Montana Headlines

John O'Sullivan on Gov. Palin vs. Mrs. Thatcher

2008-12-23T12:57:00.004-07:00

We're still making up our minds about Gov. Sarah Palin. Not, mind you, about whether she was a brilliant choice on McCain's part (she was,) whether she would have made a good VP and been capable of stepping into the Oval Office "on Day One" (she would have been at least as ready as many previous VP's and VP candidates in this century,) or whether she made McCain's uphill climb a harder one (on the contrary, she single-handedly got him back in the game, gave him a shot at winning until the economy went into melt-down, and probably saved him from a loss of 1964 Goldwater proportions.)

The question, rather, is whether Gov. Palin is the right person to spearhead the GOP's comeback 4 to 8 years from now. We must confess that since we are so steeped in the conservative movement's not inconsiderable intellectual heritage, our main question about Gov. Palin is whether she has the intellectual chops to make it happen. We unreservedly reject the condescending, haughty put-downs directed at her from her betters (after all, we heard the same sort of panicked attacks about Goldwater, Reagan, Thatcher, and Gingrich during their ascendencies, all of whom had intellectual chops far exceeding what they were then given credit for.)

But saying that the caricatures of elitist snobs (or of that even lower form of life, the elitist snob manqué) are grossly unfair is not quite the same thing as saying that Gov. Palin should be handed the Goldwater/Reagan/Thatcher/Gingrich mantle, post-haste.

In this vein, one of our favorite conservative writers, John O'Sullivan, has written a nice piece in which he comes to her defense:

Inevitably, Lloyd Bentsen's famous put-down of Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debate is resurrected, such as by Paul Waugh (in the London Evening Standard) and Marie Cocco (in the Washington Post): "Newsflash! Governor, You're No Maggie Thatcher," sneered Mr. Waugh. Added Ms. Coco, "now we know Sarah Palin is no Margaret Thatcher -- and no Dan Quayle either!"

Jolly, rib-tickling stuff. But, as it happens, I know Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher is a friend of mine. And as a matter of fact, Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin have a great deal in common.

O'Sullivan, of course, is one of American conservatism's British expatriates, and brings a depth of knowledge about Thatcher that the casual commentator lacks. He was a special adviser to Thatcher while she was PM, and he retained a close relationship with her after her time as Conservative Leader in Britain, specifically in working with her to found the New Atlantic Initiative.

As befits one of the best minds in the conservative movement today (O'Sullivan is no intellectual slouch, having been WFB's handpicked successor as editor of National Review, and writing regularly for high and mid-brow periodicals like the New Criterion, the London Spectator, Policy Review, and the usual suspects like the NYT and Washington Post) -- O'Sullivan's appraisal is one that comes with eyes wide open, as they say. He notes many of the differences in the political education of these two ladies.

But he also notes some of the similarities, and illustrates them with various (now) humorous stories about Thatcher's "ineptitude" in her days before she became the Iron Lady of Britain -- no longer misunderestimated by either friend or foe. A couple of samples:

Mrs. Thatcher's most senior position until then had been education secretary in the government of Edward Heath where, as she conceded in her memoirs, she lacked real executive power. Her political influence within that government was so small that it took 17 months for her to get an interview with him. Even then, a considerate civil servant assured Heath that others would be present to make the meeting less "boring."

...she became almost as "controversial" as Sarah Palin. Heath, for example, made it plain privately that he would not serve under her. And Sir Ian Gilmour, an intellectual leader of the Tory "wets," privately dismissed her as a "Daily Telegraph woman." There is no precise equivalent in American English, but "narrow, repressed suburbanite" catches the sense.

Mrs. Thatcher attracted such abuse for two reasons. First, she was seen by the chattering classes as representing a blend of provincial conservative values and market economics -- Middle England as it has come to be called -- against their own metropolitan liberalism.

We learn that Mrs. Thatcher got some help -- including coaching from Sir Lawrence Olivier in preparing for the regular face-to-face verbal sparring at which British opposition leaders must excel, unless they are resigned to leading only from the opposition bench forever. And again, O'Sullivan makes it clear that one only knows what someone is made of after they have met the tests put before them -- Thatcher met hers and became a legend, while Palin's tests lie ahead and may be failed. But he does have this to say about one of the many similarities he sees between these two women:

But she shares with Mrs. Thatcher a very rare charisma. As Ronnie Millar, the latter's speechwriter and a successful playwright, used to say in theatrical tones: She may be depressed, ill-dressed and having a bad hair day, but when the curtain rises, out onto the stage she steps looking like a billion dollars. That's the mark of a star, dear boy. They rise to the big occasions.

Mrs. Palin had four big occasions in the late, doomed Republican campaign: her introduction by John McCain in Ohio, her speech at the GOP convention, her vice-presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden, and her appearance on Saturday Night Live. With minimal preparation, she rose to all four of them. That's the mark of star.

If conservative intellectuals, Republican operatives and McCain "handlers" can't see it, then so much the worse for them.

Ayn Rand's relevance

2008-12-13T05:51:00.000-07:00

Ayn Rand's novels, especially her more mature works such as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, have been justly famous and influential. It is difficult to read those two books and look at the world in quite the same way again.

In a recent Newsweek interview, the current head of the Ayn Rand Institute discusses the alleged failure of free markets in our current crisis.

Traditional conservatism has a mixed relationship with Rand. On the one hand, her novels cut to the heart of socialism, collectivism, and government regulation in their various forms in a way that is readable and indeed gripping. A page-turner like Atlas Shrugged probably did more than the writings of a dozen prominent economists ever could, creating a healthy suspicion of "managed" economies and helping ordinary readers to understand the inextricable connection between the loss of economic liberty and the loss of all liberties.

Think of them as being similar to the recent, grittier movie adaptations of super-hero comic books such as the (quite impressive) Christian Bale Batman movies.

On the other hand, her hostility to traditional religion and her lack of any respect for tradition in general caused most thoughtful conservative thinkers, in the end, to reject her ideas as being just as flawed and potentially dangerous as were the communist and socialist ideologies she was mercilessly flaying in her writings.

That word -- "mercy" -- is actually apt, since the absence of anything resembling mercy and compassion in Rand's writings are one of their most striking features. Whittaker Chambers was perhaps being a little unfair in the most famous line of his justly famous piece in National Review (one that marked the "official banning" of Rand and her Objectivists from polite conservatism) when he wrote: From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To a gas chamber — go!"

Chambers did express appropriate sympathy for many of Rand's observations and sentiments, and he quite rightly concluded his essay with a more tempered statement: "the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything."

At the root of traditional conservatism's rejection of Rand is that her books are highly ideological, and as such, are inimical to how conservatism sees the world. Ideologies believe that they have arrived both at what is wrong with the world and at exactly how to fix it. The free-market supermen of Rand's novels portray her belief in the perfectability (or perhaps more precisely, innate perfection) of certain individual men, just as the Marxist thought she detested portrays the perfectability of human society.

By contrast, our American constitutional system of government is based, fundamentally, on the conviction that man is flawed (although without any hubristic notions that the exact nature of the flaws can be defined with precision, let alone remedied,) and must be restrained when governing others, lest too much power be placed in the hands of any individual or any interest. Conservative thought in the American context is likewise suffused with these ideas, and with the conviction that man's imperfections and limitations mean that radical changes will, by definition, bring radically unintended consequences that are at least as likely to be for ill as for good.

So where does this leave Rand's thought in these days of economic crisis? The Randian interviewed in the Newsweek article demonstrates a characteristic lack of humility regarding any possible flaws that the Objectivist strain of libertarian thought might have. But he (as we should also in fairness expect) has some acute observations, perhaps best summarized in this exchange at the end:

Q: With free markets now in disrepute, what's going to happen to the popularity of Ayn Rand's most famous book, "Atlas Shrugged"?

A: I think it's going to go up dramatically. I think it already has. [People] are saying, "We're heading toward socialism, we're heading toward more regulation." "Atlas Shrugged" is coming true. How do we get out? How do we escape?

Unfortunately, there is no escape. Businessmen are panicking, and I think they should be panicking. Many of them understand that this was not a crisis of free markets. There was no free market to fail. What we have is a regulated market, and the regulated market has failed. (Emphasis added)

This is unquestionably true. But at the same time, we have to understand that our economy has been regulated for a very long time, and there is no sense pretending that the path back to economic freedom could ever be a safe one, let alone easy.

Just as acts of regulation will have adverse unintended consequences that wise legislators will try to foresee, and then try to limit the damage, the same is true of deregulation. Deregulating a regulated sector of the economy is no less tricky than is detoxing a heroin addict, and one doesn't get the impression that our government adequately took that into consideration in some sectors of our economy. Freddie and Fannie, for example, knew they would ultimately get their next fix from the government if need be, so they didn't need to worry about taking ordinary precautions.

Which is why we should have been more cautious about getting our financial institutions addicted to taxpayer dollars and why we should be cautious about giving that first hit to the automakers. (Part of the current argument seems to run that automakers have just as much right to become addicts as bankers do -- out of a sort of twisted sense of fairness.)

Those of a progressive bent might seem to believe that the answer is just to call addiction normal, and make no attempt at withdrawal -- indeed that such "normality" should be expanded. Unfortunately, the Bush administration and the Republican Congress during their brief time in power couldn't decide whether to be Mr. Hyde the pusher or Dr. Jekyll the healer -- and all too often they were a hideous chimera combining the two.

Republican failures at the federal level have led to a situation where for the foreseeable future, we will have a government controlled by those who have no such confusion or internal conflict. As such, one fears that our economy will be made of industries and individuals who will resemble crack-house inhabitants scrapping over who gets the next fix while the dealers, lordlike, survey their realm, such as it is.

The duty of a rational human being in such a situation is, as much as is possible within the constraints of economic survival, to find little ways to "just say no."

Things are getting confused at LITW

2008-12-12T18:35:00.004-07:00

It's one thing to let the folks at Left in the West take a victory lap or two -- hey, the lefties had a pretty impressive year, and they have earned the right to gloat and strut like peacocks for awhile as far as we're concerned.

But let's try to keep the facts straight when we're throwing around accusations, shall we?

First, we learn that it is all the GOP's fault that the auto bailout failed. Fair enough, since GOP Senators led the charge on this one.

Only two problems:

1. Jay Stevens groups Denny Rehberg in with those who voted for bailing out Wall Street but against bailing out the Big Three. Was John Driscoll the only Democrat who noticed that Rehberg voted against the Wall Street bailout package -- or does Jay think we just won't notice that he's not telling the truth about Rehberg?

