No Comics on the Right

It would be difficult for anyone other than politicians on the right, often the butt of his jokes, to disdain Colin McEnroe. We in the land of Mark Twain do love and forgive our humorists their hyperbole, and Mr. McEnroe is the closest thing Connecticut has to, say, Aristophanes, the famous Greek comic playwright of the 4^thcentury BC.

Time, as we know, is the enemy of sound scholarship. The ruin of Greece has left huge gaps in our understanding of, among other things, Greek comic playwrights. Only eleven of Aristophanes’ 40 plays survive virtually complete. Modern scholarship, which relies on multiple disciplines –archeology, for instance -- to fill in the gaps, shows us an Aristophanes who was an arch political critic, though he wore many masks.

In his plays, Aristophanes mercilessly and subversively routed by means of humor the larger and more offensive pretentions of his day. Plato’s beef against Aristophanes was that his play “The Clouds” slandered Socrates and so led to the philosopher’s trial and execution, perhaps an over-reaction on the part of a shameless Socratic groupie.

Greek politicians, one may imagine, were none too pleased with him. Cleon, represented in “The Knights” as a political opportunist, a sharpie and a demagogue, felt his spurs. A populist leader of the pro-war faction in Athens, Cleon was a prime target of Aristophanes’ early plays, and the inevitable suit for slander brought by Cleon against Aristophanes, only served to further inflame the playwright against him.

Aristophanes was approached one day by one of the butts of his jokes, possibly a politician held up to ridicule in one of the lost plays, who demanded whether he took ANYTHING seriously.

“Of course,” said Aristophanes, “I take comedy seriously.”

So should modern politicians. Humor is dynamite. It entices populist sensibilities and focuses them on inconvenient moments that, having raised a laugh, stick in the memory.
Mark Twain, no slouch when it came to political invective, put in the mouth of his Young Satan the following fierce defense of humor:

“Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them -- and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon-- laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution--these can lift at a colossal humbug -- push it a little -- crowd it a little -- weaken it a little, century by century: But only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand."

Mr. McEnroe is a serious student of Twain’s persuasion, and he’s very good at what he does, which is to create word cartoons of politicians and their foibles, all seen from a leftist point of view. But leftists, as we all know, are not inclined to blow leftists to rags and atoms. There are no moderates or rightists, for instance, in Connecticut’s Congressional delegation,a point underscored by Mr. McEnroe:

“As a political humor writer, I am very nervous about having [Chris] Murphy and Richard Blumenthal as our senators. They're bad for business. Murphy has not been funny since Lee Whitnum barked‘Whore!!’ at him in a debate, and you can't count on that kind of thing happening very often.” Where Mr. McEnroe sees a comic wasteland, a conservative writer would see an Elysian field abloom with comic possibilities, especially in respect of Mr. Blumenthal, the political manikin.

Pity there are no comics on the right writing for Connecticut’s media, overstocked as always with liberals like Mr. McEnroe. Is there anything more depressing than an old comic in a dry month? The number of cartoonists and political comics on the right in a state that used to pride itself on its political moderation – no longer, alas – is no greater than the number of Republican politicians among its Congressional delegation, which is none, and this is very curious.

As in most other states at the beginning of the 21^stcentury, Connecticut’s two major parties have been sacked and conquered by conservatives on the right and progressives on the left, which is another way of saying that political ideas in the postmodern period have become serious. Since comedy by its nature is conservative and journalism by its nature is contrarian, one would suppose there would arise in Connecticut, chock-a-block with enthroned liberals and sans-culottes progressives, a contingent of conservative writers, commentators and journalists to kick at the progressive pricks.

This has not happened. The resistance to conservative ideas, in many other states a failure, has held in the Northeast. But moderation in both parties has been the first casualty of the 21^st century war of ideas.

On the left, the old liberals have been routed by bushy-tailed progressives; on the right, moderate Republicans have been driven out of New England by a conservative resurgence that had not yet ebbed. The last of the moderate Republicans in New England, former U.S. Representative Chris Shays, this year is running for the U.S. Senate as moderate in conservative clothing.

For Mr. McEnroe, politics has suddenly become complex. Ordinarily, a leftist with a conscience would drift toward the Democratic nominee for congress in the 5^th District Chris Donovan, Connecticut’s progressive LeonTrotsky. But alas, the shadow of the prison has fallen upon him, and Mr. McEnroe has spent too much of his career pillorying corrupt politicians – mostly Republicans– to support Donovan:

"I really should support Donovan, but I can’t. For about two decades I have trumpeted the ideals of clean government and clean elections. I have made a point of holding elected officials and candidates responsible for the actions of their subordinates. I considered Rell responsible for Lisa Moody and Rowland responsible for Peter Ellef. I hold Lisa Wilson-Foley responsible for whoever set up the deal with Rowland, even if that wasn’t her."

Here and there in Connecticut, one finds a lonely editorial voice crying out in an empty theatre that the vital center must be preserved, as one preserves in a museum the dusty artifacts of the past. Epicenters have become centers. And even these lonely voices are fierce partisans, mostly progressives – wolves, in the memorable phrase of Winston Churchill, dressed in wolves’ clothing.

