After several days on the fire lines and, more pertinently for this posting, driving around San Diego County from assignment to assignment or just scouting for fire news in general, I can tell you something that will be shocking. Especially if you've been watching national network news.
Sit down and take a deep breath. Exhale. Okay.
San Diego is still here.
Seriously!
So, for that matter, are Escondido and Ramona and Poway and Fallbrook and a lot of other towns you may have been hearing about this week.
Coverage of the wildfires this week from the national perspective has been pretty instructive and can be applied to other topics. The networks did not make a mountain out of a molehill. Our fires are absolutely a mountain of a story. However, they've managed to turn Mt. Whitney into Mt. Everest.
I spent today in Poway and the city of San Diego section of Rancho Bernardo. Many homes were destroyed. Many, many, many more were saved. In the areas where the fires passed through, my observation was that the ratio of homes saved to homes lost was conservatively 50-to-1. You probably can't tell that when the network news locates its programs at the end of a completely destroyed cul-de-sac.
The story is the same throughout Southern California. This is a huge place. The fires affected a wide area, but San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties are far wider. If you're planning to come here to attend a convention, visit for a long weekend or see relatives, give it a week or so because the hotels are filled with evacuees. But the vast majority went home today to intact homes. Our attractions like the San Diego Zoo, SeaWorld and The Wild Animal Park -- which was right in the path of the flames -- are still there.
That might be news to you if you're not from around here, and the breathless national news-types are to blame. A colleague of mine told me that Katie Couric of CBS News Tuesday walked around Qualcomm Stadium -- the city's main evacuation center -- before her newscast and did not make eye contact with anyone. There's a way to boost ratings.
When you watch national network news in the future and see stories on politics, Iraq, the economy or other major news, ask yourself whether they are making big mountains out of small mountains. Because they might be.
---
A lot of what you read about how San Diego is handling the situation, when compared to Hurricane Katrina, is true. Evacuees are behaving themselves responsibly, shelter conditions are good and volunteers by the thousands have donated time, money or goods. Yet even those comparisons are overblown by the national media, because New Orleans was more or less wiped from the map and it was the less-fortunate who were affected -- with very few people left to help them. Here, most of the city is intact and, for the 500,000-plus who evacuated, another 2 million were available to assist.
The major and comparable differences between New Orleans and San Diego are leadership and civic pride. Putting San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders against Ray Nagin of New Orleans would be cruel. So would a matchup of the Governator vs. Kathleen Blanco. From police chief to police officer, from fire chief to fire fighter, things are better here. And we do have civic pride, though a more laid-back sort. This response is what we expect from ourselves. San Diego has been let down by previous mayors and city councilmembers, along with city management, but they've been run out of town. In New Orleans, the poor leaders were left in place for years and years, and were in place when Hurricane Katrina hit. The differences between them this week were clear.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Time Ripe For Independent Candidate?
Every so often, a politician decides to make a Quixotic run for president as a relatively late-entry independent candidate, fueled by delusions of holier-than-thou grandeur (Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, who was technically a third-party candidate), more-intelligent-than-thou (John Anderson in 1980), or ideologically purer-than-thou (Ralph Nader in 2000 and 2004).
The result from those examples was that the candidate farthest away from the independent or third-party entrant won the election, since he pulled votes from the one whose beliefs were closer to his. That's why many Republicans hate Perot, a successful businessman and military supporter, and why many Democrats despise Nader, a champion of consumer's rights.
This ridiculously early campaign season, however, could be different. The timing might be right for someone to get into the race -- probably as an independent rather than a third party -- and make a bid to be the first president without a political party behind him. But he, or she, would have plenty of supporters around the country.
First, let's look at some facts. This week, a Zogby/Reuters poll found that just 11 percent of Americans supported the Democrat-led Congress, while only 24 percent were happy with President Bush. While both numbers reflect significantly lower support than other poll results, it's clear that we are not happy with our governmental leaders.
But there's more. We are showing similar levels of disappointment in a number of cultural areas as well. Television ratings released today show major drops in prime-time viewership, even when DVR playbacks are factored in. Established shows are still doing well, but the viewing public does not trust Hollywood to put out new worthwhile entertainment, so the new programs are struggling.
The National League Championship Series featured one of the best stories in baseball in recent years: the nearly unbeatable Colorado Rockies, against the young and exciting Arizona Diamondbacks. Viewership was the lowest in years.
Newspapers are struggling across the country. While some blockbuster movies still do very well at the box office, those that are less so are money-losers.
Bottom-line? We're not just apathetic about politics and culture anymore. We're fiercely apathetic.
