Newt Gingrich dropped a broad hint over the weekend that he wouldn’t mount a serious race for the presidency in 2008. By saying that he won’t decide whether to run until September, 2007 – a mere four months before the Iowa Caucuses –he indicates that he won’t be able to put together a credible campaign. He wants to keep the door open just a little bit for a potential run – in part, because it’s always possible (though most unlikely) that a vast groundswell of public support would force his hand and, more importantly, because he can participate more prominently in the national political conversation as long he hasn’t ruled out a Presidential race. That appears to be Gingrich’s real aim in this upcoming battle for the nomination – to play a strong role in the conflict of ideas and principles as various factions contend for control of the GOP. We need Newt Gingrich to take part in this essential conversation with his customary zest and brilliance. We don’t necessarily need a highly personal focus on his past and present as a potential presidential candidate.

Newt’s kind words about Mitt Romney also suggested that the former Speaker is taking a step back from the campaign. His mention of Romney as the conservative alternative to McCain and Giuliani demonstrates a canny analysis of the state of the struggle at the moment. With the two “moderate” or “maverick” candidates as the two front runners, and dividing the votes of those who may want to move away from the party’s conservative core principles, there’s an obvious opening for a strong campaign on the right to rally the GOP base. With Allen, Santorum and Frist out of the picture, and Duncan Hunter and Sam Brownback both too obscure and too quixotic to take seriously at the moment, Romney is the obvious guy. Of course, his Mormon faith raises questions in some quarters, but the more openly he speaks about it in the months ahead the more likely that even doubters will get used to the idea of backing him anyway.

McCain, Giuliani and Romney all have the ability to raise huge sums of money and to conduct serious campaigns in every corner of the country. Unless either McCain or Rudy gets out of the race, leaving the other guy a clear field among moderates and independent-minded Republicans, the most credible conservative candidate will enjoy a clear edge. And that edge, it’s becoming increasingly obvious, will go to Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

Over the weekend, the cover-up continued regarding the dark, depressing, deeply disturbing film misleadingly titled “Happy Feet.”

On the day of its release (Friday, November 17), a typical newspaper ad featured a laughing, dancing penguin waving his flaps and kicking up his feet, along with effusive quotes from critics:

“Adults and kids alike will be dancing in the aisles.” – Don Jewel, Life & Style Weekly

“THE MUST SEE MOVIE – one of the most wonderful in years. A miracle of originality and imagination.” – Gene Shalit, TODAY

These shameful and dishonest “blurbs” don’t just speak to a matter of taste--- of course, critics will disagree about the quality of any feature film. My concern with the suggestion that “adults and kids alike will be dancing in the aisles” is that it utterly misstates the nature of the cinematic experience on offer. Even most (but, alas, not all) of those who admire “Happy Feet” acknowledge that it hardly constitutes a feel good frolic for the youthful audience.

In the New York Times, for instance, the always eloquent Manohla Dargis wrote a rave review but showed enough respect for her readers to write honestly about the movie’s disturbing elements. Commending director George Miller for presenting “a vision of the world seen through a glass darkly,” she declared: “Even in a story about singing-and-dancing fat and feather, Mr. Miller can’t help but go dark and deep….Tucked inside this nominally feel-good jukebox musical with its crooning and swooning critters is a piercingly sad story about the devastation being visited on the natural world. The tapping we hear, as it turns out, is drilling holes in our hearts….Mr. Miller…plunges his hapless hero into a nightmare worthy of Samuel Fuller’s ‘Shock Corridor.’ As politically pointed as it is disturbing, it is a view of hell as seen through he eyes and ears of creatures we foolishly, tragically call dumb.”

“Shock Corridor,” by the way, is a deeply disquieting, 1963 film noir about a reporter who goes undercover as a patient in an insane asylum to try to solve a murder, but ends up losing his own sanity in the most horrifying manner.

Why would any responsible parent want to bring the children to a “Shock Corridor” for kids? Would most moms and dads truly welcome a film proudly described by its honest fans as “disturbing” and “a nightmare” and “a view of hell,” simply because it is “politically pointed” with its descriptions of “the devastation being visited on the natural world.”?

The effort to mask this reality with talk about “singing and dancing in the aisles” may succeed in bringing in large, eager audiences for the film’s opening weekend (parents are always hungry for kid-friendly animated entertainment) but once the word-of-mouth kicks in, watch for the quick box-office collapse of “Happy Feet.” No other recent release so richly deserves to fail. Perhaps that all-but-inevitable rejection will send a message that the American people don’t welcome the idea that our entertainment-crazed kids should be held hostage to the political agendas, dark obsessions and dishonest marketing campaigns of irresponsible filmmakers and unscrupulous studios.

Hollywood produces plenty of lousy movies but the releases that bother me most are those that feature false and misleading advertising. The new animated extravaganza “Happy Feet” features some of the most dishonest marketing of 2006, and deserves special condemnation for it mendacious mediocrity.

The film features the voices of A-list Hollywood stars --- Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Elijah Wood, Robin Williams—and the trailers and TV ads suggest a fun-for-the-whole-family romp with some of the awe-inspiring, wonder-of-creation views of penguin peculiarities that made “March of the Penguins” one of the top grossing documentaries in history.

While the computer-generated animation often fills the screen with visually spectacular Antarctic vistas, the story and characters will irritate most potential viewers for several reasons:

1) This may be the darkest, most disturbing feature length animated film ever offered by a major studio. At least 80% of the film’s running time shows its penguin characters in pain or danger. Scenes of terrifying leopard seals and killer whales trying to devour the protagonist and his friends are so intense as to guarantee nightmares; the PG rating is a joke since the film is wildly inappropriate for young viewers under seven (and their parents). Rather than sending you out of the theatre with a song in your heart (there’s a big focus in the script on “heart songs”) the movie produces feelings of fright, discomfort, even guilt. The title “Happy Feet,” suggesting a feel-good frolic, could hardly be more deceptive for a deeply ill-considered project that will make most audience members feel gloomier and more depressed than they did when they entered the theatre.

