Field of Steve

Does this picture mean I shouldn’t embrace children anymore?

After Thanksgiving dinner in 1990 I boarded plane to Denver to work a weekend conference of a company whose employ I’ve long regretted. The incident I recall isn’t one of those that I would put in a list of reasons why the company failed, but maybe I should.

The company sent people tickets to a business seminar and promised a free gift of accounting software and some basic business and motivational books. I had been with the company a year and obviously had never read the books, because when a guest at one of the events pointed out a quote, I had to admit I’d never seen it. I don’t remember the quote, but I do remember the author — Adolf Hitler.

Most people would agree that an American motivational book should not include a quote by Hitler, no matter how true it might be. What I do recall about the comment was had it been said by someone else who wasn’t one of history’s greatest murderers, it would have fit just fine.

Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that anti-health-care reform protesters had swastikas on their signs. While she has been denounced as a liar by some, I thought I had seen pictures of it and in looking around the Web tonight, I verified that I had.

On one level, though, so what? Liberals did it to Bush, too. You can’t judge all health care opponents for what a few crazies do.

What if they’re not crazy? The yellers on the left likened Bush to Hitler in reference to totalinarianism, which you might argue is valid. With Obama the yellers on the right might be referring to Germany’s socialism under the Nazis, which many argue is valid.

In a National Review column Andrew McCarthy argues that likening health care reform to the Nazis is appropriate, because the Nazis were socialists and that extended to health care. “The wisdom vel non of policies adopted during over a decade of Nazi socialism cannot be off the table simply because, in the end, the Nazis were monsters,” he wrote.

Well, actually, I disagree with McCarthy. For me it goes back to Godwin’s Law specifically and more generally the “slippery slope” argument we often hear. We won’t legalize something we might approve of because it could lead to us legalizing something we don’t. I hate that argument. You draw a line and you leave it there. In the 1970s we decided 18-year-olds should be able to vote. Have we since decided it should be OK for kids old enough to drive? We let 21-year-olds drink alcohol. We draw lines all the time. Sometimes we move them, but it’s not usually just because we moved them closer years before.

Besides, and this is where it gets dicey for me, it would be foolish to assume that even the most vile, evil, ungodly person in the world was capable of doing nothing good or worth emulating. I’m not saying we should emulate Hitler’s hospitals. But even an article on an Anti-Defamation League site points out that Nazi scientists may have been the first to discover that tobacco is bad for the body.

Here are things Hitler reportedly said. I can’t verify that he really said these things, but I saw it on a Web site, so it must be true. Tell me which ones you disagree with.

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”

“How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.”

“The man who has no sense of history, is like a man who has no ears or eyes”

“The day of individual happiness has passed”

“I love you Mommy”

I have no proof he said the last one, but Hitler was close to his mother, so it’s not inconceivable that he did. And I think the first one was actually his propaganda guy, but Hitler surely embraced the idea even if he didn’t say the actual quote.

Regardless, my main point is that you don’t use Hitler to support your case or to dismiss someone else’s. Health writer Tinker Ready agrees.

Where McCarthy might have a point that sells is when he writes of “a trajectory of socialism,” but again I feel he’s relying on the slippery slope model:

“There is a trajectory of socialism, regardless of the good intentions of many socialists. As he framed it, you take things such as health care, things that are traditionally understood as within the ambit of individual liberty and free choice; you move such things into the ambit of state responsibility as the welfare state emerges and grows, on the theory that it is government’s responsibility to provide for everyone’s needs (by redistributing resources); as more things are moved from private to public control, the state by definition becomes totalitarian; and, inexorably, the totalitarian state gets bad leaders and the society comes to reflect the policy choices of those leaders.”

This suggests that elements of our government are not socialist already. When did government decide it was a good idea to take roads out of the ambit of individual liberty and into state responsibility? How about wars and parks? Dictators and capitalists have both employed slavery. Do we rid ourselves of both? Are all the countries that have adopted some form of socialized medical system on an inevitable path to having their own versions of Hitler?

