Month: April 2018

PeopleforPence.com (website coming) does not oppose Tweety because of the policies of the Trump administration.  We want to replace Tweety with his Vice President, because we want those policies continued, without all the drama.

Tweety is temperamentally unfit for the Presidency.  Pence would be another Reagan or Eisenhower, in his deportment in office.  To be a man, you have to act like a man, and comport yourself as a man does.  It’s the same with the Presidency.  Act like a President, comport yourself as a President.  That’s Pence to a T, and that’s why we want him as our Presidential replacement.

It would be absolutely ruinous to this country to impeach Tweety, or remove him from office under the 25th Amendment.  He was elected fair and square, and should be allowed to serve out his term.  We just don’t want him as the next nominee of the Republican Party, and we don’t want him reelected.

Trump will have been a one term wonder, exceeding in historic significance all but a few Presidents.  He has singlehandedly revolutionized American trade policy, restored our credibility as a great power, and launched us on the road to energy dominance.  Not bad for one term.  Only James K. Polk did better than that.

I badly underestimated Trump before he took office.  I have watched in amazement at his accomplishments, at the EPA, at Interior, at State.  The list goes on.

Trump’s tax bill will be his greatest triumph.  It was a policy and political masterpiece.  Some times I shake my head in disbelief.  Tweety did that?  When Tweety is good, Tweety can be very good indeed.

A second term would lower him in the eyes of history.  Reagan would have been better off if he quit after one term, but the Cold War was still going in 1984, and winning that war took more than four years.  But from 1987 on, Reagan wasn’t himself.  He made serious mistakes, like Iran-Contra.  And, of course, sadly, his mind was going.

Tweety loves the life lives in his gilded Manhattan cage.  Let him enjoy what time on earth he has left.  He has done enough.  In one term, he will have more good for this country than all but a few men.  That’s something.  That’s a legacy.  That’s what the name Trump will signify in American history.

But, like almost all of the rest of us, he has a fatal flaw  —  his temperament.  That’s the way he was born, and he can’t change.  With Trump what you see is what you get, and at the age he and I are, you don’t change.

I don’t want to have to work on PeopleforPence.  I have a lot of other things I can do.  I want Trump to pass the torch, and I sincerely hope and pray that he does.

Our founding father, George Washington, stunned the world when he walked away from power when the war was over.  He was that big of a man, and he was universally recognized as a great man.  Some times walking away,  somehow, increases your stature.  And so it would be for Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States.

If you plan on going after the bear, be prepared.  He’ll turn on you.  Be ready to be attacked yourself.  This isn’t a sport for the weak of heart.

That’s the way it is with big boy politics, like PeopleforPence.com.  We’re trying to take out a sitting President, who is a wealthy and vindictive man.  Be prepared to be sued, to be slandered, and be ready for economic retaliation against your way of earning a living.  If you’re in any way vulnerable, you’re going to get hit yourself.

But if you’re bullet proof, as I was in Alaska, you’ve got nothing to worry about.  You will have made an enemy for life,  but that’s just a cost of doing business.  In turn, I pissed off U. S. Senator Mike Gravel, U. S. Senator Ted Stevens, former Governor Wally Hickel, Governor Bill Sheffield and Supreme Court Justice Jay Rabinowitz, along with his colleagues.  I can’t say they didn’t find ways to retaliate against me.  They did, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle.  I wasn’t afraid of anybody, just like my Uncle Fritz.

In addition to balls, you have to have the truth.  As long as what you’re saying is true, or a reasonable person could believe it to be true,  nobody can touch you, because you’re an American, and under the First Amendment you’re free to say what you want.

In the most important election in Alaska history, the Republican primary of 1978, I volunteered to work for incumbent Republican Jay Hammond, the finest man I ever met.  In that campaign I learned big boy politics from two masters, Hammond’s campaign manager, Bill McConkey, and his political consultant from Chicago, Bob Clarke.

I didn’t really know anything about Hammond, and I had no idea how important this election was.  I just wanted to get into politics, and my Uncle Fritz had told me that Hickel had no business being Governor.  He didn’t respect the Native people of Alaska, didn’t think they were capable of handling their own money.  I was aware enough to know that either Hammond or Hickel was going to be Governor, so working for Hammond was an easy decision.

Hickel was an egomaniac, among other things.  As a former Governor and Interior Secretary, with enormous personal wealth, if he could win the governorship again it could be a springboard  back into national politics.  Someone was going to win the Republican nomination to run against President Carter in 1980.  When Wally Hickel looked in the mirror, he thought, why not me?  He was a nut.

