Rogue Columnist

Storm warnings

Days ahead of the general election, the New York Times tells me that the "Ohio working class may offer key to Obama's re-election." According to a poll, "nearly half of all white voters without college degrees here say the economy is improving, and most give Mr. Obama some credit." In "post racial America," the president's overall white support is in the thirties nationally. Having spent nearly nine years in Ohio, let me try to drill something home. Guys like wealthy Republican Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney bought, stripped, ripped and bankrupted your hometown headquarters companies in leveraged deals. They closed your factories, busted your unions and sent jobs to China. They drove down your wages to redistribute incomes ever upward. They fired you. They looted the wealth that it took Ohioans more than a century to build. Not blacks. Not Barack Hussein Obama. Guys like Romney — and in some cases Romney and Bain Capital specifically. I understand your trauma and bitterness. But get a clue.

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Arizona is even more deranged. So not much to say. Change won't happen as long as turnout is low and voting dominated by the old Anglos and the LDS. Over cocktails in Phoenix a few days ago, some genuinely smart people assured me that Arizona was changing: Moderate Anglos would shake off their apathy and Hispanics would change the state's politics. I'll believe it when I see it. Until then, the odious "Nickle-Bag Joe" Arpaio will win, despite a challenge from Paul Penzone who would restore competence and decency to the Sheriff's Office. Richard Carmona might pull it out for the Senate; if not, Jeff Flake will be even less helpful to the state than Jon Kyl. The overarching political problem remains an ineffective Democratic Party. And, as with the nation, a progressive movement that can't match the narrative of the right.

 

The Goldwater Library

A few quick observations on the $30 million Barry and Peggy Goldwater Library and Archives to be built in downtown Mesa. For the city of Phoenix, it is embarrassing, ahisorical, wounding and revealing.

Embarrassing because, according to the Arizona Republic, the library trustees wanted to put the institution in downtown Phoenix and city officials dropped the ball.

Ahistorical because Barry Goldwater was born in central Phoenix, attended Kenilworth School (as did I), managed his family department store downtown and was a Phoenix City Councilman who, among other things, backed construction of the Civic Center that is still home of the Phoenix Art Museum and Phoenix Theater.

The price of admiralty

The Nimitz-class carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and strike group.

Exactly sixty-eight years ago, American warships obliterated the remaining combat fleets of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the greatest sea battle in history. It was the last stand of the battleship and the first use of kamikaze, a foreshadowing of asymmetrical warfare to come. In the aftermath, the United States Navy has ruled the oceans, and helped ensure Pax America, with a dominance only exceeded by the Royal Navy in the century of Pax Britannica after Trafalgar.

Maintaining this is not a matter of mere numbers, however, as President Obama hinted at in his devastating bayonets-and-horses rejoinder to wealthy Republican financier Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney. Building more ships will further the corporate welfare for the defense contractors and has personally enriched Romney's top naval adviser. Beyond this, the strategy is murky — particularly considering the cuts the nation is expected to endure while also further spending on the military.

For the record, the Navy had 285 active ships last year. Contrary to Romney's claim that, "our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917," the Navy was even smaller under George W. Bush. And numbers of ships are meaningless era to era. A modern Arleigh Burke class destroyer is far more lethal than a World War II battleship. A single Nimitz-class carrier strike group is more potent than all the fleets assembled at Leyte. Total firepower controlled by U.S. fleets is overwhelming. Obama made the point without going too deep into the weeds. (I hope; never underestimate the ignorance of the average voter and the coveted GOP demographic of white males and size issues).

President Romney? Part II

Much has changed since I wrote the first post on this topic. The biggest being that wealthy Republican financier Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney may well be the next president. Between the hard-core right, the duhs-and-ignos, and the whites who hate that black man in the White House more than anything, it could well happen. And don't forget the huge post-Citizens United money and vote suppression favoring the GOP. Disappointment in the incumbent is substantive — but enough to turn the country over to this man and this bunch? Possibly.