In the same ADL article mentioned earlier, Penn State history of science professor Robert N. Proctor draws the line pointing where German science failed:

“There is nothing inherently evil about physicians working and cooperating with their government. The moral failure of the German medical profession was its willingness to collaborate with the Nazi state, its willingness to serve Nazi values. There is nothing wrong with physicians working to preserve the health of a larger community; that, after all, is the essence of responsible public health. What differentiated National Socialist public health from genuine public health in a reasonably civilized society was the exclusive nature of what the Nazis considered “the community.” Nazi values excluded Jews and others deemed racially or genetically unfit from the völkisch community. It bears repeating: Most German physicians in the Reich failed to challenge the rotten substance of Nazi values, the murderous directions of Nazi initiatives.”

Opponents and supporters of health care both have solid arguments to make for their cases. Maybe the public option will end up being a Trojan Horse for universal coverage. Maybe insurance companies are driving medical costs up. Maybe Medicare’s doing it. Those are all worth discussing. But as soon as you bring up “Nazi” or “Hitler,” you’ve lost me.

In college I was taught the difference between Reagan’s success and Carter’s failure was more about strategy than philosophy.

While that might seem obvious on its face, it has relevance to the question I ask now, which is “What should Obama do?”

Carter came to the presidency in 1976 with a long list of things he wanted done and threw them all at Congress and, by all appearances, Americans became convinced he was incapable of getting anything done well. I don’t know what his list of accomplishments are, other than the Camp David Accord between Israel and Egypt. What I do know is he was seen as a failure.

Reagan had a long list, too, but he decided to focus on a few. He got tax cuts, the big one. He was seen as a success.

So, based on news reports, we see that Obama plans to start closing Gitmo, work on his 16-month timeline for removal of troops from Iraq and steps to boost the economy. That includes another tax cut in addition to funding for public infrastructure projects.

Should he limit it to that? Can he take on healthcare, Social Security, and other items?

I’m not so interested in what you think he should do based on your own political leanings. I want to know what you think he can realistically get through on his honeymoon. Any takers?

The campaign for the (Wait, I’ve got to check. That’s what I thought.) 32nd Congressional District from California continues, flying under the radar. By the looks of things, the campaign is flying so low under the radar that it’s under water. That’s fine, I don’t see a whole lot of buzz about other candidates, either. There is this speculation from something called “Informative Post,” on who will replace Hilda Solis when she becomes Secretary of Labor:

“The district that she is leaving is a Democratic stronghold and will probably be filled by a state legislator who resides within the district.”

The good news in that comment is that Informative Post is not naming names. No one in the district is a shoe-in, leaving an opening for me. Remember, you don’t have to live in the district to get elected to represent it.

I’ve decided that I’ll run as a Democrat. I’ll only do that, though, because the Democrats are in the majority. Once the Republicans get it back, I’ll join that side.

Does this mean I’m a feather in the wind? Call it that if you like, but you must first hear my second strategy. I’ll be gunning for a seat on some sort of appropriations committee from the get-go. I’ll generally do what my district wants me to do, so I’ll employ a sophisticated polling mechanism to find out just what that is. The larger point, though, is I want to be in a position to bring home as much pork as possible. My seat on appropriations in the majority party means my requests get approved whenever I want. So whether it’s a grant for costume manufacturing in West Covina or hotel repairs in La Puente, it’s on the House, the House of Representatives!

My future campaign slogans will be something like, “Making earmarks work for you us.”

U.S. Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., was just named as Secretary of Commerce in the Obama Administration, which means there’s an opening in Congress. Not just any opening, I tell you, Solis represents the area I grew up in. Of course we all know that it’s inevitable that one day I will return in triumph to my nesting ground to represent my fair peers in the halls of the House of Representatives. It was pretty much foreordained. The question is whether now is the time to accept my destiny. The first thing I would have to find out is whether this calls for a special election or an appointment. (Checking, checking, checking . . . ) OK, there’s an election and there are names already being surfaced. According to the Los Angeles Times:

State Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) said publicly last week that she was interested in pursuing the seat.

Speculation over who would run has been swirling in political circles since Obama’s choice of Solis was made public late last week.

Both Chu and Romero were suggested, as were Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello) and Assemblyman Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), neither of whom have announced their intentions.

The most compelling part for me, though, is the next sentence.

But the law doesn’t require a candidate to live in the district, so the field could be open to many other candidates for the sought-after seat in the House of Representatives, which is not subject to term limits.

So technically, I don’t have to move back and once I’m in there are no term limits, so I can be a congressman as long as I want, assuming I don’t do something stupid, like, say, writing a bill that would make cars or pancakes illegal or as long as I don’t take bribes from politically incorrect sources.

