DC Reflections

Love Trump and plan on attending Inauguration Day in D.C.?

In the spirit of our new Insulter-in-Chief, I give Trump supporters my guide to making your visit to D.C. the greatest trip in the history of travel. Believe me, because I have the best words …

A lot of you Trump supporters will be coming here to our nation’s capital for the first time on Inauguration Day. You may find the District of Columbia an alien place in many ways so please allow me to give you my top do’s and don’ts to make the most out of your stay. Most of us locals hope it will be brief.

You will find an enormous stretch of pretty green grass in the heart of the city that runs through the middle of the Smithsonian museums between the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument. This is called the National Mall. It is not a front yard. Please do not park your vehicles on it.

Avoid visiting the Library of Congress. It is filled with books, knowledge and facts. You will be confused by this, get scared and may well suffer a panic attack.

You can leave your waterproof gear at home. Believe it or not, there is no swamp here – just countless people who care deeply about our country and who go to work every day performing largely thankless jobs that make our country great already.

Do make the time to tour the U.S. Capitol as it offers you a great chance to realize you should stop blaming D.C. for creating the swamp you perceive: All the perpetrators of the alleged misdeeds you proclaim to despise came here from YOUR states. You just re-hired all the very same officials who already had control of Congress and you’ve elected a man to the presidency who is filling his cabinet with the very same kinds of insiders he rebelled against. There’s only one “local” in Congress, by the way, and she isn’t even allowed to vote.

Your senators and representatives and their staffs work in offices across from the Capitol. Statistics show that you likely don’t know your district’s and state’s officials’ names so dropping by their legislative office buildings will give you time to find out who they are. When you soon realize neither they nor your hero are going to accomplish what they told you they would, or when they do and it goes horribly wrong, you’ll also know where you can send your complaints.

Don’t be alarmed when you hear locals shouting “On your left!” while you’re descending Metro escalators. This is not a political statement. It means you’re clogging up the escalator. Stand to the right so the rest of us can scurry down on the left. We have places to be.

If you choose to visit the National Archives, please be prepared for the shock of seeing the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Please examine them carefully. You will learn that neither document allows you to justify discriminating against African-Americans, lesbian/gay/bi-sexual and transgender Americans or any other Americans. We the people are all equal and we all possess the same rights.

You might as well bring as many of your Confederate flags and silly “Lock her up!” signs as you would like. Waving them around will make it harder for you to spot all the undocumented workers, Muslims and other people that you dislike and wish to ban from the country.

There’s no need for you to bring your guns, though. Thanks to the other candidates you have championed over the years, guns are in ample supply throughout America including here in Washington. If you wander in the wrong neighborhood and happen to get shot by a person wielding an assault rifle, especially one bought on the spot at a gun show without a background check, your family can look for your obituary in the Ironies section of the Washington Post.

Pay really close attention to the Lincoln Memorial when you visit. If you stand there long enough, you can see the 16^th president shake his head every time you try to refer to your political party as “the party of Lincoln.” He knows, as do you, that nothing could be further from the actual truth. If anything, Lincoln would be a RINO today. He would certainly be ashamed of the Republican Party today.

For most Americans, sitting inside the Supreme Court is an awe-inspiring experience. If you’re ever lucky enough to observe the justices in action, you’ll see that they have dedicated their lives to the virtue of deliberation – objectively assessing and analyzing multiple points of view and voting for what’s genuinely best for the country. This is not something you’re familiar with so I’m not sure if I should recommend putting the Supreme Court on your itinerary.

Visiting the Newseum comes with several caveats you must consider beforehand. On the plus side for you, it honors the First Amendment, which is what gives you the right to say all the inaccurate things that you used to justify your vote for Trump. You should be grateful. On the other hand, you may be perplexed by the Newseum’s focus on the history of print and electronic communication. It turns out that gathering and reporting real, actual news is a skill practiced by people who believe seeking truth is a noble public service. You will be crestfallen when you realize that the overwhelming majority of real journalists are under-paid truth seekers who do not have a collective left-wing agenda. They instead take pride, often at personal sacrifice, to serve as watchdogs of democracy. Our country desperately needs these professionals to hold politicians accountable for their words and deeds.

