Walk Tall

As I lay upon my bed I began dreaming
how it's gonna be, the day that I am free
(The Jayhawks)

Tomorrow is the day I try to walk. Tomorrow is the day I try that function that is so basic and mindless for most humans. Tomorrow I lean to the right for the first time in two months. Tomorrow I try to stand tall with dignity.

It's been more than two months since the injury and more than six weeks since the surgery, and it's time for me to go see the doctor again. According to Plan Gordo, outlined in a previous blog entry, tomorrow begins the "partial weight-bearing" phase. That means starting to walk again with the aid of a single crutch or a cane.

Bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and the other parts of your musculoskeletal system are strange beasts. They don't just heal themselves with rest and time. You have to actually get up and use them to fully repair bone fractures and return your joints to something resembling their original working order.

So it is that I wait for tomorrow with a sense of nervous anticipation. I am excited to move to the final phase of healing. But I am anxious, concerned that this is the point where I will be in significant pain and likely be unstable for a while.

I have, after all, lost a lot of muscle mass. My right leg is distinctly smaller than my left, which is conditioned from months of doing all the work. Since the post-surgery cast came off, I've been flexing my ankle and writing the alphabet with my toes, and I think I can do a pretty good A-Z. But that doesn't mean I'm ready to start strut around with my usual swagger.

I figure it will come with time. Time needed to work out the ankle and remind it of what walking is like. If I can remember, that is...if walking is like riding a bike (which I think I can still do.)

More than walking, though, I'm looking forward to driving again. I've kind of banked on being able to drive myself to class this semester, so I can finally leave Mari Elise and all the other friends who have so kindly driven me to campus alone. I have a parking pass and everything, and I'm hoping to make a regular two-minute commute. And to go out and do things that previously were out of reach.

I must say, thought, that I haven't really been suffering too badly during this crutchy time. I am incredibly fortunate to have family and friends that support me just as well as my aluminum extremities do. People have been incredibly patient and accommodating, and I've had a pretty active social life despite the fact that I move at about 1/2 mile per hour.

I even went to Vail. Yes, I'm probably the only dumbass who traveled all the way to a world-class ski resort with an injury, as opposed to the poor souls who hurt themselves on the mountain. (Photo on your right: someone, not me, enjoying the powder at Vail.) But despite the fact that I couldn't cruise the powder with my friends as I so longed to, I still had a good time, hanging out with people, playing Guitar Hero, and even getting to sample absinthe.

(Note for the record: absinthe, a strong licorice-tasting liquor, recently became legal in the United States. This version lacks wormwood, the notorious ingredient that supposedly caused hallucinations -- though a recent New York Times article noted that any such nefarious effects were really just drunkenness blown out of proportion.)

Classes have resumed for the semester. I am back to trying to better myself through higher education, or at least having something to do. It remains to be seen whether I will be able to successfully complete "Magazine and Feature Writing" given the amount of in-person work I will need to do with my gimpy self. But I shall soldier on and make the State of Colorado proud. (Well, they do sort of pay for my education.)

Tomorrow shall some answers come. Good night.

Obama for President

I've been supporting Barack Obama for President for some time, but now that he won the Iowa Caucuses and more people are starting to take notice of his candidacy, I figured it was time to explain why I picked him.

Feel free to ignore my opinion. You might think I'm what communication theorists call "an opinion leader," or you might think I'm what average people might call a communication theorist ("pompous blowhard.")

But I will say up front that my six years working as a congressional aide has strongly influenced what I think about this race. Not because I have such intimate knowledge of the candidates -- I talked to Hillary Clinton on the phone once (she was very nice) and her spokesman was my boss during my brief stint in Senator Schumer's office. One of Barack Obama's staffers and I share an odd coincidence -- we made up consecutive firings from the Schumer office and then both went on to work on chemical security as one of our issues. And I know Dennis Kucinich's environment staffer pretty well.

Other than those obviously paltry connections, my knowledge is about what any other halfhearted political junkie might now. What is unique about my background is that I got an intimate look at how Washington works. Or doesn't, if you want to be a cynic. Or doesn't because it isn't supposed to, if you want to be all philosophical about it.

Let me give you some idea of what I'm talking about. For most of the time I worked on "the Hill," us Democrats were in the minority as the Republicans ran the show. That meant that my job was simple -- to cause trouble. In general, I wasn't trying to solve the big public policy challenges of the day. I was instead trying to help the various members of Congress I worked for make the case that the guys in charge, the Republicans and President Bush, were "a bunch of bums," as one of my bosses would have put it. If we can prove to enough Americans that our opposition was no good, then we could win elections and start making policy. Lo and behold, in 2006 we did just that.

