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Showing posts with label Larry J. Sabato. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Larry J. Sabato. Show all posts

Saturday, November 16, 2013

As U.S. approaches 50th anniversary of JFK assassination in Dallas, our thoughts at the blog are all over the place: JFK & LBJ and Texas and... Bryan Cranston playing LBJ on Broadway in Robert Schenkkan's "All The Way"; UVA Prof. Larry J. Sabato's fascinating new book on JFK, and CBS News' veteran reporter Bob Schieffer, who covered the JFK visit 50 years ago, now busy hosting a Saturday night network special on JFK and hosting 'Face The Nation' on Sunday morning from the scene of the crime

                       
KVUE News video ‏-Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston visited Austin today to talk about his new Broadway role as LBJ.
by KRIS BETTS / KVUE News and photojournalist MATT OLSEN 
Posted on November 15, 2013 at 8:20 AM 
Updated yesterday at 1:41 PM




 As some of you reading this blog may well recall from my having told you before in-person, in Indiana, Illinois Washington, D.C. or here in Florida, or even here on the blog, both of my parents actually saw President and Mrs. Kennedy the day before the fateful day he was killed. The reason is that both of them worked over at Kelly AFB in San Antonio, my Mom as a secretary for the Base Commander, and my Dad, who worked in the Medical Corps. 
(I was actually born next door at the hospital at Lackland AFB, one month after JFK was inaugurated.)

 They were at Brooks because President Kennedy was dedicating the new School of Aerospace Medicine, which was quite a big deal at the time given the space program, but as things turned out, of course, it was to be his last official act as president.

 My Mom still has the official photos that were taken of the welcoming ceremonies there at the base by the vigilant base photographers, and I grew-up knowing those photographs, one in particular, from just a few feet away, like it had always been part of my memory.
Because it had been.
The Last Two Days, November 1963: 21-22
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHF-WHN17.aspx

 That's the late Henry B. Gonzalez coming down the stairs off Air Force One behind JFK, to his left, and then again at 01:06 in the film, waving to the crowds.
Henry B. was the longtime congressman from San Antonio and someone I was very fortunate to talk to be able to talk to a handful of times when he was still in Congress when I was living and working in the Washington, D.C. area. 

 I was fortunate enough to attend a few of the public birthday parties that got thrown for him that were held outside in one of the House Office Bldg.'s courtyards, as his party was always one of the real highlights of the year I looked forward to, as far as having real fun was concerned. Complete with a kick-ass Mariachi band, attractive and talented dancers and a variety and huge amount of really great food and cold Texas beer, I only wish that I'd taken more photos back then, because besides his very loyal and longstanding staff, other Congressmen and staffers, Democrats as well as Republicans, he had quite a few well-known people come swing by the party to say hello, many of whom he had known for most of their adult life or even before. 
Those friendly get-togethers meant a lot to him, but I grew to believe they meant just as much to the people who attended them, because they were old-fashioned relaxing fun of the sort that 95% of the events we attended in DC never were, but wished they were.

 By the time I got to Washington, Congressman Gonzalez was still a very beloved-yet-controversial figure, and I think for most of the time I went to those events on The Hill, or saw him at other Texas-related events, he was either the Chairman of the House Banking Committee or Chair of one of the important Subcommittees, and even then though there should be an audit of the Federal Reserve, much as Sen. Rand Paul and many others do now. Transparency and public accountability.

But when that film above was made in 1963, Rep. Gonzalez was an eager and excitable second-term congressman, albeit one who had already done quite a lot for san antonio and in the texas legislature, often against great odds.
He was the first Hispanic congressman ever elected from Texas, something that he was very proud of in a not-at-all unreasonable way, especially for the times.
http://www.cah.utexas.edu/feature/0611/video.php?connection=dialup

 In all my dealings with him, you could not have met a warmer and more sincere person or someone with a better memory, and if you didn't know any better, you'd probably have guessed that he was either a retired pediatrician or veterinarian.
That memory of his was one of his great talents for succeeding in politics, since he remembered my Mother's name from a conversation we'd had many months before, even though I'd said it only in passing when talking about the fact that when JFK ran in 1960, it was the first time that she could legally vote.

