Murphy Gets McCained

In Hungary, of all placed, novice U.S. Senator Chris Murphy got McCained.

U.S. Senator John McCain made a pit stop in Budapest on his way to Munich where he led a large congressional delegation to the Munich Security Conference, a catch basin for “defense ministers, international arms dealers, oil sheiks and angry Ukrainians,” according to Jeffery Goldberg of Bloomberg News.

Mr. Goldberg suspects that Mr. McCain met the press in Hungary “so that the delegation would be asked questions about a woman named Colleen Bell,” a soap opera producer chosen by President Barack Obama to serve as U.S. ambassador to Hungary.

Ms. Bell’s creds are much weaker than those of the late Chris Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya who was murdered, according to a whimsical notion peddled by the White House, by a crowd of “protesters” dissatisfied with the quality of a brief film made by a relatively unknown auteur.  All ambassadors are the personal representatives of the president. A short time after the embassy in Benghazi was attacked, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the mother of one of the victims of the putative “spontaneous demonstration” that she was on the case. The filmmaker was arrested in due course and, Mrs. Clinton being unavailable, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was dispatched to various new outlets to commiserate with collateral victims of the attack and to point an accusing finger at the quickly imprisoned filmmaker. Ms. Rice has been taken off the U.N. beat and now serves as President Barack Obama's national security adviser, a bump upwards as anyone who knows anything about the tower of Babel in the Hudson will testify. Mrs. Clinton retired shortly after the American consulate in Benghazi was sacked and burned by non-spontaneous al-Qaida connected terrorists. Mrs. Clinton has been urged by leading Democrats to run as president

So, ambassador-wise, one would think Mr. Obama might be a little cautious. But, noooo… Ripe ambassadorships are still sold to the highest bidder, and Ms. Bell’s bids, in the form of campaign contributions, were more than adequate. A month ago, she found herself facing Mr. McCain at a confirmation hearing, which went like this:

McCain: What are our strategic interests in Hungary?

Bell:  Well, we have our strategic interests, in terms of what are our key priorities in Hungary, I think our key priorities are to improve upon, as I mentioned, the security relationship and also the law enforcement and to promote business opportunities, increase trade. ”

McCain: (Cynicism ripping like a wave over his outsized jaw) Great answer.

In Budapest, a reporter asked Mr. McCain about the producer of “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

“We’re very fortunate to have with us today the chairman of the committee that holds the hearings that these nominees come before,” Mr. McCain said, “and that is Senator Murphy, and he is very knowledgeable about these issues.”

But let Mr. Bloomberg tell it:

“Three things then happened. First, most everyone at the press conference laughed. Second, one of the people who didn’t laugh, the aforementioned Senator Chris Murphy, a freshman Democrat from Connecticut, approached the podium as if it were covered in rat poison. Third, McCain winked -- not at all subtly -- at the three American journalists sitting in the front row.”

Flourishing the usual ambassadorial pabulum, the knowledgeable Mr. Murphy told the reporters, “I think Hungary and the bilateral relationship is going to be very well served by Colleen Bell’s arrival. Ms. Bell has had an extensive history of involvement with a number of very important causes in the United States. She has visited Budapest and Hungary, and I think she is going to be a very strong ambassador, and we look forward to coming back and working with her in the very near future.”

It was a bit of a set-up, a senior member of the Senate flicking a towel at a junior member of the club in the locker room. Mr. Bloomberg was impressed:  “Watching John McCain set-up a fellow senator like a bowling pin is a rare Washington pleasure. Even when he does it in Budapest.”

But there is a serious point. At some point, the third strike ought to be called a strike out, and Mr. Obama recent choice of ambassadors has been inept.  If an ambassador is the personal representative of the president – and he is – shouldn’t the president be a trifle more discriminating? Hungary, to be sure, is no Libya. In the post-Soviet period, it may take a while for the Russian bear to maul into submission one of its former satellite countries. Ukraine is now being ripped, as Mr. Murphy well knows. In the post--Benghazi era, perhaps brains and experience rather than campaign contributions should purchase ambassadorships.

The Unbought Republican Nominating Convention

The hullaballoo that arose the last time Linda McMahon ran for the U.S. Senate against the sainted and irreproachable Attorney GeneralRichard Blumenthal was that the lady was attempting to buy the election.

