North Star Writers Group - Syndicated Commentary: Opinion, Humor and Features

September 22, 2008

Sadly, Another Election Season for Fighting Words

There they go again. Batting the “L word” and the “G word” about the politosphere.

No, not those “L” and “G” words. This column is G-rated.

I’m talking, first, about the “L” word being trotted out by the Left, the Obama campaign, and even the mainstream media (a.k.a. the “MSM”) – in multiple languages, no less.

“Lie.”

The term reared its ugly head in several quarters to describe Sarah Palin’s claim that she “told Congress thanks, but no thanks, to that Bridge to Nowhere.”

Well, Palin undoubtedly supported the famous bridge from Ketchikan to its island airport when she ran for governor in 2006. And unquestionably stopped it. So far, so good.

Except that in the release announcing her decision to terminate the boondoggle, the guv allowed: “Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island.”

“No thanks?” Sounds more like “never mind.”

An exaggeration. A stretch. Or, as we in the speechwriting fraternity (think Animal House) like to put it, poetic license.

But a “lie?” Them’s fightin’ words.

Isn’t it good enough to point out – as some Dems cheerily have, recalling John Kerry’s memorable riff on his votes on both sides of Iraq funding – that Ms. Palin “was for the bridge before she was against it?” (Although not, like the venerable senator, on the same day.)

Then there’s last week’s Obama ad en español attacking “John McCain and his Republican friends” as “telling lies just to get our vote.”

And just what are the “lies” the senator is telling to merit this attack? Search me. The ad never specifies. It does intersperse images of the Arizonan and President Bush with nasty, anti-Mexican quotes from Rush Limbaugh taken out of context and totally unrelated to the Republican nominee – who has spent more time in the cross-hairs of the bomb-throwing radio host than those caribou hunted by the First Hockey Mom.

Dale Carnegie, call your office.

But what about Commander McCain, who in response to the earthquakes shaking the financial markets, pulled the pin and tossed out that G-grenade: “Greed”? Actually, “unbridled greed.” “Excess and greed.” “Greed and corruption.” “Unchecked” corporate greed.

Shiver me timbers! Yeah, there are greedy executives on Wall Street. I have seen – and spun – some of their handiwork first-hand.

But there are also greedy truck drivers, store clerks, garbage haulers, teachers, autoworkers, beggar men, thieves, doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs. Whole crowds of whom grabbed hungrily for the something-for-nothing, no-points, zero-interest-rate, zero-down McMansion mortgages that are at the heart of the crisis – when a nice townhouse was really more in their price ranges.

And at the top of the greed heap are the entrenched, untouchable Godfathers of the government establishment. Greed for perks. For permanence. For patronization. And most of all, for power over your life, my life and, more important, the commanding heights of the economy.

They are the kingpins who skim 40 percent of America’s productive output off the top, leaving managers the task of satisfying shareholders, fund buyers and pension beneficiaries with the rest. It was they whose voluminous, Rube Goldbergian revenue code, onerous double taxation and galactically oppressive Sarbanes-Oxley rules spawned the Brobdignagians of the private-equity sector and drove capital overseas – sending competition for funding and talent into hyperspeed.

It was they whose megabillion-dollar deficits and multitrillion-dollar unfunded Social Security liabilities have placed our future in the hands of demanding Middle East sheiks and Chinese techno/autocrats.

And it was they whose commands forced mortgage bankers into risky loans – and the buyers of mortgage-backed securities into ever-more complex hedges, instruments and insurance gambits to cover that risk.

Granted, Sen. McCain did reserve some of his salvos for wrong-headed regulation and his G-bombs for those puzzle palaces on the Potomac. But here’s the problem with his red-hot rhetoric, and that of opponents who stoop to personal insults when the facts speak rather nicely, thank you, for themselves: It all makes another G-word – governing – nigh but impossible.

Someday, those same folks dropping the L word may be sitting across a negotiating table from Sarah Palin. Choose your weapon (and watch for hovering helicopters). Some of those MSM will want an interview that could leave us better-informed citizens. The words “fat chance” mean anything to you?

And I don’t know about you, but in the midst of the steepest financial freefall since October 24, 1929, I’m not looking for blame and bombast from the candidate who is supposed to represent experience and adult leadership.

As I watch my assets getting kicked, Washington doing a repo job on Wall Street and the biggest names in finance doing a disappearing act to rival David Copperfield, I need some calm and reassurance. And so do the markets.

Look, I like a good dustup as much as anyone. But if we want any of that other G-word, governing, there’s also another L word the politicos and media should keep in mind for the rest of the political season: “limits.”

In other words, cool it. Please.

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