Ugliness of 2008 could doom hopes in four years

10/12/09
John McCain, you could argue, had no choice. He saw he was on pace to lose this election, his last shot at the presidency. He wants to win, so he apparently thought he had to resort to unsavory tactics.

He has nothing to lose. His reputation will be fine; no matter what happens, he will be welcome on every Sunday morning talk show as long as he wants to show up. Why not pull out all the stops?

Sarah Palin, though, is in a different position. She’s young enough, and already popular enough, to be part of the national political scene for the next 25 years. It might behoove her, regardless of November’s result, not to provoke more than half the country into a rage at the sight of her.
Maybe she just can’t help it.

As it stands, McCain is in serious trouble. Barack Obama has solid leads in every state John Kerry won four years ago, in addition to a pair of Al Gore states, Iowa and New Mexico. That means, barring catastrophe elsewhere, McCain has to run the table on the following states — Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri and Colorado. Every one of them shows either an Obama lead or looks to be a toss-up. If Obama takes even one of them, he wins the election.

That doesn’t mean McCain and Palin should give up. But there are limits.

McCain’s ads have long pushed the boundary of truth, but he broke new ground last month with a spot that claimed Barack Obama supported "comprehensive sex education" for kindergartners. It was actually a bill in support of teaching children to be alert for inappropriate advances from adults — the kind of thing they teach in the Cub Scouts.

Palin, as vice presidential candidates are wont to do, is leading the attacks, calling Obama "someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

It’s a reference to a ’60s radical who has sporadically crossed paths with Obama over the years. By this logic, half the city of Chicago has been "palling around with terrorists," but never mind. Guilt by association is all that matters here.

She’s reveling in the ugliest corner of her party’s support. Rallies over the past week have featured backers yelling racial epithets, calling Obama a terrorist and worse. She has shown not the slightest indication any of this was a problem for her. (Nor, it should be noted, has a certain Connecticut senator on stage with her at a few of these events.)

Palin was in a position to be, in the event of a McCain loss, the leading contender for the 2012 Republican nomination. But she’s turned off so many voters in the last month that her party may decide she’s too toxic to take a chance on. They don’t nominate rabid partisans; George W. Bush ran from the Republican brand as a "compassionate consevative" — he wasn’t one, but he pretended to be — and McCain has based his entire candidacy on a willingness to go his own way.

What seems likely is that Palin, her relative youth aside, knows that this, too, is her best and only shot at bigger things. The more people find out about her, the less popular she gets. Her favorability rating dropped from plus-20 a month ago to around minus-10 today.

Her routine has already run its course, and there are signs of trouble in her home state of Alaska. The local media is not amused by the goings-on of the past few months, in which every inquiry into happenings at the state capital has been routed through the McCain campaign. And she has a serious abuse-of-power investigation hanging over her head.

After her speech at the Republican convention, it looked like we’d be hearing her name for decades to come. Instead, in three weeks, Sarah Palin may already be a footnote.

Hugh S. Bailey is assistant editorial page editor at the Connecticut Post. He can be reached at 203-330-6233 or via e-mail at hbailey@ctpost.com.

When crossing the aisle is all that matters

10/5/08
Last week’s defeat of the Wall Street bailout package in Congress should have made political writers faint with joy. It was just so bipartisan!

Among Democrats, it was 140 yes and 95 no; for Republicans, 65 supported and 133 opposed. That’s about as far from a party-line vote on a contentious issue as you’ll ever find these days.
Isn’t that what we’re supposed to support? Reaching across the aisle, putting country over party?

Sure. Be bipartisan, be pragmatic. But we’ve somehow reached a point where bipartisanship is praised for its own sake — as if working with the other party is a de facto "good thing," regardless of the merits of the issue. Whether a proposal is sound or not, no one wants to seem too partisan.

That’s the Joe Lieberman school of politics, anyway, and it’s infected the entire country — bipartisanship for its own sake as the ultimate goal.

It’s worth remembering, though, where that can lead. The worst performances by congressional Democrats in the last decade are all linked to a desperate attempt to achieve bipartisan agreement on what could only be called bad ideas. And the best move by Democrats in the Bush years was also their most partisan moment.

