George W. Bush Superstar

George and Laura - the new Spencer and Heidi.

One of the sure signs that I am a bleeding-heart liberal is my pure fascination with movies directed by Oliver Stone. I have always thought of Stone as someone who just did not care what people thought of his movies. He wasn't going to try to please you. If you like his movies, that is just incidental. Stone just makes movies about stuff that is interesting to him.

But I was a little blown away to hear that Stone is making a movie about George W. Bush, called simply W. And isn't it ballsy that he cast the stepson of Barbra Streisand, Josh Brolin, as Dubya? Yes it is. At the time this post was published, I could not confirm nor deny rumors that Stone was casting Gollum in the role of Vice-President Dick Cheney. ("My precious, precious waterboarding techniques.") I will keep checking with my sources in Hollywood though.

Next spring will allow us to revisit Bush versus Gore when W. tries to pick up more Academy Awards than that Al Gore movie on global warming.

Sweet Little Nothings About Tom DeLay

When I was a little kid, I noticed that my mom was really into politics. She read both of Houston's local papers. (Back then we still had The Houston Post. Give me a second to compose myself, okay? I loved The Houston Post.) She watched the local news and the national news. Sometimes she would bring a small television into our den and place it by our big television so she could watched Dan Rather alongside Peter Jennings. ("That Peter Jennings...so handsome," she would say from time to time.) She read National Geographic and Reader's Digest. I didn't know the term at the time but she is what we would now call a "political junkie."

My mom died in 1993. A year or so later, we got our first internet connection at our house. One of those mostly text-based things. I remember loading a single picture overnight and thinking, "Man, that's awesome!" The internet connection at our house became faster and faster and eventually we got high-speed. After I became interested in following politics and other current events around 2000, I saw that there was just so much stuff out there. I don't think my mom would have ever got off the computer.

In the early days of my politics addiction, I would be on the computer constantly. I knew there was always just a little bit more to read about the George W. Bush-Al Gore election. I would be reading stuff during my off-periods from teaching high school history. And during lunch. And during the detentions I held after school. ("You know what real detention is? Four years of a President George W. Bush, that's what!") The Gore v. Bush decision made me realize that if yahoos like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas could graduate from law school then it couldn't be that difficult. Thus I was off to law school.

The Bush-John Kerry election in 2004 was a replay for me. I really got into that election too. That was when I started blogging. (I think my anti-Bush blogging helped explain why John Kerry lost Texas by a smaller margin than one would expect.) I loved those little delegate maps that you would find on the websites of The Washington Post or The New York Times. I was also all about NPR and The New Yorker as well. Did my law school grades suffer a bit? Probably. But I considered myself a student of life. And I had the best teacher anyone could hope for. Myself.

After the disappointment of the 2004 election, I dropped out of following politics for awhile. Oh sure, I took secret joy in President Bush's incredibly shrinking approval ratings. (I had a t-shirt that said, "I don't like to tell people 'I told you so.' I'd rather just imply it.") Another thing that made me lose interest in the news was the departure from the scene of some of my favorite enemies: Tom DeLay, George Allen, Bill Frist, and Karl Rove. I saw that most of my interest in politics was in seeing the personal destruction of people I detested. Did I want to be that person? I can't say that I didn't like who I was because I did. But to think about people I hated all the time did get to be a bit much. I mean I talked about Tom DeLay on dates. Whispering sweet little nothings about Tom DeLay into a potential paramour's ear definitely does not work. I would not recommend you trying this at home, aight?

What drew me back to politics was the purchase of an iPod I made last year. There were a lot of political podcasts that I listened to occasionally through my computer. But I didn't really like listening to stuff while I was doing stuff on my computer. I found I liked listening to political podcast when I was going for a walk or going to the gym or driving around in my car. I got addicted to the Slate Political Gabfest podcast and the Bloggingheads.tv podcast in particular. I guess I can thank Steve Jobs for restoring my interest in politics.

The upshot of all this is I can get overwhelmed with all the sources of political news out there. I sample a lot of sites. I go through phases where I am all into The New Republic then I don't read it for months. I wonder sometimes how other political junkies get their news. If you are reading this modest blog, you likely are a fellow political junkie. Where do you get your political news hits, yo?

Reversal of Fortune

I remember the campaign where I first started following politics as intensely as I do now. I picked my candidate for a variety of reasons but mostly because I admired his competence and his ability to work really hard. A few of my former graduate school buddies and I had peculiarly discovered all at the same time an interest in politics. We all started having frequent jam sessions about this particular presidential race. I tried making the case for my candidate but due to my inexperience with politics and because of my candidate's low-key personality, my arguments never really won any converts.

My candidate lost that November. I was a little sad but had learned that candidates seen as "boring" or "pedantic" or "stiff" had an extra burden they had to overcome. I was able to admit at the time that I didn't find my candidate all that likeable. But he wasn't going to be my friend. I wasn't ever going to drink a beer with my candidate. But I knew my candidate would intensely think about the problems facing our country. That was a quality I was looking for when I decided who I was going to vote for.

My candidate's name was Al Gore.

Today he is seen as the greatest guy ever. I saw him give a speech in Houston in 2006. Everyone sitting by me laughed loudly at every joke Gore said. When he was talking about something serious, they listened intently. When he ended his speech, there was a minutes-long standing ovation. "Boring" and "pedantic" and "stiff" weren't going to be words thrown around to describe this speech. Al Gore had been reborn as Justin Timberlake. He was bringing wonky back.

My, how times have changed.

We are all so willing to make snap judgments about a person. We hold these judgments to be self-evident. But sometimes, we are proven to be spectacularly wrong. Al Gore is proof of this. I am happy for Gore. I liked him back in 2000 when it wasn't yet cool. He was a good person back then too. Nice to see some people jump on the bandwagon after the fact.

Hillary Clinton will undergo a Gore-like transformation too, I think. Now it is held that she is a shady character who helped preside over that terrible decade known as the 1990s. She is seen as promising "more of the same" of the Bush/Cheney years. (Strange since I thought the Clintons and the Bushes were rivals.) Clinton seemingly doesn't even know the definition of the word "change." (Ironic since if she was elected, she would bring the most "change" to the all-boy's club known as the United States Presidents.)

Clinton's place in history, whatever happens with her run for the presidency, will be to stand on the pedestal of great women leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul and Victoria Woodhull and Rosa Parks.

Some of us are "Hillary Clinton" early adapters. We get what she is saying. And what she is trying to do. The others? They will come around.