Republicans, Democrats differ on everything...

Written By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth NewsTribune on 5-6-23

Dire warning: This column is about politics. (Yikes!)

I spent my last 25 years of active journalism working on the opinion pages of this newspaper. In that role, I met and interviewed just about every politician and political aspirant from this region as well as statewide office seekers and incumbents — including a couple of vice presidents of the United States. You know the names of those two Minnesotans.

 

This is not to boast about all the important people I’ve met — governors, U.S. senators, congress members, legislative leaders, city leaders, dog catchers — but rather to illustrate that I’ve spent a considerable amount of time around politicians from both major parties (and a few from minor parties, including one who shares a given name with Jesse James).

 

You pick up on certain traits in people who seek public office, some of whom succeed. After the successful ones have been in office for awhile, they all, regardless of party, seem to have read the same playbook about how to be a politician.

 

For example, when speaking publicly, they never refer to this country simply as the United States; they always thunder “United States of America” in case there is any confusion about which United States they mean. And they say the people they serve are always “hard working” Americans who “roll up their sleeves” a lot. I have known many Americans I wouldn’t consider hard working, not excluding myself. I roll up my sleeves for a COVID-19 shot. They are also very quick with “thoughts and prayers” when the occasion suggests it.

 

Incumbents above a certain level never appear on TV or before a gathering of constituents without American flags (a.k.a. Old Glory) behind them, preferably several, in case there was any doubt about their patriotism.

 

Some things have changed, though, in recent years since I left active journalism — mainly the widening gap between the two major parties. Once opponents were referred to as “worthy” when referenced, and their party “the loyal opposition.” No more.

 

 

Thus, I have compiled a list of ways I see how Democrats and Republicans differ these days on major, and some minor, issues. I am not favoring one side over another here, although I obviously have a political ideology. These are just things I notice as I observe the political divisions play themselves out today, especially in Washington. Here goes:

 

— Republicans think Democrats are socialists or communists. Democrats think Republicans are autocrats or fascists.

 

— Democrats are for abortion and against guns. Republicans are against abortion and for guns.

 

— Sticking with guns, Republicans like AK-47 assault weapons with high capacity magazines. Democrats like squirt guns and read high capacity magazines such as Time, Newsweek and Mad. (What, ME worry?)

 

— Democrats are concerned about climate change. Republicans are concerned about diaper change.

 

— Republicans like Fox News. Democrats like Wolf…Blitzer. (Never allow either one in the hen house.)

 

— Republicans say Democrats are soft on crime. Democrats say Republicans are hard on the poor.

 

— Democrats like electric cars. Republicans like electric chairs.

 

— Republicans oppose all forms of taxation and are against government spending. Democrats are quick to support taxation and expand government spending.

 

— Traditional Republicans like creme brûlée. Democrats like peanut butter. (Serious caveat: There are indications that this has been reversed in recent elections.)

 

— Democrats embrace critical race theory. Republicans defend the Indianapolis 500.

 

— Republicans are wary of the federal bureaucracy, calling it the “deep state.” Democrats are less concerned about the deep state than the deep throat.

 

—Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling. Republicans want to raise the roof.

 

— Republicans embrace “replacement theory” promulgated by Fox News. Democrats don’t care if they go bald.

 

— Errant Republicans get in trouble over sex. Misbehaving Democrats get in trouble over money.

 

— Republicans claim the Jan. 6 march on Washington was as innocent as a Sunday school picnic. Democrats say the attack on the Capitol was an insurrection threatening our democracy.

 

— (Here’s one that won’t surprise you.) Republicans hate President Biden and want to see him impeached. Democrats despise ex-President Trump and want to see him jailed.

 

So here we are.— a country divided against itself. How long can it stand?

 

Finally, I suppose there are committed politicians who will resent some of these observations of the differences between the two parties. That’s fine. I believe more politicians should be committed. Pick your asylum. 

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

Nasty election finally over...

Written By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune/11-12-22

Well, it’s over. The election, that is. Heaven knows it was the election from hell.

At this writing I don’t know who won what. Newspaper feature deadlines are such that this is being written too early in the week to know all the outcomes of Tuesday’s election. Besides, many races weren’t expected to be decided until much later in the week — like today.

