Fourth quarter, first Wednesday

The Tuesday elections have proven to be a repudiation of George W. Bush and his administration. Democratic and independent candidates carried the day, and Republicans no longer possess a conservative majority in Congress.

Either way, the nation was going to lose. We’ve lost already, and it’s only the first days after Election Day. Bush has a team that knows how to get around Congress, if it has to. If the Bush team doesn’t have a Republican Congress to “work with,” then the team will work without Congress. Loss of a Republican congressional majority has been a repudiation, but only a vocal one. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales will continue on their same path, maybe with more machete work to do on balances of power put in place in 1789, but continuing all the same.

It is this inevitability that is so depressing. It’s like the nation is behind, 100-0, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there’s no mercy rule, and nobody can leave until the fat lady sings. If the Congress had remained Republican-controlled after the elections, who knows what the final score might have been? Now that Republicans have lost control – I don’t say, “Democrats have gained control,” because it’s not that black-and-white (or red-and-blue) – but now that Republicans have lost control, the final score, when Bush is finally carried off the field in 2008, may be 150-14.

Surely a non-Republican Congress can scratch out a couple of scores in two years, but most of the drives won’t get inside the 40-yard line, against an opponent that knows how to use the rules so well.

But who cares? What good are 14 points in the last quarter of a game that was over at the half? In the Congressional locker room, what will the coach say? “Folks, you did your best.” Well, rah rah rah. The stories in the morning papers, when the gun finally sounds in 2008, will be about which nation is bloodied the worst, Iraq or America.

And all we can do is sit in the stands and watch. Can’t leave, can’t get away, can’t go home and fix a martini and turn on the TV and try to forget. Wait til next year? Sheesh. Who wants to watch 2007 in America?

The Bush team has already won. The new Congress, in red jerseys or blue, will be the scrubs, playing out its worst loss in history against the Bush first-string, still sending in a new play every day with a new way to hide the ball until it’s too late. You almost hope all the Republicans had won on Tuesday. Go ahead and shudder at the thought. Or you can shudder at the thought of what the Bush team can do in the fourth period, even ahead 100-0, if it is motivated by a Congress wearing blue jerseys. It would be better to lose, 150-0, with a red congress, than 250-14 with a blue one. Wouldn’t it? Talk about the blues. I got ‘em, baby.

We take what distractions we can find, from the carnage on the field below. The other day a vendor came up the aisle with copies of The New York Times. I bought one, and in it found a column by Thomas L. Friedman, under the headline, “Insulting our troops, and our intelligence.” I have nothing against Republicans, or Republican or conservative philosophy and ideology, or honest Republican elected representatives, or evangelical Christians gay or straight, and I am not energized by the prospects of a party that counts John Kerry among its leaders. I am just an American, sitting in the stands, rooting for a country that is behind 100-0 with a full quarter left to go, reading a Friedman column that is the most succinct expression I have seen, of the way that I feel. Only Friedman is more optimistic than I. He believes Tuesday could make a difference. Remember Andy Griffith’s funny monologue, “What it was, was football”? Well-oiled fellow next to him slaps him on the shoulder and says, “Buddy, have a drink,” only Andy says, “drank.” To you, my seatmates in this stadium from hell, I slap you on the shoulder and say, “Buddy, read Friedman’s column. And have a drank. Have several.”

Fourth quarter

The Tuesday elections may prove to be a repudiation of George W. Bush and his administration. Or the Republican candidates may carry the day and maintain the conservative majority in Congress.

Either way, the nation is going to lose. We’ve lost already, and it’s only the weekend before Election Day. Bush has a team that knows how to get around Congress, if it has to. If the Bush team doesn’t have a Republican Congress to “work with,” then the team will work without Congress. Loss of a Republican congressional majority will be a repudiation, but only a vocal one. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales will continue on their same path, maybe with more machete work to do on balances of power put in place in 1789, but continuing all the same.

