After Iowa, Floyd joked that the two winners were not the two newcomers but the two guys with the strangest names : Huckabee and Obama. "This" , he said, "was reason to think that Engelburt Humperdinck might come into the race."

What was more important, however, was that the three leading
Dem candidates resembled the 3 of 1968, a banner year by any standard.  Hillary Clinton was, probably to her inner dismay, Hubert Humphrey, the establishment insider. Edwards was Bobby Kennedy. OK, not a former Attorney General, but short, rich and pushing class struggle. And Obama, well, that's easy : he was Gene McCarthy : intellectually confident, moralistic,
elitist---the way only an academic can be elitist (and without showing his dibbs on the Illiad, the Aeneid, or even Mark Twain.) This is why Hillary could plow through debates with confidence : "she had been promised." This was why Barrack
had his nose in the air and his platitudes sounding almost like non-platitudes.  This was why John Edwards got a $400 haircut: certainly he didn't need it or prefer that price range. He needed to do the 2008 version of the hair-thing--- and that was no longer a rock star with hair, but an envious rich man. That was 400 bucks and a news story.  

Floyd was tuned to the reality that Republicans needed validation after having lost their way in victory : after all, Bush had become a big spender and the Republican Congress had been crazy for  earmarks. The Democrats had yet to find their path in defeat after 2004.  Floyd knew that the road to the White House lay through pride for the GOP and anger for the Democrats. The GOP needed a lighthouse; the Democrats a warning buoy. Democrats were in need to a real warship : OK, a pirate ship might do : they didn't care that much about the facts. They needed to board and conquer, not define and debate. But that was their primary, Floyd's was another.  Floyd had understood for a long time the IX Amendment to the constitution was the bedrock on which the future of the Dem Party would be built; while the X Amendment would continue as the lawful basis of GOP activities. Floyd extended his didactic activities into the other party. "The IX amendment was made for the left, for people who were determined to establish new rights in society." "The problem," he said , "with the liberals is that they don't enough respect for the constitution to read it----when all the time the constitutionality for what they want (health care) may be lying there in plane sight : number nine. It was James Madison's reconsideration : maybe in 1830 or 1880 or 1980 some new rights will need to be established. Therefore : " The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights should not be construed as to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people."  For the right, Floyd simply said "There are a lot of smart people in the country, but none of them have ever shown me just where the states surrendered their authority to the federal government to regulate reproduction. The states matter!"  That's the X Amendment.

The pre-season had ended and Iowa and NH were upon us. Upon them, the candidates.  Upon the politicians and their minions. Political organizations were descending on Des Moines and Manchester, driving up real estate prices, crowding restaurants and cluttering the airwaves. The people of New Hampshire pretended to be indifferent, but of course they were not. They were flattered by this ritual which had evolved from what was once an election…..i.e. a choice, a selection,  a taking one from the multiple. A deliberate and democratic decision.

Floyd Anderson obliged and attended the ceremonial and traditional functions of the NH all of which were much more established than the people of the Granite State were comfortable admitting : you arrive, you take up hotel space, you go to town meetings, you bug people on the street, you pretend to be casual and relaxed, you debate, you spend lots of money, you debate, you hold meetings, you pretend this droning process is not getting to you, you declare your love for NH; then before the ballots are counted, you rush on to the next state.

But Floyd did alright in the debates because he was willing to acknowledge reality. When discussing illegal immigrants, for example, he dropped one on them about Mexico : Mexico had the highest birth rate in the world in 1980, -81, -82. Mexico had had a revolution when Russia did and likewise had collapsed when the USSR collapsed (1988-89). Mexico was corrupt, poorly run and nearly 100 years behind the USA and western Europe and Japan in higher education; northern Mexico had become a narco-state. Fox, he suggested, was Yeltsin. Putin was more focused  and in control----and frankly, Calderon, short and tough, looked a lot like Putin. Both Yeltsin and Fox were tall and not in control. Both Calderon and Putin would use oil money to fight drug money. Simple enough.

The debates were fine enough with less being decided on the GOP side than on the Democratic side. Only two things were decided in NH : Hillary Clinton was tough and Rudy Giuliani mistook a fair, an event, a ritual, festival for an election. The NH primary is not so much an election as it is a cultural exercise : a Protestant Marti Gras, a Kentucky derby without the horses, a World Series without the American League or the National League. It was more than a convention or a blind ritual; it had become a ceremony exerting its influence far beyond the borders of this state. For an Italian misjudging a ceremony was truly a cardinal sin. But when it was over there were many more, more authentic primaries to face.

In the early debates several things became clear : Bill Richardson was pretty emotional for a guy who been Sec of Energy and Amb to the UN; Chris Dodd acted like he was in the Senate fighting for another $26m for his state; Joe Biden was looking for his campaign legs; Dennis Kucinich believed in class struggle; Mike Gravel had a sense of humor; and Sen Barrack Obama was a sophisticated speaker.

