If they had, they'd have seen Peter Gibbons (played by Ron Livingston) tell the "efficiency experts" looking to cut a bunch of jobs at his company this little gem:
"My only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."
The RNC should know that fear is a card played by liberals, not conservatives, but they don't. What's worse, these idiots played the fear card when they were winning elections...and they wonder why donations to the RNC dropped like a stone. Fear only really works when there is something to fear, and even then it's impact is limited in a "boy cries wolf once too often and no one comes while he gets devoured" kind of way. When you get frontrunners in each political party (Clinton or Obama vs. John McCain) who are so close on so many issues (illegal immigration, glow-bull warming, class warfare, opposing tax cuts) as to be virtually indistinguishable, then fear is utterly powerless. Leaving aside all that I just mentioned, anyone with any self-respect, any sense of pride, any courage of their convictions whatsoever will not and should not allow their votes or their lives to be governed by fear. Since I can't say it better than Mychal Massie at World Net Daily (Hat Tip: Emperor Misha), I will let he who says it best say it loud. Read the whole thing.
"Fear Doesn't Control My Vote"
By Mychal Massie
"It seems to matter little where I go or who I am with, the question I am repeatedly asked many times with breathless anticipation is: "What do we do if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency and/or who can beat Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?"
Those of you with whom I correspond already know my feelings, but for those who do not, let me make my position unequivocally clear. I don't care who wins the Democrat presidential nomination, and I don't care, as such, if Obama or Clinton win the Holy Grail of politics. I care that the Republican Party doesn't have a candidate I can support as a true conservative left in the race.
I am a conservative, but I'm not an ideologue – nor is my vote governed by fear. That is to say, I will not vote for a Republican nominee to whose positions I am vehemently opposed and/or whom I do not trust, just to keep Obama or, more likely, Clinton out of the White House.
Fear is a powerful motivator that can be used to coerce well-intentioned persons, groups or even the entire nation into making incredibly poor decisions – and the Republican National Committee is not above using same. The idea that I must abandon my moral compass and vote for a candidate I could not find more objectionable – in order to shut out a liberal candidate who bears little or no substantive difference to the one I voted for – is offensive to me.
Some have told me they will vote for whomever the Republican candidate is, for fear of those whom a Democrat president will appoint to the Supreme Court – to which I respond: Who was the president that appointed Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor? Who was the president that appointed David Souter, and who appointed John Paul Stevens? Here's a hint – they weren't Democrats.
Under which president has the federal government grown exponentially? Which president thumbed his nose at the voters and arrogantly pledged his support for an amnesty bill for illegal aliens? Which presidents supported abortion, race-based preferences and race-based affirmative action? Which president signed McCain-Feingold? Which president's attorney general vigorously opposed the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative? Which president's attorney general dropped the ball in Lawrence vs. Texas, which opened the door to homosexual marriage and the undermining of the family? Which president campaigned vigorously for Arlen Specter when, in fact, Pat Toomey was the true conservative? Which president had his Justice Department undermine a lower-court ruling in the District of Columbia pursuant to the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment? Want a hint? Once again, they weren't Democrats.
Voting, in my opinion, is one of the most important acts of citizenship an American can perform. The value of that act should not be taken lightly or under duress.
As my grandmother used to say, "No good is no good," to which I add, my voting for one "no good" over another "no good" doesn't make same less "no good." Thus, as I have been forthright in stating from the beginning, I plan to write in the name of my choice, devil be damned, if Democrats win in the meantime. I survived Carter and Clinton. I can endure whomever and whatever they come up with this time, including the certainty of their punitive tax increases.
Former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie is to be credited, in part, for the calcification of my position. While still RNC chairman, Gillespie, referencing a possible Giuliani-Clinton New York senatorial contest, dismissed conservative concerns pursuant to Giuliani by insisting the conservative base would support Giuliani just to keep Clinton out, even though he favored all that we opposed. I found his arrogance indefensible then, as I do the same mindset that embodies the party today.
I am well aware that many will disagree with me for an avalanche of reasons – that said, so be it. The battle lines must be drawn somewhere. I believe the future of our party depends on it. The party cannot continue in the state of decline it now experiences. Where are the substantive differences that set us apart during the Reagan years? How offensive it is to his memory and to the movement he set in place when we hear liberal Republicans and/or Republican charades claim to be in the image of Ronald Reagan.
I agree with Thomas Sowell and others calling for a revolution to reclaim the Party of Lincoln. Obviously, the RNC has not taken the lessons of 2006 to heart. Perhaps a few more defeats will jar them into listening to us."
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Now Running for the GOP Presidential Nomination, Juan McCain Edwards-Clinton
I can't believe I missed this in the January 5 debate, but earlier tonight in the GOP debate in California, Senator McCain said, and I quote, "I led the largest squadron in the U.S. Navy, not for profit but for patriotism." That's twice now in two debates in the same month that he has thrown around tired class warfare rhetoric that would make John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama crowds erupt into spontaneous, orgasmic applause. Not only is it increasingly clear which country Senator McCain believes he is running for President to represent (Hint: It is due south of the U.S. and rhymes with Texaco), now it appears we can clearly see the political party from whom he seeks the nomination (Hint #2: Its members include Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, et al. ad nauseam).
Senator McCain, in light of the foregoing, I now dub thee: Juan McCain Edwards-Clinton.
Senator McCain, in light of the foregoing, I now dub thee: Juan McCain Edwards-Clinton.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Very Easy Armed Civilian-Related Math
I know it's a lot to ask, but even the most dense of the gun-fearing ninny crowd should be able to do this math. Courtesy of Double Tapper, over thirty dead at Virginia Tech compared to zero dead and two wounded at a high school in Israel when Islamic terrorists who attacked a class full of students were killed by counselors who drew their own personal handguns and mowed down the cowardly practitioners of the "Religion of Peace". Lest anyone accuse me of assuming that just because a school of Israeli children were attacked that it was a bunch of Islamofascists that did it, the bozos of Fatah's Al-Aksa Brigades helpfully announced and claimed credit for the attacks. I'm not really sure how much bragging these apes should be doing, given that two (allegedly) highly trained killers were mowed down by school counselors without inflicting a single casualty before going to meet their 72 Virginians in the afterlife.
More to the point of the post...even one teacher with a concealed carry permit could have saved the lives of thirty people from the maniac Virginia Tech killer. Thanks to gun-fearing, nanny statists who wouldn't recognize the Second Amendment if it jumped out of the Constitution and slapped them, over two dozen people are dead...and everyone complicit in disarming law-abiding citzens on college campuses may consider themselves co-conspirators to murder. That is all.
More to the point of the post...even one teacher with a concealed carry permit could have saved the lives of thirty people from the maniac Virginia Tech killer. Thanks to gun-fearing, nanny statists who wouldn't recognize the Second Amendment if it jumped out of the Constitution and slapped them, over two dozen people are dead...and everyone complicit in disarming law-abiding citzens on college campuses may consider themselves co-conspirators to murder. That is all.
Monday, January 28, 2008
John McCain is Ricky Vaughn from "Major League"
Remember the old movie "Major League", where Charlie Sheen played Ricky Vaughn, a fireballing right-handed pitcher with a checkered past and control problems? His coach said, "We better teach this kid some control before he kills someone." In the movie, during his first major league start, Vaughn walks the first three batters on twelve pitches. The commentator quipped, "Ball four, ball eight, ball twelve, and Vaughn has walked the bases loaded." That's how quickly John "Karma Conservative Chameleon" McCain is racking up strikes with the conservative base of the GOP.
In the movie, Vaughn eventually calms down, learns some control, becomes the ace of the staff, and leads the Indians to the playoffs. John McCain is 71 years old, and I've got news for you folks...there's no "Major League"-type change on the horizon for this doddering old fool.
As if all the other nonsense he has pulled over his many atrocious years in public "service" isn't enough (his Navy and POW record notwithstanding, of course), the strikes just keep on coming. Now he's getting honors from La Raza?!! Doesn't this pendejo understand that means "The Race" in Spanish? Doesn't he care that the man who honored him for this award back in 1999 is now Senator Hillary Clinton's National Hispanic Outreach director? For extra added fun, try the thought of having someone with a nasty temper and a bad habit of cursing his opponents with his finger on the nuclear trigger. That's to say nothing of his outright fabrication of an accusation that Mitt Romney supported a withdrawal and retreat from Iraq, or of his national campaign finance co-chair, Jerrold Perenchio. Seems as though old Jerrold has a penchant for multiculturalism, a history of fighting against English as a first language, ties to numerous environmentalist wackos, and a history of funding the election campaigns of the worst of the worst of the Dem-Cong. Jerrold, like Senator "Straight Talk", plays both sides according to the polls and his own financial interests. No wonder Bill and Hillary Clinton love this clown so much.
