Howell Raines, the defrocked NY Times editor, writes in portfolio.com about “the poisoned symbiosis between old politics and old media” in which media types lament hardball politics while at the same time secretly admiring its most extreme practitioners, like Karl Rove, who is a major character in the piece. Raines is among those who believe that Obama’s candidacy has transformed politics: “You wouldn’t know it from the campaign so far, but we may be living at the end of the age of smashmouth media coverage,” he writes. I am among those who believe Obama has not transformed anything. My skepticism is not because of Obama; rather, it is because of politics. The imperatives of democratic politics have not changed since Athens engaged in the first experiment of its kind. The best politicians understand this; the rest wish that the world were different.

Click here for the link.

Maybe this should be a daily feature. Hardly a day goes by that the leading national political web sites don’t have gloomy news for R’s:

* Elizabeth Dole, whose North Carolina Senate seat was thought to be safe, now appears to be in a tight, or at least tightening race with state senator Kay Hagan. A Public Policy Polling survey shows Dole leading, 48-43 (616 registered voters, 4% margin of error). Congressional Quarterly rates the race as “Republican favored,” adding that Hagan’s prospects hinge upon her ability to stay close to Dole in fundraising. That little bit of news could have repercussions in Texas, because Democratic senatorial campaign money will be allocated to the states where D’s have a chance of picking up a Senate seat, and so to some extent Rick Noriega and Hagan are competing for cash. Noriega’s race, at the moment, is a tick closer at four points (44-48, 43-47, in two recent polls) than Hagan’s is.

* The Los Angeles Times‘ political blog, Top of the Ticket, is reporting that Ron Paul is not going away quietly. Paul still has a $5 million warchest and hopes to have a speaking role at the convention:

Largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September.

Paul’s presidential candidacy has been correctly dismissed all along in terms of winning the nomination. He was even excluded as irrelevant by Fox News from a nationally-televised GOP debate in New Hampshire.

But what’s been largely overlooked is Paul’s candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party’s most conservative conservatives. [T]hat situation could be exacerbated by today’s expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.

* The president’s numbers continue to sink: 82% of Americans now say the country is on the wrong track, up 10 points in the last year, according to politicalwire.com. And there’s this: “Bush now has gone 40 months without majority approval, beating Truman’s record (also during economic discontent and an unpopular war) of 38 consecutive months from 1949-52.”

I overlooked a press release from Senator Dan Patrick in April that is worth a comment. Patrick hailed the Florida House of Representatives for passing a bill that would require abortion providers to perform an ultrasound procedure prior to performing an abortion. He had proposed similar legislation in the 2007 session, which passed the Senate but died in the House. The law gave the patient the option of viewing the image before terminating the pregnancy.

There is no end to the obstacles that the pro-life movement can dream up to place in the way of women seeking an abortion: parental notification, parental consent, counseling, waiting periods, and the availability of reading material, including the those that make the discredited claim of a link between abortions/miscarriages and breast cancer. Over the years, the pro-choice community has tended to oppose all of these proposals as undermining a woman’s right to choose.

I believe that this approach has been a mistake and that it has cost pro-choice advocates dearly. Politically, it would have been far wiser not to oppose these efforts. If counseling can persuade a woman not to have an abortion, that ought to be viewed as a good result, instead of a bad one. The same goes for ultrasound treatment. I know what the response will be: These restrictions are not imposed in good faith. They are designed to get women to change their minds. Well, if that is the result, that should be viewed as a good outcome, not a bad one. (I would lift all restrictions in cases of rape, incest, or health of the mother.)

By adopting a militant stance that the public sees as not only pro-choice but also pro-abortion, the pro-choice movement lost the PR battle in the 80’s and 90’s. I think that generational change is on the pro-choice side. They shouldn’t blow it by focusing on ancillary issues.

Another scandal: NY Republican congressman Vito Fossella has admitted an affair that included fathering a child out of wedlock (this on top of a drunk-driving accident) and is under pressure to resign. This was considered a safe Republican seat; now CQ (Congressional Quarterly) rates it as “no clear favorite.” A poll showed Fossella with the support of 61% of his district, but politicalwire.com says national R’s want him out, now.

A new Gallup poll has President Bush’s approval rating holding steady at 28% — well, maybe “steady” is not the right word choice. As bad as that is, even worse is the poll’s finding that Bush’s support among R’s has eroded to 60%.

Ideological opposition to tax increases is standing in the way of getting transportation in this state on a sound financial basis. Several commenters to my recent post, “Delisi Appears to Rule Out Gasoline Tax Increase,” dismiss the likelihood of an increase in the gasoline tax. What people are missing is that “tax” is a misnomer in the case of gasoline. It is a pure user fee. You pay for the mileage that you drive–nothing more, nothing less. If your car gets around 20 miles to the gallon, you are paying roughly 2 cents a mile to drive. Property taxes and income taxes are altogether different. In those cases, the government taxes value (in the case of property) and productivity (in the case of income). They pick your pocket and redistribute the property tax dollars to local government functions (schools, water and wastewater, streets, and the like) and the income tax dollars to Medicare, Medicaid, and social security recipients. Most taxpayers who do not quality for these entitlement programs will not see any benefit. Gasoline taxes are used to maintain and improve the roads that you drive on. The tax dollars stay in transportation–or they would, were it not for diversions into public schools and the Department of Public Safety and pork barrel projects.

