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4 • Thursday, March 27, 2014
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The Chicago way How cold was it in Chicago this winter? The politicians kept their hands in their own pockets. Not a bad joke -- though I think I first heard it with New Jersey substituted for Chicago. Roger Works just as well. Works for Simon just about any big city, really. When I was growing up Columnist there, the tolerance for those on the take was pretty high. As long as the potholes got fixed and the snow got plowed, who cared what tax dollars stuck to whose fingers? For one summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I used a stick with a nail on the end to pick up garbage at Rainbow Beach on Chicago’s South Side. I placed the garbage in a canvas bag I wore slung around my neck. You had to know somebody to get a job as good as that. And I knew somebody who knew somebody who knew the city treasurer, Marshall Korshak, a real power broker who dispensed jobs by the hundreds, if not thousands. This was called patronage, and today it is illegal. Back then, it was called everyday life. Years later, I became a newspaper columnist and railed about the evils of patronage. I even went to see Korshak. He had retired and did not, of course, remember that he once had given me a summer job. I told him that I was, in a sense, grateful to him. After all, I could not have continued college without the money I had earned that summer. I told Korshak that patronage is, nonetheless, unfair. Everyone should have an equal chance for every job, regardless of whom they know, I said. Korshak smiled a weary smile. “Tell me something,” he said. “You did the job? You picked up the garbage?” Of course, I said. I did a good job, a very good job. “So what wasn’t fair?” Korshak said. “As long as the job got done, what wasn’t fair?” Today you say stuff like that and you end up in an orange jumpsuit. But back then, it was the way of things. It was the Chicago way. In a book that hardly anybody reads anymore but whose title almost everyone recognizes, Thomas Wolfe wrote the following: “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country ... back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time -- back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” Wolfe called his book “You Can’t Go Home Again.” When people ask me where I am from, I automatically say Chicago, even though I have lived on the East Coast since 1984. In a few days, my wife and I will drive back to Chicago, where I will be a fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics for the spring semester. The idea is to recount the mistakes you made and the pitfalls you fell into over the span of your career so the students can repeat them. I will be living in a rented house exactly 10 blocks from where I was born. I will continue to write my column. In 1931, a notoriously corrupt Chicago mayor, William “Big Bill” Thompson, a Republican who counted Al Capone among his friends, made a politically fatal mistake. Thompson was running against Democrat Anton Cermak, a former coal miner who was born in Kladno, Bohemia. Thompson’s campaign unleashed a barrage of ethnic slurs, including calling Cermak a “bohunk.” This was not the Chicago way. Cermak, who would win with 58 percent of the vote, responded with my favorite quotation by a Chicago mayor: “It’s true I didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but I came over as soon as I could.” That is Chicago. And I don’t care what Wolfe said; I am going back home again. Roger Simon is Politico’s chief political columnist. His new e-book, “Reckoning: Campaign 2012 and the Fight for the Soul of America,” can be found on Amazon.com, BN.com and iTunes.
Prayer for today Lord God, I thank thee for the silent ways of revelation which bring hopeful communion with thee. Help me to be composed, that my life may not create a noise and my soul miss the messages that come from the depths of truth and love. Amen.
A verse to share “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.” -- Psalms 24:7-8
Energy key in path to peace While the media have been focused on the missing Malaysian aircraft, massive alterations of the world’s geopolitical terrain are underway simultaneously. The annexation of Crimea by Russia should not have been a surprise for anyone who suspects that President Vladimir Putin is trying to re-establish a powerful Soviet-style empire. When he aggressively attacked Georgia in 2008 after both Georgia and Ukraine failed to obtain NATO admission at the Bucharest Summit, we should have realized that his goals were not limited to one territory. I suspect he is now calculating an excuse to occupy the easiest regions of Ukraine first and then the whole country over time. The United States encouraged Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal and to de-emphasize its military complex, but in its moment of dire need for tangible support, will we have the courage and fortitude to help stop Russian aggression, which ultimately could lead to another Cold War or worse? Many probably have forgotten the worldwide turmoil created during the Cold War, which ended a quartercentury ago. Allowing conditions to mature that might re-create another dominant world power hostile toward
the United States could easily reinforce those radical elements who wish to see Ben the demise of Carson this nation. One of the Columnist ways we permit such conditions to arise is through our fiscal irresponsibility, which substantially weakens us because the borrower is subservient to the lender. Can we be objective in our treatment of nations, no matter what their actions, if we owe them great sums of money? Ronald Reagan facilitated the demise of the Soviet Union without firing a single shot. He enacted policies that resulted in a financial meltdown that ended the brutal Soviet reign. The recent precipitous fall of the Russian stock market cannot go unnoticed by Putin, and more financial pressure applied immediately could give pause to his grandiose schemes. We could freeze Russian financial assets, downgrade trade associations or rapidly establish energy production policies to free the European Union from the Russian energy stranglehold. EU energy freedom would require the quick establish-
