Posted on 11/07/2002 12:18:24 PM PST by Libertarianize the GOP
xPity Tom Strickland, born for a seat in the United States Senate, but preemptively banished from the world's most exclusive group of 100.
Strickland, he of the dashing airs, just the right mix of Colorado country and cosmopolitan charisma, will remain a millionaire lawyer-lobbyist for the foreseeable future. But never will he be a senator.
The onetime college football player who runs every day to stay in fighting trim is 0 for 2 in the red zone.
And it's not as though he went 0 for 2 against the 2000 Baltimore Ravens. Wayne Allard never has compared himself to Ray Lewis, but twice now he got the job done.
Which begs the question, why is Tom Strickland still a lawyer-lobbyist and the veterinarian about to take the oath for a second time?
In politics, it all comes down to numbers. In the case of Tom Strickland, it came down to one number: 42.
Sure, the vote on Tuesday has to be read as a validation of the Bush presidency, but in validating Bush across the country, from Minnesota to Florida, especially Florida, something else happened — voters repudiated 42.
Strickland, who must look back to 1996 and shake his head, never could shake his ties to 42. Worse, he welcomed them, inviting Mrs. 42 and accepting the help of 42(b) to campaign for him in the Denver metro area.
Strickland attacked his number problem with not just the wrong idea, but with the worst algorithm of them all.
Leaning on 42, directly or indirectly, Strickland associated himself with the most failure-ridden administration in history.
— The much ballyhooed peace in Ireland is slowly being revealed to be as fraudulent as its author.
— Peace in the Middle East. 'nuff said.
— Microsoft. While 42 built a straw case against Bill Gates, 42's cronies were plundering companies like Global Crossing. Now Microsoft is up and running after a settlement and there's hope that if Global Crossing stays in business, truth-in advertising rules will kick in and the company will be called Double Crossing.
— Tobacco money. It was supposed to go to stop-smoking efforts, but went instead to other programs and 42's lawyer friends. Even with tobacco millions, though, Bill McBride was still sucking Florida wind on Tuesday.
— And the worst transgression of them all — Osama bin Laden. There was poetic justice, and no small insight, in the killing Monday of Osama bin Laden's associate by a missile-packing Predator, one of those unmanned drones that were used in the Gulf War and in 42's version of Adventureland, Bosnia. By 1998, when 42 needed something to divert attention from his "ministering to a young person," he turned cruise missiles against tents in the desert and an aspirin factory in Sudan. If you sense a Freudian explanation for his choice of missiles over the more subtle, but effective method, you'd probably be onto something.
Cut it any way you like, when he went up against bin Laden and buddies, 42 got shut out.
When 3,000 died just eight months after 42 retired, it should have given Strickland the idea that he ought to distance himself from his old Grand Canyon teammate.
Strickland, though, embraced 42's record by refusing to repudiate it.
Talk as much as he might about supporting the current president in wartime, voters couldn't escape the visceral sense that 42 was lurking just behind the mustache.
After Sept. 11, 2001, the byword was that the world had changed. In the passing of the months since, though, it became an article of faith that nothing had really changed at all.
After Nov. 5, it's clear that the world is new and dangerous and that there are new numbers in the game.
With the election, 42, and his cronies, Strickland included, got 86ed. Now the long overdue national cleansing can begin.
You just can't say that often enough.
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