Some damn good reading

 Jon Huntsman hoisting the hardware at a New Hampshire gun shop.

One of the nice things about finding myself between books is that it gives me a little more time to catch up with magazines and other shorter forms of writing. Here's a quick roundup of what I've read and enjoyed lately:

Republican guy with chance to beat Obama. 
That would be Jon Huntsman, the twice-elected governor of Utah who officially nominated Sarah Palin for vice president in 2008, then served as U.S. ambassador to China. Unlike the rest of the minions scrambling to become the party's nominee in 2012, Huntsman is a rarity: a centrist Republican with legitimate business, political and foreign policy experience. He's fluent in Mandarin Chinese, smart enough to be asked to teach international relations at Penn and, if all the cards fall exactly right, could come out of New Hampshire with enough momentum to surprise Romney, Bachmann and the others.

Chris Jones, writing in Esquire ("Romney doesn't scare Obama. This guy does.") observes:

It's...hard to look at him and not wonder whether he might be coming along right on time. He'll be called a RINO [Republican In Name Only] and a traitor and a nobody in the coming weeks and months, but he'll also be called reasonable and practical and professorial and electable. Even today, so close to the start of everything, his path is clear. He needs to find a broader Republican base, drawing in those right-leaning voters who presently find themselves without a country, fiscal conservatives who don't much care whether two men get hitched or their candidate's wearing a pin in his lapel. His success or failure will be dictated by just how many people like him have been waiting for the storm of paranoid rhetoric to pass, waiting for the return of a party and a candidate who wants to govern rather than rage.

The enduring appeal of baseball.
For anyone who carries a soft spot for baseball -- despite the exorbitant salaries and the watered-down competition that's come with expansion to 28 major league teams -- this love letter by Joe Posnanski in Sports Illustrated is a satisfying read.

"What keeps the grand game great?" the headline reads. "Everything old is new again..."

In his essay, Posnanski says it's the quality of timelessness that explains the sport's appeal across the decades and our country's changing demographics. "What else but baseball connects us to America of, say, 1891?" he asks.

Here we are, 120 years later, in a very different America, and yes, all the time, we read that baseball can't keep up with the pace of our everyday lives, that television ratings are down, that football long ago took over as the National Pastime. But is that really the surprising part? Or is the surprising part that America still loves and breathes baseball, long after barbershop quartets stopped singing, long after couples stopped waltzing, long after boxers stopped hitting each other with their bare fists.

Why in the heck do so many of us still love baseball?

Sgt. Alan Beaty, Cpl. Patrick Myers, Sgt. Keith Hull, Cpl. Keith Beaty

Our wounded warriors.
A 2008 Rand Corp. study of 1.6 million American veterans who had served in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars found that 300,000 suffered from PTSD or major depression. That's nearly one in five. An astounding ratio. And as of 2011, the number of vets from those wars has now surged past the 2 million mark.

So what is anyone doing about it? Meet Alan Beaty, a former U.S. Marine sergeant who lives on the family homestead in Tennessee that was awarded to an ancestor for his service in the Revolutionary War. He's one of those with 100 percent disability and he has turned the spread into an unofficial, unfunded halfway house for fellow vets who've come back from the Middle East with physical and mental disabilities.

There, far away from the scrum of city life, they revive the camaraderie they forged on foreign lands, relive the memories, retell the stories that bond them in ways that civilians find difficult, if not possible, to understand. There, in stints from a few days to several months and even a year or more, they begin to heal.

The place is called "Vetville" and the story of the land and the men who gather there is told in compelling fashion by Mike Sager (yes, in Esquire, again). An excerpt:

Beaty scratches his head, resets his trucker cap. "When they teach you to be a Marine, they teach you to focus, because you can't be emotional in combat. You learn to be able to put things out of your mind. You learn to build walls. We've been trained to just keep functioning, to operate without emotion, without conscience. That's what you need in war. 

"But once you get back to society," Beaty continues, "the walls are still up. It's hard to have an emotional attachment to people. Because in your mind, you've been trained to know that this right here could be your last day on earth. So why allow myself to be connected to this woman? Why allow myself to be connected to my children? Lucky I got an amazing woman therapist now at the VA. It's only in the last few months that I'm learning how to take the walls down."

Politics. Baseball. The casualties of war. Take your pick. It's all good.


Photograph of Jon Huntsman by Peter Yang.
Photograph of U.S. Marines at Vetville by Jonathan Torgovnik.

Quick Takes for May

Keep trying to write short. Keep failing. Gonna try again.

-- How do you like your politics? Do you want your elected officials to work toward compromise? Or do you want them to hold fast to their principles, even if it means a lesser chance of accomplishing something for the common good? Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times has an interesting column, pointing out that American voters are increasingly pushing themselves to opposite poles and that's only encouraging our politicians to put ideology over problem-solving. I, for one, would rather have our elected officials in most cases working toward solutions that satisfy most, if not all.

-- Ever heard of the Q conference? It's an annual gathering of young Christians who are trying to find answers to faith-based questions in a post-Christian cultural climate. The conference was held in Portland in late April and thanks to my friend, Kristen, you can read a good account of the event on her blog. Now comes a followup by The Oregonian's religion writer, Nancy Haught, including a video clip featuring Q conference organizer Gabe Lyons' interview with two Portland participants --  Tom Krattenmaker, an author and contributor to USA Today, and Kevin Palau, who runs the Luis Palau Association founded by his evangelist father and is a big force behind the Season of Service that puts church volunteers to work on public service projects.

Pfc. Lori

-- Has the Army relaxed its recruiting standards? Not exactly. When Jordan came down to visit last weekend, we saw the gear he carries in his car -- helmet, vest, gas mask, boots. Lori slipped on the helmet to see how much it weighed (a lot!) and I snapped a quick photo. Next thing you know, she'll be heading over to the Recruiting Office to enlist.

