Category Archives: elections

The Team Player

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Being a team player means placing greater value on a team’s success than on individual achievement.

In sports it might mean passing up a chance to hit a home run when a sacrifice bunt is necessary.  In business it might mean supporting the competitor who got the job you wanted because the company is more important than one job, more important than one individual.

Sometimes being a team player means figure out what your team is.

The issue came up recently when Congresswoman Ann Wagner, who represents a district in eastern Missouri, announced she would support Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, who had the backing of former President Trump, for Speaker of the House just days after she said she would “absolutely not” support him.  She complained that when Jordan lost the original caucus vote to Congressman Steve Scalise, “He gave the most disgraceful, ungracious—I can’t call it a concession speech—of all time.”

Talk about a turnaround!

She justified her change by saying it is because she is a team player.

In baseball terms, she tore off her Cardinals uniform and put on one for the Cubs. Instantly.

More and more, though, it appears we don’t have teams in Washington.  We have tribes.  At least four of them: the extreme right tribe, the center right tribe, the center left tribe, and the extreme left tribe.

Jordan, whose record of getting bills passed is so thin it is, well, non-eixtent*, got the Republican conference’s majority vote as its candidate for Speaker—-but with substantial opposition, casting doubt on whether he could get the 217 Republican votes he needed to take the gavel. He came out of the conference caucus 65 votes short of what he needed in a floor vote. He and his supporters spent the days getting people like Wagner to turn around. But 65 votes was a whole lot of turning. And Jordan couldn’t do it.

Some of his opponents had the temerity to suggest that the Republican minority within the Republican majority might align with Democrats to pick a Speaker, an impracticality at the time because a Democrat in charge of a chaotic Republican House would be unable to bring sanity to the large room that seemingly needs to add padding to its walls and to rewrite its recently-rewritten dress code to include canvas blazers with long sleeves that tie in the back.

But give credit to those who have had the courage to suggest that the other side is not the enemy; they’re just friends who have different ideas.  And if they can find areas of agreement and move forward, it sure beats focusing on differences that stand in the way of service.

We do not mean to target Wagner in this entry because there are others who have misunderstood the concept of team when they proclaim in word and deed that they, too, are team players, an observation that applies to both of our political parties.  She just happened to use the phrase.

Minority Democrats, who have seemingly been inessential to the slim-majority Republicans and therefore beneath respect by them, have had the luxury of sitting back and watching the GOP House fall into a state of extreme disarray without addressing the possibly troublesome fringe of their own party and the mischief it might cause if Democrats regain control of the House—which a lot of pundits think the Republicans are proving should be the case.

It appears the only teams that matter in that climate are Republican and Democrat.  Anyone who has spent a lot of time inside the political system at the national or state level can understand how consuming that world becomes, so consuming that the real team is forgotten.

As we said earlier, there are four tribes in the House, not two teams.

Who IS the team?

Look in your mirrors.

Somebody in Washington or Jefferson City wants to be a team player?  The first step is to get rid of tribes. The second step is remembering who the team really is.

WE are the team.

Reaching across the aisle in a way that benefits the team more than it benefits any one tribe isn’t a crucifiable offense.

Was Jim Jordan interested in taking one for the team?  No, he was in it for Jim Jordan (and his big booster at the time).  And he lost three times, each time with fewer members of his own party supporting him.

So what is the team’s responsibility for straightening out the whole mess? Simple. Pay attention to what our congressional delegation is saying and doing and make sure that whomever we send to Washington next November is more loyal to country than to tribe and certainly more loyal to country than to a disgraceful former leader.

*The New Republic, an unabashedly liberal publication, said in its October 17 webpage entry,  “Jordan stands out among his predecessors and colleagues because he is not a real lawmaker… The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a project by Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, rates House members based on their legislative performance. In the 117th Congress, Jordan was tied for fourth place among the least effective lawmakers.

Jordan sponsored only a single bill in the last Congress—on social media censorship, a perennial issue among some conservatives—and it did not advance out of committee. He has never successfully drafted a bill that became law…Meredith Lee Hill, who covers all agriculture-related goings-on on Capitol Hill for Politico, reported that Jordan’s supporters pitched his speakership to agriculture-minded Republicans as the “best way to get the huge [Farm] bill to the floor” in what remains of this Congress’s term. As Hill noted, Jordan has never himself voted for a farm bill at any time in his career.”

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The Team Player 

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Being a team player means placing greater value on a team’s success than on individual achievement.

In sports it might mean passing up a chance to hit a home run when a sacrifice bunt is necessary.  In business it might mean supporting the competitor who got the job you wanted because the company is more important than one job, more important than one individual.

Sometimes being a team player means figure out what your team is.

The issue came up recently when Congresswoman Ann Wagner, who represents a district in eastern Missouri, announced she would support Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, who had the backing of former President Trump, for Speaker of the House just days after she said she would “absolutely not” support him.  She complained that when Jordan lost the original caucus vote to Congressman Steve Scalise, “He gave the most disgraceful, ungracious—I can’t call it a concession speech—of all time.”

Talk about a turnaround!

She justified her change by saying it is because she is a team player.

In baseball terms, she tore off her Cardinals uniform and put on one for the Cubs. Instantly.

More and more, though, it appears we don’t have teams in Washington.  We have tribes.  At least four of them: the extreme right tribe, the center right tribe, the center left tribe, and the extreme left tribe.

Jordan, whose record of getting bills passed is so thin it is, well, non-existent,* got the Republican conference’s majority vote as its candidate for Speaker—-but with substantial opposition, casting doubt on whether he could get the 217 Republican votes he needed to take the gavel. He came out of the conference caucus 65 votes short of what he needed in a floor vote. He and his supporters spent the days getting people like Wagner to turn around. But 65 votes was a whole lot of turning. And Jordan couldn’t do it.

Some of his opponents had the temerity to suggest that the Republican minority within the Republican majority might align with Democrats to pick a Speaker, an impracticality at the time because a Democrat in charge of a chaotic Republican House would be unable to bring sanity to the large room that seemingly needs to add padding to its walls and to rewrite its recently-rewritten dress code to include canvas blazers with long sleeves that tie in the back.

But give credit to those who have had the courage to suggest that the other side is not the enemy; they’re just friends who have different ideas.  And if they can find areas of agreement and move forward, it sure beats focusing on differences that stand in the way of service.

We do not mean to target Wagner in this entry because there are others who have misunderstood the concept of team when they proclaim in word and deed that they, too, are team players, an observation that applies to both of our political parties.  She just happened to use the phrase.

Minority Democrats, who have seemingly been inessential to the slim-majority Republicans and therefore beneath respect by them, have had the luxury of sitting back and watching the GOP House fall into a state of extreme disarray without addressing the possibly troublesome fringe of their own party and the mischief it might cause if Democrats regain control of the House—which a lot of pundits think the Republicans are proving should be the case.

It appears the only teams that matter in that climate are Republican and Democrat.  Anyone who has spent a lot of time inside the political system at the national or state level can understand how consuming that world becomes, so consuming that the real team is forgotten.

As we said earlier, there are four tribes in the House, not two teams.

