here in the New, at least during the time of documented history.

The thesis that the peasantry was unarmed throughout history in the Old World whereas Americans have been armed is a reasonable one, and is a good argument for a hunting season plus expanded ability of ranchers to eliminate predators on sight. The more wolves fear humans, the more they will stay away from us and our food.

There is no quick way to summarize the historical evidence other than to say that when humans are not seen as an active threat to them, wolves can become aggressive, especially if they are hungry. The Wikipedia article and list of documented attacks is pretty extensive and worth reading in its entirety.

I seem to remember reading a modern wolf advocate stating that all of the "big, bad, wolf" stories of Europe were based solely in the fact that man is a competing predator, and therefore wants to demonize and eliminate his competition. The more I read, the more it is clear that the big, bad, wolf of Europe was feared -- at least in part -- because of very real human experience of being its prey.

As our wolf population expands in numbers and range, to scoff at the European and Asian experience with the intermingling of wolves and humans appears to amount to willful ignorance based in ideology.

_________________

Oh, and the Russians have a great, environmentally friendly, all-natural solution to excess wolves...

Ron Tussing -- the cost to the taxpayer continues to rise (and the Gazette continues to ignore)

2008-07-17T15:40:00.005-06:00

Billings Mayor Ron Tussing, tired of only getting paid a few hundred a month as Billings mayor (he apparently didn't read the not-so-fine print on the contract and has been, according to gossip, been discontented with the mayor's pay from day one) is now running for the PSC District 2 spot against incumbent Commissioner Brad Molnar.

As much as so many in our fair city would love to see this guy leave Billings and move to Helena, it needs to be kept in mind that we already tried that tack once, paying him several hundred thousand dollars to leave, only to have him pocket the money and then run for mayor in direct violation of (at least) the spirit of the agreement.

We hope that the residents of PSC district 2 will have the good sense to re-elect Brad Molnar -- and expect that they will. But might we suggest that if Tussing is by some chance elected, that the City of Billings file an injunction to garnish his wages to pay for the damage he has done to our city's finances? He should be able to keep a few hundred a month (maybe the same that he gets paid to be mayor) to live on, but the rest of his salary should go to the City of Billings.

Today's Billings Gazette reports that the bill for the Feuerstein lawsuit is up to $1.6 million, of which insurance will likely only pick up a third. More than $1 million will have to be paid by the taxpayers of Billings.

Par for the Billings Gazette course when it comes to Mayor Tussing, the article amazingly never mentions Tussing's name, even though as then chief of police he was at the center of the lawsuit against the police department, and even though he is now running for higher office and the public has the right to be reminded of his centrality to that lawsuit (jurors interviewed after the case indicated that Tussing's testimony and arrogant attitude was particularly damning.)

To be sure, Tussing was not the only person responsible for that debacle, but he was the guy in charge of the police department, and it is a dereliction of duty on the part of the Gazette not to remind readers of Tussing's connection.

Think Burns and Abramoff -- editorial guidelines seem to be that you can't mention one in the Gazette without mentioning the other, correct? By the same token, the Feuerstein case shouldn't be mentioned without including Tussing.

Anyway, the number you read is right. More than $1 million that will be billed to the taxpayers of our fair city. Thanks, Mayor Tussing.

There is plenty in the MH archives about Ron Tussing, such as our 5-part series of posts on the Feuerstein case entitled "The House the Ron Tussing Built," which will have to be reprised as this campaign goes on. But first, interested readers can turn to our initial post about Tussing's PSC bid, and the followup piece that was prompted by how popular the first post was with commenters in a frenzy to defend their honey Ron Tussing and attack Commissioner Molnar.

The PSC 2 race will be quite a doozy -- stay tuned. If our last couple of pieces on Tussing are any indication, there won't be long to wait for further comment.

Humor for the Obama campaign

2008-07-16T15:31:00.003-06:00

This has been making the rounds, to be sure, but The Borowitz Report has one of the best responses yet to the humorless response by the Obama campaign to the recent infamous New Yorker cover: a list of "jokes approved by the Obama campaign."

To be sure, that New Yorker cover wasn't very effective as satire, especially since even as a caricature of us righties it is so far off as to not land an effective blow. If those of us who enjoy good satire can't recognize ourselves, it isn't very good satire. Still, we are in for a very long, humorless, 4 years if even a liberal bastion like the New Yorker gets lambasted for accidentally hurting Sen. Obama's feelings while in the process of painting Obama's own opponents on the right with a very broad and unfair brush.