Real comic possibilities would present themselves to a conservative comic writer in Connecticut – since virtually all the fish in the political pond are museum styled liberals or Eugene Debs like progressives. But it is pointless to expect a political conversion from Mr. McEnroe at this late date. He is too emotionally committed to waggery on the left.

Aristophanes, the comic writer who said he took comedy seriously, would have converted.

Governor Malloy On Connecticut’s Economic Doldrums

Gov. Dannel Malloy appeared recently at the editorial offices of the New London Day, where he unburdened himself cautiously on matters involving taxing and spending:

“’We have people who for political reasons are inserting uncertainty into the bond market, and we’re seeing the bond market reflect that,’ Malloy said. He went on to criticize some of [New Jersey Gov. Chris] Christie’s other recent exhortations to fellow Republicans to hang tough against established interests and to eliminate tenure for schoolteachers.

“’Hopefully I take a slightly more intellectual approach to this discussion than Governor Christie has demonstrated,’ Malloy said, adding that his counterpart ‘certainly understands the nuts and bolts portion of it.’

“’There are proven economic theories about sustaining economic growth, and we ignore those theories that have proven themselves at our own peril,’ Malloy said.

“’We’re going to see large-scale additional unemployment caused by governmental entities: local government and state government primarily, and perhaps the federal government,” he said. “Can you tell me what the impact of that is going to be on the recovery?’

One of the proven economic theories about sustaining economic growth is this: When expenditures outpace receipts and you still think you do not have to cut back spending, you are kissing the lipstick on a pig. An unsustainable national debt of $14 trillion, massive governmental regulation and excessive governmental borrowing introduce uncertainty into both bond and stock markets. The value of state bonds is secured by the economic wellbeing of the state. If California is bankrupt, its bonds will be correspondingly valueless because few would be willing to buy such bonds.

Moody lowered Connecticut’s general obligation bonds more than two years ago from stable to negative because the state used deficit bonds to resolve a budget shortfall.

“Connecticut,” Moody said in a report issued in 2009, “used one-time solutions to close slightly over half of the (biennial budget’s) shortfall … these solutions create future structural budget gaps and leave the state with significantly reduced flexibility to address additional fiscal pressures that may arise due to a delayed and/or weaker than expected recovery from the worst economic recession since the depression.”

A political writer from Rhode Island crowed after citing the report, “Break out the champagne! Another state has done worse than us in the budgeting department!

Connecticut is now running a deficit of some $3.5 billion or more for each of the next three years; the state has borrowed money to pay for budget deficits rather than capital improvements, and it has raided pension funds to pay for state debt. No “intellectual approach” – what ever that means -- will change the facts on the ground. If the state of Connecticut were to borrow less and spend less, if its pension liabilities were offset by suitable pension payments, its bond rating would be more secure.

An alternative solution, from Moody’s vantage point, is to pay debts and pension liabilities from tax increases. But recent national elections have suggested to some intellectually wide awake Democrats that this is a route leading to political unemployment, and so they have been cautious of late in proposing tax increases. It is always possible that Connecticut Democrats are more courageous than Democrats in other states. Here in the “Tax-Me State”, Democrats survived an election in which the U.S. House reverted to Republicans, many state legislatures fell to the GOP and many gubernatorial state houses also were captured by Republicans.

One would like to hear from Mr. Malloy what impact he thinks tax increases would have on Connecticut’s business environment now that Mr. Christie of New Jersey and Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York have pledged not to raise taxes. Those pledges may seem to some in Connecticut a little too close for comfort. Over the long haul, the impact of spending cuts – provided they are permanent -- will be salutary. When government shrinks, personal wealth, one of the more important drivers of the economy, increases, which is good for the economy. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, appears to share this intellectual approach with the less intellectual Mr. Christie, possibly because he does not wish New York businesses to migrate to New Jersey, a possibility that does not disturb the snoring of caucus leaders in Connecticut’s General Assembly.

Mr. Malloy, during his appearance at the Day’s editorial office, also ventured some views on history:

“The current economic plight is ‘not unlike 1935, ‘36,’ Malloy said, referring to the years when the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt had seen some success but also heard calls to roll back its most aggressive economic interventions against the Great Depression.

“’Do you pull back from a level of investment that has shown some ability to get the economy moving?’ Malloy said. ‘Do you pull back now or do you pull back over a period of time? The Republicans in Washington want to pull back now. What I would argue is you need a better thought-out withdrawal from that market, which we’re not going to get.’

“But Malloy also expressed sympathy with the intentions of politicians such as Christie, who say their goal has been to shrink the size of state government and improve its efficiency. Those same goals, which were central talking points of Malloy’s campaign, have many in Hartford anticipating a clash between Democratic leadership in the legislature and the new governor, who seems more prepared to make cuts.

“An ultimate reduction in the size of government is, ‘over the long haul ... probably a good thing,’ Malloy said, but he returned to his concern about driving unemployment. ‘Over the short run, all of that at once is a very dangerous thing.’