2. Jay also forgot to check how Montana's Democratic Senators voted until later -- something you'd think he'd do before titling his heavily-breathing post "GOP kicks auto industry to the curb." Do you think he might go back and retitle the post "GOP, joined by Democratic Sens. Tester and Baucus, kicks auto industry to the curb"? Maybe? Naw.

The truth is, the only Montanan who deserved to get attacked for having a double-standard was Sen. Baucus, but apparently when you're in a hurry to try to slime Denny Rehberg, and are grateful for all of Max's cash (much of which he shook down from the financial industry -- duh) in the last election, a little sloppiness doesn't hurt.

Meanwhile, Tester gets an "at least he's consistent" from his netroots buddies -- why doesn't Rehberg get one?

Final comment -- why would Baucus and Tester vote against this one? One thought is that they saw the P-Base polls about what Montanans think of the idea of taking the secret ballot away from workers in order to make things easier for union bosses.

Both Senators know they are going to vote to take away the right to a secret ballot and will vote to make public the preferences of employees (both their employers and union organizers will know) about unionizing their shop. In other words, both Senators will roll over for the unions, in spite of what Montana voters think. Casting this vote with the Republicans will give them something to point at, showing that they won't vote down the line with unions on every vote (and what better time to do it than in an industry where there aren't any auto manufacturing plants in Montana?)

Just a theory.

P-base polling

2008-12-11T21:14:00.002-07:00

Good stuff over at Montana Main Street Blog regarding the new P-base poll results. What sticks out?

1. ...a record 75% of Montana voters want the state to encourage more timber, mining, oil & gas development while only 14% are opposed. 63% believe Montana’s environment is currently well protected with existing laws.

(So will we see the governor and the legislature taking actions to cause an explosion of such development? Don't hold your breath waiting anything to change when it comes to saying one thing about energy development and doing another.)

2. When asked if they would support Congressional action to take away a worker’s right to a secret ballot in a union election (a provision in the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act”), an overwhelming 77% of Montana voters said no, while only 14% supported it.

(So will Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester vote to rob workers of the right to a secret ballot, in opposition to the overwhelming will of Montana voters -- and against the advice of long-time labor advocate former Sen. George McGovern? Probably. It's all about money -- if you have enough of it in campaign contributions from organized labor and its allies, you can overcome the pesky voters.)

3. ...a decisive 94% believe that all state and local government officials should be required to report all of their lobbying expenses just like other lobbyists.

(So will Democrats continue to protect state, county, and municipal employees and officials from having to divulge the extent of the time they spend lobbying the legislature? Almost certainly.)

Good stuff. Too bad it is unlikely to change opinions or behaviors on the part of our elected officials.

Moving off campus

2008-12-09T05:56:00.002-07:00

Victor Davis Hanson, who often brings a fresh perspective to commentary on contemporary politics and society because of his training and experience as a classicist, has a great piece in City Journal in which he elegantly describes the role that a classical college education (i.e. the kind where one learned Greek and Latin, and then read the literature of those languages) once played in the life of our republic.

At its most basic, the classical education that used to underpin the university often meant some acquaintance with Greek and Latin, which offered students three rich dividends. First, classical-language instruction meant acquiring generic methods of inquiry. Knowledge was no longer hazy and amorphous, but categorized and finite.

Classical languages, like their Western successors, were learned through the systematic study of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. Such philological study then widened to reading poetry, philosophy, history, and oratory. Again, the student learned that there was a blueprint—a structure—to approaching education. Nothing could ever be truly new in itself but was instead a new wrinkle on the age-old face of wisdom.

With the qualification "like their Western successors," Hanson of course betrays the hard truth that a genuinely classical education rooted in actually learning Latin and Greek is not something that even an autumnal classicist like himself actually remembers. It may not even be something that the professors he studied under as a college student remembers, but they in turn would have known scholars who had received that kind of intensive education while sitting beside future businessmen, lawyers, doctors, and public servants.

But something approaching it, with required proficiency in a couple of modern European languages, a core knowledge of Western history, a familiarity with Western works of art, and deep reading in great works of Western literature -- that is within the living memory of many who still are with us.

Hanson notes that a classical education had a very practical effect on those who imbibed it:

..classical education —- reading Homer, Sophocles, and Aristotle, or studying the Delphic Charioteer and red-figure vase painting—conveyed an older, tragic view of man’s physical and mental limitations at odds with the modern notion of life without limits. Love, war, government, and religion involved choices not between utopian perfection and terrible misery but between bad and worse alternatives, or somewhat good and somewhat better options—given the limitations of human nature and the precarious, brief span of human life.

Humility permeated traditional liberal arts education: the acceptance that we know very little; that as frail human beings, we live in an unforgiving natural world; and that culture can and should improve on nature without destroying it.

But universities embraced the idea of being primarily places for acquiring technical knowledge and skills -- and today, under pressures of cost, alternative ways of acquiring much of that specialized knowledge and many of those skills are burgeoning. Interestingly, there remains a hunger for a classical education among many, and Hanson reviews the explosion in various forms of independent education in the classics that are attempting to fill the void in our educations -- probably mostly in those with college degrees or higher who now realize that they didn't get what they were supposed to get while at university. A lot of learning is moving off campus.

This is similar to a theme that Hanson and others have touched on when they talk about the fact that consumption of good works of biography and history has never been higher with the reading public -- but little of the writing is being done by the university professors who in theory should be best positioned to tell those stories.

But as he points out, these are poor substitutes for the real thing:

...the university living experience—on-campus residence, close association with professors at dinners, and attendance at university lectures—helped reinforce the abstract lessons of the classroom and promote a certain civic behavior. Students had a precious four years in such a landscape to prepare their intellectual and moral skills for a grueling life ahead.

The university was a unique place; it thrived because liberal arts in the holistic sense simply could not be emulated by, or outsourced to, private enterprise or ad hoc self-improvement training.

....

How ironic that the struggling university, in its efforts to meet changing political, technological, and cultural tastes and fads, willingly forfeited the only commodity that made it irreplaceable and that it alone could do well.

Again, all of this is acquiring the patina of ancient lore passed down in fireside stories told by the old ones. Meanwhile, lovers of classical learning today continue to pick through the rubble like so many WALL-E's -- knowing that something is missing that was good and beautiful and yes, useful, but not really having even tools and knowledge sufficient for comprehending the magnitude of the loss.

Newspapers -- in need of fiscal resuscitation?

2008-12-07T19:06:00.006-07:00

Ed Kemmick offers an elegy for the disappearing newspaper, a noble beast that once thundered in huge herds across this country.

We sympathize, although not to the point of believing that newspapers should receive government subsidies. Perhaps Kemmick was in jest, but as we pointed out some time ago, The Nation wasn't when it proposed just that. Exhibit A in why newspapers should be subsidized, including and perhaps especially in Montana, was the fact that Jon Tester became U.S. Senator Jon Tester.

It seems quaint now, with Democrats worrying in this past election cycle only about whether they could get a filibuster-proof majority, but The Fate of Humanity Itself hung in the balance here in Montana just a couple of years ago, and as The Nation describes it, Montana's newspapers delivered the goods for Jon Tester and made the difference in getting him elected. They almost helped deliver Montana for Obama (may his enemies cringe at the fearful sound of his name) in the last election cycle.

So why exactly do we sympathize, especially when the Billings Gazette endorsed Democrats in 5 of the 6 competitive statewide races this election season (and saved its most tepid "well if we have to say it we suppose there's no real reason to vote against him so OK go ahead if you really feel you need to maybe" endorsement for the lone Republican they endorsed -- Brad Johnson?

Well, just call us suckers for a lost cause -- that's what conservatives are good at, right?

It just isn't the same looking at news on the web -- it's that simple. Newspapers go deep in the MH psyche, seated somewhere near the brainstem, going back to the mists of time when the daily paper arrived two days late because it had to be delivered first by rail to the nearest town, and then via rural mail to a certain isolated homestead. A summary of any truly breaking news had already been learned by radio or by watching John Chancellor on a fuzzy black-and-white screen, but it somehow didn't seem like real news until that crackle of an opening grey newspaper said it was so.

In the days before digital recording allowed one to pause a program, or to rewind and listen to a particular piece again, only print news allowed that luxury. You could even cut out the clipping and show it to someone else who didn't get the paper, or even save it. Wow.

Then came the wonders of big city life and the magic of having a daily paper (for a while, even two daily papers -- morning and evening) delivered to one's door. While the sky might be clear, one really didn't know that the world wasn't coming to an end until one opened the morning paper and saw that the headlines were about something mundane like a superpower summit meeting or an energy crisis. Then came settling down over a cup of coffee for a more leisurely perusal. Death to any visitor who suggested turning on the television or radio in the morning -- like drinking alcohol, there is a time before which civilized people just don't do certain things.

Just because -- that's why.

So, while MH has heard many conservatives, like so many old warrior-athletes comparing scars, one-up each other by saying how long ago they cancelled their subscription to the Gazette, we've never been able to bring ourselves to do it, no matter how unhappy we might be over political coverage from time to time.

How, after all, can one be a conservative dinosaur if one doesn't spend a fair amount of time with the news medium that dates back to before the Founding -- for as long as it lasts anyway? This business of canceling newspaper subscriptions and going paperless sounds, well, like another example of undue influence by neoconservatives if you ask us. Besides, the sports section, the hunting and fishing section, and the comics can generally be relied on to be free of bias (or at least of bias that would hurt anyone.)

And how can an unhappy conservative throw the paper down on the table or into the fireplace, calling it a dirty rotten lying rag, if one doesn't actually hold a dirty rotten lying rag in one's hands? We're just too old around here to change -- been doing it for too many decades. We still remember how those dirty rags picked on Nixon over stuff for which they would have given LBJ a free ride. Now you see the point -- closing a browser window emphatically just doesn't have the same satisfying effect. And on TV or the internet, we can go to conservative sites for news -- only in the daily paper is there that complete lack of competition that makes for a good old-fashioned gnashing of teeth.

Still -- subsidize those remaining daily newspapers? You know, the ones who, in terms of circulation, endorsed Obama by a ratio of 3 to 1? (Wonder which ones would get the inside track on the subsidies?) On the face of it, though, it sort of makes sense. After all, another old-fashioned and eminently civilized thing to do is to travel by train, but doing so requires government subsidies -- (even though there aren't enough subsidies to bring a train through the parts of Montana where most people in the state live.)