What will Sen. Obama do if he gets portrayed negatively in a cartoon -- with the dig aimed directly at him -- in ways such as Pres. Bush has been? Send the FBI to shut the magazine down?

___________________

The above post would have been more complete had this column by Maureen Dowd been worked into it, since it encapsulates so well the worrying question of whether Obama's campaign has a sense of humor.

"Net-roots Ninnies" -- and a note on Sirota

2008-07-14T17:45:00.003-06:00

Note the quotation marks -- Montana Headlines isn't given to calling names, but we do enjoy quoting the title of the piece in today's New York Post by one of our very favorite liberals -- the very smart, articulate, and unflappable Kirsten Powers. She is a Fox News regular, and is one of the few people who can get Sean Hannity to be polite for a few minutes. And when she is subbing on the best conservative talk-radio program around, "Brian and the Judge," it is always a treat.

So why does Kirsten call the netroots folks "ninnies?" In short because in their obsession about Obama's recent flip-flop on FISA and other perceived transgressions against progressive purity, they are losing sight of the fact that they are, in the end, not terribly relevant to the Democratic Party's electoral prospects:

Newsflash to the netroots and the media (which seems perpetually confused on this issue): The netroots are not the base of the Democratic Party.

Overwhelmingly white, male and highly educated, they're a loud anomaly in a party that's wholly dependent on the votes of African Americans, women and working-class whites.

Ouch. Ms. Powers is of course right that this demographic doesn't provide a lot of the votes to the Democratic machine, but on the other hand highly educated white males have always played a disproportionate role in Democratic politics -- even before the netroots came along. It's all part of that egghead thing, or what John Kenneth Galbraith called the members of his "New Class" that were needed to run things in the modern world.

If you have a welfare state with a highly centralized government, there will always be a place for technocrats to make decisions, tell people what to do, and generally run things. Cf. Democratic voting patterns in university towns, in capital cities, and on the staffs of most news organizations.

But leave it to Kirsten Powers to be unimpressed with the idealistic take-no-prisoners attitudes she sees these days from the left-roots:

Grow up, net rooters: You're going to see more Obama compromises with reality, more shifts to address what the real Democratic base cares about. Don't even be surprised if he comes out with a plan to allow domestic oil drilling.

Drill, drill, drill? We can only hope.

_______________________

Speaking of loud anomalies, David Sirota springs to mind. A one-time quasi-Montanan now back in the big city, he is a sound and fury sort, proffering what are generally conventional leftward solutions disguised as pseudo-populism. So it was surprising to find that MH and Sirota were in agreement with something the latter wrote in today's column that appeared in the Billings Gazette.

Most of the piece is of the unremarkable "Accidental Tourist" genre, bemoaning the homogenization of American society. (It is of course all the fault of corporations and franchizing -- making one wonder if Sirota is advocating legislation to ban Applebee's.)

But he does take note of something very real that Montana Headlines, with its emphasis on state and local politics, can't help but decry:

...in every corner of the country, the discussion is almost completely national focused. Who will be the vice-presidential nominees? What will the latest scandal mean for the presidential candidates? How can Democrats or Republicans win the congressional election?

Now, even decades ago, in the politically precocious early days of a young Montana Headlines, presidential politics were all the rage with the general public, while local and state races were dutifully ignored just as today.

What is perhaps different is that the explosion of media sources -- traditional and alternative -- have dramatically increased the level of detail that a political junkie has about national races and issues that really didn't perhaps need a lot more attention. Which is, of course, the great thing about the blogosphere part of the alternative media -- left and right alike. Because it is decentralized, it allows both "net-roots ninnies" and right-wing ranters like MH the opportunity to draw attention to state and local races and issues that in the past would have been ignored.

It is unfortunately true, of course, that all too many posts in regional blogs like those found in the Montana blogosphere simply rehash talking points about national politics that have already been endlessly regurgitated.

But the possibilities are there for us to make Mr. Sirota happy by dissecting state and local politics -- so shouldn't we try?

____________

Update: Jay at LITW believes the above post to be "mean-spirited" -- the readers can decide for themselves. His musings are worth perusing, but there is one point in particular that bears comment.

He claims that concerns about FISA on the left are a reflection of civil liberties concerns, while saying that those on the right who supported that bill were primarily motivated because it was "our team's" idea.

The bottom line is that the final sticking point on the bill didn't involve high-flown ideas about civil liberties. It was retroactive telecom immunity from being sued at the plaintiff's bar. Supporting such immunity should be pretty much a matter of common sense -- after all, if someone was wronged by government intrusion into their privacy, violating principles of unreasonable search and seizure, who did the wrong? Pretty clearly it would seem to be the government that demanded the cooperation of the telecom companies, and not the companies who cooperated with what the government asked for, citing a time of national threat.