On the GOP side : Floyd was disappointed with the failure of the GOP to discuss affirmative action. Here, he thought the liberal media was really setting the agenda for his conservative party. He also disliked the way the issue of terrorism or the war of terrorism was discussed. It was not so much that the discussion was not put in terms of fascist Islamic movements, but that the mechanics of foreign policy was often omitted. He was strongly for an alliance with Russia on the problem of terrorism. Floyd Anderson believed that there were only three countries which took aggressive responses to terrorism : the USA, Britain, and Russia---and of those Britain sometimes wavered with internal divisions. He did, however, find some common ground with Joe Biden who said that the road to a political solution in Iraq meant working with local government and local neighborhoods. Floyd went a step farther. In Floyd's words : "Iraq was a tribal society; stability could only come through working with the tribes." He felt that the central government should formally commit 40% of all oil revenue to the 15 tribes of Iraq. This 40% would then be apportioned according to a fairly refined formula.

He did learn to respect his opponents. He recognized Mike Huckabee's success as the product of having dealt intimately with the very real problems of his parishioners : he could imagine the Rev Huckabee sitting in a small office with a middle aged couple who had just lost a teen aged child or with some other person who had experienced a great personal loss. He soon recognized Mayor Giuliani's speaking skills  and John McCain's tenacity and honesty. He was puzzled, however, with Mitt Romney's failure to share his great skills in business and finance with the audiences. Romney, he thought, was getting poor advice. You run on your strengths---and Romney's strength was his very considerable knowledge of trade, finance, production and distribution, not any long established association with Ronald Reagan. If he were going to be the next Ronald Reagan, certainly the Republican Party would recognize that; reminding folks of it himself would only diminish the resemblance. It looked to Lt-Gov Anderson as though someone was telling Romney the political equivalent of this baseball advice : "Have Floyd pinch hit for Alex Rodriguez in the bottom of the 9th."

Several of the other Republicans did not seem to know why they were in the race. Tancredo, he thought, was single issue candidate who could have better gotten out his message by talking about Mexico : northern Mexico as a narco-state and Mexican migration : in 1958 Mexico City had 3 million people; by 1981 it had 28 million. This rapid urbanization caused great problems with housing, traffic, health care, crime, education, and pollution.

Super Tuesday pretty much showed John McCain to be the candidate of the Republican suburbs, but his victory there was fueled by successes in NH and SC.  (This suggested that the suburbs draw their fuel from fairly traditional sources.)  By mid Feb, Giuliani was on a side track, not the main line and Mitt Romney was too flawed with pressured speech, choppy gestures, sophomoric self-comparisons to Ronald Reagan, and most of all his failure to display his talents in business. The road was open for the GOP, the party of the heir apparent to anoint the heir apparent.

The GOP anointed McCain in spite of his differences with the party on immigration and campaign reform because they knew that, if anything, he was to the right of Bush on anti-terrorism. The current president was willing to sustain American casualties in order not to kill too many of the opposition. The war in both Afghanistan and Iraq were being fought with hesitation and with the handicap of police rules in order to show the people of those places that America was a compassionate and moderate power. The effect was probably to convince the people there that American lacked resolve, sometimes courage and most definitely a plan.------And indeed they did : from the very beginning it was evident the idea of democracy for Iraq was a bit of an abstraction for Bush. Between occupation and election stood mostly a vacuum : a political vacuum for the Iraqis, an administrative vacuum for the Americans.

Finally, Floyd B. Anderson knew this:
There were two theories how to win a war  :  1) von Klausowitz, Prussian, writing in the early 19th century said :  You win by killing the enemy. You kill so many at all levels of the enemy's army that soon the enemy is either unwilling or unable to replace the losses and quits.
       2) Secondly, Jomini, French, early 19th century, says that you win by taking territory and holding it. Soon the enemy is able neither able to advance, retreat, maneuver, be re-enforced or re-supplied. He is Cornwallis at Yorktown. He quits.

Both went to work for Russia as Napoleon became more powerful and more imperial.  Although he had never  been in the military, Lt-Gov Anderson knew this : Jomini was much more applicable to Iraq and less so Afghanistan than was von Klausowitz.

But now it was mid-February and the money was running out. The groundhog didn't smile on Floyd : he was pressed for cash and no harking back to a library for Jefferson or Washington or the Adams family was going to pull in any money. He went back to Des Moines and met with Ralph Jenkins. Together the old college buddies breathed new life into a third rate campaign.