Of course, to make my decision, I have to weigh the pros and cons. There are things going against me, but if I’m smart I can turn those into positives.

Con: Doesn’t live in the area.
Pro: Isn’t burdened by favors to local special interest groups.

Con: Doesn’t have any political experience outside of reporting on politics in Washington state and a few months as an intern in D.C.
Pro: Not sullied by the insiders’ games.

Con: Doesn’t know many people in the district anymore.
Pro: People I do know probably wouldn’t vote for me anyway.

It’s an intriguing idea. I’ve run in the district before and won and lost. I ran for president of Rowland Avenue Elementary School in sixth grade and came in third. My own campaign manager voted against me. In 12th grade I was ASB president at Covina High School, though, which meant I got to at least go out with some girls before they got disgusted with me.

If I do run, I’ll announce it here, not on Leno. Leno’s not San Gabriel Valley enough.

On Monday I got to witness an electoral college event in Olympia. I blogged about it at work. In 2000 the speculation I heard before the election was that Bush would win the popular vote, but not the electoral college. That it turned out the other way might explain why we still have it. I could be wrong, but it appears to me anecdotally that Republicans are its biggest protectors. So they would have to be the ones to get burned if there were to be any change in it.

Even then, I’m not sure there would be enough of an appetite to discard it. There are movements to make more states like Maine and Nebraska, which assign the seats allocated from the two senators to the state’s winner, and the others depending on the votes within congressional districts. Obama got one delegate in Nebraska this year. I believe I read that was the first time those states ever had been anything but winner-take-all.

That would not be the case in Washington, however. Instead of the 11-0 split Obama received Monday, were this state to go with the Maine/Nebraska model, I’m guessing it would have either been 8-3 or 7-4.

The problem with that method, however, is that it has the potential of making the electoral college a bigger stretch from the popular vote reality than we see already. The point I’m making in my blog at work is that the real goal of changing the system is to pretty much guarantee that no one ever wins the popular vote without winning the presidency ever again. If that’s the point, then just scrap the college. Any alterations to the process and we’re just hanging on to the process out of sentimentality. What I saw Monday was pretty neat, because it mattered to the people there. And what they did mattered.

A compelling argument, though, for a revised version that doesn’t completely rely on the popular vote is that it would be far too difficult to have a national recount if the race were close. So it’s understandable why some would still want the responsibility of choosing our president to officially reside with the states. In 2000 the overall race was close, but the only state that warranted a recount was Florida. As messy as that was, I can’t imagine having to do it nationwide.

Now for the demon “other hand.” Gore’s popular vote margin in 2000 was slightly more than one-half of 1 percent. Based on the rules in our state, that means there would be no recount. Had it been slightly less than a half-percentage point, there would be. So in 2000 the entire country could have gone through a recount, with each state carrying it out, and not so much attention would have been paid to what Florida was doing. We can only speculate on other matters, but you could also imagine that third-party candidates wouldn’t have had the sway they did that year and more votes would have gone to Gore and Bush.

Ah, but if my aunt . . .

If there is truth in the statement, “You had to be there,” it was lost on me in the early 1980s. At least it was shown to me how witnessing something in person doesn’t necessarily create the most accurate picture.

In 1983 I returned from 16 months in Chile as a Mormon missionary and headed to Utah to go to college. During the late summer a group of former missionaries got together at a home in Salt Lake City to reminisce about our shared experiences, brag about our new lives and to watch a movie that had been released around the world, except in Chile, while we were away.

Last night I watched the movie, The Lives of Others, set in East Germany about a year after my friends and I were watching Missing. In The Lives of Others a member of the German Democratic Republic’s secret police spies on a playwright. The story is mostly about the spy’s transformation and I believe does tell me a lot about life in East Germany, though some critics say the movie does not go far enough to reveal just how oppressive East Germany’s Stasi was. No Stasi agent would have been trusted enough to dupe his bosses the way this one does. It’s a story, though fiction, that gives me a chance to relate to East Germany in a way I might not have even if I had visited the place myself. A woman I dated after college had a chance to visit the Soviet Union and the USSR and I asked about her experience. She said she could “feel oppression,” but it wasn’t what came to her discussion first. I got the sense that what she felt was based on her own fears, based in reality or not, of how her visit was being watched, not on any evidence she did, in fact, see firsthand.