If bounds were overstepped, or if threats were over-stated, the fault lies with the government, and it is the government that should be punished within the constraints of the legal system. And it is from the government that anyone who has suffered loss should seek restitution.

There was one group, and one group only, who wanted the immunity stricken from that bill, and that is trial lawyers who hoped to make easy and tidy windfall profits from cases against telecom companies who would hopefully fold quickly in order to have it over with.

Not only would the wrong party be unfairly footing the bill, but we could be assured that they would have reason not to cooperate with, say, a President Obama faced with a future national emergency, demanding their help in gathering information about potential threats to the American populace.

It was perhaps wrong to characterize progressive furor over FISA as being a matter of "progressive purity," at least in an ideological sense. It was, at root, much more venal than that. It is well known that trial lawyers provide the backbone of funding for progressive politics, so the temporary intransigence of the left on retroactive immunity for telecom companies can fairly be seen as an act of simple financial self-interest.

Those big-money Democrats... again

2008-07-11T15:30:00.002-06:00

In what is a very big surprise, Republicans are projecting that they will raise $400 million from all sources to support Sen. McCain in his run against Sen. Obama this fall.

This is a staggering figure, considering that McCain is a notoriously poor fundraiser -- and probably an optimistic figure. Still, Republicans are doubtless understanding that they are really up against the wall in this election. With no hope to regain control of even a single house of Congress, and smart money saying that we'll actually lose seats in both houses, all that stands between America and one-party Democratic rule in Washington is Sen. McCain, so it is time for Republicans to buck up. Literally.

Unfortunately, even if those cheerful Republican figures turn out to be true, Sen. Obama is projecting close to $500 million. What should be noted is that a $100 million dollar deficit in favor of Democrats is nothing new.

In 2004, we had an incumbent President and majorities in both House and Senate. And yet, here is what Karl Rove recently had to say:

While the GOP may be seen as the party of Big Money, recent presidential contests have shown that – taking unions, George Soros's wealth, and organizations like MoveOn.Org into consideration – Democrats have a large financial advantage.

In 2004, when each side's spending by candidates, national committees and third-party groups was totaled up, Democrats outspent Republicans in the presidential race by $119.4 million.

In other words, we were behind by more than $100 million in a good year -- a year when Sen. Zell Miller proclaimed that his Democratic Party was "A National Party No More."

The same is repeated here in Montana up and down the ticket this year and there doesn't appear to be an end in sight for the foreseeable future. We "fat-cat" Republicans had better get used to being outspent by the real big-money party.

Some thoughts on John McCain and bipartisanship

2008-07-09T18:25:00.003-06:00

It was brought to our attention that Montana Headlines was linked to on the John McCain website (see below.) This is an honor, since MH quite a while ago came to the conclusion that John McCain was the logical nominee out of the choices available this year. (To anyone who didn't read our initial shot across the bow last December advocating a McCain nomination, don't click on the link expecting it to be a fluff piece made up of gushing talking points.)

But we would like to make some comments spurred by browsing around the blogging page at JohnMcCain.com -- we note that it includes links to some liberal blogs like the Daily Kos. Visiting the Obama website and browsing around a little, there doesn't seem to be an equivalent open-mindedness towards conservative websites on the part of the Obama campaign.

But then, that a part of what this campaign will demonstrate. For those who are concerned about the increasing divisiveness of politics in America, there is a clear choice this year.

On the one hand, we have in John McCain a Republican with a real record of reaching across party lines (even if MH wouldn't always agree with some of those bipartisan efforts.) Sometimes this has meant that Sen. McCain has earned the criticism of fellow Republicans, including MH.

On the other hand we have in Sen. Obama a Democrat who talks a good "transcending partisanship" game, but who is a conventional, down-the-line liberal without any record of transgressing even the most minor liberal dogmas.

He is, at present, trying to act like he is moving to the middle, but his past record and words militate against it being genuine. Where is Sen. Obama's record of liberals being unhappy with his votes because he reached across the aisle? It just isn't there.

Sen. Obama wants us all to get along and feel good -- but the terms of getting along seem to be that we who are a part of the center-right majority of Americans will need to strum guitars and learn the words to the old leftist songs. That's not the kind of bipartisanship that arouses much interest around here.

As Dick Morris pointed out in a sobering recent column, Obama will have no choice but to govern from the far left if he is elected President. Morris's arguments are compelling.

