Posted on 07/16/2004 11:10:22 AM PDT by Congressman Billybob
Okay, now that the Democrats have a presumptive ticket, it’s time to assess them as a pair. This is one of the few instances when the whole is less than the sum of its parts. That’s especially true when the theme the pair apparently wants to advance is “truth.”
Several months ago I wrote in detail about three would-be Democratic candidates, two that I knew personally and one by reputation. They were Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards. (Yep, it was back when Lieberman was still a faint possibility, and Kerry was a third-place candidate.)
Here’s the short version of my Kerry description: I met him when he showed up at the Yale Political Union for his first debate as a sophomore. (I was an officer of the Union, two years ahead of him.) John Kerry was then an arrogant, social-climbing twit with the charisma of leftover mashed potatoes. In the intervening 41 years, Kerry has acquired more wrinkles and more money. Otherwise, he’s the same twit he always was. No more need be said.
We turn to John Edwards. His big claim to fame is that he “represents the little guy.” He touts his experience as a trial lawyer as if he were Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Well, I have been a trial lawyer. I’ve met many personal injury lawyers, and have even handled – once in my life – a multi-million-dollar case.
A few words are in order about that case. I represented a friend whose only two children were killed in a crash between an Amtrak train and a Conrail one, in Chase, Maryland. Unlike Edwards, and unlike the other lawyers in that case, I took a fee of only 10% because I felt a larger fee was unconscionable.
I know the nature of personal injury lawyers. According to published reports, Edwards has collected more than $150 million in judgments or settlements in his years as a trial lawyer. He has taken a third of that as fees, or about $50 million. Assume that he prevailed in all those cases on behalf of “little people.” What is the other side of the Edwards equation, the source of the money?
Well, most of that money was collected from doctors, hospitals, and an occasional manufacturing corporation. They sound like fat cats, right? Not so fast, litigation-breath. Such defendants carry insurance. Most of the judgments were paid by insurance companies. And where did they get their money? From premiums, of course.
Who paid those premiums? The doctors, the hospitals, and the companies paid them. But since they don’t print money in their own basements, the funds had to come from somewhere else. They came from the “little people” who go to doctors and hospitals, and who buy products in the marketplace.
So, to put an honest face on Edwards’ career as a trial lawyer, he took $150 million from “little people.” He kept a third of that, and passed two-thirds on to different “little people.” Some Robin Hood that makes. And one of the fringe aspects of Edwards’ litigation was to drive some medical insurance companies out of coverage in some states, and some obstetricians out of the practice of medicine because of high premiums, regardless of whether they’d ever suffered any successful claims.
For a ticket which claims it will “provide health care and health insurance” for millions of Americans, it is a perverse qualification that the Veep on the ticket has increased the cost and decreased the availability of health care for ordinary Americans. It’s a classic example of what my mother, and everyone else’s mother, warned against as a bad approach to life: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
But this is only the beginning, not the end, of the institutional dishonesty in the Kerry/Edwards ticket. At their first big, kick-off fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall last week in New York, assorted entertainment types gathered to perform and display their “American values,” as John Kerry said at the end of the event.
What were those American values? Well, there was a string of obscenities by Whoopi Goldberg, which I cannot describe in any way in this column. Poke around on the Internet and you can find out what she said – repeatedly for a long riff. Suffice to say, it was the crudest form of crotch “humor,” the kind that most cable channels will blank out or dub over.
Other performers were less obnoxious, only referring to the President of the United States as a “thug” or a “murderer.” One said the President has “the intelligence of an egg timer.” No matter who is President of the United States, the office is entitled to a certain level of respect regardless of the opinion you have about the individual currently occupying the White House. Others have made this point, so I support their position.
For instance, I have spent more than eight years condemning Bill Clinton as a person. It’s more than eight years because even though he’s out of office, he will not go away. But always my objections were based on facts of what he did or did not do. I did not resort to schoolyard name-calling. Never did I approach the depths of “rhetoric” that Whoopi Goldberg applied to President Bush.
I was pleased by the immediate announcement by the Slim-Fast Corporation that it is dropping Ms. Goldberg as a spokesman. It is not based on politics but on the culture of Hollywood, that sensible corporations put morals clauses in their contracts. These clauses allow them to dump spokesmen whenever they do or say something that will embarrass the corporation and harm its sales.
I have used Slim-Fast products religiously for three years. They taste good, work great in controlling weight, and have a reasonable cost. So I’m pleased that I don’t have to include in this column a statement that I must find a substitute for Slim-Fast because of the Goldberg connection. Way to go, fellas. It’s always gratifying when a corporation demonstrates an understanding of the public and a need for a minimum level of decency. But I digress.
The Republicans, and even some members of the press (will miracles never cease?), have asked the Democrats to release a complete tape of the Radio City Rally. I have a feeling that the full tape, when it gets out, will have a similar negative effect as the infamous Wellstone Memorial, where the Democrats put the “fun” back in “funeral.”
