Mitch Gann’s

Just what level and type of experience makes a person fit to be President of the United States?

Legally, the answer is simple. The Constitution says that to serve as president, a person needs to be 35 or older and a native-born citizen of the USA.  After that, it’s just a matter of getting enough votes.

Of course, to gather those votes, it helps to have the kind of experience that will give the electorate confidence in you.  The question is, what kind of experience is that? Or what kind of experience should it be? And how much?

One line of thinking is that executive experience — especially in government — is what should count the most with voters.  So in recent years, we have had a number of state governors who have been elected president — Carter, Reagan, Clinton and G.W. Bush.  Looking at those four, I would say that two were successful presidents and two were failures.  I think others might say there were three failures and one success, or perhaps even four failures.  But I doubt that many would see a presidential success rate for former governors of more than 50%. It’s your basic crap-shoot.

Another line of thinking is that legislative experience — especially at the federal level — is what should count the most.  Admittedly, it is mostly US Senators who see it this way; the American people tend to prefer the executives. During my considerable life-time, only one sitting Member of Congress has been elected to the presidency: John F. Kennedy. All of the other presidents with experience in Congress — Johnson, Nixon, Ford, G.H.W. Bush — were all vice president before becoming president.  To me, being vice president doesn’t provide much executive experience, except in running your own office.  The only duty the VP has is to preside over the Senate — a legislative function as much as executive.  I can’t see that Kennedy and the four VPs were any less successful on average than the four former governors.  Their records are  pretty mixed.  Another crap-shoot.

One president during my life-time was a military hero and former general — Eisenhower.  As former generals turned president go, Ike wasn’t bad.  He made up some for U.S. Grant.

Logically, though, if the American people want things done, they ought to elect a president with legislative experience, and particularly experience in Congress. Then they should vote for US Representatives and Senators from the same party.  We don’t tend to do that, though. We seem to prefer governmental stand-offs, and we get them.

When I think about the experience issue as it relates to the presidency, I always think of Abraham Lincoln.  Before being elected president, Lincoln had served a term in the Congress and a few terms in the Illinois legislature.  He famously failed to be elected US Senator from Illinois. When voters cast their ballots for Lincoln for president in 1860, they did so knowing that his election was likely to touch-off a civil war, as it did. Before Lincoln could even sit down at his desk in the White House, seven states had seceded from the Union.  No other crisis in American history comes close to matching that.

If the “inexperienced” Lincoln had been anything less than a success, no candidate running for the office today would need to worry about a “Southern strategy.”

Like most Americans, I was surprised by John McCain’s choice yesterday of Alaska’s governor, Sarah Palin, to be his running mate. I was not “surprised and delighted” the way people on the far right of the Republican Party seem to be.  Just surprised.

I guess McCain is trying to shore up the support of his party’s conservative base, especially the evangelical Christians, and that may well work. Some think he is also trying to attract disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters.  That doesn’t seem as likely to happen.  I don’t know a lot about Sarah Palin, but at first impression, she seems to be more than a tad to the right of Hillary Clinton.  If both women were facing north and Sarah Palin were standing on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, Hillary Clinton would be treading water somewhere between LA and Honolulu.

Palin at least gives us a candidate in the race with some executive experience.  True, all of her experience has come in Alaska, a state with 640,000 people crammed into a mere 570,000 square miles. That’s over one human being per square mile, so during the course of a day you could expect to catch a glimpse of another person off in the distance, stalking a moose or chopping wood for the cook fire.  In contrast, on our recent vacation to New York City, my family and I stood in a cab line outside of Penn Station that was 640,000 people long.  We’d still be in line, but finally decided to walk.

Delaware, the state that Joe Biden represents in the U.S. Senate, is as small as Alaska is big; at 2,500 square miles, Delaware has 0.44% of Alaska’s area.  However, Delaware has a couple hundred thousand more residents than Alaska, and a population density of over 400 per square mile. According to U.S. Census data from the year 2000, Delaware is 6th among states in population density. Alaska is 50th.

