LITTLE ROCK — Requests have dribbled in for a column firing conventional wisdom’s arrows, perhaps on account of the primaries being pretty much over and the general election pairings pretty much set.
Ever aiming to please . . .
President Barack Obama—The economy is not good enough to commend his re-election.
Mitt Romney—The economy is not bad enough to compel his election.
The presidential race—Lacking a prevailing economic picture or public mood as related above, the race stands ripe for cynical exploitation.
That would be by the president’s campaign of lambasting Romney’s privileged and private equity background and by Republicans of Obama’s supposed out-of-touch liberalism.
This all begins to look entirely too much like the 2000 election campaign, when prevailing themes were blurred and the race came down to Ohio and Florida. We still don’t really know who won that one.
I could easily see a popular vote/ electoral vote split again this time, with Romney getting a few more popular votes and Obama a few more electors, thanks to California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey . . . and Ohio or Florida.
Congress—Anti-incumbency is the theme here and it probably will reduce both the Republican advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Democratic advantage in the U.S. Senate.
That will give us an even more fractured Congress to work, conceivably with a minority president.
That is to say, outlandish as it seems, that we may not yet have seen the full scope of our political polarization and dysfunction.
In the meantime, the lame-duck Congress will need to decide, between the election and the new year, whether to extend the George W. Bush tax cuts and how to find hundreds of billions of dollars in budget cuts, or face steep automatic ones in defense and entitlements.
Most likely, this lame-duck Congress will agree at the eleventh hour on some tenuous tentative solution and punt everything to the new and even more fractured Congress.
Attorney General Dustin Mc-Daniel—Finally, an upward arrow. I was going to put this at the end, since it won’t matter until 2014, but I was starting to depress myself with all those down arrows, such literal downers.
McDaniel will be the next governor. He was going to be the next governor even before Mike Ross quit, which is why Mike Ross quit.
Tom Cotton—He has a good name, a great resume and a positive reputation among national conservatives. If 2nd District U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin goes for governor in 2014, in which case he’ll lose to McDaniel, then it might be Cotton who would wage the Republican race against U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, and maybe even win it.
So you’re thinking I’m getting ahead of myself.
You’re saying Cotton hasn’t even been elected to Congress yet from the 4th District—that he has merely been nominated on the Republican side.
So I ask you: Have you gotten a load of the Democratic runoff combatants, Gene Jeffress and Q. Byrum Hurst?
Ethics—Even if this eleventhhour push aided by prominent and well-to-do backers fails to produce the required 62,000 signatures by the first of July—and I’m not predicting that—we will have cleared a tipping point.
A ban on gifts for legislators, a two-year waiting period for legislators to become lobbyists and a prohibition against corporate contributions to campaigns—all will become the law of Arkansas inevitably.
The football Razorbacks—If Bobby Petrino didn’t matter, and if this odd John Smith can do as well, and if team leaders like Tyler Wilson and Knile Davis can coach themselves, then why were we paying Petrino $5 million in the first place?
Coaching matters. Luck matters, too, and Petrino had some last year against Texas A&M, Vanderbilt and Ole Miss.
I see three to five losses.
I also see woeful recruiting because of the coaching uncertainty. Of course we had woeful recruiting, anyway, with Petrino.
Mad Men—It’s simply the best television I’ve ever seen, by light years, owing to a powerful sense of time and place, an obsessive attention to detail, gripping performances and a compelling story.
It’s simply my pleasure and obligation to say so at every opportunity.
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John Brummett is a regular columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com.
Editorial, Pages 17 on 05/31/2012