In a time, however, when those powers that might agitate for subsidizing major newspapers are also agitating for shutting down talk radio stations even though they don't require subsidies to stay afloat, it seems it would take logical gymnastics too painfully twisted even for The Nation.

No, just like so many other good things that have disappeared (like the Eagles with Don Felder in the lineup, the Chicago Symphony with Solti conducting, the good old college football system whereby no-one had a clue who the national champion was some years, or a federal government that only does what the Constitution says it can do,) we just have to enjoy newspapers while they are here, then talk nostalgically about them after they are gone.

Where is Obama taking us?

2008-12-06T16:38:00.003-07:00

Medved is certainly right that the chattering class on the right needs not to go into automatic attack mode against Sen. Obama over the silliest little things.

One certainly hopes that the gushing Gerson is right in thinking that Obama's early Cabinet choices mean 4 years of centrist government.

But while MH will treat the President with the respect due his office, and while hope was a Christian virtue long before it became a partisan campaign slogan, we have to agree with Tony Blankley that it is only reasonable (and fair to Obama) to expect, well... the worst.

Or as Blankley puts it: "Brace for the change you do not believe in."

A question for the Billings Gazette

2008-12-02T12:46:00.006-07:00

Why wasn't this on the opinion page?

It advocates for a specific policy.

It is indistinguishable from the kind of information/opinion piece that is routinely published in the Op-Ed section.

It ends with a specific call to action.

So it belongs on the opinion page, doesn't it?

This is perhaps a picky point, since Dennison isn't subtle about his advocacy for a single-payer health-care system, which he straightforwardly says is the answers to all of our health-care problems. This isn't a sneaky piece of advocacy journalism in in which the message is contained in the form of a hard news story, where subtle subtexts, selective quotations, and unflattering pictures of the "bad guys" achieve the intended effect of persuading the reader.

So intelligent readers should be able to figure it out that Dennison is just spouting opinion -- opinion backed up by reasoned arguments, to be sure, but opinion, nonetheless. Reasoned arguments and facts are found in abundance in columns by George Will and Maureen Dowd, too. But they are still clearly labeled as opinion pieces.

Maybe we should actually be grateful that Gazette readers have a chance to see that yes, Virginia, some reporters do have agendas -- agendas that can at other times be pushed in less detectable ways. It will be hard to read any Dennison story -- certainly anything related to health-care -- in the same way again.

But still, these pieces by Dennison belonged on the Op-Ed page. They are a far cry from the kind of restraint that Chuck Johnson demonstrates in his "Horse Sense" columns, in which we get the benefit of Johnson's perspective and personality, but don't have his advocacy for a particular policy crammed down our throats.

Critiquing the Bush legacy

2008-11-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

When things head south electorally for Republicans (as they did in this most recent election,) it is important to look back critically on the ideas, political tactics, and personalities involved in the debacle.

A perspective that is often forgotten, especially when Republicans are in power, is that of the so-called "Old Right."

There is good reason why some of the self-appointed banner-carriers of the Old Right are ignored. Some are second-rate intellects, others are consumed with ancient grievances against the early neoconservatives (former leftists who jumped on board as conservatives when the Carter presidency was imploding and Reagan came to power,) while yet others border on being racist kooks.

But much of the conservative heritage is wrapped up in the intellectual work of old-time men of the right, most of which was carried out while the right was in its decades in the post-war wilderness. For an excellent primer, get a copy of The Superfluous Men.

But getting back to some modern-day voices of Old Right ideas, one can get glimpses in the pages of the American Conservative, edited by Pat Buchanan. A recent issue reviews the Bush presidency, and not favorably. Yes, we are aware of all of the dirt dished out against Buchanan, but even those on the left have to admit that he had it nailed when it came to Iraq. The costs of those wars (and we're not talking about money) have been incalculable. We say wars, because what first got Buchanan thrown under the bus was his opposition to Bush I's war in Iraq.

Those wars have cost the conservative movement any real chance at reducing the size and influence of the federal government. They have cost us, in short, our entire domestic agenda, which is now lost for a generation -- which means permanently. It has been painful to watch conservatives line up in support of the perpetual state of war we have been engaged in ever since Bush the elder took office. One wanted to shake them by the lapels and say, "don't you see that these wars are going to mean that government will only continue to grow in size and power, that the American people will tire of an unwinnable war when we finally hit one and throw Republicans out of office, and that by bankrupting the country through an LBJ-style "guns and butter" approach, it will be a long time before we are trusted fiscally as a party?

Of course, attentive students of history know that there were conservative writers and thinkers who were making exactly that same argument in the post-war era with regard to the Cold War. Many on the right believed that communism was so fatally flawed as a system of government that the best approach we could take toward it was to ignore it and to allow it to fall under the crushing weight of its myriad weaknesses.

While William F. Buckley, Jr. remains a hero around here, there is still a contradiction at the center of his project of "fusionism" that has perhaps never been resolved, and that made the modern conservative movement incapable of dealing properly with the threat of an expansionist Islam. WFB and others believed that the war against communism trumped everything else, and that if the Cold War meant the creation of a massive federal government to carry it out -- well, so be it. Sound familiar?

We can never go back and unfight a war. We can never know how an alternative path would have played itself out. We can never know what would have happened had Bush the younger just went and killed the Taliban, and maybe bombed Iraq for good measure (but skipping the occupation and nation-building part) in response to the 9/11 attacks. We certainly don't know what would have happened had Bush the elder simply let Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia work out their own differences on the battlefield by themselves during the 1990's. Would there even have been a 9/11?

But we can certainly see what is: a mind-numbing national debt, vastly expanded federal expenditures, and the prospect of complete Democratic control of the White House and Congress for the foreseeable future.

If things were really that bad, doesn't the prospect of a Democratic administration actually portend something good? It is possible, but still doubtful. For those who harbor doubts, read Alexander Cockburn's article in The American Conservative. For those who are surprised to see this old-time leftist and long-time Nation contributor in the pages of a conservative magazine, don't be. Just read the article, and you will understand:

If there’s one thing defenders of civil liberties know, it’s that assaults on constitutional freedoms are bipartisan. Just as constitutional darkness didn’t first fall with the arrival in the Oval Office of George W. Bush, the shroud will not lift with his departure and the entry of President Barack Obama.

And again:

President Bush was also a man unbound by law, launching appalling assaults on freedom, building on the sound foundation of kindred assaults in Clinton’s time, perhaps most memorably expressed in the screams of parents and children fried by U.S. government forces in the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. Clinton, too, flouted all constitutional war powers inhibitions, with his executive decision to rain bombs on the civilian population of the former Yugoslavia.

Bush has forged resolutely along the path blazed by Clinton in asserting uninhibited executive power to wage war, seize, confine, and torture at will, breaching constitutional laws and international treaties and covenants concerning the treatment of combatants. The Patriot Act took up items on the Justice Department’s wish list left over from Clinton’s dreadful Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which trashed habeas corpus protections.

What is sadly predictable about all of this is that outside of the crotchety pages of rags like the American Conservative and the likes of writers like Cockburn and Buchanan, there is a consistent pattern in critiques of abuses of power -- conservatives criticize Democratic Presidents who do it, and liberals criticize Republican Presidents who do it. And as a result, not surprisingly, the tendency of each incoming administration is to grab for itself all of the power that the outgoing administration gathered for itself and to nab a little more in the process -- which then the next party's President will also consolidate.

On gerrymandering and redistricting in Montana

2008-11-29T12:10:00.000-07:00

Matt Singer at LITW again repeats his argument that Republicans overperformed in the 2008 legislative elections, citing the total number of votes cast statewide.

As noted before in a previous post here, this is a deceiving number in the House races (we didn't analyze the Senate races) because the figures include races in which candidates ran unopposed.

There were more unopposed Democrats than there were unopposed Republicans in this year's elections, so this skews the vote totals towards the Democratic Party. There were additional factors that skewed the results (such as the large-scale Obama GOTV effort in heavily Democratic districts, which would include those unopposed races.)

There are a lot of ways to crunch the numbers, but we made the case that in the House races, Republicans underperformed in the number of seats they won, if anything. Singer is quite simply wrong in his claims that Republicans overperformed in the House.

One point on which we would agree: Singer says that the 2014 redistricting will "address" the problems in districting which he believes are keeping the Democrats from achieving the bicameral legislative majorities to which he seems to believe they are entitled.

(It is refreshing, by the way, that Singer straightforwardly refers to Democrats having drawn the current districts, without any pretense of it being a non-partisan or bipartisan exercise.)

With Mike McGrath on the Supreme Court, it is reasonable to suppose that we can again expect Democrats to refuse to agree with Republicans on a neutral 5th member of the commission, and it is reasonable to suppose that the Supreme Court of Montana will again appoint a partisan Democrat to that position, since our new Chief Justice has a far more partisan track record than the Chief Justice he is replacing.

Singer certainly seems to assume that the results of redistricting will favor Democrats, and he he probably right. Unless the Montana Supreme Court can be shamed into choosing a truly neutral 5th member, that is -- and that isn't particularly likely.

Christopher Hitchens on the Clintonistas -- Kudlow on the Obama economic team

2008-11-26T08:21:00.003-07:00

Christopher Hitchens is shocked! Specifically, he is dismayed at the choice of Sen. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. He recounts the mind-numbing list of ways in which the Clintons have, in his (quite reasonable) view, put themselves and their financial/political interests ahead of the national interest in their conduct with foreign powers.

He says this of the once and future President Obama's choice of her at SOS: "What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me."

But why on earth would someone as intelligent as Hitchens be surprised that Obama, whom he endorsed because McCain supposedly lacked the temperament and character to be President, would choose not only Clinton herself, but an entire administration shot through with Clinton administration veterans (the latest count is that about 2/3rds of high-level appointees are Clinton people,) given his proven lack of any allergies to unsavory behavior and associations?

The choice of Clinton and the filling of the Obama cabinet with Clinton administration veterans is actually somewhat reassuring. It shows that Obama understands that he is on perilous ground, and that he needs to be able to say that he reached out for experience.

There are worse things than the Clintons' venality that so offends Hitchens -- far worse. The Clinton administration was pretty predictable because of it (and because of President Clinton's desire to be liked by the public -- a trait GWB could have tried more to emulate.) Predictability brings stability of a sort, and stability helps promote prosperity.

On another front, Larry Kudlow holds out hopes that the fact that Obama's economic team is being packed with Clinton veterans means that tax hikes will wait at least until 2010.

