On Thursday this week, if leaked reports are to be believed, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will speak at the Bush Library to explain his religion to the public.

The occasion is being compared to John Kennedy’s 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association that helped defuse anti-Catholic sentiment in that campaign. (To read the JFK speech, go to www.beliefnet.com/story/40/story_4080_1.html).

There has been an ongoing debate in the campaign about whether Romney’s membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a legitimate issue. In Nevada, whose caucuses are likely to be the third or fourth event of the 2008 presidential campaign, Mormons make up 9 percent of the population—a higher figure than any state except Idaho and Utah.

Most recently, Romney faced an essay written by a Las Vegas man who is planning to run against U.S. Sen. Harry Reid. Mansoor Ijaz, founder and chair of Crescent Investment Management, published an essay in the Christian Science Monitor about an encounter he says he had in Las Vegas with Romney.

“I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that ‘jihadism’ is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today,” Ijaz wrote.

Romney’s reply, according to Ijaz, was that “based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.”

From this exchange, Ijaz concluded that “Romney, whose Mormon faith has become the subject of heated debate in Republican caucuses, wants America to be blind to his religious beliefs and judge him on merit instead. Yet he seems to accept excluding Muslims because of their religion, claiming they're too much of a minority for a post in high-level policymaking.” (Ijaz’s essay is posted at www.csmonitor.com/2007/1127/p09s01-coop.html)

Ijaz has a long history of contributing to Democratic candidates. He gave Al Gore more than a half million dollars and has also donated funds to both Clintons, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee. But he also writes for William F. Buckley’s conservative National Review magazine and has contributed to Romney’s campaign. He told Las Vegas columnist John Smith that he’s an independent.

That similar speeches had to be delivered a half century apart by John Kennedy and Mitt Romney, both to neutralize religious prejudice, might suggest that we have not progressed very far. In fact, things got better for a time after JFK’s election. When Romney’s father, George Romney, ran for president in 1968, his LDS faith was not an issue, in part because atypical faiths were all the rage in the GOP race that year. (David Broder and Stephen Hess wrote, “Whatever it may prove, the odd fact is that the Republican party, trying to get back into the ‘mainstream’ of American political life, has presidential contenders in 1968 of anything-but-ordinary religious background. Romney, a Mormon; Richard M. Nixon, a Quaker; and Senator Charles H. Percy, a Christian Scientists, all belong to religious groups that are relatively small in numbers and unusual in doctrine.”)

But since evangelicals became an important part of the political process during the Reagan years, scrutinizing candidates’ faiths has become a disagreeable part of the process. While Kennedy’s 1960s address was devoted principally to satisfying citizens that they need not fear his breaching the separation of church and state, Mitt Romney faces a more delicate task of satisfying evangelicals about doctrinal differences between his Christian church and their Christian churches.

When we decide that Mitt Romney’s faith is our business, we are crossing a line. It also says a lot more about us than about the candidate.

Pahrump Valley Times
December 5 2007

Last week’s debate in Las Vegas among the Democratic presidential candidates ended on a particularly low note:

Cable News Network host Wolf Blitzer: “Maria, would you stand, please? Give us your full name.”

Maria Parra Sandoval: “Maria Parra Sandoval, and I'm a UNLV student. And my question is for Senator Clinton. This is a fun question for you. Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?”
Hillary Clinton: “Now, I know I'm sometimes accused of not being able to make a
choice. I want both.”

CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux: “Do we get to ask any of the other candidates or I supposed just Senator Clinton?”
      Joseph Biden: “I'm for diamonds. Diamonds.”
      Sandoval: “It's the only thing -- it's the only thing shiny up there.”
      Malveaux: “OK. Thank you so much.”
      Blitzer: “All right. So on that note, diamonds and pearls, I want to thank
all of the Democratic presidential candidates for joining us here this evening”.

After the program ended, Sandoval found herself the target of harsh criticism over the frivolous exchange. As so often happens in these kinds of public controversies, it was not that simple. Sandoval had a hand in the writing of the question, but CNN had a larger role. She responded on her MySpace site (www.myspace.com/maria_luisa_rocks) that the network required her to ask the question as a condition of getting to ask a question at all. She wrote:

“Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN. I was asked to submit questions including ‘lighthearted/fun’ questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago… For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance.”