In my opinion, Russia needs some allies. The USA is going into the Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Georgia et al. Russia is cllecting a few questionable relationships with an assortment of pariahs : Nicaragua, Venezuela, Iran,  and the like. Hell, they Braziil and India. They have been behaving like unreliable suppliers  of natural gas to Ukraine and Germany. Not smart.  Japan is probably the most relaible supplier of products in the world----unfettered and unmolested by domestic politics, economic crises,  or simply bad attitude. Russia has to learn to be that kind of supplier if it going to commence on a Cold War----or if the USA is going to to initiate a Cold War with Russia. Any way you slice it, Russia's stange collection of friends is the kind of thing that makes it in a simply scripted and too predictable grade  B movie----not in the international arena where the competition is the USA allied with the EU and tied to India and Japan.  S Korea, Canada, Australia too.

Russia  cd pick a country with a horrible present and turn it around ------by spending $1.2  B per month there for 5 to ten years : like the Congo : right in the center of Africa and large enough to  pull other African nations into its orbit : Angola,  Congolese Republic, Rwanda, Cameroon. That sort of thing : nuclear power, public schools, roads, judicial system. But let's get real : Russia is not going to get very far by threatening to cut off Germany and Holland and Poland and the Ukraine from its gas supply. There are too many engineers and bio-tech professors in those countries to get away with that,

Brazil is a country with a future. India maybe---but its potential for a bright future is tied to a potential for a dismal future as well. India has 1000 languages and a million cultures. Seriously. There are about one million different tribal entities in India. If a ten-way civil war ever breaks out the govt will have to go in and shoot people almost at random to ESTABLISH SOVEREIGNTY. Brutal yes. But brutality beats cruelty every time. Football coaches are brutal. Child molesters are cruel. Either country could be well served by an alliance with Russia, but Russia ani't gonna make the grade by fighting for South Ossetia. Really now. It's a bit like the President of the USA making Juarez (or a quarter of Juarez) the key to his foreign politicy. World trade; yes; nuclear weapons probably; energy maybe; the openness of the Atlantic, yes. But a town the size of Mobile< Al, with less money than Aberdeen, SD its centerpiece?

Alex II, where are you when your country really needs you?

Oh, left out Bush's Sec of Labor---Chow---married to Mitch McConnell. Now, not very many Senators are going to vote against Mitch McConnell's wife, if only for personal reasons. Mitch is a nice guy. A very polite and pleasant man. He's got to have more than a few fishing buddies in the Senate. You don't vote against Ms Chow if you want another bridge for your state. If that's not enough : MitcBushh was chairman of Senate re-election comm (GOP), controlling about $60m each election. He could always throw another $2m at you if vote against Ms Chow.   Point is : Bush cabinet was fairly moderate and designed to avoid conflict  and to be approved without much notice.

It was not really that far right. It could have left Sec of Education empty for 2 yrs and it could have brought Richard Perl into State or Defense, but didn't.   Bush let Powell bring Richard Armatage to State as number two man---and no person close to Bush.

Robert Gates, an old Bush friend has served Bush much better than Rumsfeld. I think Cheney has served Bush well. What has hurt Bush is not explaining himself hardly at all    :   on terrorism (i.e. mapping out strategy) on prisoners of war---not sending his Solicitor General around the country to explain the administrations position. They relied on Scalia to do it. OK, Scalia is a brilliant man, but when you wait for the court on issues like that you've waited too long. Who made those decisions? I think Karl Rove is Superman among precinct captains and a dudd on governing.

My conclusion on Bush is that he does not know when to pick his fights. Nixon was a master at that. People didn't like Nixon, but Nixon knew something at age 29 that I just learned   : SOMETIMES A FIGHT OVER A TOOTHBRUSH IS TWO TEENAGERS IN A BATHROOM, BUT SOMETIMES ITS A FIGHT FOR PROCTOR  &  GAMBLE.   Nixon could tell a from b on that score.   Bush can't.

Re Klare---says Bush "cdn't fight a Cold War if he wanted to". The reason he is short of troops for Iraq is because he is doing just that.  The USA has 50 to 200 soldier in about 110 countries throughout the world : training, guarding, laying the ground for support of USA as a great power in a COLD War. Mr Klare treats the phrase Cold War as if it's not-----not a cold war. That is stupid. Why doesn't he just lay out carefully what a Cold War is and how it's fought.

It is a war of ideology, of newspapers, of diplomacy, of foreign aide, of spying, of training, of sending sizable military missions to various countries, of military aide. The war in Iraq is suffering because Bush is beginning a new Cold War. Klare just wants coverage and readers so badly that he is arguing as if the USA has 450,000 in its military. Why doesn't he do the math?

He's right about some things but so blinded by hatred of Bush that he doesn't bother with numbers of minor deployments---Romania to Columbia to Macedonia to Bosnia to major deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama can't admit the surge is successful and it will probably cost him the election.  Were the core of Bush people Cold Warriors? Probably.   But does that include Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice?