Illustration by Kevin Kreneck, Tribune Media Services

3 perspectives on post-Osama Obama

President Obama and his national security team watch updates on the mission to capture Osama bin Laden on Sunday.

Since the death of Osama bin Laden, there's been a firehose of commentary and analysis of President Obama. Nearly all of it has been positive -- in sharp contrast to the months before, when even some of his staunchest supporters wondered when he would get a spine and stand up to the GOP with some passion on the issues of federal budget cuts and debt reduction.

Here are three particularly good takes that caught my eye this week.

Leonard Pitts Jr. of The Miami Herald calls out as racist those who questioned Obama's citizenship. Check out his column, "Obama guilty of 'presidenting while black'"

(L)et us not dismiss the birther imbroglio without calling out the bigotry at its core. Yes, that word will bring howls of protest from people who will declare that race had nothing to do with their demands for Obama’s original birth certificate. 

And I believe them. Or at least, I believe they believe what they are saying.

E.J. Dionne Jr. of The Washington Post tries to get at the contradictions that have defined our president in his column "Obama the old? Now we know." 

Barack Obama is not the man many Americans thought he was. This sudden realization has transformed American politics. 

The sheer audacity of the successful operation against Osama bin Laden has forced Obama’s friends and foes alike to reassess what they make of a chief executive who defies easy categorization and reveals less about himself than politicians are typically drawn to do.Obama is hard to understand because he is many things and not just one thing. He has now proved that he can be bold at an operational level, even as he remains cautious at a philosophical level. 

John Blake of CNN offers a thoughtful piece exploring the meaning of an iconic photo in "What 'Situation Room Photo' reveals about us" 

Most commentators have focused on the historic nature of the photo: Obama staring at the screen with a grim intensity; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, covering her mouth to repress her reaction -- the epicenter of U.S. military power hunting down its most hated foe. 

But look deeper and that photo becomes historic in a more subtle way. It's a snapshot of how much this nation's attitudes about race, women and presidential swagger are changing, several scholars and historians say.

Some good reading here. 

After bin Laden's death, what next?

Crowds celebrate outside the White House early Monday.

There's no way I can avoid addressing the topic that's on the minds and lips of people everywhere  President Obama's dignified announcement Sunday night that U.S. special forces had hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 slaughter and the inspiration for other deadly attacks and foiled plots around the world.

After ten years of trying, the news that we'd finally caught up to him and taken him out seemed surrealistic, almost too good to be true. I say that not in a bloodthirsty tone but from the perspective of appreciating the precision, the discipline, the astounding intelligence and execution required to pull it off -- all without the loss of an American life.

A few thoughts:

Will 5/1 be remembered in the same way as 9/11?
I doubt it, though I imagine millions of Americans will remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they learned of Osama's demise on May 1, 2011.

Will we see retaliation in one form or another?
No surprise that U.S. embassies were put on high alert and U.S. airport security tightened yet again in the aftermath. I don't expect we'll see attempts at revenge in the next days or even months. My sense is that al-Qaida is patient enough to take a longer view. The question now is do they have the capability after the loss of their leader?

Will we seize on this extraordinary development to come together again as Americans, the way we did after the carnage 10 years ago?
The spontaneous celebrations in Washington and New York were encouraging, as was the news that President Bush had congratulated Obama on the successful mission. But it remains to be seen whether we take this moment to find a unified purpose in addressing our lingering economic problems and deep political divisions.

Partisan fights over proposed federal budget cuts and deficit reductions are no less important today than they were yesterday. Our entanglements in Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East are as complicated as ever. Widespread ignorance and distrust of Islam is still an issue.

I'd like to think we can rally around our president and find solutions to our domestic and international problems that make us stronger. Likewise, I hope more Americans will be able to see that Islam was never the enemy -- it was bin Laden. I'm probably being naive, but for today at least I'd think it's possible.

How will this play out politically?
Yesterday's operation can only help Obama at home and America abroad. To pull this off in the midst of the Arab Spring still roiling across the Middle East, with people in Japan, Haiti and the American South still recovering from natural disasters, with the U.S. economy still teetering, was an amazing development. Euphoric, almost. Can you imagine the blistering criticism the president would have taken had this mission failed in any way?

As the father of a young serviceman, a 23-year-old Army specialist, it goes without saying that I'd welcome any momentum this adds to a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Though I understand his desire to put his military training to use, and I admire his courage his resolve, I remain reluctant to embrace the thought of seeing him deployed to what remains a very dangerous place.


Photograph by Drew Angerer, The Washington Times

Ron Paul's radical vision: Constitutional purity

Ron Paul: Ex-surgeon without a heart

He's gone from regional oddball to suddenly celebrated elder statesman. He's a 75-year-old Texas Republican from suburban Houston who's been on the short end of countless 434-to-1 votes in the U.S. House. And in today's wacky, up-is-down political climate, his rigid, reactionary ideas have placed him at the center of the national debate over the size and role of the federal government.

He is Ron Paul and if you're not acquainted with his philosophy, you owe it to yourself to read John H. Richardson's masterful profile in May's Esquire: "The Founding Father."

In stature and personality, Paul seems harmless enough -- a former Air Force flight surgeon who's small and trim and boyish as Tom Sawyer. But he is a bulldog when it comes to this idea of constitutional purity. Where most people acknowledge that politics is the art of compromise, he holds fast to the belief that principles should always trump "incrementalism." In other words, you don't compromise. As Richardson explains:

That's why he's taken more lonely stands than any other politician in American history: against the Iraq war even though he's a Republican, against the Defense of Marriage Act even though he's a conservative Christian, against farm subsidies even though he represents a rural district, against the Texas Medical Center even though he's from Texas — the list goes on and on. He refused to award congressional medals to Rosa Parks, Ronald Reagan, the Pope, and Mother Teresa. After Hurricane Katrina, he voted against sending federal help to Louisiana. 