 At 06:19 and 06:33, not wearing an overcoat, you can see future Speaker of the House Jim Wright, the congressman from Fort Worth.
As U.S. approaches 50th anniversary of JFK assassination in Dallas, our thoughts at the blog are all over the place: JFK & LBJ and... Texas and Emmy Award-winning actor Bryan Cranston of 'Breaking Bad' visiting Austin and the LBJ Library as he prepares to play LBJ on Broadway in Robert Schenkkan's "All The Way"; UVA Prof. Larry J. Sabato's fascinating new book on JFK, and CBS News' Bob Schieffer, who covered the JFK visit 50 years ago, busy hosting a Saturday night network special on JFK and then hosting 'Face The Nation' on Sunday morning from the scene of the crime, with Luci Baines Johnson slated to be a guest
As always, Prof. Larry J. Sabato's wise words and depth of knowledge are a useful antidote to years of revisionist history, both Democratic and Republican, foreign and domestic.

The Washington Post
Five myths about John F. Kennedy
By Larry J. Sabato, Published: November 13, 2013
Most everyone who was alive on Nov. 22, 1963, remembers where they were when they heard that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. JFK was the youngest elected U.S. president and the youngest to die. The fascination with him is never-ending: There have been hundreds of books, TV specials and films about his New Frontier, as well as the enduring controversy surrounding his assassination. Let’s debunk some of the most pervasive myths.
Read the column at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-john-f-kennedy/2013/11/13/bf1d1442-4b1a-11e3-be6b-d3d28122e6d4_story.html


 fact-filled photo gallery
Is there more to JFK assassination? 
By Larry J. Sabato 
updated 4:32 PM EST, Fri November 15, 2013


















Listening to THE FIRST FAMILY for The First Time. I can see why it was a huge hit - until 11/22/63. #JFK50 http://t.co/e75IplT1Ib

 In the early-to-mid 1970's, while living in North Miami Beach, I had a very good friend whose parents still had a copy of this record album, and his father would often play it when his wife was out of the house because he really loved the album and knew the material backwards-and-forwards and would often say the lines along with the actors, and laugh and laugh.

Now I don't recall whether the story was that the father was supposed to have gotten written of the album altogether, or just couldn't have it out where she could see it, but I know that in the hundreds of times I was over there, that album stayed out-of-sight, and NOT with the rest of the records they had near the old-style entertainment center console -with lots of Broadway cast albums I would come to know and love.

It seems that hearing those Kennedy-like accents just made his wife very upset and she'd often start crying and weeping if she heard even some of it.
I know that must sound sort of odd to read right now, but trust me, at the time it was happening, it seemed quite upsetting and turned everything around us upside down.
That was a secret that 12-year old me had to keep on the down low.
The Dad playing the record and the Mom who cried when hearing it unexpectedly. 












http://jfkfacts.org/
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Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Roll Call's Joshua Miller throws some cold water on Dem's rose-colored view of Florida 2012 as a target-rich environment


2012 Redistricting Process: 100 Map Milestone


Roll Call's Joshua Miller throws some cold water on Dem's rose-colored view of Florida 2012 as a target-rich environment.

One 2009 study from professors at Stanford University and the University of Michigan found that because of the nature of the geographic distribution of Democratic voters in Florida, the GOP would have a natural edge in a purely nonpartisan Congressional map.

Roll Call
Democrats Betting Big on Florida Redistricting
New Fair Districts Law Will Prevent Major GOP Gerrymander, but Huge Gains Are Not Likely
By Joshua Miller, Roll Call Staff
Nov. 8, 2011, Midnight

Florida is a state where, as millions of Disney World-bound children know, dreams come true.

But for national Democrats who hope a new redistricting law will help them pick up five or six House seats — and boost their prospects for winning back the House — the Sunshine State reality won’t be so warm.
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Steve Schale's infrequent blog is at http://www.stevenschale.com/ and is subtitled, Observations on the Land of 29 from one of its leading political strategists.

Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/


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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

To watch Sen. Marco Rubio's speech LIVE tonight from The Reagan Foundation/Library at 9 pm Eastern...

Sen. Marco Rubio responds to Sen. John Kerry on debt limit debate


Sen. Marco Rubio video: Constituent Mailbox: Recess

To watch Sen. Marco Rubio's speech LIVE tonight from The Reagan Foundation/Library at 9 pm Eastern...


Below, news video of Prof. Larry J. Sabato of UVA -and the Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball!- speaking to Fox News Channel anchor Neil Cavuto about Sen. Rubio and what his strengths are.

Sabato: Marco Rubio Could Make Huge Difference To GOP Ticket

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Saturday, August 23, 2008

2 Hillary Visits in South Florida, 3 Different Media Views; Biden anecdotes

Saturday August 23rd, 2008 2 a.m.