Those who oppose raising taxes are fond of pointing out that as fuel efficiency improves, gasoline “tax” revenue declines, because cars can go farther on a tank of gasoline than they used to. This is true. But other factors make up for this lost revenue. Texas’s population is growing rapidly, and more people means more cars and more cars means more gasoline sales, and more gasoline sales means more revenue. There is plenty of life left in the gasoline user fee.

The overriding political question is, How are we going to pay for roads? No one disputes that Texas needs a better road system and revenue to pay for it. At least five alternatives exist: (1) put more general revenue into highways; (2) issue bonds to borrow the money to build roads; (3) impose tolls; (4) sell concessions and privatize roads; (5) raise the gasoline tax and index it to inflation. Of these, (5) raising the gasoline tax, is the most logical and the least intrusive. Is it a “tax” increase? Only if you redefine a user fee as a tax. If a gasoline “tax” is a tax increase, then so are (3) tolls. They are the same thing: a payment you must make in order to use the roads.

Any solution that relies on requires general revenue is a bad idea, because it puts highways in competition with schools, health care, and law enforcement. Issuing bonds is no panacea, because the bondholders have to be paid, and what else are you going to pay them with other than general revenue?

TxDOT’s favored source of revenue has been concession payments. There may be situations in which concession payments are appropriate, but not in a case where control of the roads is surrendered to foreign corporations, far into the future, so that what we are really doing is shifting the tax burden to our children and grandchildren. Finally, we ought to question whether TxDOT should demand concession payments from local toll authorities in Houston the Metroplex, rather than having the revenue remain in a region subject to local control.

The place to start is by acknowledging that the gasoline tax is really a user fee. Then, maybe, we can actually have a discussion about how to solve our transportation problems without getting caught up in political sloganeering and ideology.

I confess that I seldom vote in local elections. The main reason for this is that I can’t stand the Austin city council. Not just this particular city council, but I mean every city council I can recall. They are lifestyle nuts. The restriping of Shoal Creek Boulevard for bike lanes was a classic. Hundreds of thousands of dollars to stripe it and hundreds of thousands to undo it because it was such a mess. They hate cars and love bicycles. They build a rail line that doesn’t make sense. The Statesman doesn’t know how to cover local politics; you have to read the free distribution Austin Chronicle. I’ve given up. The school board is no better. School board members only do two things. They rubber stamp the superintendent or they fire the superintendent. Oh, yes, they also approve bond issues that favor one part of the district over another (I remember that from my time as PTA president, and from what I hear, it hasn’t changed). What’s the use of voting? Don’t tell me that if you don’t vote, you can’t complain. Oh yes I can.

Tomorrow I’m going to make an exception. Harrison Keller, Tom Craddick’s education staffer, is running for the Austin Community College board of trustees. I have had the opportunity to work with Harrison on stories over the years, and I have found him to be intelligent, informed, and public-spirited. I don’t agree with him about everything, but he has always been up-front and square with me. He’s the kind of person who I would vote for without hestitation. I didn’t even know he was running until I got a robocall this afternoon. I will vote, and I hope he wins.

Deirdre Delisi, the new chair of the Texas Transportation Commission, has an op-ed piece in today’s Statesman in which she writes about her new job. It could pass for one of the late Ric Williamson’s speeches: Our transportation infrastructure is quickly becoming overwhelmed … a thousand people move to Texas every day … it is imperative that we have as many tools as possible to get the job done … no one-size-fits-all solution … local and regional solutions will be the key … together we can meet the challenge.

You get the idea. Absolutely nothing in this piece reached out to the public or its legislative critics to acknowledge TxDOT’s deficiencies–its lack of candor, its loss of credibility, its resistance to accountability, its air of arrogance, not to mention the widespread opposition to its determination to privatize highways.

I’m not going to prejudge Ms. Delisi (tempting as it may be). She has the intelligence and the knowledge to serve with distinction. The state needs for her to be successful. But the op-ed piece was not a good start. TxDOT has few friends in the Legislature and fewer still among the public at large. It has even alienated transportation interests in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth areas, which ought to be its strongest allies. The rule for judging the pronouncements of people whose job is to make policy is, “Don’t look at what they say, look at what they don’t say.” The failure to mend fences was a missed opportunity. It’s a characteristic of Perry’s inner circle. They don’t give an inch.

This propensity was evident from the text of the article. “[I]t is imperative that we have as many tools as possible to get the job done,” Delisi wrote, but later she added, “Our state must find new money to pay for roads and mass transit. It is difficult to imagine that the answer to our state’s transportation problems will be found in higher gas taxes….”

To repeat: Not a good start.

