A few readers might remember the drill. An off-work holiday on a Monday forces an extra column written the week before, to be published Tuesday.
So, our Memorial Day tradition around here is that hydrangeas turn purple and powder blue as I offer a column that fires conventional wisdom's arrows.
Arrowed assessments of superficial personal political fortune might seem inappropriate during a pandemic. But I'll be unusually sensitive, beginning with the preposterous second-place and Russian-endorsed president.
Donald Trump--Yes, up, though his poll numbers are down. We must endure two eternities before we vote, one called summer and the other early fall. Anyway, his approval rating is 45 percent, even though only 32 percent believe much of what he says. Remember that the tragedy of his election occurred with 46 percent of the vote. It's not about him; it's about the strength of the Democratic nominee, the virus situation in October, and the volatile decision-making of voters in three states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. There is no solid evidence that Joe Biden will be a stronger candidate than Hillary Clinton, considering his age and tendency to wander verbally into the netherworld.
U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris--Oddsmakers have installed her the reasonably strong favorite to be Biden's important pick as a running mate. She's said to be a 40 percent probability. The selection must lend vigor and pizzazz to inspire the left while presenting a credible potential president to the electorate and doing no harm. She has vigor. She has pizzazz. She can ignite the base. She'd do less potential harm than Elizabeth Warren, who seems more polarizing. Whether Harris presents a credible presidential prospect is, alas, the nobody's-perfect factor.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo--He would be the ideal running mate choice, or nominee, except that Biden is set as the latter and has promised to pick a woman for the former. There are those--Republicans, mostly--who say the shine has gone off Cuomo because he, when worried early in the pandemic about his state's hospitals becoming overwhelmed, directed that nursing home patients with the coronavirus be returned for care to isolation in their long-term care facilities. And now there have been more than 5,600 deaths in New York nursing homes. I don't think the average voter faults Cuomo for those deaths. He made a proactive call, the early reasoning for which is not destroyed by the eventual tragic outcome. We can more credibly fault inattention or indifference or negligence than a hard decision that turned out wrong.
Asa Hutchinson--His Commerce Department struggles to assure legislators that it has that business grant program running properly. The vulnerability to hacking of the already poorly performing website for unemployment claim applications is a serious institutional failing. A more personal failing is Hutchinson's huffy response reflecting that he is more annoyed than appreciative that a whistle-blower emerged. Yes, a person got into the website's private information through action that could be called inappropriate, but then that person tried to tell state government about it, and, when stymied there, told the Arkansas Times.
Dr. Nathaniel Smith--The understated state health director has been something of an Arkansas star of this ordeal, droning on about data while encouraging responsible conduct yet never one-upping or undercutting the governor. He has led his department in laying down solid guidelines for reopening businesses. I got a kick of out of his suggesting last week that complaining dentists come to the conference table rather than lob balls over the wall. That was feisty for a data nerd.
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge--The Rutledge Report is wearing thin. She's taken something that preceding attorneys general did with more restraint and turned it into her own Celebrity Apprentice. Legislators are in a mood to put tighter controls on that pot of money from lawsuit settlements for "consumer education." And I simply can't see her as the next governor. Sarah Sanders would keep her out of the race entirely, and, if Sanders didn't run, Tim Griffin would beat Rutledge.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton--The Republicans intend to run against China, which was his idea first. He'd look like a convention keynoter to me, provided they have a convention, if he was a better speaker.
Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott--He wasn't handling well the controversies swirling around his police chief selection, but, by midweek, he was recovering at least a bit by talking about an independent review of the entire police department, from chief through the ranks, covering all policies, procedures, practices and controversies. I'm not yet convinced that the chief, Keith Humphrey, should go. What I'm sure of is that there is deep and ugly division in that police department. We need to know if it's a problem from top down or bottom up, or both.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 05/26/2020