And they didn't come into office in 2000. It was 2001.

Bush's cabinet was designed to avoid conflict : to get approved quietly and quickly : Powell, whom everybody in the Senate loved and admired; Ashcroft, who had been a member of the Senate for about 10 years; Rumsfeld who had held the job before; Rice, a black woman and maybe the smartest of the lot (at Nat Sec Ad). Is is accurate to call Rice a Cold Warrior? I don't think so.

OK, then there are another set Amb to UN : Vacant for 1 1/2 yrs; CIA, the Clinton appointee; Dpt of Ag, a woman from the most populous state; Sec of Trans, another Clinton holdover, who was clearly left there as an impotent space filler for the status quo on energy; Sec of Energy : I don't even recall who that was. An Arab from Detroit Ebrahim, I think, another guy guy to fill the chair and not bring change (former member of the Senate from Michigan).

Global grand master? Who is that?

Well the USA went into Iraq for 5 reasons, one of which was to guarantee  Saudi oil for Japan. Now one cd argue that is an illegitimate use or a legitimate unwise use of Am soldiers and I respect that. But to argue that Bush and Cheney are amateurs and Bush is stupid is childish. Really, just childish. The geo=political situation looks like this : Japan has wealth but no oil and doesn't want and army (more or less).  The USA needs Japanese capital and Japanese trade. It needs Japanese banks to buy its bonds. Now if Klare wants to argue that  it is sending troops to the  gulf to keep the engines of the bond market running, I won't argue. But to always retreat to the point where Bush is dumb and backward and Cheney is greedy and evil and Rumsfeld is power hungry and arrogant;  well, that is very immature. Just take things as they are : the USA operates a larger army than Russia and spends more on its military than Russia and has military missions in several countries which are old Russian allies. That is realty. REALTY> Go with that. Just for one goddamned day! Realty.


Romania, Georgia, Ukraine, Lithuania : they are all more anti-Russian than Aschcroft and Cheney. Cheney may be a calculating opportunist. Cheney maybe an elitist. Cheney may be serving oil companies while on the job, but Cheney is not an amateur , not a child emotionally. He is what he is and he is not going to be defeated by being portrayed as less than he is----OK, maybe 20% less , maybe as 80% of what he is-----but not 5%.
Not 15%
The war in Iraq is working out well for the USA. The conflict in Georgia playing to American hands----in Vilnius, in Rega, in Bucharest, in Kiev. But Putin is the grand master?  Hey, I like Putin. I even find him amusing. But let's recognize that the USA is moving into Poland and Ukraine while Russia is not moving into Mexico and Haiti.

For Christ's sake, I think the USA shd develop alternative fuels. I want people to spend one week contemplating the effects of a USA which imports 14 barrels of petro each year. The reason I say 14 and not zero ; because in some equations we might want to divide by the amt of barrels imported and you can't divide by zero! Just take that one week and do the math : commodities brokers do that----that's why they can make us much as a relief pitcher still have an arm like a waitress : because they calculate not fulminate. Klare has no sense of this. Klare needs to look at the issue from various perspectives.


Klare needs to look at the numbers for fuel consumption.

Bush and Cheney will be amateurs at best when Russian schools replace English schools in Mexico City. Spanish is growing in the poor schools in Colorado but losing in the rich schools in Mx City. Again : REALTY.

I guess the question is will the green god kill or save capitalism.

God was once red.  Now god is green.  Will the green giant be an angry green giant and smite capitalism or a jolly green giant and save it.


The USA has a lot of energy options. Congress left town in june without an energy bill to give their friends time to get out of the gold market. when the USA passes serious energy legislation Au crashes.

Who's to say the USA won't be exporting petro in 25 years?      What! Oil shales in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah. Harvested with geothermal and nuclear power. Yup. A small surplus. Russia is not the only large northern country with options on the future. Who  in1935 cd have predicted VtNm? OK, maybe a French intellectual.

Seriously, spend 2 weeks contemplating a USA which imports only 14 barrels of oil per yer. I don't say ZERO because you can't divide by zero nd in some equations, we may want to divide by the vol of petro imports. You may think "That is impossible!"  OK, gthat's your choice.

The question of 2008 is really this---Did the USA have the energy (meaning : strength + power + stamina + influence) to make China capitalist, Russia democratic, India prosperous, and Latin America free and Africa stable all at the same time?  Indeed  did / would some of those goals work against others? Certainly the USA tried to isolate Russia. It neglected Latin America; had little clear policy on Africa----not that one was possible. I suppose "stability". It turned to India fairly late---mainly in the form of Microsoft, which employs the most people outside USA in Ireland ----but that will soon change to India. And will probably exceed numbers in USA in about 10-12 years. Question comes back to Russia : Steven Cohen said in letter to me that Strobe Talbot led a campaign to isolate Russia. In general it was successful. But Russia is neither N Korea nor Iran.   [Mr Talbot was Clinton's roommate at Georgetown and Under Sec of State].