If you have been watching the cable networks tonight, you know that Lake County, Indiana, holds the key to the Indiana Democratic primary. Lake County includes the city of Gary, a place that is the poster child for the Rust Belt. Its population has fallen with the fortunes of the steel industry, from 178,000 in 1960 to 102,000 in 2000. It is the largest city in the country that is not a county seat. For many years Gary was high on the list of the most dangerous cities, and while its ranking has improved, it still managed to post a 40% increase in homicides in 2007. The population is 84% black, and statistically it has all the problems you might expect of a city: poor schools with low test scores; high crime rates; high unemployment. It is, in other words, a place where Barack Obama ought to run very well.

And apparently he is doing just that. I found this late-breaking report from the Washington Post online, posted at 10:50 EDT:

Gary Mayor Predicts Possible Indiana Shocker

Updated 11:12 p.m.

By Alec MacGillis
As the fate of a nailbiter Indiana primary — and possibly the course of the Democratic race — hung on his city, Gary Mayor Rudy Clay said just now that it might take a while yet to finish counting the vote in Lake County, which includes Gary, and said tonight his city had turned out so overwhelmingly for Barack Obama that it might just be enough to close the gap with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“Let me tell you, when all the votes are counted, when Gary comes in, I think you’re looking at something for the world to see,” Clay, an Obama supporter, said in a telephone interview from Obama’s Gary headquarters. “I don’t know what the numbers are yet, but Gary has absolutely produced in large numbers for Obama here.”

Clay said the results were late coming in from Lake County because of the large numbers of absentee ballots that had to be counted — about 11,000. Under local practice, all of the cartridges from voting machines in Gary and nearby East Chicago are first collected at the local airport before being driven to the county headquarters to be tallied with the results from the rest of the county, he said. He said there were no major technical problems holding up the count.

“It takes a little time. We want to be sure that every vote is counted fair and right,” he said. “I just talked to the director out there and they are working like junkyard dogs to get that done as soon as possible. They are taking some time but I told them to do it right. That’s what taking the time.”

Gary, a predominantly African-American, post-industrial city, is considered a major stronghold for the Illinois senator, whose South Side Chicago home is just a short drive across the border. Smaller towns within Lake County are expected to break in a more balanced way between Obama and Clinton. In 2004, 188,000 voters turned out in Lake County, with 61 percent voting for John Kerry. Clay predicted that Clinton would win other towns in the county by narrow margins but that Obama would rack up huge totals in Gary, where he said some precincts reported only a handful of votes for Clinton. So closely was he following the local vote counting that he did not even know how close the statewide vote had gotten — a four percentage difference at 10:30.

In March, Clay predicted the race would come down to Gary, telling the Northwest Indiana and Illinois Times that tonight on CNN, “They are going to point at Indiana and say Hillary Clinton is leading by one point but Gary ain’t come in yet.”

Clay himself was deeply involved in get out the vote efforts this afternoon, going door to door to drum up anyone who hadn’t yet voted, he said. A volunteer in the Obama office in Gary said that canvassers who went out today found that in some neighborhoods almost everyone reported having already cast an absentee ballot.

“It was one of the biggest get out the vote campaigns I’ve seen,” Clay said. “It was the biggest get out the vote campaign ever in Gary for a presidential election.”

At this moment, 11:50 p.m., Clinton is clinging to a 17,000 vote lead over Obama with 99% of the vote in and Gary holding the balance. This is pretty scary stuff. Gary is, for all practical purposes, an extension of Chicago, and those Chicago boys know how to steal elections. Mayor Richard Daley may have stolen the 1960 election in Illinois from Richard Nixon on behalf of John F. Kennedy.

If Obama can pull out a win in Indiana in the wee hours, the Democratic presidential race is over.

Cornyn 47%
Noriega 43%

Rasmussen Reports released this poll on Monday morning. After the numbers, the next line was, “It’s time to add United States Senator John Cornyn to the list of potentially vulnerable Republican incumbents in Election 2008.”

Can this poll be on the money? My first reaction was skepticism, for two reasons. One is that the last poll I heard about, soon after the Texas primary, had Cornyn up by something like 52-36. The other is a widespread perception, at least among self-annointed savants, that Noriega hasn’t got his act together. He hasn’t found a top-drawer person to handle his fundraising; he doesn’t have an effective campaign organization; he is a soporific speaker; he doesn’t see the big picture. He presents himself to audiences as Lieutenant Colonel Rick Noriega–that was the sign he used to identify himself in the Democratic primary debate back in February–and talks about the war and his efforts to help veterans. I wrote a column about his experience in Afghanistan, and the effect it had on him, so I am not devaluing the service he gave to his country. But this isn’t what people want to hear. They have made up their minds about the war, one way or another. People are worried about the economy, about health care, about what kind of future their children will have. I heard him speak at a legislative conference in New Braunfels, and he just put the audience to sleep. There was no fire, no broad themes, nothing that would move a person to vote for him. He has been running for the Senate for almost half a year now, and I haven’t heard any favorable buzz about him at all. All the talk has been about how he is underperforming.

