Columnist.
In the late 1960s, actress Doris Day filmed her last major motion picture. It was a comedy about the chaos that ensues when a widow and widower marry, forcing two families and two sets of friends to converge. The film's title, "With Six You Get Eggroll," probably wouldn't make it past the mandarins of political correctness these days, but back then it was considered all in good fun. Whatever the case, the 1968 comedy reminds me of the utterly un-funny situation we Americans now find ourselves in with China.
It's rare when a liberal Democratic U.S. senator like New York's Chuck Schumer and a conservative like Sen. John Cornyn of Texas can agree on any piece of major legislation, much less on national television. But this last week both agreed that legislation sponsored earlier this year by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., was sound stuff. The law is designed to provide tax credits for first-time homebuyers. It has helped bring a pulse back into the housing market.
It's my genuine belief that when the ball in Times Square dropped and displayed the year "2000" nine years ago, something must have occurred to transform our nation and the world into a permanent version of "Alice in Wonderland." Early in the decade, America sustained an unimaginably devastating attack on our soil, and yet the media refuse to do more than mention in seeming embarrassment that Islamic terrorists were responsible -- and are probably trying to it again. We quickly came to recognize that the hiding place for those who want to kill us was Afghanistan. So we went there in force and cleaned it up a bit. Later, we let it simmer. Now we have a president who once declared this the necessary war, and yet who now isn't sure he wants to send the additional troops there to try to keep this breeding ground of evil from becoming a permanent base for future attacks on America.
The D.C. pundits think they have it nailed. Sure President Obama and the Democrats have slipped from their mighty post-election high approval ratings. But the Republicans have no message and no candidates, and are a party that has allowed itself to become marginalized because of an over-reliance on the support of Southern whites. Wrong. For starters, no Republican has a prayer of capturing the White House without running the table of some large Southern states. Florida, Virginia and North Carolina all went for George W. Bush in 2004 and then for Barack Obama four years later. Recapture these states, and a Republican nominee is halfway to winning in 2012. So dismissing the importance of Southern support for the GOP is misguided analysis. The region is their base, and no party wins without first holding its base.
Oh, the irony that former President Jimmy Carter has claimed big headlines by saying that South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst against Barack Obama during the president's speech last week was racially motivated. The irony stems partly from the timing of all this: Just days after the incident, Carter's former press secretary Jody Powell died. Perhaps more than any other Carter aide of yesteryear, Powell helped the Carter White House to conquer a Washington establishment that had a bias of its own against Southern politicians. Nothing is harder for me to write about than Jimmy Carter. I grew up circulating among his closest aides while he was Georgia governor. I swelled with pride when he won the presidency. And even with my own career background of having written speeches for Mack Mattingly, the man who became Georgia's first Republican U.S. senator in a century, and of having done debate preparation work for Newt Gingrich, I've still been more willing than many to point out some of the positives from the Carter administration.
It's easy to attack a leader. And yet President Obama says he wants input from Republicans. When I was politically active, including nationally, I was heavily involved on the GOP side of things. So here's a constructive memorandum to the president. It's based on both experience and on some of the nonpartisan polls our firm conducts. It's intended to explore the reasons Obama's approval ratings are dipping and what he can do to prevent a disastrous four years in office. I know he won't read it, but I'm writing it as if he will -- that is, as fairly and professionally as I can. Americans are scared stiff about a host of issues, including job security, credit availability, home values, international threats, even the Swine flu ... you name it.
