Marketplace of Ideas Blog

Now that this blog has been going for a few months, today seems like a good time to update some previous blog entries:

• About Democratic vice presidential choice Joe Biden: The only word that comes to mind is “uninspired.”

Obama talks about changing the culture of Washington, and reinforces that by selecting as his running mate a 35-year senator. Biden’s experience on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee rates a yawn, because Biden has never been an official representative of the U.S. government (senators don’t create executive branch policy, contrary to what senators would like you to believe). Coming from Delaware, he’s going to have zero impact in Midwestern or Western swing states. But he’s certainly having impact in political commercials:

FoxPolitics.net contributor Lance Burri pointed out that, in 2000, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, facing experience questions similar to Obama’s, picked Dick Cheney, former congressman, presidential chief of staff and defense secretary (and, amusingly, the head of Bush’s vice presidential search committee) as his VP choice. Cheney’s résumé, however, was much broader than Biden’s.

Moreover, Biden’s career shows that he’s an incident waiting to embarrass Obama. Biden was given a somewhat bad rap for failing once to credit a British Labor Party leader in a speech in his 1988 presidential run; the better question is why someone running for the presidency of the United States would quote a British Labor Party leader who failed to capture the House of Commons. Fox News also presented a look into Biden’s loose cannon nature:

Biden was initially playful with reporters, feeding them coffee and bagels Wednesday while acting cagey about whether he's being considered by Obama.

But on Thursday he snapped at a reporter who was in a car apparently too close to his property.

"Get the car off my grass, pal," he said. "Now."

Biden brought no food to reporters.

It is disingenuous for former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and others to say that Obama should have picked Hillary Clinton as his running mate. For reasons previously stated here, she would have been an absolute disaster, both before and after the election if Obama wins. However, also as previously stated here, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former congressman, secretary of energy (is energy a big issue in this year’s election?) and ambassador to the United Nations, would have been a much better choice. So would have Kansas Gov. Joan Sebelius, who would have helped in Midwestern swing states.

This is only the latest piece of evidence in the case suggesting that Barack Obama Superstar is not ready to be president.

• On the move by college presidents to study the harm caused by the national 21-year-old drinking age, Ripon College President David Joyce had a thoughtful perspective in Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (College presidents should suggest thoughtful perspectives, instead of, well, this.)

As Joyce points out:

Some very sound research suggests that setting the drinking age at 21 correlates to reductions in underage and binge drinking since its inception nearly 25 years ago. Maybe. But, anecdotally, I can say that for 18- to 20-year-old college students who wish to drink, it is not a significant impediment. Statistics can be useful, but if the Weather Channel says it's sunny while a storm rages outside, I'm inclined to trust my eyes. And the fact is that our best efforts to combat underage drinking on college campuses aren't working.

The ineffectiveness of the 21-year-old drinking age also is noted in a column by the Journal Sentinel’s Mike Nichols. (Particularly worth noting are the beginning and end of Nichols’ column.)

Meanwhile, we’re still waiting for the proponents of 21 to join the college presidents’ call for “informed and unimpeded debate on the 21 year-old drinking age,” instead of dredging up hack politicians who are afraid of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or politicians with badges who are not friends of our constitutional rights. (I wrote the preceding sentence to echo the tone of any MADD news release.)

• During my day at the EAA AirVenture, I came upon a 1997 book, The Wrong Stuff: Flying on the Edge of Disaster.

This might be the most accurately named book in history. Author John Moore, whose life disputes the old saying, “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots,” begins with his story of being blown over the side of an aircraft carrier and into the Pacific Ocean when an out-of-control fighter jet crashed into a group of jets parked on the deck, including Moore’s. Having improbably survived that experience (seven people did not, including the landing pilot), he also survived being a test pilot of the Navy’s prototype F7U Cutlass fighter jet (photo courtesy www.military-aircraft.org.uk), and survived being a test pilot for the Navy’s proposed rubber flight deck program. (That is not a misprint; it was a proposal for the Navy to be able to eliminate landing gear from aircraft.)

About the Cutlass, Moore writes in great understated fashion about a pilot whose Cutlass lost its landing gear immediately upon takeoff from a carrier. The pilot, first name Floyd, ejected safely at 8,000 feet:

Meanwhile, the Cutlass did not seem to miss Floyd one whit and just kept on going. Soon it headed east toward San Diego …

Floyd looked up from the [helicopter] pad at North Island [Naval Air Station] only to see a Cutlass, sans canopy, flying by. He wondered who was flying it and the answer was: no one. In fact, it seemed to fly as well without Floyd as with him.

After a simulated rocket attack on Point Loma and an exciting simulated strafing run on the Hotel Del Coronado, the Cutlass hung ten on a wave just south of the Hotel Del, coming to rest about 50 feet offshore amongst the startled abalone, many of which had never seen a Cutlass.

A former colleague of Moore’s, Adm. (Ret.) Tom Hayward, former Chief of Naval Operations, gave this endorsement of the author: “I flew with John Moore for many years, and I don’t know how I survived it; I don’t even know how he survived it!”

• Regarding the now-completed Beijing Olympics, the newest announcing star is clearly former U.S. gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi providing guest commentary for the NBC channels. (More on NBC’s work on the Olympics here.)

There was a studio shot of Karolyi during the all-around gold medal performance of Nastia Liukin (when he was off-camera) that made one think that NBC should have issued him a stationary chair with seat belts and stuck him in the studio corner so he didn’t hurt Olympic host Bob Costas. Oxygen had an amusing segment called (what else?) “Ring the Bela,” complete with a Chinese gong to conclude the segment.

The New York Times story on Karolyi was headlined: “Karolyi puts the color in color commentary.” He certainly does.

• On the possibility of the Milwaukee Brewers’ switching their Class A minor-league affiliation to the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers: If that’s happening, that’s apparently news to their current Class A affiliate, the West Virginia Power, which has released its 2009 schedule.

That may be less important than it seems, though. Apparently no team will lose an affiliation, based on Christopherson’s report: “The fact that the Timber Rattlers affiliation may change does not mean there won’t be minor league baseball at Fox Cities Stadium. It’s a matter of which major league club’s prospects, and sometimes major leaguers who are rehabilitating from injuries, will be on the field.”

Certainly the media following the Power think they’re gone, or at least they did when this was first reported. Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail sports editor Jack Bogaczyk even discusses which major league team might end up affiliating with West Virginia (Bogaczyk seems to be rooting for the Pittburgh Pirates). The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has picked up on the chance of a Brewers–Rattlers deal as well (click here and see “A minor consideration.”)

Don’t expect to get even an unofficial announcement from anyone connected with the Timber Rattlers before the negotiating period begins June 16, for the following reason:

Major League Baseball has strict guidelines that prohibit big league and minor league teams not bound by contract from discussing their future intentions — publicly or with each other.

Violations, if discovered, result in tampering charges and stiff fines: $500,000 at the major league level and up to $100,000 at the minor league level.