Thursday, September 30, 2010

Paladino and Dicker

I don't like Fred Dicker, and I don't like the New York Post. The fact that Carl Paladino called the Post his favorite newspaper is, as far as I'm concerned, yet another point against him. I agree with what Paladino's aide said during the attack (for want of a better term for it) about Dicker being a “terrible reporter.” To this I will add that Dicker is also a terrible writer and (at best) a second-rate intellect.

OK, now that we got that out of the way, let's make a few assumptions favorable to Carl Paladino, in order to better frame the incident between Paladino, Paladino's aide, and Dicker.

Let's assume, first of all, that Fred Dicker and the Post did send a “goon” photographer “after” the daughter Carl Paladino had with his mistress. Let's say the photographer took a picture of her, or tired to, through a window, thus making the girl upset, and frightened, and making her cry. Assume it happened just the way the candidate says it did. For the moment, never mind that there's no particular reason to believe this. Some reason might emerge later.

Let's further assume that his daughter's welfare is Carl Paladino's true concern. Never mind, for now, that Paladino seemed friendly to Dicker until Dicker asked a tough question, and only became hostile after the question was asked. Never mind that Paladino's daughter's existence is not a secret. Never mind that Paladino and his aide spent more of their time accusing Dicker of being biased against Paladino and in favor of Andrew Cuomo than they did expressing anger over what might've happened to Paladino's daughter. Never mind that Paladino has, as I've discussed elsewhere, tried very hard to simultaneously make himself into the “conservative values” candidate and deliberately project an image of dangerously aggressive sexuality, this in effect opening up his own bedroom, and the potential products of what goes on in there, to public scrutiny.

Let's go a little further. Let's assume that Carl Paladino has a moral right to seek some kind of retribution against Dicker, assuming all the above-stated facts are true. (And, I stress again, at the moment there's no particular reason to believe they are.) Not a legal right, which is a separate concept. But let's for now assume that he has that moral right.

I am in brief giving Paladino every benefit of the doubt, for argument's sake.

Then, New York, let me ask you this: Do you want a Governor who capable of behaving in such a volatile, thuggish manner in public and on camera? Comparisons with Senator Kevin Parker, similarly volatile and often accused of being thuggish, are easily made. Does anyone think Kevin Parker should be Governor? Probably not.

Do you like this idea, New York? Or, maybe, have you maybe gotten tired of Governors who make such obvious errors in judgment and make themselves look stupid?

Sadly, thuggery is, always has been, and always will be part of New York State's grand political tradition. Theodore Roosevelt admitted that his first election to the State Assembly was in part due to thuggery. I'm not asking for an end to political thuggery in the State of New York. I know that's, sadly, too much to ask. But, does New York want a Governor who drags such things out into the open, then further boasts of it and defends his right to do it? When Roosevelt wrote about the political thuggery undertaken on his behalf it was years after the fact and was spoken of with a sad regret, not with a swagger. For Theodore Roosevelt, perhaps the King of Swagger, to not swagger over something is I think significant.

What happens to someone else, to just a regular everyday person, who given a similar set of circumstances responds similarly to how Paladino did? That person would probably be in jail. I've seen people go to jail for a lot less.

Personally, I like the thought of a Governor of New York State who is capable of showing enough discretion to take revenge privately, if he does it at all.

This, to me, can be seen as a matter of judgment. Sure it can be a moral or legal issue too. But let's give Paladino the benefit of every doubt and focus on the incident solely as a matter of executive judgment and discretion. Let's perform the most cynical analysis possible. When you do this Paladino still comes out in the wrong.

If candidate Paladino reacts this way toward Fred Dicker, a mere reporter with no power (per statements made by Paladino's own aide), how will a Governor Paladino react to legislative leaders? Legislative leaders do have power. They have the power to persuade their members to pass a budget that is not the Governor's, and then to get their members to override the Governor's vetoes. And they may not, after this campaign, be inclined to enact Governor Paladino's proposals should he win.

How will Paladino react to someone who accidentally hits his gubernatorial SUV in traffic, as once happened once to George Pataki? How will he behave at press conferences? (Remember that, even if we assume Carl Paladino's primary concern is with his daughter's well-being, he didn't react angrily until he was asked a tough question. I think that's telling.)

What good has New York done for itself if it elects a Governor who's arrested for assault while in office? Was Eliot Spitzer not enough?

I'm not naive I'm not asking for a New York Governor who is any kind of saint. There are no saints in politics, not anymore, if there ever were.