There’s one other disconcerting aspect of visiting the Newseum. You can see the Canadian embassy from there. It will break your heart to realize that the embassy is not filled with Americans rushing to leave the country because your hero has been elected president. Hillary supporters and other progressive thinkers are staying right here. As the popular vote totals show, there are more of us than there are of you and we’re going to stay right here and fight like hell to make sure that you don’t return for another inauguration in four years.

 

Finding my president in a pile of frozen fish guts

Even I wasn't sure why I was watching every minute of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. I generally don't have much use for either of our major political parties and have been politically homeless for quite some time. Maybe at first I was just curious to see if the Democrats would perform as poorly with their convention as the Republicans did the previous week in Cleveland. Maybe it was because I wanted to see First Lady Michelle Obama speak or because I have a mad crush on Eva Longoria, the drop-dead gorgeous actress who is a champion of noble causes like fair wages for migrant workers. I tried to convince myself of more maybes with each passing hour of the first two nights.

My ears perked up when former President Bill Clinton told Americans about the job his wife Hillary Clinton once briefly held a job in Alaska sliming fish in 1969. He said that she had made her way there after college and ended up working in a cannery, where her job was to scoop the entrails out of salmon. 

I set out to do the same thing after I graduated from the University of Georgia in 1991.

Twenty-five years ago this very summer, I stood in a Kodiak Island, Alaska cannery surrounded by nasty smelling fish that had just come in from the sea. I ended up there after a blind throw of a dart to a world map landed on an island so tiny that a professional darts champion couldn't hit on purpose. I sold my car for just enough money to buy a plane ticket to Kodiak Island, asked my parents for camping gear as a graduation present and took off for adventures unknown in "the last frontier." I envisioned working in the canneries and saving up a lot of money that I could use to travel the rest of Alaska and other destinations.

I landed on the remote island and quickly realized that I was in way over my head: I was a city boy who was out of my league trying to become Grizzly Adams overnight. I nearly puked the moment I entered the cannery. Everyone in the building was wearing heavy duty rain gear, shivering and standing in fish parts that ran up their boots. I don't eat seafood anyway and the smell of all those fish and fish guts was too much for me, as was every potential assignment the boss told me I could take. I wasn't strong enough to handle lifting and stacking cement-like ice blocks. The boss told me he thought the best job for me to start with would be "de-slimer." He showed me a hand tool and told me that my job would be to pick up the fish coming down the line, scrape the tool across the fish and remove the slime from them. He said I could start in a few days upon the end of the current strike -- some squabble between American and Japanese fishermen and canneries.

Neither Hillary nor I lasted even a week at our putrid tasks. She says she got fired for asking too many questions about the poor quality of the fish. I didn't wait around for the strike to end because I knew full well that the long hours and painfully freezing, odious work conditions were not the environment I wanted for phase one of my global travels. I survived a few days on a gravel workers camp nearby and promptly made my way off the island. I reached the city of Anchorage with only a bright orange rain slicker as evidence I had even been on Kodiak Island. I still treasure the slicker to this day.

What struck me about Bill Clinton's telling of the fish story, though, was that it was the first time that I felt like I could relate to Hillary Clinton ... the first time I felt a human connection with her. 

Allow me now to confess some of my own shortcomings as a human being and as an American citizen: I have never cared for or voted for Hillary Clinton but my reasons don't stand up to the rigorous political and philosophical standards I usually hold myself to. As a rule, I don't believe that a person's "likability" should enter the equation when choosing a candidate for president or any other political office. A person's intellect, qualifications, platform, record and vision should be the deciding factors. She lacks her husband's gifts through absolutely no fault of her own. As shallow as it is, I have allowed superficial factors to shade my view of Mrs. Clinton -- factors I haven't held against other candidates. I have allowed issues of personal appearance, voice and lack of telegenic warmth and charm to get in the way of my ability to consider her fairly. That's wrong and I need to apply the same criteria to her candidacy than I have of every other person who has ever been on a ballot. At the end of the day, I'm looking to vote for the best person to run our country -- not to attend the prom with me.

I am also aware of many layers of my own cognitive dissonance when it comes to Mrs. Clinton.

