Campaign Let-Downs

This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on August 28, 2008.

Campaign Let-Downs

I feel let down by Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

To be fair, though, I also feel let down by the Democrats on two points, so let me get those out of the way.

First, I signed up to be "one of the first" to know about Barack Obama's choice for a vice presidential candidate, the message to arrive on my cell phone before even the cable news networks were told.

I got the message, but at 3:29 a.m. last Saturday morning, and before I checked my inbox, I saw the morning news telling me about Joe Biden. So much for being one of the first.

Second, I was disappointed that the Democratic National Committee decided to let Florida and Michigan off the hook for their disobedient behavior during the primary season. Having held primaries earlier than the rules allowed, they were stripped of their convention delegates.

After negotiations between the Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns, the states were granted half their delegates, and now, this past weekend, the DNC decided to seat both states' full delegations. As any parent will agree, you have to follow through on your punishments or they mean nothing.

These let-downs, though, are minuscule compared to those of Candidate John McCain.

I had a lot of respect for McCain, but daily it's being chipped away at. I will always respect his times of service, both in the military and in the Senate, but his run for the presidency has rubbed the gloss off.

For example, McCain's stuttering confession that he was unsure about how many houses he owns certainly was not endearing: "I'll have my staff get back to you," he told reporters. To have so many that you lose count does not make me feel like he and I have the same concerns. The count, by the way, turns out to be eight.

I'll get back to McCain himself in a moment. His staff, however, deserves mention here. They seem to forget that the way things work is that the principal spokesperson for a presidential campaign is the candidate himself.

When McCain details some of his economic plans on the campaign trail, his budget policies end up nearly $3 trillion out of line with his published plans. McCain's chief economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, was questioned about the discrepancy by online magazine Slate. Wrote Slate blogger Christopher Beam, "'This is parsing words out of campaign appearances to an unreasonable degree,' Holtz-Eakin said. 'He has certainly I'm sure said things in town halls' that don't jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn't mean it's official."

This has widely, and not inaccurately, been paraphrased as "John McCain does not speak for the McCain campaign."

And it happened again, a week later. In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, McCain said that in discussions about saving Social Security, "nothing is off the table," specifically including payroll tax increases.

The next day, one of McCain's spokesmen corrected the candidate, saying that a payroll tax increase was "absolutely out of the question." Again, McCain does not speak for the McCain campaign. Troubling.

Back to McCain himself: In a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, McCain criticized Obama's positions on Iraq, saying that they called into question the judgement he would need as commander in chief: "Behind all of these ... positions by Senator Obama lies the ambition to be president."

Maybe it is fair to criticize a presidential candidate for having ambition to be president, maybe not. But McCain should be careful of throwing stones. In 2002, McCain wrote a book about his 2000 run for the presidency, noting that he hadn't run for president to solve any particular problems. "I wanted to be president because," he wrote, "it had been my ambition to be president."

Look, we all misspeak. But in this day and age, when the lies told by "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" are perceived as truth, one must be especially careful about what one says. Failure to do so is, in itself, a black mark against you.

I leave you this week with a McCain gaffe that I found amusing but which may have made McCain's home life a bit awkward for a few days.

At the beginning of August, when McCain and his wife Cindy were attending a motorcycle rally in South Dakota, McCain told the crowd that he had encouraged Cindy to enter the "Miss Buffalo Chip" contest held at the rally.

Perhaps he did not know (or, worse, perhaps he did) that the contestants for the Miss Buffalo Chip contest dress scantily, if at all, and dance lewdly in front of the hooting audience. For John's sake, let's hope Cindy has a big sense of humor.

American Olympic stories from China

This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on August 14, 2008.

American Olympic stories from China

Given a topic as broad as China, it is tempting to go off on tangents far and wide.

In one direction, history: China's written history goes back further than any nation, back to the 15th century BCE. Its Ming and Qing dynasties top those of any English royal house - the Windsors have reigned only since 1910; the Ming ruled for 276 years, the Qing for 267.

In another direction, Sino-American relations: China is the second largest holder of American debt, after Japan (a debt to which, over the last five years, we added nearly $3 trillion). We import more goods from China than any other nation, and we have a massive trade deficit with China (a trade deficit that we share with Japan and the European Union).

But Olympic events in China in the past week permit me to put history and politics aside, and focus on a topic that I don't often feel the urge to write about -- sports.

Like many Americans, I only care about judo, fencing, shooting, kayaking, or water polo when there are Olympic gold medals at stake. And with the Games come the stories, compelling Olympic stories.

I wasn't even going to bother watching the opening ceremonies nor the mind-numbing parade of nations until I read about the athlete chosen by the U.S. delegation to be our flag-bearer. The story of Tully, New York, middle-distance runner Lopez Lomong is well-known by now, but worth repeating.

Lomong was living in Sudan when he was abducted from his family at the age of six, taken to become a child soldier in the Sudanese civil war. He and some other boys were able to escape to Kenya and for a decade, Lomong languished in refugee camps. He was finally chosen to be resettled in the United States, one of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan.

Lomong assumed his family had been killed during the civil war, and following his abduction, his family assumed he was dead and buried him in absentia. Though he was later reunited with his Sudanese family, Lomong decided to stay in the United States with his adoptive family, and became a citizen just last year.

Lomong's story inspired his fellow athletes just as it inspires many of us, and their choice of Lomong to lead them into the Bird's Nest Stadium was seen as both a dig at the Chinese, for their role in the turmoil in Sudan's Darfur region, and a recognition of the obstacles he had to overcome to reach the games.

Here is a sampling of the other stories to emerge from Beijing from just the first five days of competition.

American women swept the medals in the sabre competition, the first time Americans have swept a fencing competition since 1904. President George Bush was on hand to watch as three American flags rose over the medal podium on day one.

A quartet of American men came from behind to defeat the favored French team in the 4x100m free relay swim, a win that got Michael Phelps another gold medal in his quest to be the first to win eight in a single Olympic games.

In the women's version of the same event, 4x100m free relay, 41-year-old Dara Torres won her 10th Olympic medal, in her fifth Olympics, when she helped the American woman to a silver medal.

In oft-overlooked men's gymnastics, our team overcame the loss of Paul and Morgan Hamm to injury and pulled ahead to finish with a bronze medal, with Alexander Artemev's performance on pommel horse sealing the deal.

In baseball, a sport that Williston Little League champions should watch carefully since this will be its last appearance at the Olympics for a while, the U.S. team is one of only eight; if history is a guide, the Cubans have a better chance at gold than the U.S., but in exhibition play, the U.S. won a respectable 5 out of 6. After failing to reach the medal round in Athens in 2004, the Americans have something to prove.

Whether you're a sports fan or not, tune in to see what your athletes, and those of the rest of the world, have to offer in the coming week. No doubt you won't be disappointed.