One of the other main characters in the movie, ends up discovering how unaware he had been of what was happening around him. That was my experience after seeing Missing, months after I had come home. Only then could some of the conversations I had while I was in Chile gain some context.
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In February of 2008, the week Mitt Romney suspended his campaign and threw his support behind John McCain, the Arizona senator and would-be president came to Washington. I got to ride with other reporters in a van that took him from Boeing Field to a hotel in downtown Seattle. The other reporters did most of the talking. I held a video camera for a while and listened. I got one question in, a follow-up question.

Today I wrote about the event on my work blog, Kitsap Caucus. Go there to see my recollection of that day.

In the Deseret News publication Mormon Times, journalist Joel Campbell wrote commentators finding the Mormon Church’s support of California’s Proposition 8 “ironic” is itself ironic. I disagree. There is plenty of irony there.

The ballot measure, which passed Tuesday, defines marriage in California’s constitution as between a man and a woman. The irony some commentators see, as illustrated by Campbell, isn’t on target. The church no longer practices polygamy. And likening the persecution same-sex marriage supporters get now to what the LDS pioneers saw in the 19th century is at least a stretch in terms of degree. The church is backing a democratic ballot measure. It’s not legalizing the extermination of those who would marry someone of the same gender.

But by the definition of irony Campbell himself offers, the church‘s support does indeed demonstrate irony. Campbell wrote, “By definition, to have irony you need to have incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.”

On the most basic level, a church that once embraced a tweaked version of marriage, polygamy, now approving laws against another version, same-sex, could easily be seen as what’s expected being disconnected from what occurs.

Campbell responds to a Washington Post-Newsweek blogger who made that case by writing, “For us Mormons, the blogger could have just as well asserted that he found it ironic that Catholics support peace because Catholics once supported the Crusades.”

It’s a tempting argument, but the problem is that Catholics themselves argue among themselves about the rightness of the Crusades. Those wars have their defenders, too, but few today would argue for a similar campaign. They would think it wrong.

No one in the LDS church, no one who is intent on remaining in good standing in the church, is arguing for the reinstatement of polygamy, either. But I joined the church at age 11 and the adults talked openly about the possible return of the practice one day. Some still talk as if it might happen, as distasteful as that may sound. Our temple marriages reflect that belief in that a man can be sealed to more than one woman, but the same is not true of women being sealed to men.

The LDS church does not teach that polygamy is wrong, except that it violates the law. It was the vision of the destruction of the church entirely that was the large factor in the church’s decision to abandon the practice, not any recognition that the practice itself was unholy.

Among the church’s resources for journalists on the Internet is a publication of a Q&A from the Los Angeles Times and another primer on polygamy. From the
Q&A in the Times:

“Question: Is polygamy gone forever from the Church?
We only know what the Lord has revealed through His prophets, that plural marriage has been stopped in the Church. Anything else is speculative and unwarranted.”

From the primer:

“. . . the standard of the Lord’s people is monogamy unless the Lord reveals otherwise.”

So the church’s position is that monogamy, one man and one woman, is the rule unless God wants it otherwise. This is the sticky point. In the blog Campbell references, LDS Apostle Dallin H. Oaks acknowledges that if you don’t recognize revelation, communication from God dictating the activities of those in His church, then the irony is “profound.”

Further ironic is that the ballot measure not only affected gay marriages, which the church teaches is wrong, it constitutionally outlaws polygamy, which the church does not practice but also does not categorically condemn.

So what’s prohibiting the church from practicing marriage as it might see fit is now the California constitution, based on an amendment the church itself supported. That God would accept polygamy being illegal in order to prevent gay marriage from becoming legal is a point you could argue, but there is most certainly room to recognize the irony.

When I got into journalism and did a couple of D.C. internships, this year was pretty close to what I envisioned. I got to cover the presidential election this year. I also covered local politics, but I’ll be honest that local races weren’t really the dream all those years ago. It was the national stuff. In reality I envisioned being a reporter in D.C. and living in Virginia in some two-story house in the woods. We’ve got the house in the woods, more or less, but we’re in the other Washington. I couldn’t be happier about that now.

This past year I got to attend campaign events by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, all in 24 hours. Later I wrote stories about national issues focusing on locals. Then I went to the Joe Biden event.