Who IS the team?

Look in your mirrors.

Somebody in Washington or Jefferson City wants to be a team player?  The first step is to get rid of tribes. The second step is remembering who the team really is.

WE are the team.

Reaching across the aisle in a way that benefits the team more than it benefits any one tribe isn’t a crucifiable offense.

Was Jim Jordan interested in taking one for the team?  No, he was in it for Jim Jordan (and his big booster at the time).  And he lost three times, each time with fewer members of his own party supporting him.

So what is the team’s responsibility for straightening out the whole mess? Simple. Pay attention to what our congressional delegation is saying and doing and make sure that whomever we send to Washington next November is more loyal to country than to tribe and certainly more loyal to country than to a disgraceful former leader.

*The New Republic, an unabashedly liberal publication, said in its October 17 webpage entry,  “Jordan stands out among his predecessors and colleagues because he is not a real lawmaker… The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a project by Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, rates House members based on their legislative performance. In the 117th Congress, Jordan was tied for fourth place among the least effective lawmakers.

Jordan sponsored only a single bill in the last Congress—on social media censorship, a perennial issue among some conservatives—and it did not advance out of committee. He has never successfully drafted a bill that became law…Meredith Lee Hill, who covers all agriculture-related goings-on on Capitol Hill for Politico, reported that Jordan’s supporters pitched his speakership to agriculture-minded Republicans as the “best way to get the huge [Farm] bill to the floor” in what remains of this Congress’s term. As Hill noted, Jordan has never himself voted for a farm bill at any time in his career.”

1,078

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Heather Cox Richardson is a history professor at Boston College whose “Letters from an American” daily Substack newsletter place contemporary events within a historical context. USA Today named her one of its Women of the Year honorees last  year.

Joyce Vance is a former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and now a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in Law (criminal justice reform, criminal procedure, and civil rights are her specialties) at the University of Alabama School of Law.

We are borrowing from a couple of things they wrote when our immediately former president was arraigned on criminal charges on August 3.

Donald Trump is charged with crimes linked to the January 6, 2021 events at the United States Capitol.  Richardson cites the federal prosecutor for Washington D. C. is observing that Trump is the 1,078th person charged with federal crimes connected to those events. And he was arraigned in the same courtroom where many of those 1,077 others have appeared, or will appear.

She also cites Yale history professor Timothy Snyder, responding to defense claims that the charges infringe on Trump’s constitutionally-protected right to free speech even if his remarks were repeated lies.  The charges, however, appear not to attack his free speech remarks but instead focus on the greater issue of his illegal efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election.

Snyder thinks we should not be distracted from the real point of the charges: “That Trump will be tried for his coup attempt is not a violation of his rights. It is the fulfillment of his rights.  It is the grace of the American republic. In other systems, when your coup attempt fails, what follows is not a trial.”

We would add that in most failed coup attempts we have read about in our long life, what follows is a quick assumption of guilt and often a quick dispatching of what is called justice.

Richardson also notes in that day’s “letter,” that the arraignment took place on the same days that Republicans on the House Oversight Committee released a transcript of their interview with a Hunter Biden business associate that GOP committee members claim proves then Vice-President Biden was personally involved in some shady business deals involving Hunter.  She says the interview transcript undermines the Republicans’ claims although they’re overlooking that issue.

(If you want to read Richardsons full “letter,” you can find it at:

August 3, 2023 – by Heather Cox Richardson (substack.com)

Joyce Vance’s column, “Civil Discourse” says that, “Many people…have become inured to Trump’s behavior…A real problem with Trump is that there is just so much of it that he is exhausting. For some people it is easier to tune it out than it is to try to keep all of it in focus.”  But she says the people need to re-connect and follow the process by which these charges are dealt with “so they can assess the evidence and the proceedings for themselves…It is every American’s obligation to follow this process.”

One subtle thing she mentions is that in court, the former president is just “Mr. Trump,” a designation that applies generally to (male) trial participants.  No matter what your station is life is, or has been, you are equal in the eyes of the law to every other person who has gone through this process…Donald Trump was treated like anyone else in his position would be. Investigation having found that there is sufficient evidence of significant crimes, he has been charged by a grand jury. He now has the same opportunity to defend himself that anyone would have.”

She explains that, “Arraignment is usually a perfunctory matter, as it was for Trump… It is governed by Rule 10 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which requires that a defendant be advised of the charges against him and enter a plea to them. The traditional plea at the time of arraignment is one of not guilty. The defendant has not yet seen the government’s evidence against him—there is no informed basis for knowing whether the government can prove what it has charged. So it is no surprise that the plea Donald Trump entered…was one of not guilty.”

But this arraignment has an unusual twist, she says. While judges normally tell the defendants not to commit any new crimes while they are free on the streets, this instruction was different. The judge warned Trump not to try to influence a juror or witnesses.  If he violates that admonition, he could find himself sleeping on government-issues sheets at night and wearing government-issued clothes.

Was Trump listening to the Judge’s admonition?  Vance thinks he wasn’t. A day after he was released on pre-trial bond, Trump went on Truth Social and said, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

Vance says  on X (the former Twitter) that Trump crossed the line. “Free speech is one thing, but this is over the line. As a prosecutor, I’d be sorely tempted tomake a motion to removke Trump’s pre-trial bond and put him in custody. Let him explain it to the judge.”

Newsweek reports that Trump spokesperson has belittled Vance as “a moron (who) loses sleep because she has Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

So, apparently, does former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, the former lead prosecutor against former Trump aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, who says—in what until recently would be called a tweet—“Not addressing this will only cause it to metastasize with undue deadly risks.”

A Trump spokesman, not surprisingly, defended the threat as “the definition of political speech,” and then went into full Trump irrational rant, saying it “was in response to the RINO, China-loving, dishonest special interest groups and super PACs, like the ones funded by the Koch brothers and the Club for Growth.”

Forget getting out the hip boots, folks. It’s so deep that you’ll need a full body suit.

Friday night, assistants to federal prosecutor Jack Smith filed a notice with U. S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan expressing concerns Trump might improperly share evidence in the case on Truth Social. They urged the judge to order Trump to keep any evidence given to his lawyers by the prosecutors away from public view.

The judge ordered Trump’s lawyers to respond by 5 p.m. today.  When they asked for a three-day extension, she refused to let them have it—which set off another Trump tantrum aimed directly at the judge—not a wise thing even from a self-proclaimed stable genius:  “There is no way I can get a fair trial with the judge ‘assigned’ to the ridiculous Freedom of Speech/Fair Elections case. Everybody knows this, and so does she!”  It was all in capital letters, followed by more capitals announcing plans to seek a new judge and a new location for the trial.

We will be watching to see if the old saying manifests itself—Don’t poke a tiger with a twig.

The prosecution says it wants a speedy trial. Normally it’s the defendant that wants a speedy trial. But in this case, it’s to Mr. Trump’s political advantage to stretch the process as far as possible.

Both Richardson and Vance believe the most important charge against Trump is the final one—the one Vance says “tears at my heart….the conspiracy by an American president to take awy our right to vote…and to have one’s vote counted.”

