The Bluegrass and Beyond

Presidential nominating conventions make for interesting political theater, even if you do come away from watching them as confused as ever about what either candidate would actually do if elected.

For the most part, the Democratic and Republican conventions were giant pep rallies for the converted. There was a lot of inspiring rhetoric and many tales of personal struggle, both real and imagined. Leaders of each party distorted the records and plans of the other, while glossing over and obfuscating their own.

President Obama’s acceptance speech had too few specifics; challenger Mitt Romney’s had almost none. Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential nominee, kept fact-checkers busy with his disregard for the truth. Vice President Joe Biden was himself.

Clint Eastwood, speaking to Republicans, had a stammering conversation with an empty chair. Comedians loved it. Have you heard the new pickup line? “Is this seat taken, or are you talking with President Obama?”

In one of the best speeches of his career, former President Bill Clinton took advantage of Republicans’ vagueness to put his own spin on their plans. Clinton summarized the GOP argument for replacing Obama this way: “We left him a total mess, he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.”

U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, a Kentucky Democrat who is in a tight race to keep his 6th District seat, was too chicken to attend his party’s convention. His challenger, Andy Barr, got a speaking slot at the Republican convention, but he used his moment in the spotlight to push his campaign contributors’ phony “war on coal” agenda.

One of the most honest comments in a speech at either convention came from Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican. You may have missed it, because it was mixed in with a lot of libertarian sound bites and distortions of Obama’s comment about government’s role in creating infrastructure that contributes to individual success.

“Republicans and Democrats alike, though, must slay their sacred cows,” Paul said. “Republicans must acknowledge that not every dollar spent on the military is necessary or well-spent. Democrats must admit that domestic welfare and entitlements must be reformed.”

As we hunker down for eight more weeks of slimy attack ads, funded by millions of dollars in anonymous special-interest cash, there are some questions voters should ask before election day:

What are each party’s specific plans for job-creation and economic revival? What can Obama do that he hasn’t already done — or failed to do in the face of solid Republican opposition?

What specific things would Romney and a Republican-controlled Congress do to create jobs and boost the economy? More tax cuts and deregulation won’t do it; they never have before.

Tax rates, especially for the wealthy, are already at their lowest point in decades. Do Americans really want dirtier air and water and more gambling on Wall Street? Financial deregulation, which began under Clinton, was a big cause of the 2008 crisis that tanked the economy. Bush-era tax cuts, plus two wars waged on credit, are the biggest causes of our exploding national debt.

If Obamacare is repealed, what would Republicans replace it with? So far, they haven’t offered credible proposals for either expanding insurance coverage or curbing health care costs.

While Obama’s health-care reform law has been easy to demagogue as a package, many of its individual elements are very popular, such as letting parents insure young-adult children and banning lifetime benefit caps and exclusions for pre-existing conditions. Do voters really want those reforms to go away?

If Obamacare survives, how will both parties find ways to lower health care costs? That is the reform law’s biggest shortcoming. Improving on it will require Republican as well as Democratic solutions, many tough choices and less demagoguery. Is either party up to the challenge?

More than anything, voters should ask candidates running for the White House and Congress how they will work with those in the other party to solve the nation’s problems. The past four years have clearly shown that ideological rigidity and partisan gridlock just make things worse, no matter who is in charge.

Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell chat last August before the political speaking began at the Fancy Farm Picnic in Graves County. Photo by Tom Eblen

There are two kinds of people in Congress: work horses and show horses. Few show horses have pranced and preened as much as Rand Paul has during his first months as a United States senator.

The Kentucky Republican’s election last November came amid a perfect storm of voter discontent with the political establishment. Otherwise, Paul never could have defeated an accomplished secretary of state in the primary and an accomplished attorney general in the general election.

Paul has become one of the most high-profile members of the Tea Party movement in the freshman class of Congress. He owes much of his celebrity status to his father, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who has been a gadfly presidential candidate for both the Libertarian and Republican parties.

His appeal may also have something to do with his first name, which reminds people of the late novelist Ayn Rand, whose fairy tales of libertarian utopia still enthrall some conservatives.