The far left is just not where America is -- and certainly not where we should want it to go. It's certainly not where Montana is.

Just one more reason that gives urgency to the importance of electing Sen. McCain this fall.

Montana Headlines is now a blog by the Billings Gazette

2008-07-09T17:35:00.006-06:00

Don't believe MH that we are part of the Billings Gazette now? Well, just check out JohnMcCain.com, go to the conservative section of the "suggested blogs," and click on Montana Headlines. It's right there in black and white -- or rather blue and white: "A political blog by the Billings Gazette."

(We were gratified to see that are joined by Western Word, one of our favorite blogs, at the McCain site.)

We've notified the McCain campaign in the interest of accuracy, but for the moment, we'll enjoy being a part of the Billings Gazette family -- easily the most conservative and Republican-friendly part of it, we would imagine. The mixup is understandable, since commenting on the Billings Gazette is listed in our sub-heading part of our mission statement -- even if increasingly neglected in favor of broader commentary and reporting on Montana politics.

Good new McCain ad

2008-07-08T16:53:00.001-06:00

Video and commentary from the NYT here.

Democratic Congress hits record approval rating

2008-07-08T16:46:00.002-06:00

9%

Yup, you heard it right -- single digits for Congress. No matter how low Bush goes, Congress is always a step ahead.

Now exactly why is everyone planning to send even more Democrats to Washington?

Sigh.

New website for Elaine Herman for State Superintendent

2008-07-08T09:53:00.005-06:00

Thanks to 2nd Grade Bike Rack for noting that Elaine Herman has a new website up in her campaign for State Superintendent.

Montana Headlines has discussed the importance of this campaign before, and in Elaine Herman we have a very solid candidate who can win. Check it out.

Fox News Sunday -- forgetting Sen. Baucus exists

2008-07-07T08:48:00.004-06:00

On Fox News Sunday's panel, Montana got mentioned because of us being targeted by the Obama campaign as a swing state. Fred Barnes advised the McCain campaign "not to worry" about Montana -- which is probably sound advice from a national perspective (if McCain loses Montana, it will be part of a national blow-out,) but not so good for our down-ticket races.

But the amusing part of the exchange was where Mort Kondracke stated that North Dakota has two Democratic Senators and Montana has a Democratic governor and one Democratic Senator. Since the memory of Sen. Tester's dramatic squeaker, giving control of the U.S. Senate to the Democrats, has to be still fresh in the minds of political junkies, the inescapable conclusion is that Kondracke has forgotten the existence of the "4th most powerful Senator" on Capitol Hill.

If only it were that easy for us.

Get the real story on Obama in Butte

2008-07-06T17:32:00.001-06:00

From Kate over at Big Sky Cairn. Great reporting and local color -- check it out.

Jesse Helms, RIP

2008-07-05T11:02:00.002-06:00

Sen. Jesse Helms was to liberals what Sen. Edward Kennedy is to conservatives -- a convenient whipping boy who symbolized all that was hated about the opposition. Like Kennedy, he was a great fundraiser for the opposition. Groups like the ACLU should build great shrines to Jesse Helms because of all of the money he helped them raise by being one of their designated bogeymen.

It was somehow fitting that this great American died on the 4th of July, since he was a true patriot who loved his country and served it well.

Among his many accomplishments were two things:

1. Without Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan would likely never have been elected President. Reagan had a string of primary losses to Gerald Ford in 1976, and was down for the count. Jesse Helms was responsible for the strategy and implementation of Reagan's win in the North Carolina primary, which boosted him to what ended up being a challenge to Ford that the latter won only by a whisker. Reagan came into the convention with half of the delegates, and stole the show with his impromptu speech at the end. From that point he was the presumptive nominee for 1980, and had grassroots organization in every corner of the country by the end of the campaign.

Had Reagan lost in North Carolina, he would have had to drop out of the 1976 race, and he wouldn't have had the organization in place, and he would have had a hard time making the case in 1980 that a conservative could win the nomination and the Presidency. Thank you, Jesse Helms.

2. Sen. Helms instituted the practice of forcing roll-call votes in a U.S. Senate that had increasingly adopted the practice of shuffling legislation on through without Senators having to go on record. Helms thought that Senators shouldn't be able to hide whether they did or didn't support a specific piece of legislation, and he forced roll-call vote after roll-call vote.

In the political climate of the time, this had the added benefit of leading to the electoral defeat of many a liberal Senator who had heretofore been able to portray a more moderate image back home. But even without that, the now routine practice of making Senators go on record should be applauded by all who value transparency in government.