2) The propagandistic theme suggests that the biggest menace for the lovable penguins is the human race --- stealing the fish on which the birds depend, or ruining planet earth through pollution and global warming. There’s also scenes of a penguin captured for a zoo and tormented to the point of mental incapacity by unfeeling people Many classic animated films (even “Bambi”, or the recent “Open Season” and “Over the Hedge)” featured the equation animals=good/humans=bad but no movie for kids has gone so far in trying to induce guilt for membership in species homo sapiens.

3) There’s also a bizarre anti-religious bias operating unmistakably and gratuitously in the film. The penguin protagonist (known as “Mumbles Happy Feet”) finds himself harshly treated by the aged leaders of the flock, who worship a false God called “the Great Wind” and decry and persecute anyone who dares to challenge their “sacred” traditions. The voice of Robin Williams (in one of his two parts) also portrays a great religious guru and sage who turns out to be a complete phony, with no special knowledge of any kind. When intrepid penguins finally make contact with the “aliens” (otherwise known as humans) the first menacing structure they see is a church.

4) As in so many other recent films, there’s a subtext that appears to plead for endorsement of gay identity. Mumbles (the voice of Elijah Wood) displeases his parents and the leaders of his community because he’s born different, and makes an impassioned plea that he can’t possibly change – and they should accept him as he is.

Aside from all the politically correct messages, the movie remains singularly depressing, frustrating, scary and disturbing. An ardent love affair is frustrated for no apparent reason, with the main character’s inamorata choosing a crude, fat penguin she cares nothing about and producing many progeny. The movie’s conclusion – with tap=dancing penguins somehow persuading humankind to go to the U.N. (the United Nations Building even makes an appearance) to protect the Antarctic food chain-- makes no sense at either the emotional or plot-coherence level.

In short, “Happy Feet” comprises a strikingly downbeat evening (or afternoon) at the multiplex – an appalling waste of both time and money for patrons who will expect a far more cheerful, cold-climate-but-warm-hearted experience. The last time a major studio launched a comparably misleading ad campaign, they tried to sell Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby” as a Rocky-in-sports-bra/noble underdog boxing movie--- deliberately hiding its intense assisted suicide theme. For “Happy Feet,” they seem to hide the movie’s darker, dysfunctional messages and to ignore its questionable elements for innocent kids.

With this posting, consider yourself warned: “Happy Feet” deserves designation as “Crappy Feet” and counts as one of the biggest disappointment of the onrushing holiday season.

According to conventional wisdom, racism accounts for the persistent and profound disparities in economic success among various ethnic groups in this society. If that’s the case, however, how can one explain the shocking extent of the “Asian advantage”?

New data from the Census Bureau shows Asian-Americans leading the way in earning capacity. While “Whites,” still a heavy majority in the United States, earned median household income of $50,622 in 2005, “Asians” easily and substantially outdid them, bringing home median household income of $60,367. This disparity – amounting to a difference of nearly $10,000 – proves all the more surprising considering the fact that Asians are more than three times more likely than Whites to be foreign born – usually an indicator of financial difficulty rather than economic success.

How can one explain the Asian advantage?

Surely, it has nothing to do with racism, or discrimination against the white majority. Considering the recent history (and present persistence) of anti-Asian prejudice (remember the infamous “Macaca” remark?), no one can suggest that Americans of Asian ancestry outperformed whites because of bigotry or ethnic favoritism in their behalf.

To explain the success of Asian Americans one most turn, rather, to family structure, personal values, and cultural influences. Obviously, these factors play the dominant role in determining the success and failure of all ethnic groups in the society.

If racism alone can’t explain Asian prosperity relative to Whites, then why should we assume that racism alone explains African-American and Latino under-performance relative to Whites? The same factors that make Asians so disproportionately successful – solid family structure, cultural emphasis on hard work and reverence for education – may well work against the efforts by other minority groups to “catch up” in relation to the White majority.

Values matter – and the persistence of racism can’t undo the impact of functional values on Asian households, nor can recent reductions in racism make up for the dysfunctional values in too many black and Hispanic homes. Ultimately, prosperity for all ethnic groups in the United States depends on the behavioral norms and family commitments embraced by those groups in both intimate and public settings.

For forty years, Arab propaganda has concentrated on perpetrating a pernicious myth about the modern state of Israel. Unfortunately, these endlessly repeated lies have helped convince even some of Israel’s well-wishers that the Jewish state originated through some guilty, suspect process. As a caller to my radio show described this pseudo-history today: “After all, you can’t deny the fact that the Jews drove the Arabs from their land.”

Of course, you can deny that “fact,” because it’s not true in any sense.

Three incontestable realities give the lie to the notion that Israel pushed Arabs off their ancestral homes.

1). Contrary to the ignorant blather of Iranian President Ahmadinejad, the re-establishment of a Jewish state in the ancient land of Israel did not take place as a result of the Holocaust (which he denies anyway). A significant Jewish community survived and even thrived in the ancestral homeland for more than three thousand years, despite repeated attempts to destroy and exile the children of Israel. The modern program of re-settlement and nation-building began in earnest in 1881, and by the time Hitler began his slaughter of Jews in Europe, 600,000 Jews had already moved to Israel and established hundreds of flourishing communities. When the United Nations partitioned the land to establish one Jewish state and one Palestinian state (a solution accepted by Jewish leaders, but not by Arabs) the Jews (according to all census data) represented a clear majority in the land assigned to them.