But while Democratic control of Congress made a big difference in my opinion, it left a great deal unchanged. Washington is still a city where politics is just a game to be played by young, clueless folks like myself who are really good at writing intelligent talking points and by crusty old lobbyists who get paid gobs of money to know just a little more than I did, forcing me to consider seeing the world from their clients' eyes. Congressmen generally did what made them look good and made their party look good. And why shouldn't they? That's their job.

What was lacking was real leadership. This isn't something that comes from Congress. Say what you want about Nancy Pelosi or others, but they're really just the titular heads of a rollicking body of people trying to sort out the nation's various interests. Leadership, in terms of changing the direction of the nation and the world, comes from only one place -- the presidency.

This isn't the place for a rather obvious diatribe against President Bush, but the point here is that he and his Administration were sorely lacking in leadership. They kowtowed to their favorite interests, played partisan games, and generally made the atmosphere in Washington worse. More partisanship. More lobbyist influence. Less desire to work together, and less consideration of a wide range of public input.

So the question becomes, who has the ability to change the way business is done? How to end eight years of games and make politics into a serious tool for improving the lives of Americans and people all over the world?

Let me first say that I generally shy away from candidates without a realistic chance of winning the nomination. Bill Richardson, you're funny and smart, but people still have no idea who the hell you are. Sorry.

I turned my attention to Obama not only after his 2004 convention speech, when everyone first noticed him, but also after seeing him speak at a 2006 rally in New Jersey. His charisma and personality were incredible. I've watched countless politicians speak, and many of them are impressively articulate. But few are able to actually describe a vision and bring the energy that makes people believe the vision will actually come to pass.

And he inspired me. Let me tell you, I am a political burnout. I started out idealistic when I first interned in Senate offices in 2000 and 2001. Then I got my first job. The idealism was beaten out of me like an ACME anvil being dropped on Wile E. Coyote. It wasn't pretty.

So for me to be inspired is quite a feat. Thing is, I believe Obama. It helps to read his first book, Dreams from my Father. He wrote it well before actually getting into politics, and it tells much of his life story. It's a very real story of a very unique childhood. (It's also damn well written.) What it said to me, more than anything, was that Obama understands the complexities of the world and the people who filled it. Unlike the average Washington animal, Obama would see the consequences of his actions as affecting real people.

He has been accused of being a bit lacking in substance. And yes, Obama has not exactly gone around touting detailed solutions for every policy challenge. But is he supposed to? Presidents are supposed to provide vision and direction for the country, be someone that our citizens and the rest of the world can look to for direction and inspiration.

Details will be worked out. No presidential initiative goes through Congress without changes. That's what the administrative bureaucracy is there for. Presidents need to create the context that make initiatives actually succeed.

And experience? What exactly does that mean for a President? Obama actually has more formal foreign policy experience than every post-Nixon president except for George H. W. Bush, whose years in intelligence didn't exactly make him a foreign policy-whiz.

But any president makes things a crapshoot. Having oodles of time serving in the Senate or wherever doesn't always guarantee you'll know what to do when shit hits the fan. And "experience" often really is a code word for playing the game the usual way.

Which is my most serious criticism of Hillary Clinton. Let me be honest, I like Hillary. She's a very nice person and an extremely capable legislator who has performed quite well in the Senate. If I were a New Yorker I'd be thrilled to have her there.

She does, however, play the political game the way it's usually played. She and her husband have been in the spotlight of national politics for sixteen years now. They play the game. They aren't going to change it. Hillary in the White House would, unfortunately, mean more of the usual shenanigans of the last seven years, the ones that helped drive me out of Washington.

And John Edwards, whom I also really like (a picture of him with my friend Geoff and I from back in 2000 hangs on my wall) really wants to make Washington into one big fight. Everything's corporate greed against the middle class for him. A nice tagline to be the next Che Guevara, but not what we need to lead the entire United States.

Imagine: a President with the speaking skills of Reagan but the brains of JFK. With the charisma of Bill Clinton but the clean behavior of Carter.

Americans are already starting to imagine just what I described, and they're showing it, coming out in record numbers in Iowa and likely in New Hampshire.

Some years ago, I watched a PBS documentary about Robert F. Kennedy. He was a fascinating figure -- rarely mentioned is that he was one of Joe McCarthy's counsels during the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee hearings that exposed supposed communist sympathizers.