It was not to be, she wrote: “CNN ran out of time and used me to ‘close’ the debate with the pearls/diamonds question.”

CNN more or less confirmed Sandoval’s account to newsman Greg Sargent.

First of all, Sandoval is new to public life and not particularly savvy in public controversies (she posted her supposedly public explanation on a page she has ‘set to private’), so it’s fair to cut her some slack.

As Sargent wrote, “[I]t's obvious that the girl was hardly ‘forced’ to ask this; rather, she was offered the opportunity and took it. The network wanted to close on a light question, and they chose this one. On the other hand, the network is confirming that it did in fact choose a question that quizzed the first credible female Presidential candidate on her taste in jewelry. That's confessing to some pretty questionable taste.”

What is getting too little attention is the not the network’s taste but its judgment. Why is a supposed news network screening questions in the first place? Questions that are held out as representing the public should be genuinely so. When I was in television news, it was a license violation to stage news to look like it was a live shot when it was actually taped. This is in the same dubious ethical territory. In this case, CNN had a responsibility to inform the public that it was orchestrating questions and failed to do so.

In addition, the network controlling questions in order to control the ebb and flow of the tone of the program – serious at some points, light at others – has no place on a “news” network.

Then, too, one has to wonder about the news judgment of whoever was acting on the network’s behalf. Follow-up questions serve an important function in informing the public. CNN’s executive producer of the debate, Sam Feist, told the New York Times that the candidates had already spent ten minutes on Yucca Mountain. That’s true, but those candidates did a fuzzy job of answering. Feist should be in another line of work if that’s typical of his news judgment. Sandoval, not Feist, was acting in the interest of news by wanting to raise Yucca again.

Pahrump Valley Times
November 21 2007

            Last week Hillary Clinton’s campaign distributed a two-page news release that was 627 words long (and was principally an attack on Barack Obama).

            Paragraphs one and two were a sum-up of what was to follow. Paragraphs three, four, and five were devoted to describing Clinton’s current dominant position in opinion surveys (“Recent polls in the early states of New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina show her with consistent, wide leads while the latest data in Iowa shows that her support is growing”). Paragraph six described her successful fund raising.

            Not until paragraph seven, after 255 of the 627 words had been expended, did Clinton mention any issues, and then it was in the vaguest terms – her “message of experience and change … her well received healthcare plan.”

            I got out my file of Clinton’s Nevada news releases since she entered the race. Nearly all of them deal with tactics, particularly endorsements. From the Pahrump town board chair to the Nevada Senate Democratic floor leader, from Nevada Local 13 of Bricklayers and Craftworkers to Nevada tribal leader Arlan Melendez, the Clinton campaign has covered the state with news of endorsements, momentum, and fund raising. It is very reminiscent of the 1972 campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie, who also ran an endorsement campaign, and the 1980 campaign of Republican presidential candidate George Bush the Elder, who ran a momentum campaign.

            Muskie ended up losing the nomination to George McGovern, whose supporters were more dedicated and determined. Bush lost the Republican nomination to Ronald Reagan, who stood for something more than momentum.

            Many of the candidates in the Democratic race this year stand for things and, among party loyalists (which is what caucuses like Nevada’s tend to attract), their records are well known: Joe Biden as a leader of the war on drugs and as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bill Richardson as a proponent of greater mediation in foreign affairs, John Edwards as a critic of policies that trap people in poverty, and so on.

            Clinton, on the other hand, is not really known for issue stances, with one exception. Her term in the senate has been undistinguished (no major legislation enacted) and cutting ribbons as first lady isn’t really the kind of experience that qualifies anyone for the presidency. The one exception, the only major issue associated with her, is her ill-fated 1993 health care plan, which is a negative credential. It is the only place where she has spelled out her 2008 plan, and she did it principally for strategic reasons, to try to neutralize a negative.

            With such a minor record, she has little choice but to run on inevitability, as Muskie and Bush tried to do. As long as the public is not focused on the campaign and as long as opinion surveys continue to reflect mainly name recognition, that will work. But the Muskie and Bush precedents can illuminate whether Clinton can beat their jinx.