Between his particular brand of faux conservatism (which is really just socialism-lite) and George Bush's compassionate conservatism (which just says that the criminal gang known as the GOP knows better how to confiscate and spend your money for you than the Democrats do), the Reagan coalition and small government conservatism really may be on the endangered species list. I can't decide which is worse...being a flip-flopper who changes positions like most of us change clothes (see John Kerry, circa 2004), or to be as badly wrong on so many important issues as Senator McCain is, and worse yet, to not even know it.
God help us all if this moron makes it to the White House.
In the movie, Vaughn eventually calms down, learns some control, becomes the ace of the staff, and leads the Indians to the playoffs. John McCain is 71 years old, and I've got news for you folks...there's no "Major League"-type change on the horizon for this doddering old fool.
As if all the other nonsense he has pulled over his many atrocious years in public "service" isn't enough (his Navy and POW record notwithstanding, of course), the strikes just keep on coming. Now he's getting honors from La Raza?!! Doesn't this pendejo understand that means "The Race" in Spanish? Doesn't he care that the man who honored him for this award back in 1999 is now Senator Hillary Clinton's National Hispanic Outreach director? For extra added fun, try the thought of having someone with a nasty temper and a bad habit of cursing his opponents with his finger on the nuclear trigger. That's to say nothing of his outright fabrication of an accusation that Mitt Romney supported a withdrawal and retreat from Iraq, or of his national campaign finance co-chair, Jerrold Perenchio. Seems as though old Jerrold has a penchant for multiculturalism, a history of fighting against English as a first language, ties to numerous environmentalist wackos, and a history of funding the election campaigns of the worst of the worst of the Dem-Cong. Jerrold, like Senator "Straight Talk", plays both sides according to the polls and his own financial interests. No wonder Bill and Hillary Clinton love this clown so much.
Between his particular brand of faux conservatism (which is really just socialism-lite) and George Bush's compassionate conservatism (which just says that the criminal gang known as the GOP knows better how to confiscate and spend your money for you than the Democrats do), the Reagan coalition and small government conservatism really may be on the endangered species list. I can't decide which is worse...being a flip-flopper who changes positions like most of us change clothes (see John Kerry, circa 2004), or to be as badly wrong on so many important issues as Senator McCain is, and worse yet, to not even know it.
God help us all if this moron makes it to the White House.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
One of the Saddest, Most Evil Stories You Will Ever Read
I can't even fathom how someone can get to this point. Be sure to read the portion of the story I put in bold about the suicide note. Most such notes are apologizing, begging people to care, praying that someone notices your pain...but this, blaming a father for your suicide and the murder of his son...which you committed. Chutzpah doesn't even begin to cover it. I guess this pathetic excuse for a woman, this cancer in the body of life, didn't bother to read what the Bible says about the fate awaiting those who do harm to innocent little ones. When her judgment is done and God's wrath is finished, I am fairly confident there's an extra special toasty place right next to the hottest furnaces of hell in the company of the most vile demons of the underworld awaiting this witch. Seriously, if you have problems, talk to a friend, go to a counselor, get in church...do something, but don't murder your child and kill yourself. May God comfort this man's tortured soul and help him find peace, and may He welcome the soul of this innocent two year old boy, Ryan, into the company of the angels in Heaven. Read the whole thing.
Coach Endures Unthinkable Loss One Second at a Time
Jan. 9, 2008
By Gary Parrish
THATCHER, Ariz. -- Tim Parmeter pulled into the driveway and clicked and clicked and clicked his garage door opener, probably pushed the thing four or five times, best he can remember. But the door never opened. So he shook his head.
He just thought his estranged wife had changed the code like she had changed the locks, because that's the kind of stuff people do when they're going through a divorce. And it was a messy divorce.
There were arguments and fights, countless phone conversations resulting in hang-ups. There were threats, both silly and serious. But the bad moments always seemed to pass with time. And so even though Tim had argued with Paula the previous afternoon and didn't hear from her the rest of that Friday, he didn't really think much of it and, at the time, he figured he'd just stop by the house Saturday morning to see his 2-year-old son, Ryan.
"I was kinda surprised she didn't call that Friday night," Tim said. "But in some ways I was just relieved to not be arguing on the phone."
But now it was Saturday morning and Tim was in the driveway and his clicker still wouldn't work and he was starting to worry. He dialed the home phone. Nobody answered. He dialed Paula's cell phone. Nobody answered. So he finally called Bryana Flynn, the family babysitter, and asked for help entering the home.
She told him the spare key was in the back. He grabbed it from inside a toy chest.
He unlocked the door. He walked inside.
"And I was still on the phone with Bryana as I was going through the house, and it was a mess," Tim said. "I checked Paula's office. Checked the bedrooms. Nothing. Ryan's stuff was scattered all over the house and I was asking Bryana 'Where did they go?'"
That's when Tim opened the door that leads to the garage.
He immediately saw Paula in the backseat of the car, slumped over to the side.
She was dead.
"He was just yelling into the phone," Bryana recalled. "He was yelling, 'Oh my God! Where's my f---ing baby?'"
When Tim got closer to the car he looked inside.
Ryan was lying in the back floorboard.
He was wrapped in a blue blanket.
"I remember yelling into the phone," Tim said. "I just remember yelling, just screaming, 'She killed herself and she killed my baby!'"
• • •
The college basketball schedule is loaded Wednesday night and highlighted by a pair of Top 25 matchups.
North Carolina is playing, as are Duke and Pittsburgh and Xavier and Vanderbilt. And then there's a Pac-10 showdown between Arizona and Arizona State in Tempe that will dominate local headlines as Kevin O'Neill tries to get a road win that could push the Wildcats back into the national rankings.
With less hype, Tim Parmeter will be coaching too.
He'll be 153 miles away from Arizona-Arizona State, 153 miles away at Eastern Arizona, a junior college in the shadows of Mount Graham here in the Gila River Valley. His opponent will be Arizona Western, a league rival coached by a close friend.
And if Tim makes it through the game without breaking down it'll be the upset of all upsets, given how at halftime he'll formally announce a scholarship in the name of his son, Ryan Wrigley Parmeter, who died from carbon monoxide poisoning Dec. 29, 2006, in what police ruled was a murder-suicide initiated by Tim's estranged wife and Ryan's mother, Paula.
"The game is going to be emotional," Tim said as he sat in his office two weekends ago, exactly one year to the day after he found Paula's and Ryan's bodies in the backseat of the family's black Volvo.
"I'm just happy I'll be coaching against a friend," Tim added with a half-hearted smile. "Maybe he'll be messed up, too."
A coach's son from Indiana, Tim followed his father into the profession after playing at Truman State. He worked at Central College in Iowa, then at Iowa State for Tim Floyd before landing at Scottsdale Community College, where he fielded a competitive team -- despite not having the luxury of scholarships or dorms -- and even found time to take in Trivia Night at a local establishment every once in a while.
That's where he met his wife, an Arizona State graduate.
"She was with a big group and I was with a big group and we met over Cubs trivia," Tim said. "The question was about Hack Wilson's record for RBI in a season and we both shouted the answer from opposite sides of the room. And then it was like, 'How'd you know that?'"
Turns out, Paula was from Chicago, a Cubs fan just like Tim. That led to a conversation about WGN, which led to a conversation about Bozo the Clown which led to a first date and a second date and a wedding date in 2000. Two years later, Tim got the head coaching job at Eastern Arizona, where he had a real campus and real dorms and a career heading upward.
Meantime, Paula got pregnant. The baby was born Aug. 31, 2004. They named him Ryan Wrigley Parmeter.
Wrigley was for Wrigley Field. Ryan was ...
"Just a name we both liked," Tim said.
The rest was supposed to be the picture-perfect life with family vacations and holidays spent together. Alas, too few unions go that route these days. In September 2006, Tim filed for divorce, which sent Paula into a state of despair. She sought professional help and was placed on medication.
"I considered Paula a friend, as well as my boss, and she was a nice person," Bryana said. "But she just couldn't handle going through the divorce."
Tim moved from the family's home shortly before Christmas 2006 and stayed in Arizona while Paula and Ryan visited her family for the holiday. Tim picked them up at Tucson International Airport late on Dec. 27 and drove them home. He put Ryan to bed and was planning to leave when he said Paula asked him to stay the night so they could enjoy a present-opening session the following morning.
"I wasn't going to stay, but then she looked at me and said, 'I'm so over you. Don't worry about it,'" Tim recalled. "So I just stayed and then we woke up the next day, had Christmas and had lunch. And then I was going to get out of there because I knew once she laid Ryan down for a nap she'd want to talk."