To be fair, it is a huge leap from state representative to United States Senator. As a legislator, Noriega knew how to operate in floor debate. Tom Craddick regarded him as a bully, and that was a measure of grudging respect. But a state rep in the minority party is relegated to a few moments of action spread out over 140 days. It is hard to grow into a leader, and, in fact, Noriega didn’t do it. He was more of a designated hitter who went up to bat when his team needed him. Noriega was a leader in the military, but politics is a different situation. Nobody has to follow you.

Even so, I think that the poll is credible. Early polls often reflect not the loyalties of voters to candidates but the loyalty of voters to parties. Is it possible that the spread between the parties in Texas has narrowed to four or five points? I think it is. Republican numbers-crunchers continue to describe the spread as being in the neighborhood of 9%, but, as I wrote in Texas Monthly after the primary, I think that some realignment is taking place, both in Texas and nationally. I don’t think that Republicans are becoming Democrats overnight, but I do think that they are becoming more independent, if not yet ready to call themselves independents. Texas is not immune from national trends, and the wind is definitely blowing in the Democrats’ direction. Note the victories by Democrats in two special elections for congressional seats, those vacated by former House speaker Dennis Hastert (Illinois) and, last week, twenty-year GOP incumbent Richard Baker (Louisiana).

And let’s not forget those primary turnout numbers, when Democrats outvoted Republicans even in counties that have traditionally been rock-solid for the GOP. Overall the Democratic primary vote was twice that of Republicans. It is true that the D’s had a hot presidential race while the R’s did not, and it is also true that Democratic turnout was somewhat inflated, in the range of 7-8%, by Republicans crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary. Nevertheless, the Democratic turnout in Republican stronghold counties like Collin, Denton, Fort Bend, and Williamson was eye-opening. If Democrats can continue to be motivated into the fall, yes, I can see Noriega being very competitive in this race.

The big question for Democrats is always whether the Hispanic vote will finally reach the tipping point. Cornyn’s record on immigration and the border wall gives Noriega an opportunity to mobilize that vote. In recent years, though, it has been Republicans who have exceeded expectations; Bush won at least 40% of the Hispanic vote nationally in 2004, and an even bigger slice of the pie in Texas (thought to be around 44%). Noriega needs to push his share into the 70% range. His problem is that he is pro-choice, and this will cost him votes among Hispanic Catholics and evangelicals.

At the moment, the main importance of the poll is that Democratic strategists in Washington know that Noriega is mathematically competitive–and they know it early enough to be able to do something about it in terms of providing money and expertise and candidate training for his campaign. There is a lot of room for improvement.

Delisi Appointment maintains Status Quo at TxDOT

Sunset Advisory Commission Vice Chair says he is a “NO” vote on Delisi

The following commentary about Governor Perry’s appointment of Deirdre Delisi as chair of the Texas Transportation Commission was just received from Senator Glenn Hegar’s office. The e-mail describes the piece as an “Op-Ed,” although it is not currently scheduled for publication, according to Hegar’s office.

Austin, Texas—On Wednesday, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced he had appointed Deirdre Delisi, his former Chief of Staff, as the new Chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). As of today, I will not vote to confirm her appointment in the next Legislative session.

Ask almost any Texan, especially those who have the need to travel frequently on US Interstate Highway 35, about our Texas transportation system and they will tell you that many of our roads have extreme congestion, while other construction projects have experienced significant cost overruns. Last year, TxDOT notified the public that they had experienced a billion dollar accounting error, spent millions of dollars in an effort to persuade Texans that we need to pursue the proposed Tran-Texas Corridor even though the Legislature had just passed a two-year moratorium on public-private agreements.

Next legislative session will be a critical time as we work to ensure that TxDOT can once again gain the trust of Texans and to overcome the low opinion of what was once the most respected highway department in the nation.

In the Legislature, relations with TxDOT are also at an all-time low. Lawmaker’s questions and concerns about the Trans-Texas Corridor, the agency’s policies, funding schemes, budget, and construction priorities have oftentimes been met with contempt and disdain by TxDOT officials. The result is that many legislators, including myself, have lost confidence that TxDOT and its past policies are working in the best interests of Texas taxpayers.

That is why I had high hopes that Governor Rick Perry would use the vacancy created by the untimely passing of former Transportation Chair Ric Williamson as an opportunity to appoint someone to lead the commission who would work to change the status quo, reach out to lawmakers, and work cooperatively with the legislature to address the concerns of the citizens we represent. I view Ms. Delisi’s appointment as a squandered opportunity. It appears that rather than choose someone to head the commission who will reach out to lawmakers and work cooperatively with legislators, the governor instead has chosen a political “yes man” with little or no practical experience involving transportation issues other than carrying out the Governor’s myopic vision that relies solely on building more toll roads and selling our highway infrastructure to the highest bidder, usually a foreign owned company.

I currently serve as the Vice Chairman of the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission. In 1977, the Legislature created the Commission to identify and eliminate waste, duplication, and inefficiency in government agencies. The 12-member Commission is a legislative body that reviews the policies and programs of more than 150 government agencies every 12 years. The Commission questions the need for each agency, looks for potential duplication of other public services or programs, and considers new and innovative changes to improve each agency’s operations and activities. Currently, the Texas Department of Transportation is undergoing its 12-year Sunset review.

