A thought about Senator McCain. No full accounting of his place in our public life in recent decades (yes, it has been decades) could fail to mention his relationship with fraudster Charles H. Keating. In the late 1980s, as the savings & loan system was unraveling, McCain was one of a group of five legislators who intervened to try to halt a regulatory investigation of the Lincoln S&L that Keating controlled. Each of the five had taken substantial political contributions fro m Keating. This made things look and smell like a quid pro quo. It was at the very best a case of extremely bad judgment and ugly 'optics' on McCain's part. That said: perfect human beings are rare, and when one of the more common imperfect beings has just left us it is the custom to focus attention on what was right in his life, not what was wrong. I accept that custom. McCain leaves a rather clean smell behind him all in all. For example and to his credit: McCain testified ...
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It has 8 months left to run, but here are some retrospective thoughts on almost-the-whole of it. 1. Gitmo's infamous detention camp remains open. This wouldn't necessarily stick in one's craw except that Obama issued an executive order as early as January 22, 2009, with the confetti from the inaugural parties still incompletely cleared away, that said it would be closed within one year. 2. Another one that goes back a ways. Obama early on pressed for a cash-for-clunkers bill, which he signed on June 26th of that first year, supposedly to revive the auto industry. It was a cheap gimmick that had no good effect at all. 3 . The whole rebellion in Libya thing was horrendously mismanaged. Absurdly, the administration seems to have thought it was exercising what it called "smart power" in this connection., Nothing smart about it. Ended with the need to use a random video as a cover for whatever the heck actually happened in Benghazi. 4. Waffling o...
If all has gone well of late, I;m on vacation as you read this. I'm posting stuff prepared well in advance, so take that into consideration if the references seem dated. Fiorina has run for public office exactly once. She ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 2010 and lost, to incumbent Barbara Boxer. Now she is running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. She is most vividly known (by the portion of the non-California public to whom she isn't just "Carly who?") as the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, whose one signature initiative was the company's merger with Compaq. She was fired for that, because her board thought the initiative a bungle. Yet she will argue that she was in the right, that the combined company is nowadays stronger than either or both of them would have been without her. Presumably if her campaign catches any wind under its wings at all, she'll have plenty of opportunities to make that case. But what strikes me ab...