Jeffrey Skilling got his TWENTY-FOUR years in prison and lost most of his net worth (appeal appending) overthe Enron shenanighans. Too harsh for a white collar criminal, perhaps? My colleague, the T-Man from the hills of Northern California, points out that the notion of hard time for crime being reserved only for blue-collar thugs and gun-toting anger-peddlers is antiquated. When you consider how many people had their savings and financial hopes destroyed by the likes of the late Kenny Boy Lay and Skilling, I have to agree.
I also agree with columnist Clarence Page that Barak Obama is going to start getting smacked around (figuratively) as soon as he decides to run for President...it seems a bit odd that a man who was just elected two years ago to a national or a statewide office could be a serious contender for the highest office in the land. But public disgust for politicans is such that, the less real experience in public power a man or woman has, the more voters can read only good things into their potential record as the leader of the country.
Would a President Obama be that unusual, other than the fact that his father was born in Kenya? Certainly not. Abraham Lincoln had a whopping single congressional term before he was elected; Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson had a single term as a small state governor; Theodore Roosevelt had been governor of New York for a very short time and was picked to be Vice-President for William McKinley by the Smoke-Filled Room types at the 1900 GOP Convention just to keep the political corruption and runaway graft gravy train flowing from Albany (TR was a reformer you see.)
George W Bush had barely more than just one term as Governor of Texas before he annouced he was ready to take on the task of Head of the Free World. He beat out long-term pols like John Mc Cain and Orrin Hatch the latter calling him a "weak-state governor" in the primaries before Orrin was sent packing back to the Greta Salt Lake.
Politics may be the one profession where strong experience is a detriment, not an asset. Scary, huh?
I think its too early for Obama to run, he's just too green. But will that silly pragmatism really matter. I think his shelf life may be short,and the lure of substituting a black man for the Anybody But Hillary crowd in the Democratic Party may be too great. I don't think Hillary Rodham Clinton can win a General Election in 2008--she's more popular with white voters South of the Mason Dixon line than Honest Abe was in 1860, but not by much. Only an economic collapse will change enough independant voters to take a second look at her. If Obama can handle the heat of a year or more in a primary campaign, maybe, as in the past, voters will overlook seemingly necessary experience for the sake of having a candidate who has captured something of the zeitgeist of the age for a plurality of voters.
Another television icon and, incidentally, survivor of the Hollywood Blacklistings of the 1940's and 50's, Jane Wyatt, died in Bel-Air at the age of 95. She was beautiful in Lost Horizon (1937) and an icon for a show I can barely remember, Father Knows Best.
Living on past the time of those who persecute you must have a dose of satisfaction I imagine.
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