Vance concludes that a dozen people in the courtroom will decide Trump’s fate but all of us are a “jury in the court of public opinion.”

“The outcome of the 2024 election really is every inch the most important election of our lives. The indictment itself is not evidence, but it lays out the narrative of the facts we saw unfold before our eyes and helps us make sense of the crimes that Trump is charged with committing. It is an important document for every American to read. Not everyone will, but that’s where we can come in, sharing details, and helping people around us, understand the procedures that begin today. It’s the real work of saving the republic.”

You can read her full Civil Discourse insights at Arraignment – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance (substack.com)

Federal court rules do not allow live broadcast coverage of trials. But the standard is a rule, not a law and the exigent circumstances of this case, which will be a transcendant event in American history and will involve questions basic to the survival of our republic, should create an exception to the rule so that all of us canbe witnesses to these evens. It is of such overwhelming importance that our grandchildren’s grandchildren should be able to see and hear how our generation responded to this crisis.

We agree that the 2024 election will be “the most important election of our lives.”  It is far more important to all of us and to our nation as a whole that all of us pay close attention to the truth that emerges in the trial of 1708 than it is to give heed to anything the interpreters of that testimony on the left and the right want us to think.

 

 

 

No.  No?  Yes, No. (Corrected)

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(This story contains corrected information.  Former Congressman Richard Gephardt’s position on “No Labels” was incorrectly stated in the first version of this post as being part of the organization. This story clarifies his that he not only is not, but that he is opposed to it.)

The “No Labels” political party is beginning to form itself out of the fog of idealism announced several months ago.  It has drawn former Governor Jay Nixon into its ranks.  But former Congressman and futile (1988) presidential candidate Dick Gephardt wonders if the effort puts the anti-Trump movement in peril.

Organizers say the party is for people who are disgusted with what the long-dominant Republican and Democratic Parties have become and who want to have a middle-ground political outpost upon which to hang their hopes.

Gephardt, who was the House Majority Leader and in line to become Speaker before the Republican takeover ended that possibility, is part of one of three Democratic organizations hoping to stop the movement.

For those who claim that both parties are being run by their extreme wings, this group that has labeled itself the “No Labels” party might seem to be a refuge. But two Democratic groups, Third Way and MoveOn, want to put a stop to the “No Labels” movement because they fear it will sap votes away from the mainline Democratic ticket and hand the presidency back to Donald Trump.

A spokesman for Third Way says “No Labels” is “dangerous.”

Gephardt is part of a super political action committee called Citizens to Save our Republic.

Nixon has told the APs Steve Peoples that the opposition groups are entitled to their opinion but “No Labels” is “entitled to use our constitutional and statutory rights to allow American to have another choice.”

The question now becomes whether the party formed to be a middle ground can find a middle ground with three groups that want to snuff out its movement early.

Regardless of how this intra-party turmoil is resolved—if it can be resolved—“No Labels” adherents need to address, and quickly, what it stands for in terms of policies instead of being some kind of ill-defined safe house for the Middle.

If “No Labels” is to survive, it needs a surface identifier, a logo.. It’s not enough to say it stands for The Middle.

Sooner or later it will have to define itself in terms of positions on issues. And finding an acceptable middle of The Middle will become a difficult challenge.

But before then, there’s another crucial issue.

What will the party symbol be?  The William Jennings Bryan-William Howard Taft election of 1896 provided party adherents with symbols that are familiar to us today.

Earth & World, a website that specializes in lists and charts showing “different and unknown facts” about our planet has a list of the ten friendliest animals in the world. A new party certainly doesn’t want a threatening image (roaring lion, water buffalo, crocodile, vulture, shark, etc.).

Perhaps this guy would work (it is #1):

This is a Capybara,  E&W says they are “immensely social and trainable; thus a dear friend to everyone.” There are a couple of problems, however.  They’re not native to the United States.  And they are considered the world’s largest rodent.

Some cynical observers might find a large rat to be an appropriate emblem for a political party but we’re not going to go there today.  Mankind’s best friend, the dog, might be appropriate but who wants to be known as a member of “a dog of a party?” Besides, what kind of a dog would be most appropriate?  Pit Bulls might fit the wing nuts of either party.  But mainline folks night struggle with the dog to represet them. Something that is an edgy Golden Retriever might do.

A cross between a Golden Retriever and a German Shepherd might do.  DogTime.com told us Golden Shepherds are good watch dogs and all-around family companions, “not especially barky, they will alert when strangers approach. These dogs are protective of their loved ones and friendly with people, children, and other dogs.”

A few Golden Shepherds in Congress would be good to have right now. Replace a few Dobermans.

Number three on the E&W list is the Dolphin.  There’s some possibilities with that one. Intelligent. Communicative. Comfortable in deep water.

Number four is the cat. Not good. Nobody wants a party headquarters that would be known by detractors as the “cat house.”  Their independence is a good cat/bad cat value. But they cover up their own messes and government coverups should not be appreciated no matter how badly the mess smells. Then again, a litter-box trained politician might be better than some that we have now.

The Panda?  Nope.  We’ve enough trouble with the Chinese owning our farmland. A Chinese animal symbolizing one of our political parties is a Yangtze Bridge too far.

Rabbit?   No.  Rabbits are favorite food items for Hawks. And our national government in particular is full of hawks.  And we already have too many people, including a few in politics, who have rabbit-like moral standards.

Guinea pig?  They also are part of the rodent family.  Some people in the Andean part of Peru keep a lot of them in and around the house.  For food. Dinner-under-foot. Cuy (pronounced “kwee”) is considered a delicacy.

Horse.  The horse is one of the world’s most useful animals. Durable, unless they’re throughbreds.  Dependable.  That’s worth discussion.

Sheep.  Heavens, no.

Nixon has refused to criticize either Biden or Trump during the years since he left office. As far as becoming part of a party with no name, he says, “I feel calm.  I feel correct.”

Very Capybaric of him.

 

The Leopard Hasn’t Changed His Spots

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CNN has gotten some undeserved criticism for holding a town hall meeting with Republican likely voters and Donald Trump in New Hampshire last week.

Kaitlin Collins knew that she was going to have to try to lasso a tornado.  She knew that Trump would show no respect for anyone except himself and maybe such admirable figures as Putin and Xi and that he would try to steamroller her.

She did such a good job that Trump called her a “nasty person.”  He didn’t like it that she kept correcting him and challenging his lies, even if it was like trying to take a sip from Niagara Falls.

If I were her, I’d wear that comment with a certain degree of professional pride.

Some Democrats were critical afterwards, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for one: “CNN should be ashamed of themselves.  They have lost control of this ‘town hall’ to again be manipulated into performing election disinformation, defense of Jan 6th, and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim. The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host.”

From the Republican side of the aisle came this from Erin Perrine, the spokesman for the Never Back Down super PAC backing Ron DeSantis: “The CNN town hall was, as expected, over an hour of nonsense that proved Trump is stuck in the past. After 76 years, Trump still doesn’t know where he stands on important conservative issues like supporting life and the 2nd amendment. How does that make America Great Again?”