It is this inevitability that is so depressing. It’s like the nation is behind, 100-0, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there’s no mercy rule, and nobody can leave until the fat lady sings. If the Congress remains Republican-controlled after Tuesday, who knows what the final score will be? If Republicans lose control – I don’t say, “If Democrats gain control,” because it’s not that black-and-white (or red-and-blue) – but if Republicans lose control, the final score, when Bush is finally carried off the field in 2008, may be 150-14.

Surely a non-Republican Congress can scratch out a couple of scores in two years, but most of the drives won’t get inside the 40-yard line, against an opponent that knows how to use the rules so well.

But who cares? What good are 14 points in the last quarter of a game that was over at the half? In the Congressional locker room, what will the coach say? “Folks, you did your best.” Well, rah rah rah. The stories in the morning papers, when the gun finally sounds in 2008, will be about which nation is bloodied the worst, Iraq or America.

And all we can do is sit in the stands and watch. Can’t leave, can’t get away, can’t go home and fix a martini and turn on the TV and try to forget. Wait til next year? Sheesh. Who wants to watch 2007 in America?

The Bush team has already won. The new Congress, in red jerseys or blue, will be the scrubs, playing out its worst loss in history against the Bush first-string, still sending in a new play every day with a new way to hide the ball until it’s too late. You almost hope all the Republicans win on Tuesday. Go ahead and shudder at the thought. Or you can shudder at the thought of what the Bush team can do in the fourth period, even ahead 100-0, if it is motivated by a Congress wearing blue jerseys. It would be better to lose, 150-0, with a red congress, than 250-14 with a blue one. Wouldn’t it? Talk about the blues. I got ‘em, baby.

We take what distractions we can find, from the carnage on the field below. Yesterday a vendor came up the aisle with copies of The New York Times. I bought one, and in it found a column by Thomas L. Friedman, under the headline, “Insulting our troops, and our intelligence.” I have nothing against Republicans, or Republican or conservative philosophy and ideology, or honest Republican elected representatives, or evangelical Christians gay or straight, and I am not energized by the prospects of a party that counts John Kerry among its leaders. I am just an American, sitting in the stands, rooting for a country that is behind 100-0 with a full quarter left to go, reading a Friedman column that is the most succinct expression I have seen, of the way that I feel. Only Friedman is more optimistic than I. He believes Tuesday will make a difference. Remember Andy Griffith’s funny monologue, “What it was, was football”? Well-oiled fellow next to him slaps him on the shoulder and says, “Buddy, have a drink,” only Andy says, “drank.” To you, my seatmates in this stadium from hell, I slap you on the shoulder and say, “Buddy, read Friedman’s column. And have a drank. Have several.”

Conscious Conservatism

There are Neoconservatives, and President Bush tried to establish a Compassionate Conservative label, but the development that may ease us toward the light at the end of this national sewer we are in is the growing Conscious Conservative movement.

Conscious Conservatives are those conservatives, mainly Republican, who have become compelled by the events of the past five years to start putting some distance between themselves and George W. Bush as their political chief executive. They and he may still share some core ideologies and philosophies, but they have just become too conscious of Iraq and Katrina, cronies doing a heck of a job, executive power grabs, the word “terrorism” as a political tool, dangerous detainee policies, national surveillance practices and end runs on the Constitution. Unconscious Conservatives have witnessed these same things, and some of them may be nervous about Bush, but they wouldn’t give up his guarantees to pro-life, guns, and James Dobson, if Bush declared Congress unconstitutional and locked out the Supreme Court.

The irony is, they can have those things, and a competent chief executive, too, when the nation’s electorate becomes conscious-based, a consciousness that takes into account globalization, and terrorism, and the price of being lured into asymmetric warfare against the wrong enemy. No president may have been available, who could measure up to the demands on this country after 9/11, but President Bush’s record would not be too difficult to top. If consciousness, and not political railroading, had been a feature of the 2000 conventions and election, the nation may still have had a pro-life, evangelical Republican president, whose record today almost certainly would have to be preferable to that of George W. Bush.

