Is the GOP willing to obey a leader?

By John Parisella - Monday, May 30, 2011 at 5:56 PM - 2 Comments

The latest poll puts non-candidate and former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani at the top of the heap of Republican presidential contenders. A month ago it was Donald Trump. And earlier this year it was Mike Huckabee. In a month’s time, perhaps Sarah Palin’s bus tour of the Northeast will have catapulted her to the top. (Probably not.)

Meanwhile, more serious candidates like former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (who announced last week) and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (who will announce this week) will be among the frontrunners and will most likely battle each other through the primary season. Yet neither of them polls particularly strongly against the marginal/celebrity personalities the GOP is attracting. Newt Gingrich, an otherwise strong candidate, has had a disastrous start since declaring. His stumbles only add to the party’s woes. Why is the Republican field scoring so badly among the GOP’s supporters? Barack Obama is a formidable opponent, but the economy will likely emerge as the deciding issue come November 2012, and here the president is vulnerable. Continue…

Mike Huckabee's Masterpiece

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, May 11, 2011 at 11:11 PM - 14 Comments

If this doesn’t become an internet sensation I will be very disappointed. Mike Huckabee’s latest venture is Learnourhistory.com, an attempt to make money by selling cheaply-produced videos enable parents to teach their children the real history of the U.S. without the bias they get in teacher-controlled schools:

Many of our schools and teachers today haven’t found ways to make history for kids fun.  Instead, they’re teaching with political bias that distorts facts for the sake of political correctness.  As a result, our national pride and patriotism are in jeopardy.

The site’s YouTube channel has posted some excerpts, which are almost indescribable. The best I can come up with is “Sherman and Peabody meets Jack Chick.” Here’s the story of the hellish crime-ridden CarterScape that was America before the Reagan Revolution:

And here’s a preview of their history of World War II, which includes this quote: “What we see and hear isn’t always the Continue…

Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination Of Ronald Reagan

By Peter Shawn Taylor - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

This past February marked the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. The occasion was marked by numerous tributes to his legacy as one of America’s most popular and respected presidents. But what if he never had the chance to earn that reputation?

Two months into his first term, on March 30, 1981, Reagan was shot in the lung by deranged loner John Hinckley Jr. while exiting the Washington Hilton. It is a moment well remembered from contemporary news coverage. But Wilber manages to provide a wealth of fresh information on that traumatic event. Chief among the new disclosures is how close Reagan came to dying that day. If not for a split-second decision by Secret Service agent Jerry Parr to change the destination of Reagan’s limousine after the shooting from the White House to the nearest hospital, the president almost certainly would have died. He lost almost half his blood after the shooting and, according to doctors who treated him, even a five-minute delay could have been fatal.

Wilber seems to have interviewed everyone with a story to tell about the assassination attempt and provides efficient sketches of all the major players. But he never lets his focus stray from that single day’s actions. The result is a book that’s taut and well-paced like a thriller, yet still yields numerous small facts and details both fascinating and amusing.

Among the book’s many gems are its sketches of the wild confusion at the hospital following the shooting. As doctors were fighting to save Reagan’s life, Secret Service and FBI agents were fighting over the president’s nuclear weapons launch-code authorization card. Before he is put under anaesthetic, Reagan manages to quip, “I hope you are all Republicans.” And in the operating room, the Secret Service was clearly out of its comfort zone. Parr put his green hospital scrubs on backwards while another agent took off his shoes and slipped the surgical booties over his bare feet. It’s a lively read, 30 years after the fact.

Why Ronald Reagan is still relevant

By John Parisella - Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 12:08 PM - 22 Comments

I did not share most of his politics, but I can acknowledge that Ronald Reagan was the most significant U.S. president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He brought conservatism into the mainstream and many of his politics did much to prepare America for the challenges of the next century. The man had his flaws, but he bonded with his people and his memory does not diminish with the years.