So Tim got out of there. But Paula called as soon as Ryan fell asleep.
"She was sitting in my closet, which was empty, crying and asking why I took all my clothes," Tim said. "I told her it was because I moved out, that we had talked about this. So that went on for a while and she finally said, 'I can't go on any more. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. Please take care of Ryan.' And then she just hung up."
Worried, Tim called back. Then Paula hung up. Then Tim called back. Then Paula hung up. And this went on for hours on into the night until Tim said Paula finally calmed down. But when Tim woke up the next morning he was still bothered by the tone and decided to call Paula's counselor to "just tell him all the stuff that had happened since she had been home from Chicago," Tim said. "I was like, 'Somebody is going to die. I don't know who. But somebody is going to die.'"
The counselor immediately called Paula, who immediately called Tim and "that conversation digressed into the nastiest, most vile conversation I've ever had with anybody," Tim recalled. "I was just listening, not really saying anything. And she said, 'I bet you want to go, don't you?' I said 'Yeah.' She said, 'Are you sick of this?' I said 'Yeah.' She said, 'Then why don't you just hang up?' And I said, 'Because you'll just call back. So I'll just wait and let you get it all out.' And then she goes, 'Well, I'm done. I'm not calling you back.' And I said 'OK.' And she said, 'I'm not calling you back. You'll really never hear from me again.' And that was at about 1 p.m. on Dec. 29th."
That was Tim's final conversation with Paula.
What he later learned from police is after she hung up, she wrote six suicide letters addressed to six different people and mailed them all to her brother. Afterward, she placed Ryan in the backseat of the car with six stuffed animals, some toys, a few books, a sippy cup filled with milk and some chocolate candy. She crammed towels in every crack of the garage door and unplugged it, which is why Tim's opener wouldn't work. Then she rolled the windows down in the car and opened the sunroof before starting the engine and beginning the process that would kill herself and her son.
"He was just sitting in the backseat with Mom, reading books and playing," Tim said. "He was just having a good time. What did he know?"
Paula also left a digital camera in the car. When Tim uploaded the pictures there was a final image of Ryan.
"There he is in the car," Tim said as he pulled the picture up on his computer. "See how his lips look swollen? The police said that's from the carbon monoxide."
By the time Ryan was buried the police had all six suicide letters. One was addressed to Tim. It was given to him after the memorial service. He sat at a table with two officers. Before reading it he asked a question.
"I asked them, 'Is this going to piss me off?' And one of them just said he had never seen anything like it. He said it was pure evil."
The letter was three pages hand-written.
It reads, in part: Don't ever try to convince yourself otherwise -- this event is absolutely, completely your fault. You created it. You could have prevented it. You encouraged it. You found our pain funny. ... If I have the opportunity to haunt you, I will. ... I pray you will see our faces in your mind's eye and wonder what Ryan could have been and what we could have had if you had only chosen love.
"There is no remorse," Tim said. "It's the opposite of remorseful."
The note is signed Paula.
Beside her name is some scribbling. It's clear she also had Ryan sign the letter.
To the side she wrote, "That's Ryan saying bye-bye, Dada."
"That's the part that really gets me," Tim said, his voice cracking as he placed the letter back into his bag. "That part still gets me to this day."
• • •
Coaches spend much of every season talking about taking it one game at a time in an attempt to win it all. That's why this story is different, because it's about a man taking it one second at a time, about a man having trouble focusing on winning anything because he's still trying to come to terms with everything he's lost.
It's a slow process.
A year to the day after finding the bodies, Tim Parmeter parked in the same garage and sat in the same house, a place where not much has changed.
Ryan's room is still mostly as it was, replete with baby blue walls, a diagram of Wrigley Field and a stand holding his three favorite books, Goodnight Moon, The Going to Bed Book and Pajama Time!. Beside that is a red chair, the same red chair Tim used to sit in while reading to Ryan. He still sits there sometimes, still reads those books. There's a box of Kleenex on the floor next to the chair. It never moves. It just stays there until it's empty. Then another box replaces it.
In the den, Elmo still sits next to the TV.
In Tim's room, Cookie Monster still sits on the bed.
In the kitchen, the high-chair still sits next to the table.
And the obvious question is why, why remain in this house where an unthinkable act tore a life to pieces?
"People ask that all the time," Tim said. "They say, 'I can't believe you're still here. How could you still live here?' But this is where my son lived. So I have a harder time imagining not being here, a harder time imagining moving out of here because though I have one bad memory here, my mind mostly floods with good memories."
Which is not to suggest his mind doesn't slip. It does. Bad times come without warning and can be triggered by anything.
Sometimes it's things as obvious as pictures, which decorate the walls of his home and office. Other times it's less obvious things -- like cows (Ryan loved cows) or Subway (Ryan would get bread from there to feed the ducks at a nearby pond) or the No. 1 (Ryan, for reasons Tim still doesn't understand, refused to say the No. 1 when counting) or that Rodney Atkins song Watching You (it's about a father and son) or even something as simple as a Pop-Tart.
"I got a Pop-Tart the other day," Tim said. "I took one bite and cried because it reminded me of Ryan."
Breakfast, in general, reminds Tim of Ryan.
"A perfect example is when my family and I all went and stayed with Tim after it happened, and we got up one morning to fix breakfast," said Arizona Western coach Kelly Green. "So I went to the store and got a bunch of stuff and fixed breakfast, and then when Tim got up I told him to join us. But he couldn't do it. He just went outside and sat. So I went out there and talked to him and asked what was wrong, and he said he just couldn't do it because that's one thing Ryan and him used to do together. He used to get up and fix Ryan breakfast and then they'd just sit there together. So now breakfast is difficult."
"It's crazy what he's been through," added Kris Dunn, a college teammate of Tim's. "But what I'm proud of most is that Tim has never really melted."
He has had moments, though. It took a month before he could even go back in his garage, and moving the black Volvo for the first time (Tim ultimately sold it) nearly caused a panic attack. One time he was watching film of an old game and saw Paula and Ryan in the crowd. That was rough because he wasn't prepared to see them.
But in low times he pulls Paula's suicide letter out from that bag and reads it because, in some warped way, it makes him stronger and helps move him along.
"That letter makes me realize that giving up in whatever sense that I would give up would be letting her win," Tim said. "If I killed myself or quit coaching, then I think I would be letting her win because that's what she wanted. She obviously wanted to hurt me. And she did. But I'm gonna try to keep going. I'm just gonna try to keep doing the best I can."
One of the things Tim remembers about the day he discovered the bodies is that it was 11:12 a.m. when he walked into the garage. So on Dec. 30, 2007 -- one year to the day -- he scheduled practice for 11 a.m., and it was easy to figure out the motivation.
"Practice gave him something to do, something to help get through that time," said Eastern Arizona assistant Anthony Owens. "It was important for him to be here at that time."
So Tim was there at that time -- standing in black pants, a gray shirt and white shoes while his players sat in a circle at midcourt, stretching, grabbing their toes and counting: 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 9 ... 10 ... clap ... clap ... clap.
When 11:12 came, Tim was leaning against a brick wall, no expression, no words. He just stared at the clock above and watched the seconds slowly tick away, each as hard as the one that preceded it.
Coach Endures Unthinkable Loss One Second at a Time
Jan. 9, 2008
By Gary Parrish
THATCHER, Ariz. -- Tim Parmeter pulled into the driveway and clicked and clicked and clicked his garage door opener, probably pushed the thing four or five times, best he can remember. But the door never opened. So he shook his head.
He just thought his estranged wife had changed the code like she had changed the locks, because that's the kind of stuff people do when they're going through a divorce. And it was a messy divorce.
There were arguments and fights, countless phone conversations resulting in hang-ups. There were threats, both silly and serious. But the bad moments always seemed to pass with time. And so even though Tim had argued with Paula the previous afternoon and didn't hear from her the rest of that Friday, he didn't really think much of it and, at the time, he figured he'd just stop by the house Saturday morning to see his 2-year-old son, Ryan.
"I was kinda surprised she didn't call that Friday night," Tim said. "But in some ways I was just relieved to not be arguing on the phone."
But now it was Saturday morning and Tim was in the driveway and his clicker still wouldn't work and he was starting to worry. He dialed the home phone. Nobody answered. He dialed Paula's cell phone. Nobody answered. So he finally called Bryana Flynn, the family babysitter, and asked for help entering the home.
She told him the spare key was in the back. He grabbed it from inside a toy chest.
He unlocked the door. He walked inside.