2). In all the 67 years of significant Jewish settlement prior to UN recognition of the new State of Israel, the Jews made no attempt whatever to “drive the Palestinians from their land.” In fact, the official British population statistics show that between World War I and World War II, Jewish population increased by 470,000, but the non-Jewish population rose by a staggering 588,000. In other words, far from “driving Palestinians away,” the new Jewish settlers welcomed new Palestinian settlers by the hundreds of thousands --- drawn to that tiny corner of the Middle East because of the economic progress that the arriving Zionists made possible. The land that Jewish settlers and builders acquired was never seized (the ruling Turks and their British successors never authorized seizure); it was purchased—most of it (73% of all acquisitions between 1880 and 1948) from large Arab landowners.

3). During all the years of Zionist settlement prior to the UN Partition plan in 1947, there were no Palestinian refugees-- none!--- though there were hundreds of thousands of new Palestinian arrivals into the future land of Israel. The refugee problem only began once the Palestinian leadership, and then the five surrounding Arab states, declared war on Israel and tried to slaughter or expel the Jewish population. For the most part, the 600,000 Palestinian refugees simply ran away from the fighting – fighting that was unequivocally launched by Arabs, not Jews. In other words, it wasn’t Jewish settlement that caused the refugee problem; it was, rather, the Arab refusal to accept any Jewish presence in the Middle East.

That refusal remains the core of the conflict. Regardless of minor adjustments in Israeli or US policy, there will be no comprehensive peace in the Middle East as long as Arabs (and other Muslims) refuse to recognize the right of the Jewish people to the reborn, ancient homeland which they have restored over the course of 120 years, and defended with singular courage, determination and sacrifice in six major wars.

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For additional information providing a corrective to current distortions about the Middle East, please check out CD versions of my special broadcasts “Why They Fight: Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict” and “Five Middle Eastern Wars.” Both are available through Tree Farm Communications, 800-468-0464.

The recent elections produced numerous successes for Democratic Jewish candidates but simultaneously delivered setbacks for the state of Israel.

Democrats of Jewish ancestry like the new Senators Ben Cardin of Maryland and Bernie Sanders of Vermont turned up among the most conspicuous winners – increasing the number of Jewish Senators by two (to fourteen) and Jewish House members by five. More importantly, Congressional veterans like Senator Barbara Boxer of California, Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Congressman Tom Lantos of California, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan wil take over the leadership of some of the most significant committees in both houses of Congress,l vastly increasing the number of Jewish committee chairs. In the outgoing Congress, only one Jew – Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee – headed a major committee in either house.

At the same time, friends of Israel acknowledge that the newly empowered Democrats are less committed to support for the Jewish state than the Republicans they replace. Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, told the New York Times about his disappointment in the election outcome since Mr. Bush represented “possibly the friendliest president we’ve ever had.” Meanwhile, the forty members of the House who most regularly criticize Israel and back the Palestinians are all Democrats. Four of those 40 – John Conyers of Michigan, John Dingell of Michigan, Nick Rahall of West Virginia and David Obey of Wisconsin —will now chair key committees. During the recent war, John Dingell went so far as to say that the United States shouldn’t take sides between the state of Israel and the terrorists of Hezbollah.

This anomaly – with Jewish Americans gaining power in the recent electoral shift, but the state of Israel losing influence – helps demonstrate the absurdity of claims by anti-Semites on the right and the left that “Zionists” or “Friends of Israel” somehow dominate our political system and pushed us into war in Iraq. As a matter of fact, the Jewish members of the House and Senate (who were evenly split on authorizing the liberation of Iraq) were less likely to back war than the non-Jewish members (who supported going to war by two to one).

Moreover, Jewish voters continue to back Democrats at the same time that the Donkey Party proves far more ambivalent toward Israel than the GOP. According to Gallup, when asked to choose whether they sympathized more with Israel or with the Palestinians, Democrats split up the middle, while Republicans backed Israel by more than five-to-one.

In the just concluded Congressional elections, however, exit polling shows that more than 70% of Jewish Americans stupidly and unforgivably voted for Democratic candidates. This demonstrates that liberalism—not loyalty to the Torah, or even concern for the state of Israel—represents the real religion of most American Jews.

There’s still plenty of confusion concerning the way that last week’s Democratic victory will impact our policy in Iraq but there’s no doubt at all about one domestic consequence: Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and company will succeed in keeping their campaign promise to raise the minimum wage. Voters in six states provided overwhelming margins for ballot initiatives lifting the lowest hourly wage above $5.15, and national polling shows majorities in excess of 80% favoring a major boost at the federal level. Pelosi has promised an immediate increase from $5.15 to 7.25 – in other words, mandating a 40% instant raise for that 2% of American workers (mostly very young, in entry level jobs) who currently earn the minimum. There’s no discussion, of course, as to how businesses that employ low-wage workers will pay for this increase without firing some of their employees (an inevitable consequence) or sharply raising prices and adding to inflation, or both.

The stampede to raise the minimum wage makes people feel good, righteous and generous—with other people’s money. There’s no way to stop it, unfortunately --- chastened Republicans (including the President) will hardly stand in the way of a wildly popular measure supported by the public by margins of more than four to one.

Nevertheless, it’s important to look at some of the economic realities behind this implacable but idiotic initiative in order to provide some perspective for the next battle to defend common sense.

During the campaign, soon-to-be House Speaker Pelosi declared: “Republicans have never hesitated to cut taxes for the wealthiest few but they have refused to give America’s workers a raise for nearly a decade…. That’s immoral, and Democrats will take our nation in a new direction by raising the minimum wage.” (Insert wild applause here).

There’s so much that’s wrong and dishonest in this slick sloganeering that it’s hard to know where to begin. On the most obnoxious level, the notion that Republicans “have refused to give America’s workers a raise for nearly a decade” is ludicrous on its face. For the 98% of Americans who work above minimum wage, there have been many raises in the last decade; in fact, the median wage earner brought home 4% more in September, 2006 than he did in September, 2005.

