The Best Laid Plan

The plan was to look at a house in Seward Park, then drive over to the Obama rally at Seattle Center. T and I looked at the house all right, but the traffic into Seattle Center was impenetrable -- and we tried from a variety of directions. Traffic at the Mercer exit off northbound I-5 backed up at least a mile. Southbound 5 was no better. We tried various surface street approaches to no avail. We eventually gave up and had lunch in Pioneer Square. I did pick up some interesting stuff at Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers, plus we checked out Seiko Tachibana's impressive prints at Davidson Gallery.

But I digress. Early reports of the Obama rally had 17,000-seat Key Arena filled with enthusiastic supporters, with thousands more outside. By contrast, Hillary Clinton attracted 5,000 to a waterfront rally with hundreds turned away. It's worth noting that the Obama event happened during working hours, while Clinton's was after work. I don't know what all that means for tomorrow's caucuses, but Obama has done very well in caucus states.

Meanwhile, Josh Marshall reports on the latest bit of Bush Administration chicanery. In short, the Mukasey-led Justice Department declines to investigate the legality of waterboarding or warrantless wiretapping because, well, the Gonzales-led Justice Department said they were o.k. Gonzales, of course, eventually resigned because of his role in the NSA domestic eavesdropping plan razed his credibility in and out of the Justice Department to a level lower than the Seattle Underground Tour.

This business of unfettered executive power is arguably the most dangerous aspect of the disastrous Bush-Cheney legacy, and yet it's the least reported on. Presidents regardless of their party are loath to cede authority. Besides ignoring the will of Congress via its unprecedented use of signing statements, the Administration has attempted -- with great success -- to politicize the judicial branch and federal justice system to the extent of making them offshoots of the Republican party. An independent judiciary and Justice Department are vital to the functioning of a healthy democracy. It won't do the country any good if President Obama or Clinton regards them the same way as President Bush has.

Whither the Republicans?

For the Republicans, Super Tuesday represented less a victory by John McCain than the tipping point of a long process of elimination. From the beginning, the Republicans presented a deeply flawed field, with most of the candidates having some degree of unacceptability to one part or another of the Republican base. The one candidate whose politics came closest to jiving -- actor and former senator Fred Thompson -- showed no interest in actually working for the nomination and departed quietly. 

Meanwhile, America's mayor -- Rudy Giuliani -- started out with so many strikes against him that it's hard to believe that he actually thought the Republicans would nominate an acidic thrice-married Catholic supporter of gay rights who happened to be estranged from his children. Once questions were raised about his performance on and after 9/11, he was doomed no matter how vehemently he supported the war or how ominously he raised the specter of terrorism.

If Super Tuesday represented anything, it was the disintegration of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's campaign. Handsome, experienced, and well-funded, Romney emerged as a early media darling. His main problem -- one he never overcame -- was an apparent absence of any convictions whatsoever. After claiming that some sort of road-to-Damascus conversion that led him to renounce his previous support for gay and abortion rights, Romney pandered directly to the religious right with a groveling speech at the George Bush Presidential Library. None of it took, and Romney has failed over and again to win on the road. His primary victories occurred in Massachusetts, his home state of Michigan and its border state of Minnesota, and states with a significant Mormon population (Utah and states bordering Utah). What Franklin Roosevelt called the economic royalists of the party would no doubt love to elect Mitt Romney president, but flip-flopping and pandering doomed him with the rank-and-file.

That left John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Huckabee, the appealing Christian conservative Arkansas governor and anathema to the economic royalists, found no traction outside of his base and has thus been unable to win outside of the south. That pretty much left McCain who, despite his heresies on taxes and torture, at least attracted enough independent voters to carry him to repeated primary victories. 

However, the hard right of the party despises McCain. (See what Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and James Dobson have to say here, here, and here. Coulter goes so far as to say she'd campaign for Hillary Clinton if the Republicans nominate McCain. Unanswered is the question of whether Hillary would want her help.). A nominee needs independent votes to win elections, but healso need the committed activism of the party base. The 71-year old McCain did not poll well among the majority of self-described conservatives on Tuesday; it's easy to see that there is a great deal of mistrust there. (And misperception: A Republican friend wrote me that his nomination should make me happy because it meant that a liberal would be elected president no matter what. Beats me how a fundamentally boilerplate Republican -- we're winning in Iraq, the health care crisis is best handled by the market, free trade is good, etc. -- is a liberal, but then I'm not a hard right conservative.) 

Let them fight among themselves over who is an acceptable troglodyte. And bring 'em on!

Breaking News: Barack Obama speaks at Key Arena tomorrow morning. Doors open at 11 a.m. For more information, go here.

Super Tuesday

Super Tuesday has come and gone. While the Conventional Wisdom has it that the Democrats decided nothing, I personally would rather be -- marginally, I admit -- in Barack Obama's shoes this morning than Hillary Clinton's. As for the Republicans, John McCain took a decisive lead on Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, but nonetheless ended the day with ominous question marks for the future.

For Hillary Clinton, every day that passes with Barack Obama in the race as a strong candidate is a bad day. A year ago, her campaign assumed that yesterday would be a knockout blow setting her up for a triumphal parade through the remaining primaries and caucuses, culminating in a coronation convention. She figured to be loaded with unspent cash and backed by a party that had been unified behind her for months. Now she's locked in battle with well-funded, well-organized, incredibly charismatic candidate whose campaign thrives on continued exposure. Think of it as the best-of-seven World Series. Clinton is the team whose best shot is to win in four or five games; Obama is the team that benefits the longer the series goes on. 

