My story on U.S. Senate candidate Bob Keenan will be in Thursday's Outpost. The paper's not up yet, so there's no link, but you can find it easily enough tomorrow if you care.
It's a fairly perfunctory effort -- give me a break; I started it at 5 a.m. today. But what most struck me about Keenan was how much I liked him. And how little I really wanted to vote for him.
Actually, I usually like politicians. The public perception is that they are all lying scum, but that's not been my experience (or I am embarassingly old to be so naive). Taking a public stand on a controversial issue requires more courage than most people have, and I appreciate people who are willing to do it. And good politicians have mastered the skill of being liked, something I have never managed. I just don't know why you lousy sons of bitches don't think I'm lovable.
Curiously, the short list of politicians I haven't liked includes both of Montana's U.S. senators. I've never bought Burns' good-ol-boy shtick, and Max Baucus seems incurably opportunistic. I would trade them both for Denny Rehberg, whom I like even when I think he's dead wrong.
But as much as I liked Keenan, and most of the rest of the candidates, I can't get excited about any of them. Keenan's too far to the right. Paul Richards is too far to the left. Bob Kelleher is amusing, but I couldn't listen to him for six years. Jon Tester strikes me as a decent guy, but he seemed way out of his depth on Yellowstone Public Radio's call-in show last week. John Morrison is a sharp cookie, but he sounds too scripted. I could see voting for him, but I can't see getting excited about voting for him. A couple of the candidates I don't know at all, and probably never will.
I would be disinclined to vote for Conrad Burns, even if I liked him better than I do. Guys like me who oppose term limits but who favor some churn in the congressional delegation have an obligation to vote against incumbents just because. And it's really time for Conrad to go.
So who gets my vote? Maybe Richards, just because he's the only candidate who seems to hate the Iraq War as much as I do. At least a vote for him might be read as a protest against the war, without much risk that he could actually get elected.
It's an unhappy impasse. I envy, to a degree, guys like Matt Singer and Eric Coobs, who seem to have no trouble picking their candidate and sticking with him. Spending all these years trying to write objective stories may not have made me objective, but it sure has made it hard to make a decision.
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10 comments:
David, if you want to write about a politician, why don't you look down the road to Helena or, would you believe in the national press?!?
Wonderful, Governor BS makes a publicity grabbing, show my face in the national media, I want to be Vice President or Director of Interior for President Hillary, trip to Iraq.
Meanwhile back in Montana...
(All of these issues have been reported in the Gazette or Great Falls Tribune) A company does not come to Great Falls Montana with 100 thirty thousand per year and up jobs because Governor BS's office is too lazy to return phone calls or letters. The coal gassification company from South Africa BS has been touting just announced thier plans to build the multi-million dollar facility in Wyoming. The State released a press statement last Thursday announcing that unemployment is on the rise for the first time in five years. And yet all Governor BS cares about is putting his mug in front of the national media.
How about writing an article about how the Governor is still thumbing his nose at Montana law by keeping his brother on staff in his office? How about writing an article about how this same brother strong arms and intimidates private entities to make sure they do things his way, and does so on the Governor's letterhead.
We the people of Montana definitely got what we deserved when we voted in this back door dealing snake oil salesman and his strong arming brother.
I am a democrat and I cant stand Maxie.
I think you're right that most politicians are honest. But to get elected they've got to assemble voting blocs, and to do that they've got to convince each bloc that they stand by them on their issues. Often blocs stand in opposition to one another, as with fundamentalist Christians and progressive Republicans. To keep the party as a whole intact, the politicain has to lie. So over beers an honest politician might tell you that he lies, and that lying is an honorable part of the profession. Machiavelli lives.
Matt: I'm not sure about Tester being out of his depth, but my wife listened to the YPR interview and she said Tester fell flat on his face when a caller asked him about his donations from the Carlyle Group. He said he knew nothing about the group and didn't know what money he'd received from it. Challenged on that, he asked the caller if she was calling him a liar, and apparently never did give an adequate answer. Or so my wife tells me. I've been meaning to listen to it. But I do know my wife was heavily unimpressed by Tester's performance.
And "Cost me my employment": You've been leaving the same post all over the Web. I smell something fishy.
David, it's easy to like Senator Burns. If it comes down to a coin toss, you, personally could vote for Senator Burns because he brings much needed federal dollars to Montana.
Ever hear of trickle-down economics?
Senator Burns & Max Baucus get a Montana Highway project passed.
Part of the job is highway striping, which means some of the money comes in the door here at UR. Having the revenue here certainly helps pay for advertising, some of which comes into your pocket, and I hope some of it ends up in your pocket after all the bills are paid!
"Cost me my employment"
Welcome Greg!
Matt,
Here are two specific examples (one already cited in the comments) that aren't huge in themselves but that seem to me illustrative of the problem.
1. I've said before, I think on your blog, that it doesn't bother me that Tester didn't know who the Carlyle Group was. It did bother that he seemed almost instantly willing to return the Carlyle Group's donation to his campaign based on one caller's complaint. He really mishandled the question.
2. When he was asked about the "marriage amendment," he hemmed and hawed a bit, to my mind, before finally answering that he didn't much like amending the Constitution.
I thought he should have knocked that question out of the park. He's not going to get votes from the people who make the amendment a top priority anyhow, so he might as well offer something to the rest of us. He could have said that people have a right to make their own decisions about marriage, which would have pleased liberals; he could have said that Congress should stay out of matters best left to the states, which would have pleased conservatives; and he could have said that the whole thing is none of the government's business anyhow, which would have pleased libertarians.
But what he actually said didn't please anybody, and it didn't persuade anybody who disagreed with him.
Bad self-assessment, David. I think you're very likable even when you're wrong (which in my judgment is fairly often).
Dave, That's odd. I don't recall ever being wrong. Are you sure you don't have me confused with someone else?
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