DC Reflections

"Mac is back!" -- but which one is the question

Technical problems delayed this post ...

Somebody snuck into the political morgue tonight and cut the toe tag off Republican John McCain's campaign in New Hampshire. "Mac is back!", his supporters chanted.

The question, though, is which McCain is back. Is the independent, truth-speaking maverick not afraid to oppose President Bush ... or the guy who started backing away from his own views as he got closer to announcing a presidential run? While Republicans Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani have flip-flopped so much they're making Sen. John Kerry look consistent, McCain too started backtracking -- especially in coddling up to the far evangelical right whose views he used to say he did not share.

Somehow, though, he overcame an internal staff battle, his own firm convictions on Iraq and immigration, and a string of political obituaries. Tonight, he sounded more like the old John McCain. The McCain independents and moderates on both sides of the aisle can get excited about supporting.

"Tonight, we showed 'em what a comeback looks like," he said, in the gentle, humble manner that perhaps comes from having been held prisoner in Vietnam. "When pundits declared us finished, I told 'em I was going to New Hampshire!"

He spoke about sound fiscal policy, government playing a smaller but more capable role in solving some problems where it has a role, and other issues that once made him the best and most honorable GOP candidate in the field.

"I didn't go to Washington to go along to get along," he said.

Then he opened his heart.

"I've served my country imperfectly for many years, but have loved her without reservation every day of my life."

That's the McCain I remember and admire, and I hope that's the Mac that's back.

A great man's dream comes true -- in Iowa of all places

I have been extremely reluctant to write about politics in this blog. I am new here and not looking to lose friends and antagonize people. A bilingual French media outlet in Paris, France 24, however, has asked me to write commentary on the presidential election. And now I've got the fever. The editor said he found my views to be independent and colorful.

I hope they also prove thoughtful. I may not be able to pull my punches sometimes (my apologies in advance to Mrs. Clinton and almost all of the Republicans), but I hope the occasional political missives here provide a forum for thoughtful discussion -- not point scoring.

My hope is to provide a different look at the issues of the day. Agree or disagree, I hope you'll respond by making comments on the blog. Most of DC Reflections will continue to be the old-fashioned newspaper column I enjoy writing, but I can not avoid the influence of politics in this town. I may opine about the presidential race, Congress, the D.C. City Council, and maybe a state government or two. But I won't write about politics a lot -- and if you, gentle readers, find no value in this discourse, it won't be long-lived at all.

Following is the gist of my first piece for France 24. I'll borrow from it to get me started on my first two pieces.

A great man's dream coming true -- in Iowa of all places ... King's shadow stretches across Hawkeye state

Political pundits were right when they said voters giving the nod to Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama did so because they wanted change -- but they missed the most important point Thursday night.

Forget Huckabee. His campaign is going to be irrelevant a month from now and, even if he somehow wins his party's nomination, there's no way he would win a general election because his extremely socially conservative (evangelical) views are too far out of step with mainstream America. Clinton can't win a national election either because she is too socially and fiscally liberal for the majority of Americans -- people who also see right through her phony, calculated personality-of-the-week persona.

That brings us back to Obama, a man whose views I mostly disagree with but who made me go to bed Thursday night proud to be an American.

As a progressive-minded but politically independent Southerner (I moved here from Atlanta seven  months ago), I dreamed of the day that my country would more closely resemble the nation Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned when he spoke of the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners sitting down together at the table of brotherhood. While America in the past 50 years has made painfully small but consistent strides in opening the full array of her opportunities to people of all backgrounds, I was stunned to see people of Lily white Iowa put the country on its back for a giant leap.

Though only 2.3 percent of Iowa's population is black, Iowans turned out in droves to support a man with a father from Kenya. Obama's win speaks volumes for progress in America.

Yes, in Lily white Iowa of all places.

Long before the Thursday caucus, I wanted to believe my fellow Americans wouldn't deny Obama their vote for less than honorable reasons. I wanted to believe we had reached a point in which, again in King's words, people would judge Obama not based on the color of his skin but the content of his character. Vote against him because of his policy views, fair enough, but not because of his pigmentation.