I also serve as a member of the Senate Nominations Committee, the committee who will have to vote to confirm Ms. Delisi’s appointment when the legislature reconvenes in January 2009. One might expect that the Governor and Ms. Delisi would have contacted all members of these key committees to discuss their plans to reform TxDOT in the Sunset process and to ask for our vote in the upcoming Nomination process. Unfortunately, like most of my colleagues, I learned about the appointment from the news media.

The Governor can certainly appoint anyone whom he sees fit, but as a State Senator who takes his constitutional “advise and consent” responsibilities seriously, I would have hoped Governor Perry would have sought out the advice of legislators before asking for our consent at this critical juncture in Texas history.

The Texas Department of Transportation’s vision statement says that the agency will work to: “Promote a higher quality of life through partnerships with the citizens of Texas and all branches of government by being receptive, responsible and cooperative.”

The Governor’s and Ms. Delisi’s recent actions with regard to this appointment are certainly not in keeping with that vision statement, but instead reflect a vision of non-cooperation and non-responsiveness to both lawmakers and the constituents they serve.

I certainly hope that Ms. Delisi will prove me wrong.

Likewise, I hope that between now and her Senate confirmation hearing next January she will attempt to change my perception that she will not be an agent of the status quo at TxDOT. If so, she may still have an opportunity to earn both my confidence and my vote, and the taxpayers of our state and those who use and depend on our vast transportation system will be well served.

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled on a longstanding case involving homebuilder Bob Perry. Do you think the court (a) ruled for Bob Perry (b) ruled against Bob Perry (c) that this is a stupid question because we all know the answer?

Here is the release from Texas Watch. I will add more later.

A Democratic operative who is in touch with the Obama campaign explains their strategy this way: Obama has the lead. Clinton can’t overtake him in pledged delegates. All they want to do is hold the lead until the convention and win the nomination without angering Clinton’s supporters, so that they can unify the party in the general election. I think this is a mistake, but then I think almost everything Obama has done in the weeks since the March 4 Texas and Ohio primaries has been misguided. He is playing the game the way college basketball used to be played before there was a shot clock: Take a lead into the last five minutes, spread the floor, and pass the ball back and forth while the time runs out. Passivity worked under those rules, but it doesn’t work in politics. It kills your momentum, and Obama’s momentum is dead. The Obama campaign is playing not to lose rather than playing to win.

Machiavelli, the first political consultant, wrote one of his most famous passages on the subject of fortune in politics:

For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly.

Fortune favors the bold. The Obama campaign has allowed Clinton to seize the initiative while he has tried to stay above the fray. He has not fought back; he has allowed Clinton to question his electability when he could have been questioning hers. The world of sports really is analagous to the world of politics. The cliche that you have to play one game at a time is right. It is folly to adopt a post-convention unification strategy when the moment of peril is right now, in Indiana and North Carolina and Oregon. Clinton has no business being in this race. Her strategy was ruined the moment she lost Iowa. She’s running low on money. But she isn’t going away, and she will have her people in control of the convention.

I think Obama’s fundamental problem is that he lacks good political instincts. How could he fail to see that Jeremiah Wright was going to be a problem? How could he make that comment about the bitter people of rural Pennsylvania clinging “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” How could he go bowling when he couldn’t even break 40? He has–maybe I should say “had”–a great message, but he lacks a feel for political combat.

Here’s what I posted two days after the Texas and Ohio primaries. (I have edited out a comment about Tom Craddick’s toughness for brevity’s sake):

The national media attribute her success to Roy Spence’s 3 a.m. ad, and I’m all for one of our own getting the credit, but I think Clinton’s success had less to do with her than with Obama. His performance level has dropped. He wasn’t on his game in the Texas debate, and he was downright bad in the Ohio debate. Maybe he has been sick–a correspondent pointed out that he was blowing his nose at the rally the night before the Texas debate–but I think he’s got a different kind of bug. He has begun to read his own press clippings and, worse, believe them. When I watched the Ohio debate, I could practically see him grow a glass jaw. Clinton hit him again and again, and he didn’t fight back. He let her bully him in the discussion over Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement. He said he renounced it and Clinton said he should reject it and he argued a while and finally said, “OK, I renounce it and reject it.” Weak!

Hillary has been running ads suggesting that she is stronger and would make the better commander-in-chief, and he played right into it. I think women got the message a lot more clearly than the message of the telephone ad: Hillary Clinton is tougher than Barack Obama. I feel as if I am watching a rerun of an old movie, starring Michael Dukakis, who wouldn’t fight back, co-starring John Kerry, who wouldn’t fight back. Only two people in America have more baggage than Hillary Clinton, and she’s married to one of them and trying to succeed the other. She hammers Obama for his dealings with Tony Rezko, but he can’t find a way to mention that her brother, Hugh Rodham, made $400,000 in fees for lobbying for presidential pardons, including one for fugitive financier Marc Rich, who gave $70,000 to her Senate campaign.

I’m afraid that Obama wants the love more than he wants the presidency. And Hillary knows it. She’s tougher.