To Republicans, he embodies character, vision, and greatness. While he swept to office as the most ideologically driven president in a half-century, he governed in a most pragmatic way. Most notably, his conservative mantra of balanced budgets and reducing the size of government quickly gave way to compromise and incrementalism. By the time he left office, Reagan had never balanced a budget and defence spending grew as never before under his watch.

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Happy 100th birthday, Mr. Reagan!

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 8:16 AM - 8 Comments

Celebrations: The Reagan centennial is being marked by symposiums and conferences

As his 100th birthday approaches on Feb. 6, the ghost of Ronald Reagan continues to loom large over America. He is one of the most admired and most popular presidents. The centennial is being marked by a variety of conferences, university symposiums and ceremonies. But it is in the political trenches where the legacy of a president who left office 22 years ago continues to be hotly debated and redefined. Republicans are taking their veneration of the 40th president to new heights. Democrats, meanwhile, are finding that the more time passes, the more there is to like about the man they once caricatured as a doddering B-list actor who built a military colossus on the backs of the poor.

Sarah Palin herself discovered just how jealously her party guards Reagan’s legacy when she had the temerity to compare herself to the former actor and California governor. Smarting from criticism that her decision to star in a television show about Alaska appeared un-presidential, Palin quipped on Fox News in November, “Like, um, wasn’t Ronald Reagan an actor, wasn’t he in Bedtime for Bonzo—bozo, something… ” The backlash was immediate. “Excuse me, but this was ignorant even for Mrs. Palin,” wrote Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan in her Wall Street Journal column. She went on to lovingly catalogue Reagan’s lengthy career from actor to union leader to two-term governor of the most populous state, and to standard-bearer for conservative political philosophy. “The point is not, ‘He was a great man and you are a nincompoop,’ ” Noonan concluded. “Though that is true.”

Rush Limbaugh calls him “Ronaldus Magnus.” During the debate among candidates for the post of Republican National Committee chairman in January, the six people running were asked to name their favourite Republican president. Not one mentioned Abraham Lincoln. “Okay,” declared the satisfied moderator, Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, after all cited Reagan. “Everybody got that one right.”

For many Democrats, Reagan is no longer a president to scorn, but to study. President Barack Obama let it be known over the holidays that he was reading a biography of Reagan. Their first-term situations are similar: both took office amid a recession, in a moment of national demoralization. Both saw their approval ratings plummet in their first year ahead of mid-term elections, in which their respective parties lost seats. And now as Obama faces an Egypt in turmoil, commentators are recalling Reagan’s dealings with the Soviets and asking, “What would Reagan do?”

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Reagan had Alzheimer’s in office: son

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 17, 2011 at 1:12 PM - 5 Comments

Ron Reagan, son of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, writes in a new book that his father showed signs of Alzheimer’s disease as early as 1984, when he was campaigning for a second term. However, Ron’s older half-brother Michael, who is also releasing a book commemorating the 100th anniversary of Reagan’s birth, says the claim is untrue and offensive. Doctors have said that the disease, which was officially diagnosed five years after he left office, may explain the confusion Reagan experienced during the 1984 debates with Walter Mondale. Ron says he noticed then too: “There was just something that was off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it,” he told ABC News. Ron cites the fact that his father had difficulty naming familiar canyons in 1986 and called Princess Diana, “Prince David” by accident as evidence of the degenerative brain disorder. Older son Michael believes the statement tars his father’s legacy; Ron thinks it shouldn’t. “This no more discredits or defines his presidency than Lincoln’s chronic depression, Roosevelt’s polio, Kennedy’s Addison Disease any of those things.”

The Telegraph

Let us now debate the difference between user fees and taxes

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 5:50 PM - 43 Comments

John Baird says the government will increase the airport security fee charged to air travelers, the opposition critics say this is a tax and this is perhaps relevant because the Prime Minister once said, “I give you my word, as long as I will be Prime Minister … there will be no new taxes.” (In fairness, he said “no new taxes,” which wouldn’t, one supposes, necessarily preclude him from increasing taxes that already exist.)

Here, for the sake of argument, is how the distinction was explained in a 1987 New York Times story about the Reagan administration’s attempt to navigate this discussion.