The danger of reflexive bipartisanship is this: The party in power can make a proposal, and even if it doesn’t pass the laugh test, members of the opposite party feel compelled to meet halfway. It’s the story of the Iraq war.

George Bush said, in effect, We’re going to invade Iraq, and neither Congress nor anyone else is going to tell me otherwise. Congressional Democrats could have demanded a good reason to start a war. They could have insisted on seeing legitimate proof of a threat (which didn’t exist, but that’s another story). Instead, they opted to be "reasonable."

They persuaded the president to go to the United Nations, and made him promise to seek congressional approval before invading. He did both, and then did what he was going to do in the first place. He ordered, for no discernible reason, the invasion of a country that didn’t threaten us.

Immediately after 9/11, it was understandable that Democrats didn’t want to appear obstructionist. It’s why there was never a chance the Patriot Act wouldn’t pass — in that atmosphere, no one could risk looking political. But they could have developed some spine before giving approval to start a war — one that, it must be repeated, continues to this day.

At least Democrats learned a lesson. After his re-election, Bush embarked on the conservative dream of dismantling Social Security (incidentally, is anyone not happy today we didn’t agree to put all that money in the stock market?). He failed, mostly because it was a bad idea and people hated it. But, just as crucially, the opposition party did its job.

Even with a majority, Republicans knew they couldn’t push through their plan without bipartisan cover. In their earlier incarnation, Democrats would have hedged, met them halfway, sought out a compromise. To their credit, they didn’t. They stood together, cast aside false bipartisanship and helped defeat what would have been the domestic equivalent of Iraq.

Remember that the next time the centrists of the world, or the Fourth District, promote their history of bipartisanship. So what? If a resolution in support of clubbing baby seals emerges with bipartisan support, that doesn’t make it a good idea.

Hugh S. Bailey is assistant editorial page editor at the Connecticut Post. He can be reached at 203-330-6233 or via e-mail at hbailey@ctpost.com.

Let's talk about that 'Bush Doctine'

The Sarah Palin phenomenon is burning out faster than Lehman Brothers. Two weeks ago, her favorability ratings were off the charts. Now they're already in negative territory.

But who cares -- Americans hardly ever vote based on the bottom of the ticket. As for the health of John McCain should he be elected, we could all follow Joe Lieberman's lead. Asked at the Republican convention about Palin's qualifications, he said, "Well, you know, let's assume the best. John's in great shape; he's gonna be the president and let's assume that nothing bad will happen."

Great advice, senator. As Iraq proved, hope is a wonderful plan.

But as people are finding out more about Palin, there's too much that's not being said. We're familiar with McCain's take on foreign policy. Going back to January 2002, when he shouted, "Next stop, Baghdad!" while speaking to U.S. troops headed for Afghanistan, it's been clear he thinks, if anything, President Bush has been too timid in pursuing his policies.

About Palin, though, we don't know. In her first television sit-down, she famously didn't know what the "Bush Doctrine" is. This has been explained away by supporters saying, in effect, "So what? Most people on the street don't know what it is, either." To which one can only respond, most people on the street are not running for vice president.

But what's most important isn't her lack of knowledge (though that is a serious problem); it's that the Republicans are promising to keep these policies going.

In the ABC interview, after stalling for a moment, the governor got it wrong. So did her interviewer, Charles Gibson. "The Bush Doctrine, as I understand it,'' he said, "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a pre-emptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us."

He's wrong. No one in the political mainstream disputes the right of "anticipatory self-defense" or a pre-emptive strike. If the country is going to be attacked, the nation has a right to defend itself.

The Bush Doctrine goes further. Leading up to the war in Iraq (which is still going on, by the way), the president laid out the right for our country to attack any other country that might -- someday; we don't know when, but it could happen -- somehow pose a threat. That's why we attacked Iraq (supposedly; to this day, no one but the president really knows). They weren't a threat at the time, but they could have become one someday, maybe.

That's not pre-emption. It is insane, but it is not pre-emption.

Bush favored "preventive" war. If that's our policy going forward, we should expect a lot of wars in the coming years. How many countries are there that might pose a threat someday? Russia, China, North Korea, Iran -- and we may have just added Spain. Are we supposed to invade all of them?