"Once you say, 'Well, you know, we live in the real world and sometimes you have to give in a little bit,' then you're never yourself, you're never your own person, and they'll badger you to death. So it's much easier for me to follow a set of principles than fussin' and fumin' on knowing exactly when you're supposed to throw in the towel."

Paul is often called the "intellectual godfather" of the tea party movement. Any taxation is theft. Any spending of public dollars is socialism. Any attempt to help those of lesser means is redistribution of wealth.

"The implications are ruthless -- starving old people in the street, literally," Richardson writes. But Paul says that's OK, that the Founding Fathers believed that personal liberty and economic liberty were one in the same, and that Christianity emphasizes the importance of the individual.

Paul is the Christian Scientist of economics, convinced that the "medicine" of government planning is the sin of pride -- if you really trust the Lord, you don't give your children antibiotics and you don't give your grandparents Social Security. He is willing to increase social pain dramatically so the nation can be born again.

Paul's vision is as scary and Draconian as it is pure and unshakable. His libertarian-leaning ways would never fly in Oregon. It's the rest of the country, Red States America, that makes me worry.

Photograph: Brent Humphreys/Redux

Remembering John, mourning Elizabeth

Hardly a week goes by that we don't lose a famous entertainer or politician -- or observe the anniversary of someone who died long ago. And so it is with the deaths of John Lennon, gunned down 30 years ago today, and Elizabeth Edwards, who succumbed to cancer yesterday.

Their personalities and their deaths could not have been more different and, so, too will be their legacies.

Lennon was a musical genius and the leader of what I would argue was the world's most influential band. The Beatles burst onto the scene in the early '60s and with their mop-top haircuts and collarless suits (so tame to look back on now), both looked and sounded different from anyone we'd seen or heard on this side of the Atlantic. As the band experimented with different styles and influences, their catalog of albums expanded our definition of what pop and rock music could be: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Yellow Submarine, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, Let It Be.

"Nowhere Man" came up on my iPod as I was running this morning, but I like this video of "I'm A Loser" a little better.




Where Lennon cultivated an image of a rebel, Elizabeth Edwards conveyed something entirely different: a woman of grace, courage, remarkable honesty and resilience.

We all know her story: an accomplished lawyer; the loyal wife who supported her ambitious husband during his political campaigns; the betrayed spouse who endured the humiliation of John's infidelity; the mother of four who lost her her oldest child to a car crash; and, lastly, an author who wrote candidly and about her life's ups and downs and spoke forcefully about her determination to make the best of each day, even as she was losing her life to breast cancer.

As political spouses go, Elizabeth Edwards seemed to have a real sense of humanity and genuineness that separated her from the rest of the pack. As a mother and a human being, she was an inspiration.

Photo of Elizabeth Edwards: http://www.inquisitr.com

The morning after

I went to bed after midnight, feeling dispirited about the Republican beat-down that swept across the country. But you know what? The sun came up this morning. The Earth stayed on its axis. And my neighborhood streets looked as familiar as ever as I went on my morning run.

Even though the GOP rout in the House was one of historic proportions -- and even though, as I write this, we still don't know if Oregonians have elected a Republican governor for the first time since 1986 -- I'm OK with it. Why? For one thing, we all saw it coming. I would have been shell-shocked otherwise, but voter anger was volcanic and impossible to miss. What's still up for debate is correctly identifying the target of that anger: Obama? The Democrats? Incumbents, no matter what their party? Congress? The federal government? It's probably all of that.

There's no question that continuing concerns over the economy, and related worries about the mounting size of the federal deficit, eclipsed everything. We can debate all we want about whether Obama and the Democrats acted responsibly or not in responding to the economic disaster that Bush left behind but, the truth is, there's no objective answer. Judgment is subjective and history ultimately will shine a light on who and what was right, though there will still be plenty of room for other interpretations.

The second thing is that it's now time to put up or shut up. Whether you credit or blame the tea party movement for lighting the spark that ignited this fire, the burden is now clearly on those folks to make the transition from politicking to governing. That's where I have huge doubts -- and it's where I hope I am proven drastically wrong about bipartisan solutions that involve painful fixes to complex policy issues and budget choices.

The morning after is a good time to reflect on how we got here and where we might go from here. And I point to two superb articles in The Economist's (Oct. 30-Nov. 5) issue as exemplary.

The cover story, "Angry America," asserts that the rage directed at Obama is "overdone" -- a charge I completely agree with.

In the non-bylined column called Lexington, the essay "The good, the bad and the tea parties"  accurately portrays the challenge ahead.

"Ideology is one thing. But if the tea-partiers do well...especially if the Republicans capture the House, they need to move past ideology into the realm of practical policy. This means having something serious to say about how actually to bring spending under control. To date, they have preferred breezy slogans. Will they cut into pensions and Medicare, and if so how? Will they accept that taming the deficit will require hikes in taxes as well as cuts in spending? Will they continue to oppose reflexively every measure of a Democratic administration, or have the courage to share responsibility for the painful decisions the times demand? It has been all too easy from the outside to conjure up a mythic America of limited government, sing hymns to the constitution and denounce the federal bureaucracy in all its forms. Once they are in government themselves, that gig will be over."

 Illustration: The Economist.

One nation divided

A growing chasm?

Finally, Election Day. I dropped off my ballot yesterday and now I'm bracing for the outcome -- more so for the national results than Oregon's. In this blue state of ours, most left-leaning candidates will win. The only question is whether voters will go for a second-time-around candidate, Democrat John Kitzhaber, or the fresh-faced but totally inexperienced challenger, Republican Chris Dudley.

In normal circumstances, Kitzhaber, probably would cruise to a third term. But, clearly, there is nothing ordinary about this election year. That Dudley, a former NBA player who's never run for (let alone served in) elective office at any level, is going head-to-head in the final polls really says something about the national backlash against Democrats and incumbents.