Joseph A. Pechman, a leading tax authority and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, thinks there can be a distinction. A user fee – such as the admission fee to national parks – is, he said, ”imposed on individuals who use certain services provided by the Government and is proportional to the use of the service.” By contrast, he defines a tax as a ”mandatory assessment on an individual family based on certain characteristics, such as income or consumption.”

But Mr. Pechman adds that a user fee is sometimes not very different from an ”excise tax,” which is a tax imposed on particular commodities, such as gasoline, cigarettes and alcohol.

The Commons: ‘I shouldn’t have to be here’

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 4:58 PM - 179 Comments

“If there’s a silver lining to the dark cloud of this political crisis in Ottawa, it’s an amazing, spontaneous degree of citizen engagement,” he said. “In a way, this manufactured crisis has woken Canadians up out of their so-called apathy.”

That was, to be fair, some 13 months ago and Jason Kenney, the immigration minister, had just witnessed 3,000 people gather in downtown Calgary to protest the possibility of a coalition government. “I don’t recall anything on such short notice with such a large crowd in this city,” Mr. Kenney gushed. One assumes the sentiment roughly holds for today’s events too.

Then John Baird was proudly declaring the government’s intent to “go over the heads” of the Members of Parliament and the Governor General, and go “right to the Canadian people.” Then it was Steven Fletcher, minister of state for democratic reform, encouraging all his fellow Manitobans to rally for no less than the nation we all hold dear.

Thirteen months later, a new political crisis. Then, the government side yelled “traitor!” Now, the other side yells “dictator!” Once more, our civic engagement runneth over.

Perhaps we should make political crisis an annual event.

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Bruce Cockburn's rocket launcher, Knut's girlfriend, and the new Osama

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, September 18, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 2 Comments

Dr. Nash’s hero
Wheelchair basketball lifted Terry Fox out of the funk of losing a leg to cancer. So it’s fitting that Fox’s Marathon of Hope inspired fellow British Columbian Steve Nash, Canada’s greatest basketball player. Nash interviewed Fox’s family, visited his grave in Port Coquitlam and has produced a heartfelt documentary on his childhood hero, to be aired on ESPN next spring. Fox’s foundation has raised hundreds of millions for cancer research. Nash’s own foundation helps “underserved” children in Canada, Arizona and Paraguay. The Phoenix Suns point guard is back in B.C. this weekend to receive an honorary law degree from the University of Victoria, and to host a charity soccer match in Vancouver.

White-collar crooks
Both the federal and Quebec governments promised tougher measures this week to hunt down and jail white-collar fraudsters, and none too soon in the view of jilted investors. Jury selection began on Monday for the criminal trial of Vincent Lacroix, the former CEO of Norbourg Asset Management. He is accused of stealing $115 million from thousands of Quebec investors. He was previously found guilty of securities violations and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. That was reduced on appeal, and he is now on parole after serving just 40 months. Also free in Montreal, money manager Earl Jones faces criminal charges for allegedly scamming 150 investors, including friends and family, of $50 million. Bailiffs seized his condominium last Friday as police kept a watchful eye on a scrum of angry investors waiting outside. Jones had wisely already vacated, leaving behind junk food on the counter and an open book on the sofa. Proceeds from the condo’s sale will go to investors. In Calgary on Monday, police charged two Alberta men with allegedly running an international Ponzi scheme that raised more than $100 million from investors. One of the men is still at large. Continue…

The Ronald Reagan Corollary

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 12:02 PM - 2 Comments

Doug Bell sort of dissents from those who long for Michael Ignatieff to be a policy wonk.

I’m not so sure that Ig’s policy prescriptions, whether delivered to big foots or scrubbers, are really the answer. When a pol speaks it’s not the policy that remains as the affective residue, it’s the underlying point of view…

Voters want to know what their representatives think. Not so much because they want to agree or disagree but because only in that way can they sense whether he or she is their guy.

Did you hear the one about Obama?