Back to the present: The latest poll in Indiana, conducted by Indianapolis-based TeleResearch Corp. for a local TV station, has Clinton ahead by 10 points, 48% to 38%, outside the poll’s 3% margin of error. This is a tracking poll, and Clinton’s lead grew throughout the polling period in late April. Her lead was built on a shift of white men–no doubt the bitter sort, clinging to God and guns–to Clinton. In North Carolina, Clinton has trimmed Obama’s once double-digit lead to seven points, 51% to 44%, according to a Research 2000 poll. And in Oregon, with three weeks to go until the primary, Obama’s lead has dwindled to six points, 50% to 44%. One thing about politics: It can frustrate you, it can depress you, but it seldom bores you. In the short space of two months, we have seen Obama go from almost unbeatable to almost unelectable. He is running out the clock–on himself.

The retiring Williamson County state representative was released on $1,000 bond after his arrest last night. Williamson County is notoriously tough on violators of any sort, especially DUI, and the ensuing trial could imperil a future appointment to the Texas Highway Commission, for which Krusee is widely believed to be in line after his term expires in January 2009. There has always been a question about whether Krusee’s advocacy for the Trans-Texas Corridor would pose a threat to his confirmation by the Senate. He became a pariah in the House in 2007 when members finally realized what they had voted for in 2003 without bothering to read the bill, but his relations with senators did not seem to be impaired.

Would a DUI cause Perry to rethink the appointment? Probably not. The governor’s history has been that he does what he wants to do and doesn’t worry about the consequences. Krusee’s support for the Corridor will outweigh the short-term negatives of the DUI, but the long-term issue that the governor’s office has to consider is whether this was a one-time incident or a manifestation of a bigger problem. Another consideration is that Kirk Watson’s decision not to block the appointment of Deirdre Delisi, Perry’s former chief of staff, as chair of the Texas Highway Commission lessens the need for another cheerleader for privatized toll roads and comprehensive development agreements on the commission.

I started out to write about the news that TxDOT plans to reduce maintenance by $4.9 billion over the next eleven years. In the process of researching the story, I have learned from a source close to Kirk Watson (NOT Watson) that the Austin senator will not object to the appointment of Deirdre Delisi to succeed the late Rick Williamson as chairman of the Texas Highway Commission. Watson has been the primary roadblock–so much so that speculation was rampant that Perry would name a chairman who was not controversial, and then Delisi would take over the running of the agency, a position for which no Senate confirmation is required. However, Watson had previously objected to the appointment of Ron Wilson to the Public Safety Commission, and the best way I can think of to put it is that Perry was playing hardball and Watson didn’t think that busting a second Perry appointee was a good career move. The appointment will likely be announced within the next couple of days.

Delisi’s ascendancy will be greeted with intense skepticism by many senators, including Transportation chair John Carona, who told me, “She’s not qualified, she’s a political placeholder, and she has a horrid history of working with the Legislature. The governor couldn’t be sending a worse signal.” Nor is David Dewhurst a Delisi fan.

One Perry intimate suggested to me that Delisi is someone who has the ear of the governor and might, in a Nixon-goes-to-China sense, get him to modify his insistence on comprehensive development agreeements that privatize toll roads. That’s a lovely fairy tale, but it isn’t Perry’s style. Or Delisi’s.  

The battle over Delisi is just one of many fronts in the controversy over transportation policy. The decision to cut maintenance was a big news story, but it ultimately was not a major shift in policy. The embattled agency has around $28 billion to spend over the next decade of so, around $10+ billion of which is nondiscretionary spending. The real issue has been how to divide the remaining $17+ billion or so between new construction and maintenance. (To give you an idea of the extent of TxDOT’s problems, the real maintenance needs over the next decade or so are over $20 billion.) The decision is to spend $12.5 billion on maintenance and $4.5 billion on new capacity–that is, new roads and new lanes on existing roads. The $12.5 billion on maintenance represents a reduction of around $350 million a year that will be shifted to new construction. TxDOT currently claims that 87% of its roads are in “good or better” condition, a figure that will fall to 80% under the new spending pattern. The Dallas Morning News story about the decision said that pavement conditions on one in five Texas roads would be substandard by the end of the planning period. This is mathematically correct, but it is not necessarily an accurate forecast. A transportation lobbyist who is familiar with the process told me that characterizing road conditions is more art than science.

The Legislature’s primary push has been for TxDOT to start issuing bonds for road construction that were authorized by a constitutional amendment, which the voters approved in 2007. So far, TxDOT has been slow to respond, which has not exactly endeared TxDOT to legislative policy makers (not that TxDOT has many friends in the Capitol anyway).

Another problem for the agency is that it is currently up for Sunset review, and the staff report will probably come out in late May. The early word is that Perry wants the Sunset bill to be narrowly drawn and not get into the big issues, such as how to finance toll roads. If these issues are part of the Sunset bill, and they do not come out to the governor’s liking, he would have to veto the bill–but it’s not easy to veto a Sunset bill, because Sunset bills have to pass, or the agency ceases to exist. All indications are that Sunset chairman Carl Isett is on board with the governor and is not seen as a change agent. This is disappointing, because Isett certainly has the intelligence to take on the reform of TxDOT but apparently not the will.