Conscious Conservatives may be starting to realize something else. The administration points out, almost every day, that the nation has not been attacked by terrorists since 9/11. The emerging reality is that the 9/11 attack hasn’t ended yet. It was just the starting point, the place in Manhattan where the enemy plunged a syringe into the nation, injecting us with a fear-based virus that set into motion erosive events that are occurring still, unchecked. One such event is the immigration wall measure, that James Goldsborough wrote about last week. Another is the signing yesterday, by President Bush, of law that deprives some people of the habeas corpus rule that is a cornerstone of United States jurisprudence.

Such events don’t affect most of us directly, but they create a climate. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about loving airplanes. I also love anticipating trips on airplanes. We are going on a trip soon, and I was online at the airline Website, looking at the planes we will be on, looking at our seat assignments, looking at maps of our destination airports, and suddenly I stopped and stared at the screen. I could feel somebody out there in the government, feel what it would be like if somebody was watching my clicks, and wondering what I was doing. I remembered what a student told me recently. At the library he checked out a book for a paper he was writing on terrorism. A few days later, the FBI showed up at his door. President Bush likes to ask: do you feel safer than you did five years ago? At that moment, looking at a map of DFW, I had to respond: No. I felt watched. This is an erosive climate. I can feel the fear.

Some of this new cadre of Conscious Conservatives enjoy high position. Every time you see a Republican office-holder trying to distance him- or herself from the president, you are looking at a Conscious Conservative. With the November elections close by, their awareness is apparent. As they reassure their district and state voters that they are not in lock-step with Bush Administration policy, the Conscious Conservative movement grows.

The movement should have the effect of expanding the political middle. Not only Dubya-dubious Republicans, but independents and moderate Democrats could find Conscious Conservative appealing. I feel that I am one of those. I am pro-choice, but I am also pro-state’s rights, pro-less government, pro-taxes, as long as they are fair, pro-Constitution, pro-separation of powers, pro-business, pro-mom, pro-apple pie, pro-flag, a veteran, and pro-faith. If a person is pro-faith, how can he also be pro-choice? It is difficult, yes, but so is the woman’s position, and the decision she must make. Only she should have the right to make it.

Who would our candidate be? I have a feeling he or she would come from the conservative side. I can’t think of any particular Democrat smart and tough and willing and aggressive enough to lead the country at this uniquely difficult time. John Kerry couldn’t even rise to keeping himself from getting swift-boated in 2004, and good old avuncular Al Gore lacks the charisma to galvanize the millions away from the margins of the staunch, even on the left. I’m not sure there is an American alive, Republican or Democrat, who after six years of Bush leadership could step in and do anything but sink up to his or her knees in the Bush muck. Colin Powell is tall, and John McCain has been in very deep muck before, so one of them might be able to find some useful footing.

What we really need is a Dave, like in the movie. Good old Dave. I have been thinking about him ever since Bush turned his back on New Orleans. If indifference were an impeachable offense, Congress could send George Bush winging off to Texas at just about any time. But it’s not, and George W. Bush will be President of the United States for more than two years. The best that Conscious Conservatives can hope for is for Dave, a stand-in with affection for the country and a reasonable idea of what to do next. Where have you gone, George Washington? Wow. George W: from first to worst.

New brother in the club

Fascinating, this week, to read the story by New York Times travel writer Joe Sharkey, of his experience on an airplane he believed might crash. He was aboard the executive jet, flying above the Amazon forest, that was clipped by a jetliner with 155 people aboard. The jetliner crashed, killing all on board, but Sharkey’s story tells how his damaged aircraft was able to stay airborne until they could find a landing field.

It was the first such experience I had ever read, since the same thing happened to me, almost 50 years ago. On the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 28, 1958, I was on an airplane that I believed was going to crash. For a moment, in fact, I believed it had crashed, and that I must be dead.

I was a sophomore on our district champion high school football team, the Abilene Eagles, and we were flying from Abilene, in West Texas, for a first-round playoff game against Ysleta, an El Paso suburb. We were on two chartered DC-3s, the first team and head coach on the first plane, the scrubs on the second. I was on the second, in the last seat on the right-hand side.