When asked about tax hikes on Monday, Obama said the debate is between repeal and not-renewal. In other words, repeal the Bush tax cuts in 2009, thereby raising tax rates on capital gains and successful earners, or wait until the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. Investors want to hear the latter, and Mr. Obama said his team will make a recommendation.

Here’s my thought on his team. Summers, Geithner, and Romer will all recommend no tax hikes in a recession. Maybe for Keynesian reasons; maybe a nod to supply-siders.

We can only hope. Yes, we know the axe is coming to the neck, but doesn't the condemned prisoner always appreciate a reprieve?

Who won the state House of Representatives voting?

2008-11-09T17:16:00.004-07:00

Matt Singer notes that there were just under 230,000 votes for Democratic House members in Montana this year, compared to just under 220,000 for Republicans.

Where we would disagree with Singer is that he implies that Democrats just didn't get their votes in the right places -- i.e. that Democrats underperformed in terms of how many seats they won when compared to how many votes they won.

We'll trust him on the math, but it is important to point out that this figure includes unopposed races. There were, by the MH count, 7 unopposed Democrats and 4 unopposed Republicans.

Running quick sums on the competitive races using the Billings Gazette results page, our totals (which we didn't double-check, so they could be off a little) were 207,000 for Republicans and 189,000 for Democrats -- an 18,000 vote edge for Republicans in those districts where there was even token opposition. Third party and independents were included in the major party totals if they were the sole opponents (i.e. if a Constitution Party member ran against a Democrat, but no Republican, the Constitution Party votes were tabulated as Republican votes -- or if an independent ran against a Republican, his votes were tabulated as Democratic.)

There are a number of ways to crunch the numbers, but if one assumes that the 89 competitive seats were divided proportionately with that popular vote, Republicans would have won 46.6 of those seats. Adding in their 4 seats from unopposed races, that would give Republicans between 50 and 51 seats. As it is, Republicans won 50 seats, but several (four, as we recall) of those were nailbiters, some of which may be subject to recounts, while only one Democratic win in the House was close enough that recounting was remotely a possibility.

In addition, we can assume that those safe, unopposed seats were prime targets for the Obama campaign's massive GOTV effort, inflating the number of voters compared to those who would show up in an unopposed Republican district. That's just speculation, but not unreasonable speculation.

So, it was actually Republicans who underperformed in how many seats they won in proportion to how many votes Republican House members received statewide. This is exactly what one would expect, given the history of legislative elections since gerrymandered redistricting took over in 2004.

The wonder is that Republicans did as well as they did in spite of wading upstream in a torrential river of Obama and Baucus money this year.

Tony Blankley on the conservatism of tomorrow

2008-11-09T15:16:00.006-07:00

In his post-election post-mortem, Tony Blankley perhaps had the most pointed and convincing comments we have yet seen from a conservative.

Of course, Blankley hit a soft spot for Montana Headlines from the start by quoting from William Blake's haunting poem "Jerusalem," so that wasn't really fair of him. (Yes, we realize that one could make a deconstructive case that it was Hubert Parry's later musical setting that made this into an anthem redolent of English conservative sentiment, while Blake's lyrics hint at a "heaven on earth" idea that has more in common with the left. But leave us with our love for the final product.)

Still, it isn't enough to throw off some verse -- one has to follow with thoughts worthy of it, and Blankley does:

Conservatism always has been and always will be a force to reckon with because it most closely approximates the reality of the human condition, based, as it is, on the cumulative judgment and experience of a people. It is the heir, not the apostate, to the accumulated wisdom, morality and faith of the people.

Ah -- Russell Kirk's own heart would warm to those words. Blankley continues on by pointing out that "conservatism, like all ideas and causes, is hostage to the effectiveness of the party that carries its banner." Here, too, Kirk would agree, having experienced the ups and downs of being an intellectual conservative whose party, at various points, was either worthy or unworthy of the ideas he championed.

After listing the many ways in which the deck was stacked against Republicans this election, Blankley gives an cliff-top overview of the political battlefield in the plains below, making reference to the Goldwater defeat of 1964:

...the first explanation of losing causes and losing parties (liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans) almost invariably is to blame incompetent candidates, ineffective messages, and overwhelming events.

At a technical level, that is often true. But at a deeper, historical level, the failure was that the cause was not yet ready to lead. We conservatives were not ready to lead in 1964. By 1980 and 1994, under Reagan and Gingrich, we had figured out how to talk to a majority of the country with both principles and programs that gained a majority endorsement. We no longer were just standing on our high horse declaiming to a nation. We were on the ground, with the people, leading them into the citadel of power.

Most interesting is that Blankley turns, in this hour of darkness, to a brief discussion of Benjamin Disraeli, someone who has been kicking around in the back of the Montana Headlines brain for more than a year. Disraeli is a major figure in Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, and with good reason, as Blankley explains:

Disraeli envisioned the Conservative Party as the true national party, while the Whigs were merely the party of intellectual ideas. In that time, English intellectuals and progressives were fascinated with German ideas, just as today Democrats are enchanted with European ideas.

Disraeli judged: "In a progressive country, change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change, which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of the people or in deference to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines."

By championing the vote for the people in a century in which that was inevitable, Disraeli formed a conservative party that dominated British politics for 150 years.

John O'Sullivan, writing in the New Criterion almost a year ago made the following observation:

Making due allowance for national differences, conservatives win elections when they have the support of three groups—nationalists, moral traditionalists, and supporters of free enterprise.

This is pretty obvious, and has been true in a variety of Western European countries during the democratic era. Blankley points out that two of the three are for the most part non-negotiable for conservatives:

Today there are certain profound values -- free markets and respect for life -- that are renounced at the price of our soul.

What Blankley implies needs rethinking is what O'Sullivan calls the "nationalist" leg of the stool:

...a conservative agenda must, for example, learn to speak persuasively to a near majority of Hispanic-Americans, or we will be merely a debating society.

Looking back at the legacy of the recent conservative movement, one of the great failures of the Bush administration (and of John McCain,) was that while there are Republicans who understand that the Latino vote is essential to electoral victory, there was a failure to articulate a political message and an approach to illegal immigration that would help Hispanic and non-Hispanic alike find a common home for cultural nationalism in the Republican party.

We've heard much on the right about the unwillingness of Latinos to assimilate into American society. Perhaps. But when one looks at the secular and atomized society that is being rejected by those resisting assimilation, one can fairly ask the question of "exactly which side better reflects Western Christian civilization?" More often than not, one suspects that it isn't us gringos. And on a more mundane point, whose language more resembles the Latin of the great republican heroes of Roman Western civilization -- Cato and Cicero?

There is more to the conservative rethinking that lies ahead than the question of how to join forces with the Hispanic population of the U.S. But it is a telling example for Blankley to pick as an illustration.

After all, Disraeli's brilliance was that he recognized that the universal franchise was inevitable -- the question was which party would embrace it most convincingly, and how exactly the Conservative Party could embrace it while remaining conservative. What Disraeli did, of course, was to create a concept of England (was it any accident that it was a novelist who accomplished this for the Tories?) wherein the full cultural, political, historical, and economic heritage of England was the rightful possession of all British subjects -- not just those of a privileged class.

Likewise, a bi-lingual and bi-cultural (let's not pretend that it will be multicultural -- there are really only two at play) America is at this point inevitable. Conservatism will have to be reimagined within that context, and it will need to be conceived in an authentic and organic way, not in a spirit of tokenism and identity politics -- a game at which we will lose every time.

Will America's conservative leadership be up to this and other challenges? The answers to this question will in large part determine the length of our stay in the political wilderness.

Orwell on the patriotism of paying taxes

2008-10-27T11:46:00.003-06:00

This per John Derbyshire's internet radio program. As Derbyshire says, you can't go far wrong with a quotation from George Orwell. This is from August 1940, while the Battle of Britain was raging, and the fate of the free world hung in the balance:

I wrote a long letter to the income tax people... Towards the government I feel no scruples, and I would dodge paying the tax if I could. Yet I would give my life for England readily enough, if I thought it was necessary. No-one is patriotic about taxes.

The title of the book of collected essays whence the quotation comes is entitled My Country, Right or Left. A sentiment worth noting, and attempting to emulate.

What would Milton Friedman say?

2008-10-20T08:03:00.002-06:00

We have had occasion before to mention Peter Robinson, whose fine "Uncommon Knowledge" program is a successor of sorts to William F. Buckley's "Firing Line."

A fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Robinson recently had a small piece in Forbes, in which he sat down with two of his Hoover Institution colleagues, Thomas MaCurdy [yes, the spelling is correct] and Jay Bhattacharya [can't claim expertise on that spelling.] Both economists are "close students" of Friedman, so Robinson asked them to speculate on what that great economist would say about the current financial crisis, were he around. The whole piece is worth reading, but the answers to Robinson's question about what Friedman would have thought about government intervention were particularly interesting.

He would have approved of such efforts in Britain--but expressed grave reservations about those here in the U.S.

"Milton would have wanted the authorities to find very, very aggressive ways of expanding the money supply," says Tom. The Bank of England did just that, placing large deposits in banks throughout the British financial system. "What they did in England was quick, clean and direct."

Here in the U.S., by contrast, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's original bailout plan, under which the Treasury would have spent hundreds of billions of dollars purchasing subprime and other instruments from major banks, went at the problem backwards. "The government should take responsibility for the money supply, but not for setting prices," says Jay. "The problem with subprime assets is that nobody knows what they're worth. Friedman would have told you that bringing the government in wouldn't have helped that."

With his new plan, under which the Treasury has now taken equity stakes worth $125 billion in nine big banks, Paulson has finally begun to make sense. "Direct injections of capital into banks--Milton would have approved of that," Tom says. "But why did it take so long? Why did we have to wait for the Bank of England to set the example?"

Good question -- but watching "Prime Minister's Questions" on C-Span last night (watching that wonderful weekly exercise in parliamentary sparring reminds us of why even lowly British back-benchers have a verbal agility that virtually none of our major politicians do) the viewer was reminded of why it didn't happen. Labour back-benchers were pummeling Labour leadership (the PM was away, so a stand-in had to do the honors,) asking why the money had gone to the banks rather than to the people.

It is a sad day when the British Labour Party leadership has the strength to do what Friedman would have done, while here in America...

And finally, Robinson asks whether Friedman would have seen current events as a setback for capitalism. Their answer?

Only in the short term.

"If this election goes the way it looks as though it's going to go," says Tom, "then the political system is about to get a major overcorrection to the left. And that means the American people are about to get an extreme illustration of just how badly government intervention screws stuff up."