"And I was still on the phone with Bryana as I was going through the house, and it was a mess," Tim said. "I checked Paula's office. Checked the bedrooms. Nothing. Ryan's stuff was scattered all over the house and I was asking Bryana 'Where did they go?'"
That's when Tim opened the door that leads to the garage.
He immediately saw Paula in the backseat of the car, slumped over to the side.
She was dead.
"He was just yelling into the phone," Bryana recalled. "He was yelling, 'Oh my God! Where's my f---ing baby?'"
When Tim got closer to the car he looked inside.
Ryan was lying in the back floorboard.
He was wrapped in a blue blanket.
"I remember yelling into the phone," Tim said. "I just remember yelling, just screaming, 'She killed herself and she killed my baby!'"
• • •
The college basketball schedule is loaded Wednesday night and highlighted by a pair of Top 25 matchups.
North Carolina is playing, as are Duke and Pittsburgh and Xavier and Vanderbilt. And then there's a Pac-10 showdown between Arizona and Arizona State in Tempe that will dominate local headlines as Kevin O'Neill tries to get a road win that could push the Wildcats back into the national rankings.
With less hype, Tim Parmeter will be coaching too.
He'll be 153 miles away from Arizona-Arizona State, 153 miles away at Eastern Arizona, a junior college in the shadows of Mount Graham here in the Gila River Valley. His opponent will be Arizona Western, a league rival coached by a close friend.
And if Tim makes it through the game without breaking down it'll be the upset of all upsets, given how at halftime he'll formally announce a scholarship in the name of his son, Ryan Wrigley Parmeter, who died from carbon monoxide poisoning Dec. 29, 2006, in what police ruled was a murder-suicide initiated by Tim's estranged wife and Ryan's mother, Paula.
"The game is going to be emotional," Tim said as he sat in his office two weekends ago, exactly one year to the day after he found Paula's and Ryan's bodies in the backseat of the family's black Volvo.
"I'm just happy I'll be coaching against a friend," Tim added with a half-hearted smile. "Maybe he'll be messed up, too."
A coach's son from Indiana, Tim followed his father into the profession after playing at Truman State. He worked at Central College in Iowa, then at Iowa State for Tim Floyd before landing at Scottsdale Community College, where he fielded a competitive team -- despite not having the luxury of scholarships or dorms -- and even found time to take in Trivia Night at a local establishment every once in a while.
That's where he met his wife, an Arizona State graduate.
"She was with a big group and I was with a big group and we met over Cubs trivia," Tim said. "The question was about Hack Wilson's record for RBI in a season and we both shouted the answer from opposite sides of the room. And then it was like, 'How'd you know that?'"
Turns out, Paula was from Chicago, a Cubs fan just like Tim. That led to a conversation about WGN, which led to a conversation about Bozo the Clown which led to a first date and a second date and a wedding date in 2000. Two years later, Tim got the head coaching job at Eastern Arizona, where he had a real campus and real dorms and a career heading upward.
Meantime, Paula got pregnant. The baby was born Aug. 31, 2004. They named him Ryan Wrigley Parmeter.
Wrigley was for Wrigley Field. Ryan was ...
"Just a name we both liked," Tim said.
The rest was supposed to be the picture-perfect life with family vacations and holidays spent together. Alas, too few unions go that route these days. In September 2006, Tim filed for divorce, which sent Paula into a state of despair. She sought professional help and was placed on medication.
"I considered Paula a friend, as well as my boss, and she was a nice person," Bryana said. "But she just couldn't handle going through the divorce."
Tim moved from the family's home shortly before Christmas 2006 and stayed in Arizona while Paula and Ryan visited her family for the holiday. Tim picked them up at Tucson International Airport late on Dec. 27 and drove them home. He put Ryan to bed and was planning to leave when he said Paula asked him to stay the night so they could enjoy a present-opening session the following morning.
"I wasn't going to stay, but then she looked at me and said, 'I'm so over you. Don't worry about it,'" Tim recalled. "So I just stayed and then we woke up the next day, had Christmas and had lunch. And then I was going to get out of there because I knew once she laid Ryan down for a nap she'd want to talk."
So Tim got out of there. But Paula called as soon as Ryan fell asleep.
"She was sitting in my closet, which was empty, crying and asking why I took all my clothes," Tim said. "I told her it was because I moved out, that we had talked about this. So that went on for a while and she finally said, 'I can't go on any more. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. Please take care of Ryan.' And then she just hung up."
Worried, Tim called back. Then Paula hung up. Then Tim called back. Then Paula hung up. And this went on for hours on into the night until Tim said Paula finally calmed down. But when Tim woke up the next morning he was still bothered by the tone and decided to call Paula's counselor to "just tell him all the stuff that had happened since she had been home from Chicago," Tim said. "I was like, 'Somebody is going to die. I don't know who. But somebody is going to die.'"
The counselor immediately called Paula, who immediately called Tim and "that conversation digressed into the nastiest, most vile conversation I've ever had with anybody," Tim recalled. "I was just listening, not really saying anything. And she said, 'I bet you want to go, don't you?' I said 'Yeah.' She said, 'Are you sick of this?' I said 'Yeah.' She said, 'Then why don't you just hang up?' And I said, 'Because you'll just call back. So I'll just wait and let you get it all out.' And then she goes, 'Well, I'm done. I'm not calling you back.' And I said 'OK.' And she said, 'I'm not calling you back. You'll really never hear from me again.' And that was at about 1 p.m. on Dec. 29th."
That was Tim's final conversation with Paula.
What he later learned from police is after she hung up, she wrote six suicide letters addressed to six different people and mailed them all to her brother. Afterward, she placed Ryan in the backseat of the car with six stuffed animals, some toys, a few books, a sippy cup filled with milk and some chocolate candy. She crammed towels in every crack of the garage door and unplugged it, which is why Tim's opener wouldn't work. Then she rolled the windows down in the car and opened the sunroof before starting the engine and beginning the process that would kill herself and her son.
"He was just sitting in the backseat with Mom, reading books and playing," Tim said. "He was just having a good time. What did he know?"
Paula also left a digital camera in the car. When Tim uploaded the pictures there was a final image of Ryan.
"There he is in the car," Tim said as he pulled the picture up on his computer. "See how his lips look swollen? The police said that's from the carbon monoxide."
By the time Ryan was buried the police had all six suicide letters. One was addressed to Tim. It was given to him after the memorial service. He sat at a table with two officers. Before reading it he asked a question.
"I asked them, 'Is this going to piss me off?' And one of them just said he had never seen anything like it. He said it was pure evil."
The letter was three pages hand-written.
It reads, in part: Don't ever try to convince yourself otherwise -- this event is absolutely, completely your fault. You created it. You could have prevented it. You encouraged it. You found our pain funny. ... If I have the opportunity to haunt you, I will. ... I pray you will see our faces in your mind's eye and wonder what Ryan could have been and what we could have had if you had only chosen love.
"There is no remorse," Tim said. "It's the opposite of remorseful."
The note is signed Paula.
Beside her name is some scribbling. It's clear she also had Ryan sign the letter.
To the side she wrote, "That's Ryan saying bye-bye, Dada."
"That's the part that really gets me," Tim said, his voice cracking as he placed the letter back into his bag. "That part still gets me to this day."
• • •
Coaches spend much of every season talking about taking it one game at a time in an attempt to win it all. That's why this story is different, because it's about a man taking it one second at a time, about a man having trouble focusing on winning anything because he's still trying to come to terms with everything he's lost.
It's a slow process.
A year to the day after finding the bodies, Tim Parmeter parked in the same garage and sat in the same house, a place where not much has changed.
Ryan's room is still mostly as it was, replete with baby blue walls, a diagram of Wrigley Field and a stand holding his three favorite books, Goodnight Moon, The Going to Bed Book and Pajama Time!. Beside that is a red chair, the same red chair Tim used to sit in while reading to Ryan. He still sits there sometimes, still reads those books. There's a box of Kleenex on the floor next to the chair. It never moves. It just stays there until it's empty. Then another box replaces it.
In the den, Elmo still sits next to the TV.
In Tim's room, Cookie Monster still sits on the bed.
In the kitchen, the high-chair still sits next to the table.
And the obvious question is why, why remain in this house where an unthinkable act tore a life to pieces?
"People ask that all the time," Tim said. "They say, 'I can't believe you're still here. How could you still live here?' But this is where my son lived. So I have a harder time imagining not being here, a harder time imagining moving out of here because though I have one bad memory here, my mind mostly floods with good memories."
Which is not to suggest his mind doesn't slip. It does. Bad times come without warning and can be triggered by anything.