But the Governorship of New York State is important enough that it warrants someone who can keep his temper in check in public.

That really isn't too much to ask. We all have to do it.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Why Carl Paladino's Adultery Matters

Periodically, the issue of whether or not politicians' sexual improprieties should be a factor in judging them comes up. Typically one camp suggests these are private matters that should stay private. The other camp, arguing that politicians' sexual improprieties should and do matter, typically advance one or more of four distinct arguments.

The first argument isn't really an argument at all, and it doesn't really deserve consideration beyond mentioning that it's out there. There's a degree to which some people will use a politician's sexual improprieties simply as a vehicle to attack him, but it's not the real reason for the attack. The relentless, sex-based attacks on Bill Clinton throughout his Presidency, even before credible allegations of adultery finally emerged, are an excellent example. Unfounded rumor at one point, as I recall, even had him hooking up with actress Sharon Stone.

This isn't really an argument per se. By definition it means you'll care about the sexual improprieties of a politician you disagree with, and not care about the sexual improprieties of a politician you agree with.

But, there are there arguments for caring about politicians' sexual improprieties that I, for one, consider perfectly legitimate.

First is what I call representational morality. This is the idea that our elected leaders should represent the best of us, including exemplifying the moral ideals that we hold more often than we live up to. Reason two comes to us from the Biblical saying that he who can't be trusted in small matters can't be trusted in great ones. In other words, if a man will betray the trust of his family he might also betray the trust of his people.

Applying these two arguments is a personal matter, depending on each voter's values and expectations.

The third reason is what will be mostly considered today. Whereas the other two reasons to care are essentially private, this one is essentially public.

A politician's first duty is to remain true to the political persona he creates, and that persona is also the first thing we have to judge him by, even before he enacts a single policy. Politicians, wrote Political Scientist Richard Fenno, spend a lot of their time engaging in the “presentation of self.” When they do this, by definition they are playing a character. Sometimes that character is a version of the real person, sometimes it's not, but sincerity isn't the issue here. The issue is that when a politician creates a public political persona to play, it's fair to judge him by how well he can hold do it. To thine own self-created image be true. Or else why bother creating it at all. And further, it's fair to judge him by the logical consequences of that persona.

By this standard, sexual improprieties might matter a lot more for some politicians than for others. David Paterson, for example, has not made his happy marriage part of his political persona. Therefore, shocking allegations of public “necking” with a lady not his wife at a New Jersey steak house were shocking chiefly for their undeniable stupidity; it was stupid of the Governor to allow himself to be seen this way even if there was nothing going on between him and the woman. We may not want David Paterson to be cheating on his wife (though we know he's done it in the past, as he's spoken about it), but if he were still cheating and it became known, no one would be terribly surprised. He hasn't put his own personal morality into play as a political issue.

John Edwards, on the other hand, made his happy marriage part of his political persona. And, thus, his adultery was genuinely shocking in a way it wouldn't be for David Paterson. If a politician cannot be true to his own political persona, what's left for him to be true to? There are excellent reasons why sexual improprieties have likely ended his political career. He put the issue out there.

Eliot Spitzer's sexual improprieties were particularly easy to judge. He violated both his own political persona, and the law. Bill Clinton's were harder, as his persona was as ambiguous as the legal status of many of his actions to cover up his affair.

Some politicians, when caught, can plausibly make the excuse that their private lives are entirely private and we shouldn't judge them by it. Whether or not we agree is another matter, but some can plausibly make the case. And some politicians can not plausibly make this case. Either they have put their values or their own domestic bliss front and center, or in some (seemingly rare) cases they present a persona that's so hyper-sexual in nature you can't help but look.

Carl Paladino is perhaps the rarest case of all. His weirdly contradictory persona, not ambiguous like Bill Clinton's but openly contradictory, is both hyper-sexual and values laden. Either way, he's in effect put his own bedroom front and center. His adultery should matter, and matter a lot.

First of all, he has expressed his political persona in values terms. His verbal assaults on President Obama as not being Christian “in his heart” are one example. Especially when one considers that, in context, Paladino's statements went beyond answering the question he was asked. Paladino was clearly attempting to to cast himself as a values candidate. To refer to someone as being “not Christian in his heart,” as Paladino did to President Obama, is clearly to imply that you're qualified to judge. Paladino's website, and his recent Daily News interview, also reference Paladino's staunch Catholicism. In Catholicism, adultery is a serious sin. Paladino and his supporters have openly touted the candidate's “conservative values.” Typically, the phrase “conservative values” implies a lot more than cutting taxes, at least to the voters if not to the political class.