            In Muskie’s case, he faced an opposition supporting McGovern that was among the most passionate campaigns ever run. If the Obama and Richardson campaigns in Nevada are any indication of their motivation nationally, their workers are much more zealous than the Clinton people, who tend to be technocratic or bewitched by frontrunner status.  But while their supporters are ardent, it is nowhere near the level of fervor the McGovern people had, just as opposition to the Iraq war has never approached the level of intensity there was against the Vietnam war.

            Bush the Elder in 1980 ran a campaign arguing that he was ahead in the polls, so he should win the nomination, because he was ahead in the polls. Among dedicated party workers who are in politics to promote issues, this didn’t cut much ice. As reporter Jeff Greenfield later wrote, “Instead of building a base of supporters that was drawn to Bush out of a sense of what he might DO as president, Bush had built…a following based on the idea that he could BECOME president. With his first bad stumble, the politics of momentum became Bush’s millstone.”

            Here, there is less comfort for Clinton in history. Because of her aversion to spelling out her positions, no one really knows what Clinton will do as president, which may account for her attacking Obama when he DOES talk issues. Her success will probably depend on avoiding mistakes and running a perfect campaign.

Pahrump Valley Times
October 17 2007

Last week a story appeared in newspapers that probably seemed to most readers to be the ultimate inside-baseball kind of story that politics produces. South Carolina's Republican Party announced it would hold its presidential primary on Jan. 19, 2008, an earlier-than-planned date.
Setting aside the issue of why South Carolina allows its political parties to decide the date of state elections, the decision was the talk of political circles. It portends a speeded-up primary and caucus process next year that could end up producing the Democratic and Republican nominees for president so early that the issues of the campaign are not yet known.
Some background is in order here: In 1968 the process of selecting delegates to the Democratic National Convention was begun so early (Michigan started the ball rolling in 1966!) that it was one of the reasons the system was so unresponsive to the potent issues, notably Vietnam, that emerged in that important year.
The Democratic Party ended up adopting a rule for future delegate selection that forbade starting the process before the calendar year of a presidential election. In 1982 the party went further and created a 13-week primary schedule putting all primaries and caucuses between the second Tuesday in March and the second Tuesday in June. There were two permanent exceptions - two small states, Iowa and New Hampshire, were permitted to hold their traditional first in the nation caucuses (Iowa) and primary (New Hampshire). The Republican Party later developed a similar schedule.
Then last year the Democratic Party approved changes that breached this sensible schedule and allowed Nevada to hold caucuses on Jan. 19 (after Iowa on Jan. 14 and before the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 22) and South Carolina to hold a primary on Jan. 29.
January thus became more frontloaded and events were set to run in this order: Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Democratic Party leaders assumed that New Hampshire secretary of state Bill Gardner would sit still for these changes. They apparently didn't get such an assurance from him. Gardner is required by state law to set the date of his state's primary at least a week before any other "similar election." Whether that language means primaries or also caucuses is within Gardner's discretion.
New Hampshire's tradition as first in the nation goes back to 1920. Iowa's goes back only to 1972. New Hampshire tolerated one caucus state in front of it, but it's unlikely it will tolerate two, demoting New Hampshire to third place. Soon after Nevada's elevation it was being widely reported that Gardner would move the primary not just ahead of Nevada but also ahead of Iowa. (The South Carolina GOP's decision will already force Gardner to move the date to Jan. 12, ahead of Iowa.)
Then state legislatures started meeting this year. The decision to move Nevada so far forward turned out to be a blunder of monumental proportions. State after state decided that if the longstanding agreement to hold all contests off until later in the year could be broken by party leaders on Nevada's behalf, all wraps were off. State after state moved its primary date to February 5 (the first date on which other states were allowed to hold events under Democratic Party rules). Soon half the states were holding a quasi-national primary on that date, a superprimary so big and expensive that it made the race for president all about money and may well make it impossible for second-tier candidates to compete.
Then Florida went even further. It leaped over February 5 and scheduled its primary for Jan. 29. Florida is a big population state, and its change made it even more difficult for non-frontrunners, frontloading the process by an order of magnitude.
Now it appears more likely that New Hampshire and possibly Iowa will push their events into 2007. A few states, like Washington, have responsibly resisted jumping on the bandwagon of early events. But most gave no thought to national implications, instead treating delegate selection contests like a form of economic development. A cascade of criticism has hit the Democratic Party for triggering this fiasco.
Democratic Party leaders may never live down the blunder of violating its prohibition on January contests by foolishly putting Nevada's caucuses into that month.