Funny thing. When I logged onto my blog this morning, the first pop-up ads were "Chris Dudley for Oregon." Guess that shows the strength of his fund-raising. The guy's on the Internet as well as TV.

Anyway, a final burst of pre-election reading these past 24 hours left me wondering just how small the political middle has become, with partisans on both sides clinging to their poles-apart stances and demonizing each other like never before.

It's one thing for like-minded people to flock together. Witness the Glenn Beck "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, D.C., followed by last weekend's Stewart-Colbert " "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear."

It's another thing to analyze the demographic makeup of America's TV watchers and gear your political advertising accordingly. According to a New York Times article, "Where Parties Look for an Audience," Republican ad buyers favor sports programming (college and pro football, NASCAR racing) and crime dramas to reach their target audience while their Democratic counterparts connect with like-minded viewers watching comedies ("Everybody Loves Raymond," "Two and a Half Men") and talk shows ("Dr. Phil," "The Dr. Oz Show"). Check out the graphic to see the breakdown.

It makes sense, but isn't it just a little sad? Unless your viewing habits span the spectrum, you're getting only one side. Of course, given that most political advertising is in the form of attack ads, maybe it's a good thing we're missing more of each other's sniping.

Last word. The only show that seems to have crossover appeal for both Ds and Rs? "Dancing With The Stars." Go figure.

Photo: www.photobucket.com

Still got hope?

Two weeks from today, voters across the nation will deliver their verdict in the mid-term elections. Will they, in their righteous and misguided indignation, refudiate (er, repudiate) what President Obama and the Congress have done to try to haul this country out of the ditch that Bush & Co. drove us into? Or will they show they have come to their senses?

Too many Americans either don't understand or don't want to admit that it was the previous administration that started two wars and mismanaged the economy -- and that you can't fix everything in less than two years.

The conventional wisdom says Republicans are poised to make net gains in both the House and Senate. I suppose that's inevitable, and I won't get into the specifics here. But I can hope (can't I?) that at least some voters will take notice of an important story by The Associated Press that contradicts the notion that partisan gridlock has resulted in a do-nothing Congress.

In the piece "A productive Congress gets no respect from voters," reporter Jim Abrams notes that this Congress was actually the most productive in nearly half a century, having passed significant legislation on everything from the stimulus, health care reform and Wall Street regulation to making college loans more affordable and enacting new consumer protections for credit card users and tax credits for first-time homeowners.

Yet recent polls show as many as three-fourths of Americans disapprove of Congress. What's amazing is how today's backlash mirrors that of nearly 50 years ago. "In 1966," the AP reports, "after Democrats created Medicare and Medicaid and passed civil rights laws, they got hammered in the [mid-term] election, losing 48 seats in the House and four in the Senate." 

Things are heating up in the Northwest this week, with the big guns coming out to support Democrats in important races. Bill Clinton was in the Seattle area yesterday, on behalf of Washington Sen. Patty Murray, and Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are all scheduled to stump for her in the next few days. The president will be in Oregon tomorrow to boost the campaign of John Kitzhaber, the former Democratic governor now seeking a third term.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin was in Reno yesterday kicking off a 15-day national tour in support of Tea Party candidates, including Nevada's Sharron Angle, who's perhaps the daffiest of them all.

At times, I despair. But then I take heart when I read Obama's call to action ("Obama Fights Back") in Rolling Stone's Oct. 15 issue:

"It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. There may be complaints about us not having gotten certain things done, not fast enough, making certain legislative compromises. But right now, we've got a choice between a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place, versus an administration that, with some admitted warts, has been the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.

"The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible.

"Everybody out there has to be thinking about what's at stake in this election and if they want to move forward over the next two years or six years or 10 years on key issues like climate change, key issues like how we restore a sense of equity and optimism to middle-class families who have seen their incomes decline by five percent over the last decade. If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we'd better fight in this election."

Gingrich in 2012?

Gingrich in his office, 2001

Although Esquire leans left, one thing I've appreciated over the years is the great job the magazine's writers do in crafting political profiles of key members of the Republican Party. Through deep reporting and bold analysis, I've learned more about John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rush Limbaugh and Tim Pawlenty -- and what makes them tick -- than from other sources. Now comes another warts-and-all piece from John H. Richardson about Newt Gingrich.

And who better than a chain-smoking ex-wife-- Marianne, spouse No. 2 of Newt's three -- to provide commentary and insight on the naked ambitions, personal foibles and contradictions of her former husband? Make no mistake, though. This isn't a hatchet job. It's a well-rounded piece, featuring revealing scenes where Gingrich meets with supporters as well as the one-on-one interview in the former House Speaker's office on K Street on Washington's Lobbyist Row.

As much as the GOP talks about family values and the sanctity of marriage, I'd forgotten about  Gingrich's story: That he married his high school geometry teacher as a teenager and divorced her while she was recovering from uterine cancer; that he married Marianne, then divorced her in order to marry his present wife, a congressional aide 23 years younger than him.

At 65, he's risen from the depths -- he quit his job as Speaker and resigned from Congress while having an affair with now-Wife No. 3 -- to become the "philosopher king of the conservative movement" and apparent front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2012, based on early polls and the fact he's raised more money this year than Romney, Pawlenty, Palin and Huckabee combined.

"At a moment of doctrinal crisis in the Republican party, Newt Gingrich is the only major figure in his party who is both insurgent and gray eminence," Richardson writes. "That is why twelve years after his career ended — twelve years after any other man in his position would have disappeared from view — he is ascendant."

Two passages in the piece stood out for me:

He's the first person you've ever met who speaks in bullet points. In fact, he sometimes more resembles a collection of studied gestures than a mere mortal, so much so that he gives the impression that everything about him is calculated, including the impression that everything about him is calculated. Which can make him seem like a Big Thinker but also like a complete phony — an unsettling combination.

The failure of the Republican leadership under George W. Bush created an opening for him, he says. Obama's "radicalism" made that opening wider. Now a lot of Republicans are starting to ask, What Would Newt Do?