Sec. State Brad Johnson -- Montana Headlines interview, Part 2 of 2

2008-07-01T18:00:00.002-06:00

Read Part 1 of the interview here.

Part 2:

MH: The Secretary of State's office oversees a wide variety of governmental functions, all of which are important, but most of which are out of the view of the average Montanan. Could you, for the benefit of readers who aren't familiar with what your office does, give an overview?

Brad Johnson: Elections are, of course, the one that everyone notices. But the Secretary of State's office also serves Montana's business community as a filing office. When a new business gets started, they register their name here so no one else in Montana can use it. Corporations and Limited Liability Companies file annual reports with us, so the public can be aware of contact information, who's on their board of directors, and more. After business filings, we also preserve records for the rest of the state, we publish that state's Administrative Rules, we oversee Notaries Public, and more. That's one of the reasons I like the Secretary of State's office: it's an office of government that does humble, quiet work. It really is a place to serve the people.

MH: You mention filing and reporting for corporations as being a role of the Secretary of State's office -- are there things under the purview of your office that you think could be changed in order to create a more business-friendly climate in Montana? Will you be advocating for any legislation in the upcoming session?

Brad Johnson: This office definitely improves the business climate in Montana. The first step has been to hold fees down. Not one business reporting fee has increased during my term. The second is to reduce paperwork, which we did by shifting to online annual reports and which we’ll continue doing by bringing more services online. We’re improving the methods by which we deliver information about administrative rules, which many businesses need to do their job. Those are just a few of the areas where I hope to make even more improvements over the coming years.

MH: Let's turn to politics. You are one of only two Republicans holding state-wide office right now, and the only one in Helena. This has thrust you into a high-profile leadership role in the state party that you probably didn't anticipate having 4 years ago when you defeated Bill Kennedy for the Secretary of State position.

What has that been like, and what are your thoughts as a leader about what we Republicans will need to do in order to recover from the losses we have sustained in the last couple of election cycles?

Brad Johnson: I wholeheartedly believe that the excited, committed crop of Republicans we have this year is ready to come roaring back in 2008. We've got so much excitement at the grass roots, it's really moving. I try to think of myself as a resource to them. I believe there's an understanding out there among the activists that it was never offices or numbers or majorities that made this party great -- it was our beliefs. Our beliefs will make us great again.

We don't need to think about being in power; we need to think about being in the right. As long as we are, and we stay that way, we will be a great political party. Fiscal conservatism, the values of the American family, a strong nation with a strong defense, liberty and individualism -- we stood for those things once, and we were great. If we stand for them again, we will be great again.

MH: Speaking of your new high-profile role, part of the package deal is that you've drawn fire from the left here in Montana -- we've certainly seen it in the blogosphere. You've also had to have felt a bit isolated as the sole Republican member of the state land board. We're not giving away any big secrets here when we say that you are being targeted by the Democrats in this election. How does this affect day-to-day life in doing your job as Secretary of State?

Brad Johnson: I've had my share of criticism from the Democrat party, that's true. But I just don't let it affect the job. While I'm there, the Secretary of State's office will not descend into partisanship. I've actually got an elected Democrat serving as my elections deputy -- Lisa Kimmet, former Clerk and Recorder for Prairie County. Many people don't know that, but to me, it's a guarantee of high quality elections for everyone. We have a Republican Secretary of State and a Democrat who's working right alongside me to make sure Montana's elections remain among the cleanest, fairest in the country.

MH: Funny thing -- one struggles to think of examples where the leftward bloggers in Montana, let alone the mainstream press, commends you for having hired a Democrat as your elections deputy.

Brad Johnson: I admit it’s a bit frustrating. People on the other side of the aisle line up to sing Schweitzer’s praises for having “Republican” John Bohlinger in his administration, but they’re dead silent when our side does something similar. But I try not to let those frustrations come up too often. The truth of the matter is, you don’t do the right thing for credit, you do the right thing because it’s the right thing. And an election that both sides can trust is absolutely the right thing.

MH: One more question on attacks from the left: we've heard stories about a nationwide effort on the part of Democrats specifically to take over Secretary of State offices at the individual state level, presumably to have more control over the election process. Have you had evidence that you are being targeted on a national level?

Brad Johnson: We’ve had some interaction with the national Democrat and left-leaning organizations. Their “Secretary of State Project” wrote about my race once, and have been said to have an interest in it. We encountered MoveOn.org, too, believe it or not. They sent us a bunch of petitions urging Montana to move to paper ballots. Of course, we passed that law in 2005…

MH: Yes, that was an amusing illustration of how out-of-touch MoveOn.org is, once they get away from the coasts.