There was no way to prove that, of course.  It was reading his mind, and he denied it.  But a lot of people in Alaska thought it was true.  But nobody would, or could, say it.  The Hammond campaign couldn’t make such an unprovable accusation.  So they asked me to do it, and I did.

It worked, just as Bill and Bob thought it would.  The Anchorage Daily News hated Hickel, and they made a big story about my accusation.  I was the chair of a mythical volunteer group, Hands for Hammond, and my charge had some traction.

Everyone knew Hickel had a vicious temper, and when he was asked about the story in the Daily News he blew up.  He was so pissed off that he said some things he shouldn’t have, and it cost him.

Ten days later Hammond won by 98 votes.  I was 33 years old, and an Alaska resident for only four years, but now I had a name, and a reputation.  If you’ve got enough balls, and brains, you don’t need big bucks.

You’re an American, and you can say anything you want.  Speak the truth, consequences be damned.  It’s a great country.

And if you’re going after the bear, it’s best to go with an old pro.  That’s me.

Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) was one of the first things Bill McConkey taught me when I joined the reelection campaign of Republican Gov. Jay Hammond in 1978.  Bill was a state employee, so he couldn’t be Hammond’s official campaign manager.  He just did the things that campaign managers do.

When I signed on as a volunteer he asked me to find a titular campaign manager in Anchorage who would front for the campaign.  I got my friend Eric Sanders to do it.  He was just starting the practice of law as an assistant public defender, so he had no reason not to.

I remember tracking him down in the law library and offering him the job.  He had no political experience, and had just moved to the state after law school.  But he was bright enough.  All he had to do was what Bill and Hammond’s Chief of Staff, Kent Dawson, told him to do.  It turned out Hammond really liked Eric, and made him a Superior Court Judge.

I think “P for P” is pretty simple.   I just own the domain name for now.  The web site will come later.

In 1983 Bill was running House Speaker Joe Hayes’ campaign for Mayor of Anchorage.  In Alaska the mayor of Anchorage is a political heavyweight, and this was just a warm-up  for a run for Governor by Joe in 1986.   The name Bill chose for the campaign, Everybody for Joe Hayes, was awful.  What are we, lab rats?  Everybody for Joe Hayes?  So if you’re not for him, you’re not somebody?

Joe was a civil engineer, and a really nice guy, but he was a terrible politician.  I have yet to meet an engineer who had any political sense whatsoever.   Silicon Valley is full of engineers, like Zuckerberg, and they’re all brain dead, politically.

In 1983, as the Republican Speaker of the House, Joe was the consensus pick for the 1986 Republican nomination against incumbent Democrat Bill Sheffield.  But after spending a million dollars of his own money, he came in fourth, with 5% of the vote.

Engineers are all just terrible politicians.  He lost that race for Mayor in 1983, and never recovered politically.  It wasn’t Bill’s fault.  As a politician, Joe stank.  And Everybody was not for Joe Hayes because everybody knew the Mayor’s office was just a stepping stone to the Governor’s Mansion.

All this made Bill defensive, and led to his downfall.  He was always a bit of a glory hound, and he agreed to appear on a panel of political consultants at some event.  It was pretty informal, and someone asked Bill if he’d lie to get his client elected.

Bill looked at the guy like he was an idiot, and said of course he’d lie.  That was what campaign managers did.  Which is true, but you’re not supposed to say that.

The liberal media in Anchorage hated Bill, and they piled on him after he said that, in public.  His career as a political consultant in Alaska was over.  In politics, you have to be careful with the truth.

And the truth is, Trump is the greatest American politician of modern times.  But he thinks he knows everything, and he’s wrong.  Nobody knows everything.  And what Trump probably doesn’t know is that he’s a one term President.

People for Pence is going to prove that.  Stay tuned.

Tweety made his first appearance in 1942’s A Tale of Two Kitties, with cats named Babbit and Catstello.  He was an aggressive little bastard, who enjoyed kicking his opponents when they were down.  One of his signature lines was, “Aw, the poor kitty cat!  He faw down and go (in a tough, loud, masculine voice) BOOM!!”, and then grinning mischievously.