None of the terms used by Mr. Malloy are qualified. How much time is a “long haul”? How much time is a “short haul”? No one but local anarchists are proposing that government in the state of Connecticut should be reduced a modest 25 percent “all at once.” But Mr. Malloy should at the very least be able to tell editorial page editors what percentage of state government should be reduced to insure solvency “over the long haul” and whether the reductions will be permanent or temporary.

And at this point, only a few weeks before his budget will be written in stone and presented to a rubber stamping Democratic majority in the legislature, Mr. Malloy should be able to disclose what percentage of tax increases to reductions in spending he thinks will stabilize Connecticut’s bonds and reverse a flow of jobs from Connecticut to other states in which state debts are lower, bond rating is more secure and taxes are less punishing.

That kind of information, elicited by editorial writers and demanding reporters across the state, will greatly sooth the minds and hearts of taxpayers, those who receive government services, bond rating agencies and any stray intellectuals who have not already found employment in the Malloy administration.

The Moody-Bannon

With the departure of the Jodi Rell administration – all good things must end – Lisa Moody, a punching bag for people who did not want, for whatever reason, to punch Mrs. Rell, will also leave the stage, to be replaced by Tim Bannon, Gov. Elect-Dan Malloy’s Chief of Staff.

Mr. Bannon, among other accomplishments, is the very first gubernatorial chief of staff in Connecticut to have appeared as a character in a comic strip. T.F. Bannon, of the firm Torts, Tarts & Torque, an early character in Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury,” was patterned after Mr. Bannon, a school chum of Trudeau’s when the two were terrorizing Yale together, Mr Bannon as chairman and Mr. Trudeau as Editor in Chief of the Yale Record, America's oldest humor magazine.

The use of a major domo to deflect criticism from the chief is considerably older than the friendship between Mr. Bannon and Mr. Trudeau, who likely will not reinsert Mr. Bannon into his strip any time soon.

Though she was perfectly capable of thinking for herself, Queen Victoria had Disraeli to serve as a buffer protecting the Queen from the slings and arrows deployed against her administration from Fleet Street. George Bush’s straw man was Vice President Dick Cheney, said to be his brain mostly because the president, like Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Bannon a graduate of Yale, was thought to have none. That is how Mr. Bush, wandering through Mr. Trudeau’s panels as an empty-headed Roman warrior’s helmet, was depicted in Mr. Trudeau’s strip. One looks in vain to Mr. Trudeau’s for a similar comic treatment of President Barack Obama, whose vices do not include the bogeyman of Yale graduates -- stupidity.

It is obvious that Mr. Trudeau likes Mr. Bannon, whom he describes as “brilliant, competent and integrity itself.” Affection is a wet blanket that stifles the burning embers of comedy. Most political cartoonists are unapologetically fierce. What is the point of having absolute power if you are not willing to abuse it, a famous caricaturist once asked?

No, given Mr. Trudeau’s obvious tilt to the left, it will not do to poke fun at the Malloy regime, which promises to be, on the state level, a repeat in a minor key of the national script rolling out of Mr. Obama’s administration: Get the economy moving again with large-scale capital spending projects; turn the millionaires, hereafter defined as anyone making more than $250,000 per annum, upside down and shake the money from their pockets into the state treasury; spend more money on education -- there can never be too many failing urban public schools; phone Washington and beg for handouts; phone businesses elsewhere in the nation and try to sell them on a state that has a crushing debt, two fiscal years out, of upwards of $6 billion; and prepare to mount a sturdy defense of the Malloy administration by riffing on the theme – it was my predecessors fault; I’m just trying to administer the mess left me by Rell-Moody.

To some extent, Ms. Moody played the same straw man part for Mrs. Rell, a governor who, as a creature of the legislature, was for that reason too willing to arrange collapsing compromises with Democratic leaders fixated on spending tax money lavishly and swelling the ranks of their union supporters.

The lamb that has survived the slaughter is bound to have a cousinly regard for the lamb led to the slaughter. "I think he's one of the smartest people I've ever met,'' Moody said of Bannon.” He's a man of uncommon intellect. He has very high integrity, is very much a hard worker, and he will thrive as chief of staff. He's going to learn to become a juggler, a confidant, a task-master on occasion, a buffer, and a constant multi-tasker.''

At this point, the skies are empty and blue. But major unaddressed problems do not disappear when administrations change. If Mr. Malloy is serious about cutting spending, as his campaign rhetoric indicated, his struggle in office will be similar to that of Rell-Moody, and there is every reason to believe that Mr. Malloy, whose cranial matter appears to be in good order, will sometimes stumble, possibly over the feet of Speaker of the House Chris Dovovan.

No administration is entirely transparent or fault free. When the pratfalls occur, Mr. Bannon, taskmaster and buffer, will be on hand to upright his boss and even, should the occasion warrant, take a media bullet for him. It will be very interesting to see at that point whether Connecticut's left of center media will applaud him for his self sacrificial bravery.