Paul has spent a lot of time in front of cameras and microphones this year, especially on friendly venues such as talk radio and the Fox News Channel. He has been busy promoting his new book, The Tea Party Goes to Washington, and flirting with a run for the presidency, even though the Bowling Green eye doctor has no previous political experience or apparent qualifications for the job.

Much of the attention Paul has received from media not in the business of promoting right-wing politics has come because of his controversial statements. Those include a rant against water-saving toilets during a congressional hearing and last week’s complaints about government over-regulation of dairy farms that were based on information he should have known was not true.

The most significant thing Paul has done so far as a senator is to propose a budget-balancing plan that has no chance of ever happening. It would slash $4 trillion in spending by basically doing away with much of the federal government.

Like a somewhat less-radical plan by Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, it is based on the same tax-cutting, anti-regulation philosophies that caused the economic crisis and ballooned the federal deficit in the first place. Both of their schemes would be good for corporations and wealthy people and bad for everyone else.

Paul also has endorsed the idea of a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget. That sounds good in theory, but most economists think it could be disastrous. That is because it would prevent the government from acting to minimize damage from an economic crisis.

Public opinion polls show little support for radical spending cuts, just as they show declining support for the Tea Party movement. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll last month found that 47 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party movement, an increase of 21 points since January 2010.

Both the political left and right like to claim a mandate from the “American people,” but the truth is that the nation is pretty evenly divided. What most people want is for both sides to work together to solve problems, not battle over ideology.

If Paul has any desire to become an influential member of Congress — and not just a show horse — he should take some lessons from the Senate’s Republican leader and his fellow Kentuckian, Mitch McConnell.

Even those who don’t agree with McConnell’s politics or admire his values acknowledge that he is a master politician. He can aggressively push his agenda but still find ways to achieve beneficial compromise. McConnell knows how to work with opponents and get things done. So far, Paul has shown little interest in or talent for that.

The media will eventually find another show horse to ride, especially if the public continues growing weary of the zealots of the Tea Party movement. Unless Paul can find ways to serve his constituents and actually accomplish something in the Senate over the next six years, I suspect Kentucky voters will be quick to put him out to pasture.

Before I left for the Fancy Farm Picnic on Saturday, I stopped by the public library to borrow some audio books for the five-hour drive to Graves County and the five-hour drive back.

One was leadership consultant Stephen Covey lecturing on his best-selling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey has sold millions of copies of his book, and some of America’s most successful executives have said those “habits” transformed their lives and companies.

As I drove down the Western Kentucky Parkway listening to Covey, I was struck by two thoughts: The first was that the success habits he recommends for people and organizations are just common sense. The second was that American politics violates every one of them.

I would soon hear ample evidence of that, both from the politicians who spoke at the annual church picnic that kicks off Kentucky’s fall campaign season and from the thousands of partisans who cheered and jeered them.

This could help explain why, rather than being “highly effective,” government has become increasingly dysfunctional. Take, for example, the U.S. Senate, where the main warriors at this year’s Fancy Farm Picnic — Democrat Jack Conway and Republican Rand Paul — hope to serve.

Last week’s issue of The New Yorker magazine had a fascinating piece about the Senate by journalist George Packer. The article, “The Empty Chamber,” described how the legislative body that the Founding Fathers intended as a place for reasoned debate has become hobbled by the destructive behavior of Republicans and Democrats alike. Many senators seem more concerned with money, power and petty politics than with governing.

Consider Covey’s seven recommended habits in the context of today’s political environment:

■ Be proactive. Don’t wait for a crisis to react, Covey says. Politicians are the most reactive people on the planet, afraid to take a stand or make a tough decision unless public opinion, often in response to a crisis, forces them to. As a result, many complex problems just keep getting bigger.

■ Begin with the end in mind. Covey asks his audience to imagine what they would like others to say about them when they die. Given the large egos of many politicians, you would think they would want something better than “he/she was a money-grubbing tool of corporate interests.”

■ Put first things first. Peace, prosperity and justice, anyone?