 

So we likely all know the results by now (as this is being read) and I’m happy for you if things went the way you had hoped, and sorry if they didn’t. The way this election went down, though, was disgusting.

 

I spent the bulk of my journalism career associated in one way or another with politics at every level. Because of this I’ve met every high-level politician from Minnesota (and to some extent Wisconsin) from the early 1960s through the early years of this century. That’s all the governors, the U.S. senators and Congress members from this part of the state together with state lawmakers from around here. And also many of their challengers who hoped to defeat them. Oh, throw in mayors, city councilors, county board members — the whole kit and caboodle. But I never interviewed a candidate for dogcatcher, more’s the shame.

 

This is not boasting; it comes with the territory of some aspects of newspaper work.

 

And I have to say, this has been the nastiest election I have ever seen, including during all the years I was active in covering them, or writing stories and editorial opinions on candidates.

 

Will I take sides here? No. Campaigning, one party’s as bad as the other today. You wince at those ubiquitous television ads, showing candidates in dark tones and describing all of the terrible things they have done and will do both in their personal and public lives. They are the scum of the earth, the ads convey.

 

Jeez, who wants to be that mean? The political parties do, that’s who. It’s called negative campaigning, and it works.

 

In past elections, candidates often were referred to as “worthy opponents” and “the loyal opposition.” That is history. Instead we have ominous voices telling us on TV that if elected so-and-so will destroy our country (or state or congressional district, or state legislative districts).

 

In contrast, over the years, in conversing with myriad politicians and their challengers I generally found them to be pretty nice people. They harbored their own ideologies, of course, and proudly stated them, but they stuck to the issues of the day. I don’t recall any of them harshly knocking their opponents in a personal way like they did in this campaign. The best ones were way above that.

 

And while I might have had my own ideological opinions in meeting with those whose political views I knew were opposed to mine, it didn’t affect our cordial contact at all.

 

On the personal level, I liked both Democrats and Republicans, some better than others. I suppose among Minnesota governors, my favorite was the late Rudy Perpich. He could make any contact cordial while also espousing knowledgeable policy positions. And he was very common in his demeanor.

 

One time in a group dining with him in a restaurant, he insisted his security guard (a uniformed state trooper) be seated with the rest of us. After leaving office the first time (he served as Minnesota governor twice) he worked in Croatia, the homeland of his parents. I had the occasion to mention him in a humorous way in a column (he WAS known as “Governor Goofy” recall) and he called me from Croatia to good-naturedly rib me about what I’d written. It was when the Balkans were in upheaval, and I thought I could hear gunfire in the background.

 

Perpich was a Democrat. How about a Republican? Former U.S. Sen. David Durenberger was an affable interviewee who seemed intent on doing good for Minnesotans more than promoting ideological precepts of his party. And like Perpich, he openly displayed a light-hearted side of his personality. Unlike so many politicians, especially today’s, he knew how to laugh.

 

One time during a dinner meeting I mentioned a line I’d heard pointing out that then President Ronald Reagan was “older than Yugoslavia.” Loyal Republican Durenberger burst out in uproarious laughter at that thought. It was true: Reagan was born in 1911 and Yugoslavia wasn’t formed as a Balkan nation until after World War I. Both Reagan and Yugoslavia are now history. Durenberger, 88, is still with us.

 

But enough wonking around. I only have room here to cite these two politicians who led in a time before politics got as nasty as it has become. Of course political opponents resented one another, and REALLY resented those who challenged them at election time, but it usually didn’t show.

 

Elderly people (among whom I must ruefully now count myself) often espouse a fondness for the “old days” by longing for the “way things used to be.” I usually don’t subscribe to that, but I hope we can return to those days election-wise, before I get around to finally interviewing candidates for dogcatcher.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Jumping into new worm woes...

Photo by Josef Gorres, University of Vermont

"Yeah, the jumping worms are like snakes, it is said. Fool around with them and they rise up like India cobras being tooted out of a cask by a Hindi seer." Written by By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune, September 19, 2020

 

I have never cared for worms. Have you? Even harmless angle or earthworms seem kind of yucky to me. You used to put them on fish hooks, which was unpleasant to me even at a young age. Maybe that is why I have never cared for fishing. (Don’t get me started on impaling minnows.)