Politically, she shares most of the same views as President Obama -- a man I voted for twice and the first Democratic presidential candidate I ever voted for. I actually only started listening closely to him when he first ran because I had planned to vote against whoever was running against her in the Democratic primary. He ultimately captivated me in a way that caused me to reassess every political view I've ever had, a process still going on eight years later but that's another story for another day. I have been throughout most of my adult life an ardent supporter of the Libertarian Party, which is to say that I have been socially progressive and fiscally conservative. I even helped run a U.S. Senate campaign for a Libertarian candidate in Georgia in 1996. Mrs. Clinton shares a great many of my views of social and environmental issues.

In my middle age, I find that my question is no longer a Democratic, Libertarian or Republican query about whether it's better to have a bigger or smaller federal government. My quest is for government, regardless of size, to be effective. I want it to do good for the people it serves. I also better appreciate now that there are some things that the private sector, non-profits and individual citizens just can't do by themselves. State governments, either. Visit any of America's national parks with me and I'll show you just one example of something our federal government does phenomenally well and that makes me proud to be a tax-paying citizen.

Gary Johnson

My Libertarian leanings still get at my central anguish about Mrs. Clinton and this presidential election. It would typically be easy for me to simply vote for the Libertarian candidate for president as I've done for most of my life. This is a particularly good year for the Libertarians because they have put up perhaps their best-ever nominee -- former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. I do not see voting for third parties as an act of wasting a vote but one of demonstrating a conscience. My ballots in every election during presidential and non-presidential cycles have always included a mix of Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans and write-in candidates. (I'll write in the name of a respected friend before I'll vote for a candidate from any party if I believe that the person in question is not the best person for the job.) Gary Johnson is absolutely qualified to be president of the United States and under normal circumstances would deserve serious consideration.

These are not normal circumstances: The presidential election of 2016 features Donald Trump as the representative of the Republican Party.

The reasons to vote against Trump are more massive than the wall he intends to build along our southern border. His irrational, schizophrenic and temperamental personality makes him even more unqualified than his viewpoints. Trump's views are reprehensible. He has been wrong on nearly every one of the few actual ideas he has put forward. He is wrong on issues of immigration, foreign policy, guns, public safety, economics and more. He is quite proud to be a vile human being, too. He relishes in his own egomania. Trump delights in being nasty. He champions willful ignorance as a virtue. He lives for reaching out to Americans' most base instincts and fears to make America hate again because he knows that trying to turn us against each other is the only way he can win.  

Crime is down. Illegal immigration is down. Unemployment is down. Gas prices are down. Bin Laden is dead. The stock market is up. The auto industry survived. Interest rates are low. The Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land. More people than ever have access to health insurance and health care. We are confronting global climate change. The answer to Ronald Reagan's question about whether Americans are better off than we were four years ago (eight in this case) is a resounding "Yes." These are pesky facts for which there is no room in any Trump tower.

Republicans chose not to support high-character and highly qualified candidates like John Kasich. There simply is no rational, reasonable argument to vote for Donald Trump for president. Any Republican voter who chooses to do so is putting political party before patriotic duty. Any independent voter who selects Trump because that voter somehow perceives Trump as a "lesser evil" than Mrs. Clinton is shockingly uninformed. Mrs. Clinton has her flaws and people can rightfully debate her on the merits of her ideas but she does not dwell in the same vile and un-American realm as Donald Trump. 

As Bill Clinton spoke last night, it dawned on me that the real reason I was watching the Democratic National Convention was that I had to prepare myself to accept the fact that the stakes are too high in this election for me to vote for a third party candidate. This election is going to be won by the tiniest of margins. Every vote is going to matter more this November than ever before.

I realize now that I have no choice: I'm With Her -- even if I had to go back to memories of standing in frozen fish guts to figure that out.

 

 

 

 

Marriage fairness: We all deserve to feel gushy inside

I ran into a high school sweetheart nearly two decades ago back in our hometown of Atlanta. She told me that her life had changed a lot since we dated: She realized she was gay. “Rebecca” (not her real name) shared the painful journey that ultimately led to her happily embracing her sexuality.

We lost touch not long after that but recently found each other again here in the D.C. area, where we had met so many years ago as puppy-faced kids on a multi-school trip to the nation’s capital. I found that we weren’t all that different in our middle age: Rebecca and I had both moved here to make a difference and were thriving in our District careers. I was in a committed relationship with a woman; she was, too. If she is ever able to marry, I will attend her wedding. On Nov. 6, I will also vote yes on Maryland’s Question 6 to express my support of Maryland’s recently passed Civil Marriage Protection Act legalizing same-sex marriages.

