Five More Ways to Honor the Memory of Ted Kennedy

As you may have heard, our Secretary of Health & Human Services (and presumably our Administration) believes that Congress should honor the memory of Sen. Kennedy by taking over one-sixth of the American economy:

“Hopefully, at every step of the way, people will ask themselves: ‘What would Teddy do?’ and move it forward,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

“If people are truly interested in honoring his legacy,” she added, “the best possible legacy is to pass health reform this year and get President Obama a bill he can sign.”

What a gracious gesture!  But passing health care reform may not be enough to fully capture Ted Kennedy’s impact on American government.  Thus, I propose five more things that one can do to honor the memory of the liberal Lion of the Senate:

1.  Consummate a Manchurian Candidacy.  Since Kennedy thought it appropriate to enlist the Soviet Union’s assistance for his own presidential aspirations in exchange for help in tearing down the Reagan Administration from within, it’s only fitting that some enterprising pol promise Iran some nuclear appeasement in exchange for assistance in winning office.

2.  Make a slanderous, incendiary, public address against someone you don’t care for. It was good enough for Robert Bork, so why not for your personal enemy?  Preferably, your scurrilous accusations should have an impact on his career.

3.  Call something you dislike its originator’s “Vietnam.” Kennedy, who came of age during and earned his political stripes opposing his brother’s war in Vietnam, kept trying to relive those golden days by declaring subsequent missions he opposed to be “Vietnams.”  Iraq was “George Bush’s Vietnam,” and Northern Ireland was “Britain’s Vietnam.”  Try it yourself!  Windows Vista is “Microsoft’s Vietnam.”  Your over-mayonnaised sandwich is “the kitchen’s Vietnam.”  Your daughter’s unkempt playroom is “Julie’s Vietnam.”  You’ll find that it’s incredibly satisfying, it requires almost no effort or accuracy, and the media will be remarkably receptive.

4.  Manipulate a neutral rule to benefit your political party. Senator Kennedy has been hailed as a master of the legislative process and a key broker of bipartisan compromise.  That may be true, but he was at his best when he was fixing the game in his team’s favor.  Need an example?  On the eve of what he believed to be his friend John Kerry’s election to the presidency, he got the Massachusetts legislature to change the rule allowing a governor to select an interim Senator to one requiring a special election.  The governor at the time was Mitt Romney, a Republican; an election would have invariably resulted in a Democratic Senator.  When he was on his deathbed, however, Kennedy asked the legislature to switch it back — to make sure that his fellow Democrats in Washington had a 60th vote to pass health reform (the governor was now a Democrat).  How can you top that kind of cynical mendacity?  Some recommendations include censoring the mailings of your political opponents; effectively banning the primary media outlet of the opposition; or fixing the Census to overcount your most reliable voters (and undercount the terminally-misguided).

5.  Convince someone of your approach, then blame them when it fails. In 2001, all the political world hailed President Bush and Senator Kennedy’s joint effort on the No Child Left Behind Act.  Billions more for education; accountability for schools; new programs for teachers – it was a revolution in federal education policy, and it was largely the realization of Kennedy’s long-held wish list for education reform.  But once parents and teachers started to complain about the high-stakes tests, the absurd assumptions, the unfunded mandates, the byzantine rules, and the total lack of local control, Kennedy blamed the Bush Administration for “poor administration” of the program and a failure to fund it.  No matter that his Congress holds the purse-strings, or that the program was a fairly faithful implementation of his vision – if a government program doesn’t work, it’s a Republican’s fault or it needs more money.  Kennedy didn’t even do a good job of shifting blame for his mistake – I’m sure you can do better.

So ask yourself, “What would Teddy do?,” and get to work!  If the answer doesn’t make you a favorite of the Washington elite, it might just get you a disease, a DUI, or a trillion-dollar deficit.  Any others to add to the list?

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The Racist Slur

CNN’s Jack Cafferty is the latest media personality to state without equivocation that ONLY racism can explain the closeness of the presidential election:

The differences between Barack Obama and John McCain couldn’t be more well-defined. Obama wants to change Washington. McCain is a part of Washington and a part of the Bush legacy. Yet the polls remain close. Doesn’t make sense…unless it’s race.

Of course, Mr. Cafferty ignores the fact that, four years ago, we had a contest between two candidates whose differences were arguably more “well-defined.”  Bush was actually on the ballot, and Kerry was running against him as an incumbent.  The Iraq war was far less obviously a success then than it is now .  And both men were, of course, white – meaning that “race” wasn’t a factor.

What was the state of the race on September 17, 2004?

In a new Gallup Poll, conducted Sept. 13-15, President George W. Bush leads Democratic candidate John Kerry by 55% to 42% among likely voters, and by 52% to 44% among registered voters. These figures represent a significant improvement for Bush since just before the beginning of the Republican National Convention.

Compare that to today’s Gallup tracking poll, which has Obama leading McCain 47% to 45% among registered voters.

That’s right — year over year, Bush outpolls McCain.   So, despite the fact that McCain has supposedly painted Obama as the “angry black man,” and “[t]he angry black man . . . doesn’t have broad appeal in White America,” the Angry Black Man is outperforming the Windsurfing White Man by three points at this stage in the race.  And he’s so undermined by prejudice that he’s been able to convince seven percent of 2004’s Republican-leaning voters not to support this year’s GOP candidate. In fact, Americans are such racists that 62% of them approved of Barack Obama in March 2008.  Of course, Democrats like Kathleen Sibelius tell us that “[a]ll the code language, all that doesn’t show up in the polls” — because…why?  Are there verbal racist time bombs that don’t change people’s attitudes today, but magically turn them into virulent bigots on election day?  And what are these code words, and who is saying them?

I guess that means 38% of us are racists, since there is no other justifiable reason to oppose a man who wants to raise taxes, spend unprecedented sums on new government programs, declare failure in Iraq, negotiate with Iran, invade Pakistan, leave Georgia’s security to the U.N., nationalize health care, eliminate democratic union elections, indict Bush Administration officials, close free trade, open our borders, censor talk radio, give terrorists access to US courts, and who changes his positions on issues so regularly as to call into question everything I just typed.

Utterly inexplicable without racism, I tell you.

Update: Crush Liberalism gives his thoughts on this topic here, and Jim Geraghty highlights other gems.

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