Sometimes it's things as obvious as pictures, which decorate the walls of his home and office. Other times it's less obvious things -- like cows (Ryan loved cows) or Subway (Ryan would get bread from there to feed the ducks at a nearby pond) or the No. 1 (Ryan, for reasons Tim still doesn't understand, refused to say the No. 1 when counting) or that Rodney Atkins song Watching You (it's about a father and son) or even something as simple as a Pop-Tart.
"I got a Pop-Tart the other day," Tim said. "I took one bite and cried because it reminded me of Ryan."
Breakfast, in general, reminds Tim of Ryan.
"A perfect example is when my family and I all went and stayed with Tim after it happened, and we got up one morning to fix breakfast," said Arizona Western coach Kelly Green. "So I went to the store and got a bunch of stuff and fixed breakfast, and then when Tim got up I told him to join us. But he couldn't do it. He just went outside and sat. So I went out there and talked to him and asked what was wrong, and he said he just couldn't do it because that's one thing Ryan and him used to do together. He used to get up and fix Ryan breakfast and then they'd just sit there together. So now breakfast is difficult."
"It's crazy what he's been through," added Kris Dunn, a college teammate of Tim's. "But what I'm proud of most is that Tim has never really melted."
He has had moments, though. It took a month before he could even go back in his garage, and moving the black Volvo for the first time (Tim ultimately sold it) nearly caused a panic attack. One time he was watching film of an old game and saw Paula and Ryan in the crowd. That was rough because he wasn't prepared to see them.
But in low times he pulls Paula's suicide letter out from that bag and reads it because, in some warped way, it makes him stronger and helps move him along.
"That letter makes me realize that giving up in whatever sense that I would give up would be letting her win," Tim said. "If I killed myself or quit coaching, then I think I would be letting her win because that's what she wanted. She obviously wanted to hurt me. And she did. But I'm gonna try to keep going. I'm just gonna try to keep doing the best I can."
One of the things Tim remembers about the day he discovered the bodies is that it was 11:12 a.m. when he walked into the garage. So on Dec. 30, 2007 -- one year to the day -- he scheduled practice for 11 a.m., and it was easy to figure out the motivation.
"Practice gave him something to do, something to help get through that time," said Eastern Arizona assistant Anthony Owens. "It was important for him to be here at that time."
So Tim was there at that time -- standing in black pants, a gray shirt and white shoes while his players sat in a circle at midcourt, stretching, grabbing their toes and counting: 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 9 ... 10 ... clap ... clap ... clap.
When 11:12 came, Tim was leaning against a brick wall, no expression, no words. He just stared at the clock above and watched the seconds slowly tick away, each as hard as the one that preceded it.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
A Good Post-Mortem of Fred '08
For the upcoming issue of The Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson pens a very fair and accurate portrait of some of the reasons that former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson's campaign for President never really took off in the beginning and ended in an early demise. Incidentally, and not coincidentally, they happen to be some of the biggest problems inherent in what politics has become today. As they say, read the whole thing.
"The Failure of Normality : The Unhappy Lessons of the Thompson Campaign"
by Andrew Ferguson
"In his recent memoir, Alan Greenspan says he's been pushing a constitutional amendment of his own devising. It reads: "Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office." If the Greenspan amendment is ever enacted, it will at last clear the field for Fred Thompson, who might then become president. But not until then.
Thompson withdrew from the presidential race last week. He ended his campaign as he had conducted it, with a minimum of fuss and no wasted words. He released a withdrawal statement over the Internet. It was three sentences long, and he hasn't been heard from since. My guess is we'll be missing him dreadfully by spring.
The charge against Thompson, who entered the campaign last September when polls showed him a favorite among Republican voters, was repeated so often it became a cliché. Like most clichés it tells us more about the people who used it than about the state of affairs it was supposed to describe. His campaign lacked "energy." He didn't get out enough on the campaign trail, and, when he did, he didn't hold enough events. His speaking style was too low-key, and his speeches were too long, and more often than not his "performance" in televised debates was lackluster. He just didn't have the fire in the belly.
Fire in the belly: For those of us who suffer from acid reflux, this is a phrase full of meaning. In the world of politics, however, the meaning is vaguer. William Safire's New Political Dictionary defines "fire in the belly" as "an unquenchable thirst for power or glory; the burning drive to win a race or achieve a goal." It's bad, apparently, not having fire in the belly. The premise seems to be that vein-popping ambition, unrestrained avidity, is a necessary if not sufficient quality for someone who wants to hold the highest political position in a democratic country. Thompson himself seemed puzzled by the phrase and the premise underlying it. He was asked about it at a town hall meeting in Burlington, Iowa, in late December.
"Nowadays, it's all about fire in the belly," he said, with a touch of sarcasm. "I'm not sure in the world we live in today it's a terribly good thing that a president has too much fire in his belly."
He pointed out that he'd made financial sacrifices to run for president--he quit his various high-paying jobs and went without income for nearly a year--which should, he said, demonstrate his earnestness about the task before him.
And yet: "I'm not consumed by this process. I'm not consumed with the notion of being president. I'm simply saying I'm willing to do what's necessary to achieve it, if I'm in synch with the people and if the people want me or somebody like me. . . . I'm only consumed by very, very few things and politics is not one of them."
Thompson didn't give off the usual political vibe: the gnawing need to please, the craving for the public's love. A few voters and journalists found this refreshing, many more found it insulting. Some just found it fascinating, in a clinical sort of way: What kind of politician isn't consumed by politics--and what kind of campaign would such a politician run? Well, now we know. If Thompson could plausibly avoid an overnight campaign trip, he did, preferring to return home to his wife and children in suburban Virginia. He spent an inordinate amount of time with his briefing books. And his response to the chore of raising money--the chief occupation of every office-seeker in this era of campaign finance reform, which was intended to reduce the role of money in politics--seemed nearly pathological. Fundraising events scheduled to last two or three hours often guttered out when the candidate departed after twenty minutes. High-end donors complained of being uncourted, unpampered, unloved--even unphoned. At one party in a private home last year, Thompson made the rounds of money-shakers, delivered brief remarks, and then slipped into a bedroom to watch a basketball game on TV by himself.
Having become famous as an actor in TV and movies, Thompson might have been expected to be a showman. But he was resolutely prosaic. Only with the greatest reluctance did he agree to a photograph with the Iowa State Fair's "Butter Cow," and when a fireman in Waverly asked him to wear a helmet, he said he didn't wear "silly hats." As the critics charged, his public speeches really were unusually long, even at drop-bys along the trail, because he insisted on mentioning details of his plans to recalibrate the benefit formulas for Social Security, inject private incentives into Medicare, and develop an optional, two-tiered flat tax. So nobody should have been surprised that when it came time to film his final pitch to voters before the Iowa caucuses, the broadcast speech ended up being 17 minutes long--Homeric by the standards of political ads. Crowds did not go wild.
Now, you can overstate the intellectual heft of a campaign that was launched by the candidate during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He was a different kind of candidate but not an incompetent one. Indeed, his finest moment came in a debate before the Iowa caucuses, when the moderator asked the assembled candidates for a show of hands if they believed human activity caused climate change.
"Well, do you want to give me a minute to answer that?" Thompson said. When the moderator said she didn't, he said: "Well, then I'm not going to answer it. You want a show of hands, and I'm not going to give it to you."
The moderator looked as though Thompson had suddenly sprouted daffodils from his ears. So did his fellow candidates. After a stunned silence, they all courageously announced their refusal to show hands, too. They looked like the Little Rascals, hitching up their britches and flexing their biceps after Alfalfa clocked the neighborhood bully.
It's telling that his most notable moments were negative--marked by his refusal to follow some custom of the modern campaign. (From another debate: "Should government step in and help Chrysler and the other auto makers?" Thompson: "No.") Asked about education reform, he said: "It would be easy enough for someone running for president to say: I have a several-point plan to fix our education problem. It's not going to happen. And it shouldn't happen from the Oval Office." When journalists and candidates, with their typically childlike enthusiasm, suddenly began gumming the word "change" after the Iowa caucuses, Thompson pointed out the obvious: "Change has been part of every election since the dawn of elections, if you weren't an incumbent." He noted how easy it was "to demagogue" the issue of federal spending by dwelling on relatively insignificant earmarks: "All these programs that we talk about in the news every day are a thimbleful in the ocean compared to the entitlement tsunami that's coming to hit us."
Views like these might have earned another candidate a reputation for "straight talk"--maybe even the title of "maverick." But Thompson was more subversive than that; he was an existential maverick, and his campaign was an implicit rebuke to the system in its entirety. He was a man out of his time. With its reduced metabolism and procedural modesty, his campaign still might have served as an illustration of what politics once was like and--if we have the audacity to hope--might be again. After all, by the standards of a century ago, Thompson was a whirligig.