Last week’s Rally was more tacky than the Wellstone event in 2002, lacking the touch of dignity that death contributes. The Democrats are fighting the release of that tape because they realize they’ve been caught with their hands in the political cookie jar if the public ever gets a gander at that tape, even with the worst stuff bleeped out and left to the imagination.
The morning after the Rally, the Democrat ticket had a joint press conference in which they said they were for “American values,” and that one of those values was “truth.” However, that commitment did not extend to allowing the press and the people to judge for themselves the goings-on at the Radio City Rally.
Ken Mehlman, Campaign Manager for Bush, wrote to Mary Beth Cahill, Campaign Manager for Kerry, asking the Democrats to make a tape of the Rally available. Her letter in reply, which was put out as a press release, is instructive on whether the Democrats have any truck with “truth” in public discourse.
Her letter has 20 sentences in it. Of those, 15 sentences contain claims that are factually false, as anyone with access to the Internet can quickly establish, from public sources, with a few mouse clicks. Most of her letter has zip to do with the Radio City Rally.
The one operative sentence says, “we will not consider your request until the Bush campaign and White House make public the documents/materials listed below:” In short, Ms. Cahill says that the Democrats will conceal the truth about their Rally until the Republicans supply documents about five unrelated subjects, to the satisfaction of the Democrats. So the date when the Democrats will voluntarily tell the truth about their Rally is, in Johnny Mathis’ words, “the twelfth of never.”
Another subject which the Democrat ticket has pushed as a matter of “truth” boiled over on the political stove last week. Remember Joe Wilson? He was in all the papers. He was a hold-over State Department functionary from the Clinton administration who got sent to Nigeria to investigate the claim that Saddam’s Iraq sought to buy “yellow cake” uranium ore there.
When Wilson testified to the 9/11 Commission under oath, he said that he found “no evidence to support that claim,” which President Bush had cited from British intelligence in his prior State of the Union message. Mr. Wilson also said under oath that he “would not recognize the person who recommended him for that assignment if he met him in the street.”
Well, last week the Senate Intelligence Committee issued its Report which found unanimously that Mr. Wilson was recommended for that assignment in a memo written to her superiors at the CIA by his wife, Valerie Plame.
There are, as I see it, three possible interpretations of this revelation of the Plame memo. They are: 1) Mr. Wilson did not know that his wife was female. 2) Mr. Wilson could not recognize his wife on sight. Or, 3) Mr. Wilson was lying under oath and thought no one would find out.
The third conclusion gains support from the fact that the Senate Intelligence Report also concluded that Iraqi representatives DID go to Nigeria to discuss buying uranium ore. It is also supported by an independent British investigation whose Report came out this week. It gave details on the attempt to buy additional Nigerian uranium. This would not have been the first such effort, only the most recent one.
Lastly, Wilson claimed that the documents the British had about the attempted uranium purchases were forgeries because “the names and dates were wrong.” The only problem was, Wilson pronounced them as forgeries ten months before he saw those documents.
His “investigation” apparently consisted of sipping tea with governmental friends in tony cafes in Lagos at our expense. Diplomats do that a lot, but it’s not an effective way of arriving at the truth.
While we’re on the subject of “truth” and Democrats, as of the time this column was written, Joe Wilson was maintaining a website at this address: www.RestoreHonesty.com . This website repeats Mr. Wilson’s various claims, sells his book, and promotes the wounded innocence of him and his long-suffering wife. The last line on the front page of this website says that it is “Paid for by John Kerry for President, Inc.”
It is now demonstrated in front of God and everybody, and confirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate Intelligence Report, that Joe Wilson is a bald-faced liar under oath before the 9/11 Commission. I suspect Wilson website will either promptly disappear, or at least the Kerry/Edwards campaign will cut its connection with it. Joe Wilson has now earned a name change to Joe Isuzu. His uranium story will now make the Kerry Campaign politically radioactive.
Somehow, I don’t think the theme of “truth” is a pony which Kerry/Edwards can ride to victory. Having spent more than a few years watching horses run and money fly away, I think this mount will buck those riders into the cheap seats in 2004. And if Kerry/Edwards think otherwise, they may be kidding themselves, but they will not kid a majority of the American electorate come November.
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About the Author: John Armor is a civil rights attorney who lives in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina. CongressmanBillybob@earthlink.net
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John / Billybob
Another gem. Very strong article.
Good Job John!
Thanks for the work.
Bump and save
Thanks from Wilmington, NC.
bttt
GoodJob Billybob
Wilson's website is still up and paid for by JFK. Of course you just posted it, but it will be interesting to see how long it stays. Great comments, as always.
Excellent work...
Congressman Billybob ping.
Damn good one!
Nice column. If you put another one up, please ping me.
Thanks in advance.
great article
Bump!
And this article explains concepts that even my die hard Democrat senior citizen mother understands, and as a result she says she will sit this one out.
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