Ah, the advantages of the long, historical view. Grouchy conservatives are of course always correct when they say we are doomed, doomed, doomed. But optimistic conservatives (really the same people, just in different moods -- we are grouchy when we have just read the morning newspaper or made an unavoidable journey to the mall; but optimistic when we choose to marry and have children, when we start a business, or when we write a paragraph in the hopes that someone will read it and care) -- optimistic conservatives understand that after the ecliptic doom, the sun always comes out, even if it won't happen in our lifetimes.

Murchison on James Polk

2008-10-17T18:38:00.003-06:00

There are few art forms that are more enjoyable than reading a good book review. It is a sort of a cheap thrill (quite literally,) since one gets much of the benefit of a book without having actually to purchase and read it. Thus, for many of us who are addicted to reading book reviews, we are condemned to lives of having read many more reviews than books -- and of having the sum total of our knowledge of a given book filtered through the eyes of a reviewer.

So be it.

Wiliam Murchison (long-time columnist for the Dallas Morning News,) writing in the American Spectator, recently reviewed what sounds like a fascinating biography of President James Polk. Walter R. Borneman's book makes the case that Polk's was a transformative Presidency, and when you read the summary, it's hard to argue otherwise:

Polk got it done. He had promised that inside one term of office -- that was all he wanted and all he said he would accept -- he would assert American title to Oregon; he would bring Texas finally into the Union; he would acquire California; he would reduce the tariff; and he would provide for an independent treasury. Wondrous to say, he did it all. There was some howling: not enough to deflect the president from his chosen course.

Murchison lightly notes that Boston newspapers didn't much care for "Polk's war" (known today as the Mexican-American War.) In fact, we would go further and note that the war spawned the first serious secessionist movement since the founding of the Constitution. One of John Calhoun's later biographers (we can't recall whom,) noted that the South Carolina statesman received much of his education in New England under schoolmasters who were secessionists. While Calhoun's arguments for the right of a state to secede are today considered to be part and parcel of his Southern mindset, they were actually forged in the fires of New England's anti-war sentiment.

But back to the review. Murchison is a descendant of Polk, so admits to not being completely unbiased in his admiration for Polk's accomplishment. He notes that modern political biographies of more distant figures are invariably laden with outright or thinly-veiled parallels to current events (guess which ones in this case.) But one passage sticks out at the end, as Murchison doubtless intends, one that reminds us of what a uniquely golden time the early 19th century was in the life our our country (if you were lucky enough not to be a slave, of course):

An unfamiliar flavor can fill the mouth of an American reader of Borneman -- the flavor of success. We win! Goals, during the Polk administration, get set and met. The United States, in pursuit of objectives that to many moderns would seem prideful or arrogant, strides onto the stage, ready for action. It expands its borders, opens new lands to exploration and development. A United States shorn of its western portion due to political timidity would be a different place from the nation that took shape under James K. Polk.

"Shorn of its western portion" -- enough to make a chill run down the spine, isn't it?

A new director at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

2008-10-15T00:52:00.004-06:00

And the editors of The New Criterion are ecstatic. Readers have been listening to them fretting over the impending retirement of Philippe de Montebello -- someone who in their eyes had managed to be "a unique moral and aesthetic force in a museum world besotted by the meretricious glitter of a preposterously overvalued and trash-addicted art market." (Tell us what you really think, will you?)

In looking ahead to the next directorship, they didn't exactly use the traditional conserative lament of "we are doomed, doomed, doomed..." But the subtext, as they say, was clearly in that vein -- they were bracing for the worst.

Since most Montanans read little about what goes on at the Met, and visit it even less, why should anyone care about the appointment of Thomas P. Campbell? The answer is simple -- institutions like the Met influence art museums in every corner of the country through their example, just as what happens at the Chicago Symphony influences the approach that smaller regional orchestras take toward their programming, their choices of new music to commission, and their interpretations of classic works. If Campbell bears out the promise that TNC's editors see in him, the visual arts will benefit everywhere.

The editors tell us that Campbell was on no-one's "short-list," and that the trustees of the Met had seen fit to reach out and tap a man on the shoulder who hadn't sought the job. The new guy in charge is a scholar, has a keen aesthetic sense, and seems to lack hubris besides -- what's not to like about that?

The election is over

2008-10-10T17:14:00.004-06:00

No, that's not a prediction as to any outcomes -- it's just an existential decision on the part of the Montana Headlines editorial staff. It's not that we don't have any opinions about the ongoing campaigns and the various tussles and tangles of this election. It's just that it is just getting to be a gawd-awful bore. All of it. So it has been harder and harder to get worked up about this or that issue, controversy, or race. Certainly, it's been getting ever harder to write about it.

Since Montana Headlines is a virtual reality to begin with, we thought -- why not just declare that the election is over, at least as far as Montana Headlines is concerned? According to the self-imposed rules of this virtual political universe -- anything is possible. Suddenly, the world seems more interesting again. Free at last, as they say.

What has this election cost us? Well, no commentary on the Billings Symphony opener and the brilliance of Valentina Lisitsa's Rachmaninoff. No discussion of the disturbing cultural implications for Billings of having Ed Kemmick's band break up (OK -- we'll tell that part: It was the usual, per the word on the street -- nice kids they wanted to have more time to visit, wanting to enjoy good microbrews with friends rather than practice guitar, happy marriages that made them want to stay home -- the same sad story that afflicts every folk/blues band made up of straight-shooting, middle-aged guys with ordinary day jobs.)

No discourse on The New Criterion's issue on higher education that we picked up while traveling (the May issue -- that's how much this politics stuff gets in the way of life) -- let alone their annual poetry issue. No reflections on re-reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the first time since college, or on Montana Shakespeare in the Park's summer offerings. Or how about that gratifying New Yorker article on Sibelius -- how long ago was that?

And what of the opening of hunting season, the smell of fall in the air, and the smell of the fall of the Oakland Raiders? It's hard to be missing all of that -- and then the realization hits: one doesn't have to write about politics, just because the election is around the corner and the expectation is that a political blog has to be in the thick of the flying mud.

Wake us up when that November 4 thing is over and tell us who won what. We'll decide if we want to comment on it.

Camille Paglia on Palin

2008-10-08T22:33:00.005-06:00

One of the most enjoyable writers on Salon is Camille Paglia, a strong Obama supporter and feminist -- but who also has the unfortunately uncommon ability to view contemporary feminism through a relatively apolitical lens. This, of course, translates into an ability to admire Gov. Palin and her accomplishments -- and to acknowledge that politics will never be the same for women again after Palin. It will be better, and not just for Republicans:

The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin’s bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up.

Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition — without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She’s no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she’s pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite — which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey’s witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin’s cadences and charm, she can’t capture the energy, which is a force of nature.

She also raises the fascinating question of whether Gov. Palin, like her husband, is part Native American:

And where is all that lurid sexual fantasy coming from? When I watch Sarah Palin, I don’t think sex — I think Amazon warrior! I admire her competitive spirit and her exuberant vitality, which borders on the supernormal. The question that keeps popping up for me is whether Palin, who was born in Idaho, could possibly be part Native American (as we know her husband is), which sometimes seems suggested by her strong facial contours. I have felt that same extraordinary energy and hyper-alertness billowing out from other women with Native American ancestry — including two overpowering celebrity icons with whom I have worked.

One of the most idiotic allegations batting around out there among urban media insiders is that Palin is “dumb.” Are they kidding? What level of stupidity is now par for the course in those musty circles? (The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting. As a Yale Ph.D., I have a perfect right to my scorn.) People who can’t see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism — the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.

She even points out what millions of ordinary Americans already know -- those who don't speak as though their words have come filtered through the New York Times style book:

As someone whose first seven years were spent among Italian-American immigrants (I never met an elderly person who spoke English until we moved from Endicott to rural Oxford, New York, when I was in first grade), I am very used to understanding meaning through what might seem to others to be outlandish or fractured variations on standard English.

[]

Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment.

On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse — which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies). This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.

We have to admit that we prefer someone who can both: speak in "shapely and syncopated syllables" while consistently speaking in complete sentences as well. But having endured two Presidents Bush who could do neither, we'll take Sarah, gladly. And like Paglia, we have the feeling that Palin has the ability to learn, which is more than one can say for a great many politicians who are more greatly admired by the media and the left.

Impending economic doom -- another angle

2008-10-03T15:36:00.002-06:00

It's amazing that no one else had the foresight to anticipate this particular economic crisis. Watch:

As the man says, there is an urgent need to develop products for marginally politically active liberals to throw their money away on. Scary, but almost certainly true.

Can Palin climb the Ifill tower?

2008-10-01T18:33:00.004-06:00

By now, most everyone has heard that Gwen Ifill, moderator of this year's Veep debate, has a book timed to come out when the new president takes office in January that not too subtly celebrates the considerable political achievements of Sen. Obama -- and that this fact wasn't disclosed to the McCain campaign when negotiations were going on over debate formats, moderators, and rules.

Newsflash! Debate moderation is stacked in the Democratic candidate's favor! You don't say... Let's see, debate moderators are journalists, journalists are 90% Dem. Wow. What a shocker to learn that a debate moderator likes the Dem candidate!

Ifill is just as capable of getting snarky as any other television news personality (as she momentarily did with Cheney 4 years ago,) but she has had years of experience on PBS cultivating a liberal but even-handed approach, she has a keen mind, and she has absorbed a lot of the calm Jim Lehrer demeanor that generally serves about as well as any in these debates. Give us Gwen Ifill -- even if she is a rabid Obama partisan -- any day over some of the clowns on television today. Ifill is more capable than most of divorcing her personal views from her performance as an interviewer.

And, let's just say it: if Gov. Sarah Palin can't handle Gwen Ifill, then the McCain/Palin ticket has much bigger problems on its hands than who is moderating a debate. Part of being a Republican candidate (and officeholder) is knowing how to deal with a media that votes 90% Democratic and can't be expected to be able to keep their partisan leanings under wrap most of the time, let alone all the time.

Palin hasn't looked good in her first couple of major interviews -- she has seemed over-coached, like a college freshman who has been cramming for a final exam. And in many ways, the job of a Veep is harder than that of the candidate. John McCain knows what he thinks, knows how he voted, and just gets to say it -- and defend it however he likes. Sarah Palin has to memorize what John McCain thinks, how he voted, and has to defend it in the way McCain would defend it. And since she hasn't had months of experience at being a McCain surrogate on television face-offs (in the way that a Tim Pawlenty or Mike Huckabee has had,) she is needing to cover a lot of ground, fast.