One more political question -- you were an early supporter of Gov. Mitt Romney, who was successful in winning the Montana Republican Presidential Caucus. Have you been asked to be involved in Sen. McCain's presidential campaign here in Montana -- and regardless of whether you will be actively involved, how would you suggest that the Montana Republican Party can transfer some of that Romney grassroots energy to John McCain?

Brad Johnson: I've already been advocating the importance of electing John McCain to the White House. I haven't been involved in the campaign yet, but I'm spreading the word on a personal level as much as I can. As far as transferring some of the Romney enthusiasm to McCain, I think there's a relatively simple formula that will work: Romney earned a lot of his support simply by showing up. He came here, he listened to Montanans, and he treated us like we mattered.

Frankly, we saw the same thing in the supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Those two were here a lot, and their supporters were very enthusiastic for that reason. That's what the party and the McCain campaign need to do to transfer the Romney enthusiasm. Treat individual voters with respect. Listen to their ideas. And give them some time. They will respond. Chairman Iverson is already doing this at the party level; I have every confidence that we're going to see it from the McCain campaign as well.

MH: Let's leave politics and for the final question go back to the job you've been doing as Secretary of State. You've overseen a major modernization of the Secretary of State's office during your 4 years. Tell us a little about some of the things happening behind the scenes in your office that might not be making front page news.

Brad Johnson: When I ran for this office, I committed to bringing the Secretary of State's office into the 21st century. It's going well. We've got online candidate filing now, a statewide voter registration database, business annual reports are mostly online, we've just upgraded our Administrative Rules system into an easily searchable online database, we've established a steering committee to guide statewide policy on electronic records and information management, and more.

Right now we're in the middle of a project to completely revamp the office's computer system, with an end goal of making all our records available electronically, and all our reports submittable electronically. We've saved over a hundred thousand dollars with the online annual reporting. Electronic services cut down on paperwork and time for the citizen and the fee-paying business, and they're cheaper for the state to provide. It's a win win situation for everyone.

MH: A "win-win" situation is a good note to end on. Secretary Johnson, thank you very much for spending time with us here at Montana Headlines. Good luck in the campaign.

Sec. State Brad Johnson -- Montana Headlines interview, Part 1 of 2

2008-06-30T18:00:00.002-06:00

Note to readers: please see our introductory comments on method and ground-rules that we published with our interview with Republican State Auditor candidate Duane Grimes.

____________________________________________

MH: Secretary Johnson, first of all welcome to Montana Headlines, and thank you for agreeing to do this interview.

To start off, Montanans read in the newspapers last month that you just finished visiting the election offices in all 56 Montana counties in your capacity at the chief election administrator of the state. That was quite an undertaking.

Share with us, if you will, some of your impressions about the state of elections in Montana. What are we doing well, and what are some of the challenges that we face in what promises to be one of the biggest primary and general elections that Montana has seen in quite some years?

Brad Johnson: Montana's elections are some of the cleanest and fairest in the country. When I meet with other Secretaries of State from around the nation, they're always envious of how smoothly elections proceed here. One of the first reasons for that is our paper ballot requirement. While other states around the country are dealing with all the security risks of electronic voting machines, every single vote in Montana is on paper where we can count it by hand if we need to. That was bipartisan legislation for which I was proud to be the first proponent.

Another reason Montana's elections work so well is our system of local control. County election officials make their own decisions about whether to count ballots by hand or using a machine. County Commissioners make their own decisions about ordering a hand recount if they believe there's a problem with the total. We have some of the best election administrators anywhere in the country, and I'm proud to call each and every one of them a colleague.

That was one of the best things accomplished by the tour. I had the chance for real face-to-face interaction with the people on the front lines of our electoral process. County election officials had the chance to tell me directly what they wanted form the state. When they asked for more training on the statewide voter registration database, they got it. When they asked for more communication, they got it.

There are still areas we can fine tune. In the last legislative session, my office worked with Rep. Brady Wiseman on legislation to require random audits of some counties vote counts after an election. That didn't pass, but we hope to return to that issue in the next session. Overall, we've got a great election system here -- one that other states look to as an example.

MH: How did the June primary go from your perspective, given the record turnouts, especially on the Democratic side?

Brad Johnson: There are a number of important points to observe about our primary election. The first is that, for the first time ever, Montana endured the rigors of full fledged modern Presidential campaign. The result? Short, well-managed lines, no challenges to the counts, and timely reporting of the results. In brief, this election proceeded nearly perfectly in process. I think a large share of the credit for that goes to the outstanding local election administrators, who trained hard, worked hard, and delivered results for the people of Montana.