When I saw the three news headlines below, I thought back to those little nuggets I used to love seeing in The New Republic in the early '90's -back when they were riding the waves of so many interesting stories before anyone else in Washington- showing wildly varying headlines for the same story.

That was back when I used to read TNR cover-to-cover and would run into Ruth Shalit all the time as she made her way up TNR's masthead, yet still used her Princeton ID card to write checks at the Borders Books on 18th and L Street, N.W., where I worked in the evenings during the week after my day job.

In retrospect, as I've written here before, I think I had a bit of a crush on her, because she could turn on the wit and charm in a nano-second, and could draw you out almost against your will.

See my previous post on Ruth Shalit from South Beach Hoosier on February 17th, NBC's David Gregory's Super Tuesday brain fart; Michelle Cottle the bore; Ruth Shalit is a charmer!http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2008/02/david-gregorys-super-tuesday-brain-fart.html

Having lived in Chicago and Evanston for a few years not too long before I met Shalit, whom I'd constantly run into all over D.C., esp. between K Street and Dupont Circle, I found her 1993 TNR cover story on one-and-done Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun devastatingly accurate!

Other reporters I knew in Washington, esp. those assigned to Capitol Hill, told me at the time that they marveled at the column's power, sweeping away all the senator's alibis and excuses so deliciously and completely.

Many of them were pre-disposed to like her, but they found her so un-prepared for office that it shook them up that someone like her could become a senator for a big state like Chicago.

See Shalit's interesting essay on pp. 38-43 of POLITICIANS AND ETHICS
http://www.apubb.ro/Documents/Ringsmuth/Cozic_Politicians_and_Ethics.pdf

(Since I mentioned the bookstore, I should say here publicly that by far THE friendliest media personality who was a frequent Borders customer was the late Jack Smith of ABC News, son of the legendary Howard K. Smith. He was very un-assuming and couldn't have been nicer! I was very sad at the time to hear that he'd died of pancreatic cancer, just as NFLPA head Gene Upshaw did on Wednesday. http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jpsmith.htm )

New York Times, August 21, 2008
At Rally, Finding Clinton's Aid to Obama Too Tepid
By Damien Cave
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/us/politics/22clinton.html

South Florida Sun-Sentinel, August 21, 2008
headline above newspaper masthead: Hillary Clinton fires up Democrats in South Florida
headline on story, front page of local section: Stumping for Obama, Clinton calls for unity
By Mark Hollis and Lisa Huriash
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-flbclinton0822xsbaug22,0,3207003.story

7th paragraph from above reads as follow: (my emphasis in red)
"Obama campaigners were looking to sway minds at Thursday's events. But in characterizing her party as steadfast for Obama, Clinton came across to some of her supporters as overly optimistic. Several said after Clinton's speeches that they know many local Democrats and independents who aren't convinced Obama has the credentials they demand in a president."

So which is it, tepid or overly optimistic?

Miami Herald, August 21, 2008 headline on page 5A: Clinton stumps for Obama in South Florida by Beth Reinhard http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/652652.html

Meanwhile, at midnight, the lead headline at the Herald's website,
http://www.miamiherald.com/ is Democrats on the verge of a sharp turn to left
http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/654325.html

I could prove to be wrong -though I doubt it- but I'd be willing to bet that the headline in the actual newspaper will be different in a few hours.
The Herald typically only uses the word "left" in their stories or headlines about Latin America. That's the list!

By the way, pre-Neil innock, I was a Joe Biden supporter in '87, after having written a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Robert Bork confirmation hearings and being surprised to receive a note from him.
Later I received a printed copy of the hearings, which were great to re-read Bork's brilliant points, even the ones I disagreed with.

Over the years that I lived in Washington, I eventually wound up with a complete copy of all the Judiciary Committee SCOTUS nomination hearings from Bork onwards towards 2003.
That included the questionnaire they had to answer, which were fascinating reading on morning Metro rides into downtown D.C.!

To set the scene the day I left on Super Tuesday 1988, let me quote from my January 12th, 2008 South Beach Hoosier post:

http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2008/01/on-heels-of-jim-leyritz-arrest-another.html
As it happens, back in the days when he was talking and acting more like a DLC Democrat than the person he's become since then, in 1988 I defied South Florida's supposed Democratic CW (conventional wisdom) about the electability of Michael Dukakis and voted for Al Gore during the FL primary on Super Tuesday, March 8th. (Gore's senior thesis at Harvard was on "The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency.")