Any two people who love each other should be allowed to celebrate that relationship through the act of marriage and no government has any business deciding who can and can’t be together. Opponents of marriage equality refuse to recognize the inherent issue of fairness and equal rights this country has fought for more than two centuries to preserve. It is beyond me how one human being can look into the eyes of another and declare the latter to be a second-class citizen.

I find it particularly odd that many African-Americans would deny gay people the right to marry each other. I mentioned this to my stepmother, who happens to be black, and reminded her that it wasn’t that long ago that the government banned blacks from marrying whites. She later told me that my points resonated with her and that she has since changed her view on the subject. Civil rights champion Julian Bond, meanwhile, appears in TV commercials every day encouraging people to vote yes on Question Six.

How would other Americans react today if the government forbade people from marrying someone who speaks a different language, practices a different religion, or has a different skin tone? What if the government told heterosexuals that it would deny the right to marry only to that group? There would be revolution in the streets, that’s what.

Opponents of marriage fairness are also misguided on the subjects of choice and religion.

I’ve heard many condemnations that homosexuals shouldn’t “choose” to be gay. No one chooses who they’re attracted to or who they fall in love with. I don’t remember ever sitting down with my parents and saying, “Mom, Dad, I’ve given this matter a great deal of deliberation and I have decided I shall date … girls!” All I remember is a zillion moments in which I spotted a young woman like Rebecca in a Smithsonian cafeteria and got all gushy on my insides. I was in love with her by the time I put my arm around her at the Jefferson Memorial later that evening and I nearly fainted when she agreed to go out with me when we got back home.

I don’t buy religious arguments that homosexuality is a sin, either. While people can use any document including a bible to justify their views, the god I believe in is not one who condemns a group of people he himself played a role in creating. Many churches in Maryland are supporting marriage fairness. 

Life can be difficult enough when people aren’t being treated to bigotry and discrimination. We don’t need to make it harder on anyone because he or she is different.

Rebecca may be off the list of women I can marry but that doesn’t mean my feelings about her are any different. She had big beautiful brown eyes and wanted to make the world a better place when we met. She still has big beautiful brown eyes now and she is fulfilling her dream. America is a better place because if it. I remain incredibly grateful for the romance we once shared. She helped me gain a sense of self-confidence and blessed my life in many ways.

No law should deny Rebecca the opportunity to make a woman as gushy on the inside as she once made me.

Jury gets it almost right in John Edwards trial

The John Edwards trial jury got it almost right today when it found the former U.S. senator from North Carolina not guilty on one charge and declared themselves deadlocked on the rest -- prompting a federal judge to declare a mistrial. The only more appropriate verdict would have been not guilty findings on all the other charges.

While I am not normally one to jump to the defense of someone who engaged in porcine behavior, even John Edwards deserved a fair trial that keeps him out of prison. Pigs deserve justice, too. 

The trial was an absurdity from the start. If anyone is guilty of anything, it is the bad decision making by the person or people in the federal government who decided to prosecute this case. If elected officials made the call, impeachment is in order. If non-elected federal prosecutors made the decision, they should be relieved of duty immediately. The wastes of time and taxpayer dollars were ridiculous. Note to the Feds: Try worrying more about violent crime and the economy, less about who's sleeping together.

Here's what John Edwards did: By his own admission, he did an awful lot of bad. That's not a crime. 

Edwards obviously cheated on his wife, fostered a child out of wedlock and let rich friends pay hush money to keep the child's mother quiet. The question of whether he knew his friends were footing such a bill is moot. He didn't commit a crime even if he did know. Federal prosecutors brought baseless charges that Edwards violated campaign finance laws.

One gaping hole in that theory that should have stopped the trial before it started?

Even the Federal Election Commission determined Edwards violated no campaign finance laws. It plainly stated that the hush money paid to keep Edwards' mistress quiet did not constitute a campaign contribution. Apparently, the prosecution was baffled by the complex legal construct that if someone doesn't give money to a campaign, it's not a campaign contribution! Change campaign laws if you think that will stop Democratic and Republican big money from getting around contribution limits but there is no law preventing anyone from paying for a mistress to stay quiet about the identity of a child's father. 