Another important point that I’m happy about is that this year, for the first time ever, the Montana Secretary of State’s office delivered accurate, up-to-the minute results on election night. In years past, our “final unofficial count” has been available at some point the day after. But the simple fact of the matter is that the people demanded better. We delivered it, and I was pleased by that.

Voter turnout was great – just a percentage point or two shy of our office projection. And, I might add, the highest since Congress made changes in how we measure voter turnout.

I think every Republican has to look at the turnout figures on the Democrat side and say some version of, “It’s time to get to work. That’s a large number of people voting in the Democrat primary. Obviously the high visibility of the Obama vs. Clinton contest was driving that, combined with the McCain nomination being long-since settled, but even so, we have to look at those numbers and respond with more work and more ideas. We can take nothing for granted.

MH: Was there anything in the results in Bob Kelleher's win in the Republican Senate race or John Driscoll's race in the Democratic House race that raises any red flags for your office, given how unexpected these results were?

Brad Johnson: We certainly did have questions from some folks shortly after the primary. There were a few who wanted to blame the Kelleher situation on some problem with vote counting machines. But Montana has a number of counties that count their ballots by hand. The simple fact of the matter is that the results of the Senate primary in hand-count counties essentially mirrored those in the machine count counties. Kelleher won. Driscoll won. Figuring out why will be a great opportunity for professors and analysts. But they did win, and it was not a problem with the count.

I will take a moment here to say I believe that’s a trend which is highly destructive to democracy. On both sides – Republican and Democrat – when the results are not what we wanted, we blame the system rather than admit we could have lost. Democrats did it in 2004 in Ohio, a few Republicans have been doing it now in Montana… but what happens if those efforts succeed? What happens if the public comes to believe that the only legitimate election is one where your candidate wins? People will lose faith in the system of self government. That’s something I think we all want to prevent.

MH: You took some flack from the left during the last legislative session when you advocated for election workers and their reasonable proposal to close registration a mere two business days before the election. Did we see the kinds of backed up lines and overloaded staff on election day that we did in the fall of 2006? Will you be advocating for such legislation again, or do you think that we are just stuck with voter registration loading down our election offices on election day itself?

Brad Johnson: In the political world, we have a big debate going on about “everyone should be able to participate in an election, even if they forget to register up until the last minute” vs. “Voting is a responsibility, if you can’t be bothered to pay attention you should not take part.” I believe in voting as a responsibility, and I work every day toward increasing people’s informed, prepared participation. I also believe in increasing participation. That’s why I think HB281 in the 2007 session was such a good compromise. It still opened up the process much more – from 30 days before the election down to three. But it asked for just a little bit of prior preparation.

But none of that takes into account the technical part of election work. One thing that frustrates election workers everywhere is how little people outside the business understand what we do. The simple fact is that late registration is very, very hard for county election workers to implement in a way that preserves a smooth election process for the rest of the voters and also maintains the integrity of the process. But people outside don’t see that. They just see the “participation vs. responsibility” debate.

I have a responsibility to see the election workers’ perspective though. And their opinion was near-universal. 55 out of 56 county election administrators wanted to roll back the date of late registration. I won’t name names, but HIGHLY partisan Democrat election administrators wanted to see that deadline rolled back. On the other hand, relatively politically inactive Democrat election administrators also completely supported rolling back the date for late registration. As well, Republican election administrators supported rolling back the date. Election administrators of no party also supported it. Among the most highly-regarded election administrators in the state – of all political stripes – all said the deadline should be rolled back.

It’s not that I don’t understand the Democrats political position. What I don’t understand is why they were so unwilling to listen to a universal consensus from the people in the field.

And after all that, it absolutely must be said: we did far, far better this year. My office undertook a campaign of public service announcements – that never used my name, face or voice, I should add – encouraging voters to register early. As well, the major Presidential campaigns were all working on getting voters registered early. County election offices worked on getting voters registered early. And the team effort worked. Lines were shorter to non-existent in some counties. They moved faster. It was a good result. But we’d have an even better result if we closed registration on the Friday before the election.

MH: Some states are enacting measures to decrease the chances of voter fraud, such as photo ID's. Another concern in many states that isn't yet an issue in Montana but that may become one in the coming years is the possibility of illegal immigrants voting in our elections. Do you have any thoughts about these and other voter fraud concerns in Montana and how the legislature might take action? It is the position of Montana Headlines that every fraudulent ballot cast disenfranchises a voter who followed the rules. Any thoughts on that?

