Journalism 101: Sometimes what doesn't happen is news...

By Jim Heffernan

With both major political parties’ national conventions out of the way, and Labor Day consigned to history, the 2012 presidential campaign pitting President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is in the “home stretch,” ending on election day, Nov. 6.

So for a couple of months we will see almost nothing but politics on newscasts, in the papers and online. I enjoy it, although it’s a little nerve-wracking because -- at least at this writing -- the polls all say it’s close. I’m a strong supporter of one of them; you can guess which.

Barry Goldwater

In my lengthy newspaper career, I only got close to a national campaign once, and it was a long, long time ago. I was still a fledgling reporter in 1964 when Barry Goldwater, the Republican, faced off against incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. 

The only national attention Duluth got in that presidential campaign came from the Republican side. Goldwater’s running mate, William E. Miller, a congressman from New York, made a fleeting trip to Duluth, spoke briefly to the media and hardly anyone else at UMD (on the lawn outside Kirby Student Center) and high-tailed it out of here, all on a sunny October day.

In those days, as with today, the designated candidate for vice president had a large retinue following him around the country, including representatives of major media organizations, although none of the big names. I was assigned to be part of the Duluth press corps covering this major political event.

So, I got to ride on the press bus with all of the national correspondents, who, it seemed to me, were a particularly unfriendly bunch. They could spot a hick reporter (like me) from the sticks (Duluth) from a block away and simply ignored us. Didn’t even look at us.

The national press people seemed perpetually bored with their assignment, and didn’t smile at all. I suppose they wanted to be assigned to cover one of the presidential candidates, and felt that it was beneath their talents and dignity to be chasing a vice presidential hopeful around. Maybe they were hung over. Maybe all of the foregoing.

That was the year, of course, when Minnesota’s own Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey was Lyndon Johnson’s running mate, but I don’t recall him coming to Duluth during the campaign. He might have. I did cover him several other times during his lengthy career.

William E. Miller

But back to William E. Miller, a man of average build, pleasant features and ultra-conservative political credentials, just like Barry “Extremism in Defense of Liberty is No Vice” Goldwater. (I need hardly point out that they lost the election.) 

It so happened that the very week of Miller’s Duluth visit, a huge scandal had erupted in Washington. A top aide to President Johnson, Walter Jenkins, was arrested at a YMCA in Washington, D.C., after being discovered engaged in a homosexual act. Believe me, in 1964 such charges were less common than they are today, and considered more grievous.

When Miller spoke in Duluth, he didn’t mention the Jenkins scandal. I don’t recall what he said. I took my notes and rushed back to the newspaper and wrote my story, turning it over to a city editor.

The city editor scanned it quickly and asked me if Miller had mentioned the Walter Jenkins scandal. I said he hadn’t, and, therefore, there was no mention of it in my story.

He responded by cranking a fresh sheet of copy paper into his own typewriter – always a dreaded sight to a reporter – and wrote a new top to my story. It went something like this:

“Republican vice presidential candidate William E. Miller avoided the Walter Jenkins sex scandal today in a whirlwind campaign visit to Duluth.” And after a couple more sentences, it picked up on my story with a “meanwhile” -- one of the handiest words in all journalism.

I learned a lot from that city editor, but that lesson stands out: Tell what didn’t happen. Sometimes that’s news too.

Here's news for Bachmann: America not missing...

By Jim Heffernan

Before Michele Bachmann got to the point in her withdrawal speech in which she said she would “step aside” from her presidential campaign after finishing dead last in the Iowa Republican caucus, she repeated many of the themes she and other GOP hopefuls have been sounding throughout their campaigns:

They keep saying they want to “take back the country.”

I didn’t know the country had gone anywhere.

The United States (“of America,” as the politicians all add in case there was any confusion about which United States they might mean) seems pretty much the same to me as it has for most of my lifetime, a not inconsiderable period of time, it turns out.

Nevertheless, every time I hear Bachmann and Willard “Mitt” Romney and Republican also-rans say they want to take back the country, I wonder what they could possibly mean. I look out the window, and there it still is – the United States (of America) looking pretty much the way it has looked for the last half century-plus that I have been paying attention.