The District of Columbia — the ultimate goal for all the candidates — is more densely packed than any of the states, and by a huge margin.  Yes, the Capitol and White House police do their best to keep us ordinary citizens away from our elected leadership, and that’s a good thing for both sides.  And, yes, many D.C. residents are poor people whom politicians can and do safely ignore after the election.  But, at least psychologically, sharing a square mile with nearly 10,000 other residents has to feel much different than having the whole thing to yourself.   All of a sudden, you’ve got neighbors, and lots of them.  Some of them smell funny.  Some of them are nuts.

Oddly, having all those neighbors can make you feel lonelier, and at the same time, more put upon.  In Alaska, if you happen to encounter a neighbor while you are out inspecting your line of beaver traps, you will probably stop and chew the caribou fat for a while.  If you try to do that in a busy place like New York City or D.C., your bustling neighbors (and a couple thousand tourists) are apt to stamp you into the sidewalk like a wad of  gum.  Of course, on the positive side, it is much less likely that you’d be inspecting a line of beaver traps in New York or D.C..

Anyway, I just think someone ought to point all this out to Sarah Palin.  She may not know how good she has it.

I guess Barack Obama really is going all out to court the college-age voters. Who the hell else was up at three in the morning to get his VP text message? Not old guys like me, that’s for sure.

Did I say “old”? I meant, “mature.”  Which reminds me — the other day my wife and I had breakfast at a chain restaurant with a meal-club for “seniors,” meaning anybody 55 and over. “You should join,” my wife said.  I told her I didn’t want to go through the hassle of being carded.  “Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that,” she said. Turned out she was right. But, then, even when I was 21, nobody ever carded me.  I just have always looked . . . mature.

Of course, when Obama’s VP announcement went out, it was only midnight on the West Coast; maybe he was trying to nail down California. Yeah, that’s a toss-up state there.

What bugs me the most is that I had signed up for his email notice, and then never got it.  I did receive some other junk mail from the campaign, so I know I gave the right address.  Oh well. I guess Barack figures he has the senior vote in Michigan in the bag.

I do like Joe Biden. For one thing, he’s 65.  He and McCain and I could all enjoy the senior breakfast special down at the Big Boy some morning.

Barack will have to pay full price.

I nearly did a spit-take with my morning coffee when the gang on ABC’s “This Week” began discussing how Mitch I. Gann will vote in the presidential election.

While this blog has been steadily gaining in readership, I never expected to get a mention in the mainstream media this soon.

One of the panelists — it was either Sam Donaldson or Cokie Roberts — asserted that John McCain has a good shot at taking the Mitch I. Gann vote, despite an economic situation that ought to send Mitch I. Gann securely into the Democratic camp.

First, let me say that I am doing OK economically.  True, my potential inheritance of GM stock is looking shaky.  But I never counted much on an inheritance.  The Ganns have a long history of taking it with them.

Now, as for how I will vote this fall, as any reader of this blog can tell, I am not crazy about either of the major party candidates.  Still, I can’t see wasting my ballot on some third or fourth party loon.  I think we should go with one of the loons who has a chance of being elected.

Let me list the obvious strengths of Obama and McCain:

Obama’s Strong Points

1. Democrat
2. Not another boring white guy
3. Younger than I am
4. Speaks well, and in English

McCain’s Strong Points

1. Not popular with the Christian Right
2. Strong on defense
3. Older than I am
4. Determined to win in Vietnam

As you can see, it is pretty much a toss-up. The candidate who has the courage and common sense to suspend all TV advertising until October will have an edge with me.  Failing that test, as I’m sure both will, I’ll have no choice but to study the white papers, spending hours comparing the candidates’ positions.  However, the fall is busy for me, so it may come down to the usual coin flip.

I want to make one thing clear: Mitch I. Gann cannot be bought. Rented cheaply, perhaps.  In that regard, there is plenty of ad space available on this highly influential, nationally known blog and I am running a special to November 5th  — three muckrakers for the price of two.