I feel so lucky to have been able to do this. I don’t know if I did it well, but so many thanks I give for getting the chance. Should I get a chance to do it again in four years, I’ll do it better. But even if I don’t, I’ll have always had 2008. This isn’t written without the knowledge that for many people 2008 was a downer year, despite the election. My only answer would be that while others were riding high in the late 1990s, I was struggling. And this year was not a major biggie for me in terms of money.

No, this year was rich because I was lucky enough to spend my year studying and immersing myself in what I think is the most interesting thing in the world, American politics. Whatever my career offers in the future, I’ll always have this, and it will have made me better in what I do. I don’t want to be too much of a sock-sucker (the Chilean equivalent of “brown noser”), but my bosses deserve thanks for giving me this chance.

Four years ago, the day after the election this wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to be writing editorials by the next time an election came around. That didn’t happen. Again, I couldn’t be happier.

This could be dangerous for me. It’s probably way too soon to speculate like this, moments after watching the opening sketch on Saturday Night Live. I don’t know how John McCain will appear on the rest of the show, but that opening sketch seemed like it would have been far more appropriate, for lack of a better word right now, next Saturday.

The sketch had all the energy of an after-the-loss skit. When Sarah Palin was on her appearances had her come off as authoritative, someone with a shot. The skit tonight had the air of a post-election concession. McCain’s own part in the skit was probably fine. The 10 blank plates joke was funny. So was Sarah Palin talking about Palin 2012 and becoming a white Oprah, but it would have been better next week. Tonight, being in a skit with Palin angling for 2012, (Well, someone playing Palin.) it looked like an admission of defeat for McCain to be taking part. If it had been Darrell Hammond playing McCain, it wouldn’t have been as funny, but it still would have somewhat funny.

I’m certain McCain doesn’t see it that way. He’s having a good time, getting some air time and perhaps generating warmth from those watching. The skit will be replayed thousands of times between now and Wednesday. There is a benefit to taking your critics’ arguments and having fun with them yourself. But I also believe three’s an art to it. The skit tonight didn’t measure up to that. Instead, it left an impression of McCain as the loser.

If I would have been in his shoes, I would have done the show, but not that skit

I’m watching the skit about Keith Olbermann now. This one is good, nice tone by Affleck.

UPDATED at 12:20 a.m.: I did a little searching to see if anyone else was opining on the McCain appearance. I found the LA Times recap of the episode. I haven’t seen Weekend Update yet, and apparently he’s on that. From what I’ve read, it doesn’t sound like I would change my general thought.

UPDATED at 12:26 a.m.: OK, that wasn’t bad.

In a blog entry I wrote for work, I referenced a New York Times story about the presidential candidates’ health care plans. The basic point of the story was that we can’t trust that the numbers from either campaign will end up being true. Both are probably being rosy in their estimates and too critical of their opponents.

The key paragraph, though, was one I thought bears true to issues far beyond health care:

A number of economists said voters would be wise to simply tune out all of the competing numbers and focus instead on the philosophical underpinnings of the candidates’ plans. Indeed, Dr. Reinhardt offered voters the same instruction he delivers to his students, that economics as practiced in the political arena is often “just ideology marketed in the guise of science.”

After the election, at the other blog, I plan to offer a discussion about the topic of “wanting to believe.” It’s probably true that both candidates are making promises too bold about a lot of their plans. But plans, once implemented, can be tweaked. We can predict disaster and to some degree we’re in an economic one now. In reality, though, both plans might work, and both plans will certainly have unintended consequences. So you get to the core question of which one you would rather have be the one put in place, with the consequences being a secondary matter.

It explains why many of my friends send me anti-Obama stuff that is obviously false within the first few sentences, but only to those who either want to find the fallacy or at least don’t implicitly believe it because it came from a friend. The same is true for much of the anti-McCain stuff I have heard during the campaign, the worst of it from Republicans themselves. Or there’s the screed against journalism by Orson Scott Card, who repeats the standard bullet points of Republicans seeking a way to make Democrats alone guilty of the financial crisis. It doesn’t take long to discover that politicians generally played a role, politicians of both ranks. I haven’t studied the meltdown enough to speak authoritatively, but I’ve read enough to know that there’s a wide swath of accountability for this, including on my own shoulders for taking on as much debt as I did. But folks interested in winning aren’t interested in that.