Still, when I hear them say these things about our country, I worry that I have somehow missed the theft of an entire nation and didn’t even notice. I wonder if I had Rip Van Winkled for a few decades and suddenly awakened to find that my country had been taken away.

So I jump in my car and drive around, looking for signs that my country had disappeared, and find that at least one small portion of the country, Duluth, Minnesota, is still there pretty much as I have always known it. There are cosmetic changes, of course, but there it is, a shining city on a hill, as President Reagan might have described it. And atop flagpoles, there they still are, the stars and stripes, forever waving in the wind.

I have a hunch the rest of the country is still out there, too.

So, I wonder what these Republican presidential aspirants and, one assumes, their supporters, mean when they say they want to take back the country. I hate to sound too cynical, but could it be that they mean they merely want to take back the presidency? Could that be it?

If that’s what they mean, they should say so. I sense that many tea-drinking Americans simply don’t accept President Barack Obama as a bona fide president like all of the white, male presidents of the past. Somehow, they can’t see him as as strong a commander in chief of the armed forces as past presidents, especially some of the great White House warriors like Reagan, who spent World War II in uniform on the 20^th Century Fox lot in Hollywood making training films, or George W. Bush, our immediate past president, who flew for the Texas National Guard…over Texas, but not Vietnam.

It’s getting hard to find presidential candidates of either political party who have actually served in the armed forces, but Bush fils has probably taken care of that when vets of the wars he started begin to seek political office.

Finally, Michele Bachmann accuses Obama of being a “socialist” because he wants everyone in America (that’d be the United States that has gone somewhere and needs to be taken back) to have access to affordable health care.

That will be quite a change for America – health coverage for everyone, like in Canada and most of “old” Europe. I’d say bring it on, but somebody already said that. In a different context, of course.

Right Wing can't prove Obama doesn't love America...

Here's my "letter to the editor appearing in today's (August 30) Duluth News Tribune. Guess it says it all....

"Reader's View:  Right Wing can't prove  Obama doesn't love America.

Letter writers from the right wing are never more amusing than when they accuse President Obama of not loving America.

Take the Aug. 15 letter, “Mothers believe in Palin’s message,” which extolled the virtues of Sarah Palin, the failed Republican vice presidential candidate, resigned governor of Alaska and Fox News commentator.

“Most of all, she (Palin) loves our country, something woefully lacking in the present president,” the letter writer stated. Those making such charges (and also those challenging his very citizenship) should be more specific about just what Obama does to demonstrate that he does not love our country. Like, name one thing.

I can name several things he has done to demonstrate his great love for our country. To be specific, he loves our country so much he wants every American to have health coverage assured; he pushed for legislation that very likely averted a deeper recession or even a depression; he spearheaded credit card consumer protection. The list is long.

People might, and will, differ over the president’s policies or choices for Supreme Court justices, but to propagate the myth that he somehow hates (the opposite of love in this case) America is ridiculous and betrays woeful lack of understanding in those who make such a charge without offering one shred of evidence backing it up.

While I might not agree with Palin’s politics, I don’t doubt for a moment she, too, loves America, especially its currency."

Jim Heffernan

Disaster feared as worldwide Velcro failure spreads

Senior citizens rendered barefoot
“These people haven’t tied shoes with laces since the 20th century,” the AARP spokesman said. 
By Jim Heffernan

Here’s news you won’t find anyplace else…

In the wake of what is shaping up as the worst oil spill in U.S. history, it was learned yesterday that the government is deeply concerned about another threat that could turn the nation into turmoil: Velcro is starting to fail.

The handy hook-and-loop fastener, key to national defense as part of combat uniforms and astronauts’ space suits – not to mention other appliances on the space shuttles – began failing in January in Keokuk, Iowa, and has since been spreading to both coasts and overseas.

“We can’t explain it, but the hooks and loops just aren’t connecting anymore,” according to a source who declined to be identified because she is not authorized to speak for the National Science Foundation.

Intelligence officials reportedly are concerned that Al Qaeda or elements of the Taliban might be behind the failure.

