Tag Archives: 2008 election

Joe Biden

Biden: born for this job?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

As I watch President Biden perform certain ceremonial functions — or even simply walk to and from the Oval Office or climb the steps leading onto Air Force One — I am struck by a recurring thought.

It is that this man has wanted the job he now holds for practically as long as he has been a national public figure. That goes back a good while.

He burst on the national scene as a freshman U.S. senator from Delaware. He won election in 1972; Biden was just 29 years of age when they declared him the winner, but would turn 30 (the minimum legal age to serve as a senator) between Election Day and his swearing in.

It is a fairly open secret that he lusted for higher office from almost the very beginning. Biden had to endure intense personal tragedy before taking office in 1973. His wife and infant daughter died in a car crash; his sons, Beau and Hunter, were gravely injured. They would recover.

Biden would remarry five years later.

He ran for president in 1988. Then he tasted humiliation when he got caught plagiarizing the remarks of a British politician, using the British pol’s life story as his own. Sen. Biden bowed out. He would run again for POTUS in 2008, but then quit after being steamrolled by the eventual Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama — who then selected him to run with him as vice president. They won. They served two successful terms.

Now it’s the Joe Biden Show in the White House.

I just am filled with the strong sense that President Biden has been in a sort of training for half a century to do the job he is now doing.

My critique? He’s quite good at acting like a president. He sounds like a president. He behaves like a president.

After enduring the clumsiness, the chaos, the confusion and the cockamamie pronouncements of the president’s immediate predecessor, all this “normal” stuff seems quite, well … refreshing.

national news

McCain endorses Biden

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I guess you could say that politics at times can travel full circle.

Consider this: The wife of the man against whom Joe Biden ran in 2008 has endorsed the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nominee’s bid for the presidency of the United States.

Cindy McCain, wife of the late senator and Vietnam War hero John McCain, says Biden is the “only man” who speaks for the nation’s values.

At one level this endorsement isn’t surprising. Biden and McCain were the best of friends. They came from different parties; they differed politically and philosophically. They also shared a love of country and a commitment to serving the public. Biden’s path took him to the Senate by the time he turned 30 while McCain’s journey took him to the Navy and then to the Vietnam War, where he was shot down and imprisoned (and tortured repeatedly) for more than five years; he came home in 1973 and became a successful politician.

Biden ran as vice president on a ticket led by Barack Obama in 2008. They defeated the GOP ticket led by U.S. Sen. McCain, who ran with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Biden and McCain never let their political differences interfere with the deep affection and respect they had for each other.

So it was today that Cindy McCain endorsed Joe Biden’s bid to become president. Sen. McCain would be quite pleased.

local news

This retirement journey keeps taking strange twists and turns

Retirement is so much cooler than I thought it was when I entered this world just a few years ago.

I have been able to devote more time to this blog. I have been able as well to sleep in if I choose. My wife and I have taken our fifth wheel recreational vehicle on lengthy and not-so-lengthy trips to hither and yon. We have been able to spend more time with our precious granddaughter.

I also have just begun a gig as a freelance reporter for a couple of Collin County weekly newspapers.

What’s more, today I got to participate in a live radio broadcast. Yes, a live event. It went on the air as we spoke the words. Did it make me nervous going in? Uhh … yes. It did!

However, it worked out far better than I expected it would.

I’ll now set the stage.

Mark Haslett is a friend of mine who works as news director for KETR-FM, the public radio station affiliated with Texas A&M University-Commerce. He plays host to a weekly radio show called “North by Northeast.” It airs each Friday from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Did I mention it’s a live show? Oh, yeah. I forgot.

Well, I also write for KETR-FM’s website. Haslett asked me to be a guest on his show. I agreed, knowing it’s a live event and also knowing it would give me the heebie-jeebies.