Or, he puts it another way: "The underlying thematics are beginning to be universalizable in a way that has taken years of work."

Whatever that means...

And then there's this from a fellow Republican:

"I've known Newt now for thirty years almost," says former [Oklahoma] congressman Mickey Edwards . "But I wouldn't be able to describe what his real principles are. I never felt that he had any sort of a real compass about what he believed except for the pursuit of power."

I'm certain that Sarah Palin cannot and will not be nominated in 2012. I haven't a clue who the Republicans might cough up, but after reading this piece on an astonishing political resurrection I won't be surprised if it's Gingrich who takes on Obama two years from now. Read the piece here.

Photograph: Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images

Huff Post meetup

Every once in a while, it's good to stick your toe into new waters. And so I did tonight on a mellow Monday evening at the Lucky Lab brewpub in Northwest Portland.

Surfing the net the other night, I came upon The Huffington Post and noticed an open invitation to meet other readers of the site face-to-face and discuss current issues. HuffPost calls itself "a socially driven Internet newspaper" and its national reach was evident tonight. A Portland State University student who worked on Obama's campaign stepped up as organizer and 17 others signed up for the meetup, one of more than 300 that Huff Post hopes to pull off around the world.

Seven of us showed up -- not a bad turnout, I thought. Four women, three men, with ages ranging from 22 to 60-plus (I'm estimating here) and political leanings a solid blue -- about what you'd expect for Portland and a Web site that draws mostly liberal commentators and readers.

We gathered shortly after 6:30 p.m. around two picnic benches in a corner of the outdoor courtyard while a bluegrass band played a few yards away. And for the next couple hours we flitted from subject to subject like a butterfly after nectar.

Has Obama been a disappointment as president?
Yes. Though some folks were more forgiving or defensive or more apt to blame the Republicans for not getting more significant legislation through the Congress, the consensus was he hadn't met expectations -- though some of us argued those expectations were too lofty in the first place.

Are Democrats a victim of their own diversity of ideas?
Yes. The health care bill took so long to pass because there were so many factions within the party advocating for this or that feature, this or that level of coverage while the Republicans simply closed ranks and opposed it nearly universally, just as they've done on every major issue. Failing to come together -- and soon -- could mean the GOP scores big in November.

A few other personalities and topics popped up -- the Oregon governor's race, Portland Mayor Sam Adams, U.S. labor unions, national politics -- and the group agreed it would be worthwhile to get together again. I'd hoped to gain some insight into what's on the minds of ordinary citizens -- as opposed to the elected officials, policy advocates and other usual suspects whose views regularly find a home in The Oregonian's editorial pages -- and I certainly came away with an unfiltered dose.

As noted previously, this was hardly a representative slice of Portland. Still, it was good to learn about the different ways people access the news these days. The PSU student, for one, said she relies on Twitter updates all day long and, in fact, was checking her Blackberry periodically during the meetup. Another person starts each day online with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. And still another says she tends to watch KGW, the NBC affiliate, for local news; when she comes upon a story she's interested in, she goes to the station's web site for more information. Finally, everyone agreed that while The Oregonian has good content, our affiliated web site, oregonlive.com, is difficult to navigate -- a complaint I've heard before, owing to the template we're locked into.

I've hardly scratched the surface here but I'm glad I went...and I'd be up for a second round.

Photo by yours truly. From left: Dave, Kori, Mike, Tara, Lynsey (meetup organizer) and Moya.

P.S. Random observation. Anyone else notice today's date of 8-9-10?

The real John McCain

Our time here on Orcas got off to a "rocky" start.

Lori was using the gas-powered weedwhacker on the side of the house and didn't notice until after she was done that a small rock had been propelled into the passenger side window of our car and left a spider-webbed pattern of cracks.

Well, knowing rain was in the forecast and not wanting the glass to fall apart while we were in, we knocked it out ourselves into hundreds of little pieces that made for a tedious clean-up, and I ferried to Anacortes the next day to have it replaced.

Folks, if you ever need an auto glass job in Anacortes (fat chance!), allow me to recommend Novus Auto Glass on the main drag. You'll not only get great service, you'll also meet the man himself: John McCain.

This McCain is either the store owner or manager and he's as friendly as his photo would suggest. I asked him how his customers react to meeting a nationally known political figure.

"Most of 'em are pretty good about it," he said. Although, he added, "This one guy from Guemes (Island) wouldn't even shake my hand."

Obviously kidding, he said he's thought about running for political office and seeing how far the name recognition would carry him. We agreed he'd either have a cakewalk or lose in a landslide.

I pointedly didn't ask him about his politics, but he clearly doesn't play favorites when it comes to customers.

Right after finishing the job on our vehicle, with its "Women for Obama" bumper sticker (thanks to Lori), I noticed the big RV that was next in line. Its bumper sticker had, ahem, a slightly different message:

"I'll keep my guns, freedom and money. You keep the change."

Madame Secretary

On the cover of Esquire's May issue on women: Christina Hendricks, the curvy redhead from "Mad Men." Inside, photos of half-dressed actresses and models; the usual features on fashion and food, music and movies; an eclectic assortment of "personality profiles," this time including Lady Gaga (gah!) and Paris Hilton (double gah!); and a Q&A interview with Carol Bartz, the unapologetically hard-ass CEO of Yahoo!.

What might sound like fluff is saved, however, by a brilliant piece on Hillary Clinton, crafted by Tom Junod, one of the magazine's stable of very talented writers.

The headline and subhead capture the essence of the piece, as they should:
"Hillary. Happy."
She has lived the most extraordinary American life. Now she lives in extraordinary exile -- from the two men she is most loyal to, from politics, from controversy. And it has freed her.

At the start of what became a seemingly endless 2008 presidential campaign, I was inclined to vote for Hillary. Sure, she was a wooden, painfully scripted speaker but she brought tremendous intellect and insider experience from eight years in the White House and six years in the U.S. Senate.