Values are clearly part of Paladino's political persona. And his adultery violates his own publicly-held, much-trumpeted values.

Another part of Paladino's political persona, which has surprisingly been little-commented on in the mainstream media, is sexual potency, especially as contrasted with that of Andrew Cuomo's It seems very important to Paladino that he show he's bigger than his opponent (and I think we all know what I mean by that). A picture on Paladino's Internet site, for example, contrasts the two candidates by presenting Paladino as a big, masculine looking dog, and Cuomo as a small, feminine looking dog (named Fifi). Paladino's repeated threats of physical violence and his expression of political matters in violent, physical terms are surely also proof of a man showing off his testosterone count, as is his repeated references to the political contest as a fight. Almost all American politicians to some degree engage in this kind of hyper-masculine discourse. In fact it's almost impossible to avoid, to some degree even for women in politics. But Paladino's put hyper-sexuality front and center, deliberately and intentionally.

Paladino's public persona thus presents us with a strange paradox: morally righteous and devout Christian on the one hand; sexually aggressive, baseball bat wielding, street fighting overman on the other.

Paladino's adultery, especially as ongoing, secret, and child-producing as it was (this was not the openly “libertine” sexual impropriety of a figure like Roger Stone), is a violation of the first half of his persona, and a logical and necessary consequence of the second half.

And, thus, it's fair to judge him by it. He's put it out there, for all to see.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Personal Politics: Charlie Rangel and Andrew Cuomo

As most readers doubtlessly know by now, Andrew Cuomo, self-styled reformer and Democratic candidate to be Governor of New York State, was seen recently at Representative Charlie Ranger's birthday celebration, which in good political fashion doubled as a fundraiser for the embattled Representative.

Cuomo's opponents have taken his attendance as an opportunity to question Cuomo's reform credentials, to paint Cuomo as politics as usual.

There's surely a grain of truth to the accusation that Cuomo is, or at least has been, an insider. Cuomo doesn't actually seem to deny this. For example, on the campaign trail he talks openly about his time working in the gubernatorial administration of his father, Mario Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo appears to base his reform credentials not on a complete lack of insider status, which if he tried to claim it would be a lie for sure, but because but because as Attorney General he hasn't directly been part of the political game as it's currently being played.

But why would any would-be reformer, even a would-be reformer who's also an unapologetic once-insider, want to be seen with a politician like Rangel, who's rarely referred these days to without being described as “ethically challenged” or “disgraced?” Especially since Rangel's career appears to be the ultimate American political cautionary tale. Rangel replaced the famous Adam Clayton Powell in the U.S. House of Representatives after the latter's ethical problems, only to now face ethical problems of his own.

Andrew Cuomo himself provided one answer:

“Let’s get the facts and then we’ll make the decision once we have the facts,” Cuomo said. “I think we have to be careful jumping to conclusions before we have all the facts and we get both sides of the story. But I’ve been at this long enough to know there’s always two sides to a story—and sometimes there’s a third side.”


And while his statement is surely correct, I don't think anyone believes that was the only reason for Cuomo's attendance. There's two or three sides to every story, but not everyone who has a story has Andrew Cuomo in attendance at his or her birthday party. Not even every politician, or every Democratic politician, does.

Another answer of course is that provided by radio commentator Alan Chartock:

Because, clearly these people [politicians] know that he's highly popular, Rangel, within a certain community [the Black community], and he [Cuomo/generic politician] doesn't want to lose those votes.


Chartock wasn't talking exclusively about Andrew Cuomo, but did clearly mean to include him.

Andrew Cuomo in particular cannot take the Black vote for granted, as he faces a challenge from fringe candidate Charles Barron. Barron is a current Member of the New York City Council, and a former Black Panther, whose campaign is explicitly based on race and racial issues. Indeed, the candidacy was founded over Barron's unhappiness with Cuomo's White running mate. Though considered a fringe candidate, Barron did manage to get nearly 45,000 petitions for his candidacy, in contrast with Carl Paladino's 28,000.

As far as I'm concerned, that means that if Paladino is a viable candidate, necessarily so is Barron. Therefore, Andrew Cuomo can't take the Black vote for granted.

There is, however, potentially another, more personal, reason for Andrew Cuomo's attendance at Rangel's birthday party.

