Montana, the state that looks like Nixon

I always thought that on a map of the USA, the western boarder of Montana, the section that borders Idaho, looked a little like the profile of Richard Nixon.

“How amazing,” I thought when my 8th grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Kotkin pointed that fact out.

This was 1969, and the Viet Nam war was raging. I am sure Mr. Kotkin became a teacher just to avoid the draft. He never gave homework, which to a 14 year old in junior high school was just great. Kotkin was not much of a Nixon fan, and he probably had supported Eugene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy for president the year before.

Anyway, I can’t think of Montana, without thinking of Nixon. His beady eyes are right where Missoula is. The jowly cheeks, near Butte and Anaconda.

And, at least on the Democratic side of the primary aisle, the vast majority of the primaries are on the super-est Super Tuesday of them all ---February 5th. Thus far, 22 states and all 'Democrats abroad' will cast their votes on that one day. Those state legislatures were thinking far ahead back in 2005 or 2006, and made it a priority to move their Primary Election day to an early time.

That got me thinkin’-----which states---at least on the Dems side--- simply thought to themselves---“Screw it, let’s not have any impact on who the Dems pick for President. We're gonna stick to being last.”

That state is Montana. Yup, the The Treasure State. Big Sky Country. The Bonanza State. Their 27 delagates will be picked on the same day as South Dakota’s----Tuesday, June 3rd.

Their voters will have no impact at all. While we, here in the Garden State, will [finally!] be players in the Presidential primary game. Or at least, we hope so.

So, here’s to you Montana: Your name has been popularized by the number one teenage girl show on TV ---whose viewers probably could not locate the state on a map. Your western border still looks like Nixon to me.

And your voters will have little to no impact in the Presidential primary.
Go Big Sky Country.

Oh, and maybe someone can read it to him.

Ok, so up till now it seems like the Democrats in Congress have no will to actually leave Iraq. And, sad to say, some of the same people who voted to support the war, also supported the surge. Perhaps there is no good plan to leave Iraq, only a field of very bad choices. Well, you can’t say we didn’t tell you so. That’s why you don’t get in to wars like this.

But, alas, we did go in.

An old liberal Democratic warhorse has come up with an idea on how to actually leave Iraq. Remember Senator George McGovern? For those of you my age, that’s a stupid question.

For the rest of you, he was the guy who won Massachusetts and DC in the 1972 Presidential election, but came in second to Nixon. Yes, the election right before Watergate and Nixon’s resignation. Perhaps if he were the president back then…but I digress.

Senator McGovern has written a book with William R. Polk, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now. And it’s in paperback, too.

But don’t take my word for it. Here is what the folks at the Middle East Policy Council have to say about the book:

“The real importance of McGovern and Polk’s short book has been to offer an alternative framing of the choices facing America in Iraq from those found in either the careful calls for regional diplomacy and redeployment of the Baker-Hamilton Commission’s report or the president’s wildly unpopular and almost certainly doomed choice to instead “surge” tens of thousands of additional American troops into Iraq. The once heretical idea of a rapid American withdrawal has now moved to the center of American politics. Withdrawal gets ever-more support in public-opinion polls and has been endorsed by Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, while both houses of Congress passed a bill containing the (unenforceable) demand for a 2008 departure date. Detailed proposals for a withdrawal are popping up everywhere from The Nation (Juan Cole) to the Council on Foreign Relations (Steven Simon) to MIT’s Security Studies program (Barry Posen). Clearly, a sea change has taken place in American politics on the question of Iraq. Out of Iraq may one day be read as a key crystallization of this moment.”

Buy one and send it to President Bush for the coming holiday season.

Wesley Lance, a true gentleman and dedicated public servant.

New Jersey lost a true gentleman and dedicated public servant this week.

Wesley Lance served New Jersey for more than 70 years ---first as a representative from Hunterdon County to the New Jersey State Legislature, and most recently as the attorney for the Township of Lebanon. It was at a Lebanon Township committee meeting I had the first opportunity of meeting Mr. Lance.

In early 1995, I was giving a presentation for the First Night Flemington to the Lebanon Township Committee, and Mr. Lance served as their Township Attorney. I introduced myself as the newly elected Councilman from Flemington Borough, and he could not have been more courteous.