In addition to Sunset, another challenge is looming. In 2009, the  moratorium expires–but so does the authority for comprehensive development agreements. The Legislature will have to deal with these issues. And it will also have to deal with the primacy issue, whether local toll authorities will have the authority to make the decision about financing their projects without having to get the blessing of TxDOT. Finally, there is the issue of funding. If the Legislature would raise the gasoline tax (or give metro areas the authority to raise it) and index it to inflation, the need for CDAs would be greatly reduced, and the control of toll roads would remain in the public sector. Chairman Delisi is going to have a busy time.

Barack Obama’s pastor appeared on Bill Moyers Journal last night. Interested readers can find the complete transcript on the PBS web site. Below are the two portions that deal with political subjects: Wright’s “God damn America” sermon and his support for Louis Farrakhan.

First, however, Moyers and Wright talked about the history of the African-American experience regarding Christianity. Wright argues that the missionaries brought a version of Christianity that was white and European and outside the black experience. This discussion begins:

BILL MOYERS: So, when Trinity Church says it is unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian, is it embracing a race-based theology?

REVEREND WRIGHT: No, it is not. It is embracing Christianity without giving up Africanity. A lotta the missionaries were going to other countries assuming that our culture is superior, that you have no culture. And to be a Christian, you must be like us. Right now, you can go to Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and see Christians in 140-degree weather. They have to have on a tie. Because that’s what it means to be a Christian. Well, it’s that kind of assuming that our culture, “We have the only sacred music. You must sing our music. You must use a pipe organ. You cannot use your instrument.” It’s that kind of assumption that in the field of missions, people say, “You know what? We’re doing this wrong. We need to take Christ and leave culture at home. We need to learn the culture of people into which we’re moving, and preach the methods of Jesus Christ using the culture that we are a part of.” Well, the same thing happened with Christians in this country when they said, “You know what? Because those same missionaries who went south, they didn’t let us sing gospel music.” That was not sacred–

BILL MOYERS: They were singin’ the great Anglican hymns.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Correct, correct. And make sure you use correct diction. Well, the– Africans in the late– African-Americans in the late ’60s started saying, “You know, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” Even– I was in Virginia Union, I was soloist at Virginia Union in the college, in the concert choir. We were not allowed to sing anything but anthems and spirituals. The same thing with the Howard University concert choir. The same thing with all the historical black choirs until ‘68. When King got killed, black kids started saying wait a minute. We’re not givin’ up who we are as black people to become– to show somebody else that we — in fact, the music majors at Howard when I was– teaching assistant at La Vern they said to the choir director there, “We’re tired of singin’ German Lieder and Italian aria to prove to you that we– you know, we can sing foreign songs. But we have our own music tradition.” Prior to ‘68, there was no gospel music at Howard University. Prior to ‘68, there was no jazz major. The white universities are giving Count Basie and Duke Ellington degrees. We don’t even the jazz course. We don’t have blues. We don’t have any of our music on this black college campus. Because the missionaries had not allowed us to teach our own music.

And at that point in history, all across the country and all across denominational lines, the– the college-age kids started saying, no more. No mas. Nada mas. We’re gonna do our people. We’re gonna do our culture. We’re gonna do our history. And we’re gonna embrace it and not put– to say one is superior to the other. Because we are different. And different does not mean deficient, that we just different like snowflakes. We’re different. We talk about God of diversity? God has diverse culture, God has -and we’re proud of who we are because that’s the statement the congregation was making, not a race-based theology. [end of excerpt]

As Moyers points out later in the interview, this approach to Christianity has a name: black liberation theology. It is the interpretation of Scripture from the viewpoint of the oppressed. Moyers says, “As I understand it, black liberation theology reads the bible through the experience of people who have suffered, and who then are able to say to themselves that we read the bible differently, because we have struggled, than those do who have not struggled. Is that a fair bumper sticker of liberation theology?” Wright says it is. Moyers goes on to point out that this is the essentially the Jewish story, and Wright agrees. Having just been through Passover, I know this is true. The Exodus is liberation theology: If any man is in bondage, I am in bondage.

The common lament of those who feel abused by the media when their remarks become sound bites is that their words have been taken out of context, and Jeremiah Wright is no exception. But he may have a point. We see and hear him saying things that most of us, including me, find totally reprehensible, and we can’t understand why he would say them. They make no sense in a political context. But he isn’t a politician; he is a theologian, and in the context of black liberation theology, his words are understood by his parishoners in a different way than we hear them. This is a defense of Jeremiah Wright, but it is not a defense of Barack Obama, who is a politician and thus is charged with knowing how these words will be understood in a political context.

The discussion of the “God damn America” sermon comes next:

BILL MOYERS: One of the most controversial sermons that you preach is the sermon you preach that ended up being that sound bite about Goddamn America.

REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT: Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change. And I’m through now. But let me leave you with one more thing. Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate - the Roman government failed. The British government used to rule from East to West. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonized Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the British government failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no. Not God bless America; God damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!