Political campaigns have always been boisterous affairs, but candidates themselves rarely took center stage till well into the 20th century. The first presidential candidate even to make an appearance on his own behalf was William Henry Harrison in 1840. When he showed up in Columbus, Ohio, to give a speech extolling his (exceedingly thin) record, the political world was scandalized. An opposition paper, the Democratic Globe, counted his uses of the pronoun "I"--there were 81 of them in his text--and pronounced the speech "a prodigy of garrulous egotism." The Cleveland Adviser, a nonpartisan paper, asked: "When was there ever before such a spectacle as a candidate for the Presidency, traversing the country advocating his own claims for that high and responsible station? Never!"
"The precedent thus set by Harrison," concluded the Adviser's editorialist, "appears to us a bad one."
But it wasn't much of a precedent. Active campaigning didn't catch on for another half century or more. (The exception was Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, the only one of the four presidential candidates that year to leave town to deliver a speech.) Candidates stayed home, receiving visitors and maintaining a quiet dignity while occasionally uncorking a speech in the neighborhood so the newspapers had something to report. Meanwhile surrogates scattered around the country, leading parades, holding rallies, and telling lies for which the candidates themselves couldn't be held responsible. Even the appalling Theodore Roosevelt, who would smooch babies at a train wreck if he thought it would get him votes, managed to contain himself and keep off the hustings when he ran for reelection in 1904. Eventually barnstorming became marginally acceptable, but only as the last recourse of candidates who, like Harry Truman in 1948, were so far behind they could risk looking desperate and undignified.
As late as the 1970s, the constant motion that modern presidential candidates subject themselves to was still of recent enough vintage that Nelson Polsby and Aaron Wildavsky, in their great book Presidential Elections, felt the need to account for it. "Everybody does it because it is the fashion," they wrote, "and the spectacle of seeing one's opponent run around the country at a furious pace without following suit is too nerve-wracking [for a candidate] to contemplate. It is beside the point that no one knows whether all this does any good."
The traditional restraint of old-time presidential candidates wasn't arrogance or sanctimoniousness, the twin accusations that wised-up politicos made against Thompson during the campaign. There was a philosophical component to it too: By not seeming overeager--no matter how eager they were--candidates paid tribute to the democratic idea that political power is best sought, taken on, and used reluctantly. It was also a matter of seemliness, and Thompson, alone among recent candidates, felt its pull. In his stump speech he often mentioned George Washington, once a staple of political rhetoric for his willingness to walk away from the power that was thrust upon him. Today Washington's restraint seems nothing more than an archaism. And by extolling it Thompson sounded merely odd.
"If people really want in their president a super type-A personality," Thompson said at that Iowa town hall meeting, "someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night thinking for years about how they could achieve the presidency of the United States, someone who could look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning--I ain't that guy."
But does "super type-A personality" really describe the kind of person who runs for president nowadays? It's not pleasant to think of the life they lead, these Americans who would be president, from the first hints of dawn to well past midnight, this life of endless demands, this succession of superficial sociability, in which you smile and smile and pop your eyes wide open in delighted wonder at the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of faces and places that circles before you, and you haven't the time or leisure to settle on a single one. Charming countryside, pretty little towns, sprawling centers of commerce and industry fly by and you haven't a moment to enjoy them or learn their tales. You rush to meet hundreds of people a day and never have a meaningful exchange of words with any of them.
From the backseats of freezing cars and vans you're hustled into overheated coffee shops and those packed school gymnasiums with the stink rising to the rafters and then the oppressive hush of corporate meeting rooms, where your nose starts to run and a film of sweat forms under your wool pullover, and you press the outstretched hands that carry every bacterial pathogen known to epidemiology. You open your mouth and you release the same cloud of words you recited yesterday and the day before. And in the Q&A, when you stop to listen, you hear the same questions and complaints from yesterday, the same mewling and blame-shifting, all imploring you to do the impossible and through some undefined action make the lives of these unhappy citizens somehow edifying, uplifting, and worth living. And you always promise you will do that; you have no choice but to tell this kind of lie.
There's no rest, because there's not a moment to waste: The handful of minutes away from the kaleidoscope are spent chatting with the scorpions of the press, the ill-dressed, ill-mannered reporters from the prints and the pretty, preening peacocks of TV, each of them either a know-it-all or a cynic or a dope, take your pick, and each of whom, for professional and other reasons, will deploy all his energies and cleverness to the task of trapping you into a misstatement or ungenerous remark or expression of irritation so he can convey to his editors and the world that--at last!--you've made a gaffe; and if you won't make a gaffe then he will convey to his editors and the world how "scripted" and "over rehearsed" you sound; kind of slick, almost robotic, inauthentic.
When the scorpions are dismissed, in the seconds before you pass from the freezing van to the overheated gym or boardroom, a sycophant whose name you can't remember hands you a cell phone that connects you to a rich man whose face you dimly recall from another boardroom last summer and you beg him to give you money, or more often--considering the grinding pressure you feel for cash, always for cash--you beg him to assemble a circle of other rich men that he can beg on your behalf, and when you sign off you don't have time to be grateful. There will be more calls before dinner and after dinner, and dinner is a cold thigh of chicken in a sump of clotted gravy served from a steam table in a freezing cinder block banquet room at the Lions Club, and a hundred pairs of eyes fix themselves on you--a celebrity, someone they've seen on TV--as you dribble the gravy on your shirtfront. And after you release the same words and hear the same complaints you go to bed in a Hampton Suites for five hours of sleep on starchy sheets with dimly visible stains whose origins are impossible to discern, and from the corner the digital display on the microwave flashes 12:00 12:00 12:00 . . .
And you do all this so you can wake up the next morning and do it again. Because you like it.
The man or woman who seeks out such a life and enjoys its discomforts is not normal. Not crazy necessarily, but not normal, and probably, when the chips are down, not to be trusted, especially when the purpose of it all is to acquire power over other people (also called, in the delicate language of contemporary politics, "public service" or "getting things done on behalf of the American people"). The case is made, in defense of the contemporary campaign, that this is an efficient if unlovely way to choose leaders: It winnows out those who lack the stamina and discipline necessary to lead a rich, large, powerful, and complicated country. By this argument, Thompson failed because he deserved to.
But the opposite case is easier to make--that the modern campaign excludes anyone who lacks the narcissism, cold-bloodedness, and unreflective nature that the process requires and rewards. In his memoir -Greenspan remarks that of the seven presidents he has known well, the only one who was "close to normal" was Jerry Ford. And, as Greenspan points out, Ford was never elected.
Fred Thompson probably feels terrible at the moment, but he should be honored to be in Ford's company."
"The Failure of Normality : The Unhappy Lessons of the Thompson Campaign"
by Andrew Ferguson
"In his recent memoir, Alan Greenspan says he's been pushing a constitutional amendment of his own devising. It reads: "Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office." If the Greenspan amendment is ever enacted, it will at last clear the field for Fred Thompson, who might then become president. But not until then.
Thompson withdrew from the presidential race last week. He ended his campaign as he had conducted it, with a minimum of fuss and no wasted words. He released a withdrawal statement over the Internet. It was three sentences long, and he hasn't been heard from since. My guess is we'll be missing him dreadfully by spring.
The charge against Thompson, who entered the campaign last September when polls showed him a favorite among Republican voters, was repeated so often it became a cliché. Like most clichés it tells us more about the people who used it than about the state of affairs it was supposed to describe. His campaign lacked "energy." He didn't get out enough on the campaign trail, and, when he did, he didn't hold enough events. His speaking style was too low-key, and his speeches were too long, and more often than not his "performance" in televised debates was lackluster. He just didn't have the fire in the belly.
Fire in the belly: For those of us who suffer from acid reflux, this is a phrase full of meaning. In the world of politics, however, the meaning is vaguer. William Safire's New Political Dictionary defines "fire in the belly" as "an unquenchable thirst for power or glory; the burning drive to win a race or achieve a goal." It's bad, apparently, not having fire in the belly. The premise seems to be that vein-popping ambition, unrestrained avidity, is a necessary if not sufficient quality for someone who wants to hold the highest political position in a democratic country. Thompson himself seemed puzzled by the phrase and the premise underlying it. He was asked about it at a town hall meeting in Burlington, Iowa, in late December.
"Nowadays, it's all about fire in the belly," he said, with a touch of sarcasm. "I'm not sure in the world we live in today it's a terribly good thing that a president has too much fire in his belly."
He pointed out that he'd made financial sacrifices to run for president--he quit his various high-paying jobs and went without income for nearly a year--which should, he said, demonstrate his earnestness about the task before him.