■ Think “win-win.” This is a big one. In today’s political environment, even an honest change of mind is labeled “flip- flopping” or “waffling.” Compromise is called weakness. America is pretty evenly split between red and blue — in the case of the 2000 presidential election, remarkably so. Yet politics is increasingly a zero-sum game. In the Senate, whichever party is out of power wages a war of obstruction against the party in power. They simply fight to regain control, at which point the other party will do the same to them.

■ Seek to understand, then to be understood. What politician today seeks to understand the other party’s concerns? After all, that might change a mind, lead to compromise or accidently create a “win-win.”

■ Synergize. “To put it simply, synergy means ‘two heads are better than one,’” Covey says. Again, this is an alien concept in politics. Many would rather walk barefoot over broken glass than admit that someone in the other party has a good idea.

■ Sharpen the saw. This is not the same as sharpening the knife so you can stick it in your opponent’s back. Covey is talking about expanding your mind through reading, study and social interaction. In The New Yorker, Packer pointed out that bitter partisanship in the Senate has increased as social interaction between Democrats and Republicans has decreased. It is easier to call the person across the aisle Satan’s henchman if you never play golf together or share a meal.

But we can’t just blame the politicians. They often are responding to voters who marinate their minds in segments of the media that have discovered there are big profits to be made by dishing up distortion, propaganda and extremism.

America would be more successful if politicians — and the voters who elect them — applied Covey’s seven habits, which have been so successful in business and personal development, to politics and governance.

“We already know,” Covey says as I roll down the highway toward Fancy Farm, “that what is common sense is not common practice.”

Here’s a gallery of photos I took today at the 130th annual Fancy Farm Picnic in Graves County in far western Kentucky. After a lunch of barbecued mutton and pork, fresh vegetables and homemade pies, Kentucky politicians spoke while their fans cheered and detractors heckled. The main attractions were Democrat Jack Conway and Republican Rand Paul, who are running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Jim Bunning.

I understand why so many Americans are angry. I am angry, too.

The nation is mired in two costly wars. The economy tanked because of greedy bankers, investors, lenders and borrowers. Schools and other vital institutions are in crisis. Things our society used to take for granted — from affordable health care to jobs that can fund a middle-class lifestyle — are hard for many people to find.

The angry people getting most of the attention lately are the Tea Party screamers — mostly older, white, more affluent folks who preach a gospel of selfishness. They see the problem as “big government.”

But I encounter a larger, quieter, though still angry group of people every day. They don’t wave flags, wax nonsensically about the Constitution or seek to live in some idealized past.

These people, both Democrats and Republicans, think the Tea Partiers’ diagnosis of what is wrong with America is missing a couple of words and most of the point. They see the problem as “big business” and “irresponsible government”.

Free enterprise is what makes America great — the ability of individuals to work hard and succeed, to be both “free” and responsible members of society. But for that to work, it takes responsible government to provide infrastructure, keep the system honest and protect the vulnerable. Government is not “them,” it is “us”.

Responsible government has been hard to find lately. One reason is both Democrats and Republicans have been lavishly funded by big business, and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority recently opened the floodgates for even more corporate influence.

Another problem is both Republicans and Democrats want to spend too much and tax too little. The nation’s social safety net and economic security are threatened by rising debt, but money keeps flowing to corporate giveaways, pork-barrel projects and unrealistic entitlement programs. Not to mention ill-conceived wars.

At the same time, irresponsible politicians have repeatedly cut taxes, especially for the wealthy. What the “taxed enough already” crowd will not acknowledge is federal taxes for almost everyone are their lowest in decades.

Republicans like to complain about health care reform being a “government takeover.” In reality, it is nothing like the government-run health care that works pretty well in most other western democracies. This reform was basically a sop to the health care industrial complex. While it expands coverage to more people, it does little to control costs and lacks a public option to private insurance.

“Socialist” President Barack Obama is the focus of much right-wing anger. But liberals — not to mention the nation’s few actual socialists — note that most of his policies would have made him a solid Republican only a few decades ago.

Tea Partiers love to rant against government regulation, as if markets were the product of magic rather than human nature. Anyone can find examples here and there of regulation that overreaches or is silly. But many of today’s biggest problems were caused by too little regulation, not too much.