What struck me about that documentary was that when RFK ran for president in 1968, he was greeted by increasingly large and passionate crowds everywhere he went. Rather than simply being someone that people tended to prefer, he seemed to be a phenomenon in himself. The Hannah Montana of the late '60s. And after he was assasinated, countless thousands lined the railroad along which his body was carried.

The modern political cynic in me thought that either PBS had used rose-colored glasses to show the support for RFK or that such adulation was simply impossible in these days. When did you ever see throngs line up for Al Gore or John Kerry? To defeat Bush, that was something worth screaming at the top of your lungs. But did John Kerry really get a rise out of anyone?

Sure, Howard Dean did, but that was more of a coalescing of the anti-war movement than any true personality attraction.

Obama, though, seems to have the magic touch. He seems to get people to believe he can actually deliver change. Record turnouts in Iowa -- something Howard Dean never achieved -- attest to that.

And he got this cynic to believe.

A Little Truthiness

This picture of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Iowa was on the New York Times' website today. It's a wonderful visual deception.

I'm not talking about Romney's statuesque hair, which can withstand weather better than Gore-Tex. I actually want to draw your attention to the handmade signs behind him: "Mitt 2008," "Iowa [heart]'s Mitt," "Ann for 1st Lady," and the like.

It's time to let out a little political secret. This is a democracy after all, and democracies are based on people being informed. Well, I'm informing you that those signs are bullshit.

Trust me when I say that eager, everyday Iowans who think the Mormon from Mass is the second coming of Ronald Reagan did NOT make those signs. I would even be so brave as to say that Joe and Jane Q. Public had virtually nothing to do with any part of those signs before holding them at that rally.

The campaign made them. Likely it was a volunteer who had a way with markers or a low-level young staffer whose handiwork got a quick nod from a higher-up in charge of the event where they would be used.

Politics isn't a baseball game. People don't come to campaign rallies with handmade signs designed to get them noticed on C-SPAN. (Clinton Sees Plenty Ahead for our Nation!) Like as many parts of a campaign as possible, the signs are scripted and created by the campaign and distributed at the rally to eager volunteers.

I'm not implying that there is some grand sign scheme. Just that campaigns try to control as many things as possible, among them what's written on signs at their rallies and events. So while your four-year-old's rendering of Mike Huckabee and Chuck Norris might be cute, the Huck people will make you chuck them if you want to come to the party.

In 2000, I volunteered at Al Gore's last rally in Pennsylvania. Held outdoors in beautiful Fairmount Park, there were a little less than 2000 people held neatly behind barriers. These partisans were itching for a chance to cheer, but they were told (partly for security reasons) to bring nothing with them.

My job was simple -- to give them signs. And since "Al -- U Put My Heart in a Lockbox!" was verboten, I had a massive stack of preprinted, snazzy "Gore-Lieberman" signs to hand out. With my friend Erin accompanying me handing out pom-poms, I took the signs and headed down the "chute," as they called walkway through the crowd that Gore would later use for his entrance.

The crowd, which really hadn't had anything to do for a while, took my appearance as a sign of things happening and erupted in raucous cheering. I turned flush in the chill autumn air, reveling in the weirdness of having a big crowd shower you with adulation, even if they had not earthly idea who you were.

While that moment of glory shows you how eagerly campaigns control the "visuals" at their events, I was handing out signs that were very obviously created by the campaign, since they all had that familiar moon-to-a-star logo on them.

But literally campaigns break out the Crayola and make some handmade ones, too.

Last year I was in New Jersey helping the state Democratic campaign, most of which was focused on getting Bob Menendez to beat out Tom Kean, Jr. (not to be confused with his father) in the race for Senate.

We had arranged for Barack Obama, the closest thing to a rock star in politics, to come to a rally in support of Menendez and the other slate of Democratic candidates, which happened to include the two congressmen I've worked for (Rush Holt and Frank Pallone, Jr.)

Before the rally, we fueled up on Dunkin' Donuts (greatest breakfast ever) and got to work with some white posterboard and a party full of markers. We were making a lot of directional signs but also rally signs. I was quickly taken off the job because of my poor artistic skills and made to serve penance by standing on the side of the road waving people into the parking lot.

These are but two examples from my experience. I've seen it plenty more times. Take it from me, reader -- those signs aren't what you think they are. It's all part of the show.

Oh, and for the record, during campaign season when you see political letters to the editor (usually adulatory ones), those are also not from Mollie Happy Citizen, as they would have you think. Campaigns write letters to the editor, then find willing supporters ready to send them in to newspapers. As long as they're not sent in under the name of a campaign staffer, they paper doesn't have a good leg to stand on for denying them. But it's more theater, I assure you.

Gordo out.