And yet: "I'm not consumed by this process. I'm not consumed with the notion of being president. I'm simply saying I'm willing to do what's necessary to achieve it, if I'm in synch with the people and if the people want me or somebody like me. . . . I'm only consumed by very, very few things and politics is not one of them."
Thompson didn't give off the usual political vibe: the gnawing need to please, the craving for the public's love. A few voters and journalists found this refreshing, many more found it insulting. Some just found it fascinating, in a clinical sort of way: What kind of politician isn't consumed by politics--and what kind of campaign would such a politician run? Well, now we know. If Thompson could plausibly avoid an overnight campaign trip, he did, preferring to return home to his wife and children in suburban Virginia. He spent an inordinate amount of time with his briefing books. And his response to the chore of raising money--the chief occupation of every office-seeker in this era of campaign finance reform, which was intended to reduce the role of money in politics--seemed nearly pathological. Fundraising events scheduled to last two or three hours often guttered out when the candidate departed after twenty minutes. High-end donors complained of being uncourted, unpampered, unloved--even unphoned. At one party in a private home last year, Thompson made the rounds of money-shakers, delivered brief remarks, and then slipped into a bedroom to watch a basketball game on TV by himself.
Having become famous as an actor in TV and movies, Thompson might have been expected to be a showman. But he was resolutely prosaic. Only with the greatest reluctance did he agree to a photograph with the Iowa State Fair's "Butter Cow," and when a fireman in Waverly asked him to wear a helmet, he said he didn't wear "silly hats." As the critics charged, his public speeches really were unusually long, even at drop-bys along the trail, because he insisted on mentioning details of his plans to recalibrate the benefit formulas for Social Security, inject private incentives into Medicare, and develop an optional, two-tiered flat tax. So nobody should have been surprised that when it came time to film his final pitch to voters before the Iowa caucuses, the broadcast speech ended up being 17 minutes long--Homeric by the standards of political ads. Crowds did not go wild.
Now, you can overstate the intellectual heft of a campaign that was launched by the candidate during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He was a different kind of candidate but not an incompetent one. Indeed, his finest moment came in a debate before the Iowa caucuses, when the moderator asked the assembled candidates for a show of hands if they believed human activity caused climate change.
"Well, do you want to give me a minute to answer that?" Thompson said. When the moderator said she didn't, he said: "Well, then I'm not going to answer it. You want a show of hands, and I'm not going to give it to you."
The moderator looked as though Thompson had suddenly sprouted daffodils from his ears. So did his fellow candidates. After a stunned silence, they all courageously announced their refusal to show hands, too. They looked like the Little Rascals, hitching up their britches and flexing their biceps after Alfalfa clocked the neighborhood bully.
It's telling that his most notable moments were negative--marked by his refusal to follow some custom of the modern campaign. (From another debate: "Should government step in and help Chrysler and the other auto makers?" Thompson: "No.") Asked about education reform, he said: "It would be easy enough for someone running for president to say: I have a several-point plan to fix our education problem. It's not going to happen. And it shouldn't happen from the Oval Office." When journalists and candidates, with their typically childlike enthusiasm, suddenly began gumming the word "change" after the Iowa caucuses, Thompson pointed out the obvious: "Change has been part of every election since the dawn of elections, if you weren't an incumbent." He noted how easy it was "to demagogue" the issue of federal spending by dwelling on relatively insignificant earmarks: "All these programs that we talk about in the news every day are a thimbleful in the ocean compared to the entitlement tsunami that's coming to hit us."
Views like these might have earned another candidate a reputation for "straight talk"--maybe even the title of "maverick." But Thompson was more subversive than that; he was an existential maverick, and his campaign was an implicit rebuke to the system in its entirety. He was a man out of his time. With its reduced metabolism and procedural modesty, his campaign still might have served as an illustration of what politics once was like and--if we have the audacity to hope--might be again. After all, by the standards of a century ago, Thompson was a whirligig.
Political campaigns have always been boisterous affairs, but candidates themselves rarely took center stage till well into the 20th century. The first presidential candidate even to make an appearance on his own behalf was William Henry Harrison in 1840. When he showed up in Columbus, Ohio, to give a speech extolling his (exceedingly thin) record, the political world was scandalized. An opposition paper, the Democratic Globe, counted his uses of the pronoun "I"--there were 81 of them in his text--and pronounced the speech "a prodigy of garrulous egotism." The Cleveland Adviser, a nonpartisan paper, asked: "When was there ever before such a spectacle as a candidate for the Presidency, traversing the country advocating his own claims for that high and responsible station? Never!"
"The precedent thus set by Harrison," concluded the Adviser's editorialist, "appears to us a bad one."
But it wasn't much of a precedent. Active campaigning didn't catch on for another half century or more. (The exception was Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, the only one of the four presidential candidates that year to leave town to deliver a speech.) Candidates stayed home, receiving visitors and maintaining a quiet dignity while occasionally uncorking a speech in the neighborhood so the newspapers had something to report. Meanwhile surrogates scattered around the country, leading parades, holding rallies, and telling lies for which the candidates themselves couldn't be held responsible. Even the appalling Theodore Roosevelt, who would smooch babies at a train wreck if he thought it would get him votes, managed to contain himself and keep off the hustings when he ran for reelection in 1904. Eventually barnstorming became marginally acceptable, but only as the last recourse of candidates who, like Harry Truman in 1948, were so far behind they could risk looking desperate and undignified.
As late as the 1970s, the constant motion that modern presidential candidates subject themselves to was still of recent enough vintage that Nelson Polsby and Aaron Wildavsky, in their great book Presidential Elections, felt the need to account for it. "Everybody does it because it is the fashion," they wrote, "and the spectacle of seeing one's opponent run around the country at a furious pace without following suit is too nerve-wracking [for a candidate] to contemplate. It is beside the point that no one knows whether all this does any good."
The traditional restraint of old-time presidential candidates wasn't arrogance or sanctimoniousness, the twin accusations that wised-up politicos made against Thompson during the campaign. There was a philosophical component to it too: By not seeming overeager--no matter how eager they were--candidates paid tribute to the democratic idea that political power is best sought, taken on, and used reluctantly. It was also a matter of seemliness, and Thompson, alone among recent candidates, felt its pull. In his stump speech he often mentioned George Washington, once a staple of political rhetoric for his willingness to walk away from the power that was thrust upon him. Today Washington's restraint seems nothing more than an archaism. And by extolling it Thompson sounded merely odd.
"If people really want in their president a super type-A personality," Thompson said at that Iowa town hall meeting, "someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night thinking for years about how they could achieve the presidency of the United States, someone who could look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning--I ain't that guy."
But does "super type-A personality" really describe the kind of person who runs for president nowadays? It's not pleasant to think of the life they lead, these Americans who would be president, from the first hints of dawn to well past midnight, this life of endless demands, this succession of superficial sociability, in which you smile and smile and pop your eyes wide open in delighted wonder at the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of faces and places that circles before you, and you haven't the time or leisure to settle on a single one. Charming countryside, pretty little towns, sprawling centers of commerce and industry fly by and you haven't a moment to enjoy them or learn their tales. You rush to meet hundreds of people a day and never have a meaningful exchange of words with any of them.
From the backseats of freezing cars and vans you're hustled into overheated coffee shops and those packed school gymnasiums with the stink rising to the rafters and then the oppressive hush of corporate meeting rooms, where your nose starts to run and a film of sweat forms under your wool pullover, and you press the outstretched hands that carry every bacterial pathogen known to epidemiology. You open your mouth and you release the same cloud of words you recited yesterday and the day before. And in the Q&A, when you stop to listen, you hear the same questions and complaints from yesterday, the same mewling and blame-shifting, all imploring you to do the impossible and through some undefined action make the lives of these unhappy citizens somehow edifying, uplifting, and worth living. And you always promise you will do that; you have no choice but to tell this kind of lie.
There's no rest, because there's not a moment to waste: The handful of minutes away from the kaleidoscope are spent chatting with the scorpions of the press, the ill-dressed, ill-mannered reporters from the prints and the pretty, preening peacocks of TV, each of them either a know-it-all or a cynic or a dope, take your pick, and each of whom, for professional and other reasons, will deploy all his energies and cleverness to the task of trapping you into a misstatement or ungenerous remark or expression of irritation so he can convey to his editors and the world that--at last!--you've made a gaffe; and if you won't make a gaffe then he will convey to his editors and the world how "scripted" and "over rehearsed" you sound; kind of slick, almost robotic, inauthentic.
