2009-04 GEORGETOWN

In 2006 Democrats made an assault on the high moral ground and Speaker Pelosi vowed to crush the “Republican culture of corruption.” By that time the 2008 Presidential campaign was in full swing and I can only surmise that those now in the White House never got the memo.

So now we have a tax cheat (brilliant, but still…) overseeing the IRS, another who will not take over Health and Human Services, a pay-for-play Governor who will not get to be Commerce Secretary, a Chief Performance Officer who will not get to perform, and, oh yes, the former Governor of Illinois who did what Illinois politicians have been doing since Statehood but got caught doing it. Gives new meaning to “Yes we can.” And our new President asks us to emulate the principles and ethics of his Administration. Now in the case of Secretary Geithner, does that mean….?

Hold on, sputters the left, “you guys on the right were just as bad.” Precisely! But when those who fancy themselves morally superior are found with their mitts in the public cookie jar, it can be particularly embarrassing. Good and evil are not the exclusive prevue of the left and right respectively, and those who so profess are morally bankrupt.

Funny how transgressions of the right are always sleaze while slips on the left are “inadvertent.”

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The RAM is on the block! Located in a building constructed in 1889, the Red Ram Restaurant and Saloon is a Georgetown institution, anchor of commercial 6th Street, kitty-corner from (en face de) Hotel de Paris, 19th century haute maison and now museum. Absent financial rescue it will be auctioned on the courthouse steps in mid-March. Actually the two other bar-restaurants in town – the Raven Hill Mining Company and Mother’s Tavern are also for sale and the once proud Alpine Inn – site of the original town train depot – stands empty. There are two bistrots in Georgetown – the Euro and the new Prague – both Czech!, and an assortment of coffee spots led by The Happy Cooker. Georgetown may appear busted, but it has been weathering boom-bust cycles since the gold and silver mining days. We will survive!

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The house Stimulus Package that passed without a single Republican vote is taken by many as proof positive of either moral courage or craven indifference. Whatever. But it will contribute mightily to the eventual transfer in ownership of the economy from Bush to Obama. Success will rightfully accrue to the new Administration and failure will be more difficult to hang on the old.

Buffoons like Limbaugh who want the Administration to fail (and the trailing Coulters who tried to say he really didn’t mean it) are (almost) beyond belief. The radical left’s active promotion of failure in Iraq (General Betrayus!) in order to embarrass Bush was unspeakably evil. Current efforts from the opposite direction are no less so.

Let me be clear (to coin a new White House phrase) and make no mistake (another) {LMBC/MNM}: I believe that conservative, democratic, capitalist, private enterprise principles are the best hope for our future, but if other tenets achieve positive and productive goals I will embrace them. How could any responsible citizen do otherwise?

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In December there was a mini brouhaha when a C-SPAN talking head asked liberal blogger and journalist Anna Marie Cox to define conservatism and she stuttered and sputtered. A bit like asking a moose to pilot an F-16, dontcha think?

As a public service I enumerate here my own foundations of a conservative philosophy:

1. limited government
2. individual liberty
3. traditional values
4. private enterprise capitalism
5. strong national defense

One and three are problematic and much debated even within conservative circles. Four is currently under siege notwithstanding its considerable success in the 8 decades since the great depression. Five is mocked by those with short memories, including my French friends who, in its absence would be munching weisswurst instead of le chien chaud and replacing circonflexes (^) with umlauts (Ü).

But the greatest of these is Two. It seems that most every day some insidious force chips away at my right to fall on my face, feel foolish for a moment, then pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again. Hilary Clinton’s village is closing in on me. Now LMBC and MNM, I am neither hermit nor anarchist but I do value the much ballyhooed American Dream. When you remove or dilute the ability to soar or plummet, you diminish the human spirit, a condition abundantly obvious on the faces of all who exist where freedom does not.

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Rhetoric lives! Despite genuine attempts to reach across Party and philosophical lines, our new President still refers in almost every public utterance to “the crisis I inherited from the previous Administration,” with nary a mention of the previous Congress’ piece of that nasty puzzle. In fact, during most of 2008 the President’s approval rating (“low 30’s, worst in history”) was a tag line in virtually every media release and political speech. Not true by the way, both Truman and Nixon sunk lower, and history is rehabilitating both, Nixon modestly and Truman substantially.

But virtually no mention of Congress’ rating plummeting to an historic low, south of 10% as the 2008 election approached. Oh, and by the way, care to guess who had the highest Presidential rating in history, not once but twice? You got it, the dreaded “W,” followed by Truman. Are we fickle or what?

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Recent habanera communications from some conservative readers prompted a re-reading of my recent posts, and confirmed that I do appear to have achieved the exalted status of offending virtually every segment of the political and social spectrum at one time or another. I was wondering what that warm glow was. I had assumed it was just a random je ne sais quoi, but now I know better.

And this serves as a fairly accurate gauge of amity. When comity persists after you have said something alien to the beliefs of an acquaintance, you can have some confidence that a bond exists which transcends political prejudice and partisan beliefs. Others fall eerily silent.

…the adventure continues and next time I may have a new mountain perspective…