ment of a rational energy development platform that does not cater to far-left environmentalists. Many advocates of common sense are also concerned about the environment, but are reasonable enough to realize that rather than using Environmental Protection Agency regulations to stifle abundant energy production, we can use the EPA in conjunction with the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship to produce and export a vast amount of clean energy. This could significantly improve our bargaining position throughout the world. Expanding our wealth of energy resources, as well as encouraging the development of new renewable energy sources, would provide an enormous economic lift with obvious benefits, but it also would bolster our role as a formidable player in the struggle for world leadership. The rapidly changing geopolitical scene cannot successfully be managed by leading from behind. We need to put aside partisan ideological bickering and use our collective knowledge and wisdom to thwart the redevelopment of a powerful and dangerous rival for global influence. Perception is reality, and it is crucial that we not be seen as timid and
waffling during the opening moves of this strategic chess match. Our allies must know that we have their backs when they get into difficult situations, and our support must be pronounced and immediate. Consistent reliability and strong support in these matters will lead to strong support when we call upon our allies to join us in employing economic leverage against rogues who threaten world peace. Americans should be supportive and encouraging of our leaders during times of international crisis, but let’s hope they are listening to voices from all major parties about the ramifications of each option available to us in this fight. Let’s further hope that they can see the big picture and understand the importance of using all of our resources, including natural energy, to achieve our objectives. Developing our natural energy resources, controlling our national debt, consistently supporting our allies and aggressively opposing our foes without playing politics will help improve our status in the world and make peace more likely. The stakes are too high to simply be reactive. We must act if we are to lead. Ben S. Carson is professor emeritus of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University.
Hillary uses gender to win BY DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN Throughout her political career, Hillary Clinton has used her gender and the still-novel specter of a woman running for president to cloak her advances and shield her from losses. It is never about her. Her own merits, qualifications, defects, failures or shortcomings are never the issue. The question is always: How are we to treat women in politics? Now that she is on the verge of running for president again, the Gallup Poll shows that about one Hillary voter in three cites her gender as the leading reason to vote for her. Coming in second, mentioned by only half as many respondents, were her qualifications. Her use of gender as cover was evident when she conceded her battle for the Party’s nomination in 2008. Her punch line was that her candidacy had made “18 million cracks in the hardest and highest glass ceiling” despite the prize of the
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presidency eluding her. It was not Obama who beat her, nor even her own limitations. She was defeated by the “glass ceiling,” and her campaign was a common effort of all feminists to crack it. From the start of her entry into politics, she has always used her gender to advance politically and to deflect negatives. When she compared her focus on a career to women who “stayed home, baked cookies and served tea,” she did not admit that her comments were elitest and offensive to stay-at-home moms. Instead she said that she was under attack because she “had been turned into a symbol of my generation” and the “fundamental change in the way women functioned in our society.” Criticized for doing legal work for the state of Arkansas while her husband was governor, she said, “This is the sort of thing that happens to women who have their own careers and their own lives. And I think it’s a shame, but I guess its some-
thing we’re going to have to live with. Those of us who have tried and have a career -- tried to have an independent life and make a difference -- and certainly like myself who have has children, you know I’ve done the best I can to lead my life.” Nobody was attacking her for having her own life. The attacks concerned the fact that the wife of the governor was being paid from tax money to do legal work for the state. Hillary approaches her political career as if it were a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all women, rather than an effort by one woman to get elected. As my wife Eileen McGann and I wrote in our book “Rewriting History”: “When Hillary is attacked, she frequently parries the charges by arguing that it is all women who are under attack rather than just one in particular. ... Criticized for her business dealings as a lawyer, she treats it as an attack on all professional women. Knocked for tolerating her husband’s adul-
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tery in her bid to hold on to political power, she gathers around her all women who want to protect their privacy. Slammed with allegations of insider trading in the commodities market, she cloaks herself in the garb of every woman seeking financial security for her family.” Now, as Hillary again floats the trial balloon of her candidacy, she gains a key advantage by making her ambition the generic goal of all women -- to elect one of their own as president. But it is this woman, not all women, who is about to run. It was this secretary of state who neglected the security of her Benghazi outpost. It was this person who naively called for a reset with Russia. She was the one who initially advocated health care legislation that was the foundation of the ill-fated Obamacare. It was Hillary, as secretary of state, who had to have known about and approved of the NSA wiretaps on foreign leaders. Not all women. Just her.
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