John McCain is running a TV ad in Michigan that blames Barack Obama for the high price of gasoline and claims that McCain is the one person who knows how to solve the problem of America’s dependence on foreign oil. McCain’s solution is simple: drill more oil wells in the USA.

I have a few issues with this ad. To begin with, Obama, as a first-term US senator, cannot be to blame for the high price of gas.  As far as I can tell, Obama has been a do-nothing senator; he seems to have spent most of his time and energy plotting a run for the White House.  Perhaps the point of the McCain ad is more that Congress is blocking action on more US drilling, and that Obama’s party is currently controlling Congress.  OK, but McCain has been in the senate a long time, much longer than Obama, and there were years when both Congress and the White House were in Republican control.  Yet the ban on drilling in certain off-shore sites and wild life reserves remained in place.

Another problem is the ad’s apparent claim that only McCain knows how to solve the crisis.  It’s exact wording is that “one man knows” the solution.  Why does it have to say that?  To me, this is part of the dangerous “cult of personality” politics that has been becoming more and more prevalent in US politics.  I don’t know how far back cult of personality politics go, but for US presidents, I’d argue it started with FDR.   Before that, we had a lot of stodgy presidents.   Of course, it is no coincidence that FDR was the first US president to exploit modern media effectively.   It was the radio then.  Now it is mostly TV and the Internet.   When we can see and hear our political leaders, we don’t want them to be stodgy or unattractive.  We don’t want thinkers because thinkers are boring and they might challenge us to think.  We want do-ers, just like in the movies.  We want heroes, or at least rock stars.  Or we want inspirational speakers.   We want that one special person who knows all the answers, who is always right.   I am not blaming John McCain or the Republicans for the cult of personality approach.  Obama is the perfect example of it.  But to suggest that only McCain has the answer is to suggest that he has some special, supernatural gift of seeing.  I don’t think so.

I especially don’t think so when McCain’s unique insight produces “drill more oil wells here” as the way to solve the energy crisis. For that idea, you need a special gift? As insights go, it falls short of messianic. Let me ask,  who will drill these dozens or hundreds or thousands of new oil wells?  From what I have read, there is not an over-abundance of drilling rigs and drilling crews ready to pock-mark America with new wells.  Quite the opposite.  Large oil companies are multi-national.  They are producing enough oil right now to satisfy the world’s needs — albeit at a high market price.  The big, multi-nationals don’t care about “America’s dependence of foreign oil.”  What they care about is producing as much crude as possible as cheaply as possible while getting it to market efficiently and earning the highest price they can. If they can earn massive profits from the wells they already operate around the world, why would they suddenly flock back to the US?  Because the new president asked them nicely?

Some independent, wild-cat companies might want to start sinking wells here and there and everywhere.  Americans would apparently go for that idea as long as “everywhere” did not include their own neighborhood and as long as the increased drilling and refining resulted in significantly reduced gas prices.  As soon as proposals for drilling and refinery-building get specific, they are apt to meet with strong local opposition. For instance, a recent poll taken in my home state found that people supported more domestic oil drilling — but not in the Great Lakes.  Not in our Great Lakes.

Go mess up some other shoreline.

However, in spite of environmental concerns, many large and small companies do pump a lot of crude from American wells still.  Domestic production is already increasing.  According to an article in our local newspaper this past weekend, oil companies are even opening up old, capped wells in southeast Michigan — including several within a 10-minute drive from my house.  It is now economically feasible to operate wells that only produce two or three barrels of oil per day.   This is because of the high price of crude on the world market.   At today’s oil prices, uncapping old, low-producing wells is an easy way to make money.  The same logic would probably lead to more drilling in currently protected areas of the United States were they to be opened up.  But would this lead to cheaper oil and gas? The whole point is that oil production is increasing in the US because the price is high.

Interestingly, the oil tycoon and Republican businessman T. Boone Pickens has come out with a plan to end America’s dependence on oil.  He has been promoting his plan on TV and the Internet.  His premise is that we cannot drill our way out of the crisis:

America uses a lot of oil. Every day 85 million barrels of oil are produced around the world. And 21 million of those are used here in the United States.