If the ever-anal FEC determined Edwards did nothing illegal, it makes no sense that another arm of the federal government thought he did. (Nor did it make sense that U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles barred the jury from learning about the FEC's findings. Shame on the judge.)

As many including Edwards have said, the once-promising pol committed many acts of appalling behavior -- sins if you will -- but he did not break laws.

That of course didn't stop Republican insiders like David Frum from leaping on CNN to declare that the trial result puts the presidency and elections at all levels in great peril. Imagine, Frum said, that if Edwards had been elected president, he would have been beholden to his rich friends who paid his mistress the hush money.

Please.

Like all modern presidents aren't beholden to the big dollars that put them in office in one way or another. There's no difference between the influence that Edwards' donors Fred Baron and Rachel "Bunny" Mellon would have had on a Democratic president than what oil and gas industry titans have on Republican presidents. Each of the two old political parties -- equally useless in my eyes -- have long lists of big donors and big organizations that put them in office because we the people don't do enough to replace them with better parties and better people.

Before GOP hypocrites like Frum start ruing any days and trying to score political points on the back of a properly humiliated Democrat, they should look at the facts of this case: John Edwards is a pig -- and it is not illegal to be a pig. 

We the people should not have had to foot the bill for federal prosecutors who thought it was.

 

 

 

 

 

Fenty for dinner, probably not. For mayor? Absolutely.

I've spent a great deal of time reflecting on Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and his central re-election problem: He's behind in the polls before this Tuesday's Democratic primary because, in short, many people just don't seem to like him. I keep asking myself what I would do if I lived a mile south and voted in the District instead of just working and spending time there.

I can empathize with District voters who say they find Fenty to be a jerk, that they don't think he listens to them and that he runs the city with an iron fist. Like everyone else in America, I've encountered unlikeable and off-putting colleagues and bosses in the workplace. I don't enjoy working with or for those kinds of people any more than some District residents like dealing with Mayor Fenty. 

When I pull back from the emotional level, though, and think about what's more important, I realize I'd cast my vote for Fenty over D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray if I had a say come Tuesday. I've studied the mayor since the day I began working in the District three years ago. While I've never met him (or Gray) in person, my first impression of Fenty is the same one I carry today: Adrian Fenty is a mayor who is making the city of Washington a better place. 

To be clear, if Fenty had the personal charm and manner of Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker, there wouldn't even be a contested election in the District next week. Anyone who has ever seen Booker in person appreciates his infectious personality and the sense he conveys that he genuinely cares about what you have to say. 

What Fenty may lack in those gifts, he more than makes up for in producing results. 

Start with the reform he brought to the school system. Hiring Chancellor Michelle Rhee was a bold move demonstrating he meant business. Rhee wasted no time in pulling up decaying school system roots that were holding the system back. With Fenty's blessing, she has made tough choices making her and her boss unpopular in many quarters. Yet test scores and enrollment are up and waves of positive change are starting to roll through District schools. 

Fenty's hiring of and support for Rhee illustrate something I admire about the current mayor. He's not afraid to take on entrenched powers more interested in maintaining their comfy status quo than performing up to a high standard. After years of Marion Barion-era corruption and lethargy, Washington D.C. was a city in dire need of shaking up. I've always said that if I ever ran for public office myself, I'd be one heck of a one-term servant. I would attack problems and sacred cows with gusto -- accomplishing tons but upsetting so many special interests that I'd be gone come re-election day.

Fenty has been willing to risk the same fate. A Washington Post editorial today laments that it's a shame District residents may cast out a mayor who has brought reform to schools, made the streets safer, made government agencies more responsive and given the District badly needed new recreation facilities. Fenty can rightly point to a long list of other accomplishments big and small. Taxi service rates are easier to understand. Affordable housing is more plentiful. New job training programs exist. More public library renovations are underway.

It's hard for me to imagine that anyone could build such a list of accomplishments without angering people who would rather watch good ideas go to die in the collaboration process than see results produced. It's equally difficult for me to imagine anyone achieving Fenty's success without laying off people whose jobs are for fiscal or performance reasons pulling the city down. Fenty has made the tough choices -- the kind I do not think the much-liked Gray is capable of making.