Niall Stanage, writing for The Hill, said “Trump did not so much win the event as CNN lost it—catastrophically.” Stanage didn’t like the audience whooping and hollering and applauding Trump, even when he attacked Collins and E. Jean Carroll, the woman who earlier in the week won a five-million dollar damage suit against Trump for sexual battery and defamation.

Rival network commentator Joy Reid on MSNBC referred to the show as “blatant fascism meets the Jerry Springer Show.”  We think that’s a little over the top because no fist fight broke out over somebody’s claim that Trump fathered her child, although the program aired just a day after a civil court jury found Trump liable in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.

And what did Trump think?  With his typical modesty, he called the show a “very smart thing” that got “Sky High Ratings that they haven’t seen in a very long time…Many minds were changed on Wednesday night by listening to Common Sense, and sheer ‘Brilliance.’”

Well, of course. Would you expect anything less from a “stable genius?”

While the soundtrack certainly sounded like the audience ate it up, audience cutaways during the broadcast showed plenty of audience members were silent and non-demonstrative.  Republican consultant Matthew Bartlett told correspondent Tara Palmeri of Puck News, a digital media company covering politics, finance, technology, and entertainment news, that many in the audience were “quietly disgusted or bewildered.. In a TV setting you hear the applause but you don’t see the disgust, “ he said.

He was critical of Collins for sparring with Trump instead of taking more audience questions because some disgusted audience members “were ready to confront him” if they had been given the chance.

Here’s why the CNN town hall was not a train wreck:

1.The first such gathering in the campaign cycle showed what our democracy is up against. And it showed the GOP frontrunner for what he (still) is.  And what he is, is what he has been.  He has not learned from his 2020 defeat or from the Carroll lawsuit for from the House January 6 Committee hearings or even from many of his former supporters and enablers who have told him his loud whining about losing the election and doing nothing wrong in trying to intimidate elections officials, the media, prosecutors, and opponents is not doing him any good. He is not a surprise anymore. Republicans can complain about the event, but the energy spent complaining is wasted. Better it be channelled it into keeping his minority segment of the party from keeping the entire party down to his level.

  1. The program provided plenty of evidence for supporters who are thinking about moving past Trump that they should waste no time doing it. For those who are finding him tiresome and his bluster wearing thin, this program gave them an early opportunity to look for a grownup who can life the party out of Swamp Trumpy.
  2. The program showed that he has a core group of supporters that for reasons normal people cannot understand still buy into his egotistical irrationality no matter what.
  3. Clearly, other Republicans know they need to find a way to unify during the primaries to deny him enough delegates for an assured convention nomination (as was the case in 2016).
  4. Trump’s performance might have shown why some believe his firm grip on the party is eroding. Mainline party members can figure out how to put him in the rearview mirror. It’s the old saying, “The enemy you know is better than the enemy you don’t know.”   Trump delivered an opportunity to his party. Several Republicans are making noises about running.  Before they form a circular firing squad, they need to eliminate the outsider who has more bullets than each of them have individually.
  5. If Democrats haven’t cut that broadcast into hundreds of segments they can campaign against, they’re asleep at the switch.
  6. AOC is wrong. Trump might have taken control of the program but he didn’t run over Collins. At the end of the show she was standing almost nose to nose with him, showing control many people would have lost long before, and not backing down to his windstorm, always reminding viewers and listeners that the words “Trump” and “truth” are only remotely related.

He thought she was “nasty.”  This observer thought she was quietly tough enough that he called her a name. I hope somebody creates a bumper sticker to pin to her office bulletin board.

In months to come, there will be other town halls involving both parties.  The cumulative impact of those other town halls should weigh heavily against Trump.  But it would be a mistake if those other town halls focus too much on attacking Trump instead of offering clear, positive, honest alternatives to him.

In fact, he probably hopes they do spend too much time attacking him instead of offering their party and the general public something better.  People like Trump enjoy being attacked by better people because it makes him look bigger and makes them look smaller.

It’s better to have the worst possibility first.  After that things can only get better.  God knows this program succeeded in showing us all why he deserved to lose in 2020 and why he deserves to lose in 2024.

Then again, as we’ve said a few times, Mr. Trump needs to be less worried about whether he’ll get four more years and more worried about whether he’ll get ten to fifteen.

Bob and George, Part II 

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I’ve already admitted that I appear to be woke and unapologetically so.  Now I have revealed that I once was involved with George Soros.

I have some strongly conservative friends but so far none have made the sign of the cross and waved garlic branches to protect themselves as I have drawn near them.  I swear, however, based on some letters to the editor, that there are people who each night pull their Murphy Beds down from the storage space in their bedroom wall and then look under it to see that George isn’t there.

Here’s how George and I got together.

One of the hinge-points in world history occurred on November 9, 1989 when the gates of the Berlin Wall were opened and the destruction of the wall began.  The fall of the Berlin Wall was the symbolic end of the Cold War, confirmed at a summing meeting on December 2-3 ith George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev during which both declared the Cole War was officially, in their opionons at least, finished. German reunification took place the next October.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republicans quickly fell apart.  When Czechslovak President Gustav Husak resigned on December 10, the only hard line Communist government remaining from the Warsaw Pact was in Nicolai Ceaucesecu’s Romania and he was about done.

(He pronounced his last name Chow-CHESS-koo.)

About the time Berlin was celebrating the fall of the wall, the Romanian Communist Party’s Fifteenth Congress  was electing Ceausescu to another five-year term. His speech that day denounced the Peaceful Revolution, as it was called, that was underway throughout Eastern Europe. Violent demonstrations broke out in the Romanian Capital of Bucharest and in Timisoara, considered the cultural and social center of the western part of the country.

Ceausescu held a mass meeting on University Square in Bucharest four days before Christmas that year in which he blamed the riots in Timisoara on “fascist agitators who want to destroy socialism” but the crowd was having none of it. He was booed and heckled and took cover inside the building.  By the next day the revolution was nationwide and the military turned against him. He fled in a helicopter than had landed on the roof of the building, just ahead of demonstrators who had surged inside. The chopper was ordered to land by the army which soon took custody of the president and his wife.

They were tried on Christmas day by a court established by the provisional government, convicted and sentenced to death. It was reported that hundreds of soldiers volunteered to be their firing squad. A firing squad described as “a gathering of soldiers” began shooting as soon as the two were in front of a wall. Their execution was videotaped and shown on Romanian television.

In the months after those events, Marvin Stone, a former deputy director of the United States Information Agency, with support from Secretary of State James Baker, founded the International Media Fund to “help establish non-governmental media across the former Communist bloc.”

In August and September, 1991, I was one of three men sent to Romania and Poland to conduct seminars under the auspices of the International Media Fund and the National Association of Broadcasters. While there we worked with The Soros Foundation for an Open Society, which organized the seminars we conducted.  The foundation told us it was formed “to promote the values of freedom and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe.”

In order to build an open society, one needs education, free communications and the free flow of ideas, and the development of independent, critical thinking at all levels in society. An open society is characterized by a plurality of opinions. There is never only one truth, such dogmatic thinking is the characteristic of closed societies. In an open system ideas, ideals and opinions are constantly challenged, and they enter into competition with each other.  This free, unhindered competition of ideas yields a better system for all.