By John Intini - Monday, June 22, 2009 at 4:10 PM - 96 Comments

Soon after Barack Obama’s victory last November, late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel stopped by Legends, a barbershop in L.A. He was there for a trim but also to test out, “on behalf of the comedy community,” what type of jokes about the new President the almost all-black staff and clientele considered offensive. Cracks about Obama being a bad dancer are fine, they said. So are jabs at his big ears. But, Kimmel was told, Mrs. O’s “butt” is off-limits.

The skit was a joke (a pretty good one, actually), but it illustrated a real concern among some comedians and late-night scribes heading into the Obama era. Sure, comics would be able to count on Vice-President Joe Biden to regularly stuff his foot in his mouth, but Obama, unlike most of the commanders-in-chief who preceded him, wasn’t a walking punchline. Most of the late-night hosts have publicly complained about how little the President gives them to work with. Comedian Chris Rock compared Obama to the untouchable Brad Pitt. “Ooh, you’re young and virile and you’ve got a beautiful wife and kids,” Rock told CNN. “You know, what do you say?”

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John Baird has a fireplace

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 19, 2009 at 7:14 PM - 3 Comments

The Transport Minister talks to the Globe.

How Christopher Buckley blew it

By Barbara Amiel - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 13 Comments

I talk to my dogs but, though a lot of enthusiastic tail wagging takes place, I’m not blind to the observation of William James that they have no more understanding of the delights of literature and music than I do of the rapture of bones under hedges or smells of trees and lampposts. They belong to a different universe. I’m aiming to get two more: a rescue kuvasz next and then perhaps a Caucasian ovtcharka.

These are not breeds to turn over to dog walkers or leave to idle in the kitchen, unless you are aiming to become that mythical old woman who dies and is eaten up by her pets. They are work if owner and dog are to happily survive. “Industry is the enemy of melancholy,” William F. Buckley said, and when I last visited him in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., shortly before his death, he had a new puppy creating havoc, was so ill he could hardly remain vertical, yet was still writing marvellous prose in his final book on Ronald Reagan. Inspired by this, on the level of mole to mountain lion, I find my two kuvaszok and writing deadlines leave me little time for elegant woe.

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Welcome to Canada, Mr. President

By Rachel Mendleson - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 7:27 PM - 1 Comment

Since Barack Obama will be in Ottawa this week, we thought it timely to look back at some previous presidential visits to our nation’s capital.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: August 1943
The city proclaimed a half-day holiday to mark the first-ever U.S. presidential visit to Ottawa. About 27,000 people jammed Parliament Hill to hear FDR’s public address. During his car tour of Ottawa, spectators held up black Scottie dogs as a show of support for his dog Fala.

Harry S. Truman: June 1947
While in Ottawa, Truman met with Mackenzie King and Governor General Alexander. During his parliamentary address, Truman praised Canada for achieving internal unity. When he was finished, politicians thumped their desks in approval. Truman’s trip to the capital included lunch at the Chateau Laurier, a tree-planting and a state dinner at Rideau Hall. He also traveled to Montebello, where he fished for trout. It was his second trip abroad after the Second World War.

Dwight D. Eisenhower: November 1953, July 1958
Both visits to the capital included a parliamentary address. In 1953, more tickets were sold to the House of Commons gallery than there were seats, and some spectators had to be turned away. In 1958, Ike drew fire for his virulent defence of U.S. trade interests in his speech. It was during his second visit that he and PM John Diefenbaker agreed to set up the Canada-United States Committee on Joint Defense. While in Ottawa, Ike played a round of golf at the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club and took a trip to Gatineau Park.

John F. Kennedy: May 1961
When JFK and Jackie arrived on Parliament Hill, there were reportedly 50,000 people there to greet them. It was their first post-inauguration trip. Jackie looked on from the visitors’ gallery during the President’s Parliamentary address, during which he famously said: “Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies.” He even tried to articulate a few sentences in French — albeit poorly. And he hurt his back while planting a tree on Parliament Hill.