John McCain's gamble was that she would be politically bright enough to be able to pull it off. We're about to find out. Fortunately, just as before her knock-out speech at the RNC, expectations have been lowered to the point where if Palin gets off the debate stage without drooling on herself, she will have succeeded. Palin isn't going to impress Ifill -- or any other journalist, Democratic activist, or university academic. She won't "win" the debate, and was never going to. She was selected to connect with the average voter, and her success in this debate (besides not drooling on herself or threatening to burn books about evolution) will be measured by how well she is able to climb right over the Ifill tower, communicating directly to those average voters.

Thanks, Congressman Rehberg

2008-09-29T16:10:00.002-06:00

This bailout bill was just too much to swallow, and we're glad to see that Rehberg didn't swallow it.

Yes, we have heard all of the arguments about how the economy will go into meltdown because of its failure -- isn't that called an "adjustment?"

It is true that many of the same people who are cheering on the destruction of the greedy fatcats on Wall Street might later be wishing that something had been done if they see that the rot has extended to their own apple-barrel. But what seems to be the case in our conversations with ordinary non-political, non-financier types is that they are resigned to a very bad spell in the economy no matter what is done.

The question is whether we are heading into bad times with Wall Street multi-millionaires federally insulated from much of the pain. Amazingly enough, people would seem to prefer that the greedy types on Wall Street start jumping out of windows. We don't like the idea of suicide -- we would recommend that those who have lost their gazillions put on sackcloth and ashes and head down to Washington to start fingering the Congressmen and bureaucrats who were complicit in this mess. We suspect they will, and it can't happen soon enough.

Call it Schadenfreude, call it what you will. But you don't have 228 Democrats and Republicans voting against a bill that has widely been billed as vital for our nation's financial health unless their phones are ringing off the hook by angry ordinary taxpayers who vote -- and the only thing that Congressmen fear more than bad relations with their campaign contributors is getting voted out of office.

Workers' Comp -- more than you might like to know

2008-09-25T17:42:00.003-06:00

To check out what would appear to be the rather sorry state of the Worker's Compensation Program in Montana when compared to, well, just about any other state, go to Montana Main Street Blog to take the quiz.

The last question is the kicker: our state Supreme Court, unless it fails to be true to form, will probably put us in an even worse position in the national rankings. Cheery thoughts in a week filled with cheery events.

Victor Davis Hanson on wisdom

2008-09-24T17:13:00.002-06:00

One of MH's favorite authors is Victor Davis Hanson -- farmer and professor of classics, conservative political pundit and military historian. What's not to love (other than his excessive enthusiasm for the Iraq War?)

He recently wrote a column that, in a much more elegant way, touches on some of the same themes as our recent piece on Democrats being smarter and more sophisticated than Republican stumblebums.

A sample from Hanson:

I spent nine years as an undergraduate and graduate student — three at UC Santa Cruz, four at Stanford University, and two in Athens, Greece. In that near decade, I met all sorts of supposedly brilliant professors, undergraduates, and graduate students in the humanities — Ivy-League Ph.Ds, whiz-kids with Oxford and Cambridge degrees, Rhodes Scholars, famous archaeologists, accomplished classicists and historians, well-know humanities scholars, and Oxbridge Dons with landmark books on history and philology. In addition, the last five years I have worked at Stanford again, and often have met another array of brilliant entrepreneurs, in fields as diverse as finance, law, medicine, engineering, and computers.

I contrast all this with growing up my first 18 years in southwestern Fresno County on a 120-acre tree and vine farm, where for most of my life I knew only neighbors who worked the soil, and survived the tough environment of the local schools. And then once again from age 26 to my mid-forties, I farmed as well as taught, and so I had a good idea of what the highly educated did during the day, and what the farmers and small businesspeople did on weekends and late afternoons.

Two conclusions I drew from all of this. While civilization advances on the shoulders of the educated, it is carried along by the legs of the muscular classes. And the latter are not there by some magical IQ test or a natural filtering process that separates the wheat from the chaff, but rather by either birth, or, as often, by their preference for action and the physical world.

Second, I have seen no difference in intelligence levels between those who inhabit the world of the physical and those who cultivate the life of the mind. That is, the most brilliant Greek philologists seemed no more impressive in their aptitude than the fellow who could take apart the transmission of an old Italian Oliver tractor, fix it, and put it back together — without a manual. And I knew three or four who could. The inept mechanic seemed no more dull than the showy graduate student who could not distinguish an articular infinitive from an accusative of respect.

Take a wild stab at how Hanson applies his insights to the current political field...

PSC Commissioner Brad Molnar -- Montana Headlines interview (Full text)

2008-09-24T05:00:00.001-06:00

MH: Commissioner Brad Molnar, welcome to Montana Headlines -- thanks for taking the time to do this interview.

First, we've got to ask this question: are you related to Thomas Molnar…

Brad Molnar: Yes. First cousin.

MH: Hold on, wait for the rest of the question. Thomas Molnar, the famous Hungarian conservative philosopher and historian/political theorist?

Brad Molnar: No. Wrong Hungarian, sorry. Cousin Tom runs a septic pumping service in South Bend, Ind. I don't think that he is very philosophical about it. Don't suppose he thinks it's a political statement either. I could be wrong about that though.

MH: Well, we’re off to quite a start, aren’t we? So let's start with a simple but crucial question: what exactly does a PSC Commissioner do?

Brad Molnar: All fifty states have some form of Commission. Fed regulators (FCC and FERC) share responsibilities with us. If state or federal legislation grants monopoly power we act as a brake to make sure the customer get the value as if there were competition. I'm pretty sure the brake is broke.

MH: Correct us if we're wrong, but you seem to enjoy your job as a PSC Commissioner immensely.

Brad Molnar: Yup.

MH: Put differently, a lot of public office holders enjoy the attention, the power, or the potential for future political ambitions that go with their jobs (yes, that was a little side-swipe at your opponent) -- but don't necessarily seem to enjoy the day to day grind of their lives in public service. You seem, more than most, to just plain enjoy doing what you do. Do we have that right, and is this typical for PSC Commissioners?

Brad Molnar: I truly enjoy the job. Like most before me I am amazed at how different it is from how it is perceived. I would say that all five of us are very dedicated to doing the job as best we can. Even Toole, which surprises me. But he is so political and infecting the Commission that he overshadows the good he can do. Raney and Jergeson have become far more political since Toole got elected.

MH: What is it that you find so enjoyable or satisfying about this job?

Brad Molnar: The total and ongoing exposure to new problems and various solutions in a room filled with very intelligent people and very different ideas. The fight for individual liberty and against runaway liberalism is fought here every day. But it’s not like in the legislature -- you can't go back to your caucus at the mid-day break or go home. You are in for four years. I've actually had to develop people skills...

OK "try" to develop people skills.

MH: We've heard it said that PSC Commissioners have a more direct impact on the daily lives of Montanans than do many state-wide positions that are higher profile. Is that true, and if so, could you explain?

Brad Molnar: We make the Appropriations Committee look like a bunch of panty-waists. Schweitzer talks (and talks and talks,) about energy but we analyze myriad proposals constantly. We recently implemented an additional 50 MW of QF wind (never mind the jargon just catch the drift.) If history holds that will cost consumers over a billion dollars more than the electricity is worth.

And we have zero capacity for ancillary services to firm it. NWE was against it. Montana Consumer Council was against it. I was the only no vote. The press never reported it (Who would write the story and who would understand it?). Only lobbyists and special interest liked it. By the time it kicks in no one will remember it and those that voted for it will be retiring from their new jobs as lobbyists for the same special interests. (Least ways that's my humble opinion)
On a 3-2 vote we OK'd sending 2,000,000 of NWE ratepayer dollars to Portland and Seattle to help spread the word about energy efficiency in the wood pulp industry. I'm sure that most of that money will find its way back to Montana via liberal PACS. Not one word in the daily press. TRY THAT in the legislature.

A rate increase of $15M got big press but the $60M "tracker" we passed several weeks later never got a mention. I was the only no vote and will soon show the world why. But the "why" is a twenty year deal. Legislative actions are only good for two years. Our mistakes can't be undone, are under analyzed, and in the billions of dollars. That is why we have more impact.
And the obvious. You get an energy bill every month. All business and government entities get a utility bill every month -- so you actually pay all three.

MH: Readers of Montana Headlines know that we find your opponent, Billings Mayor Ron Tussing, to be... well, let's not go there.

From a public-interest perspective, we were definitely rooting for Curry in the Democratic primary, but as we wrote in an earlier post, "From a punditry perspective, Molnar vs. Tussing would be a dream: sort of a to-the-death political cage match."

You don't seem like someone to back down from a fight, and you're certainly in one. We haven't seen a lot of fireworks yet -- when will it start, and what shape will it take?

Brad Molnar: It's definitely started. The state Demo party has filed grievances against me with the Office of Political Practices about the Billings Brownout. They were thrown out because Noonan tried twice to get the form right but couldn't quite grasp the concept. Mary Jo Fox (formerly with Raciciot then Martz -- now Tussing's campaign manager) has filed and amended several, also on the Billings Brownout, and of course the D's on the Commission have asked for a ruling from the AG also stemming from the Billings Brownout.

Plainly they feel the Billings Brownout is a good thing in need of attack to try to drown out Tussing's enormous negatives by creating some for me. Pretty stupid. EVERYbody I have talked to about it sees right through it. Does anybody think Tussing could even win Mayor again? The last three days of his campaign for Mayor were a gathering of some of the slimiest people in Montana politics. How they escaped prosecution I have no idea. I expect I'll get some on me as all the old ones are back plus a few new faces.

Because they are issueless they have really tied me up with all the work I have to do on their inane complaints. It is very consuming of emotional capital, money and time. IS this really the best way to form a new government every two years? The Tussing campaign (Led by Mary Jo Fox and Joe Gunthals) is the spiritless fate we must now suffer for failing to rein in crap-mongers during so many campaign cycles. Especially the last mayoral campaign in Billings and the Fox v Cooney for Senate. I fully expect a repeat of the final days of the mayor’s race with enough crap slung by "independent expenditures" to make me vote for Tussing. Tussing’s name is so negative that they can't raise him up. They need to try to bring me down.