I was joined by two other men, Bayard “Bud” Walters of Nashville, the owner of several radio stations who would discuss sales—a novel concept in a country that had nothing approaching a capitalist society or a capitalist mindset—and Julian Breen, a former programmer from WABC in New York who had built WABC to having the largest listening audience in America.

Julian died at the age of 63 in 2005. Bud, who is my age, still runs his Cromwell Media expire from Nashville.  When he was asked a couple of years ago about his career highlights, the first one he cited was being “part of a three-person media team that taught how to have a Free Press in Romania and Poland.”  It was eye-opening and rewarding.”

We spent a week in each country and all three of us were impressed by the enthusiasm the young people of Romania and Poland had for free expression.  I talked about the mechanics of covering the news, of who news sources would be—or should be, of the things people needed to know about in a free society (heavy emphasis on telling people what their government was doing for, to, and with them, a unique thing to those folks).  I talked of ethics, a particular interest of our audience.  I talked about the courage it takes to be a reporter, a quality necessary in building free media in a society still mentally adjusted to totalitarianism.

When we came home, we hoped we had planted some seeds of freedom in countries that still had few free radio stations, countries where many people—especially older ones who were accustomed to cradle-to-grave government regulation of their lives—were not sure what this freedom thing was all about and whether it was a good thing.

But the young people knew it was.  One of them told me there was a great irony in the advent of freedom in Romania.  In 1966, Ceausescu made abortion illegal. It was an effort to increase the country’s population. Decree 770 provided benefits to mothers of five or more children and those with ten or more children were declared “heroine mothers” by the state. The government all but prohibited divorces.

The ”decree-ites,” our friend told me, the children born because of the ban on abortions, constituted the generation of Romanians that revolted and killed Ceaucescu.  And were learning lessons about a free society from us.

A decade later, I was judging an annual contest for excellence in news reporting for the Radio-Television News Directors Association—an international organizationthat made me the first person to lead it twice—when one of my board members announced that we had our first truly international winner.

A young woman from Romania.

I think she was too young to have been in those seminars in ’91.  But knowing that a seed we had sown in Romania had, indeed, flowered, was a strongly emotional moment.

We were sent there by the IMF and the Media Fund.  The seminars at which we spoke were financed by George Soros.

For those who speak his name because of their ignorance of his belief in an open society, I want you to know that I am proud of my association with him even though it was decades ago.  To those who think we as a nation should be ignorant of our history of prejudice, discrimination, and coercion,  and blindly follow those who demean and insult our intelligence in their efforts to get and maintain self-serving power over us, I want to remind you of the goal of George Soros’ Open Society foundation:

In order to build an open society, one needs education, free communications and the free flow of ideas, and the development of independent, critical thinking at all levels in society. An open society is characterized by a plurality of opinions. There is never only one truth, such dogmatic thinking is the characteristic of closed societies. In an open system ideas, ideals and opinions are constantly challenged, and they enter into competition with each other.  This free, unhindered competition of ideas yields a better system for all.

When it comes to freedom, I’d rather have George Soros on my side.  Because I have seen the other side. Unlike so many of those who have turned his name into an empty-headed epithet, I have been within his circle. And I do not fear him.

Despots should.  And I know why.

Showing His Stripes

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Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wants to be the second son of a former Missouri Governor to also achieve that office.*  Ashcroft seems to have been aloof from the three-ring show at the Attorney General’s office that has involved lawsuits against China, meddling in the elections of other states and, now, joining an abortion lawsuit in Texas—all of which by some twisted logic seem to involve protecting or advocating MISSOURI’s laws.

But with the passing of the 2022 elections, Ashcroft has left his moderate self at home and has started to show his stripes.

His declaration a few months ago that he alone can withhold state aid to public libraries unless they agree with his personal standards on what’s fit for your children and my children to read is scary.  He seems to be most worried about the corruptive influences of anything other than stories about married heterosexual adults sleeping in separate beds (the Rob and Laura Petrie model of marital bliss).  His proposed policy is worrisome enough on its own but in pondering the example it sets for his successors, we are gravely concerned.  Suppose our next Secretary of State denies the existence of the holocaust, regardless of the reader’s age.  Suppose our next Secretary of State is one who thinks the history of black people is not material to our well-being.  Suppose our next Secretary of State reveals himself to be fond of Karl Marx and will take money away from libraries that have any capitalist literature.

His announcement of his availability to lead our state is aggressive, antagonistic, and—as it turns out—ill-timed.  He says Missouri is at a “crossroads,” which is certainly true.  We are known as the Center State, with as many states to the north of us as to the south and as many states to the east as to the west.  But he’s not talking geography here. He’s talking about his own party’s failure to make Missouri a one-party state.

And it would not be surprising if some of his fellow Republicans didn’t feel like he’d gut-punched them when he said, “Red states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee, even Indiana and Arkansas have become examples of conservative leadership while Missouri Republicans, who control every statewide office and have supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature have failed to deliver.”

As we recall, Ashcroft wasn’t satisfied last year that Missouri still has two Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and wanted new congressional district maps redrawn to reduce that to one by eliminating a district in Kansas City served by Missouri’s current longest-serving African-American congressman.

As for the legislative supermajorities failing to deliver, legislators of the red school might rightfully take umbrage.  They’ve delivered a lot although some of what they’ve delivered has been ruled unconstitutional by courts.

He complains about career politicians who “talk a lot but don’t do a lot.”

The career politician is a frequent target of fervent successor wannabes who have not given us a definition.  Perhaps he’s referring to a career politician such as:

State auditor 1973-1975

State Attorney General 1977-1985

Govenror 1985-1993

  1. S. Senator 1995-2001
  2. S. Attorney General 2001-2005

Yep, Jay Ashcroft knows all about the dangerous career politicians.

He’s also critical of “politicians and lobbyists in Jefferson City [who] slap each other on the back while they give our tax dollars to global corporations, sell out farmland to China, and raise gas taxes on hardworking Missourians.”

Right. Before the recent ten-cent hike (spread over several years) in the gas tax, the latest “big” gas tax hike was a six-center spread through four years (a 55% increase in the then-11-cent per gallon tax) that was proclaimed as “the great economic development tool of the decade” by the then-governor, the career politician described above.

Wonder what dad thinks of the swipe in his son’s candidacy comment.

Give our tax dollars to global corporations?  Several years ago the state cut a big tax deal with a company called Ford to keep it building trucks here. Ford’s pretty global. There are no doubt other examples that don’t jump immediately to mind of such irresponsible use of our tax dollars.

Selling our farmland to China? How about leasing it?  Bad idea, too?

Don’t be too critical with your mouth full. Smithfield Foods, owned by a company in Hong Kong—that’s in China, you know—owns eleven of Missouri’s biggest concentrated animal feeding operations and hires hundreds of Missourians to work those operations or process the meat they produce.