 

Why worms now? We here in the Northland are being warned of the arrival from Asia — where else? — of the jumping worm.  I’m not making that up. This paper published a lengthy report on the invasion of the Asian jumping worm a week or so ago. Google it.

 

Whew, as if we haven’t got enough to worry about, now it’s the jumping worm? And, of course, every few years or so we get invaded by army worms  — they’re actually caterpillars — that strip all the deciduous trees of their leaves and crawl around outdoor surfaces ruining picnics and other outdoor activities like just relaxing on the deck.  

 

But back to the angleworm for a moment. Beyond threading them on fish hooks back in the day, we actually dissected them in a college natural science course. There’s a saddle on their back, or in their middle, called the clitellum. That pretty well summarizes everything I learned about natural science in college. Well, there were very unfortunate spotted frogs too, but we won’t go into that. It explains why I didn’t go to medical school.

 

And if earthworms are yucky, what about night crawlers? They seem juicier. They show up on the driveways and sidewalks of the civilized world — at least it used to be civilized — after it rains, ready for the, what, picking? Not by me.

 

Some guy named Walt sells them at area gas stations/convenience stores. I notice the sign “Walt’s Crawlers” as I drive by. How convenient is that? Gas, milk, potato chips and night crawling worms all in one handy stop.

 

But this threat by the jumping worm has got me spooked. Suddenly it shows up right in the middle of a global pandemic, thank you very much, and it is said to actually fight back if you pick one up. Not a pleasant thought, not that any worm is actually a pleasant thought or not that I would ever pick one up if I didn’t have to. Let Walt do it.

 

Yeah, the jumping worms are like snakes, it is said. Fool around with them and they rise up like India cobras being tooted out of a cask by a Hindi seer. And what are they good for? Nothing. Turns out worm scientists say the jumping worm crawls around a couple of inches beneath the surface of a lawn, and consumes all that keeps the lawn healthy. Trees too.

 

So, it’s an election year and what are our leaders going to do about the jumping worm threat? Wouldn’t we like to know.

 

I imagine the two main sides in this election — need I say Republicans and Democrats? — would have vastly different reactions to the invasion of the jumping worm. Republicans would blame it on Democrats and Democrats would defend them as part of the environment.

 

But enough. I want to get to a discussion of another worm that somehow enters my consciousness every single day: The earworm.

 

I am deeply involved with the earworm because I am the kind of individual who has some form of music on my mind every minute of every waking hour of the day. Mostly, in my case, it’s classical music, but other music too, like patriotic in an election year.

 

So, as I go through any given day (they are all a gift), I might be internally humming a theme from a symphony by Beethoven (the composer not the canine movie star) or “O Canada” or a show tune like “Oooooooklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plain” or, possibly, a hymn, “Rock of Ages” (not to be confused with rock ’n’ roll of the ages embodied by the late Little Richard) when suddenly a strange ear worm intervenes.

 

Enter, lately, a guy named “Ragtime Cowboy Joe.” Do you remember him? The song got stuck in my mind decades ago and now suddenly it’s back in the form of an earworm.

 

Readers of a certain age might recall it and even remember the melody. Hum along here: “He likes to sing raggedy music to the cattle as he swings back and forward in the saddle,/On his horse — a pretty good horse —to a syncopated gaiter and the roar of his repeater,/How they run when they hear his gun,/ ‘cause the western folks all know,/ He’s a high falutin’, roootin, shootin’ son-of-a-gun from Arizona,/ Ragtime Cowboy, talk about yer cowboy, Ragtime Cowboy Joe.”

 

That’s my latest and ubiquitous earworm. Can’t seem to shed it. Like on the Fourth of July, I might be out in the garden on a beautiful morning poking my 10-inch flag into a flowerpot and thinking, “O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light…” when suddenly:

 

“He likes to sing raggedy music to the cattle as he swings back and forward in the saddle…” drowning out the Star Spangled Banner on the Fourth of July in an election year in the middle of a global pandemic, for crying out loud. Arrest this man. Send in the Army worms.