Pahrump Valley Times
August 15 2007

At the forum for Democratic presidential candidates in Carson City a few days ago, as the candidates finished the on-stage interviews with moderator George Stephanopoulos, most of them stepped into a different part of the building for a “media availability” – a press conference with waiting reporters.

As former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel was leaving his session with reporters, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich was just entering. He stopped Gravel and offered his hand and his praise for Gravel’s “standing up to end that rotten war.”

It was a moment that went unseen by the reporters and probably would have meant little to most of them, anyway. But there was a poignancy and power to it. There they were – once fiery young leaders who now were in the winters of their careers, the least known of the Democratic presidential candidates making probably futile races for the presidency.

Dennis Kucinich once made a battle against corporate power that shook the state of Ohio and captured the nation’s attention, a reminder of the kind of economic populism that defined the Democratic Party before it became bewitched by money and power. He was mayor of Cleveland when the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (CIE) and the city’s banks combined their formidable economic muscle to try to force the city to sell its publicly owned power company.

The city council supported the corporations, but Kucinich battled them week after week, month after month. By the time the corporations were finished they put Kucinch through a recall election, forced the city into default, and used tactics that damaged the municipal power utility – but the city’s voters backed Kucinich’s ballot measures on keeping public power. The mayor was competitive in his reelection fight until his opponent’s daughter was run down by a van and killed, submerging issues under a wave of sympathy.

In the years that followed, information emerged on the predatory conduct of CIE and the banks and Kucinch’s reputation, which had suffered severely because of the turbulence of his mayoralty, was rehabilitated. He was elected to the Ohio Senate and then to the U.S. House. The Cleveland city council in 1998 honored his “courage and foresight.”

Mike Gravel was a former state legislator and Alaska House speaker when he made was seemed like a quixotic race against a man who was an Alaska institution, U.S. Sen. Ernest Gruening, who had been territorial governor before becoming senator upon statehood in 1959. Gruening was also one of only two members of Congress who voted against authorizing war in Vietnam. Gravel shocked many by defeating Gruening and surprised them again by becoming just as outspoken a dove.

Gravel advocated economic populism, including restoration of the progressive nature of the federal income tax that had been undercut by decades of loopholes. He also battled the messianic view that the U.S. needs to guide the world’s ways, often enforced by weapons of war or covert actions. He mounted a months-long filibuster that helped end the draft.

In 1971 newspapers were printing sections of the massive top secret Pentagon study that revealed how U.S. officials manipulated and misled the nation into war in Vietnam. One of the largest leaked collections of the Pentagon papers were in Gravel’s hands. He did what even better known antiwar leaders like George McGovern would not do. He gave the papers to the public. Convening a late night meeting of his subcommittee on buildings and grounds, he read some of the more disturbing documents, becoming tearful at the misdeeds they revealed, and entered thousands of pages into the record, then distributed them to anyone who wanted them. They composed the largest available set of the Papers outside top secret archives and were later published in four volumes by Beacon Press under the title “The Pentagon Papers/Senator Gravel Edition” over the objections of the Nixon administration. A set rests on my bookshelves.

Gravel was defeated for a third term after Jerry Falwell, then at the peak of his power, intervened in a primary against him.

The man once known as Dennis the Menace is 60 now, Gravel is 76. They will likely both lose their presidential races. But if they will not make history in the presidency, that does not change the fact that they have already made a lot of history by showing the character and nerve we seldom see anymore in our presidential candidates.

Pahrump Valley Times
March 7 2007

 If the Democratic National Committee approves a recommendation that Nevada be thrown into the early rush of presidential primaries and caucuses, the state will have an enhanced role in picking the next president compared to its previous role, which was none. How could anyone argue with that?

There's another problem with the idea. By jumping at the early caucuses idea, Nevada is undercutting a proposed western states "Super Tuesday" in which many caucuses and primaries in the west would be held the same day - February 5, 2008. So far Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico have signed on, but in all likelihood the race will be over by then. The 2007 Nevada Legislature would have had an opportunity to move the state's events to that date, but it may be preempted by the national party decisions

Pahrump Valley Times
August 9 2006