His announcement reiterates a commonly-heard GOP claim that, “It is the very rare occasion if ever, that the state spends its money better than families that it’s taken that money from.”  There’s a lot of validity in that claim if you think social services, criminal justice, education, and our infrastructure can be financed with car washes and cookie sales while taxpayers keep their money and buy a new big-screen teevee.

His comment that Missouri Republicans have failed to make Missouri more like red states of Florida, Texas, TENNESSEE, Indiana, and Arkansas could not have been more poorly timed, coming about the same time the Republicans in the Tennessee legislature expelled two black Democrats who had joined a protest that interrupted a house session, while keeping a white representative (by one vote) who was part of the protest, too.

If Florida is going to be an example, does this mean Jay Ashcroft will take over Worlds of Fun if it disagrees with his political philosophy?

This critical examination of the words used in announcing his political intentions leaves this observer of the passing scene uncomfortable after reading his idealistic words reported by Missouri Independent in its story on his announcement:

“It helps that I was raised with the understanding that people being involved in politics is normal, that elected officials aren’t special. I was raised to understand that it’s about public service, that it’s everyday human beings that are willing to give up their life to serve other people and to make a difference in the lives of current generations and future generations.”

That is an honorable statement. I’ve heard his career politician father say the same sort of thing. But I am left wondering how to reconcile this kind of idealism with his angry, aggressive, antagonistic, and unsettling statement of candidacy.

Which is the real Jay Ashcroft? Which one should I believe in?

-0-

*John Sappington Marmaduke (1885-died in office 1887) was the son of Meredith Miles Marmaduke, who served the last ninet months of Thomas Reynolds’ term after he committed suicide February 9, 1844.

If You Think Congress Is A Mess Now—-

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You’d better hope some Republicans in the U.S. House fail in their efforts to take away your rights to make it better.

Several of these birds are trying to whip up support for a change in the United States Constitution to limit the number of times you and I can vote to send someone to represent us.

They say they want to confront the “corruption” of career politicians.

House Joint Resolution 11 would limit House members to six years and Senators to twelve years.

That’s worse than Missouri’s term limits and Missouri’s term limits, take the word of one who has watched the impact from the front row, are a disaster.

Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina finished Congressman Mick Mulvaney’s term with a special election win in 2017. He has since been elected in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

Do you sense a whiff of hypocrisy here?

Do you suppose he will voluntarily step aside after this term?

His bill has 44 cosponsors.

His term limits idea would work the same way our term limit amendment worked when it was adopted 31 years ago.  The clock would be reset so a member could only run for three MORE terms after the amendment would go into effect.  Past terms would not count.

So let’s assume his idea is passed by the Congress (fat chance, at least in this term) and then is ratified before the 2024 election. He could still run in ’24, ’26 and ’28. So, the sponsor of this three-term limit could serve six terms and part of a seventh.

And if voters in his state react the same way Missourians reacted, he would.

His argument is the same debunked argument we heard in 1992. He told Fox News Digital last week, “It’s inappropriate for our elected leaders to make long-term careers off the backs of the American taxpayers. We’ve seen the corruption it can led to. While there is value in experience, it’s easy to become disconnected from those you serve after too many years in Washington. Most American support term limits, but the problem is convincing politicians they ought to serve for a period of time and then go home and live under the laws they enacted.”

Only one of the 44 co-sponsors is a Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine. He says the House of Representatives was “never intended at its inception to be a place where someone served for 30 years.”

His argument harkens to the Articles of Confederation, which set limits for members of Congress at six years.  But when the Constitution was written after delegates learned the Articles just didn’t work, the delegates opted for a system of checks and balances, the bittest check and balance being the voters.

James Madison, considered the Father of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist Paper 53 that “[A] few of the members of Congress will possess superior talents; will by frequent re-elections, become members of long standing; will be thoroughly masters of the public business, and perhaps not unwilling to avail themselves of those advantages. The greater the proportion of new members of Congress, and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt they be to fall into the snares that may be laid before them.”

Madison’s allies felt the better check on corruption was regular elections than short turnovers in office.

They placed their confidence in the citizens, in the voters. Not so for this bunch.

Golden is serving his third term right now.  Let’s see if he files for re-election next year.

Among those fervently in support are Matt Gaetz of Florida, a prime example of the kind of person who would bring dignity to the office. He is serving his fourth term. Want to bet he will voluntarily decide he has been around more than long enough next year?

Another bandwagon rider is James Comer of Kentucky, also a four-termer.

Representative Don Bacon, another four-termer, thinks this idea is just ducky, too.

Gaetz thinks term limits would help lead to a “more effective legislature.”

If one calls the process by which Speaker McCarthy was elected earlier this year “effective,” I guess he has a point.  Drawing a name out of a hat would have been more effective.

Comer says his constituents are “excited” about the idea. Does that mean they would be “excited” to see him leave after this term?  They can prove how excited they are about term limits by kicking him to the galleries in 2024.

Bacon, who doubts this thing will fly in the U.S. Senate, thinks it’s a “good thing.”  We’ll see just how “good” he really thinks it is at filing time next year.

The tragic thing about this kind of gut-thinking rhetoric is that those who spout it aren’t honest about the “corruption” they claim they want to fight.

We wonder what a close look at their campaign finance reports will show.  Who has their hooks in them?  What is their voting record on issue their big-money donors are interested in?

What do the budget hawks among them think should be slashed or eliminated?  Things on which average folks rely?  Or might it be things the wealthy use to get wealthier—you know, all those things that the big-money folks receive with the questionable contention that the benefits will trickle down to the little people such as you and me or those below us on the economic scale?

Let’s put it this way:

If you are not scared out of your shoes that this entire notion, from its national security and national defense implications and that the national economy would be left in the hands of Matt Gaetz (four terms), Marjorie Taylor-Greene (second term), or Lorena Boebert (second term)—or even relatively responsible people—who would have only four years experience heading into their last terms forever, you should be.

And let’s not even think about talking about George Santos and whether his colleagues from the majority party should have term limited him after three DAYS.

Consider our current House of Representative members:

Cori Bush  second term

Ann Wagner  tenth term

Blaine Leutkemeyer  eighth term

Mark Alford  first term

Emanuel Cleaver  tenth term

Sam Graves  twelfth term

Eric Burlison first term

Jason Smith sixth term

If you favor term limits in Congress and if you voted for five of these people in the last election, you’re an undeniable hypocrite. Bush, Alford, and Burlison are still using training wheels.

But the other five are, in the eyes of Norman and his deluded disciples, corrupt, serving “on the backs of taxpayers,” “disconnected,” and—God help us—career politicians.

Forget that the voters decide every two years if their careers should end. .

The Hell with the voters.  They don’t know what they’re doing when they send their representatives and their senators back for another term. The crew behind House Resolution 11 is clearly the moral superiors of the voters and they know that you and I have no business making the decision more than three times on who will represent us although your critical observer has no trouble suggesting there are some people who should be limited to one term—and even that is too long in a few cases.

The responsibility for the good or bad in our government remains with the voters. There are problems with manipulative media and the influence of secret and unlimited money. Perhaps if Norman and his friends focused their considerable intellectual efforts on those issues, they would do more good than they will by limiting the choices you and I can make on election day.