With the stock market crashing and the government nationalizing the finance industry, no one is talking about these things. But they matter. In a best-case scenario, American troops will be out of Iraq by 2011 or so -- a full eight years after we invaded. We spend the equivalent of an AIG bailout, $85 billion, over the course of a few months there.

And still, despite the happy talk from people who supported this war from the beginning (Chris Shays, that's you), Americans are still dying there -- fewer than a year ago, but they are still Americans who would otherwise be alive. Iraqis are still dying. Car bombs are exploding on a weekly basis. McCain, though, told Time magazine last month that Iraq is "a peaceful and stable country now."

He's wrong about a lot of things, but he will never top that one.

Palin gives every indication that she's OK with the way this country went to war. Since she might be president someday, she could at least tell us her thoughts on the matter.

Hugh S. Bailey is assistant editorial page editor at the Connecticut Post. He can be reached at 203-330-6233 or via e-mail at hbailey@ctpost.com.

Bridgeport must weather economic storm

9/14/08
Bridgeport can't be blamed for this one.

The momentum behind most of the major development projects in town has stalled. Steel Point is in limbo, downtown construction is at a crawl and there's little to report from the other large-scale projects around the city. But there's probably nothing that could have done differently.

The slowdown is hurting development across the country. But because Bridgeport is a poor city that is banking on big-ticket projects to bring it back to life, it stands to suffer more than its share. And with little to fall back on, the situation looks more dire here than it would in a relatively well-off place.

For instance, New York. The country's largest city has been building like crazy for more than a decade, and has enough built-in wealth to weather some difficulties. It would take a lot more than a mere slowdown to knock New York off its current heights; it's one of the benefits of being the financial and cultural capital of the universe. And there are millions of new people projected to move in over the next few decades.

But at a basic level, New York is facing the same problems as Bridgeport. Most of its high-profile mega-projects, financed publicly, privately or in combination, in the past year have been either scrapped or drastically scaled back. Costs are shooting up, and demand for housing and retail is cratering.

For instance, the Fulton Street Transit Center in Lower Manhattan, which was supposed to be a

showpiece near the World Trade Center site, with a glass dome rising over the connection of 12 subway lines and 23,000 square feet of retail space. As the cost climbed by tens of millions of dollars, the dome was scrapped and the entire project has come to a halt. There's no telling what it will look like if and when it's finally finished.

Then there's the plan to build a new Penn Station on the West Side. That project kept growing in scale and dollars, eventually including a number of high rises alongside a rebuilt Madison Square Garden. It collapsed under its own weight, and now there's little hope of rescuing the underground train station in the near future.

The World Trade Center site is a story unto itself, and faces challenges that dwarf any other development. But it, too, has been hamstrung by the bad economy. There's little sense in putting up all that office space if there won't be people or businesses to put in it.

There's a definition of a recession the economy hasn't met -- unless the nation experiences negative economic growth for two straight quarters, we're apparently not in a recession. Why that's supposed to matter to anyone is another question.

People judge the economy by what they're dealing with, not by what the aggregate numbers tell them. People are struggling, and businesses are struggling right along with them.

Cities, likewise, don't judge the economy on what national numbers tell them. There's too much at stake. But neither can they sit back and wait for the problems to work themselves through.

That's why it's encouraging to see that, despite the problems, Steel Point and the other big developments are still breathing. If they can survive this lull, which is no sure thing, the city could be in good shape to capitalize on the inevitable recovery.

It had better hope so. If the recovery takes too long to arrive, there's no real backup plan.

Hugh S. Bailey is assistant editorial page editor at the Connecticut Post. He can be reached at 203-330-6233 or via e-mail at hbailey@ctpost.com.

Stadiums a losing bet for development

9/20/08
This is a scenario Bridgeport knows something about.

A sports stadium earns favorable tax agreements on the promise of economic growth. In the end, the stadium benefits the few while the many foot the bill.

It's not the Arena at Harbor Yard, it's the boondoggle in the Bronx. The new Yankee Stadium, a report shows, is costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and offering almost nothing in return.

A report from a New York City Council member concluded that the city and state invested as much as $850 million in cash and tax breaks in the new stadium, while the economic benefit will go mainly to the team's ownership, which is already doing just fine. In addition, the stadium's construction resulted in the loss of acres of parkland used by some of the city's poorest residents.