While President Barack Obama has remained publicly silent, some of his critics in Congress and elsewhere said over the weekend that Obama’s lack of stick-to-itiveness has resulted in a weakening of Velcro nationwide.

“The president has shown time and time again his indifference to the nation’s basic needs, like the ability of our brave men and women, proudly serving in uniform on two war fronts, to slap our hallowed American flag patch on their sleeves without resorting to time-consuming and potentially dangerous needle and thread,” said Sen. Mitch O’Donnell, R-Moon.

Meanwhile, the president is said to be huddling with members of his cabinet, the Joint Chiefs and his closest aides to find ways to reverse the Velcro failure. First Lady Michelle Obama was said to be “concerned.”

Assistant Press Secretary Joshua Panchuraboldt (pronounced Josh Wa) made a brief statement to reporters acknowledging the failure and saying that the president will leave no button unbuttoned in returning Velcro effectiveness for Americans.

A spokesman for AARP, the senior citizen lobby, said millions of the nation’s seniors are unable to wear their Velcro-fastened sneakers and have been rendered barefoot. “These people haven’t tied shoes with laces since the 20th century,” the AARP spokesman said. Rioting was feared in The Villages, Fla., where many seniors reside.

Rand Paul, recently nominated as a Republican senatorial candidate from Kentucky, said the Velcro failure is a natural phenomenon and none of the government’s business. “Velcro is as Velcro does,” said Paul, who interrupted his afternoon tea to issue the statement. Paul, an eye doctor, is the son of Saint Paul.

Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska and losing vice-presidential candidate in 2008, said in a Wichita, Kan. speech to Tea Party activists: “How’s that hookin’ and loopin’ workin’ out for ya now?"

Vice President Joe Biden urged calm. “We got along fine without Viagra throughout most of our history, and we’ll get along fine now,” he said.

When informed the emergency was not with Viagra but with Velcro, Biden said, “What?”

Film at 10.

Obama's humor perseveres...

I got a real kick out of the NY Times picture of Obama on today's front page. He's visiting a local bookstore on off time from a rally on health care reform in Iowa City and impishly poses with the newly released books by Republicans Mitt Romney and Carl Rowe.  His obvious sense of humor is a welcome sight during this time of unrelenting partisan battles. Click HERE to see the picture.

Birthermania: all politics loco

Born to be president, or maybe not
By Jim Heffernan

I believe the turning of a new year is a good time to take stock in one’s life so far. Not just the last year, but one’s entire life up to this point.

And it’s high time for me to face up to the fact that I’m never going to be president. That’d be president of the United States. I did make president of my church youth group as a teenager, but that’s another story.

Even before that, when I was an actual small child, I believed them when they told us in school that every boy could grow up to be president (girls were not included then), and I counted myself in. But I became discouraged early due to those mean teachers who kept issuing report cards with mediocre grades. So it’s their fault that I never became president.

Actually, that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because years and years after I’d grown up I discovered that I was not born, or at least properly registered, just as an alarming number of Americans do not believe that Barack Obama, president of the United States and commander in chief of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, was born, at least on American soil.

On New Year’s Eve, of all frivolous occasions, I received via e-mail a jubilant report that some California judge, who, the report took pains to point out “is a former U.S. Marine,” has agreed to take a case brought by people who challenge Obama’s right to be president because they believe he was born somewhere other than in America.

The U.S. Constitution, of course, stipulates that to be president you’ve gotta be born on U.S. soil, unless you are Sen. John McCain, who was born in Panama, but never mind that. Obama’s Honolulu birth certificate looks fishy to people who did not vote for him and resent the fact that he is not only president (who gets to fill Supreme Court vacancies when they occur), but commander in chief of the above-mentioned branches of the armed forces.

Association in some way with the armed forces apparently means a lot to these folks, often referred to as “birthers” when they occasionally get mentioned in the mainstream media because they challenge the validity of Obama’s birth certficiate.

So now to me. As a full-grown adult, with all thoughts of being president cast aside, I discovered when applying for a U.S. passport that they didn’t have a first name for me when I was officially registered (it was in the time of Caesar Augustus), so they wrote “baby boy” where the first name ought to have been.