Some maintain that the Clinton-Obama contest may split the Democratic party. The argument is that the strength of each emerges from contending coalitions: African-Americans, students, men, and college graduates for Obama; women, Latinos, seniors, and blue-collar workers for Clinton. Nonetheless, there's no reason to think that these coalitions can't unite behind one candidate, especially in a year when there is so much enthusiasm within the party. Much depends on the tone of the campaign, but consider that her early stab at going negative reflected poorly on Clinton and drove undecided voters into the Obama camp.

As for me, I'm supporting Obama at Saturday's Washington state caucuses. On some issues, such as health care access, I'm closer to Clinton than Obama. In the end, though, I can't get past Clinton's vote to give Bush war-making authority in Iraq or her refusal to repudiate the vote. (She blames Bush for abusing his authority -- the subject of another entry). I'm supporting the intelligent, inspiring candidate who appeals to the hopes and aspirations (check out this video) of all of us, to the better angels of our nature. But you know what? I'm proud to be for either.

Croutons and Rainbows

T. sure makes great croutons and oatmeal cookies! A husband could eat them all day!... The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an especially good Letter-to-the-Editor column today. Click here and scroll down to "Peace and Prosperity Are Significant Achievements." See what I mean? (The letter was written in response to this article.)

U2's manager doesn't like Radiohead, doesn't like iTunes, and doesn't especially like music fans. He thinks that the state ought to be able to disconnect "repeat infringers" who have the temerity to download free music. Read about it here. What's a "repeat infringer," anyway? The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claims that it is illegal for me to copy a CD that I purchased onto my own computer. In other words, I'm supposedly not allowed to back up the CD or transfer it to my iPod. (Presumably, I have to buy a separate downloadable copy for that.)

Last fall, Radiohead took the daring initiative of making an advance copy of their new CD "I N / R A I N B O W S" available to their fans as a free download. I wasn't all that familiar with Radiohead other than knowing that they were well-regarded. But this was a chance for free exposure, so I took it. And guess what? "I N / R A I N B O W S" is good. It's rhythmically and musically complex while not sacrificing anything to tunefulness. (Jazz critic Fred Kaplan agrees with me -- scroll down to "Jazz and Radiohead.") I liked it so much that I bought the formal CD release (the download, while free, was not of the best quality) and picked up "Hail to the Thief" (good) and "OK Computer" (near great) in the bargain. Whatever U2's manager thinks of Radiohead, their strategy created at least one new fan. 

The Basic Project of Art

"The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world."

Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New

Jalisco!

OK, all you fans of the Texas A&I Fighting Javelinas (it will never be TAMU-Kingsville to me), admit it: you thought you'd never hear this! It does make for one hell of a fight song... The R. Crumb exhibit at the Frye Museum is terrific... Big surprise: It's cold and wet out... Today, we take Flat Stanley on a tour of Seattle to help my Ft. Worth nephew with a school project. Bill did Flat Stanley years ago. Uncle Joe and Aunt Anne took Stan to the Clinton inauguration... Did I mention that it's cold and wet?... Great to see that Ted is a rock star again. After all, Tony Bennett was on MTV... There's snow on Croagh Patrick. It looks sorta like this and this...Chaos ruled the cold and wet Seattle roads yesterday. Unbelievable... Speaking of which, I've heard of manna from heaven and pennies from heaven. I've even heard rumors of pigs flying. But I've never turned around and found a cow in the back seat of my car...

Killian Heard

Bridge of Sighs, Robin Trower (EMI-Capitol 50999 5 01845 2 1). Like thousands (millions?) of us, Jimi Hendrix changed the way Procol Harum guitarist Robin Trower heard music. Unlike the rest of us, Trower has the hands to go with his ears, and in 1974 he came up with Bridge of Sighs, a post-Hendrix classic that goes heavy on the blues and easy on the psychedelia. Now, EMI has released a remastered version of Bridge, and it's a dandy. Besides cleaning up the sound, they've added eight live tracks from two BBC sessions. Trower wears the Hendrix influence on his sleeve, but what an influence! And in any case, he has the chops to pull it off. 

Primavera En Nueva York, Martirio (Norte 8869 705293 2). Spanish singer Martirio performs a gorgeous set of mostly Cuban boleros in a jazz setting. A terrific band (including Kenny Drew, Jr., George Mraz, and Paquito D'Rivera) provides perfect accompaniment to Martirio's husky, sexy vocals. Romantic and pleasurable from beginning to end.

Just A Little Lovin', Shelby Lynne (Lost Highway B0009789-2). It takes a lot of balls -- and I mean big brass ones that clank when she walks -- for a woman to record a CD of Dusty Springfield covers. (Watch this to get a load of what Shelby was up against.) Lynne resists what must have the awful temptation to sing straight, heavily orchestrated covers and instead explores the country, blues, and folk roots of the material. In the end, she finds all of Dusty's pain and uncertainty; she just gets there by a different road.

Well, Coach Gibbons really had it in for me today:

1000 meter row

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15 dead lifts at 88 pounds

50 jump ropes

10 push-ups

(repeat two times for a total of three sets each

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500 meter row