Even more significantly, the Pelosi propaganda attempts to suggest that both policy decisions she cites – cutting taxes and raising the minimum wage – involve taking funds from the same pile of money. The GOP position seems “immoral” because they give money to the “wealthiest few” with funds that could otherwise serve to give “America’s workers” a raise.

The stupidity and dishonesty in this notion should appall all fair-mined people, Republican and Democrat alike. Neither cutting taxes nor raising the minimum wage involves the government spending money. The government, after all, doesn’t have its own money. The Feds don’t make money, they simply take money – from taxpayers. A tax cut involves a decision to take less, not to give away more.

And the government does nothing to pay the costs of raising the minimum wage. Private business people, running small or large companies, bear the cost of such an increase, not the government. Pelosi’s attempt to suggest that there’s some connection between cutting taxes and raising the minimum wage makes as much sense as saying, “Hey, I’m upset because my boss isn’t paying more to the low end workers at our company, at the same time that my rich neighbor pays less in taxes.” You may want your neighbor to pay more to the government, while you also want your boss to pay more to his part-time janitors, but the connection between the two desires is non-existent.

In both cases – pushing for tax cuts (across the board, every time) while opposing raises in the minimum wage – Republicans took a stand for principle. What principle? The core conviction to which the GOP must passionately return: that shrinking government is good, while growing government is destructive. Letting people keep more of the money they earn themselves involves shrinking government – and diminishing its interference in our lives. Raising the minimum wage, however, increases the influence of government in our lives – and deserves resistance. If you’ve been paying some workers at the rate of $5.15 an hour and the government instantly inserts itself to demand that you most give them a 40% raise (or else fire them), this constitutes a huge intrusion of federal power in your private affairs.

Resistance may be futile at this point, but the issues behind the debate (as exemplified by Ms. Pelosi’s ditzy demagoguery) require our serious attention, even in a lost cause.

Many Republicans believed that the immigration issue would play a powerful role in helping them maintain their majorities – especially after the Congress finally validated the “enforcement first” approach and authorized the building of a 700 mile wall. Many candidates (including the admirable Rick Santorum) made a point of pushing hard on the immigration issue, accusing their Democratic opponents of favoring “amnesty” (because they supported an approach similar to that of the President, Senator McCain and half the Senate Republicans).

Regardless of the merits of the arguments on this issue, as a political strategy it flopped completely. Two of the most outspoken hardliners on the issue of illegals, Congressman J.D. Hayworth and one-issue radical Randy Graf, both got slaughtered by overwhelming margins in formerly Republican districts in Arizona—the state worst afflicted by the flood of unauthorized entrants. Arizona’s Democratic governor, who did demand more federal help for border security, drew denunciations from anti-immigration forces as a “squish” on the issue but won re-election with 63% of the vote. Arizona did pass several initiatives by overwhelming margins to take commonsense steps to deal with the flood of new arrivals-- establishing English as the official language, banning law suits by illegals, denying state aid for illegals in higher education, and so forth – but these were rational, practical steps that all conservatives (and many moderates and liberals) could easily support.

On the other side of the issue, no prominent supporter of comprehensive immigration reform or earned legalization suffered the predicted dire consequences at the polls. The notion that immigration constituted a hot button concern that would mobilize millions for hard line Republicans, and punish their opponents at the poll, produced not a single example in all the House and Senate and governorship races. The most visible pro-immigrant Republican in the country, Arnold Schwarzenegger, also proved to be the most visible GOP success on Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, the exit polling showed the devastating impact of the Republican association with immigrant-bashing. Of all the major groups in the population (with more than thirty identified by pollsters), none shifted as significantly, as disastrously from GOP support in 2004 to Democratic support in 2006 than Hispanics. Republicans lost 8% of their overall white-Anglo support, and maintained the same meager level of Afro-American support, but gave up a staggering 30% of the Hispanic support they labored so hard to win in 2004. Lop-sided Latino margins for Democrats proved decisive in numerous House and Senate races. Hispanics will comprise rapidly increasing segments of the American electorate. Any party that risks driving these people away en masse—alienating 30% of its prior supporters in just two years! – runs a very real risk of extinction.

The exit polling on issues further confirmed the sad impact of the immigration issue. When asked to name the issues that concerned them most, respondents chose corruption, the economy, Iraq, terror and other biggies, with illegal immigration finishing last among the major options. Only 30% identified it as a significant issue AND, even among those who viewed immigration as a top concern, the votes split almost down the middle: 52% for Republicans, 46% for Democrats. If half the people who felt worried over illegal immigration chose the party of Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy, then the current Republican tough guy posture clearly isn’t working.

In talk radio, hosts and listeners talk endlessly about the need to curb the “invasion” from the south but the argument that this issue represented some magic bullet to save endangered conservatives disappeared along with the GOP majorities.

SAVING ELECTIONS FROM FRINGIES AND FANATICS

The Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for their stinging electoral setbacks on Tuesday, and it’s neither honorable nor conservative to explain our own failures by criticizing the folly of others. Nevertheless, some of the high profile disasters suffered by the GOP once again illustrate the consistently insane and destructive role of fringe parties in American politics.

At the conclusion of a long night of counting, control of the US Senate (and through the Senate, potential control of the Supreme Court for decades to come) came down to two cliffhanger races in Virginia and Montana. In both contests, the Democrats appeared to prevail, giving them the barest of majorities in the Senate (and dominance of the all important Judiciary Committee). And in both states, third part eccentrics played a decisive role in the final outcome.

In Virginia, Democrat Jim Webb appeared to beat Republican Incumbent George Allen by a tiny margin of less than 7.000 votes. Meanwhile, 26,000 votes went to the “Common Sense Conservative” candidate of the mighty Grass Roots Party, who identified herself as Gail “For Rail” Parker. If two-out-of-three of the votes that went to this devoutly Christian, retired Air Force Officer (whose big issue was building more train lines) would otherwise have gone to George Allen, then her utterly meaningless candidacy handed control of the Senate to Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, and Barbara Boxer.