She did spend $50 million, mostly on campaign literature and salaries for overpriced advisors, and the wife of then Republican campaign chairman Chris Healy was on her staff. Moreover, the lady had minimal political experience, and yet here she was attempting to leap into the U.S. Congressional pool where she would be swimming with such congressional sharks as former U.S. Senator from Connecticut Chris Dodd, who following his retirement flew off to Hollywood, there to become Tinseltown’s chief lobbyist, after having assured everyone that he would never – no, never – become a lobbyist.

Mr. Dodd himself leapt into the U.S. Congress without much political experience under his belt. He served as a volunteer in the Peace Corp, Dominican Republic chapter, from 1966 to 1968, joined the Army Reserve, serving until 1975, thus avoiding active duty service in Viet Nam, and was swept into Congress as a part of the "Watergate Class of '74." Mr. Dodd’s political lineage as the son of former U.S Senator Tom Dodd gave him an edge over his competitors that even the $50 million squandered by Mrs. McMahon could not buy.

As everyone knows, Mrs. McMahon, having secured the nomination of the Republican convention, lost her last campaign for the Senate to Mr. Blumenthal. Though Mrs. McMahon had a money advantage over Mr. Blumenthal, also millionaire from Greenwich, Mr. Blumenthal clearly had a media advantage over Mrs. McMahon. So frequent were Mr. Blumenthal’s press availabilities during his 20 year run as Attorney General that they gave rise to the often heard remark: there is no more dangerous spot in Connecticut than that between a TV camera and Mr. Blumenthal. In the U.S. Senate, Mr. Blumenthal has lost a great deal of his state notoriety sheen.

It is not at all surprising that Connecticut’s media, working cheek by jowl for decades with a left of center Democratic majority, has taken on a blue tincture. Not so much unfair as unwilling to operate out of the usual incumbent box, the media presents a problem for most minority candidates who fall to the right of, say, former U.S. Senator Chis Dodd, now a Hollywood mogul, or U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, who reconfigured as an Independent after having served social liberals in the senate for more than 20 years. Mr. Lieberman was dumped by the Democratic Party in a primary, purportedly for conspiring with the enemy. He endorsed U.S. Senator John McCain for president and, though vowing to decouple himself from the current struggle for his seat, has professed warm feeling for former U.S. Representative Chis Shays, a congressional colleague of long standing.

This time around, Mrs. McMahon will face a tough primary opponent in Mr. Shays. The McMahon-Shays tousle has a déjà vu all over again scent to it. Mrs. McMahon’s last Republican Party primary opponent was former U.S. Representative Rob Simmons, whose campaign blinked on and off because Mr. Simmons, thought by some a tougher opponent of Mr. Blumenthal, was conserving his campaign cash. Despite the Democratic Party howl raised against Republicans as being the party of the rich, Republican state parties that have lost to Democrats the bulk of their moderate front line troops are the poor cousins of politics. During the last election, U.S. Rep John Larson, who holds the safest seat this side of Beijing, China, outspend his Republican Party opponent by a ratio of $7,871to $1.

Should Mrs. McMahon survive Mr. Shays in a primary, she will likely face the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate, current U.S. Representative Chris Murphy who, whatever his political merits, is no Dick Blumenthal. So teflon-proof was Mr. Blumenthal that he was able to survive a stolen valor charge that he had several times falsely claimed active service in Vietnam. Frequent media availabilities over a twenty year period in Connecticut politics do have their advantages.

The redoubtable Susan Bysiewicz will be a tough primary opponent for Mr. Murphy, driving him leftward in a state seemingly beginning to show a bit of buyer’s remorse over the hard-charging, sweet talking President Barack Obama.

At the conclusion of the Republican Party nominating convention, Mrs. McMahon received 61 percent of the delegate vote; Mr. Shays, who distained to ask delegates to vote for him and vowed prior to the convention to engage in a primary, received a more slender 32 percent. Mrs. McMahon’s advantage in delegate votes was the result of superior hustle. At the opening of the convention, Mrs. McMahon produced a list of supporters that included 95 Republican Town Chairs, 33 Republican Town Vice Chairs, 20 Republican Town Secretaries and 13 Republican Town Treasures, more than 250 “grass roots leaders,” she said in a press release. The lady put some miles on her boots to earn such support.

These figures, however, will not be sufficient to convince hard boiled opponents that Mrs. McMahon did not BUY the convention. Watch for it.