Can you imagine how that would have played with a certain segment of the American electorate if I had, indeed, agreed to run for president had anyone suggested it, which no one did for reasons obvious to my early school teachers but not so obvious to the dozen members of my church youth group?

Ah, politics. Former U.S. House speaker Tip O’Neil is said to have said, “All politics is local.” I wonder if they heard him right. Are they sure he didn’t say, “All politics is loco”?

Obama salute style said salutary...

By Jim Heffernan

The military takes its salutes seriously. True military men (and presumably women, too, but I didn’t serve directly with any) go to great lengths to perfect the salute so that it looks just right: the correct angle of the arm from the elbow to the brow, the perfect flat hand position with thumb and fingers tight and straight.

The Sunday New York Times (Nov. 1) ran a commentary by guest writer Carey Winfrey (“A Final Verdict on the Presidential Salute”) in which the writer, an ex-Marine, passed on President Obama’s salute, calling it “impeccable in every way.”

I’m glad for Obama. This might seem like a trivial thing, but people who know a little something about saluting – that’d be everyone serving or who has served in the military – notice things like the way the commander in chief’s salutes.

It’s surprising how difficult it can be to get it right. President Bill Clinton was never able to pull off snappy, admirable salutes as he alighted from his helicopter on the South Lawn, or anywhere else, for that matter.

So what? A lot of military types resented it. It helped to dilute his implied authority as commander in chief. On top of which he was a Democrat, and true military men (and presumably women, too) often are suspicious of Democrat presidents. I had voted for Clinton, but I winced every time I saw him salute knowing how our warriors would react.

I think George W. Bush’s greatest achievement as president was his salute. Like me, he’d done time in the National Guard, so there was that military background. I am a moderately good saluter. Saluting doesn’t come naturally to me but I can put on a good show. On active duty you had to salute to get paid, so you catch on fast.

But President Clinton, and now Obama, never served in the military, so saluting is bound to be more of a challenge. I’m glad Obama’s salute passes the muster of the New York Times, but we’ll have to see about the Wall Street Journal. Fox News? I don’t think so.

Here’s something I didn’t know until I read The Times commentary: President Ronald Reagan started all of this presidential saluting. Presidents before Reagan didn’t salute, just like they don’t ordinarily wear uniforms even though they are in charge of he armed forces. Bush (W.) did wear one to announce “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq in 2002. You wonder if that flight suit will find its way to the Smithsonian. Maybe after the war is over.

Reagan, if memory serves, was a pretty snappy saluter. Of course he’d served in the military during World War II – on the 20th Century Fox lot in Hollywood making training films. If you’re going to star in military training films, you’d better know how toss off an effective salute. It’s not that important for a commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States.

Cheney and blood in the water...

By Jim Heffernan

When blood ran in Lake Superior’s water...
CIA Director Leon Panetta is saying in an upcoming New Yorker article that he thinks former Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism of the Obama administration’s approach to terrorism almost suggests “he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point,” wire services reported over the weekend.

Panetta told the New Yorker that Cheney “smells some blood in the water” on the issue of national security.

It reminded me of another time somebody from Washington smelled blood in the water – right here in Duluth.

It was during Paul Wellstone’s first run for the U.S. Senate, facing incumbent Republican Rudy Boschwitz, a race Wellstone won. During the campaign, the Duluth newspaper’s editorial board, of which I was part, had scheduled an interview with Boschwitz as part of the endorsement process.

About an hour before the Boschwitz interview was to begin, conservative Washington pundit Roland Evans showed up in my office unannounced and asked if he could sit in on the interview. Evans, who has since died, was part of the Evans and (Robert) Novak team on CNN, and also wrote a syndicated column.

I asked Evans what he was doing in Duluth, and why he wanted to sit in on the Boschwitz interview. His answer: “Blood in the water.”

It doesn’t take those Washington sharks long to sense blood in the water.

Thoughts on Pawlenty's announcement...

Check out this link to the Duluth Journal to read my public comment and those of other locals on Gov. Tim Pawlenty's announcement today that he will not run for a third term as Minnesota's governor. I guess my comment says it all so here it is...