Tweety Bird is now my moniker for Trump, similar to his terms, “Lyin’ Ted” and “Li’l Marco”.  And my goal is to send Trump back to his cage in Manhattan where he belongs.  This fits nicely with Tweety’s theme song:

I’m a tweet wittow biwd in a gilded cage

Tweet’th my name but I don’t know my age

I don’t have to wuwy, and dat is dat

I’m tafe in hewe fwom dat ol’ putty tat.

What sent me over the edge were the latest tweets.  I agree entirely with the sentiments Trump expressed.  I don’t disagree with Trump on any substantive issue, other than Article V, which he has vigorously condemned.  I just can’t take his utter lack of Presidential temperament.  It’s just too much.

In my lifetime, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Ford, Reagan and Bush 1 all had  proper presidential temperament.  FDR was, apparently, a man of excellent temperament.  Some one (Walter Lippman, maybe?) said of Franklin Roosevelt, “He had a mediocre mind, but world class temperament.”  Trump has a brilliant mind, and the temperament of Dennis the Menace.

After the Hollywood Access tapes came out, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him, so I wrote in Pence for President.  And now it’s time to start a Pence for President campaign.  All I need is a web site.  I hope to get one up soon.

After I had my political epiphany in October of 2013 I attended ALEC’s December meeting in D. C.  I talked my old buddy from Wrangell, Senator Robin Taylor, into coming with me.  The highlights of the program were speeches by Ted Cruz and Mike Pence.

Cruz was trying to play a part which didn’t suit him, and for which he had no natural ability.  Watching him orate was like watching someone with absolutely no sense of rhythm trying to dance.

Pence was a star.  I liked everything about him, everything.  And the fact that he spent the first third of his speech exhorting the state legislators to back Article V, and the Balanced Budget Amendment,  was gravy.  I was ready to go to work for this guy.  I was Jack Kemp’s Alaska Chair in 1988, and hadn’t backed a candidate since.  This could be fun.

But Pence couldn’t raise any money, and he didn’t run.  The next time I saw him was at a rally in Carson City.  I got a chance to ask him a question from the audience, and I said, “Governor, I saw you at an ALEC meeting in Washington a few years ago, and you talked about the importance of Article V, and the Balanced Budget Amendment.  Is there any chance to could bring this subject up with your running mate?”

He hadn’t wanted to call on me.  I was dressed in khakis and a blue dress shirt, but I have a big white head of hair that captures people’s eyes, and attracts their attention.  He saw me next to one of the microphones, but passed over me.  But the lady in charge of the microphone, a very nice woman from the local Republican party, waved at him, and handed me the mike.  I’d been sitting there waiting for him, as close to one of the microphones as I could get, for over two hours.   I told her a little about myself, and we talked a little bit.

So Pence, I think, was relieved that I wasn’t some kind of nut.  His reaction was picture perfect.  His pitch, his tone, his demeanor, all were absolutely just right.  I’m a careful observer of these things, and have been for a long time.  I haven’t seen anyone as smooth since Jack Kennedy.

He smiled nicely at me, turned to the larger crowd and explained that ALEC was a conservative legislator’s organization, and then said a few positive words about Article V.  Then he said it would have to come from the states, and moved on to the next question

This was the first I’d seen of him in three years, and I was even more impressed than I was at first.  This is a man who should be President.

Pence will, of course, disavow all of this, and insist that not a dime be raised in his name.  He may even make the Sherman Pledge “I will not run if nominated, and will not serve as elected.”  It doesn’t matter.  We’re drafting him, and he can’t stop us.

I talked to my old friend Senator Dave Donley of Anchorage on the phone today.  You may have seen him at the Republican National Convention.  He was the old guy from Alaska running up to Ryan and demanding a vote.  It put a stop to the convention for  about fifteen  minutes while they straightened things out.

The Hickel/Stevens machine beat me, in that I was never elected to the United States Senate.  But I got in a few licks of my own.  The most important was the defeat of the subsistence amendment, Ted Stevens’ pet project.

The amendment was a POS, but Stevens didn’t care.  This was an easy way to win Native support, and in Alaska the Natives, especially the Eskimo, have a lot of money.  He bribed or threatened enough Republican State Senators to get it through the Senate, but it had to get 2/3 in the House, and I had 16 votes out of forty.  They’d have to pick off three of my people to get there.  They didn’t get any, and we all held the line.

I wasn’t counting on any Democrat votes, but I got one, from Dave Donley, a blue dog Democrat at the time.  He took a lot grief for that, but he didn’t care.  He was a stand up guy.  And still is.

 

 

 

Here’s a link to an absolute Must Read from Erick Erickson.