The USA was quite successful in moving Poland and the Ukraine and Romania and Bulagria and the 3 Baltic states away from Russia, followed by Georgia. The result of an isolated Russia is not good. While 100% of the recent Russian invasion of Georgia cannot be laid at the feet of the last 2 US administrations, much of it can.

It is as if the task of democracy in Russia was too much for the USA. Instead, it chose a step by step approach : Romania, Poland, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia. Where it overstepped was in Kosovo. That shd have been left to Serbia. Ossetia is "Kosovo East". Georgia is the west's Serbia. Russia is determined to take revenge  : Ossetia for Kosovo. Symbolic, yes, but in Moscow strong symbolism.

Energy: I've heard it said "Any conservation USA might do on fossil fuels wd quickly be taken up by China and India; thus, no savings at pump in price per gallon."
 This is simply false. It ignores something important to economics : numbers. The USA used 134.4 Billion gal of gas (plus 8B gal of ethanol) in 2007. China used 16.6 B. that's right : USA : China = 8:1. In other words, if we cut our consumption by 12.5%, the reduction wd equal 100% of China in 2007. Now, if we cut consumption by 25% that wd be a reduction of 33.7B equal to the total amount of France, India and China, and a couple of other industrial countries.  Calf used slightly more than Japan. Calf= 35 m people; Japan= 128 m. About equal number sq miles. Japan has more money.That is possible in 3 short years : drive less, higher mileage vehicles, more natural gas and more alcohol, although we are near limit on ethanol (already produce/use more than Brazil (sic). Now, there's no way China, India and Europe wd taken up 100% of that reduction. 60% : yes; 80% maybe. But 100% : no way. There are 10 million cars produced in USA every year; another 2-3 million imported. Thus, when Obama talks about 10-12 million hybrids in a decade, he is being as cautious as someone calling for a bronze in basketball in London in 2012.

What America is ripe for is a candidate who says "In 100 years, the world will look upon the last 2 decades as a time of great squandering of resources : energy, national unity and influence."

USA uses as much gas as the next 12 countries together. The main statistic one shd know about the USA is : there are zero mundane statistics about the USA. Not in patents, or crime or teenage pregnancy or energy or movies or immigrants or books or murders or spending or credit. Europe is a museum. The USA is a shopping center----with a software company and a bio-tech company across the street. The parking lot has 310 million cars in it.

biden?  yes, i expected a younger better lookin' dude. but biden is a good choice : he re-assures the wash insiders, the clark cllffords & the tommy bogges-es.
conservatives regard Biden as sincere but misguided; not really bright but trust-worthy.
 
The fact that the Dem Party has to swing to its v-p candidate for the blue collar vote is not only a bad sign for this election but for the next 6 elections. They are the affirmative action party, if you ask me---which is a catching basket for other items like Indian gambling and illegal immigration and gay marriage.

If Obama was 43% as smart as people think he is he'd say----"With regard to alternative energy, we Dem have spent too much time on tax credits and not enough on streamlining construction permits. We treat building and erecting solar collectors and wind mills like they are off shore oil rigs. Let's move 'em!"

McCain shd say about Obama and the surge----"A president has to be able to recognize success whether its in bridges or remedial reading or long term health care or law enforcement or preventing animal diseases or in diplomacy or bio-technology or in making steel. A president who puts politics before acknowledging the success of other Americans endangers the success and progress of the country. The surge was successful and Senator Obama shd be man enough to say 'well done, boys. Well done.' "

Biggest loser in the invasion of Georgia is Iran. The crisis makes Iran a secondary player to Russo-West relations, pushing Iran down the ladder one step, making a Russian veto of sanctions against Iran and moot point, thereby opening the door to bomb Iran. Iran needs Russia on "almost good terms with USA/EU", not on bad terms. Iran needs Russia to be just one step away from good terms with the west. When it is 8 or 9 or 12 steps away---"what the hell! let them veto any sanctions". Sanctions then become fairly hopeless and the time for negotiations are over---Move the fleet. Move it into place and let the Russians protest in the UN. And the nuclear projects are checked for another 8 to 12 years. If Iran strikes back in any way, take out the one or two or three oil refineries in Iran---and their economy becomes about as primitive as their politics. [Hey, I like that phrase.]

Put another way, Iran is finding out that Russia has its own interests---interests which far exceed creating problems for the USA in the gulf. Soon Iran will be jealous of the attention that Georgia is getting ----and frightened by the silence over its nuclear ambitions.