That’s 25% of the world’s oil demand. Used by just 4% of the world’s population.

Can’t we just produce more oil?

World oil production peaked in 2005. Despite growing demand and an unprecedented increase in prices, oil production has fallen over the last three years. Oil is getting more expensive to produce, harder to find and there just isn’t enough of it to keep up with demand.

The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone.

(The Pickens Plan)

Pickens goes on to argue that “the United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power.”  He also is big on natural gas, which burns cleaner than gasoline and is located in abundance in North America.  I’m not necessarily sold on all the details of the Pickens Plan, but it seems more clear headed than the McCain plan.

Pickens is not running for office, so he can afford to think.

Newsweek, in a story about its latest political poll, is reporting that Barack Obama has opened up a 15 percentage point lead among registered voters. In contrast, notes Newsweek, during June 2004, John Kerry held only a six point lead over President Bush in the same poll. At this point in 2000, Al Gore and Bush were in a dead-heat.

Newsweek acknowledges that its poll shows a much greater lead for Obama than other national polls, but insists that Barack’s Bounce is real and far beyond the poll’s four point margin of error.

I downloaded the PDF of the poll results and took a look.

Among independent voters, Obama leads 48% to 36%. Among men voters, Obama leads 47% to 40% and among women voters, 54% to 33%.

Hillary Clinton’s supporters prefer Obama over McCain by a 69% to 18% margin.

Now comes the rub: age. Younger voters (18-39) are going for Obama by a ratio of greater than two to one. But the middle-aged and older voters — the voters who actually show up to vote — display a much lower degree of Obama-mania. They give the younger candidate the nod, but by a margin that is within the poll’s margin of error. And twice as many over-40 voters are undecided as compared to the under-40 voters.

So, a considerable chunk of Obama’s lead is among younger, less reliable voters. Newsweek admits that “the two candidates are statistically tied among older voters,” but makes nothing of it. What I would make out of it is this: Newsweek is polling registered voters, not likely voters. Now, it could be that the young people will turn out this November in great numbers, on a par with their elders, even though they never have before. Sure, it could.

But don’t bet on it, Barack. Youth is fickle. Go for the mature types — the grizzled ones who know which school gym to line up to vote in.

It’s been a long week.  I intended to blog more, but life got in the way.

And while I was focused on the mundane details of life, oil prices shot up $11 bucks a barrel and Barack and Hillary held a late-night tete-a-tete.

What the world needs is a pause-button.

Over at the Huffington Post, blogger Kathleen Reardon is pondering the question “Why let McCain win?”

Why would a Hillary Clinton supporter vote for McCain? It does seem ludicrous. After all, he represents four to eight more years of George W. Bush. The country can’t afford that. What would prompt a Hillary supporter, especially a Democrat, to even consider backing such a despicable outcome?

Reardon has no answer to her question. Her real purpose is to promote Clinton as the Dem’s VP candidate, which she thinks would take away any excuse for Clinton’s supporters to vote for McCain instead of Obama.

So I will step into the breach and tell you why some of Clinton’s supporters will vote for McCain. First, they may figure that whoever is unlucky enough to be elected President this year will have a hopeless task on his hands, and will not be re-elected in four years. Better that be McCain than Obama. Then Clinton can run again before she reaches McCain’s advanced stage of “experience.” Second, some Clinton voters may actually value experience above youthfulness. Those voters will obviously lean heavily toward McCain. Third, some Clinton backers may not view McCain as another Bush, and therefore may not view his election as a “despicable outcome.” This makes sense if you see both McCain and Clinton as moderates, and Obama as far to the left of center. Fourth, some of Clinton’s supporters simply cannot stand Obama. I don’t know why exactly. Is it racism? Is it a matter of personality and style? Is it that they did not get to go to Harvard? Beats me, but there is a genuine antipathy out there.

Personally, I don’t care if Clinton is Obama’s running mate or not. Who votes for a VP? I’m just offering some answers to the question Reardon posed.