Montana provides an even more alarming example. Democratic John Tester beat the Republican incumbent Conrad Burns by a margin of less than 3,000 votes. At the same time, Libertarian standard bearer Stan Jones drew 10,324 votes. In general, Libertarians draw more than two-thirds of their votes directly from Republicans. Once again, the Stan Jones juggernaut (which earned an anemic 2.6% of the total vote) drew more than enough support to change the course of history for the worse.

The amazing revelation for the 10,324 suckers who voted for Mr. Jones is that they cast ballots for an individual so dazed and confused that he couldn’t even recall the office for which he was a candidate. On the day after the election, a visit to the “Stan Jones for Senate” website featured the headline: STAN JONES- LIBERTARIAN FOR U.S. SENATE. Immediately below that headline appeared a statement from the candidate that began as follows: “For many years I have recognized that something is vitally wrong with our government. We seem to vote for people who promise to improve things. But regardless of who we vote for we get the same thing- more government and higher taxes. I’m running for Governor to drastically reduce state government.”

Actually, Stan, you weren’t running for Governor – you were running for U.S. Senator. The headline less than two inches above your statement says so.

Nevertheless, later in his manifesto the honorable Mr. Jones declares: “I won’t hesitate to issue blanket pardons when the legislature passes unnecessary laws over my veto or fails to repeal bad laws.” Actually, Senators don’t get to veto anything, or pardon anybody. Elsewhere on his website, Stan Jones brags about his “study of the constitution.” Maybe further study will help clarify the different roles of U.S. Senator and governor of Montana.

But then again, when you’ve got no chance of winning anything, who really cares about the difference between executive and legislative, Senator and Governor?

For those who protest that Stan Jones inadvertently re-cycled some previous statement of candidacy from some previous (and doubtless pathetic) gubernatorial race, I’ll concede that’s probably true. But his failure even to proofread his own letter “To The People of Montana” declaring his candidacy, and to adjust its language for his current campaign, demonstrates just how little effort or thought or care he actually put into his race for the Senate. He simply didn’t take his campaign seriously enough to specify the right office in his statement of candidacy. And yet 10,324 duped voters took him seriously enough to use their precious, sacred franchise to mark their ballots for a lazy, sloppy lunatic.

Any time some fringe party gets a line on the ballot it will draw votes – which is why the system must be changed to make it far more difficult for eccentric parties to win a place on general election ballots. Primaries are different, of course. The primary is the first round in the process and anyone can and should run, with wide open access to the ballot. Let any loon-dog party get a shot at the primary voters, but then limit a place on the general election ballot to those parties that made at least some vaguely respectable showing by drawing some serious level of support (say, 5%) among primary voters. That means the Ross Perots and Jesse Venturas and even Kinky Friedmans (and Joe Liebermans) would still earn their names on November ballots, but that the Gail “For Rail” Parkers and Stan Joneses would not.

Some activists complain that we already make it too hard for third and fourth and ninth party candidates, but actually the current system discriminates against the major party contenders. As a Republican or Democrat, you can only earn a spot in the general election by first generating substantial support (enough to beat your opponents) in the primary. That means that some candidates who win tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of votes will still lose in the primaries and fail to appear on November ballots. If you’re running as a Losertarian, however, or a representative of the Green weenies, or the Constipation Party, you’ll seldom face primary opposition (what sort of crazed narcissist actually wants such embarrassing nominations?) so you can qualify for the general election with a dozen primary votes or less. You get to play in the general election without going through one of the toughest ordeals of the election process. Why should we make it harder for a Republican or Democrat to qualify for the November sweepstakes than it is for weirdo fringies with zero chance of victory?

In two formerly Republican Congressional districts in Texas and Florida, the GOP candidates couldn’t get their names on the final ballot, despite massive support (they both nearly won, after replacing disgraced former Congressmen Tom Delay and Mark Foley. Meanwhile, kooks and crazies with a few dozen supporters got their names into the general election, and didn’t have to ask their supporters for write-in support.

Democracy needs to remain open and free-wheeling, allowing for the possibility of some oddball or idealist to come out of nowhere to shake up the status quo. The way to maintain that openness is to make primary access easy. But a place in the general election is a different matter, and it ought to be earned: you don’t make it to the finals in any sport unless you’ve done well enough in the first qualifying round.

The egomaniacs who get their jollies by running oddball campaigns for high office have a right to their dreams and their obsessions, but the rest of us have a right to a sane political selection process that’s free (in its final, all important stages) from distortion, distraction and destruction by self-indulgent fools with no real support.

No votes have been counted yet, and most votes haven’t even been cast, but we can already identify the biggest single winner in tomorrow’s election.

His name is Joe Lieberman, and his guaranteed landslide victory (crushing a much-touted leftwing partisan with strong Democratic Party support and unlimited funds) should help inspire new thinking about the direction of both parties, regardless of the final outcome of the struggle for Congressional control.

Mainstream media will tout Joe’s victory as a triumph for “moderation,” but that’s a fraud. Lieberman is no moderate, and he’s certainly no conservative. He’s a lifelong liberal (with most liberal organizations giving him a lifetime voting record rating of 75% or higher, and no conservative organization rating him higher than 30%) with an independent streak.

The reason that Lieberman- who failed so miserably in the Democratic primary-- managed to take command of the race as an independent candidate is precisely that word “independent” associated with his campaign. Voters in Connecticut and across the country feel disgusted with both major parties, with ideological turf wars, with constant political bickering, with negative campaign ads (86% respond badly to such ads, according to Gallup), with the take-no-prisoners attitude that’s become part of Washington culture. Republicans in Congress found themselves horribly unpopular at the beginning of this campaign not because the public rejected conservatism (nearly twice as many Americans still identify themselves as conservative as call themselves liberal) but because the GOP looked more partisan, more vicious, more divisive. The main reason the election has tightened so conspicuously (according to Gallup, generic Congressional preference went from a 23% Democratic advantage on September 15th to a mere 7% advantage—and falling – on November 4) is that Democrats have caught up with Republicans in partisanship and shrill messages. Their angry, relentless Bush-bashing and efforts to portray Republicans as villainous scum have, very clearly, backfired. The more they’ve turned up the volume of their negativity, the more people have abandoned their cause and, in many cases, gone back to their GOP roots (since the Dems hardly offered a kinder, gentler alternative).