MH: One war that you are definitely winning, from what our eastern Montana readers tell us, is the Burma-Shave sign war. Do you expect to maintain your commanding Burma-Shave lead over Tussing -- and so our readers who don’t make it onto the roads of PSC District 2 can know what on earth we're talking about, could you share a couple of your favorite Burma-Shave campaign sign sequences?

Brad Molnar: Displaying all the creativity and originality that Tussing can muster on energy and telecom issues ("I want to explore options and "look for"...never mind) -- Ron Tussing has copied my signs.

MH: Mayor Tussing really is shameless, isn’t he? But in all fairness, he did manage to compose a puerile ditty about the city administrator he was in a fight with -- readers can look that monumental act of creativity up in the MH archives (search for "The House that Ron Tussing Built") -- or in the court records from when the City of Billings was being taken to the cleaners for millions in no small part because of Tussing.

We digress shamelessly -- go on...

Brad Molnar: Of course I copied them from the Burma Shave idea but let’s admit that I took them to a new level in Montana politics. The people that have mentioned Tussing's signs, regardless of party leanings, all use the word "copy cat".

What else did he think people would feel? That he was clever? The rest of us learned in fourth grade that "copycats" were to be shunned on the playground. He has a right to do it but it's dumb and again raises all of his other myriad ethics issues.

But for the unenlightened they are signs with jingles on them rather like the old Burma Shave signs. Some are silly but all fit my theme.

Those Liberal Fellas / Sound Real Clever / Do their ideas work / Never Ever / Molnar for Public Service Commission – (This is the only sign to be stolen so far; last cycle it was the only one to be driven over.)

Mine it now / Drill it now / Don't need Arabs / To show us how / Molnar for Public Service Commission – (This one is very popular. Got me labled a racist. Sheesh.)

When near a school / Drive real slow / Let those little / Voters grow / Molnar for Public Service Commission -- ( This is also a carryover from last cycle. Actually from an original.)

Can't make him run / Can't make him cry / Molnar is / A stand up guy / Molnar for PSC Molnar for PSC -- (In case they were wondering.)

MH: These are, of course, 5 separate signs in a row, and you have to wait a bit for the next line -- very effective. As noted before, you are crushing the opposition in the Burma-Shave wars. Turning to more serious topics on the campaign front, where is this election going to be fought and won?

Brad Molnar: I think that I have to play a heads up game but it is already decided. In redistricting my area was designed to be Republican and Jergeson’s was designed to be Dem. The others are plus or minus 6%.

But 140,000 of my 200,000 voters all live in Yellowstone County. Obama people are really registering a lot of people here but we don't know how many of those will actually vote. That and the Baucus money thing are the only two unknowns.

Other than that the Gazette is the paper of record for the district and everywhere I go people are well aware of Ron's reneging on the $160,000 pay to leave, shoving the reporter and claiming self defense, the law suits, the multiple ethics violations, voting money for his wife’s projects, subordination violations, lying under oath, being already bought and paid for by lobbyists, etc.

Getting yard or Burma sign locations is easy. I just have to say that Tussing is my opponent. I think that the majority of people have already made up their minds about us. If he is the kind of guy (with the kind of followers he has) they want on the PSC they can have him. But plainly even those that supported him for Mayor have come to see that the City Manager was right and Tussing had to go to protect the people of Billings and now they have buyer’s remorse.

I think the primary numbers show that. Curry's campaign was nonexistent (I saw just two yard signs). The Curry votes were not Pro Curry. They were anti-Tussing. No idea what that means in the general. People should wonder why the Dems and liberals are so willing to debase themselves to get Tussing on the PSC when they already have a majority and the odds of Repubs sweeping all three open seats are long.

MH: You mentioned the Gazette as the paper of record in your PSC district. Do you believe that the Montana press in general and the Billings Gazette in particular has given you fair and balanced coverage during your tenure as commissioner and during this campaign?

Brad Molnar: In general "no." But, in truth, I think it is improving. Dennison and I have a respect for each other and trade barbs without ongoing animosity. Actually a healthy reporter/reportee relationship.

I miss talking with Chuck Johnson. He was very unfair to Judy Martz but always fair with me. I think, and hope, that my chagrin with LEE lies with the editors. I know it is with AP. Gouras is OK. Hergenrider in Billings tries to be fair but Lutey is nothing but a partisan hack. The new Capitol Correspondent for the GF Tribune has definite Democrat leanings. Sometimes he overrides them sometimes not. The jury is still out on him.

What's her name, the old GF Capital correspondent, was great. Very unbiased writing but she went to work for Lee in Missoula. Lucky Missoula. AP should have picked her up for Helena. Assume I will have between 45 days and 4 years to regret these comments.

MH: How about being a little more specific and forthright in answering the rest of these questions!

Anyway, while we're on the press, tell us about your working relationship with the Billings Outpost and its editor, David Crisp. Crisp at Billings Blog and Montana Headlines are the totality of the political blogging scene here in this part of the state, so we take a keen interest in the success of the Outpost.

Brad Molnar: I have total respect for David as a person, for his intellect, his ethics, and his journalistic capacities.

MH: While he often describes himself as a conservative, it would seem that you and he would probably have slightly different conceptions of what that word exactly means.

Brad Molnar: I think that David is more like a European style "liberal/conservative" and I am perhaps "right" of that sniveling, teary eyed, limp wristed, panty-waist that wrote Genghis Khan’s prisoner policy.

Dave's and my differences are probably more specific – for example, where we might both agree that the Full Faith and Credit clause of the US Constitution would require all states to recognize a gay marriage from any state, I would argue that it should not because of the 10th Amendment but he would challenge my conservative credentials for making such an interpretative argument after standing on fundamentalist interpretation ideals for so long. Hope that is not too obtuse; and that Dave concurs.

MH: I imagine that we’ll find out, since Billings Blog and MH regularly engage in good-natured, yet substantive disputes.

Anyway, in spite of your differences, your column was a staple at the Outpost for some time.

Brad Molnar: It was very popular. Even in Wyoming. But the #1 comment I got was from Dem's telling me how surprised they were that they actually agreed with me. Dave paid me $30 per column and never tried to censor me. People still tell me they miss it; but alas.

And I miss writing it. Actually the column appeared in several papers off and on.

MH: Let's touch on a few specifics, starting with your public comments condemning the "right to work" plank inserted into the platform at the recent GOP convention. For the record, MH opposes such laws, too. What on earth happened up in Missoula that this plank got shoved into the party platform?

Brad Molnar: That is what happens when people do not pay attention. I was not on the floor when it took place and it is so cloaked that...well, it happened. True conservatives cannot accept government intervening in private sector contracts. Period.

MH: Agreed. How do PSC Commissioners affect the interests of labor union members, and what specifically have you done to look out for them while on the PSC?

Brad Molnar: As you know I was the first Republican in the history of Montana to represent Laurel in the legislature. Some said that the union influence made it impossible. I figured that railroaders did not have enough money to be liberal so talked about what we had in common (which is most things) and they kept me in till term limits.
I actually enjoy working with union guys. They are long on doing and short on pussy footing. But more directly, when the Judith Gap wind farm was being started they wanted to use out of state, non-union contractors. There are no in-state non-union contractors that could have built the project.

At the PSC level I made a motion to place in our docket that "Little Davis Bacon" would apply. Still not sure if it would have applied but I tried. Only got one vote, Raney's. The other D's took a powder.

MH: "Little Davis Bacon?"

Brad Molnar: State version of Federal "prevailing wage."

MH: Got it. So is it possible that Republicans, if they don't insist on blowing it, have the opportunity to win the support of traditional unions in Montana and elsewhere?

Brad Molnar: Of course. Under Jerry Driscoll the AFL-CIO dropped their participation in slime ball politics and focused on jobs for their people. Republicans tend to like that concept so it was symbiotic.

I have encountered a strong union sentiment to that in my PSC campaign. The trade unions pulled Tussing's endorsement to fight for me. (No resolution of that yet. Railroaders in Forsyth recognized me at a cafe, and walked up to offer their support).

Union workers are just individuals. Approach them as such and all things are possible. Don't attack their union. After all it is their union. Let them change its policies if they so desire. They vote on this stuff and their leaders. If you don't like it then join and vote.

How tough is this? It's called freedom. Not every fight requires war. I have noticed that Republicans that complain about union money and "bus loads" of volunteers have not donated a dime to local candidates or even a few afternoons stumping for a candidate.

If we are being out-organized, out-donated, and out-volunteered by a minority, why do we have the right to be critical of others for digging out their pocketbooks and getting off the couch?

MH: You’re preaching to the choir. No whining about unions allowed around here.

Next up is energy deregulation.

Brad Molnar: OH BOY!!!

MH: Well, you knew it was coming. Listening to your opposition, the evil state legislator Brad Molnar was single-handily responsible for deregulation, ensuing high energy prices, and general chaos, mayhem, and destruction. Did we leave anything out?

Brad Molnar: And I did it at the request of my corporate masters....

I was such a powerful legislator that Bob Gannon handpicked me. I didn't even have to show up at the hearings. If you have nothing to say, but an election to win...make it up.
Considering Tussing's history why would this surprise anyone?

MH: You’ve got a point there. But leaving aside the fact that this argument is so… so 1990, are we correct in suspecting that this is, just maybe, a bit of over-wrought election year shrillness?

Brad Molnar: Actually since they have decided that conservation efforts are the root of all evil they have pretty much left this cut and paste argument alone. But I'm sure we will see more of it.

It's really a stupid argument to raise. I'm the one that took my own time and money trying to sue to get it overturned. The D's on the Commission actually took a public vote to try and block the suit to keep the facts from coming to court.

The facts are clear. The PSC acted in collusion with MPC and PPL, and lied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to facilitate the sale of MPC generation assets as quickly as possible. They had to ignore a dozen brakes put on them by the legislature. The document they did this with is the first one under my pic on the PSC website.

Notice that they clearly state that the federal government does not allow states to deregulate –rather, only a Commission can request the state's generation be granted (EWG status.)

MH: Is there a "rest of the story?"

Brad Molnar: I was absolutely shocked when the Repub party did not even ask if they could help. I was shocked when the Demo party refused to even discuss how to reregulate and I was shocked when my fellow Commissioners ordered our legal staff to stand with the PPL attorney (He has donated to Tussing) and defend our deregulated status.

I never asked them to help or give money. Just stay out of the way. When Raney switched to oppose the reregulation effort he publicly stated it was for "partisan political considerations" from the bench. (last entry below my pic on the PSC website).