What I want is for a large group of Americans to admit that they’re voting for their candidate not because the one guy is a Muslim or the other guy is crazy and old. I want voters to say I agree more with the one guy’s politics, and then admit it makes them more likely to believe the garbage about the other guy. Only then can someone who saw the Reagan years as golden not blanche when someone talks about how wrong the 1980s were. It will be then that a liberal can not take offense when a conservative considers Obama’s policies akin to socialism. Those beliefs are based on core philosophies.

Part of the reason I’m voting for the candidate I’m voting for is because I want to believe his policies will be better than the ones from the other guy. All the while I’m wanting to believe the other guy is at his core a good man and would be revolted to think he could harm this country. This wanting to believe of mine comes with the caveat that I recognize an illness in anyone who wants to be president, only because I’ve probably seen signs of illness in myself. Nonetheless, I think politicians are capable of overcoming their own egos, and in this election I have high hopes for both contenders.

This morning, Sunday, I made the drive from Bremerton to Tacoma, about a 40-minute ride, to take in what will probably be the last major visit by a presidential or vice-presidential candidate to this state. Barack Obama is likely to win this place. The real question, as it was four years ago, is the governor’s race. Joe Biden, who would be Obama’s veep, came to Tacoma today mostly to tout his and Obama’s candidacy. But there was a strong message in support of Chris Gregoire as well. I got to cover it for the paper. Here’s the story on Sunday’s Biden event. And here’s the story I wrote about our governor’s race.

What America’s facing economically is something we reporters have been facing for the past few years. There has been a real uncertainty in the ranks and major exits from bigtime reporters. Well, bigtime for this state. At least four of the biggest players in Olympia have taken PR jobs, two with private companies and two with the state. I don’t blame them. Sometimes I envy them. Today was not one of those times. For someone who loves politics, at least most of the time, today was like ice cream. So this year I got to see Hillary, Obama, McCain and Biden. I even got to participate in an interview with McCain. You know who would be so proud? My mother. I wish she would have lived long enough to see this. I have faith she is seeing it and that it matters to her. Probably not as much as those grandbabies, but still. I mean I got to ride the bus with McCain. No matter what happens the rest of my life, I’ll always have 2008.

Go to 20:55 to hear my part.

I’m joining in the hypermiling craze. Well, is it really a craze? Had you heard of it? It’s not a craze like, say, flashmobbing, which is another craze I want to be part of at least once.

What’s involved is doing all I can to use less gas in the car. Having once worked in a marketing capacity, I was trained in the art of testing. Specifically, you change one element at a time to see how that affects results.

So the first thing I needed to do was see how, driving normally, the car I drive would perform. On the first tank I came in at 18 miles per gallon. When I refilled, gas was $4.20 a gallon, so I ended up figuring out that it was costing me about 24 cents a mile to drive. That opens up a whole new way of looking at things for me, because now I’ve resorted to figuring out how much trips to different places cost me.

For example, going to work and back costs about $2.65. Going to the gym is about $2.15. Now, if I was taking the bus to both of those places, the fare would be $1.50 each way, I think. So driving is cheaper, but not when you consider that the only cost I’m figuring in this calculation is the gasoline. There are oil changes, tune-ups, air fresheners (boy howdy) and other costs. But when I think about riding the bus, I think about that $1.50. When I drive to work, I seldom think about the cost. I only see gas prices in terms of how much it costs when I fill up.

This has been a helpful thing, because it has influenced me a couple time to work from home, which also means I’m less tempted to eat out, saving more money. Plus I get to wear shorts at home. Heck, I could wear . . . I won’t burden you with those images. Too late, you say? Sorry. Anyway, it’s pretty cool. It probably costs me about $3 to go to church, so from now on I’m only going if I can figure it will be worth more than two double cheeseburgers.

The real thing I did was change the way I drive. I go the speed limit. I turn off the engine in drive-throughs. I time signals way ahead. The people behind me are not always happy with me, but I try not to be too annoying. I also think about which routes will be more efficient. The end result, which is in no way a scientific one because I can’t completely re-create the drives I took on the first tank, was an increase in mileage of 1.2 miles per gallon. Frankly, I was hoping for better. But upon reflection, it’s still a noteworthy difference. It means I saved about $5 on that tank of gas. Each round trip to work is about a quarter cheaper. Over a month that’s about another $5 savings.

The next step is the first one in the Obama playbook. Tomorrow morning I’m making sure my tires are inflated correctly. I’ll return and report.

