Michael P. Riccards's blog

In December 2008, the Holy See released a new document dealing with bioethics called “Dignitas Personae.” This “instruction” from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith (the old Office of the Holy Inquisition), was previously headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. The letter is offered up not only for Catholics, but for other people of good will who use reason and have a respect for natural law. It could have important consequences for public policy, if taken seriously.

Several years ago, I suggested in one of my first essays for the Hall Institute that New Jersey was not the most corrupt state in the nation. I immediately ran into an angry buzz saw of opposition from newspaper people, some of who make good money from the “Soprano industry” in this state. They rail about corruption on radio, television, and in the print media, and could not believe that any other state was even close to us. Part of our corruption is due they said to our civic culture, to our large numbers of jurisdictions, and to our public entitlement mentality. Their views were buttressed by the long successful string of prosecutions by the Federal attorney.

When I worked for the College Board, I represented them for a year or so to the National Governors Conference. I was never terribly impressed by the group, but they were men and women who tried to deal with the major problems facing their states and localities, especially education. Every governor wants to be called "the education governor" just like every president wants to be known as the education president. There have been governors like Hunt in North Carolina and Caperton in West Virginia who genuinely tried to move ahead on the issue; and of course the great education president was Lyndon Johnson, although one must in fairness acknowledge the efforts of the Bush presidents. But this month in Philadelphia, the NGA met hat in hand to plead with Obama for more money from the Feds. Unlike the states, the federal government can simply print money and run deficit budgets.

The media, which loves headlines and knows little history, is trying to sell President Elect Obama as another Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But that jump is really a bit premature and perhaps out of sync. Obama was the child of a racially mixed marriage, between an African man, who quickly abandoned the family, and a hippy anthropologist mother who left her child with her parents while she roamed the earth. If one reads his autobiographies one senses very clearly a young man desperately trying to come to grips with his identity in life. FDR was, on the other hand, from a wealthy patrician family with an extremely devoted mother, and a much older father who came from a group of financiers and shippers often making the China run in the ninetieth century. He knew who he was and relished to recount his background.

The American patriot and the gracious war hero re-emerged Tuesday, oddly in defeat. Senator John McCain gave a moving concession speech, acknowledging Obama’s victory relatively early on election night. He admitted that it was a long and difficult campaign, but that Obama had managed to inspire the hope of so many millions of Americans. And added “I deeply admire and commend him.” Then he sensitively went on to realize this was an historic election, one that was of special significant to African Americans. It proved to McCain that this America that he loves is indeed a land of promise. He reminded Americans, many so historically illiterate, of the outrage that greeted President Theodore Roosevelt when he invited black educator Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House. Now an African American will live with his family there.

Thomas Freidman of the New York Times is constantly writing about the need for America to become more competitive, to return to its entrepreneurial roots, to become more technologically smart. Yes, of course, he is correct, but he overlooks the simple fact of life--America’s customer service system is in shambles. We all know about calling somebody in New Delhi about lost Ginza knives, or trying to explain to a telephone lady in North Carolina that Hamilton is not Trenton. But these are minor annoyances compared to the total breakdown of Verizon—one of the spin offs of the once revered Bell Telephone.

In this terrible economic crisis, it is remarkable how many innovations really owe their origins to the New Deal, or as in the case of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to Herbert Hoover. Even those who fought so hard to undo the New Deal are now putting back in place its safeguards or even acquiring for the government private institutions and assets to get through the financial crisis. We now have, with the encouragement if not insistence of Wall Street, capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich. You guys have to live by the market vagrancies, but Wall Street is standing in line for a bailout. I have yet to hear any more talk, by the way, of privatizing Social Security.

Senator John McCain insisted that he and Senator Barak Obama should go on the road for a host of town hall meetings to discuss the issues in a rational and open way.  He was lucky that Obama did not do that.  Based on the Nashville debate, one can see very clearly that McCain is just not up to that pace. 

I enjoy watching Governor Sara Palin, either in person or being impersonated.  She is delightfully ill-informed and marvelously programmed, sort of like a Stepford wife.  You ask her if the sky is blue, she will give you the deer in the headlight look and then repeat what somebody told her about something.  She has a fabulous memory to remember what she has been prepped for by McCain lobbyist-politicians.  Unfortunately her responses are often not related to the questions, as poor Katie Couric has learned.

John Nance Garner, the two time vice president under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, once said that that office was not worth a pitcher of warm spit.  He always was a class act, but he helped deliver the Texas delegation at the 1932 convention to FDR when it looked like the Democrats might face another deadlocked convention like they did in 1924. That got him to the bottom of the ticket.  Still, if one looks at the number of vice presidents who have succeeded to the presidency or those who were elected on their own right later, the number two spot is a rather important stepping stone for an ambitious politician.