I want to attempt to get beyond the horse race or debate analysis to contemplate a Romney presidency. So, a few thoughts:

The man is frighteningly opaque. We've been conditioned to believe "all politicians lie." Maybe so. But I can't think of a presidential candidate in my lifetime who has held so many different and conflicting positions. Not evolving or changing one's mind when the facts change, but cynical shape-shifting to close the deal. Anything to win. Even if this doesn't reveal a dangerous sociopath, we must ask: Who is this man? The hard right doesn't care; it has given him a pass to play "Moderate Mitt" just to defeat Obama. But does "Moderate Mitt" really exist? Or was that merely the calculus of a man who won one term as governor in blue Massachusetts ("my state" as he always says in debates, creepily avoiding saying the state's name). Is it the lazy fantasy of the mainstream media that also had a misplaced crush on the "maverick," wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III.

Tear-down city

It's an outrage that two of the very few remaining buildings of the Deuce, the Madison and St. James hotels, are being torn down to make a surface parking lot. Phoenix sure doesn't have enough surface parking lots. Apparently a "compromise" with the Phoenix Suns, which owns the property downtown, will "preserve" a fragment of one building. That's almost more pathetic and insulting than blading the whole thing. These commercial buildings from the early 20th century only make sense as part of a whole, i.e. a walkable block of these human-scaled, useful and historic structures, a "smile full of teeth," as it were, right up to the sidewalk. In isolation, they lose these winning features. A few pieces of rubble in a surface parking lot...is that a joke?

Team owner Robert Sarver must be sitting in his San Diego palace savoring getting some of his own back, after not being able to demolish the Sun Mercantile to build a W Hotel. According to my sources, Sarver was presented with a stunning architectural option that would have twirled the hotel tower well above the roof of the historic structure. He shot it down in favor of something more conventional and dull and destructive. Which never happened anyway. It's amazing the Sun Mercantile survives, and a credit to preservationists. Does anyone think Sarver, had be owned the Suns at the time, would have pushed for a downtown arena as Jerry Colangelo did? Just as I'm sure Ken Kendrick and pals wish Chase Field was on the rez near north Scottsdale. Seattle's looking for an NBA team. Don't assume anything with "stewards" like this.

I realize this post is coming very soon after a meditation, sparked by the fight over the Wright house, on all that Phoenix has lost. And yet the losses just keep coming. A century-old store in Higley was no match for the sacred widening of the holy wide "streets" which are the width of major highways. But the downtown calamity especially stands out.

Town hall of fools

UPDATED

One of the treasures of my home in exile is Town Hall Seattle, a setting that consistently holds intelligent and searching events featuring top authors, artists, scientists and other intellectuals. The audience is always smart, never boorish or full of thugs and trolls. The vital issues of the day are on the menu, the setting a restored majestic church downtown. That such a place not only exists outside of New York but is highly popular is almost enough to give one hope. But this is a very blue city that consistently ranks at or near the top in the nation for literacy.

A very different town hall will take place Tuesday night: The second presidential debate. As the New York Times reports, the format "is designed to be a little less stiff — a free-flowing question-and-answer session between the candidates and a studio audience." Get it: Studio audience. Not only is this "debate" actually highly scripted, it is intended to mimic the great god of Moronistan, the television. Please, let us trivialize what should the solemn obligation of learning real issues and acting as real citizens. Far better Donahue/Oprah/The View with pretend issues and a premium on treating Americans as stupid children. Wasn't it the first such "town hall debate" in 1992 when George H.W. Bush checked his watch? I felt his pain.

In the Obama/Romney version, we will see 80 participants "culled by Gallup...from a sample of uncommitted voters." Right there is what cops and crime-writers call "a tell." Uncommitted? Seriously? How could anyone be uncommitted or undecided in this election. Only people who are imbeciles. People who should not vote. I hearken back to Gore Vidal's famous line about 50 percent of Americans don't vote and 50 percent don't read a daily newspaper — and he hoped it was the same 50 percent. Today the number of actual readers is far lower. But we will have Messrs. Romney and Obama pandering to the duhs and the ignos, consumers not citizens.

Carmona vs. Flake

The concise answer to the Arizona U.S. Senate contest is this: "The Mormons vote. The Mexicans don't." If that pattern repeats, along with the typically disgraceful low turnout, then Republican Jeffrey Lane Flake will win. The Flake momentum will only grow if President Obama continues his self-immolation against wealthy Republican financier Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney.

That's a shame on so many fronts. Jon Kyl, who is retiring after being in the Senate since 1995, has been a disaster for both Arizona and the country. Along with wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III and Flake himself, Kyl set the template for a delegation that is almost exclusively concerned with furthering an extremist right-wing agenda while doing nothing for the state they nominally claim to represent. The consequences of the former include being willing to wreck the country (further) just to defeat President Obama. The consequences of the latter are particularly insidious for Arizona's worsening predicament.