People liked it when George W. promised to change the tone in Washington as a “uniter, not a divider” and they also liked it when Bill Clinton campaigned as “a New Democrat” who’d go beyond partisanship and ideological purity. Americans did not respond well, however, when Newt Gingrich proved willing to shut down the government to prove a point, or when Republicans tried to impeach Clinton, or when Al Gore (who should have won handily as the candidate of peace and prosperity) cast the election as a stark choice between “the people and the powerful.”

Lieberman’s message in Connecticut may not count as ideologically moderate, but it sounds reasonable and friendly and grown up: he’s going to come back to Washington to help to promote a more cooperative, harmonious atmosphere in the Senate. In other words, if we can’t quite live up to Dr. King’s dream, let’s at least honor the vision of Dr. Rodney (“Can’t we all get along?”) King. The disgust with both political parties and the sense that they’re both too nasty, angry, combative and negative, is so palpable that it raises an obvious question: if the people do truly want a more cooperative, non-partisan tone, why don’t some smart politicians (other than Senator Joe-mentum) give it to them?

The answer is strikingly obvious and reflects the essential genius of Karl Rove. In a closely divided nation, turnout is everything: when only 40% of eligible voters typically bother to vote in midterm elections, getting a mere 10% more of your base to the polls will probably be enough to swing any race. And even though the squishy “independents” and “undecideds” (who usually make up the biggest group in any election) may feel turned off by strident partisan appeals, it’s tough to mobilize your base without them. Rhetoric about good government and high-minded non-partisanship and putting patriotism above party and so forth, may make most people feel proud and warm and comfortable but it won’t necessarily get them to drive to the polls, wait in line in the rain, and cast ballots. By the same token, in primary elections (dominated by proudly partisan and ideologically driven Democrats and Republicans) people who talk about cooperation and conciliation and a new spirit of consensus and kum-ba-ya usually get bulldozed by their angrier-than-thou opponents.

Nevertheless, some of the biggest winners of this election season have managed to escape the temptations of ideological purity and go-for-the-throat/slaughter-our-enemies strategy and to emerge as national rock stars in the process. Consider the Governator in California—about to win a landslide victory in the bluest-of-blue states, and likely to take some of his GOP running mates with him because of his broad coat tales (yes, his physique requires broad coats). And consider Barack Obama – though not on the ballot anywhere, he’s clearly one of the big gainers of the political year 2006. He achieved this stunning, across-the-board appeal not only due to his compelling personal story and undeniable charisma (both factors for Arnold, as well) but because of his finely crafted, reasonable-sounding, on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand approach to discussing issues. Republican Michael Steele of Maryland, another potential big winner tomorrow as a candidate for US Senate, also deserves attention for his astonishingly strong campaign and cross-party appeal in an overwhelmingly Democratic State.

Whatever the final outcome of the partisan battle, it’s painfully obvious that the country at large longs for a fresh approach, for less angry voices. Even if the Republicans maintain their majorities in both houses (it’s still possible) they need to concentrate on finding these voices (especially with a new Senate Republican leader, due to Frist’s departure). It’s hardly too late for the regrouping GOP to develop its own version of Joe-mentum before the even bigger showdown of 2008.

Regardless of the final outcome of the fiercely fought Congressional elections of November 7, it would be an exaggeration to say that they provide evidence of some massive shift in American politics. One important number to keep in mind: even if Democrats do end up capturing 22 Republican seats – a very optimistic result from their point of view-- and taking control of the House of Representatives, that still means that 90% of Republican House Seats would remain in Republican hands. A shift of 10% of your seats—or of 5% of total House seats—hardly amounts to a sea change, or a tidal wave, especially when compared to similar elections in the past. In the sixth year of Presidencies, following a chief executives triumphal re-election, the opposition party since the New Deal ear has gained an average of 33 seats. Even the master politician FDR lost a staggering 80 seats to resurgent Republicans in 1938. Only Bill Clinton gained seats in this situation—he won 6 in ’98 because of public disillusionment with impeachment, but the opposition party kept control of both Houses of Congress. If the party of President Bush loses less than 33 seats in the House and 5 in the Senate it will have beaten the odds and done better than average in this situation.

This doesn't mean that Democratic takeovers are inevitable -- in either the House or the Senate. With decent turnout, the GOP can and will protect its majorities in both parties. But even if the dispirited base refuses to come out and vote, if Republicans succeed in battling the historical tides that engulfed FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon-Ford, and Reagan, and keeping their losses to a reasonable minimum, any talk about a new "Democratic majority" in this sharply divided country will amount to pure hokum.

Today’s media obsession involves the apparently disgusting behavior of one Ted Haggard, who just resigned as President of the National Association of Evangelicals. Four days before an election, we don’t talk about the startling new unemployment figures (the best in five years!) or progress against North Korea (winning concessions no one expected). Instead, we’re treated to excruciating detail about a pastor from a Colorado Springs mega-church who admits that he purchased methamphetamines and received massages from a gay prostitute.

Isn’t the partisan agenda utterly transparent in the intense attention focused on this story? Very few Americans had ever heard of Haggard before the scandal broke yesterday; he is in no sense a household name. He is not a candidate for any public office, nor has he played an especially visible role in this election. Had these charges been made against a liberal pastor, or an atheist activist of any stripe, it’s hard to believe that cable news networks would cover the story as if it were deeply significant?