But that’s too hard.  Helping to educate a public with an increasingly short attention span when it comes to politics takes far more effort than telling them, “We’ve fixed it so you only have to endure these crooks for six years. And then you can elect another one.”  Encouraging citizen irresponsibility is easier.  And it sounds better.  And it might get them elected to a fourth term.  Or more.

Term limits is an unending train wreck.

I’m not buying a ticket on that train and I sure hope you don’t either.

 

 

The News is Broken

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Brooke Baldwin was a reporter and an anchor for CNN for thirteen years but left the network in 2021.  But she is still a journalist and she still cares about the news industry.

Earlier this week, she took to her Instagram page to express some concerns about the cable news business and the recently-revealed disclosures that indicate FOX News might be a bigger Trump mouthpiece than suspected.

In her frank video she not only expresses concern with what the broadcast news business has become (cable, over-the-air radio and television, etc.) but what the public has become. One fees the other, and she fears that is now healthy for democracy.

We’re publishing her posting that comes after she says, “I’ve thought so much about this and realize I really feel it’s my duty to say something.”  Her conclusion is a pretty strong statement about the news media AND about the public’s responsibility to itself and to our country.

I also realize I’m in this sort of rare position having spent more than a decade in the cable news machine and I will own it. It’s sometimes being part of the problem. But now I am out and I am a viewer just like you.

And I cannot stop thinking today…about this Peter Baker reporting in the New York Times, specifically the piece about FOX news and election night 2020. And so if you have not read the piece…the quick skinny is this:

So it’s election night 2020. It’s Biden versus Trump for the presidency.  FOX news was first. FOX News was right by the way something you really want to be as any news network in calling a state for one of these people running for president.

You know, they had their fancy multi-million dollar updated election projection system up and running.  They called the battleground state of Arizona for Joe Biden. And they did it before anyone.  And they were accurate in calling it.

But they had a problem because Team Trump was furious and also by calling it early, it sounds like they lost out on even more monster ratings by not stringing out the results by not telling the truth when they knew it. And they were mighty upset about that.

And what’s crazy is how do we know about this?  Because the New York Times in this Peter Baker piece, they got ahold of one of these post-election FOX Zoom calls where it included some of these news anchors like Martha McCallum and Brett Baier, folks that I admired over the years, who were upset at the hateful reactions they were getting not only from their own viewers but from the Trump Campaign and so there was a quote in the piece that I’m going to read it for you. This is from one of the FOX executives and this is what she said. “Listen, it’s one of the sad realities, if we hadn’t called Arizona, those three or four days following election day our ratings would have been bigger.  The mystery still would have been hanging out there.”

In addition to that, Tucker Carlson’s texts revealed that he was instructing others to sort of reel in the truth in favor of Trumpism because of FOX’s share price was tanking.

A clear choice of propagandist economics over truth. And Peter Baker, this New York Times reporter doing what any good journalist does also reached out to CNN to say, “Hey, CNN, Did you prolong your election night, any of the calls for ratings?” And their response from this PR person was, “No.”

Full disclosure, I wasn’t in any of those rooms among CNN brass on election night 2020 making those calls but there was zero evidence of CNN doing so.

There’s so much more to this piece. I encourage you to check it out. But my takeaway is this: that FOX wanted the ratings instead of the truth. In fact they tripped over themselves to choose ratings over truth. Honestly, they look like clowns. Not even like clowns masquerading as journalists, just clowns.

And this is all so freaking important because the race to 2024 is already underway and we the viewer deserve to know if we’re being strung along or given the truth about one of the biggest decisions that happens every few years in this country.

This is our democracy at stake and this is also personal for me. I love journalism…When I was growing up as a little girl my mom always told me I was fair and trustworthy. She was, like, “Brooke, you should go be a judge.” I said, “No, I’m going to be something very similar. I want to be a journalist.” I’ve agreed with the pioneers of CNN who once said, “The news should be the star.”

That said, the last couple of years I was hosting my show, how we covered news fundamentally changed. And part of that was because of the then newly-elected president in 2016 and his sudden complete disregard for civility and process and truth.

And part of it was the way we covered the last president.

Yes, how we covered the last president. It felt like a personal feud was playing out every day on our air, devouring what I thought was a disproportionate amount of airtime at the expense of other news.

And if you started pushing back, you got sidelined.

As for all the opinions and opinion overload, I was part of it. My colleagues at night especially were part of it and people who turned on CNN, you know, you come for the news but you perhaps stayed for the opinion. Same with any of the other cable news networks. You just go and flip the channel until you find the host who you most agree with and then you stay there in hopes of leanring about a scoop or further detail on any given story. But really, if you are not changing the channel to hear the counter view, then cable news has become a confirmation bias echo chamber.

Full stop.

Again, perspective that was then.  CNN is under new leadership now. I’m fully rooting for them. I really am. But I’m out so I can’t speak to the editorial decisions being made internally but my bottom line, why I’m sitting here today:

I am worried. On top of getting informed about the state of our democracy I’ve been reading about all these studies that are showing how we are all suffering mentally, physically, just from watching news.

And I’m going to share something I have yet to share publicly—my closest friends know this.  And by the way, I am so proud of my 20-year broadcast journalism career and so proud of these incredible warriors I got to work with through the years.

But today, unless there is a MAJOR breaking news story, I don’t turn on the TV anymore. How do I get my news?  People ask me this all the time.

I read. I read morning newsletters. I read a variety of newspapers, magazines. You know, we are craving the truth and we need it. But between now and next election we will become victims and perpetrators of an all-out information war.

There are some incredible organizations out there trying to do something about all of this and…we all need to do something about it because right now the truth is –

The news is broken.

She’s right.  I have said to several groups and to several individuals that the problem with radio, television, and cable information sources is there’s too much talking and not enough reporting, too much analyzing/speculating/manipulating by people who have become or think they are becoming media stars.

She also makes a valid point when she says, “If you are not changing the channel to hear the counter view, then cable news has become a confirmation bias echo chamber.”

We have a responsibility to ourselves and to our American system to be open to different ideas, opposing ideas, challenging ideas. We have to view different channels, read newspapers and magazines—-and even listen respectfully to other’s ideas.

If we become nothing more than cable-enabled idiots, we do ourselves and our country no good. We need a personal Declaration of Independence from unthinking opinion.

And it’s time we quit making stars out of people whose thoughts are no greater than  yours or mine just because they have a microphone and a camera.  Because, after all—

The news is the star.

 

Presidents Day

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On this Presidents Day, we pause to think of Missouri’s Presidents.  There are two, only one of whom is a native. And there might be a third.

And then there are a lot of folks who once entertained thoughts of high political grandeur but who fell by the wayside.  We spent some time back in a Missourinet studio last week talking for today’s edition of “Showme Today” about our presidents and some of our presidential wannabes.