The team and the city dispute the findings, but the results by now are clear -- stadium construction is about the biggest farce going when it comes to spurring economic development.

Put it this way: The Yankees are the most successful team in U.S. sports history. Their stadium sits in a neighborhood, the South Bronx, that for decades was synonymous with urban blight. If that much success did that little for the local area, no one should expect better results elsewhere, including Bridgeport.

Stadiums bring a minimal level of new employment and, considering they are unused for much more time than they are in use, can in fact be a blight in their own regard. When there's no game, there are no people.

Bridgeport has learned this; Harbor Yard did not spark a development revolution. New York should have known it, as well.

Make commitment to regionalization

9/19/08
It's the curse of Connecticut. With 169 towns and cities vying for their own slice of the pie, neighboring communities have little incentive to work together.

For well-off towns, that's no problem. But the cities that have lost business and industry over the decades have little recourse. It's one of the main reasons our state looks the way it does, with rich towns surrounding poor cities, and little done to bridge the gap.

Every so often a plan comes along to change that. The hope of regionalization is that towns with money to spare would realize it's in their interest to see their neighbors succeed, as well. Fairfield, for example, does quite well for itself, while next-door Bridgeport has trouble paying its bills.

But it's not just for the cities. A recent proposal calls for a study to determine how Monroe, Trumbull and Easton might benefit from forming a regional emergency dispatch center. It makes good sense - the three towns currently handle emergency dispatching separately, but sometimes share resources, like traffic accident investigation units, canine units and crisis negotiators.

This kind of thinking on a wider basis could lead to real cost-saving opportunities around the state. If local officials can move past their typically insular views, there are some interesting options out there.

But it is the cities that have the most to gain. It's long been posited that if Bridgeport could annex the towns on its borders, the standard of

living for everyone would increase. There would certainly be more money for education - the key component in economic development.

That's not going to happen, but there are steps to be taken. Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch has long championed these efforts, and at a forum sponsored by the regional business council, other local leaders pledged support, as well.

For starters, the local communities could look to regionalize the water pollution control apparatus. It's a burden on Bridgeport, and one that could and should be shared with neighbors.

There will always be thorny issues like neighborhood schools that will stymie progress, but they shouldn't be allowed to halt the entire endeavor. Last week's meeting should be a starting point, and local leaders should commit in writing to workable regionalization plans.

Slowly, the suburbs are realizing that the health of the cities affects everyone. The sooner steps can be taken to improve that health, the better for everyone.

Rell, Blumenthal exploit public fear

9/18/08
No one can deny the emotion surrounding the case of convicted rapist David Pollitt and his much-discussed release from prison last year. But we count on our elected officials to make fact-based decisions, not outbursts.

In this regard, Gov. M. Jodi Rell and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal failed the people of Connecticut.

The Pollitt case is difficult for any number of reasons. Convicted of a series of rapes, he served his sentence before being released, with significant restrictions, to the home of his sister, in Southbury. Rell and Blumenthal disgraced themselves then, insisting the Pollitt be held in prison even though his term was up.

Residents of Southbury were understandly nervous about the prospects on Pollitt living in town. Rell and Blumenthal could have used the opportunity to make clear that he would be restricted in his movement and watched at all times by an electronic monitoring device. Instead, they gave in to mob mentality and demanded he be kept in prison.

No one is in favor of seeing someone dangerous on the streets again, but if the law says he is to be freed, he must be. We don't make laws on an ad-hoc basis.

When Pollitt's monitoring device malfunctioned last week, Rell and Blumenthal wasted no time demanding he be returned to prison immediately. They could have let law enforcement do its job and waited for some facts to arrive before sending out their press releases, but they decided to play to the cameras instead.

As it turns out, the problem was faulty electronics ­-- as well as faulty leadership.

No one is advocating anything other than a strict interpretation of the law. If someone has served his sentence, our leaders must not demand he be kept in jail. That's giving in to fear.

Similarly, if there's reason to think a convict's parole has been violated, then let the process take its course. The actions of Rell and Blumenthal did nothing but once again ramp up fear in Southbury. It was political grandstanding at its worst.