Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

I would like to know the context for Alford's remark, and what he follows it with, but I don't want to pay to read it.

This brings to mind a fictional conversation that stuck with me as Vicki and I were reading our way through all of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels over the summer.  (I've got one to go and Vicki wants to know if she can cast a write-in vote for that Jack Ryan.)

"That leaves twenty percent of the people who swing back one way or another.  Maybe they're the true independents, like you.  That twenty percent controls the destiny of the country and ... here's the funny part.  Those twenty percent don't especially care what you think. ...

"That twenty percent wants to believe that you really do believe in what you say. ... They will respect you and support you even though in some cases they disagree with you.  Why?  Because they will know that you are a man of your word.  And they want the occupant of this office to be a man of character and integrity.  Because if things go to shit, you can depend on somebody like that to at least try to do the right thing."

-- Chief of Staff Arnie van Damm to President Jack Ryan, pp. 470-471 in Tom Clancy's 1996 novel Executive Orders.

This showed up in a direct way in my civic life. When I lived in Rochester, New York, my congressional representative was Republican Frank Horton.  At one point, Congressman Horton was stopped and arrested for DWI (or DUI, I forget how it goes in New York State now).  What he did about it was plead guilty and request no special treatment.  He served his time in jail.  He didn't attract so much attention as other Congressmen from this area, but he often ran essentially unopposed and I found some pride in having him working for me as one of his constituents.  Sometime during the Reagan-Bush era, Horton chose to retire from the Congress.  Frank basically gave his nod to a local legislator that he admired, Louise Slaughter, now the Democratic Representative from the 28th New York Congressional District.  There was something very respectworthy about all of that, and I was pleased to cast my vote for Louise as well.

I just noticed the difference in labeling between "independent" and "undecided."  Even though I know what I am looking for and also what I am unwilling to support, I'm not really officially "decided" until I make the mark on the electronically-scanned paper ballots we have here.  So what?

Nice article, David. It notes:

An interesting -- and depressing -- note is how many have been influenced by the scurrilous GOP attacks on Kerry's wartime service. One lady, a lifelong Democrat, said she couldn't vote for Kerry because Teresa wasn't ladylike enough.

One of the things that I learned about politics at the Camp Wellstone training session I attended (and blogged, of course) was that "the purpose of negative campaigning is to suppress turnout".

Unfortunately, it works.

Orcmid, you can read Salon articles either by paying or by viewing an ad. (I subscribe because I get way more than $30's worth of ideas per year from Salon.)

Thanks David.  I finally caught that and then got stuck having to enable cookies as part of getting through the ad, so I gave up again.  I get so many ideas from you I have no idea what the Salon overload would be.  Probably an escape from my studies and I have enough of those [;<).

PS: Julie Leung put up a great comment on her blog: http://www.julieleung.com/archives/001384.html
I think she and I are both trackback-challenged.