Viewpoint – Transgendered mayor in trouble

A transgendered mayor in an Oregon town is embroiled in controversy, but as Ian Beaumont reports, it's really all a storm in a C-cup!

One of the benefits of the Internet.

One of the great things that I find about the internet these days is that it allows you to look back in time to a degree and see just how right or wrong we have been.

Back on December 17th 2006, at the end of another edition of Face The Nation on CBS, Bob Schieffer talked about Evan Bayh, a senator from Indiana. Unfortunately, there's no video, but we do have a complete transcript.

Evan Bayh is a well-regarded, two-term Senator from Indiana but he is not exactly a household name. So when he announced two weeks ago that he was thinking about running for the Democratic presidential nomination, even he knew it was a long shot.

He acknowledged it was a David-versus-Goliath kind of thing, but he remembered that David did pretty well.

True enough, but yesterday Bayh realized why the smart money is usually on the giants — because they are giants — and he quit the race as quickly as he had entered.

"Whether there were too many Goliaths or whether I'm just not the right David, I concluded the odds were longer than I felt I could possibly pursue," he said.

In other words, he took a look, realized he had no chance and decided not to waste his time or the country's.

How refreshing! None of this "I decided I wanted to spend more time with my family," or the catalogue of excuses we've come to expect from usual wanna-bes — or even worse, one of those ego trip campaigns that all involved know is headed nowhere except to get some TV time for the candidate.

Bayh just concluded it wasn't to be and said so.

The one downside is, that is just the kind of straight talk we need more of in politics.

A man so candid about himself and his chances might have had some interesting thoughts on other subjects. In a way, I'm sorry we won't get to hear them.

In a way, what Bob wanted to happen has happened, because Barack Obama has been refreshingly straight when it comes to politics during this 2008 campaign. Now as we approach the time of his inauguration as President, we as citizens of the world, would like to see more politicians be this refeshingly honest and candid.

We haven't seen too much of it from the Republican Party, and something tells me we won't see much honesty from them.

Tim Russert: 1950-2008

My first media encounter with Tim Russert was when NBC Super Channel arrived onto Astra 1 in 1995.  At the time, I knew nothing about what an American television network did.  So, NBC Super Channel was my first introduction to the world of American television networks. 

Meet The Press was something new to me.  A Sunday morning "Public Affairs" programme.  We had had Sunday morning political shows in the UK, but the term "Public Affairs" was new and confusing.  And whilst that confusion has lifted, I gained a respect for Tim and his love of politics.

For me, it has always been Meet The Press with Tim Russert, from NBC Super Channel to CNBC Europe, and then later to a downloadable podcast.  Meet The Press with Tim Russert was always a regular appointment.

The news of his death, is, quite understandably, a shock.  He was a consumate professional, a brilliant interviewer, and a wealth of knowledge and experience, almost encyclopedic, of the Washington political scene.

But more than that, Tim Russert shared his roots, his background with all of us, and you saw and felt just where he came from.  He was an "everyman" with the razor sharp lawyer's intellect. and the insights of someone who worked inside the Washington political machine, but never lost his grounding in what was real, what mattered outside the bubble of Washington politics.

As a journalist, he's an inspiration.  As a person, he couldn't have been more balanced.  Journalism has lost a real pro, and humanity has lost an everyman.  Tim Russert was just 58.

Jonathan Aitken to head conservative think tank on Prison reform!

And now, from Viewpoint, an extra special commentary on Johnathan Aitken and the insanity that is modern politics.

Would you put a convicted criminal in charge of the criminal justice system? Would you task a fare evader with catching fare evaders on our transport system? Would you trust a proven liar to actually come clean and tell you the truth? Would you buy a used car from Arthur Daley or an item from DelBoy's market stall?

So why would David Cameron ask Jonathan Aitken to lead a conservative think tank to look into prison reform?

Cameron has made some gaffes in his time, but this has to rank as the biggest gaffe of the lot so far. This is like putting a tax evader in charge of the Inland Revenue. You've put a convicted criminal, a perjurer, and someone who actually spent time in prison, in charge of reforming them? There is a kind of logic to it, but unfortuantely, it is the logic of the madman. You'd have made the idea more popular if you had put a victim of crime in charge, not a convicted criminal.

Unfortunately, this situation is a symptom of a situation that exists not just in the UK, but around the world. Politics is becoming insane. It has become about trying to prove your opponents are wrong, and you are right, at any cost. Truth no longer seems to matter to politicians, who seem ready to lie, spin, and promote propoganda, rather than tell the truth.

And unfortunately, more and more people, like myself, are getting fed up of it.

Politics is NOT about proving yourself right, by lying and spouting political propoganda. It IS about finding REAL solutions to REAL problems. It is about serving the public, not helping yourself.

It is about making a positive difference to people's lives, not about petty political point scoring, or shameless self promotion.

Unfortunately we've had too little of the problem solving, public helping politics, and far too much of the shameless, propogandist, petty, point scoring politics, which just deepens people's cynicism in a dying political system. Political parties are not helping politics, but hindering it, hindering it so much that it is making politics very unpopular.

And it's not just the big name politicians that are doing this.

Around the world, the political "netroots", those who post on blogs, just like I do, are putting their opinions on the web for all to read, but unlike me, they do not think about what they write, other than just how well they are pushing their political points.

What they do not consider, are the realities of their opinions. What would happen as a result of their ideas. The "netroots" can and do get their political parties who they support into a lot of trouble. Take the Republican netroots, who not long ago were promoting the idea of sending all 12 million plus illegal immigrants back where they came from. Like so many ideas, it sounded great in theory, but unfortunately it would have so spectacularly backfired on them, that if they had followed it through as a policy, the Republican Party would have gone straight over the cliff, like a multitude of lemmings, hurtling off the cliff of political reason, into the abyss of political destruction. The Republican party would have commited political suicide, and there would have been nothing that the netroots or anyone else could have done to prevent that.

Fortunately for political discourse, cooler heads did prevail, but it was a close run thing.

But even though the "netroots" must also take some blame, there are still others who must also take their share.

And this time, it's not the "new" media I am looking at, but rather the "old" media.

I'm looking straight at the people, who I refer to as the "politicos", the talking heads, who appear on 24 hour news channels, and host talk radio shows, the ones who believe their point of view is the only one that matters and that others need to be "educated" into their way of thinking.

I'm looking at you, Bill O'Reilly. I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity. I'm looking at you, Rush Limbaugh. I'm looking at you, Michael Savage, Laura Ingrahm, Glenn Beck, Don Imus, Pat Buchanan, Tony Blankley, Eleanor Clift, Michelle Malkin, Kirsten Powers, Mort Kondracke, Fred Barnes, Chales Krauthammer, and all the other "talking heads", "columnists" and "contributors", who waste more time in pointless political discussions that, like a lot of Enterprise set pipes from the original Star Trek TV series which were lablled GNDN, Go Nowhere, Do Nothing.

All you guys do, is promote your own party's talking points, rather than trying to find real solutions. You contribute NOTHING to the political discourse, and only reinforce the political divide, and in some cases, make the divide wider.

As Sherlock Holmes used to say, It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has enough data to do so. One ostensibly twists facts to suit theories, rather than theories to suit facts. Perhaps the political world should remember to twist theories to suit facts, rather than facts to suit their own politcal agendas.