While I think Hillary Clinton was until last night largely justified in staying in the race, I agree with George Will’s characterization of some of Hillary Clinton’s ongoing justification for staying in the race.

“We,” says Geoff Garin, a Clinton strategist who possesses the audacity of hopelessness required in that role, “don’t think this is just going to be about some numerical metric.” Mere numbers? Heaven forefend. That is how people speak when numerical metrics — numbers of popular votes and delegates — are inconvenient.

It’s over. As a local Democrat here said:

“The only thing they could hope for was that he would self-destruct,” (Dave) Peterson said, “and he just hasn’t done so.”

On Tuesday we thought it would be a good idea to talk to some Democrats and ask them their thoughts about the possibility that the Democratic campaign could stretch into June and even August. We stopped people on the street and got some comments. I finished the story Tuesday evening, but as the night wore on it was clear it wasn’t going to end the way we’d speculated everything. So I had to retool the story and the video, which you can see here.

Andrew Binion, one of my co-workers, wrote one of the best, funniest columns I’ve read about this political season. He says if we want to really know what we need to about the candidates, we need to make them mad.

We need to enrage the presidential candidates.

I don’t mean cast our ballots or caucus votes for third parties. I mean personally offend the candidates. Make them angry at you. Tell them that you have the same shoes at home and paid half what they paid. Ask them if they’ve seen an obscure 1970s science fiction movie, then look down your nose when they answer they never heard of it.

Twenty years ago or so I thought more about my old high school classmates and knew less about them than I do now. On Sunday I wrote an e-mail to a guy I kind of hung out with from time to time when I was a teenager. Had I not come across some information about him on the Internet, I’d have never considered it.

Twenty years ago had I been living in Washington it would have been a lot of work to find out about some of the congressional races in another state. Yesterday, however, remembering a name connected to a name in my past, I found out a former girlfriend’s husband is running for Congress. Not only that, some think he’s got a decent shot of unseating the Democratic incumbent. I don’t know him at all, but the woman he married was for a time one of my best friends.

I introduced her here as a former girlfriend, but in truth she was far more friend than girlfriend. We worked together at the college paper. Then a group of us went on D.C. internships at the same time. My roommate and sometimes friend had the hots for her. I tried to pretend I didn’t and told him to go ahead. I said that after I had tried to discourage him from it a few times. Finally I said “go ahead,” because I knew that’s what he wanted to hear, and at the time I didn’t think I was interested. Unfortunately, he only heard the encouragement without any of the nuance. Once we all got out to D.C. she and I talked and it was clear we felt more for each other than we’d let on. We decided to carry on in secret, but got busted holding hands in the TV room at the apartment complex we were living in. He didn’t take it well and I’m not sure I can blame him.

As for the romance, I would go in and out of interest in her, until a point where she’d given up on me, right when I decided I didn’t want to lose her. I spent much of the rest of the semester pursuing her. Things were hot and cold and I was my normal co-dependent self. While things were hot my roommate, Roger, pretended I didn’t exist. When things were cold he was as warm as any friend I’d ever had. The semester at the internship workplace was perfect. My life outside of there was awful. It came to a head St. Patrick’s Day weekend, when four of us went up to New York City.

It was three guys and her. She was the only one I could talk to. Roger wouldn’t acknowledge me at all and the other guy, Tom, was in an awkward situation. My sole comfort that weekend were the times I was alone with her. I’m pretty sure I remember talking to her about marriage while we walked around the city on Saturday night. She wasn’t interested, but I persisted. But Sunday was completely terrible. I decided it wasn’t worth all the stress to try to pursue her when she wasn’t sure she wanted me back and having my pursuit make it so there were moments I had no one to talk to. So after we got back to our apartment complex, I went to her place and told her I was giving up. Then I bawled.

He wasn’t afraid to squeeze her butt, but her mother wasn’t standing right there.

For about the next month we were nothing more than friends. It hurt, but Roger would speak to me again and I slowly got used to the idea of being no more than her friend. Then toward the end of our time there she came back to me. We had this agreement that when we said “good-bye” to each other I’d grab her butt and she’d grab mine, like Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine did in Terms of Endearment. I chickened out, though, because her mom came to pick her up and I couldn’t do that in front of her mother.