I loved airplanes, knew all the makes and types, liked to go to the Abilene airport and watch the Pioneer Airlines DC-3s come and go. So I knew, that at Big Spring, 100 miles west of Abilene, there was Webb Air Force Base. The base was south of us, to our left, so I got out of my seat and asked the two guys across the aisle if I could lean across and look out their window at the base. There it was, the runway perpendicular to us, maybe five miles away.

In the next instant, without any sense of anything happening, or time passing, I was stuck, spread-eagled, to the ceiling of the airplane. I couldn’t move a finger, couldn’t close my eyes. Directly below my eyes was the window I had been looking out of. Below that was the ground, brown West Texas ranch land, coming up to get me.

In another instant, again without any sense of happening or time, I was on the floor, underneath one of the guys – Graham Holland – I had been leaning over, and on top of us was a lot of stuff, including a long, large, glossy stick, red and white with black marks and numbers on it. Loving airplanes, I knew this was the stick that, at the airport, they used to measure the fuel in the wing tanks. I looked at the stick and thought: this stick is supposed to be outside the airplane. It must mean that I am outside the airplane, too, which means I must be dead. Never having been dead, it made sense that this is what it would look like to a departing spirit: just like life.

But then we started to stir, pick ourselves up. We were flying again, straight and level. It was very quiet on the airplane. The pilot, Charles L. Kageler, came on the intercom. He said we were almost hit by a T-33 jet trainer, taking off from Webb. He said he cut power to his engines, stood the DC-3 (a fabulous airplane) on its left wingtip, and dropped about 1,000 feet. That’s what stuck me to the ceiling. Kageler said the trainer missed us by about 25 feet.

We flew on to El Paso, played the next day, won, 45-0, and flew home without incident. But the people on the airplane that Friday afternoon had become members of a club who know what it is like on an airplane that is about to crash. We knew three things: your life really does pass before your eyes; the ground really does come up to get you; there is no panic, or terror. No one on the airplane yelled, or screamed; it was eerily quiet, during and after.

For 48 years, I believed the absence of terror was because of time. It happened so quickly, the brain couldn’t figure it out. The brain, being a logical instrument, strives to put patterns on everything, but things were happening too fast. I came to believe it was a form of compensation: people who were about to die at least would not die in the indignity of terror.

Now, this week, I read about Joe Sharkey’s experience, a “terrific jolt,” the sight of a wingtip sheared off and the skin of the wing peeling back, losing speed and altitude, and no visible place in the thick rain forest to land. They were in the air for 30 minutes, “the most harrowing 30 minutes of my life,” Sharkey writes. Plenty of time to figure things out. Yet, Sharkey writes: “Amazingly, no one panicked.”

So there must be something else about human beings. We – not our intellect, but our visceral selves – must understand the singularity of life, of being alive, and we are born with an instinct that says such a possession cannot, will not, be taken away. A wingtip is sheared off, the plane is going down, but that’s okay. Plenty of time left. Plenty of fight. I have witnessed some evidence of this. A person is dying, wasted by disease, yet in the last minutes, the final minute, the last seconds, the body is fighting visibly, ferociously, to stay alive, to possess its singularity, until finally it relaxes, takes a deep breath or two, and then surrenders. This thing about life in us makes us all noble. The World Trade Center victims didn’t jump to die. They jumped because it was their last fighting chance to live.

Front Page Values

People are so funny. They have no idea how a newspaper does its job. Last week, stripped across the top of our local paper, The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Letters page, were letters whining about some of the U-T’s recent choices for front-page stories.

One griped about the huge front-page photo of Padres pitcher Trevor Hoffman, the morning after he broke Lee Smith’s all-time major league record for saves. Another thought the front page should be reserved for international, national or statewide content. A third wondered about showing a photo of San Diego teachers on the front page, where the news of the day should be.