If Iowans did right by America that night, Obama did them right by delivering one of the best victory speeches I've ever heard. He spoke with confidence and candor, and with both humility and the pinch of hubris anyone seeking the nation's highest office needs. He honored other uphill battles this country has won, from the American Revolution to World War II and the Civil Rights movement. If Democrats across the country go on to make him their nominee, he said he would do his absolute best to prove worthy of their confidence.

His speech was so good I almost forgot how much we disagree.

Something else about his speech struck me, too. Like a lot of people in in this country, I still wasn't quite sure what I thought about Obama before the caucus win. He seemed like a genuine, stand-up guy, and I'm all for anyone not named Bush or Clinton making his or her way on to the national political scene. In the back of my mind, though, I wondered: Does this guy have the gravitas to be president of the United States?

Thursday night, for the first time, I thought the man looked "presidential". He had an aura about him on that podium that said to me, "I may be young. I may not have spent my entire life in politics. But I can do this job. I am up to the task. And I can honor this office."

I suspected a great many people from Alaska to Alabama found themselves thinking the same thing in that moment.

Regardless of my political differences with Obama and his supporters, and I may well go vote for him in the Democratic primary as I have no party, I'm glad he won in Iowa -- and I'm damn proud to be associated with the Americans who turned out in his favor.

 

Of shepherds, sheep, and baseball fields

Home for Christmas, I sat in my old church listening to minister and friend Gray Norsworthy preaching a sermon about shepherds and sheep.

"Sheep are dumb, smelly animals," he said, explaining that they'll follow anybody anywhere -- and that like humans, they need the right people to care for them and to guide them. Gray said he needs a shepherd to get him cleaned up and that his shepherd is God. Sitting in a pew at Shallowford Presbyterian Church that day, I was in a room with more than just one of my lifeguides: I was communing with an all-star team ... a group of people who had intersected each other's lives thanks to some very special baseball fields a few miles away.

One of the reasons I love Gray's sermons is because he speaks in a real, honest and human way. He's a man who follows his faith and divines the answers to life's questions as best he can. He'll tell you straight out when he doesn't know something with certainty.

The way he conducts life is also one of things that, without him ever really knowing it, caused him to become one of the many shepherds in my life.

I was 31 or 32 when my father told me he was changing jobs and couldn't coach one of my brother's baseball teams in the Rehoboth Baptist Church league in Decatur, Georgia. Fill in for me, he said, you'll be great. Practice starts in two days.

I had never coached a team, but I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to spend more time with my kid brothers Michael and Gregory -- a full generation younger than me but a huge part of my life. I did know sports, though, and I had watched my father coach a number of them when I was growing up.

My dad moved our family from St. Paul, Minnesota to Atlanta in the early 1970s because the city couldn't get enough teachers willing to work in the inner city. Serving kids most in need of help would become his mission for the rest of his professional and personal life. That decision to move to a place he had never seen to work with kids others shunned is one of the reasons my father Len is one of my heroes. Come to think of it, I should have turned to him in church that day and reminded him of that.

My dad taught history and social studies, and he coached sports after school. Football, baseball, tennis, soccer -- whatever his schools needed. He ran a tight ship that was big on self and team discipline, and equally big on love. Kids in his classroom and on his fields knew he loved them, wanted the best for them, but that he didn't take no junk, as we say in the South.

I tried to emulate that approach as I first set foot on the 10 and 11-year-old field. It was an interesting league to be sure -- Baptist by organization but open to every faith and lack there of in the community. It was a place that gives everybody a chance to belong.

I had the great fortune to be paired with a head coach, Mike Revzin, who could show me the ropes and gave me the chance to be an assistant instead of having to fly solo my first time out of the box. I watched Mike closely. Completely opposite from me in personality -- he is soft-spoken and measured in his communication -- I learned the basic keys to organizing a youth baseball team. Journalist Mike still helps me today, introducing me to reporters he knows in Washington who I need to know for my job here.

That rookie season also gave me the chance to observe coach Rembe Rodriguez, whose teams would become our arch rivals in the years to come. Rembe, strolling out to the pitcher's mound in his old-school black and white Converse high-tops that matched his salt-and-pepper hair, kept his kids mentally sound no matter the game situation.