I may not want to invite Fenty to dinner but there is no question I would vote for him to keep running Washington D.C. 

Dear Howard Dean: Act now to honor voters' desires, protect primary fairness

The following is an open letter to Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. I hope all readers of this post contact him and the other officials mentioned in this letter. Just click on the links. And as always -- agree or disagree -- blog comments are welcome.

Dear Mr. Dean:

I'm writing you today to request that you more aggressively assert control over your party's primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton so that you honor voters' desires and protect the fairness and integrity of the primary process. You are on the verge of causing voters across the United States to lose faith in the legitimacy of the Democratic primary process -- showing us that your party does not care how we vote or what we think. You are on the verge of causing a backlash against your party unlike anything we've seen in the modern era.

But you have the ability to stop this from happening. Specifically, it's time for you to take your head out of the sand, gather the Democratic party's most respected elders, exert your collective influence, and announce that you are taking the following actions:

Stop candidates from trying to steal the already earned (pledged) delegates of their opponents. All primary and caucus delegates won by a candidate are delegates earned fairly. Many reports have made it clear that one candidate is trying to convince such pledged delegates to vote against the person he's pledged to. There are laws against and punishment for grand larceny in the real world. Apply such a system to your primary. Your silence on this issue is unconscionable.

Make the superdelegates support the will of the voters. Announce that your office has contacted every single superdelegate and informed them all that you and the party demand that they cast their votes for any candidate if he or she enters the convention with a lead in regular delegates won (the only thing that should count anyway), especially if that candidate also has the lead in the popular vote and the number of states won. A superdelegate who fails to do so should be removed from the convention. The superdelegates, according to the latest story in The Washington Post today, clearly believe they have the powers of a dictator -- and one that needs to pay no attention to the millions and millions of people who got involved in the Democratic primary ... including some of us who did so for the first time.

Said Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury: "If the pledged-delegate total is within 100 votes or whatever, I don't think there's a great deal of significance in that. I just believe that the determining factor for superdelegates shouldn't be, 'Well, 49 percent voted for Hillary and 51 percent voted for Obama, and that decides it for us.' Sorry, but that's not how it works."

"Sorry, but that's not how it works"? Who does Mr. Bradbury think he is? It doesn't matter whether a candidate wins by 2 percent, 20 percent -- or one vote. I ask you to admonish him immediately for making such an insulting comment. It is exactly that kind of arrogance and disrespect for voters that will unleash itself against Democrats.

In the same Post story, New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman confirms the superdelegate superiority complex -- while also inadvertently making the point the rest of the nation now sees as a self-evident truth:

"If superdelegates were just intended to automatically vote for the preference someone else expressed, there wouldn't be any purpose."

Announce that this will be the last convention that includes superdelegates. The superdelegate system is immoral, un-democratic an anti-American -- end it. Admit the party is correcting a long-overdue mistake by doing away with the presence of party insiders who have the ability to help a candidate steal an election away from voters.

Definitively state that delegates from Michigan and Florida will not be seated, period, and there will be no "do-over" primaries in those states at a later date. Both states knowingly, willingly and enthusiastically chose to move up the dates of their primaries -- even though doing so was strictly against the rules. It's like both states robbed a bank right in front of a police officer and yet are somehow outraged that they got arrested and convicted.

Voters in those states could have made more of an effort to stop the effort to move their respective primaries, and, failing that, can exact a price on those officials by removing them from office. Meanwhile, sticking your head in the sand while one candidate seeks to seat delegates in Michigan, where she was the only one of the remaining contenders not to remove her name from the ballot, and Florida, where neither candidate campaigned, is, again, unconscionable on your part.

It's time for you to stand up and be counted, Mr. Dean. It's time for you to quit your fence sitting and start aggressively doing your job as leader of the Democratic party. Considering the outrage that so many Democrats felt after Gore lost to Bush, and the unfairness your own presidential campaign experienced as a result of an audio glitch, it is absolutely your moral obligation to intervene. It's time for you to act to honor voters' desires and protected the fairness of your primary.

If not, all current supporters of either current Democratic candidate should commit to voting for the Republican nominee this November. Far better for voters to sacrifice one election in order to regain control of the party than to forever know that the Democratic primary is an illegitimate process and that our votes in 2012 and beyond absolutely do no matter.

      

"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.