Reader annoyance with editorial decisions is an eternal, fascinating irony. The values and realities that editors use to make their decisions were not created by the media, or by the first newspaper publishers 500 years ago. Those values and realities were created by people, our ancient ancestors, dating all the way back to the caves, and we carry them still, every day, and we know what they are. News values are nothing more than categorization and measurement of the way people react to events, and those reactions began tens of thousands of years before the media came into being. In fact the media came into being simply by adopting those values and turning them into a business. There are 10 such values in all, each measured on a strength of zero to 10. Every value is present in every story in the paper, each on its strength of zero to 10.

When an editor looks at a photo of Trevor Hoffman on the front page of The San Diego Union-Tribune, he or she sees novelty (10), proximity (10), prominence (10), and sensationalism (7 or 8). Timeliness (7) and human interest (about a 6) are there, too, but the others are the big four behind the Trevor photo.

Novelty is the news value invoked by the unusual, the rare (Snow In San Diego!). Setting a record in major league baseball in America is an unusual event. People still talk about Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record. Setting a record for saves hadn’t been done for decades. Novelty insured that the feat was noted in Monday newspapers all over the country, even three paragraphs in The New York Times.

There are two types of proximity: physical and emotional. Physical proximity means the story happened close to you. Hoffman pitches for the Padres, the home-town team. If he pitched for far-away Cleveland, the story would have been three paragraphs on an inside sports page. Emotional proximity is just that: the story is close to your emotions. Little guy vs. big guy, David vs. Goliath, is the classic example, because in our lives we have all been Davids at some point, and we know how it feels. When you read a David and Goliath story, you are reading it because of emotional proximity. The U-T did, this week, miss an emotional proximity story. In yesterday’s Letters page was a short letter, way at the bottom, that wondered why, in its Monday “This day in history” feature, the paper didn’t list the PSA crash here on Sept. 25, 1978 that killed 144 people. I don’t expect an actual story until the next anniversary year, 2008, but I did scan the pages, looking for a mention. When it happened, it was a 10-plus for all the values except progress, probably the biggest news story in San Diego media history.

Prominence is simple: big names make news. Trevor Hoffman is a celebrity, who achieved a novel feat, in his home town. And sensationalism, in its legitimate sense, refers to an event that is sensational. The biggest sensational story that I can remember is the farewell tour of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. His performances were sensational, and they were noted in the media worldwide, as they happened. My biggest personal sensational story is Steve Garvey’s home run (off Lee Smith, incidentally), in Game 4 against the Cubs in 1984. You can ask anyone who was there (all 10 million of them) if they have ever heard a louder roar.

So if people know what these values are, why do they gripe about front-page content selection? They do it because of demographics. Every reader, from highbrow to sports fan, has his or her own list of stories they want to see. It forces editors into choices, which are usually based on another value, consequence: on any given day, which demographic represents the largest number of readers likely to react to this story? It would be good if the paper could get all the news in, every day, but the paper would weigh 20 pounds, they could never sell enough ads, and 90 percent of the content would go unread by any given reader.

The 19-man army

What I can’t get over is how Osama bin Laden managed to damage my country so badly with an army of 19 men.

I guess we would have to concede him his victory in New York. That defeat was an awful price to pay for ignoring all the intelligence that pointed to an attack.

After that, though, it wasn’t any time at all before we completely acknowledged his unique (in our battle history) skill and determination as an enemy. We know his tactics and understand his strategy. Why, then, five years later, are we still letting him bleed us?

All terrorists are media experts. They know how to manipulate reaction. They know how to get into the news, get onto television, and stay there. Tim McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building at 9 o’clock on the morning of a sunny day. Bin Laden’s pathetic soldiers flew the airplanes into the towers at 9 on the morning of a sunny day. They did that for an excellent reason. They wanted to give the cameras maximum time to see. The plot just discovered in Britain all involved blowing up planes coming from Europe to the United States. Those are daylight flights. Going the other direction, they all take off in the late afternoon or evening.

Reaction is bin Laden’s sword. At first it was a tiny sword, no bigger than 19 boxcutters being snuck through security. Today the sword is huge, for one simple, maddening reason, one reaction that bin Laden was counting on: we are helping him swing it, with our Iraq war, and Patriot Acts, and surveillance schemes, and end runs on the Constitution, and dissolution of values and principles into so-called correct ideology.