The economic crisis was largely the result of deregulation and a lack of oversight of the financial industry under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The biggest problem with federal environmental laws has been that, until recently, they were barely enforced, despite what the “drill baby, drill” and “dig baby, dig” crowds like to claim.

As BP’s broken well gushes crude oil, destroying the environment and the livelihoods of thousands of people along the Gulf Coast, some Tea Party candidates want to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. Excuse me?

One of the most absurd examples of political theory trumping common sense occurred last week. In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Rand Paul, fresh from winning Kentucky’s Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, indicated he thought the 1964 Civil Rights Act was an example of government over-reaching.

Echoing comments he made last month to the Courier-Journal editorial board, Paul suggested restaurants, for example, shouldn’t be required by law to serve black or gay people if they didn’t want to. Only later, amid outrage even from within his own party, did Paul finally take a stand in favor of a half-century of settled civil rights law.

“I hope he can separate the theoretical and the interesting and the hypothetical questions that college students debate until 2 a.m. from the actual votes we have to cast based on real legislation here,” Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican, told The New York Times.

Something tells me it is going to be a long six months until November.

Lexington voters’ moods seemed as gloomy as the weather Tuesday, at least what few of them came out to the polls.

I spent much of the day driving around town, talking with voters about the candidates and issues that interested them.

The most excitement I detected was among supporters of incumbent Jim Newberry and Vice Mayor Jim Gray in the mayor’s race, and among Republicans voting for Rand Paul in the U.S. Senate race.

Paul was embraced by the conservative Tea Party movement, while his opponent, Secretary of State Trey Grayson, was the GOP establishment’s choice. The race was being watched nationally as a barometer of Tea Party power.

Many Paul supporters said they were ambivalent about the Tea Party, but said he struck them as a departure from politics as usual — and they were plenty tired of that.

“Rand Paul brought me out,” said Connie Cooper, who lives off Pasadena Drive. “He’s different. I like his issues.”

“I don’t like the way the Republican Party has been going,” said Micah Fielden, 20, a pre-medical student at the University of Kentucky who said he voted for Paul.

Nelva Fitzgerald, who lives in Palomar subdivision, also was unhappy with the Republican Party — so she changed her registration Tuesday to Democrat. What sent her over the edge, she said, was Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices who voted to allow more corporate influence in politics, which she thinks is bad for the country.

Raleigh Deaton is a registered Democrat, but would have voted for Paul if he could have. He likes Paul’s fiscal conservatism.

“I’m tired of this doggone government giving money away like it’s growing on trees,” the utility engineer said. “That’s the worst thing we could be doing.”

As the results reflected, most people I talked to supported either Newberry, who finished first, or Gray, who finished second, in the mayor’s race. They will face each other in November.

A couple liked former Mayor Teresa Isaac, who finished third, but most people’s feelings were summed up by Fielden, who said he voted for Gray: “I think she had her shot and it’s time to move on.”

James Potter, an electrician who lives in Twin Oaks subdivision, said he came out to vote for Newberry. “With the World (Equestrian) Games and such, everything seems to be going pretty good,” he said.

Carrie Kennedy of Palomar agreed. “I think (Newberry) has done a good job,” she said.

But Gregory King, who lives in the Kenwick neighborhood east of downtown, disagreed. “I haven’t been much impressed with Mayor Newberry,” he said. “Jim (Gray) seems to have more creative ideas for Lexington.”

Josh Radner, a science teacher at Yates Elementary School, thought so, too. “He’s the more creative thinker,” he said of Gray. “He’s in touch with a wider group of constituents, including some who may not be the most powerful people.”

Allen and Zell Richards, a retired postal worker and teacher who live off Man ‘O War Boulevard in south Lexington, are Republicans and Paul supporters.

But the Richards split on the mayor’s race. He voted for Gray, because he didn’t like Newberry’s support of CentrePointe. She voted for Newberry, but agreed with her husband on that failed development.

“They jumped into that before they knew much about it,” she said. “I thought they should have renovated some of those old buildings. We have a beautiful city and we ought to keep older things around.”

“Yea,” her husband agreed. “Like us.”