The purpose of the Haggard focus is to remind everyone of Mark Foley, the media “Golden Oldie” from a few weeks ago. The cherished theme – that Republicans and conservatives only pretend to honor morality, but actually behave horribly in their private lives – gets big time re-enforcement from Haggard’s heinousness. Just as the Foley Fiasco managed to stop Republican momentum a month ago, so the tawdry Ted-stuff is supposed to stop the current surge toward the GOP in key races across the country?

It may work, alas, even though the media bias emerges as ugly and undeniable.

Two other recent examples turned up in two recent headlines in USA TODAY, a newspaper that generally tries to be more impartial than many of its shamelessly leftist counterparts.

On Monday, October 30^th, USA TODAY ran the following headline: MINORITY ENROLLMENT IN COLLEGE STILL LAGGING, but the substance of the article told a totally different story: minority enrollment rose by 50.7% between 1993 and 2003, while white enrollment went up only 3.4%. Every minority group saw huge gains --- with Hispanic enrollment up by a staggering 70%, while Native American students at four year institutions increased by 50%, signaling a “major shift.” Overall, 47.3% of white high school graduates attend college, vs. 41.1% of black high school graduates – a remarkable and encouraging closing of the once huge racial gap. Rather than suggesting that minority college attendance was “still lagging,” the accurate headline would have declared: MINORITY ENROLLMENT IN COLLEGE SURGING.

Another headline similarly distorted the contents of a major article. On November 1, the Life Section of USA TODAY proclaimed: “MAINLINE PULLS IN PROTESTANTS; Pews are Filling Up in Some Churches.” I ended up reading the whole piece because it looked like a reversal of a long-standing trend in which the only gains in Protestant church membership involved Evangelical, not Mainline denominations. But rather than a shift in that trend, the numbers in the article itself actually confirmed the Evangelical increases, and the simultaneous declines for Mainline denominations. United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (very much considered a Mainline, moderate-liberal denomination, despite its name), Presbyterian Church USA, Episcopal Church, Disciples of Christ, and the ultra liberal United Church of Christ ALL lost members between 1995 and 3004. Meanwhile, Southern Baptist Convention, the Mormons, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Assemblies of God all gained membership in the same time period. In other words, far from showing that “MAINLINE PULLS IN PROTESTANTS,” a more accurate headline would have declared, “MAINLINE LOSING MEMBERS; while Evangelicals and others continue to grow.”

What, precisely, is the agenda here? It’s the same point of view that leads to the heavy Haggard focus: anything to make Evangelicals and religious conservatives look hypocritical or irrelevant. And the headline over “lagging” minority enrollment when that enrollment actually surged, goes along with the basic script that injustice has only gotten worse under Bush, and that America remains a bigoted, unfair nation that needs sweeping new government programs to help us achieve equality.

Media bias remains a constant problem in mainstream publications and TV networks but in the run-up to a crucial election it becomes especially notable and destructive.

  Now that John Kerry has apologized (sort of) for his clumsy and insulting comments showing his contempt (and pity) for Americans in Iraq, it might be time for America's "Journal of Record" to offer an apology of its own for horribly dishonest reporting of this episode.

  On November 2, Kate Zernike offered a "Political Memo" in which she suggested that the whole dispute came down to Kerry's inadvertent failure to pronounce one crucial word. "But with a single word- or a single word left our of what was supposed to be a laugh line direced at the president - Mr. Kerry has become a punching bag again, for Republicans and his party," she wrote.

  A single word? Could conservatives really be so ruthless and ridiculous as to raise all this ruckus over the accidental omission of a solitary syllable?

  Zernike repeats this descripition of the controversy later in her piece: "Mr. Kerry's prepared remarks to California students on Monday called for him to say, "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush." In his delivery he dropped the word 'us.'"

  This is a laughable distortion of reality, and Ms. Zernike needs to correct the record as soon as possible. "In his delivery he dropped the word, 'us.'"? Even if you believe the dubious claim that some speechwriter had written the inane and unfunny joke referenced above (a joke which I believe was thrown together retroactively, to try to get Kerry off the hook), he clearly "dropped" more than as single word.

  His actual statement came out as follows: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't you get stuck in Iraq."

  Sorry, but these two statements are NOT identical save for the single crucial word :"us." They include only 11 matching words, while 23 words from the purported "original text" never actually passed Kerry's lips.

  The video of his speech shows a lame politician ad-libbing with a friendly crowd; it does not depict a speaker who's fumbling with a prepared text. As a former political speechwriter (1970-74), I can attest to the fact that any campaign professional who put together a "joke" as illogical and nonsensical as the one composed for the phoney "prepared text" would deserve immediate termination for incompetence and malfeasance. The bit about people who "don't study" who "aren't smart," getting themselves elected Presdient and then "getting US stuck in a war in Iraq" isn't funny and makes no sense.

  Kerry's actual comments are also painfully unfunny, but at least they make sense: many folks on the left share the mistaken conviction that our active duty military is populated by people with limited education and few life alternatives.

  In the Nixon administration (which Kerry no doubt fondly remembers) sagacious commentators originated the platitude, "the coverup is worse than the crime." In Kerry's case, he's also been ruined by the attempt to cover-up his embarrassing gaffe, by the insistence even now that he was somehow "misinterpreted," and by the claim that ordinary Americans are simply too stupid to understand the true profundity originally intended sparkling witticism. He easily could have conceded that he simply mispoke, and acknowledged that he felt appalled and embarrassed when he heard the tape showing the way his unscripted words came out. Instead, the klutzy spinning harms the Senator's image even more than the initial insipidity, and the New York Times stands disgraced in its outright lie in support of Kerry's cracked and dishonest version of the whole sorry affair.    

