Salon.com > Rob Patterson

The scruffy charms of an insecure president

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 11:11:00 +0000

Revelations from "Dead Certain," Robert Draper's new biography of President George W. Bush, have received marquee play since the book's publication on Sept. 4. The disclosures have ranged from the petty -- Bush, a stickler for punctuality, once locked a late Colin Powell out of a meeting -- to the momentous. Among the more uncomfortable for the White House: Bush's claim that Paul Bremer, head of Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority, made the disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi army without Bush's knowledge, an assertion rapidly rebutted by Bremer.

Kinky and Grandma battle for third

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 12:10:00 +0000

Conventional wisdom says that the brief and mostly charmed political career of Kinky Friedman, independent candidate for governor of Texas, will soon be over. His poll numbers peaked at 23 percent in mid-September and have fallen as low as 13 percent in more recent surveys, putting him a distant fourth in the state's strange five-person gubernatorial contest. But don't try telling that to the wisecracking man in the black cowboy hat. At least for public consumption, one of this election year's more unlikely candidates remains confident of his chances.

"I feel pretty good about it, actually," Friedman insisted last Tuesday, a week before Election Day. He had just arrived back in Texas from New York. While his opponents had been spending millions on ad blitzes and crisscrossing the state in the race's final days, he had scored yet another major free media coup by taping an appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman" that would air Friday, Nov. 3, just four days before polls open.

"My chances depend totally on the turnout being as big as the early voting is, which has been record breaking," Friedman said Tuesday. "If the turnout is that big, I'm the governor. It's very simple. If it's not, [incumbent Rick] Perry's the governor. That's it."

Earle’s last stand

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:37:00 +0000

A ferocious dog barks and growls in an ominous ad that blares from TV screens in the Texas capital of Austin. "A prosecutor with an agenda can be vicious," a barbed voice intones. The commercial assails "liberal Democrat" Ronnie Earle, the district attorney of Travis County, which includes Austin, for prosecuting powerful Texas Rep. Tom DeLay for conspiracy to violate election laws and money laundering. "Bad, Ronnie! Bad!" the voice snarls before baying: "Tell Ronnie it's not a crime to be conservative."

Earle, a lifelong Democrat, has earned the wrath of Republicans by spearheading a criminal investigation into DeLay. He intends to demonstrate that DeLay helped funnel illegal corporate money to Republicans running for the Texas Legislature in 2002, which helped the party gain control of the Statehouse. With the GOP in the driver's seat, the Legislature rammed through a controversial redistricting of the state's congressional districts, which sent more Republicans to Washington, further consolidating DeLay's power in Congress.

New Orleans rising

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 21:19:00 +0000

If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break, when the levee breaks I'll have no place to stay
-- Public Domain (also credited to Memphis Minnie, Kansas Joe McCoy and the members of Led Zeppelin), "When the Levee Breaks"

New Orleans brass-band music, exemplified in this age by such superb purveyors as the Dirty Dozen and Rebirth Brass Bands, is built upon the fundament of the funeral march. Yet there's something in the rolling snap of the snare that all but jump-starts the living heart. And the horns, even in their funereal bleats of sorrow, recall the mighty life force of the music that crumbled Jericho's walls.

On Aug. 29, the walls that held back the seiching waters of Pontchartrain began to break in the other direction, and the most musical city in America, if not the world, was largely inundated. The flood drenched homes where creative souls lived in what more than one Crescent City musician in the last few days referred to as a "paradise." It also flowed into and over clubs and studios, as well as the means of income for a music community that was a magnet for visitors and one of the most piquant exports in a city rich with delicacies. It washed over musical instruments and equipment as well as the music itself, both recorded and written, soaking, soiling and damaging but, thank God, not fully destroying one of America's most vital, important and soulful cultural traditions.

Camp Casey goes to Washington

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 23:45:00 +0000

On Cindy Sheehan's last Sunday in Crawford, Texas, the president finally came to Camp Casey II to meet and even pray with her. Not President Bush, which comes as no surprise, but TV President Jed Bartlet of "The West Wing," Martin Sheen.

The actor and activist arrived late in the day to a cheer from at least one bystander of "Bartlet for America!" He came to say a memorial rosary with his fellow Catholic Sheehan for her son and all the other servicemen who died in Iraq. It was the highlight of a Sunday at the ground zero of the new antiwar movement that included a morning visit from the Rev. Al Sharpton for prayer services, a Jewish kaddish, two weddings, and the sharing and solidarity that have become a trademark of Sheehan's inspiring vigil down the road from George W. Bush's pseudo ranch in the rolling farmland of Central Texas.

On Wednesday, Sheehan decamps from Crawford and heads to Austin. She will hold a rally at City Hall to kick off her bus tour that will end in Washington at a major antiwar demonstration planned for Sept. 24. Since she first camped out alone on the side of the road on Aug. 6 at what became known as Camp Casey I, thousands of Americans have also made the pilgrimage to the town and countryside near the president's vacation getaway to show their support. And millions have witnessed her crusade via the media.