I served as the Hunterdon County Democratic Committee chairman from 1996 to 2000. During that time I had the privilege of developing an acquaintanceship with Wesley Lance, the father of Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance. The younger Lance would be the first one to tell you that it was not too long ago that he would be introduced as the son of the father, rather than the other way around.

While I was Chairman, Mr. Lance would sometimes call me out of the blue to discuss some local or statewide issue. The issue I remember most vividly was his telling of the story of the 1968 meeting of the Electoral College, where Richard Nixon was chosen as president over Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.

Mr. Lance told me that he served as the president of the Electoral College that year, and that he was not a big fan of that method of choosing the president. His articulation of that point of view proved prophetic 32 years later in the 2000 Bush-Gore debacle.

He was a very bright and respectful man, who generously shared stories with me about the early days of Hunterdon County. He told me bits and pieces of many stories: How he was chosen by the Republican Party to run for the Legislature; How the Republican Party used to have picnics on the property that is now St. Magdalene’s Church in Flemington; How the 1947 New Jersey State Constitution changed the power of the governor in the state.

His thoughtful consideration of issues, as well as his good-natured articulation of the stories behind the people of Hunterdon showed a unique combination of intelligence and humor.

His like is rare in politics today. We are better off in New Jersey for his having been a public servant.

My condolences go out to Senator Leonard Lance, his wife Heidi, and to James Lance, and the rest of the Lance family.

Ending the war: Not complicated at all.

In E.J. Dionne's column today in the Star-Ledger, he advises left-wing Democrats [as if they are the ONLY ones to oppose this war and find problems with the President's failed war policies] to follow Barry Goldwater's advice from the 1960 Republican Convention and just "Grow up". Senator Goldwater back then was attempting to beat back “a rebellion against Richard M. Nixon, whom conservatives saw as selling out to liberals on various platform planks.” How much wiser the Republicans were in 1960, then in 2007. Had they only beat back Richard Nixon, he may have gone into historical oblivion much sooner.

Dionne says “The Democratic Party's progressive wing, furious at what it sees as the capitulation of its congressional leaders to President Bush on the Iraq war, should remember this history. The decision to drop withdrawal timelines from the Iraq supplemental appropriations bill is not a decisive defeat.” While not a ‘defeat’, it still sets back months and months the objective the Democrats were elected to do, which is end this war. The president certainly has no desire or plan to do that.

Dionne is suggesting that somehow progressive Democrats should learn a lesson from Goldwater, the doyen of the conservative movement, and simply “grow up.” They should not look at the House Democrats giving up on meaningful timetables and benchmarks as a major defeat. I must vehemently disagree. This is a problem of major proportions.

The Democrats in the House folded their tent went home. Not all Democrats. Speaker Pelosi and others did have the courage of their convictions and voted their conscience and did the right thing. All the Democratic NJ Members of Congress did the same, with the exception of Rep. Rob Andrews. The reasons given by Rep. Andrews were filled with political platitudes like “We do not have a veto-proof majority for that proposition.” or “There are two ways to end our involvement in Iraq's civil war. The first is to elect a new President who will accomplish this goal.” Both reasons, I fear, are not of any importance to the families waiting for their loved ones to return. Nor to the 200-300 more families who may suffer a devastating loss this summer, should the war continue.

But the rest of the Democrats let down the American people who overwhelmingly wish to see an end to America involvement in this war, period. The headline of Dionne’s editorial is “See you in September”. Unfortunately, there may very well be several hundred more soldiers dying during the summer in this horrible mistake of a war----those who will not make it to see their families in September. So, while many of us will be at the Jersey Shore, at community pools, and on vacation sometime this summer ----Congress now must wait an additional four months to September in order to deal with the next funding bill for the Iraqi war.

Dionne goes on to say that “Democrats, in short, have enough power to complicate the president's life, but not enough to impose their will.” This unfortunately, is very true.

However, I think that it is well worth making the president’s life more and more “complicated”, as long as more and more American lives are lost in Iraq.

That is, not “complicated”, at all.