Brad Johnson: In the last legislative session, I testified on behalf of a bill that would have made it a felony to knowingly falsify information for the purpose of registering to vote. The Democrats killed it. That’s one step the legislature could take right away that would address many of the concerns you mentioned. I share your position that if voter fraud happens, it disenfranchises honest voters.

It should be pointed out that the non-partisan Legislative Audit Division identified instances of individuals who attempted to vote more than once, but those attempts were thwarted by the statewide voter registration database. The numbers of such attempts were small, but recent Montana elections often include very close races. Just this June, we had a House primary decided by one vote. Every attempt at violating election law is significant, and I would like to see the Legislature strengthen the penalties for it.

MH: A final election followup -- how far away are we from going to vote-by-mail in Montana? We've heard some pretty convincing arguments that fraud would actually be more difficult to perpetrate with an all-mail system as opposed to our current mix of absentee ballots, in-person voting at the precinct level, and early voting at election offices.

Brad Johnson: Montana’s local election officials tend to be strongly in favor of mail ballots. I think their arguments have merit – especially in regard to the savings to the taxpayer that could be realized. But I also think we don’t want to be too hasty about this. There are questions that need to be answered. Is the county paying for the return postage? Or the voter? If we make the voter pay for the stamp, is that the same thing as charging people money to vote? If not, then where does the money for postage come from? And does the expense of postage eat up the hoped-for savings?

More than all that, I’m not sure we can completely take away a traditional in-person polling place because it offers accommodations for Montanans with disabilities that simply can’t be offered with a mail ballot. And finally, there are just some folks like me who like doing things the old fashioned way, and voting in person.

So there are two sides to the story, and we don’t know the answer yet. I’d like to see us be quite thorough in studying the issue before making any decisions.

Read Part 2 of the interview with Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson here.

More on the governor's public service announcements

2008-06-29T21:22:00.005-06:00

As we noted before elsewhere, it would have been a simple thing for the administration to say that the governor's public service announcements (PSA's) that appeared after the primary were the result of some sort of careless clerical error over dates. Looking at the timing of it, that would have been a plausible defense, and upon which we would hope that the response of the Montana GOP would have been to say "shame on you," and then drop it.

It would have been painful to drop it, since the PSA's were pretty blatant (they prominently featured the governor's voice saying that "Montana's on the move" -- which is his campaign slogan.) But it would have been right to drop it and just tuck it away as one more example of carelessness, born perhaps of overconfidence.

But instead, the governor's office and campaign has continued to try to insist that nothing was done wrong, since the state didn't pay for the radio air time (does the state commonly pay for public service announcements anyway?)

Leaving aside the fact that state employee time and equipment were used to make the ads, we wonder -- if the PSA's were so legal and everything, why hasn't the governor continued to do more of them? Will we continue to see them through the campaign season? But of course, Democrats know that the whole point to the law that the governor himself signed was precisely to keep elected officials running for re-election or for another office from using PSA's to raise their name recognition and favorable image during election season. And the governor is an elected official running for re-election who appeared in a public service announcement during campaign season.

Often, Montana Headlines is in the position of saying that the GOP state party office has over-reacted to this or that misdeed by the Democratic party or Democratic candidates. We believe that a disproportionate response can become a sort of "crying wolf" that makes the public less likely to listen to us in the future when we have more serious assertions to make.

The Montana GOP is right not to let go of this one, though -- precisely because the administration has not been forthcoming about what should have been a pretty straightforward response from the governor of "my bad -- won't happen again." Again, it is the obfuscating response that is far more disturbing than are the ads themselves.

__________________________

Update: Read the MT GOP's brief here. The governor has made a "motion to dismiss or for summary judgment," or put differently, a "please make this go away without my having to admit I did anything wrong" request. The MT GOP is correctly making a strong case that this would be the wrong thing for the commissioner of political practices to do.

The brief does have its amusing moments (such as when it refers to the governor's "maniacal insistence" that the case be dismissed summarily without the usual due processes of discovery and presenting evidence. And what exactly is "diaphanous conduct?" That one is a head-scratcher, unless it is legalese of some sort. But this is a typical Montana Headlines digression into wordsmithing.

The document is commendable for its clarity, restraint, and measured tone. The bottom line is that the governor put a campaign slogan into a PSA, and that the ad violates both the spirit and the letter of a law that the governor himself signed into law. We'll see what happens, but this round goes to the state GOP as far as we're concerned around MH.