I've never seen an election where picking v-p is so difficult  and so difficult to say whether or not it is important. Ch. Crist? Evan Bayh? Tim Kane? Tim Pawlenty? Romney? Wd they really make any difference. I think McCain wd be better off with Romeny. But Romney needs lessons in spontaneity. Romeny looked mechanical and opportunitst the way he blurted out "Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan" in the primaries.       "Hey, if you're the next Ronald Reagan, the Republicans can figure it out. You don't get there by saying 'it's me, folks'."

v-p may make very little difference---or Romney could hold Colorado and Az and even take Michigan. I question whether Evan Bayh cd carry Indianna. I was saying in 1992 : "Bush ought to drop Dan Quayle for Gov Jim Thompson of Ill" and I waz very right. But this year---the v-p is sort of submerged beneath all the hype of Obama and the legacy of McCain.

Like 1824 : was John C Calhoun (no small figure in Am history/politics) really that vizable or important alongside Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay? I think NOT. 

John McCain is Andrew Jackson.
B. Obama is JQ Adams.
Hillary Clinton is Henry Clay------only one of these 3 never to become president.

Adams was a man of the world. A peitist. An intellectual. An abolitionist. A diplomet. What other distinction? Well, he  had the most disappointing presidency in Am history. Reagan, McKinley, Cleveland , all his inferior, were more successful. What you want for success is a Harry Truman listening to a JQ Adams; then you've got a great presidency. Likewise, James Madison, most influential American ever---more JD Rockefeller or Th Edison and Mark Twain and Bill Gates and Th Roosevelt put together---was not that successful. He wrote the constitution.  A few months after it went into effect, there were revolutions in France and Brazil.  On the centennial of the US cont., Brazil and Japan established constitutions. About every country in Latin America used Madison's model. But as a president?  Not that great. (his v-p? He had two; they both died in office).

There are four basic positions on energy in the USA---

1] Those who want to suppress fossil fuels in order to create a crisis in capitalism. (REDS)

2] Those who want to suppress fossil fuels in order to save the planet.   (GREENS)

3] Those who want to make the production and use to fossil fuels more rational in order to strengthen the USA.  (RED, WHITE & BLUES)

4] Those who want to proliferate fossil fuels in order to strengthen capitalism. (conservative libertarian/Rush Limbough) (color?)

The sum of these 4 positions constitutes about 85% of the US population. Perhaps another 10-15% just wants cheaper gas and that's that. Just simple consumers with no eye to the environment, the economy, the government, the future, the environment. The other 80-85% is really competing for the support of this relatively small and very unsophisticated set of people.

Phil Graham did not resign from McCain campaign because of his remarks about "nation of whiners".
He made the remarks to create a pretext to resign----hust as Rev Pfluger made the crazy talk at Obama's church so that Obama cd resign from Rev Wright's church.
Why? Well , that's because the United Bank of Scotland has been the conduit for many wealthy Americans depositing money in Lichtinstein to avoid taxes. And if the American people have a prejudice it's against places which are not countries pretending to be countries : Grand Caymans, etc.

And who is the President of UBS--USA? That wd be Phil Graham. So he had to get off the McCain train and needed a stop really soon. He just pulled the emergency cord with those remarks, which, yes, he may well believe, probably does believe, but said them now to create a cover for his departure; thus, quashing the story about any McCain connection to the Lichtinstein scandal.

Here's the basic way I see the sociology of the present time.
In 1450 it took about 440 males to rule (i.e. maintain order and lead) 10,000 males. By 1850 that number was down to about 150 : 10,000.
By 2000, it was about 80 : 10,000. There is now a push on to get to get that number down to about 40 to 50; i.e. to rule 10,000. {1450 year applies to England, France and Germany. Probably higher number in Russia and Poland.}

The "push" or campaign consists of the following----
1) Put aggressive boys on drugs---unless they are really subtle in their aggression.
2) Affirmative action : promote women over men, most numerously and broadly in college admissions, especially law school. Continue this even though women have 60% of the college degrees.
3) Promote gay marriage, which will dilute the power of men
4) Ridicule men in advertising------ by far the most pronounced on TV but also on radio and other media.
5) Promote gender free college campuses : dorms, bathrooms, sports programs (indirectly).

The result will be that the men who survive will do so by their wit and stealth. Power becomes more clandestine, more covert, more elitist. The men who survive will be more intelligent, more artful, more elite, less physical, less public, more opportunist : having no faith except in their desire to rule.

Who represents this "new man"? This metro-sexual elitist :relaxed, affable, modest, excessively private and totally opportunist?