 

So there you have it. Worms that plague our lives, including this new jumping worm. I’m an old Lutheran, but I’ll never understand how Martin got along on a diet of worms.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Cravaack should get Kochs to reopen GP...

Here's my letter to the editor, appearing in Sunday's Duluth News Tribune editorial pages.

Read it HERE)...

Cravaack should get Kochs to reopen GP

I was saddened to read the stark headline in the Aug. 22 News Tribune: “Duluth’s GP plant closing; 141 to lose jobs.” What a blow this summer after our devastating flooding.

I do wonder how many readers knew immediately what GP stood for in the headline. It stands for Georgia-Pacific, of course, the corporation that owns the 64-year-old hardboard plant on our waterfront that most folks around here think of as Superwood. According to reports, Georgia-Pacific purchased Superwood in the 1980s, and in 2005 Georgia-Pacific itself was purchased by Koch Industries Inc.

In this election year, the name Koch is becoming more and more prominent as billionaire industrialists David H. and Charles G. Koch, well known for their conservative politics and Tea Party support, spend millions to influence the congressional elections in favor of Republicans as well as to make President Obama a one-term president.

Since Koch interests own Georgia-Pacific and Georgia Pacific runs Duluth’s Superwood, wouldn’t it be nice if conservative Republican 8th District Rep. Chip Cravaack could persuade the Koch brothers to order GP to reverse its decision and save those 141 jobs in his district? Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to learn that the Koch-backed Super PAC Americans for Prosperity already is contributing to the Cravaack campaign in its efforts to elect more right-wing Republicans to Congress.

If the Koch brothers would really like to help Cravaack get re-elected, they could order their Georgia-Pacific minions to keep our Superwood plant operating — instead of gutting it and putting it up for sale, leaving in its wake 141 Northland workers wondering what the future holds for them and their families.

Jim Heffernan

Where have all the pseudo-intellectuals gone?

By Jim Heffernan

The Republicans running for president have been fueling suspicion of intellectuals, especially elite intellectuals like the Harvard faculty (as opposed to the first 500 names in the New York City phone book), and, of course, President Barack Obama, a former professor of constitutional law.

Newt “Big Ideas” Gingrich has been particularly hard on the intellectual elite, and also the mainstream media, especially those who bring up his matrimonial record.

Gingrich is almost of my generation, so I believe I understand him better than the other Republicans, although fairly youthful-seeming Mitt Romney is no spring chicken. Ron Paul, of course, is an old rooster.

I do not understand, however, why these conservatives are so resentful of intellectuals, knowing that they are old enough to recall when the real problem – at least it was when I was in college – was with pseudo-intellectuals. That leaves only Rick Sanatorium.

When I trod the halls of academe in the 1960s, such as they were at the Duluth “branch” of the University of Minnesota, pseudo-intellectuals – all male -- were hiding behind every pillar of higher learning. Everybody knew who they were due to certain universal pseudo-intellectual traits obvious to the naked eye as well as those who wore spectacles. This was the immediate post-lorgnette era.

The most obvious trait of a pseudo-intellectual, aside from thinking they were smarter than everybody else, was pipe smoking. No cool guy (i.e. a cigarette smoker) would be caught dead smoking a pipe. Pipe-smoking pseudo-intellectuals also wore horn-rim glasses, made a public display of playing chess and bridge, and – forgive me for this – had unkempt seemingly not recently shampooed hair. You know the hair.

They were also careless about their dress, eschewing the “cool” clothes worn by, say, fraternity men or athletes. Plastic shirt pocket protectors? You bet your ballpoint pen with the piggy back refill built right in. Slide rules were worn in holsters on belt, for quick drawing in discussions on the limits of pi. I hasten to add, though, that their mothers loved them.