Lyndon B. Johnson: May 1967
While in Canada for Expo 67, Johnson spent some time at the prime minister’s official retreat on Harrington Lake, where he met with Lester B. Pearson. As the story goes, a security stopped PM Pearson on his way to the bathroom to ask him who he was and where he was headed. “I’m the Prime Minister of Canada and I’m about to go and have a leak,” he reportedly answered.

Richard Nixon: April 1972
Vietnam War protestors greeted Nixon when he arrived in Canada. Despite his infamously acrimonious relationship with Pierre Trudeau, he opened speech to the House of Commons with a joke about Ottawa’s weather, and cheered Canada for being a fine neighbour. “The Canadian-American example is an example for all the world to see,” he said. The Great Lakes Pollution clean-up agreement was inked during his visit.

Ronald Reagan: March 1981, April 1987
During Reagan’s address to Parliament in 1981, NDP MPs sported black armbands to indicate their opposition of the U.S. involvement in El Salvador. Though his relationship with Brian Mulroney was much warmer than it had been with Trudeau, Reagan only visited Ottawa once while Mulroney was in office. When Reagan spoke in the House of Commons in 1987, he was interrupted by MP Svend Robinson, who implored the president to “Stop Star Wars now.” During their time in Canada, Nancy Reagan urged students at Ottawa’s Brookfield High School to “say no to drugs.”

George H. W. Bush: February 1989, March 1991
George and Barbara traveled to Ottawa less than a month after Bush’s inauguration. While the President met with Mulroney, Barbara read to local students at a nursery school in  Fern Hill. Among the pupils was the PM’s son, Nicholas.

Bill Clinton: February 1995, October 1999
Jean Chrétien, with whom Clinton had a close relationship, took the President on a tour of the Centre Block while Hillary skated on the Rideau Canal. During his first address, Clinton touted Canada as an example “of how people of different cultures can live and work together in peace, prosperity and respect,” and spoke of the “ties that bind the United States and Canada.” In 1999, he came to Ottawa to dedicate a new Embassy building.

George W. Bush: November 2004
Though George W. was scheduled to address Parliament in May 2003, he cancelled the trip, citing the war in Iraq. Others suggested that the President’s relationship with Chrétien, which had become strained, was to blame for the change in plans. When he did arrive in Ottawa in November 2004, some 5,000 protestors demonstrated against the Iraq war. The first couple visited a Gatineau archival presentation centre, where they reportedly set eyes on Shania Twain’s songbook, and one of the earliest baseball rule books.

The vision thing (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 10:37 AM - 35 Comments

Lawrence Martin on Ignatieff.

Dumbing down has been equated since the Reagan era with having the common touch. But, according to pollster Frank Graves, there is a growing appetite in Canada for a more sophisticated, intellectual form of leadership. It comes not just from Barack Obama’s having lit the fuse, Mr. Graves says, but from our own experience and conditions. We haven’t had the elevated style since Pierre Trudeau, who remains, according to polls, Canada’s most admired PM.

Since that era, it’s been largely populist and visionless. The country’s politics have swung so low in recent years not just on account of Mr. Harper, who exists almost entirely in the realm of tactics, but on account of Liberal leaders as well.

“We’ve been punching well below our intellectual weight,” says Mr. Graves. “We have the most educated public we have ever had but, instead of reaching higher to them, our politicians go the other way.” They should understand, he says, that “you don’t have to be aw-shucks and lowbrow to relate to average people. Average people are smart. Obama’s victory showed that. On the Republican side, Sarah Palin was making George Bush look like a Nobel Prize winner.”

BTC: What he said

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 29, 2008 at 3:25 PM - 0 Comments

In Inuvik yesterday, the Prime Minister attempted to define a recession. “Somebody said a recession is when people start losing their jobs, and when your neighbour loses his job. There are job losses, but overall employment is pretty stable,” he said.

A well-read reader suggests Mr. Harper has mangled Ronald Reagan’s line from the 1980 presidential campaign: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”

This is a not inconceivable connection to draw, at least given the Prime Minister’s recent fondness for the one-liners of late 20th century Republican presidents.