When the scorpions are dismissed, in the seconds before you pass from the freezing van to the overheated gym or boardroom, a sycophant whose name you can't remember hands you a cell phone that connects you to a rich man whose face you dimly recall from another boardroom last summer and you beg him to give you money, or more often--considering the grinding pressure you feel for cash, always for cash--you beg him to assemble a circle of other rich men that he can beg on your behalf, and when you sign off you don't have time to be grateful. There will be more calls before dinner and after dinner, and dinner is a cold thigh of chicken in a sump of clotted gravy served from a steam table in a freezing cinder block banquet room at the Lions Club, and a hundred pairs of eyes fix themselves on you--a celebrity, someone they've seen on TV--as you dribble the gravy on your shirtfront. And after you release the same words and hear the same complaints you go to bed in a Hampton Suites for five hours of sleep on starchy sheets with dimly visible stains whose origins are impossible to discern, and from the corner the digital display on the microwave flashes 12:00 12:00 12:00 . . .
And you do all this so you can wake up the next morning and do it again. Because you like it.
The man or woman who seeks out such a life and enjoys its discomforts is not normal. Not crazy necessarily, but not normal, and probably, when the chips are down, not to be trusted, especially when the purpose of it all is to acquire power over other people (also called, in the delicate language of contemporary politics, "public service" or "getting things done on behalf of the American people"). The case is made, in defense of the contemporary campaign, that this is an efficient if unlovely way to choose leaders: It winnows out those who lack the stamina and discipline necessary to lead a rich, large, powerful, and complicated country. By this argument, Thompson failed because he deserved to.
But the opposite case is easier to make--that the modern campaign excludes anyone who lacks the narcissism, cold-bloodedness, and unreflective nature that the process requires and rewards. In his memoir -Greenspan remarks that of the seven presidents he has known well, the only one who was "close to normal" was Jerry Ford. And, as Greenspan points out, Ford was never elected.
Fred Thompson probably feels terrible at the moment, but he should be honored to be in Ford's company."
Friday, January 25, 2008
More Anti-McCain Cowbell Baby!
Just in case I didn't make clear the reasons that there is no chance in hell that I would ever pull the lever for John McCain as the GOP nominee in 2008, here's some more:
1.) Courtesy of the Mitt Romney campaign (Hat Tip: Emperor Misha), an absolutely devastating montage showing a litany of liberal Democrats and their enablers in the mainstream media talking heads speaking glowingly of Senator McCain.;
2.) The New York Times endorses Senator McCain and Senator Clinton because they are both inside the Beltway, poll-driven, MSM-worshipping liberals. Any real conservative would tell the New York Slimes where to stick their endorsement, but this whackjob touts it right there on his campaign website...as a good thing!;
3.) Senator McCain does not believe in the concept of America as a melting pot. As Mark Krikorian astutely points out, Senator McCain would prefer that we become a balkanized country along many different lines...racial, religious, tribal, cultural and language just to name a few. Don't believe it? Mr. Krikorian's article shows that Senator McCain's own voting history proves it. I love the final quote best of all:
"Before anyone ever compares him to Theodore Roosevelt again, just try to imagine McCain saying this, from one of TR’s letters:
"We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house."
Enough said.
4.) Senator Mel Martinez (RINO-FL), someone whose brief run atop the RNC did substantial damage to Republican fundraising efforts, actually managed to produce a negative trend in Hispanic outreach, and who was right there with Ted Kennedy, Lindsay Graham-nesty (RINO-SC), and Senator McCain attempting to ram amnesty down the throats of America, endorsed Senator McCain today.; and finally,
5.) Courtesy of several sources (Michelle Malkin, Emperor Misha, Lone Wacko, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies via NRO, Jerome Corsi, and Gateway Pundit)...McCain now has as a campaign consultant and director of Hispanic Outreach for his campaign an open-borders zealot by the name of Dr. Juan Hernandez. Whether this jackal is paid or unpaid is immaterial. I honestly believe that Mexican officials (past, present, and future) who seek to meddle in the internal affairs of America, especially when they actively promote and enable illegal immigration, should be arrested, blacklisted, and deported permanently, with the understanding that, if they are caught once more attempting to erode American sovereignty and undermine our laws, they would be subject to arrest and prosecution the same way an agent of any other nation caught engaging in unauthorized, unwelcome espionage on American soil would be...as a spy. And yet, John McCain, who allegedly "gets the message" regarding illgal immigration, hires someone who has clearly demonstrated at all times that he has the best interests of Mexico, not America at heart. Senator McCain, I and many other Americans with more than three neurons to rub together might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.
I mean, read the man's own website on the issue of illegal immigration, you'd think this egomaniacal, obfuscating bastard was running for President of Mexico and/or greater Latin America. After paying token lip service to securing the border, mind you, with absolutel no details about how he plans to do this (because he has no plans to secure the border), he talks more about the alleged duty of America to absorb anyone and everyone who manages to break into our nation, more about the alleged rights of illegal immigrants to crash the gates of our country and violate our sovereignty, and more about pandering to and the rights of greedy employers who would love nothing more than an endless supply of illegal foreign labor to hire any illegal they please in order to pad their bottom line at the nation's expense than he does about actually securing the border and all that entails. That tells me everything I need to know about the man as a presidential candidate...I just can't fathom why the people of Arizona, home of Proposition 200 and the "business death penalty" for businesses who hire illegal immigrants, haven't tossed this idiot out on his ear yet.
Oh, and last but certainly not least, Bill and Hillary Clinton apparently think McCain is just ducky and dandy...as my profession is fond of saying, I rest my case.
1.) Courtesy of the Mitt Romney campaign (Hat Tip: Emperor Misha), an absolutely devastating montage showing a litany of liberal Democrats and their enablers in the mainstream media talking heads speaking glowingly of Senator McCain.;
2.) The New York Times endorses Senator McCain and Senator Clinton because they are both inside the Beltway, poll-driven, MSM-worshipping liberals. Any real conservative would tell the New York Slimes where to stick their endorsement, but this whackjob touts it right there on his campaign website...as a good thing!;
3.) Senator McCain does not believe in the concept of America as a melting pot. As Mark Krikorian astutely points out, Senator McCain would prefer that we become a balkanized country along many different lines...racial, religious, tribal, cultural and language just to name a few. Don't believe it? Mr. Krikorian's article shows that Senator McCain's own voting history proves it. I love the final quote best of all:
"Before anyone ever compares him to Theodore Roosevelt again, just try to imagine McCain saying this, from one of TR’s letters:
"We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house."
Enough said.
4.) Senator Mel Martinez (RINO-FL), someone whose brief run atop the RNC did substantial damage to Republican fundraising efforts, actually managed to produce a negative trend in Hispanic outreach, and who was right there with Ted Kennedy, Lindsay Graham-nesty (RINO-SC), and Senator McCain attempting to ram amnesty down the throats of America, endorsed Senator McCain today.; and finally,
5.) Courtesy of several sources (Michelle Malkin, Emperor Misha, Lone Wacko, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies via NRO, Jerome Corsi, and Gateway Pundit)...McCain now has as a campaign consultant and director of Hispanic Outreach for his campaign an open-borders zealot by the name of Dr. Juan Hernandez. Whether this jackal is paid or unpaid is immaterial. I honestly believe that Mexican officials (past, present, and future) who seek to meddle in the internal affairs of America, especially when they actively promote and enable illegal immigration, should be arrested, blacklisted, and deported permanently, with the understanding that, if they are caught once more attempting to erode American sovereignty and undermine our laws, they would be subject to arrest and prosecution the same way an agent of any other nation caught engaging in unauthorized, unwelcome espionage on American soil would be...as a spy. And yet, John McCain, who allegedly "gets the message" regarding illgal immigration, hires someone who has clearly demonstrated at all times that he has the best interests of Mexico, not America at heart. Senator McCain, I and many other Americans with more than three neurons to rub together might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.
I mean, read the man's own website on the issue of illegal immigration, you'd think this egomaniacal, obfuscating bastard was running for President of Mexico and/or greater Latin America. After paying token lip service to securing the border, mind you, with absolutel no details about how he plans to do this (because he has no plans to secure the border), he talks more about the alleged duty of America to absorb anyone and everyone who manages to break into our nation, more about the alleged rights of illegal immigrants to crash the gates of our country and violate our sovereignty, and more about pandering to and the rights of greedy employers who would love nothing more than an endless supply of illegal foreign labor to hire any illegal they please in order to pad their bottom line at the nation's expense than he does about actually securing the border and all that entails. That tells me everything I need to know about the man as a presidential candidate...I just can't fathom why the people of Arizona, home of Proposition 200 and the "business death penalty" for businesses who hire illegal immigrants, haven't tossed this idiot out on his ear yet.
Oh, and last but certainly not least, Bill and Hillary Clinton apparently think McCain is just ducky and dandy...as my profession is fond of saying, I rest my case.
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