That's a rare combination of feelings that someone ought to be able to capture. But it's not going to be a Republican who can do so, nor a Democrat. The overwhelming majority of the public sees the GOP as incompetent and would rather suffer from psoriasis than elect someone else from George Bush's party to the White House. The Democrats are on the wrong side of too many issues and have disappointed too many people with their failure to capitalize on their 2006 Congressional victories by governing responsibly.
Who then? I unfortunately can't name anyone specific. He or she will nominally belong to one of the major party, odds are, but can't be linked too closely to that party or the public will reject him. He or she needs to have a traditional viewpoint as opposed to stridently conservative or liberal. The person will need to speak clearly on the war and national security needs, be willing to hold the line on taxes and spending, protect our health care expenses for the poor and those hit by catastrophic expenses, be willing to solve illegal immigration and entitlement reform, and attack cultural issues such as drug abuse and gang violence.
The person most mentioned as an independent candidate is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but he is considered to be a too-liberal money man too close to the political establishment that got us into trouble in the first place.
The tragedy is that there is someone who could have played the role of the presidential candidate to the rescue, but he entered when everyone else did and thereby diminished himself and his candidacy. Mitt Romney. If he'd stayed out of the race, he could have entered as an independent early next year as the savior of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games (which were worse off than the United States is in 2007 by a long shot) and the moderate Republican governor of a liberal northeast state.
Unfortunately, he entered the race already, has run a mediocre campaign and can't fill this role.
I will name someone who can fill a vice-presidential spot on an independent ticket, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman. The left likes him for his stands on most issues. The right likes him for his support of the war on terror. But Lieberman is not a presidential kind of guy. Someone else will need to step forward and offer to clean up the Washington, D.C. cesspool.
The result from those examples was that the candidate farthest away from the independent or third-party entrant won the election, since he pulled votes from the one whose beliefs were closer to his. That's why many Republicans hate Perot, a successful businessman and military supporter, and why many Democrats despise Nader, a champion of consumer's rights.
This ridiculously early campaign season, however, could be different. The timing might be right for someone to get into the race -- probably as an independent rather than a third party -- and make a bid to be the first president without a political party behind him. But he, or she, would have plenty of supporters around the country.
First, let's look at some facts. This week, a Zogby/Reuters poll found that just 11 percent of Americans supported the Democrat-led Congress, while only 24 percent were happy with President Bush. While both numbers reflect significantly lower support than other poll results, it's clear that we are not happy with our governmental leaders.
But there's more. We are showing similar levels of disappointment in a number of cultural areas as well. Television ratings released today show major drops in prime-time viewership, even when DVR playbacks are factored in. Established shows are still doing well, but the viewing public does not trust Hollywood to put out new worthwhile entertainment, so the new programs are struggling.
The National League Championship Series featured one of the best stories in baseball in recent years: the nearly unbeatable Colorado Rockies, against the young and exciting Arizona Diamondbacks. Viewership was the lowest in years.
Newspapers are struggling across the country. While some blockbuster movies still do very well at the box office, those that are less so are money-losers.
Bottom-line? We're not just apathetic about politics and culture anymore. We're fiercely apathetic.
That's a rare combination of feelings that someone ought to be able to capture. But it's not going to be a Republican who can do so, nor a Democrat. The overwhelming majority of the public sees the GOP as incompetent and would rather suffer from psoriasis than elect someone else from George Bush's party to the White House. The Democrats are on the wrong side of too many issues and have disappointed too many people with their failure to capitalize on their 2006 Congressional victories by governing responsibly.
Who then? I unfortunately can't name anyone specific. He or she will nominally belong to one of the major party, odds are, but can't be linked too closely to that party or the public will reject him. He or she needs to have a traditional viewpoint as opposed to stridently conservative or liberal. The person will need to speak clearly on the war and national security needs, be willing to hold the line on taxes and spending, protect our health care expenses for the poor and those hit by catastrophic expenses, be willing to solve illegal immigration and entitlement reform, and attack cultural issues such as drug abuse and gang violence.
The person most mentioned as an independent candidate is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but he is considered to be a too-liberal money man too close to the political establishment that got us into trouble in the first place.
The tragedy is that there is someone who could have played the role of the presidential candidate to the rescue, but he entered when everyone else did and thereby diminished himself and his candidacy. Mitt Romney. If he'd stayed out of the race, he could have entered as an independent early next year as the savior of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games (which were worse off than the United States is in 2007 by a long shot) and the moderate Republican governor of a liberal northeast state.
Unfortunately, he entered the race already, has run a mediocre campaign and can't fill this role.
I will name someone who can fill a vice-presidential spot on an independent ticket, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman. The left likes him for his stands on most issues. The right likes him for his support of the war on terror. But Lieberman is not a presidential kind of guy. Someone else will need to step forward and offer to clean up the Washington, D.C. cesspool.
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