Well, there a bunch of 'em out there, but non one says "Brave new correct world to me like JOHN CORZINE, CEO of Goldman Sachs, then liberal US Senator, then governor of New Jersey. I see no conviction in this man only "opportunity, calculation,and ....yes....private decisions, public policy."

Floyd B Anderson decided to run for president as he was walking up the steps of the statehouse in Des Moines, Iowa. Floyd was Lt-Gov of Iowa, a position he had held for nine years and three months. Floyd was moderate Republican and 63 years old. He was single, his wife having passed away seven years after a divorce some dozen years ago. He had a son in California and a daughter in NH, neither of them very political. He stopped at the landing atop the steps, took off his tie and descended, heading for the nearest coffee shop. He thought that he would announce informally to the first person with whom he might share coffee.

When he arrived, however, the place was nearly empty; so he sat down alone and sketched out a strategy to succeed James Madison, Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt. When had finished, he called his friend Ralph Jenkins in California and told him the news. Ralph didn’t take him very seriously but he did promise his support.

The plan that Floyd outlined was as follows :
1) Write a series of essays to be published in small town newspapers in Tennessee and Kentucky. The essays would be a sort of modern day Federalist Papers on the purpose functions and limits of government.
2) Secondly, they would set the tone for a new political culture in the USA: a new patriotism. He would call for presidential libraries devoted to the earliest presidents. Washington/Jefferson at UV; Madison/Monroe at Geo Mason; the Adams family at U Mass; and Jackson/Polk . He really couldn’t decide whether it would be feasible to include van Buren in the Jackson/Polk library. Of course, van Buren was a Jacksonian and Jackson’s Sec of State, then his v-p but he was also a New Yorker. Floyd knew that van Buren’s papers were at the University of Rochester and that they wouldn’t give them up easily. What he did believe is that the idea of a library of Washington and Jefferson and the Adams family rather than another library to yet another mediocre president would appeal to the American people. 3) He would advocate another Mt Rushmore type memorial to 4 more presidents, this time on a granite mountain either in Colorado or Utah---somewhere near I-80 on land already owned by the federal government. These four faces? Madison, father of the constitution; J Q Adams, the most successful Sec of State in Am history and probably the American who lived the most historic life of any since 1600E, even being ambassador to Russia when Napoleon invaded in 1812.
4) The Lt-Gov would advocate the building of a new canal in Central America.
5) A manned mission to Mars.
6) He would strongly support biotechnology, recognizing its two basic divisions : agriculture and medicine. The government would have to face up to its role in two ways : clarifying the law in patents and copyrights, as well as its role in research.
7) He would run a very aggressive war against terrorism.
8) He would rebuild America’s image in the world, explicitly defending America’s role in defending freedom and fighting hunger, poverty, exploitation and genocide. He would be a president who would not be too modest to remind the world to which nation the oppressed fled whether in the 18th century, the 19th, the 20th or the 21st.
9) He would do something very controversial : in foreign policy he would encourage Europe to take responsibility for its own defense; he would ally with Russia against terrorism and he would turn toward a long neglected area of US foreign policy and assistance : Latin America.

The stategy would be to publish in weekly newspapers in Tennessee and Kentucky in order to get the attention of the press and then move to a few larger markets to raise money. The press would probably pay him more heed if he were publishing in out-of-the-way places then if he were competing for attention in NYC and DC. The donors, however, would have to be approached where they were : in the suburbs of Chgo, NYC, LA, and DC. He learned later that they were everywhere; their address e-America.

Once Ralph Jenkins began to receive e-mail from Floyd, he began to see that Floyd had some serious possibilities, that Floyd had done something most men do not : he had grown substantially after age 50. Floyd began his essays with the vitality of America. He quoted Gen Howe who had commanded British forces in the colonies during the Revolutionary War and who probably composed the best sentence ever constructed on America “Had the British realized the vast resources and great potential of America in its origins, it might have done more to bind America to its empire.” Floyd’s essay compared American trade to that of the Spanish colonies which until the 1770s were limited to trading with a single port in Spain : Seville. When they finally gained trading privileges at the port of Barcelona, they thought they had been blessed. He informed the reader that while the port of Havana, Cuba was occupied for only 11 months during the Napoleonic wars its received some 165 ships compared to only 12 ships the previous year.

Floyd Anderson knew, of course, that the economy was always the number one issue of any presidential contest. He therefore set out in his 5th and 6th weekly publications to outline his economic reforms : a lower corporate tax and a corporate flat tax. Gone would be the numerous, complex and verbose tax credits for business. In Lt-Gov Anderson’s mind, tax credits were the act of a government reaching into control what was left of an income after they had taken 35 to 50%. Anderson believed in laissez faire, especially at the lower level---and among those especially in the early phases.

