In my latest for the Guardian, I round up pundit commentary following President Obama’s big speech on health-care reform — and consider whether he succeeded in charting a middle course between liberals and centrists, while marginalizing conservatives as unregenerate (“You lie!”) obstructionists.
What does Andy Card want?
The Massachusetts Republican Party may be at a disastrously low ebb. But, contrary to expectations, it looks as though it’s going to field the equivalent of its A-team in both the special election to succeed the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and in next year’s governor’s race.
Former state representative Andy Card, who was chief of staff to George W. Bush and a top aide in George H.W. Bush’s administration, has all but announced for the Senate seat, according to the Boston Herald.
Granted, Card was far better known several decades ago, when the Republicans regularly hoped he would toss his hat into the ring, and were invariably disappointed. Then, too, Card will have to answer for his tenure in the second Bush White House — especially his oft-cited 2002 pronouncement that the administration would not start pushing for war in Iraq until September because “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”
But the chances of a Republican succeeding Kennedy would appear to be non-existent in any case. Card’s presence on the ballot will help with party-building simply because he’s serious and credible.
Since Card knows he’s unlikely to win, the interesting question is: What does he want? And that’s where the Republicans’ other credible candidate, Charlie Baker, comes in. Baker, who was then-governor Bill Weld’s top aide in the early ’90s, is now running for governor himself.
Unlike the Senate, the governor’s office is a position that a Republican can reasonably hope to win, as Weld, Paul Cellucci and Mitt Romney proved. With Gov. Deval Patrick’s poll numbers down, Baker would appear to have a decent shot, assuming he can get by his primary opponent, Christy Mihos.
But is it possible that Card is looking past the Senate race in hopes of running for governor himself?
The latest on the Times Co. and the Globe
New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and president Janet Robinson met with employees of the Boston Globe yesterday. And it appears there is nothing new to report.
According to stories in the Times, the Globe and the Boston Herald, Sulzberger said the Globe is still for sale, though an improving financial picture means there’s no hurry.
It also sounds like folks at the Globe remain angry over the way they were treated earlier this year, when the Times Co. threatened to close the paper if the unions failed to approve $20 million in concessions.
I could go on. But you get the idea. Ralph Ranalli has more at BeatthePress.org.
The folly of casino gambling
There’s a terrific front-page story in today’s New York Times on the sagging fortunes of the casino-gambling industry. Ian Urbina reports that casinos may well be reaching the saturation point, as more and more are chasing the same number of customers.
In New Jersey, legislators have repealed no-smoking regulations in order to entice gamblers. In Illinois, there’s actually a proposal to keep gamblers liquored up with free drinks so they’ll keep blowing their money.
Urbina writes:
“When budgets get tight, expanding gambling always looks to lawmakers like the perfect quick-fix solution,” said John Kindt, a professor of business and legal policy at the University of Illinois who studies the impact of state-sponsored gambling. “But in the end, it so often proves to be neither quick nor a fix.”
Crime jumps 10 percent in areas with casinos, personal bankruptcies soar 18 percent to 42 percent and the number of new gambling addicts doubles, Mr. Kindt said. Predicted state revenue often falls short and plans frequently get tripped up by legal fights or popular opposition, he said.
With Gov. Deval Patrick, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate president Therese “Ka-ching!” Murray expected to make a renewed push for expanded gambling this fall, the Times story is as timely as it is important.
Crime, bankruptcies, addiction — is this what our state leaders want?
“You seem to be in denial”
That’s what U.S. District Judge William Young told former sportscaster Bob Gamere yesterday after Gamere whined about the five-year prison sentence he’d just been handed for distributing child pornography.
No kidding. What Gamere seems to have lost sight of is that actual children were exploited, and that his actions helped spur demand for more such exploitation.
Or maybe he doesn’t care.
The missing mayor
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGqikIrNKw4&w=425&h=344]
Joel Brown calls a television commercial put out by Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s re-election campaign, featuring his empty desk, “a terrible spot” and — with a bit of rewriting — “an excellent ad for one of his opponents.”
Adam Gaffin adds: “Maybe this is what happened to Curley’s desk.”
A new-media lesson from an old newspaper
I can’t think of a better lesson for journalism students.
Earlier today I was attending an orientation for freshmen and transfer students when word came in on my BlackBerry, via the Salem News’ Twitter feed, that the Danvers Town Hall was on fire. (Media Nation’s world headquarters is located in Danvers.)
By 4:30 p.m., the News had posted a reasonably complete story with a Google map and an 11-photo slideshow.
Ten years ago, needless to say, the News would have been silent until the next day.
Glenn Beck has his moment
In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at the fall of Van Jones — and at how a far-right Web site and Glenn Beck, improbably enough, took him down with a clean hit.
No comparison
Conservative pundit Byron York has written a piece for the Washington Examiner reminding us that Democrats protested when President George H.W. Bush delivered a televised address to schoolchildren in 1991.
As described by York (and a contemporaneous New York Times account backs him up), the Democrats’ protest was deeply stupid. But, as York notes, the protests came after Bush’s speech, and were about money, not motives.
If York wants us to believe there’s any moral equivalence between what the Democrats said 18 years ago and Republican protests that President Obama would indoctrinate impressionable minds with socialist ideas, well, he’s going to have to do better than that.
The life of Sgt. Jared Monti
Media Nation recently participated in a fundraising drive for a scholarship named after U.S. Army Sgt. Jared Monti of Raynham, who was awarded the Medal of Honor after giving his life to save a fellow soldier in Afghanistan.
On Sunday, the Boston Globe published a terrific front-page article on Monti’s life by Bryan Bender. What makes it especially powerful is that Bender presents Monti as a real human being rather than as an improbable saint. Bender writes:
Everything went wrong for Monti and his patrol. The unit was left on that narrow ridge longer than intended, exposing it to a much larger enemy. And while Monti’s display of “extreme personal courage and extraordinary self-sacrifice,” as the Army described it, helped turn the tide, disaster struck again when the soldier Monti tried to save was killed in a freak accident while being airlifted out. Including Monti, four soldiers died.
“True valor is not defined so much by results,” an Army general wrote in recommending Monti for the medal, “as it is by the depth of conviction that inspires its expression. On rare occasions, the actions of men are so extraordinary that the nobility rests, not in their outcome, but in the courage of their undertaking.”
Bender’s piece is both inspiring and heartbreaking, and I urge you to take the time to read it. And yes, you can still give to the SFC Jared C. Monti Memorial Scholarship Fund.