Not a word in the press. An unbiased study of the causations, the issue, the process are a gold mine on how to have a better future and not make the same mistakes again (state and federal) but alas, the issue is better political fodder. Geez, it even happened before Tussing moved to Montana to claim the title Most Failed Chief of Police/Mayor Billings Has Ever Known...but it seems to be the only thing he knows anything about.

MH: Let’s turn to some more dirty stuff. We've had an annoying commenter who periodically shows up on MH threads that deal either with you or Ron Tussing, saying that you were convicted of felony assault and battery.

Knowing how devoted Mayor Tussing's fawning admirers are, this sort of anonymous charge will probably continue to appear on various blogs and in the comments section of the Gazette during this campaign. Would you like to enlighten MH readers regarding your past felonious activities?

Brad Molnar: I would rather talk about my future felonious activities but my compatriots would prefer that I not. Such stories will probably continue to surface in the blogosphere but not on the editorial page because they would be actionable and could not muster a defense onnaconna taint true.

Actually a felony would preclude me from serving would it not?

MH: We tried making that logical point, along with pointing out the absence of anything in the press about it in the last election cycle, but some people are logically challenged.

Brad Molnar: Yes, I've had a few scrapes but never seen a judge... plainly self defense.

Sorry, but I can't match Tussing man-handling a reporter at his announcement for mayor when he dared ask why Tussing thought he could break the $160,000 settlement agreement. Apparently Tussing claimed self defense and said he was afraid the man was armed (he had a camera and is 1/3 the size of Tussing)

He has not assaulted anyone for carrying a camera before or since. Charges dropped. Had that been me I would still be in the clink. It amazes me when they know they are vulnerable yet go forward with their cowardly attacks. They don't even care if they hurt their own candidate. Very poorly thought out. Tussing should be avoiding these issues like sumac.

MH: Enough on that – if we continue, our readers will be forced to go take a shower and won’t be able to finish reading this most engaging interview.

Let’s talk some specifics of how the PSC works. How do PSC commissioners interact with the state legislature -- do you have an advisory role in the crafting of legislation?

Brad Molnar: We often craft our own. For example the PSC crafted the legislation to increase the USB (consumer tax) on natural gas by 300%. I was the only commissioner to oppose it.

MH: Do you testify before committees?

Brad Molnar: There is at least one Commissioner present for just about any piece of legislation that concerns what we do. Often just to answer technical questions. Just as often we offer pro and con positions as determined by our votes to support or oppose various pieces legislation.

For example Mood (the other R) and I have, for the past two sessions supported legislation to mandate that the PSC put together a "lowest cost possible" energy portfolio for utility customers with the option for "green power" aficionados to pay more for their chosen color of electrons.

The three Democrat commissioners have always stood with the enviro lobby and opposed same. All of us agreed that Gov. Schweitzer’s HB3 Special Session was patently illegal. Ergo none of the D's went to testify so they could not be questioned.

MH: Most interesting – we’ll have to pay attention in the next session to see who testifies and when.

Can you give examples of laws that have passed or nearly passed in the legislature in the last couple of sessions that were injurious to Montana citizens -- ones that a Republican legislature should overturn in the coming session?

Brad Molnar: Of course the aforementioned 300% increase in USB taxes (it was made far worse in committee at the request of MDU).

HB 25 has a moratorium on new coal-fired plants and created a new 3.5% tax on energy. If we repeal the Renewable Energy Portfolio (SB 415 Schweitzer/Tester) we could save about $50M immediately and millions more per year.

MH: How about any that need to be fought and kept from passing in the next legislative session?

Brad Molnar: Have been a little preoccupied with the next couple of months to worry about the next session but I assume that everyone agrees that the people of SE Mont would be represented very differently before legislative committees if Tussing should win.

MH: Fair enough, but still, is there legislation that you as a PSC Commissioner would like to see introduced and debated in the next legislative session?

Brad Molnar: Along with Rep Everett I tried to make fraud by, or before, the Commission the same as fraud anywhere (punishable up to two years after discovery) rather than you have thirty days after a ruling to file an action.

Only the three D's on the Commission and NWE opposed it in committee. It got clobbered in Committee and twice on the floor just to get a rehearing.

Listen to the tapes. Jergeson went berserk to kill it. Totally berserk. It was amazing. My jaw dropped. It would have allowed the Commission to be held responsible for the fraud and collusion they committed (and admitted to) when they asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to deregulate Montana Power and PPL.

Dems really hate the truth on this subject. I'll bet they quote Justice Nelson on this topic when they blog. Four justices refused to sign his dissent so they naturally quote him like he actually represented someone other than himself and his loathing for my conservative politics and our many years running feud over his judicial activism.

MH: Well, that spares us from having to ask for a comment or two about the role of the judiciary.

Next up, what kind of a grade would you give the current governor when it comes to the basic pocketbook issues of utility rates?

Brad Molnar: A+ for taking credit for the efforts of others.

D-minus for what he has done to consumers and the cost causers he has planted.

When I nailed him on imploring us to help low-income ratepayers with their increasing utility bills, when he promoted every cost causer in the legislature he said, "Yes, but my concern was for the jobs it creates."

Six months building wind mills and 20 years of higher rates. Make that an "F."

Same, exactly the same, answer from his transmission guy (Tuttle) at the Colstrip meeting of the interim ETIC when he was asked by Weisman (D-Great Falls) about the impact of the Montana Idaho Intertie.

So it is definitely Schweitzer’s policy to ignore costs if he gets a good headline about jobs. He is a very bright guy so I assume he knows he is guilty. It's just that the press prefers to not ask any follow up questions. Just quote the press agent...or they might not be invited to the next wine tasting.

Same thing when Barret told legislators to resist my amendment to HB 3 (special session) that would have saved consumers $38.85M on electricity bills (That reminds me. We should try that one again.)

ZERO dems voted for it. Why doesn't Schweitzer say what he has done to lower energy bills (not counting subsidizing the poor with other people’s money)...make that F-minus.

Republicans put price caps on the renewables in SB 415 2005 in House Committee. The amendments to pull off the consumer protections were called the governor’s Amendments...mainly because they were. Hell of a floor fight. Nothing in the press.

What is lower than F-minus? Add $10,000 to the war chest against me.

MH: Let us know if there is a spike in fundraising from Helena after this interview appears.
Let’s move on to a different intra-governmental relationship. How do PSC commissioners interact with the federal government?

Brad Molnar: Constantly. Directly via meetings with FERC and FCC top personnel at NARUC meetings and teleconferences and through regional stake holder issues (BPA) and transmission issues to the east. The commissioners you must work with are "no nonsense" professionals. They Googled me before I got there and judged if I had anything to add to the issue.

If not, you will just be a placeholder and cannot represent Montana. Very judgmental and very hard working group. They wouldn't let Tussing carry the donuts.

MH: As entertaining as it is to pull a visual of Mayor Tussing fetching donuts and coffee for the big boys, let’s hope we don’t have to deal with that. How has the change to Democratic control in the U.S. Congress affected things in the last couple of years?

Brad Molnar: It appears to me that the people voted to end the war. They still have the war but got stuck with a freshman congress controlled by a bunch of enviro zealots that simply refuse to have a holistic approach to energy and the environment.

I never thought that there would be a working majority in congress that was willing to perform great violence on families in the US via their utility bills (Cap and Trade/carbon tax) (a crafty tax hidden in utility bills that we will never get rid of.). I must now concede the possibility and work to mitigate the harm.

MH: Will the outcome of the Presidential race this year affect what you do at the PSC?

Brad Molnar: Both Obama and McCain have signaled that they will sign Cap and Trade. They are both willing to sell this country down the river for a sound bite.

Maybe Sarah can get McCain to moderate but I doubt it. Before it was Warner-Lieberman it was McCain-Lieberman. Either way we are screwed and, if I am in the majority, will write rules to mitigate the damage they will do.

If not in the majority I will use the position to inform consumers....actually a pretty good weapon....which is why I am so heavily targeted.

Add another $10,000 to Tussings war chest. I'm joking -- it will be independent expenditures.

MH: We’ll look forward to getting those mailers. Let's turn back to the specifics of energy for a final question. Is it safe to assume that we are in agreement that for now, drilling for more oil, building more oil refineries, and mining and using more coal are the irreducible minimum in relieving the burdensome cost of energy?

Brad Molnar: Those that argue against more drilling are just plain goofy....but may get elected president. It's a purist environmentalist argument..."No carbon at any cost -- but confuse the issue at every turn."

MH: And would we also be in agreement that the "all of the above" approach to attacking the energy supply issue on every front is essential to meeting our energy needs in the long run?

Brad Molnar: And the short run. Look how fast Bakken turned the argument. Even Tester is taking credit for it now.

MH: Moving on from that, what alternative energy source is the most promising for Montana -- and what makes it the most promising technology?

Brad Molnar: Wind, though not as a stand-alone generation. But wind with compressed air storage (still in R&D), tied to hydro, tied to EXISTING natural gas.

As a nation we have 205,000 megawatts of natural gas baseload. We would be generations tying it to wind and the results would be astoundingly good. Building gas generation to support wind....totally political and wildly anti-consumer.

And when you say "for Montana"...the only winners are those that sell wind power. That's why people have to be forced to buy it i.e. thru renewable energy portfolios etc and that's why they are forced to pay a $16 BILLION dollar subsidy. Montana is often called the Saudi Arabia of wind (so is No Dak. So Dak. Texas etc etc...it's what people say when they think a vacuous statement will work better than facts...usually on the 6 o'clock news).

Do the Arabs have to mandate the use of oil? Do Arabs subsidize its sales to help hide the true costs? If wind is mandated why subsidize it? The least complicated to authorize is "cogeneration" on a case by case basis as long as it is not a Qualified Facility. We have plenty of affordable/reliable energy in Montana. Why we are convincing ourselves that greater investment in subsidized/unreliable energy is a winning argument is beyond me. We have not and cannot curtail one megawatt of electricity from Colstrip since we built Judith Gap with its 135MW capacity. Know why?

MH: I think that is pretty obvious, and can be summarized in one word: demand -- which is only going up.

Brad Molnar: And you would be wrong. Have a nice day.

MH: That's a cliffhanger of a note to end on. We'll have to find the real answer to that one another time, then.

Commissioner Brad Molnar, thank you again for taking the time to talk with us here at Montana Headlines. Good luck in your campaign – and while we may regret this, you can have the last word.

Brad Molnar: Luck? I'm up against a discredited cop, that became a discredited mayor, that admits he would be a know-nothing Commissioner. How tough could it be.....INCOMING!!!!