For most of its history, Arizona's congressional delegation, particularly its senators, were expected to serve the interests of the state in Washington, not be national showboats. This is why, for example, millions of Phoenicians can turn on the water tap and never worry whether water will come out. This happened because Sen. Carl Hayden in particular but the entire delegation for generations championed the Central Arizona Project. Every member, Democrat and Republican, was determined that Arizona not only get its "fair share" of federal money, but more than that.

Backs against the wall

Remember when progressives were told not to worry, that President Obama was playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers. Unfortunately checker-players ended up winning most of the matches. And then there was Obama as "zen master." No Drama Obama. And he was peacefully stoic as the Republican right captured nearly every agenda and framed nearly every debate. We are left with one last chestnut: That the president is at his best when his back is against the wall.

Based on the results of the respected Pew poll, we're about to find out if this is the case. Calling the poll findings "devastating, just devastating," Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast wrote:

I've never seen a candidate this late in the game, so far ahead, just throw in the towel in the way Obama did last week - throw away almost every single advantage he had with voters and manage to enable his opponent to seem as if he cares about the middle class as much as Obama does. How do you erase that imprinted first image from public consciousness: a president incapable of making a single argument or even a halfway decent closing statement? And after Romney's convincing Etch-A-Sketch, convincing because Obama was incapable of exposing it, Romney is now the centrist candidate, even as he is running to head up the most radical party in the modern era.

Phoenix 101: Lost

The main waiting room of New York's Pennsylvania Station, shortly before it was demolished in 1963.

The effort to save the David and Gladys Wright House has become a cause célèbre, or as much of one that can find traction in the sprawling, just-rolled-in-from-Minnesota "civic" climate of metro Phoenix. A Facebook page has been set up. The New York Times flew in architecture critic Michael Kimmelman to write an appreciation of this Frank Lloyd Wright work, including such details omitted by the local media as the demolition company (!) being the one who realized the treasure they had been engaged to rip down and going to the city. The odds of success are long. Perhaps if this were the Joe Arpaio House and it was being torn down to create a day labor center for illegal immigrants. Otherwise, only the Resistance and minority of Resistance-minded citizens have a clue.

The modern preservation movement in America is often traced to the 1963 destruction of Pennsylvania Station, the classically-inspired masterwork of McKim, Mead and White in New York City. It was replaced by a brutalist Madison Square Garden with the railroad station in rat-passages underneath. New York has never gotten over this loss, nor should it. But it ensured that thousands of buildings nationwide were saved, including Grand Central Terminal. This never happened in Phoenix, yet it's not because we wanted for something grand like Pennsylvania Station to be destroyed by barbarians.

The Japanese Flower Gardens was one of our Pennsylvania Stations, a breathtaking Eden at the foot of the South Mountains. The gardens ran for miles along the legendary and evocatively named Baseline Road and offered staggering views of the city — and for anyone, not just the toffs. Lost. Replaced by miles of schlock subdivisions, faux stucco apartments, fast-food boxes and huge expanses of asphalt. Nothing was learned from this colossal act of vandalism. Not one change came to land-use regulations or an attempt at farmland preservation.

The conversation

Several weeks ago, ASU President Michael Crow spoke before the Chandler Chamber of Commerce. His comments, as reported by the Arizona Republic, are instructive:

Let me start with something that’s really been on my mind the last few months. People say to me, “What is the economic development challenge of Arizona? It’s really kind of strange. It really isn’t what people think it is. The economic development challenge for Arizona, in my view, is our inability to express the creativity, the adaptability, the successful way of doing business, the free-enterprise spirit and the things that go on here. It’s our inability to project positively.

Crow goes on to list a number of "positives," including that "there are very few communities with the assets Chandler has been able to amass. It is unbelievable! But you would think none of this is true." And, "If you took nothing but the newspaper and the political rhetoric spoken now, you would think the United States is a failure. You would think Arizona is a backwater, cornpone hangout....If we do not work on projecting the image of what this place is, we are fools. Fools!" Crow is no fool, and this could easily be dismissed as just saying something nice for the chamber types, but it was also picked up as a rallying cry in an editorial.