But when the charismatic and inspiring Barack Obama came along, touting a new approach to national politics (one that would emphasize bipartisanship) and foreign policy (one that would have America re-engage in international diplomacy after the bellicose Bush years), my vote went to the senator from Illinois.

I don't regret changing loyalties and I'm glad Hillary accepted Barack's invitation to serve as secretary of state. (See how well I know them? I'm on a first-name basis...Actually, Junod points out that these two are the only American political celebrities known globally by their first names. Not Bill.)

But, like a lot of Americans, I've wondered what it's really been like for Hillary in her new job, immersed in the world of obtuse dialogue and ceremony, far from the heat and blinding lights of Beltway politics and insipid partisan politics that have infused nastiness and ignorance into national debates about health care, immigration reform and judicial appointments.

Wonder no more. Junod does a brilliant job of taking us through Hillary's history -- as the ambitious "co-president" when Bill was in office, as the humiliated partner in the world's most scrutinized marriage, as the well-respected senator from New York, as the reluctant candidate whose inevitable nomination to the presidency was thwarted by Obama.

And now? She is undeniably one of the president's greatest assets, Junod writes. Polls show that Americans rate Obama more favorably on her foreign policy than domestic policy. And, Junod notes, her global celebrity makes her indispensable to the administration even as it exiles her to endless touring, trying to rebuild fences where Bush-Cheney knocked them down. At age 62, Hillary traveled a quarter of a million miles in her first year as secretary of state, which means she has lived separately from her husband and gained an ironic respite from speculation about her personal life --- because she has no time for a personal life.

There's much to like in this piece, which is clearly sympathetic to Hillary and leaves you wondering what if.

"We will never know if Hillary Clinton would have made a great president," Junod writes. "What we do know, based on the way she's done her job as secretary of state — with her loyalty feeding her capacity for self-sacrifice and self-sacrifice awakening her genius for competence — is that she'd probably make a great president now, having lost her chance forever."

There are several great scenes in this profile, but I choose this one as emblematic of the intellect, loyalty and inner strength that Clinton brings to her job as well as a neat segue to the human qualities -- physical and personal -- that come to light in the piece.

You don't know how she does what she does. You don't know how anyone possibly could. You see her use her hands to push herself up when it's time to stand up from the day's work at the dais; you see her use the banister when she's climbing the steep steps from the runway to the waiting plane. You see her so tired that her face looks almost punctured. You see her emerging from one closed-door conference after another, standing next to one ceremonial man after another, speaking in the same dead diplomatic tongue, staring at him and nodding as he speaks in a language she doesn't understand, and you wonder if the job she has taken is a parodic reiteration of the poses she mastered as a political wife.

You wonder, as you have always wondered, what goes on in her mind while her face sets itself into its unruffled mask. And you wonder, mainly, when she is going to yawn. She never does. Her job seems to dare her to yawn, and yet she never does, while you, you who worry about her as you follow her, you who wonder where she gets her strength from ..."Well, I appreciate your coming on the trips and following us around," Hillary Clinton says when you get the chance to visit her at the State Department. She gives you her hand, and it is small and lightly freckled.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/women/women-issue/hillary-clinton-0510-5#ixzz0oOK4bhC9

Photo of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden by Pete Souza, White House photographer

Photo gallery: Getty Images

Face of the Tea Party

Finally, some poll-based data on those who consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement. If you were thinking of a monolithic group of poorly educated, below-average income hicks, think again.

From today's New York Times comes this story: "Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated."

The principal findings: The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45. [No surprise there.]

They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.” [Again, no surprise.]

And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.” [Ah, now there's the revealing characteristic.]

And what are they angry about?

Mostly, the recent health care reforms, excessive government spending and "a feeling that their opinions are not represented in Washington."

They are pessimistic about the direction of the country and believe that the policies of the Obama administration "are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich." [Hmmm, is that a bad thing?]

They believe Obama "does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 90 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

We've heard a lot of outrageous stuff in the past year or so from the extreme right wing -- those who scream "socialism" at every turn, those who believe Obama is a Muslim and wasn't born in the United States, those who dispute the phenomenon of climate change.

This story, with the accompanying poll data and video interviews with Tea Party supporters, helps break down the easy stereotype. But it also helps put a face on those whose animosity about the new administration and its new policies reflects their loss of entitlement.

Photograph by Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times

A bridge to the 21st century *

Writing in The New York Times this week, Thomas Friedman shed new light on some familiar themes and introduced me to a new constituency that could play a huge role in U.S. politics and economic affairs in the next few years.

"Who's Up For Building Bridges?" he asks, referring to the question of which political party is going to strengthen America's ability to compete in the global marketplace while practicing greater fiscal discipline. Based on the quagmire that currently passes for national politics, it's certainly not going to be the Republicans, who've become the Party of No. But it won't necessarily be the Democrats, either, if they can't get beyond a decades-long agenda of major entitlement programs.

Friedman argues that both major parties have essentially come to the end of the road of the divergent paths they've pursued during the 20th century. The GOP embraced the Reagan Revolution perhaps too much, with an incessant call for tax cuts, deregulation and a government-is-the-problem mantra. Meanwhile, with the passage of health care reform, the Democrats essentially brought the New Deal-FDR Revolution to its logical conclusion.

So, who's looking ahead to the 21st century to push us toward the creation of new jobs in a greatly changed environment -- both literal and figurative? President Obama is at least trying, Friedman says.

"Obama-ism posits that we are now in a hypercompetitive global economy, where the country that thrives will be the one that brings together the most educated, creative and diverse work force with the best infrastructure -- bandwidth, ports, airports, high-speed rail and good governance."

In a world with a warming climate and a steadily growing population -- projected to hit 9.2 billion by 2050 -- demand for clean energy is going to expand mightly. And so we should expect energy technology to be the next great global industry.

