A Nation of Weasels

Years ago, JFK wrote Profiles in Courage, a book about those who took the right stand at great personal sacrifice to themselves. Today, our profile in courage is New York senator, Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for  months before concluding he had been wrong. “I apologize for those who feel  offended,” Mr. Grisanti, a Catholic who opposes same sex marriage on religious
grounds, nonetheless said, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a  worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is, the same rights that I have with my wife.”

It was a marvelous moment, one that has been sadly lacking in elected officials of both parties in stations from local to national to, to be fair,  international. If JFK were alive and wrote “Profiles: Part II,” it would be flash fiction. Some people are born weasels, and they do what weasels always do,  and that’s not too disappointing as we expected it. But there are others who  have been hugely disappointing and deserve to be called into account.

President  Obama
I make no secret that I am a progressive, but back in high school  and college, I was a libertarian Republican, snipping at LBJ for nothing that had anything to do with the Vietnam war, Republicans being notoriously pro-war  even then. I had a summer internship with Human Events Magazine and, as part of it, went to a White House press conference.

Press secretary George Christian made mention that LBJ was particularly keen to see passage of the “Rat Bill” – a bill which would provide federal funds to  eradicate rats in major cities – within a week. “The what bill?” one of the reporters yelled.

“The Rat Bill,” Christian replied.

“He means the little bitty mouse bill,” a southern reporter  drawled.

Christian stood a bit straighter and, in an angry tone, began  citing statistics concerning rat bites in New York, Boston, Chicago, etc.,  adding that this bill would be passed. The following day, the bill was  mentioned in short stories on front pages of major cities, with follow-up  features on the extent of the problems locally. The bill passed and, as I  recall, LBJ did not have to directly address it.

LBJ understood power and, reviled though he may have been for his stand on an earlier unwinnable war, his understanding of power created many of  the social programs we take for granted today.

Obama has no clue, indeed, he is so clueless that he is working with weasels that one wonders if  picking Sarah Palin to be an old man’s heartbeat from the presidency was the GOP way of throwing the election and having an unseasoned Democrat take the helm and try to solve the national emergency. If so, they were brilliant  weasels, willing to sacrifice the well being of the country for the sake of  holding power in the Beltway.

So what does the hope-master have to do?

First, stop telling congress to play nice. They are weasels and they love to nip at what smells like the blood of a wounded animal. Start using your  contacts to make policy and take the high road. When you do speak to the nation,
give them a plan of action, and let them know you are sticking to it.

Second, use  power covertly. This is something you seem to have no inclination to do, possibly because you have so few chips to bargain with. But on the occasion when you work covertly, more gets done. Defense of Marriage Act is no longer being defended  in court, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is a policy of the past, drug enforcement is stopping at state borders instead of busting medical marijuana suppliers, the  government is now targeting illegal aliens who commit crimes. It’s a step in
the right direction.

Third, when  you do speak, show some passion.
Those of us out here in recession  land are struggling, we are angry and we want our leader to stop being so damn cool and start showing his anger, too. When billionaire Warren Buffet seems more irate about no tax hikes on the rich  than a supposedly progressive president,  something is very wrong.

Fourth, try  a new jobs initiative that does not require those irritating yellow highway cones.
Want the red states to love you and create jobs at the same time? Create a Pickens Plan for water, a public works project that lays pumps and pipelines to  pull floodwaters from the Mississippi and other rivers when they swell to  dangerous heights and use the pipelines to fill reservoirs in drought-ravaged states like Texas and Arizona. It’s cheaper than desalinization and if the
pipelines leak, what’s a bit of water before the pumps get turned off? Anyone who doesn’t think this is important has ignored the number of Texas ranchers selling off their herds because they have no water for their cattle, or their feed crops (wait until the food prices start rising next year). If this seems  unreasonable, realize that the Trans-Alaska pipeline is 800 feet and that was  run over tundra under horrible conditions. And get some experts to repair the  plug that has been pulled on the Great Lakes before they become the Great  Puddles.

Fifth, keep your mouth shut, but ask others to start talking about climate change as if we  can still do something about it.
500-year back-to-back floods, 100-year  hurricanes, deadly heat waves that last for weeks, massive dust storms, mudslides in California, coastal areas so salty due to drought that the shrimp and clams are dying is pretty persuasive evidence that something is amiss on  our planet and it’s high time we did something about it – if we still can. And  if we can’t, we need to start planning on how we will face the world post-warming.

Next blog:  The biggest weasels look to a future in the Oval Office. What they need to do to actually get elected

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