BILL MOYERS: What did you mean when you said that?

REVEREND WRIGHT: When you start confusing God and government, your allegiances to government -a particular government and not to God, that you’re in serious trouble because governments fail people. And governments change. And governments lie. And those three points of the sermon. And that is the context in which I was illustrating how the governments biblically and the governments since biblical times, up to our time, changed, how they failed, and how they lie. And when we start talking about my government right or wrong, I don’t think that goes. That is consistent with what the will of God says or the word of God says that governments don’t say right or wrong. That governments that wanna kill innocents are not consistent with the will of God. And that you are made in the image of God, you’re not made in the image of any particular government. We have the freedom here in this country to talk about that publicly, whereas some other places, you’re dead if say the wrong thing about your government.

BILL MOYERS: Well, you can be almost crucified for saying what you’ve said here in this country.

REVEREND WRIGHT: That’s true. That’s true. But you can be crucified, you can be crucified publicly, you can be crucified by corporate-owned media. But I mean, what I just meant was, you can be killed in other countries by the government for saying that. Dr. King, of course, was vilified. And most of us forget that after he was assassinated, but the year before he was assassinated, April 4th, 1967 at the Riverside Church, he talked about racism, militarism and capitalism. He became vilified. He got ostracized not only by the majority of Americans in the press; he got vilified by his own community. They thought he had overstepped his bounds. He was no longer talking about civil rights and being able to sit down at lunch counters that he should not talk about things like the war in Vietnam. He preached–

BILL MOYERS: Lyndon Johnson was furious at that. As you know-

REVEREND WRIGHT: I’m sure he was.

BILL MOYERS: That’s where they broke.

REVEREND WRIGHT: And that’s where a lot of the African-American community broke with him, too. He was vilified by Roger Wilkins’ daddy, Roy Wilkins. Jackie Robinson. He was vilified by all of the Negro leaders who felt he’d overstepped his bounds talking about an unjust war. And that part of King is not lifted up every year on January 15th. 1963, “I have a dream,” was lifted up, and passages from that - sound bites if you will - from that march on Washington speech. But the King who preached the end of- “I’ve been to the mountaintop, I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land, I might not get there with you,”- that part of the speech is talked about, not the fact that he was in Memphis siding with garbage collectors. Nothing about Resurrection City, nothing about the poor–

BILL MOYERS: Resurrection City was the march in Washington for the poor.

REVEREND WRIGHT: For the poor. That part of King is not talked about because we want to keep that away from the public eye, and the public memory, and it’s been 40 years now.

* * * * *

Near the end of the program, Moyers raises the subject of Wright’s support for Louis Farrakhan:

BILL MOYERS: But even some of your admirers say it would be wrong to gloss over what Martin Marty himself called- who loves you- called your “abrasive edges.” For example, you know, Louis Farrakhan lives in the south part of Chicago, doesn’t he? You’ve had a long complicated relationship with him, right?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: And he, you know, he’s expressed racist and anti-Semitic remarks. And, yet, last year-

REVEREND WRIGHT: Twenty years ago.

BILL MOYERS: Twenty years ago, but that’s indefensible.

REVEREND WRIGHT: The Nation of Islam and Mr. Farrakhan have more African-American men off of drugs. More African-American men respecting themselves. More African-American men working for a living. Not gang banging. Not trying to get by. That’s not indefensible in terms of how you make a difference in the prisons? Turning people’s lives around. Giving people hope. Getting people off drugs. That we don’t believe the same things in terms of our specific faiths. He’s Muslim, I’m Christian. We don’t believe the same things he said years ago. But that has nothing to do with what he has done in terms of helping people change their lives for the better. I said direct quote was what? “Louis Farrakhan is like E.F. Hutton. When Lewis Farrakhan speaks, black America listens.” They may not agree with him, but they’re listening.

* * * * *

One of the significant moments in this interview comes when Wright says, “We have the freedom here in this country to talk about that [criticizing the government] publicly, whereas some other places, you’re dead if say the wrong thing about your government.” Moyers responds, “Well, you can almost be crucified for saying what you’ve said in this country.” And Wright responds–I’m paraphrasing here–no, no, I was speaking metaphorically about getting killed, you can be crucified in the way the media crucifies people, but you can REALLY be killed in a lot of other countries. That doesn’t sound like somebody who is anti-American to me, and, of course, we know about Wright’s record of service in the Marine Corps. There is a lot more to him than what we see on You Tube saying, “God damn America.” And some of his observations really hit home. Yes, Martin Luther King was a national hero when he wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and when he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, but I had forgotten that public opinion had turned against him when he criticized the war in Viet Nam and raised protests against conditions in urban areas such as Detroit, Chicago, and Memphis. He had, as the saying goes, “quit preaching and gone to meddling.”

After I first saw the film clips of Jeremiah Wright saying, “God damn America,” I thought Obama should have left the church as soon as he heard them. While I still find the words reprehensible, I no longer think that Jeremiah Wright hates his country. But the sound bite is so powerful that it drowns out any discussion of context, as was discussed by Moyers and Wright. And that is bad for the democratic process.