After voting, I promptly drove up to Washington, listening to election returns on the radio throughout the South on my drive up, which had been my game plan all along. Lots and lots of Charlotte's WBT and Nashville's flamethrower, WLAC, as well as many smaller stations reporting local races with just as much drama, intrigue and backbiting as farther up on the ballot. Lots of talk about whether Gore would be able to win in northern states!

Mostly, they were the very same radio stations I'd always listened to for American Top 40 with Casey Kasem (AT40) during its heyday, so I was a veritable walking-talking Billboard hit list by the time my drive north ended, just as I'd been on my drives down here and back from Indiana for spring break. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Top_40 and http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/index.jsp )

(jingle and lines that are always in my head on long droves by myself)

"Casey's Coast-to-Coast!"

"Hi, I'm Casey Kasem on American Top 40, coming to you on great radio stations like...

We're counting down the top hits...

Now on with the countdown!...

When Sen. Biden entered Walter Reed Hospital because of the brain aneurysms, I wrote him a letter expressing my thoughts and concerns, thanking him for his kindness months before and sent along a (new) cassette of one of my favorite and most relaxing albums, featuring lots of Gershwin, so that he could listen to it in his hospital room when nobody was around.

A while later, after he was back on the Senate floor, completely out-of-the blue, I received a wonderfully penned Thank You note from his wife, Jill, a school teacher, which was about as classy as you could possibly ever imagine, especially given the awful circumstances.
That really hit me hard.

As it will otherwise continue to occupy space in my long-term memory, I wanted to share the previously meaningless trivia that after the Biden campaign office moved out of their office over on C Street, N.E., the next tenant was the Church of Scientology.

Given the late breaking news about his selection and where Biden will be in a few hours -Springfield- where Barack Obama made his formal presidential declaration, not far from the original law office of Lincoln and Herndon, http://www.online-springfield.com/sites/lhlaw.html , it's semi-ironic to me that Biden's '88 campaign office was just 2-3 blocks north of Lincoln Park.

Over the years I was living and working in the Washington area, because of my job and my own interests, I was probably at well over one hundred Senate Judiciary or Foreign Affairs Committee hearing where Joe Biden was either the Chair or the Ranking Member, and at everyone, regardless of the topic, he was always well-prepared, voluble and funny.
The latter may prove more helpful than ever over the coming months, as I think it stands in stark contrast to Obama's self-evident thin-skin.
A sense of humor is something you have to acquire by hook or by crook if you're serious about spending any time in Washington getting tangible results for the country.

I'm still going to be for McCain in November because of the experience gap and the personality of Obama, but I have a strong feeling that David Broder's great column from 1988 on Biden's potential political future will be re-read a lot in coming days, with references to it appearing in all the usual places in Washington, print and electronic.

I have it somewhere in a folder with my small circular red, white and blue campaign button that simply says, "Joe."

I'll try to post it here in the next few days.
-----------------------------
http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/654325.html
CAMPAIGN '08
Democrats on the verge of a sharp turn to left
Two days before their party's national convention, Democrats are more liberal than at any time in a generation.
------------------------------
As a bonus, I'll leave you all to consider this excerpt from UVA (University of Virginia) prof Larry J. Sabato's typically insightful essay from his 1991 book Feeding Frenzy, titled The Media Should Not Sustain Rumors About Politicians, which was selected for inclusion in the aforementioned POLITICIANS AND ETHICS.
It seems even more timely given the news of a few hours ago.

The 1988 Presidential Campaign
• When Michael Dukakis's campaign sent out the "attack video" that torpedoed Joseph Biden's candidacy, Richard Gephardt at first received the blame.
Private speculation about the identity of the perpetrator was unavoidable, but when the conventional wisdom fingered Gephardt and this conclusion seeped into print—as it did almost everywhere—the Missouri congressman's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination was dealt a body blow. Gephardt's 1988 press secretary, Don Foley, offered this assessment:
It did us a lot of damage. Up until that time Dick Gephardt was viewed by most people as someone who would not engage in dirty campaigning, and he had a Boy Scout image. But this incident painted him as somebody who was a bit overanxious for the prize;
in the eyes of a lot of people this took the shine off of the Gephardt aura.

Even when Dukakis's staff was revealed to be behind Biden's troubles, the tarnish seemed to stick to Gephardt's image.

See also Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball, http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/
which I've been subscribing to and reading -and found invaluable- for years since my days living in the Washington area.
And it's FREE.
It's conveniently on the Hallandale Beach Blog link list, too, n'est-ce que pas?
Oui!

"A comprehensive Web site run by the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball features analyses of presidential elections, Senate, House and gubernatorial races."
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