In the old railroad depot in Atchison, Kansas is the smallest presidential library in the country. It’s considered an unofficial one because of the peculiar circumstances of David Rice Atchison’s perhaps-presidency.  His grave stone in Plattsburg tells a story:

Missouri’s northwesternmost county is named for him, way up in the corner. For years, Missouri and Nebraska feuded over 5,000 acres known as McKissick’s Island that was left on the Missouri side of the river after a flood in 1867 changed the river channel. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1904 that McKissick Island was still Nebraska territory. It took 95 more years for the two states to agree on an interstate compact approved by Congress that created the legal boundary. But the only way Nebraskans can get to it is by driving through part of Iowa and into Atchison County, Missouri.

Atchison, Kansas is 24 miles southwest of St. Joseph. David Rice Atchison was from Liberty but in the days of “Bleeding Kansas” when the state was deciding if it would be slave or free, Atchison led one of the groups of “border ruffians” who went to Kansas and voted to elect a pro-slavery legislature.

He served two terms in the U. S. Senate. He was so popular that he was elected president pro tempore thirteen times. In those days, the vice-president presided over the Senate and the pro tem was elected and presided only on those rare times when the vice-president wasn’t there.

Vice-President George M. Dallas left the Senate for the rest of the session on March 2, 1849 and the senate picked Atchison to preside in his place.

Presidents were inaugurated later back there—March 4th (the 25th Amendment adopted in 1933 moved the date to January).  The date fell on a Sunday in 1849. Pesident James Polk signed his last bill early in the moring of March 4 because the Senate had been in session all night. In fact, it didn’t adjourn until 7 a.m.

Incoming President Zachary Taylor did not want to be sworn in on the Sabbath and did not take the oath of office until noon, Monday, March 8.

Some argue that Atchison, as president pro tem, was in line to be president of the country under the succession act of 1792.  But Congress had adjourned its session that Sunday morning, meaning Atchison no longer held a Congressional office and therefore there was no line of succession.

He never claimed he was president, “never for a moment” as he wrote in 1880. The truth seems to be that there was no president and no congress for almost a day. In those days of slow national and international communication, there was no crisis.

That’s why the Atchison presidential library, those two display cases in the railroad depot, is “unofficial.”

Incidentally—there was a corresponding controversy in 1877 when Rutheford B. Hays, apparently seeking to avoid another Atchison affair, took took the oath of office in a private ceremony on Saturday, March 3.  But President Grant’s term did not end officially until March 4th. Some think that meant we had TWO presidents for a day.

Speaking of Grant—

Missouri claims him although he was not a native.  He married Julia Dent, the daughter of a wealthy St. Louis County farmer and took up farming in the area.  Grant was Ohio-born and his real name Hiram Ulysses Grant.  He didn’t like his first name and preferred to be known byhis mddleone. He became known as Ulysses S. Grant because Congressman Thomas Hamer nominated him for appointment to West Point apparently not realizing his first name was Hiram and addig a “S” as a middle initial—Grant’s mother’s maiden name was Simpson.

There is at least one letter from Grant during his West Point years in which he signed, “U. H. Grant.”  In time he came to accept the Ulysses S(for Simpson) Grant.  His tactics during the Civil War led to his nickname of “Unconditional Surrender.

Grant’s father-in-law gave the young couple some of his land for their own farm. But the venture was unsuccessful. He also was unsuccessful in other business ventures.

He rejoined the Army at the start of the war and was a Colonel based in Mexico Missouri when he read in a newspaper that he had been appointe Brigadier General.  He commended the unit at Jefferson City for a few days before being dispatched to southeast Missouri where he began building his fame.

Missourian Mark Twain became his close frend in his last days when the family was living in very poor conditions—there was no presidential pension then—and Grant was slowly dying of throat cancer.  Twain arranged to have Grant’s two-volume autobiography published after his death. Sales gave the family some financial security.

In 1903 the Busch family bought the land, now known as Grant’s Farm. Today his farm, his cabin, and the mansion of the Dent Family are part of the Busch family estate.

And that brings us to our native-borne president, Harry Truman, who also has an “S” that means nothing. He was born in Lamar, in southwest Missouri, a town where famous Wyatt Earp had his first law enforcement job.  He also has an S between his first and last names but, unlike Grant, it’s not a mistake.  Formally, there’s no period after the letter because it doesn’t stand for any specific name although he often put a period there.  The “S” honors his two grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.

His extensive story is a familiar one to Missourians but there’s a special angle that links Jefferson City to the Man from Independence.   In the 1930s while he was the Presiding Judge of the Jackson County administratie court, President Roosevelt appointed him to head the administrations jobs program.  Three days a week, he drove to Jefferson City where he did business out of a fourth-floor room at the Capitol.  It was during that time that the Pendergast political machine in Kansas City called him to a meeting in Sedalia to tell him he was going to challenge incumbent U.S. Senator Roscoe Patterson in the 1934 election.  There are those who think the Pendergasts wanted him to lose so they could put their own man in the presiding judge’s chair and get Truman out of Jackson County politics. Truman, however, beat Patterson, beginning a career in Washington that led him in 1944 to the vice-presidential nomination and ultimately his historic years in the White House.

We’ve had some others who sought the presidency or thought they might seek it.

Governor Benjamin Gratz Brownan Unconditional Unionist in the Civil War and a founder of he Republican Party in Missouri.  He tried to get Abraham Lincoln replaced as the Republican nominee in 1864, strongly opposed President Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, was defeated in the 1872 convention by New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley—and they ultimately were crushed by former Missouri failed farmer U.S. Grant.

Congressman Richard Parks Bland was the leader going into the 1896 Democratic National Convention.  But his marriage to a Catholic woman generated opposition within the party and he lost to William Jennings Bryan on the fifth ballot.

Champ Clark, the only Missourian to serve as Speaker of the House, was the leading candidate at the 1912 Democratic Convention. Although he was favored by a majority of delegates he never could get to the required two-thirds.  It took 46 ballots for the convention to choose Woodrow Wilson over him.

Young Christopher Bond was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party when the convention met in 1976 in Kansas City and was on a short-list of potential running mades for Gerald Ford. His 12,000 vote upset loss to Joseph Teasdale in November crashed dreams of the White House. But he beat Teasdale in a 1980 rematch and went on to a distinguished career as a United States Senator.

Thomas Eagleton sought the vice-presidency under George McGovern’s campaign. But reports that he had undergone some electro-shock treatments for depression ended is VP run a few weeks after the convention.

Congressman Jerry Litton was a charismatic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1976 who died with his wife and two children and two other people when their airplane crashed on takeoff from the Chillicothe Airport on their way to a victory party in Kansas City.  Litton was known to think he was presidential material. Jimmy Carter, who was elected President that day, thought that Litton would be President some day.  The Senatorship went to John Danforth.  His top aide told me sometime afterwards that Danforth wasn’t sure he could have beaten Litton.  The what-if game can ponder whether we might have seen a Reagan-Litton contest or a Litton-Bush 41.

We haven’t had a serious contestant since, although there are rumors that Josh Hawley would like to be the running mate of Donald Trump in 2024.

Some presidents bring honor to the office. Others bring dishonor and all of them fall somewhere in between.  Today we honor those who served and the office they held.

It is one of the Monday holidays decreed by Congress in 1968. Although we call it Presidents Day, Congress has never changed its original designation:  Washington’s birthday.

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