Musings Of A New Southern Man

My first thoughts when I considered my subject here was that my considerations were preposterous. It seemed as if no link between die-hard Democrat Harry Truman and the pompous Donald Trump could be possible. Their politics are almost polar opposites, Truman being the ultimate liberal and Trump the reactionary right winger. Truman was a Missouri farm boy, Trump the heir to a New York real estate empire. Truman was humble, Trump arrogant. Truman is said to always look to find the best in humans, Trump shows he can find the worst whenever it is expedient. However, there are three attributes that make them twins in history, the least of which is that their names are very close in spelling. 1. Political savvy about the electorate. First, both Truman and Trump were expected to be routed on Election Day. Thomas Dewey was far ahead in the polls in the months leading up to the 1948 election. Truman's popularity at the end of World War II plummeted in the years after. He then launched wha...

I didn't know James F. (Jimmy) Byrnes as anything other than a name on a high school in South Carolina. I guess a guy needs to do something of interest to have a school named after him. I didn't realize the impact of the man until I started reading David McCullough's brilliant biography Truman , about the man thrust into the presidency when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945. By all rights, the man to take FDR's place should have been Jimmy Byrnes. The Democrats faced a huge decision in 1944 as FDR was readying his bid for a fourth term as president. The current vice president, Henry Wallace, was viewed as the wrong man to remain in the job. The party wanted a man with the right qualifications, someone with experience in working with Congress and who had a strong record in foreign relations. Jimmy Byrnes was that man. FDR said as much, and the Democrats entered the 1944 convention in Chicago with Byrnes the clear frontrunner to get the nod. The problem was that Byrn...

I joined millions of viewers who watched all 45 minutes of Sen. Susan Collins' announcement Friday that she would vote to affirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. She used facts to support her vote. She articulated points of his judicial background, shooting down widely- (and wildly-) held propaganda points put forth by those opposing Kavanaugh's nomination. She cited case law. She took a reasoned, detailed approach, which was refreshing given the chaotic atmosphere in the halls of the Senate. She stood up for what she believed, she stepped into the public limelight, and she gave a rational response to justify her vote and attack wrongs committed by those who wanted Kavanaugh ousted. She is being vilified by the far left, and she is a target of big-money efforts to unseat her. Her crime in their eyes? She had the audacity to come to a different conclusion than they had. One of the big wrongs committed (and I wrote about this in a blog entry) is th...

I was ready to watch the 1:30 p.m. political show known as the committee vote to send Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the full Senate. I figured it was a done deal. Final expected score: Republicans 11, Democrats at least one less depending on how many members opted to abstain. Funny thing happened on the way to that done deal. It was marvelous reality TV, much more enjoyable than Thursday's battle royal featuring testimony from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh. We can thank Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona for Friday's surprise. Flake had an attack of conscience, or maybe he read the political winds better than his allies, and requested an investigation to last no more than one week. The focus of the investigation will be the other people identified by Dr. Ford as being at the site of the alleged sexual abuse by Judge Kavanaugh, then a teenager at a D.C. area prep school. It was the wise request. Imagine that in Congress. A major force behind the move ...

It was riveting reality TV. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh made impressive appearances in today's congressional hearing. There are culprits in this story, but I'll get to that later. Let me set some ground rules in this story. This is not a case of women who are sexually abused against the system. Yes, there are numerous cases of abuse that go unreported for a number of reasons, and often the system is to blame. But this case is simply a matter of whether Judge Kavanaugh abused Dr. Ford when they were teenagers. All the other cases of abuse must be put to the side as we weigh the truth of today's testimony. (By the way, I know the powerful impact of sexual abuse because I dealt with that issue within my own house. My wife was abused as a teenager, and she opened up about that incident through therapy, just as Dr. Ford did.) Dr. Ford was more than a credible witness. She was calm and believable. She stood up against her own fears of going public a...

I write today as I await the start of the Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh appearances before the congressional committee. There might be no other hearing in my life that I feel compelled to view. I will watch both major figures testify. So will millions of others. What will be more interesting to watch are the judgments of those viewers. I believe a vast majority of those people already have their minds made up as far as guilt or innocence on Kavanaugh's part. Why? Because we are a nation that is deeply divided to the point that truth rests on political leanings. The perception of events overpowers the reality of the situation. As The Rock Man says in Harry Nilsson's The Point: "You see what you want to see and hear what you want to hear." I will comment on the testimonies after they are finished, but for now I will concentrate on the deeply divided nation. To do that, I will use the public comments by two of my Facebook friends, both acquainta...

The temperature today was 93 and the humidity was about 70 percent at midmorning. It's the kind of day they warn you about when you move to the South. Just bear up under the conditions, veteran Southerners told me. I bear up nicely, at least on my best days. What makes this return to the Southern sweatbox is that we had three days of absolutely beautiful weather before this latest blast hit. I mean, it was chamber of commerce weather. Temperatures were in the low 80s, nighttime lows went to the low 60s, and the humidity was less than 50 percent. That's as good as it gets in August. We have an attic fan that goes unused during a large part of the summer because the humidity is so taxing. That attic fan was on in the morning for those three glorious days. Cool air swept through open doors and windows. We basked in the beauty of the day. I know my old Colorado friends would be running for their dehumidifiers if the humidity hit 45 percent, but this weather and Colorado's hav...