Because of its timing, Senator Kerry’s outrageously dismissive statement about uneducated losers who “get stuck” in Iraq struck me in a distinctly personal way. We had just celebrated the wedding of one of our best friends, “Marine Mike,” with a riotous ceremony involving 300 people and then, the next night, a dinner for 30 at our home. In Jewish tradition, the Bride and Groom don’t disappear on honeymoons—they stay in the community where they’ll make their life, and go from one festive dinner to another at the homes of their closest friends on each night of the first week of their marriage. Mike and his new wife Bluma are, by the way, remarkably wonderful people – she’s a PhD and therapist with a passion for helping people, and he’s a licensed civil engineer with a prestigious degree from the University of Washington. Mike has also volunteered to serve his country on three different tours of duty in the Middle East—the first one with the Marine Corps (where he rose to rank of Staff Sergeant and fought in the first Gulf War) and the last two with the Air Force Reserve. He’s more typical than many liberals might realize of the outstanding young people who fight for the rest of us in Iraq – and nearly all of whom believe passionately in the importance of their mission. The idea that Mike and his buddies “got stuck” in Iraq because they had no alternatives is beyond insulting, and shows the Democratic tendency to view the military as more worthy of pity than respect.

When we gathered for dinner toasting Mike and Bluma on Monday night, John Kerry had just made his outrageous comments that may yet sway these Congressional elections (see my full-length Wednesday column for analysis) and the controversy hadn’t yet grabbed media attention. These strands of drama and politics and life cycle events do have a way of coming together, however—and this week has already provided its share of significant confluences. Just hours before we welcomed our guests for the post-wedding dinner, my irrepressible fourteen year old son broke his arm at school by falling off the top of a human pyramid he had assembled with friends; he and Diane spent six hours in the hospital, but the surgery appears to have been blessedly successful. Meanwhile, on a far more grim and serious note, a member of our small congregation in the Seattle area got on his motor cycle on the way home from another party and suffered a fatal accident before he got home. The funeral took place today.

Death, injury, healing, love, marriage, new beginnings, celebrations, idiotic imprecations against our servicemen on the even of fateful elections. Tomorrow I fly to California to speak at the Reagan Library. Dramatic moments seem to collide in this eventful and, perhaps auspicious Autumn – and it’s a privilege to watch them come together.

It’s always gratifying to watch a truly awful movie flopping horribly at the box office but several extra-cinematic factors make the disastrous reception for “Death of a President” even more enjoyable than usual.

The British import drew intense attention (and widespread condemnation) for mixing news footage and staged interviews to portray the assassination of George W. Bush, and the subsequent power grab by President Cheney, in October, 2007. After a tumultuous but mostly positive response at the Toronto Film Festival, glowing reviews from the Roger Ebert website and other mainstream critical voices, and intense controversy (including a combative appearance by director Gabriel Range on the Michael Medved Show) that provided priceless publicity, the film opened on Friday not with a bang, but with a whimper. The much ballyhooed pseudo-documentary entered a grand total of $167,000 on 91 screens across the country, for 27^th place on the weekly box-office list and an anemic per screen average of just $1,835 – a shockingly low figure for a “prestige” project available mostly at selective art house venues. By contrast, the top film in the country last weekend, “Saw III,” averaged a robust $10,830 for its 3,167 screens. Even the low-budget, critically dismissed Christian football movie, “Facing the Giants,” drew a $2,010 average on its 393 screens and has already earned $6.3 million dollars in five weeks—many times to the total possible take for “Death of a President.” In terms of theatrical distribution in the U.S., the assassination fantasy remains unlikely to crack $1 million in box office receipts, and may fail to recoup even its own modest production budget.

The failure of the film carries two important lessons for entertainment executives as well as political pundits.

First, it’s time to retire or terminate the inane, shopworn theory that suggests that controversy guarantees publicity, and publicity guarantees box office success. “The Last Temptation of Christ,” perhaps the most controversial film in movie history, should have discredited this logic 18 years ago. Despite a blaze of top-of-the-news global conflict over the film, and unprecedented attention from magazines, TV news broadcasts, newspapers, preachers, and demonstrations that drew tens of thousands of participants, the movie fizzled at the multiplex, failing to earn back even its modest production budget of $6 million. “Death of a President” similarly provoked intense praise and widespread denunciation (even Hillary Clinton condemned it without seeing it) but failed abjectly in getting people to invest their money to see the actual film. Newmarket, the American distribution company for “Death of a President” (or DOAP), had scored spectacular success with another bitterly debated release, “The Passion of the Christ,” so they liked the idea of commentators going back and forth with complaint and commendation concerning their new, relentlessly mediocre movie. The executives probably assumed that just as it was easy to sell Jesus to a public already predisposed to love the Man from Nazareth, so to it would be easy to sell the Bush assassination to a populace already full of hatred to the man from Crawford, Texas.

That’s the other big lesson from the DOAP fiasco: don’t over-estimate the power of Bush hatred. Critics might feel intrigued by the slick manipulation of imagery to make the shooting of the chief executive look authentic, but for ordinary Americans the world looks threatening and unstable enough without worry about the assassination of our leaders. That’s especially true for a tendentious, ultimately silly piece of work like DOAP: which suggests that the chief executive had it coming, and takes a sympathetic attitude toward the fictional shooter. He’s a grieving father (and a former Army major himself) who blames Bush for the death of his stalwart son in Iraq, and for “destroying” and “ruining” honor, decency and accountability in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

Bush-hatred may be a powerful force in the lives of many Americans, but it’s hard to base an entire movie on that singular, simplistic loathing – just as you can’t base an entire election campaign on distaste for George W. Bush when his name isn’t even on the ballot. The movie business learned this weekend about the limited usefulness of anti-administration rage as a tool for promoting a project. On next Tuesday, the political class may get a similar and related lesson about the waning utility of relentless Bush bashing as a simplistic and single-minded strategy for seizing control of the Senate and the House.