Anyone who thinks that can be achieved without government involvement -- whether offering incentives or setting high national education standards -- is delusional. Globalization has weakened both parties, Friedman argues -- and I'll suggest interested readers check out his column rather than take up more space here explaining why.

He concludes by pointing to the emergence of so-called "Newocrats," a new constituency created by globalization "which combines the multinational corporate manager, the technology enterprepreneur and engineer, and the aspirational members of the meritocracy." Such people would have leaned Republican in the past but now many lean toward Obama.

"They don't agree with everything he's proposing," Friedman concludes, "but they sense that he is working on that bridge to the 21st century, while today's GOP/Tea Party is just not in the game."

If he's right, that gives me some encouragement in the short run, for the 2010 mid-term elections, and for the long run, if our president can bring together enough level-headed people in business, labor, education and government to pull their oars in the same direction.

Photograph: Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times

* This column marks my 301st post since I started this blog a little over 15 months ago. Thanks to one and all who've been along for some or most of the ride.

"The Notorious Blago"

"People Who Matter 2010." That's the promo on Esquire's February issue and, as we all know, that's a pretty subjective way to describe the cast of characters found inside.

No arguing that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are two politicians who matter. As for the rest, you decide: Blake Lively, Jay-Z, Robert Gates, Ellen DeGeneres, Jerry Brown, Dana White, Rod Blogojevich.

While you're pondering that list -- by the way, Dana White is president of the mixed martial arts Ultimate Fighting Championship -- let me just say that if you read just one of these profiles, let it be "The Notorious Blago."

The disgraced former Illinois governor comes off as a true whack job, delusional and profane as a two-bit thug, as he blames political enemies for his indictment on 16 felony charges that he attempted to sell Obama's Senate seat. He actually believes he's going to beat the rap.

Seriously, you have to read this. Here's a taste:

"It's such a cynical business, and most of the people in the business are full of shit and phonies, but I was real, man — and am real. This guy [Obama], he was catapulted in on hope and change, what we hope the guy is. What the f***? Everything he's saying's on the teleprompter. I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up."

Read more: Rod Blogojevich interview.

Photo by Andrew Hetherington

Barack Obama and positive discipline

This month's Esquire arrived the other day and, as usual, there's some fine material in it.

Forget the profile of cover girl Blake Lively, the "Gossip Girl" who strikes me as yet another one of the many interchangeable Next Big Stars in Hollywood who doesn't become one.

Instead go to the intriguing piece, "Barack Obama: Papa in Chief," and wrap your mind around this theory put out there by writer Tom Junod: To understand Obama, you need to understand the "positive discipline" movement, a philosophy of discipline that rests on the principle that children should never be punished but, rather, should be taught mutual respect through the parent's example.

"Positive discipline does not mean no discipline; it means that discipline is a matter of teaching mutual respect, rather than making your child suffer," Junod writes. "... and so when faced with intransigence, parents have to respond by stating their expectations, repeating the rules, and then giving their children the love and support they need to follow them. Always try to include, rather than isolate; avoid labels; don't negotiate, but don't escalate, either. If your children are not doing well, either take them out of the situation or remove yourself. You — and they — can always try again."

If you imagine Obama as the patient father, never raising his voice, never punishing his opponents, you can begin to see the consistency with which he's dealt with Congressman Joe ("You lie") Wilson of South Carolina, the intransigent Republicans seeking to block health care reform, Sgt. James Crowley (the cop who arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home) -- even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. ("One could almost hear Obama saying, 'Use your words, Mahmoud. Use your words.' ")

Junod continues:

"The things we liked about him have turned out to be the things that drive us crazy about him. After eight years of the Decider, we elected the Deliberator ... and now we've decided that he's too deliberative, too methodical, too cool, too unemotional, too even-tempered, too undemonstrative, too rational, too conciliatory, too compromising."

Obama's style is so contrary to what we've become to expect from a president that we don't know what to make of him -- or ourselves. We liked it when he said he wanted to change Beltway politics-as-usual, but he frustrated the Left by not asserting himself more strongly in the health care debate and he drove the Right crazy by seeming, in their eyes, way too accommodating with foreign leaders and apologetic for past American actions and attitudes.
Is it him? Or is it us that doesn't get it?

"Most Americans respond to strength and decisiveness in a president the same way they do in a father," Junod writes. "It has been unsettling to have a president whose agenda for change includes changing our very notions of strength and weakness, and whose idea of decisiveness seems to involve mostly making good choices, which is not necessarily leadership. He has been able to lead by inspiration but unable to simply lean on people, and unwilling to try on the world stage. His uncertainty as an authority figure may or may not have encouraged our foreign enemies, but it has certainly emboldened his domestic ones, who seemed confused about whether to call him a tyrant or a weakling until they realized, like schoolboys, that they weren't going to be punished and started calling him whatever they damn well pleased."

If you buy Junod's thesis, then Obama's seeming indecisiveness appears to have a logical context. Consider:

"The biggest difficulty with all nonauthoritative approaches to authority is that, even when they work, they often don't work right away. Spanking a child, threatening a child, taking a child's toys away — they might not be the best thing for a child, but they generally get a child's attention. ... There are no orders in positive parenting, as there are no orders in the Obama administration. There are, instead, reasonable goals and clearly stated expectations. The approach is evolutionary, and on the most important domestic issue of his presidency — health-care reform — so is the Paleolithic progress of the debate."

So, is Obama outfoxing us all by sticking to a philosophy of positive discipline in the face of unruly opponents and an easily spooked, easily manipulated American public? Or is he following this approach to the political graveyard?

Read the piece here and decide for yourself.

Image: President Obama, by Adam Beane. Clay-and-wax-based composite material, 18 inches high. Commissioned for Esquire, December 2009.