I have spoken on the radio before. It was in 2008 in Amarillo, at High Plains Public Radio. Haslett worked at HPPR then. National Public Radio wanted to talk to journalists who worked in vastly different political environments during an election year; NPR sought out someone who worked in a Republican-leaning “red” area and a Democratic-leaning “blue” region. I got the call to talk to NPR about the Texas Panhandle’s outlook for the upcoming presidential election. NPR did a great job of editing the audio we produced, making me sound cogent and coherent.

This live gig was a different animal. There would be no editing.

Haslett and I talked about Texas politics, the curious recent controversy involving the lame-duck Texas House speaker, the state of journalism in today’s changing media climate and I even got to share a couple of extraordinary experiences I enjoyed during my 37 years working as a print journalist.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this wonderful new experience was that it went by like lightning. They told me at KETR this morning that it would fly by rapidly. Oh, man … they were so right.

Before I could barely catch my breath, the hour was done. Haslett signed off. I leaned back in my chair and heaved a sigh of relief that I didn’t mess up.

Could I do this again? Yes. Probably. Just not right away. I have great admiration for those who talk for a living. I prefer simply to write.

national news

Harris scores big, but now faces some blowback

Kamala Harris pounded Joe Biden with some serious body blows at that debate this past week. The U.S. senator and former California attorney general caught the former senator and former vice president flat footed when she questioned him about his senatorial relationships with avowed segregationists.

Oh, my. Then came the initial response. Harris now is on the front rank of Democratic challengers to Donald Trump. Her fans think better of her, if that’s possible. Biden’s fans initially were somewhat dismayed.

Now, though, the senator is getting a bit of push back, some resistance from those who think she might have let her ambition get the better of her. She shouldn’t have gone low with that attack against the ex-VP, some are saying.

Let’s play this out for a moment.

Suppose Biden remains the favorite among Democrats. Suppose, too, he gets the party’s presidential nomination in the summer of 2020. Who would he choose as his running mate. One Biden anonymous supporter said, “That sh** ain’t happening.”

Really? Let’s see. George H.W. Bush called Ronald Reagan’s fiscal policy “voodoo economics” when the two of them ran for the Republican nomination in 1980. Reagan then selected Bush to run with him; they served as a team for two terms and Bush got elected president in 1988.

Oh, then we had Biden running against Barack Obama in 2008. They fought hard for as long as Biden was in the hunt. Then the Delaware U.S. senator dropped out. Democrats nominated Sen. Obama — who then chose Biden to run with him. You know the rest of it.

Moral of the story? If Biden gets nominated, do not count out Sen. Kamala Harris as a potential running mate.

national news

Trump stands as proof that ‘anyone’ can become POTUS

A young U.S. senator from Illinois stood before the 2004 Democratic National Convention and said, “Only in this country is my story even possible.”

His name was Barack Obama, a self-proclaimed “skinny kid with a funny name.” He was an African-American man born in Hawaii to a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya. There he was, delivering the keynote speech to Democrats who would nominate Sen. John Kerry to run against President Bush.

Four years later, that senator would run for president himself. Millions of Americans voted proudly for him. I was one of those Americans. Sen. Obama became President Obama and demonstrated that, indeed, “anyone could be elected president.”

Obama set the standard for political improbability. Eight years after that, though, another man smashed that standard to smithereens.

Donald John Trump Sr. had never sought public office. He had never devoted a minute of his adult life in service to the public. His entire life had been built with one goal: to enrich himself.

He was a huckster supreme. He sold us a bill of goods. He talked about his brilliant business acumen. Trump told us he would do for the country what he did for himself. He would make America great again. All by himself, too!

Well, this charlatan managed to capture enough Electoral College votes to defeat a profoundly more qualified candidate, former U.S. senator/secretary of state/first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Now he wants a second term as POTUS. I must ask this question: Is this clown going to fool us yet again?

Trump has managed to denigrate damn near every institution he has touched. He has hurled insults. Trump has tossed out innuendo after innuendo.