The relationship between Rangel and the Cuomo family, it seems, goes back awhile, to an early run by Mario Cuomo to be Mayor of New York City. Then-incumbent Mayor Ed Koch had rankled the city's substantial Black population rather badly. Rangel and Percy Sutton (another Harlem-based Black political leader) were looking for a reason to endorse anyone other than Koch, and Cuomo first seemed viable. Cuomo, however, didn't meet Rangel's and Sutton's hopes or expectations. As Rangel described in his book, And I haven't Had a Bad Day Since,

When we [Sutton and Rangel] met with Cuomo, he took great pains to explain that he was color blind, and therefore could not promise a certain number of positions for blacks in a Cuomo administration. He said that he himself wasn't even Italian; he was just an American. The very idea that blacks would need particular political support was racist, Cuomo told us. (And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since, page 206)


This simply wouldn't do, especially as contrasted with Ed Koch's more accommodating stance. “What do you want,” Koch asked Rangel and Sutton. “How can we work this out?” Interestingly, and tellingly about how politics is done in Harlem, Rangel also complained bitterly about how “a handful of blacks,” without his approval, endorsed Cuomo on the steps of City Hall. (And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since, page 207.)

Rangel also related how he was upset about Mario Cuomo becoming nominated by then-Governor Hugh Carey to run to be Hugh Carey's Lieutenant Governor in the election of 1978.

In my opinion, Mario Cuomo had done nothing to merit getting on the very short line to the governor's chair. What had he done? He arbitrated a nasty dispute between residents of Forest Hills [a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens] and advocates seeking to build public housing there.

Meanwhile, we in the African-American community believed State Senator Basil Patterson [sic] deserved consideration. The whole idea that [Mario] Cuomo was slam-dunked for the governor's chair while Patterson [sic] was overlooked didn't sit well with us. Twenty-four years later, Andrew Cuomo didn't do much to redeem his dad when he challenged our Carl McCall in the 2002 [gubernatorial] primary. (And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since, page 210, emphasis added by me.)


Sometimes, politics in New York State is personal. Could it be that Andrew Cuomo showed up at Rangel's birthday party in part because he feels the need to redeem his father in the eyes of Representative Rangel?

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Dear Glenn Beck: Regarding Carl Paladino....

Dear Glenn Beck:

I hope this letter finds you well.

I write you today because you are America's leading expert on the ongoing threat of Nazi Germany. Your efforts to expose the Nazi influence in American political life have been tireless. You have exposed things as diverse as the Peace Corps, President Obama, Al Gore, the concept of empathy, and Rockefeller Center as being secretly, or even overtly, Nazi in origin.

Oh wait, sorry, Rockefeller Center wasn't Nazi, it was Communist. You'll forgive the error, I'm sure. What's the difference anyway. After all the full name of the Nazi party was National Socialism, right?

At any rate, I am simply dumbfounded by your apparent lack of attention to the race for the Republican nomination to be New York State's Governor. A source close to one of the two candidates, Carl Paladino, recently described, to the mainstream media, the candidate's upcoming pre-primary ad buys as a “wall to wall blitzkrieg.” As I am sure you are aware, blitzkrieg is a Nazi military term roughly meaning "lightning war."

Further, the Paladino Blitzkrieg was announced on or very close to the anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland, wherein the Nazis used blitzkrieg techniques. Unless he was the source himself, Paladino I guess didn't actually use that term himself. (Though, really, there's no evidence that he wasn't the source, or that he didn't use the term in private even if he wasn't the source.) But neither has he repudiated such an explicit Nazi reference being used on his behalf. I mean, President Obama wasn't even necessarily aware of his making a Nazi reference when he described a Supreme Court nominee of his as having “that quality of empathy,” yet surely he should have repudiated that statement once you pointed out to him how Nazi he was being! So shouldn't Paladino explicitly repudiate such an overtly Nazi statement being made on his behalf?

Surely, Mr. Beck, your tireless attempts to expose the Nazi threat in American political life should be extended to include this. Unlike the other Nazi threats you've exposed, this one isn't even subtle. It's explicit.

Perhaps you just didn't know about it? When you spend all the time looking for the subtle, sometimes you miss the obvious; I understand that. Happens to me too. In fact I almost didn't catch this one. Those Nazis sure are crafty.

You know, maybe, Glenn (do you mind if I call you that?), you have spoken out against the, explicitly, consciously Nazi-like activities of Carl Paladino and I just missed it. Sorry if that's the case.

If you haven't noticed this one yet, however, you may now consider yourself informed. You should surely devote a two-hour special to this one.

Maybe you're already planning one?

Sincerely,
-The Albany Exile