Joe Lieberman And His Enemies

U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman’s principled stand in favor of ending the invidious “don’t ask don’t tell” policy in the U.S. military has elevated him to heroic status among some liberals, but the news continues to rasp the more tender consciences of puritanical progressives who feel they must applaud Mr. Lieberman’s efforts even as they strenuously condemn the man.

All this hero worship, Greg Hladky writes in the Fairfield Weekly, is a Washington beltway distortion: “Isn't it interesting how different the Lieberman situation appears down in Washington compared to the Lieberman reality back home?... Lieberman stands virtually no chance of winning the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination.”

Here at home in the progressive camp, Mr. Lieberman’s dark deeds will not easily be forgotten or forgiven. Mr. Hladky ticks off a familiar bill of particulars:

“It wasn't just Lieberman's unquestioning support for the Iraq war that produced the hostility. It wasn't just Joe's affectionate closeness to George W. Bush, or his decision to speak at the 2008 Republican National Convention and campaign for his buddy John McCain and against Barack Obama, or his suggestion that he might support Republican Linda McMahon in Connecticut's U.S. Senate race this year.

“It was all those things and the feeling that Joe has for a long time considered himself better than the Connecticut Democrats who used to believe in him, who used to think they knew who he was.”

Mr. Lieberman’s position and perseverance on the issue of gays in the military received at the more moderate New London Day an encouraging response: “Sen. Lieberman's determination to reverse the policy may help redeem his reputation in his home state, with which he has had a love-hate relationship in recent years.”

The loss of a party primary “due in large part to his unrelenting support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” forced Mr. Lieberman to run as an independent in 2006 and “compelled him, ill-advisedly, to support John McCain for president in 2008, and ironically the GOP senator from Arizona emerged as one of the most vocal opponents of ‘don't ask, don't tell.’"

Some progressives might quibble somewhat with the word “compelled”; the senator is, after all, a grown man and well above the age of reason. Politicians generally are “compelled” to do or say this and that in the same sense that the denizens of bordellos are compelled to do business with each other. Time and chance have not treated kindly some legislators who bolted their parties to run as independents. Neither Charlie Crist (R-I-Fl) nor Arlen Specter (D-R-D-PA) are serving any longer in the U.S. Congress.

Mr. Lieberman incautiously has left in his wake a rich store of UTube clips tracing the outline of what progressive consider his rank betrayal of the left wing of their party. Could he defend himself, Mr. Lieberman likely would say, along with former President Ronald Reagan, that his party left him, though at least one progressive in Mr. Lieberman’s party, President Barack Obama, has since assuming office veered to the middle on issues of war and peace. Tactically, Mr. Obama’s position on Afghanistan bears a striking resemblance to former President George Bush’s position on Iraq.

Similar campaign killer clips – which save lazy commentators the necessity of thinking seriously about issues – were used successfully to torpedo Linda McMahon’s campaign for the U.S. Senate. These bloody slices of demagoguery are the equivalents of knives drawn across the throats of people who cannot argue with damning visuals: wrestlers slamming each other in the ring, Mr. Lieberman bussing Mr. Bush on the floor of congress. Mrs. McMahon was also unfortunate enough to have earned her millions to self finance her campaign; and while Mr. Lieberman is no multi-millionaire, he does have more than a million campaign bucks socked away under his pillow in case one or another of his potential Democratic challengers should summon the courage to attempt to beard the lion in his den.

Mr. Lieberman’s challengers so far are being coy, perhaps hoping that the senior senator from Connecticut will follow U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd’s sterling example and leave the senate after his weak points have been sufficiently probed by assassins in the media who really should be supporting term limits.

That’s right, term limits. Good for what ails you, term limits would have the same beneficial effect on a sclerotic political system that the retirements of Mr. Dodd Mrs. Rell this year have had in Connecticut on media sales. When time servers leave the political arena, things begin to pop. People come out of the woodwork to vote, patriotism flutters from every street corner, and nearly everyone sinks happily into the comforting illusion that this time the country as a whole will enjoy, in the immortal world of Mr. Abraham Lincoln “a new burst of freedom.”