Trump has failed time and time again to demonstrate a shred of humanity. He lacks the basic elements of empathy. He cannot tell the truth at any level.

Donald Trump has proven without a doubt that in this country, “Anyone can be elected president.”

If this individual manages to win re-election in 2020, then we all must live with the truism we hear from time to time:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

national news

Mitt weighs in on Trump’s McCain derangement syndrome

“I can’t understand why the president would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain: Heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country and God.”

So wrote Utah’s junior U.S. senator, Mitt Romney, about Donald Trump’s obvious fixation with the late senator from Arizona.

Honestly, Sen. Romney, few of us out here can grasp what in the name of human decency has infected Trump.

I didn’t vote for Sen. McCain when he ran for president in 2008. That does not diminish my respect for the exemplary and heroic service he delivered to this nation in war and later in political service.

Indeed, for the president to say what he has said in these months since McCain died of brain cancer speaks so graphically about that individual’s absence of character.

I’m with you, Sen. Romney.

I hasten to add that you were right in 2016 when you called Trump a “phony” and a “fraud.” He demonstrates both qualities damn near every day.

national news

Former VP Biden looks like he’s in . . . sigh

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Joe Biden is sounding increasingly like someone who’s decided to make yet another run for the presidency of the United States.

Oh . . . my. This situation fills me with great emotional conflict.

I admire the former vice president greatly. He has served in public life with distinction. He has occupied a large spot on the national stage, starting with his election to the U.S. Senate in 1972.

Have there been missteps, hiccups, embarrassing moments along the way? Yes. He was caught plagiarizing remarks from a British politician; he has been prone to assorted verbal gaffes throughout his public life.

He ran for president in 1988 and again in 2008. The plagiarism rap torpedoed his earlier run. He lost to Sen. Barack Obama two decades later and then ran with the future president to two historic election victories.

Biden also has endured tragedy. His wife and daughter were killed in that horrific traffic accident prior to his taking office in the Senate. His elder son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. The VP wore his emotions on his sleeve. He endured and has carved out a largely successful public service career.

He’s now 77 years of age. I want a fresher face to run for president and to challenge Donald Trump in 2020.

That all said, if it comes down to a Trump-Biden contest next year, there’s no doubt who would get my support.

I just want someone else to go for the gusto.

media news

Time of My Life, Part 6: Kudos to NPR

There once was a time — and it wasn’t that long ago — when newspaper editors’ opinions were of some value, that others actually sought them out.

I got to play the part of a media “expert,” but I use the term loosely, as in quite loosely.

The 2008 presidential campaigned exposed me to the marvels of radio editing and the magic that radio hands perform with raw audio “copy.”

National Public Radio was looking for two newspaper editors who plied their craft in politically disparate parts of the country. They settled on Kevin Riley, editor of the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News and, um, yours truly . . . me!

Dayton is a heavily unionized community in southern Ohio. In 2008 it was considered to be part of the electoral “battleground” where U.S. Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain were fighting in their quest to become the next president of the United States. Riley was editor of the paper. I don’t know the fellow.

I was editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News, deep in the heart of McCain Country. There wouldn’t be any fight in the Texas Panhandle over voters’ preferences. Our readers were solidly behind Sen. McCain.

NPR wanted to talk to the two of us to get our take on how our communities viewed the upcoming election.

I showed up at the High Plains Public Radio studio in downtown Amarillo, got comfortable sitting amid all this radio equipment. My good friend Mark Haslett — who worked for HPPR at the time — set up the studio nicely. The call came from NPR, I introduced myself to Liane Hansen, the NPR host, and to Riley, who was on the other end of the line in Dayton.

We chatted for about 30 minutes or so. I was terribly nervous, more so than Riley; at least that’s how I figured it, given that he stammered and stuttered far less than I did when he was answering questions from Hansen.