“The first time I met him (Pawlenty) was at a News Tribune editorial board endorsement interview when he made his first bid for the governorship. Agree or disagree with him, we were struck by how articulate he was, and how he could smoothly discuss the issues and his goals with no sign of the nervousness most politicians display under those circumstances. So he’s smooth. And he’s smart. And he’s conservative — really conservative, a veteran of the ill-fated Jon Grunseth gubernatorial campaign in the 1990s. He took his early signing of a pledge to not raise taxes — not ever — way too seriously. He shouldn’t have signed it in the first place, not knowing what the state’s needs would be and because it forced him to raise many taxes anyway and calling them ‘fees.’ It’s duplicitous. He clearly has national ambitions, and he’d be an effective candidate for the Republicans, with some of the same campaigning talents that President Barack Obama has, along with a similar humble early background. The last time I spoke with him was a few weeks ago in the entry area of BlackWoods restaurant on London Road where he, his wife and daughter just showed up in casual attire and signed up for a table. Since Minnesota governors don’t go anywhere without security, I asked him where the highway patrol guy was. He pointed to the door.”

Left-handed Commentary...

By Jim Heffernan

I’ve discovered I have something very personal in common with President Barack Obama. We’re both overhanded left-handers. By that I mean not only do we write with our left hands (see him sign the stimulus bill on TV), but we position our pen hand ABOVE the writing.

Got that? Maybe all of you ordinary right-handers have noticed it in some, but not all, left-handed writers. Some left-handers position their wrist and hand below the writing line, like right-handers, which, to me, is cheating.

Once in school – Duluth’s Lincoln Elementary – a high official from the Board of Education came to our classroom, noticed with alarm how I positioned my hand when I wrote, sat right down at my desk with me and tried to get me to change – not change handedness, but to write with my left hand below the writing. It didn’t take. I went right back to my old practice as soon as he went back downtown to do whatever he did when he wasn’t trying to change 8-year-olds’ writing methods.

But back to Obama. There is a problem -- the only one I see in his entire presidency so far (guess who I voted for). He wears his wristwatch on his left – writing – wrist. Check out that TV bill-signing again. There he is, his hand and wrist extended above the bill, with a big wristwatch clunking along behind.

As an older overhanded left-hander, I advise the president to doff the watch on his left wrist and move it to his right wrist, where it won’t get in the way when he’s signing bills. Maybe you’ve noticed that virtually all right-handed people wear wristwatches on their left wrists. Doesn’t it make sense, then, for left-handed people to wear their watches on the right wrist?

It does to me, and I hope the president reads this blog. I’m sure he does.

Obama is too young to have worried about other concerns in being an overhanded left-hander, but I’m not. When I was in school (see above) our desks had inkwell holes, and every so often during Palmer-method penmanship instruction Mr. McKay, the janitor, would show up with a big bottle of ink and fill each little ink well on our desks. Then we would be given pens with pointed tips to dip in the ink and, as best we could, write stuff in artful cursive.

This is not something for an overhanded left-hander to try. With the hand and wrist ABOVE and following the writing, two things happen: The hand gets full of ink, and the writing gets hopelessly smeared. You can tell from the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson couldn’t have been an overhanded left-hander. If I had written the declaration (I’m not THAT old) we would still be English subjects. Nevertheless, English was my favorite subject in school. Penmanship was not.

The introduction of ballpoint pens (like the Paper Mate Pen, “with the piggyback refill built right in”) in the 1940s saved me, of course, but the early models tended to smear for left-handers anyway.

So here’s the deal: Obama is said to be interested in, and good at, compromise to achieve results satisfactory to most people -- all Republicans being the only exception. In that spirit, I propose that he continue to be an overhanded left-hander but that he switch his watch to his right wrist, which would be a signal to the right that he is willing to compromise on things in general. It would be a subtle message, but it could achieve big results.

As an aside, the late President Gerald Ford was an overhanded left-hander who also wore his wristwatch on his left hand. He was never elected president. (See history: He achieved the presidency by osmosis when Richard Millstone Nixon resigned, then lost an election bid.)

That’s all for today from a right-brained left-winger. Surely you could tell.

It's a New Day...