Real Valor

Looking at the flag around the 4th of July, beer can in hand, we sometimes forget that the red in the flag is a sign of blood. The flag, incidentally, is not, as is commonly thought, a symbol. It is a sign – which is to say it IS the thing it signifies. One stops for a stop sign; one need not stop for a stop symbol. Those who know what the flag signifies will place their hand over their hearts when it passes by in a parade, a sign of affection and respect we do not extend to symbols. Those who have shed blood for the country will understand the difference. It was a sign to the joyful and generally peaceful heart of America when the flag was unfurled at Iwo Jima. The sign signified an impending victory, followed by a long and lasting peace.

Tech Sgt. Matthew Slaydon has more than a notional understanding of the flag’s color scheme.

"The blast blew off my left arm, crushed my face in, destroyed my left eye completely -- left eye is a prosthetic -- and blinded my right eye. I honestly wished I had died for a very long time," Slaydon said.

During his long convalesence in various hospitals, where he was recovering from injuries suffered from an IED that had exploded a foot from his face, Sgt. Slaydon drifted in and out of consciousness, but he remembers his “steely eyed wife” telling him of the extent of his injuries. Annette had been told by a nurse that she could not give into her grief in her husband’s presence; she would have to be “steely eyed.” And she played the part with great courage, abandoning herself to grief only when she was alone.

Slowly, Sgt. Slaydon came to understand that he would have to live with his injuries. The quotes below were pulled from the U.S. Department of Defense site, “Wounded Warriors Diary”:

“I woke up three and a half weeks after my incident. I was unconscious through, I think, the traumatic brain injury, and also by being on very heavy pain killers. The hardest was, I think, when I woke up. The first thing I remember was Annette’s voice, and she was asking me if I wanted to know what my injuries were. And, as you can image, it took me a little while to really understand what was happening. And I feel for Annette because, as it turns out in hindsight, she actually had to tell me what my injuries were multiple times, because I would forget, due to the traumatic injuries, the TBI. I remember her telling me that my left arm had been traumatically amputated – and I knew what that meant, I knew what that meant – and that my left eye had been removed, and they were trying to save the vision in my right eye. And that’s when I started to figure out that I couldn’t see; that I’m like okay, it’s not dark; I don’t, I mean, I have bandages on my eyes, but that’s not why I can’t see anything. I can’t see anything because I’m blind. And that’s when reality slowly started – I mean, a little bit of it was crashing, but then I’d wake up, and I wouldn’t understand, or they’d give me a heavy dose of sedatives and, you know, it would take me a little while to figure out where I was again. So that was the hardest part, I think, was the initial awakening. My wife, Annette, took the bull by the horns when it came to my medical care. And anything they would let her do, she did. And, you know, you can imagine, I was just physically and emotionally and mentally, just wrecked – devastated. And I knew I was going to be safe, though, when I felt her hands on me.”

Sgt. Slaydon and his wife were remarried on April 13, 2008, a date, Annette says, that now marks their real wedding anniversary:

“We are celebrating the beginning of a new life together. And it’s certainly not the life we thought we were going to have, I can tell you that. But what we have realized is that we’re still going to have a fantastic life together, and we’re both dedicated to making sure that happens. It’s just going to be different than what we thought it was going to be… When Senator [John] McCain was giving his speech at the Republican convention, he said something that really hit very close to my heart, and I hope he will forgive me if I borrow a phrase from him. But he said he had been ‘blessed by misfortune.’ And I felt like he was talking to me when he said that – because though I would give everything for my husband to have his vision back, so that he can continue his career, we have been blessed by the love and caring of so many people. It’s been a positive experience, and we’ve both grown a great deal. We have made life long friends… When we renewed out wedding vows, he said something – I’m sorry, I’m going to cry – but he told me that it was all worth it, what he’s gone through, for us to have this love and everything at that moment; he felt it was all worth it.”

With some assistance from a Connecticut company, the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation, Sgt. Slaydon, an Arizona resident, will be able to return to school and get his doctorate in psychology.

A few days ago, Robbie Kaman, co-founder of Fidelco with her husband Charlie Kaman, died after a painful illness. She was a hands-on owner, as anyone blessed with of a Fidelco guide dog can testify. It seems somehow appropriate that Kaman is defense related.

As the Fourth of July approaches – a day, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, that “ought to be celebrated by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other..." – we should be mindful of the true valor of soldiers, and in our joyous illuminations we should see tokens of the love poured out for them by their families and others, such as Robbie Kaman, whose touch heals the deepest wounds.