So much damage, that sword has wrought in five years. And now it is so late, and we are bleeding from so many cuts. There must be someone in my country’s leadership who has the skill, intelligence and determination to take the sword out of bin Laden’s hands. But I can’t think of a name. All the famous names, in the national leadership, and I can’t think of one who would know exactly what to do, and how to do it, at this point. It certainly hasn’t been George Bush. He may be the Decider, but what we need desperately is a Uniter.

We need someone to remind us who we are. The Bush administration keeps telling us we’re safer than we were five years ago. I don’t feel safer. There’s this huge sword swinging around. Our leadership, with all its display, is acting just like the terrorist wants us to act, then suggests we are dead wrong if we disagree. It makes all of us out to be acting just like the terrorist wants us to act. But we’re not that way. I watched the buildings burning on Sept. 11, and at some point got on email and messaged everybody I knew that we should think what the terrorists would want us to do, and then do the opposite thing. Nobody objected, or disagreed. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know how to fight a terrorist. We just all need to be brought together in this quiet, firm, fight, and quickly.

Trying to watch football

It’s going to be a long football season. I watched part of the Florida State-Miami game on Monday night and was overwhelmed by the production, which shrank the game itself to a relatively calm eye at the center of a hurricane of visuals and sound.

All television sports is being shrunk in this way, by hurricane production values aimed at a target audience of young men and boys who like bells and whistles more than they like blocking and tackling. The commercial breaks are long and frequent, and the commercials are compressed action movies. Everywhere there are tents and bright lights shining down on sideline sets with former coaches and jocks yelling analysis at each other, and into the living room. Somewhere behind all that are the players, trying to keep warm, even in September, for that moment when play is allowed to resume.

I wish football on television was like dinner at a good restaurant used to be, when the food was great and the waiter was invisible, until two seconds before you needed him, and there he was. Today, everyone who watches sports on television eats at Ruby Tuesday’s (where, true to the form, they brag about making hamburgers out of steaks), or does takeout. ESPN has a morning sports talk show called “Cold Pizza,” which nails the demographic exactly.

The better the game, the worse the hurricane. This weekend it’s No. 1 Ohio State at No. 2 Texas. It is a game that should not be scheduled before the first week of October. It is being played the second weekend in September for only two reasons. One, the hurricane has become monstrously hungry over the last few years, with its power to suck millions of young male eyeballs into primo (god, we even start to talk like them) position to view commercials for steak hamburgers and cheap, shiny cars in which to go for six-packs and tomorrow morning’s cold pizza. That is a hunger that needs to be fed by a big game every week. Two, the hurricane is greedy for perfect conditions. If Ohio State and Texas were allowed to go four games into the season, against teams other than Northern Illinois and North Texas, one of them might lose, and they would no longer be No. 1 and No. 2. They might also be undefeated, and much better, more interesting teams with four games under their belts, but that is not a risk worth taking.

Somewhere in there is a game many of us remember, and still want to watch. The rules have been changed a little, to shorten the game. This year, the clock will start at the instant of kickoff, not when the returner catches the ball, and after first downs, the clock starts when the referee spots the football, not when the ball is snapped. Essentially, the new rules take time away from the game to compensate for the extra time the production hurricane is taking for commercials and halftimes. There are, again, only two reasons for that. One, advertisers and television schedulers want their games in three-hour packets, so when games are stacked consecutively, they can stay on schedule. Two, when games start running long, viewers go to sleep, or pass out, which kills the hurricane pretty quickly.

These are all excellent business reasons, when football on television is the business and revenue is the bottom line. Are they professional? Personally, I don’t think so, but I can’t back that up with anything more than an observation. During the Florida State-Miami hurricane, suddenly there were a succession of football coaches – all the head coaches in the Atlantic Coast Conference, it turned out – making simple statements, as if to their teams in the locker room, about fair play and sportsmanship. They didn’t look or sound believable. They didn’t even look like they belonged.