The election would be held in 2008 and it would be the greatest presidential contest since 1824, when J Q Adams triumphed, via the US House, over Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and William Crawford. The end of Bush 43’s term would signal the first also since 1824 that 2 consecutive presidents had served two full consecutive terms. OK, Truman/Eisenhower together came within one month of the four full terms, but then the reality was that Truman was boosted into presidential orbit not by his own popularity but by that FDR.

There would be no shortage of presidential aspirants. Hillary Clinton was the favorite to win the Dem nomination. But the whole crowd was colorful and colored with paradox. Clinton was a US Senator from NY the wife of an ex-president who had only stayed with her philandering spouse out personal ambition. There was a Mormon, but from Massachusetts not from Idaho or Utah. There were other aspirants out of the US Senate : ex-Sen John Edwards, who had been the v-p nominee of his party in 2004. Edwards was a trial lawyer, but from NC not from California. There was Sen Joe Biden of Dl a new comer by social standards; then there was Sen Dodd of Ct who as the son of a former senator had been around since before he was born. There was Bill Richardson, former Sec of Energy under Sen Clinton’s husband. Richardson was a new England aristocrat masquerading as a Mexican. (Floyd supposed that if there were a real Mexican running, he would be masquerading as a New England aristocrat.) There was Sen Barrack Obama who, because he was black via a father from Kenya was an African-American, not and Afro-American (those who trace their ancestry through slavery to Africa). Of course, there was Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of NYC and mayor during that city’s most horrific moment. During the crisis the mayor acted like a true hero and in the aftermath of the attack the mayor acted like a true Italian, full of sentiment and ceremony. No mayor of NYC, however, had been elected to higher office in slightly more than 150 years. There was John McCain a military hero who had spent five years in POW camp in Viet Nam. There would later be Fred Thompson of Tennessee, also a former US Senator , who joined former govs Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin and James Gilmore of Va. From the US House came Duncan Hunter of Ca and Tom Tancredo of Co, also as Republicans. Finally, there was three more colorful candidates : D. Kucinich also from the US House selling class struggle , very former Mike Gravel of Alaska, and Mike Huckabee former gov of Arkansas.

THEN Floyd Anderson did something no one expected and few were able to do : he introduced a sense of art into the campaign. As he explained to Austin Jenkins, whose prosperity allowed him to leave California for Iowa and a few other political destinations, “if Huckabee can baffle them with morality, I can baffle them with art. Art and a little patriotism.” The Lt-Gov did this by treating the map as his canvas and making his itinerary a sojourn of meaning. He did just what only a mind relative insulated from the din of the metropolis could do. He became a little original:
Floyd struck out on a tour every city or hamlet in the USA named Springfield. At each Springfield he spoke of their differences and their commonality. In Springfield, Mass, he spoke about the history of industrialism in America. In Springfield, Mo, he spoke about values and loyalty. In Springfield, W Va, he reviewed the history of John Brown. In Springfield, Or , he addressed hi-tech and future of the world. In Springfield, SD, he spoke about small towns and good government. In Springfield, Ohio, he spoke about commerce and education. But everywhere he spoke of unity : “We all live in Springfield,” he said. “Even Manhattan is Springfield.” At every stop he used the line “Even Bart Simpson lives in Springfield.” By calculation, the Springfield segment of his tour ended in Springfield, Ill, because his next stop was Lincoln, Neb.

Floyd’s second segment was to visit the four state capitol’s named for presidents :Lincoln, Madison, Jefferson City and Jackson, where naturally he spoke about those four distinguished persoanalities. For him Madison was the most fun; it allowed him to make a few points about the fourth president that are often missed : a few months after Mr Madison’s constitution went into effect revolution broke out in France, the most influential country in Europe and in Brazil, the largest country in South America. But he enjoyed speaking about Jackson, Jefferson and Lincoln as well.

He extended his state capitol tour by adding several others : in Atlanta he spoke about myth; in Olympia he spoke about ideals; in Sacramento, of the sacred; in Salem, about peace; in Columbus, of history. His best speech in this segment was not surprisingly in Phoenix, where he spoke of a city rising from its ashes : lower Manhattan or New Orleans. Even went to Bismark, where he made the 19th century German chancellor look like more than an iron curmudgeon. Bismark had a sense of humor and a sense of history. Floyd Anderson had both as well; so he made it work. He even went to St Paul and spoke there about the visions and courage required to build a new culture, admitting that Mike Huckabee could probably do a better job with St Paul than he. When he got back to Des Moines, he assured his friends that that city’s name meant “the center”. And indeed, for him, it did.
It was Dec-19-2007, the preseason/cactus league was over and his daughter was flying in from NH with his grandsons Aaron, Devon, an Trevor.

A new year stood before Iowa’s smartest man.

Posted by Donald at 1:31 PM

Labels: Iowa's smartest man, political odyssey, tommy