The bottom line was that Riley said the race in Ohio between Obama and McCain would be tight; meanwhile, I told NPR that McCain was likely to win the contest in the High Plains of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Kansas in a walk.

NPR boiled the interview down to about a 4-minute presentation on its “Morning Edition” broadcast on Sunday.

Here’s the most astounding part of it: NPR’s editing team made me sound much smarter and erudite than I am. They edited out the fits and starts, the “uhs” and “ums” and the occasional mangled sentence structure.

What’s more, they did it without changing any context! They broadcast my remarks completely and correctly, but without the mess I made of it.

I tell you all this to make two points: First, given the decline in print journalism and the explosive growth in other forms of media, newspaper editors no longer are deemed to be as valuable a resource as they once were; I am proud to have taken part in that discussion. Second, National Public Radio comprises geniuses who are very good at what they do . . . and I was proud to be a part of NPR’s broadcast.

national news

Tough to bid farewell to icons

Americans have had a busy year bidding farewell to iconic public figures.

We’ve just bid adieu to our nation’s 41st president, George H.W. Bush, who in just a few days will be laid to rest next to his beloved wife, Barbara, and their first-born child, who died at age 3.

We have given President Bush the kind of sendoff he deserves, but which reportedly he would have disliked intensely. His son, Neil, noted that “Dad” would be embarrassed by “all the nice things people have said about him.” Nice things?

Good, gracious. Those “nice things” do not even begin to do justice to the service Bush 41 gave to the nation he cherished. It has been well-chronicled certainly since his death this past Friday at age 94. It was well-known already.

I have declared my belief on numerous occasions that Bush 41 was arguably the most qualified man ever to hold the office of president. As I have listened to the tributes, that belief has been shored up.

As for his wife, “Bar,” she left us in the spring. She and George H.W. Bush shared a 73-year marriage that produced six children. Five of them grew to adulthood, with their first child, Robin, dying as a toddler of leukemia.

Barbara Bush didn’t aspire to pursue a career other than being a homemaker and devoted spouse to a great man. She, however, achieved greatness, too, as first lady. She promoted literacy and always, without fail, carried herself with dignity and grace.

The tributes paid to the former first lady served as well to remind us that love truly does conquer all.

As for the third icon, he ventured to the gates of hell and returned to build a political life devoted to serving his nation.

John McCain died in August of brain cancer. He served for three decades as a U.S. senator from Arizona. And, yes, he was a bona fide, true-blue war hero. He was shot down over Hanoi during the Vietnam War, taken captive and held as a POW for more than five years.

Donald J. Trump sought to disparage McCain’s war service by denigrating his hero status, how he was a “hero only because he was captured. I like people who aren’t captured.” That despicable utterance stands as a testament to the complete absence of character from the man who uttered it.

McCain would serve in the House and then the Senate with distinction. He rose to the level of icon during his years in Congress. His years as a POW elevated his profile immediately upon being elected to Congress.

He ran twice for president, losing the Republican nomination in 2000 to Texas Gov. George W. Bush and then losing the 2008 election to Sen. Barack H. Obama.

All three of these individuals sought in their ways to achieve a “more perfect Union.” They are worthy of every single ounce of tribute they have received.

national news

‘Comity’ in Washington is MIA

Few of us ever use the word “comity” in everyday speech. It is a word used by media and politicians to describe a sense of togetherness and civility among public officials.

That word might get a comeback today as the nation bids farewell to U.S. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who preached a return to “order” in politics and sought to reach across to Democrats who served with him and who shared a love of country.

McCain died the other day after a yearlong battle with cancer. His Earthly voice has been stilled, but I surely hope his legacy will remain and that it will include his call for “comity” in the halls of power.

With that, here is a clip from the 2008 Al Smith Memorial Dinner, when Sen. McCain shared a podium with fellow Sen. Barack Obama as the men fought for the presidency.

It gives you a good look at what politics can become and what many of us hope will return … one day.