"God's Politics"

Since when did believing in God and having moral values make you pro-war, pro-rich and pro-Republican? And since when did promoting and pursuing a progressive social agenda with a concern for economic security, health care, and educational opportunity mean you had to put faith in God aside?

While the Right in America has hijacked the language of faith to prop up its political agenda -- an agenda not all people of faith support -- the Left hasn't done much better, largely ignoring faith and continually separating moral discourse and personal ethics from public policy. While the Right argues that God's way is their way, the Left pursues an unrealistic separation of religious values from morally grounded political leadership. The consequence is a false choice between ideological religion and soulless politics.

With liner notes like that, I couldn't resist picking up Jim Wallis' book, "God's Politics," when I went to trade in some books a few weeks ago. It's been a bit of a slog since then, but I managed to finally finish it last week. Shame on me, too, for not getting to it much earlier. It came out in 2005, shortly after GWB had begun his second term, and so, it features a scathing critique of Bush's decision to go to war as well as the me-first economic and tax policies of those times.

Wallis, for the uninitiated, is a Washington, D.C.,-based evangelical who founded Sojourners, a nationwide network of progressive Christians working for economic justice and peace. He's a prolific author and lecturer and, judging from this book, at times too self-promoting.

Nevertheless, his message -- that there is ample room for a middle ground at the intersection of religious and political life in America -- is a sound one. Wallis spares no mercy ripping into the Religious Right (and politicians who cater to them) for pushing a morals-based agenda on abortion and gay rights while ignoring broader concerns like poverty and the growing gap between rich and poor. At the same time, he scolds the Secular Left -- that would be me -- for insisting on an absolute separation between church and state when there are opportunities to join together for the common good.

I've seen in my own community how people motivated by their religious values can put their beliefs into practice. The best example: the Season of Service organized by the Luis Palau Association that has created partnerships between Portland metro area churches and public schools with high concentrations of poverty. See Tom Krattenmaker's essay, published earlier this year in The Oregonian, to read about West Linn's SouthLake Foursquare Church and its involvement at North Portland's Roosevelt High School.

This being a Sunday morning, I'm here at my computer, not in a church. I don't think that's going to change. But I can say Wallis has opened my mind on these issues of religion and public policy. Dozens of dog-eared pages attest to various passages that resonated with me. I especially appreciated how he ended the book with a chapter on "The Critical Choice: Hope Versus Cynicism."

The choice between cynicism and hope is ultimately a spiritual choice, one that has enormous political consequences, he writes.

Cynicism does protect you in many ways. It protects you from seeming foolish to believe that things could and will change. It protects you from disappointment. It protects you from insecurity because now you are free to pursue your own security instead of sacrificing it for a social engagement that won't work anyway.

Ultimately, cynicism protects you from commitment. If things are not really going to change, why try so hard to make a difference? Why become and stay so involved? Why take the risks, make the sacrifices, open yourself to the vulnerablities?

But, he argues:

More than just a moral issue, hope is a spiritual and even religious choice. Hope is not a feeling; it is a decision. And the decision for hope is based on what you believe at the deepest levels -- what your most basic convictions are about about the world and what the future holds -- all based on your faith. You choose hope, not as a naive wish, but as a choice, with your eyes wide open to the reality of the world -- just like the cynics who have not made the decision for hope.

I've always thought of myself more as a skeptic than an outright cynic. Even so, as a lapsed Catholic, Wallis has given me plenty to think about. More important, he's given me plenty of cause to re-examine my values and choices, and ample reason to more often choose hope.

The Salahis on SNL

They came from out of nowhere two weeks ago, the Virginia couple who crashed President Obama's first state dinner and raised all sorts of questions about the Secret Service and a breakdown in security at the White House.

Even if you haven't been paying much attention to the story about socialites Michaele and Tareq Salah, the wanna-be reality show stars, take a few minutes to check out this great SNL spoof. (Watch it on full screen mode. And be patient. There's a 30-second ad.)

The show's been through dozens of cast member changes over 35 years and two of my favorites are Kristen Wiig (Michaele) and Jason Sudeikis (Joe Biden).

Enjoy.

President Gore?

I don't particularly like Larry King -- I think he's overrated as as interviewer. But maybe was "on" tonight. Or maybe his guest just seemed particularly impressive.

Al Gore, the former vice president, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Oscar-winning contributor, best-selling author and quite nearly the 44th president of the United States, was on King's show for a full hour tonight. He touched on just about everything in modern political life: advice for Obama, his service under Clinton, his take on Cheney and Palin (boy, was he polite), his unexpected focus on environmentalism, even his diet (yes, he eats red meat from time to time as matter of personal preference, he told a caller).

In the process, he reinforced my impression of him as a smart man, a sensible politician (except for his mismanagement of the 2000 presidential campaign) and a guy with a great sense of humor (as reflected in a sketch with Stephen Colbert).

It struck me at one point that had he won, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut would have been vice president, the proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency -- and that made me shudder. Old Joe can't seem to figure out if he's a D, an R or an I. The way he cozied up to McCain in '08 was sickening. And now he's being an obstructionist on health care reform. I think the Democrats ought to boot his butt out of the party. (Hey, a little bit of alliteration there...)

I saw Gore in person back in 1999 at the UNITY convention of minority journalists in Seattle. He was an impressive speaker, but then so was Bob Dole when I saw him in 1996 at a black journalists convention in Nashville. Watching these career politicians, you marvel at how easily they speak for 30, 40, 50 minutes without notes, without a pause, just moving from topic to topic. Is it wisdom disguised as verbosity? Knowledge masquerading as hot air?

Gore is coming to Portland on Nov. 18 for a lecture in conjunction with the release of his new book, "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis." I won't be there, but I figure Blue Portland will pack the house.

It's too bad the Supreme Court ruled the way it did in 2000. Would have been nice to see how a President Gore would have done. How would he have reacted to the Sept. 11 attacks? Would he have invaded Afghanistan? Iraq? Would he have won a second term?