I felt at the time it would be horrible to be branded a pseudo-intellectual and went out of my way not to seem like one. In hindsight, there were two ways to avoid being labeled a pseudo-intellectual (other than pipe smoking and the rest): Be an actual intellectual, so you could condescendingly look down on the pseudo-intellectual in the academic pecking order. This was not an avenue open to me because I hailed from Duluth’s western precincts, had never been crowned a Junior Rotarian and the academic achievement reflected in the grades I got were, um, not reflecting sufficient intellectual rigor, let us put it.

So those of us who could not claim to be actual, bona fide intellectuals but didn’t want to be branded a pseudo-intellectual put on a “regular guy” act or whatever passed for “cool” in the early 1960s. The late 1960s were entirely different, but I was well out of the academic environment by then.

Now that so many years have passed, I have been able to track the lifetime records of a few of those we regarded 50 years ago as pseudo-intellectuals. Most have given up the pipe and chess, but bridge might be a pastime that endures with a few. Some of them actually made intellectual status and enjoyed continued academic life on faculties while retaining many of their own (faculties). And a few made big bucks and have become philanthropists and pseudo-philanthropists with their names on college buildings.

As for me, I am writing a book I will call “The Old Man and the C”. You just read the introduction.

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.

Minnesota Elections: A Housecleaning in More Ways Than One...

By Jim Heffernan

Minnesota State Capitol–St. Paul Minnesota

A few thoughts on the election in Minnesota…

The legislature has changed hands, with Republicans gaining majorities in both the state House and Senate for the first time since, let’s see, maybe since Eve said to Adam, “Hey, Adam honey, come over here and try this apple.” Something like that.

But we all vote (well, we don’t all vote, but a lot of us do) and hope our candidates will win (not all of them do, but some of them do) and do what we want them to do when the Legislature convenes in January. Election over; let’s get on with our lives and let the politicians get on with theirs.

But it’s never over for winners of seats in the Minnesota Legislature. Republicans, who have now gained control of both houses, and Democrats, who have had power for so long, resent one another, not to say dislike one another. Why not say it – sometimes they truly dislike one another.

I have spent time at the Minnesota capitol during a legislative session, and here is what I experienced: Democrats take you aside and complain about Republicans and Republicans take you aside and complain about Democrats. Talk about policy issues that might, just might, benefit the state and its people is secondary.

What follows is one reason why they so resent one another -- that almost never gets reported.

When a party has a majority in either house, or, as often happens, in both houses, that party’s leaders and members have their pick of offices in the capitol. Members of the party in power choose offices closest to the chambers of the House and Senate, and also the largest offices with the best views of the capitol grounds, the towers of St. Paul in the background.

Lawmakers in the majority get to choose these nice offices, personalizing them with photographs (family scenes, poses with high officials like a president) and art on the walls, knick-knacks on their desks and favorite books. Comfortable chairs are positioned for cozy conferences with constituents or school kids who are brought there for lessons in Democracy. There was a time – I don’t know if it’s still the case – that some offices had liquor cabinets where lawmakers of the same political persuasion would gather, say, at the end of the day (or after breakfast, for that matter) for a nip of scotch, a sip of vodka, or even a humble beer.

These nice offices, close to the House or Senate chambers, become a home away from home for the lawmakers, a comfort zone, a place to reflect on how accomplished and important they are, how far they’ve come in life, and where they can have thoughts like, if only gramps and gramma could see me now. Oh, and sometimes they conduct the state’s business, which most see as their party’s business.

A person can get attached to such surroundings, even enjoying a feeling of ownership, although everybody knows the offices are owned by the state, or, as they say, “we the people.”

So, when we the people speak and say we want the OTHER political party to run things, guess what? Members of the victorious political party tell the movers to vacate the nice offices of the newly minted minority – the desks, the pictures, the knick-knacks, the opposing lawmakers themselves, who are so comfortably ensconced – and gather their stuff from a much less desirable office in the basement, or even a nearby building and move into the rooms with a view.

The lawmakers who survived the election but whose party is no longer in power get to move into the dingy basement offices formerly occupied by some of the people who will be moving into their nice offices.

That’s the way it works.

So if you ever talk quietly with a lawmaker and he or she rails against lawmakers of the other party, you’ll know one reason why they resent each other so much. It’s not fun to be kicked out of your home away from home.

And it’s coming to Minnesota in January.