His gift for developing young minds was obvious to everyone. He also wore his heart on his jersey sleeve. (I would later choose to live in Takoma Park because Rembe had moved his family here. The moral support they gave me as I chased my dream of living in D.C. made my new life possible.)

By the end of my first season, I was equal parts Mike, Rembe and my dad -- with a budding sense of my own approach. I poured my guts into coaching that team during a season in which wins were hard to come by. That didn't matter to me, though. I could see that I played a small role in helping some of the kids get a little better.

There was something else happening on that field, too. Something I didn't really see until the end-of-the-year party when player Alan Carpenter's mom made an announcement that would instantly change my life.

Mrs. Carpenter thanked me for helping Mike coach the team, but not so much for the athletic contribution. She said that the parents agreed what they liked about me most, and what she hoped the kids gathered around us saw, was that I was someone who showed those boys an example of what being a good man should look like. She said the parents were grateful for the impact I made on their kids' character.

I was stunned. I hadn't yet thought of myself as a "man". My dad, yes. Me, no. And I hadn't really thought of myself as any kind of role model.

I recognized in that moment that I had just graduated into the world of adulthood, and that it was time for me to make a bigger commitment than I was used to making at the time. I decided right then and there that volunteer coaching was for me and that I'd do it virtually year-round. For the next five years, that's exactly what I did. (I called Mrs. Carpenter before leaving Atlanta and thanked her for starting me on a journey of service that now lead to the nation's capital.)

Along the way, I would be absolutely humbled by the opportunity I had to provide a bit direction to a number of kids. The act of guiding young men, however, seemed to shape my character as much if not more than whatever I was able to do for them.

I also found other shepherds who kept me going in the right direction.

I met Gray as a result of having conversations with his son, catcher Mason, who kept throwing my kids out every time we tried to steal second. My teams could always run, but not against him. Speaking to him at the park one day, the youngster started to talking to me about cumulonimbus clouds and other scientific phenomena. Wow, kid has a cannon in his arm and his skull, I thought. I need to draft this guy next time. And so I did. Season after season after season. (Seeing him at church the other week, he was so tall I almost called him Sir.)

Drafting Mason also gave me the chance to get to know his little sisters, the beyond adorable combo of Cameron and Maggie. They wrapped me around their pint-sized fingers the second I saw them. They also forced into my head a brand new (though still rare) notion: maybe I'll have kids some day.

Robert Speers came into my life next. His son Brandon had been on my first team so we decided to coach together as Mike couldn't continue. Robert and I would coach two baseball seasons a year plus basketball in the winter. It was a coaching and friendship mind-meld, each of us bringing different strengths to the table and knowing at all times what the other was thinking.

While we would build a little rec league dynasty in our years together -- thanks in part to Rembe retiring from coaching and thus allowing us to draft his son Iggy -- the championships were of secondary importance. We were all about helping our charges develop more self confidence as athletes and as human beings -- the latter a quality I completely lacked as a kid. We also spent a lot of time with our teams off the field.

We took them to college and minor league baseball games and showed them what it takes to make it there. We took them on outdoor trips to teach them about conservation. (I was working for the Trust for Public Land at the time.) We took them to Robert's favorite school, Georgia Tech, and to my alma matter, the University of Georgia, where we explained how to handle what college life was really like.

We took them on volunteer work projects to food banks and assisted living centers. After a day of  taking our dogs to visit one such facility, we returned to our fields and had a team discussion about what we had all just experienced. The emotions and insights the players of that team (the Huskies) expressed blew the coaching staff and the parents away.

We took them on fitness runs, encouraging them to follow us as yours truly would lead them on head-first slides down muddy slopes.

The whole time, Robert, several years my senior, probably didn't notice that I was watching how he conducted himself as a husband and a father. He didn't see me thinking, "If I ever go those routes, I'm going to be a lot like him."

Sitting at church as Gray brought home his sermon, I had tears in my smelly sheep eyes. I would give him a huge hug after the service, high-five my father and brothers on my way out the door, and later make my way toward Robert's house to watch some football. Gray's message is still with me two weeks later. I wish I could gather every shepherd I met through Rehoboth on a field today -- a list that would include far more names than space allows for here -- and thank them all for what they've done to direct my life. I pray I live up to the example they've set.