I went home to California and she returned to school for a final semester. I worked construction and she finished her last few classes. I had plans to drive to see her. One night I called and she was an absolute snot to me on the phone, one of the few times I ever experienced her being anything other than wonderful. A few minutes later she called me back and apologized, but told me not to come visit. It was over. That moment I said “good-bye” in Alexandria, Virginia was the last time I ever saw her. I think I called her later when the Lakers won the championship to rub it in. I was still angry and pretended it was good natured ribbing, but she saw through it. I think that was the last conversation for a while.

I didn’t take that long to recover. I dated a couple of women that summer and another one the fall semester. Months later when I was again able to recall how good a person she was I wrote her a letter. I don’t remember at all the contents. I probably wrote something about wanting to still be her friend or some such sentiment. She called me late one afternoon, waking me from sleep after pulling an all-nighter to finish a communications law project. From then on we’d talk once in a while. We started as friends, dabbled in something else and last I spoke with her we were still friends.

The first day my first semester back I was sitting in my communications law class and Roger walked in. We hadn’t left D.C. on good terms with each other, because at the time the woman who shall not be named was with me again. But when he walked in he acted as though there had never been any animosity between him and me. He came and sat next to me and was as chummy as ever. He lived in the apartment complex next to mine and we ended up knowing a lot of the same people. I dated a girl who was friends with many of the guys from Roger’s hometown. Roger told them that I had encouraged him to after a woman and then went after her myself. The girl I dated asked me about it, and I told her it was true, then explained the context. I’m not sure it mattered.

My last semester I went back to D.C. at the invitation of Roger’s former boss to do Roger’s old job. I didn’t do anything all that well until the last three weeks. I wanted to get work there, but didn’t make it happen. My parents moved to Utah while I was away and I ended up there for far more years than I ever intended. The girl who was my friend and briefly my girlfriend married a guy she worked with. Now it appears he plans to run for Congress.

Roger died a few years later.

I have friends who went through a kind of ritual with their roommates if a former girlfriend mistreated one of them. They’d refuse to say her name. I’m not saying her name here, but for a different reason.

This entry led with me telling how I’d sent an e-mail to someone I probably never would have worried about had I not come across his name and had an easy way to contact him. A simple Google search and suddenly you can fill in blanks about names you barely remember. I don’t think I said anything incriminating here, but I don’t want someone to Google the candidate’s name or that of his wife and find this story, not now anyway. I’ll only inflict attention on people who deserve it or welcome it. It seems silly that I remember so much from part of my life more than 22 years ago. It’s more silly that I’d Google her husband’s name, but the Internet often satisfies my curiosity in finding out how people are doing. I can’t imagine not caring.

MSNBC reported earlier this week that 144 journalists, since dropped to 143, contributed to political campaigns. Furthermore, they didn’t disclose their contributions to their readers. Many of the reporters are on the periphery (i.e. copy editors, lifestyle critics and writers) and can’t really be held to the same standards hard news reporters are. Opinion writers get a bigger pass from me. Also, you look at a list of thousands of reporters and you find a few more than a hundred, I think that shows the numbers are few. I noticed those pieces of context were missing when Michelle Malkin and Bill O’Reilly gloated over the report.

Still, reporters and editors shouldn’t be contributing to political campaigns. I know some reporters disagree with me, and there is some truth to the argument that we involve ourselves in churches and other organizations in our communities with little thought to losing our objectivity. I still draw a line at politics, and so does the Society of Professional Journalists.

Anna Quindlen’s first sentence in her latest Newsweek column mentions Ann Coulter, only in saying it is not a column about her.

This is not a column about Ann Coulter. Otherwise it would be irrelevant. When the conservative lounge act used an anti-gay slur to refer to John Edwards while speaking to a Republican gathering, she catapulted herself momentarily back into the public eye. That, of course, is what she was after. As Warren Beatty once said of Madonna, she doesn’t want to live off-camera, much less talk. If it takes a bit of desperate bigotry to make the cameras whir—well, desperate times demand desperate measures.

She continues by saying the blam-blam of public discourse has seen its day.

The national snarkfest is on its way out, and good riddance. Like doo-wop when the Beatles showed up, an era is grinding to a close. The landscape of American discourse has grown lousy with agents provocateurs whose careers are built around delivering verbal depth charges, not information. The form is now officially past its sell-by date.

My fear is that the only evidence Quindlen has is her own wish that it were so. I’m not convinced anything will be better in 2008. I hope she’s right, but I’m not making any bets.