Good Interview

  • Posted by smijer
  • August 29, 2006

My friend Alice gave an interview with the North Carolina based Pensito Review about Tennessee Politics. You can find it here. What I like about Alice is that she is so dang smart. The interview is a pretty good summary of the prospects in Tennessee for the November election & looks to me to be pretty much spot on. She doesn’t have many kind words for our District 03 Congressman, Zach Wamp or our ertswhile Mayor, Bob Corker, for that matter. I’m not as hard on either of these fellows personally.

Corker, for all his failings, has something neither of his primary opponents had, and something his party is generally deficient in these days: a brain. Issues & politics aside, a brain is the most important thing to me in a politician. Without a brain, a politico can have a good political ideology and apply it to ill effect. Without a brain, a politico can take a bad ideology and abide by it unthinkingly until the damage is beyond repair. With a brain, a politico who has the least shred of conscience can recognize when a move is going to hurt everybody, and ease away from the wrong side of an issue. Of course, I look at blue dog Ford, and I see a damn fine brain and somewhat more affinity for progressive political ideology - so naturally I’ll align with him - but I’m still very grateful that he is running against Bob Corker instead of Van Hilleary or Ed Bryant.

Zach Wamp - no dunce, but not likely to win any Nobel prizes soon either… He gets kudos in my book for spending a lot of time listening to constituents. He understands retail politics in Tennessee, something that Al Gore could have probably taken a lesson on. He is a pretty popular incumbent, and we will have to see in November ifthe people of District 03 want to hold him to his promise of a term limit, if they are tired of his shallow record in the legislature, and if they see a reasonable alternative in the person of Bruce Benedict.

Anyway - this isn’t about Bob Corker, Zach Wamp, Harold Ford, and Bruce Benedict. Or Chris Clem & Bill Lusk. It’s about Alice’s gorgeous interview with Pensito Review about all those guys. And it is gorgeous. Did I mention that I like people with brains? Go read the interview, and enjoy!

Information and Links

Join the fray by commenting, tracking what others have to say, or linking to it from your blog.

Information
August 29th, 2006
2 Responses
Feeds and Links
Comment Feed
From This Author
Del.icio.us
Digg
Technorati
Categories
Local & State
Politics

Other Posts
Economics 101
Cure Cancer

Write a Comment

Take a moment to comment and tell us what you think. Some basic HTML is allowed for formatting.

Reader Comments

Comment Number:
1
Written by:
alice
Posted on:
August 29, 2006 at 8:34 am

Thanks for the plug! I know I was especially hard on Corker, but if he WAS using his brain, he wouldn’t be denying established science in favor of sucking up to the right wing. The thing that scares me about that sort of behavior is that once a politician starts sucking, he can’t stop — there’s always the next race to worry about…

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
smijer
Posted on:
August 29, 2006 at 10:27 am

Yeah, ambition & arrogance continually circumscribe what conscience a politician may have… but intelligence does eventually, sometimes, offer a way out.

Frist knew better on stem cells when he opposed the funding… Eventually, it was an intelligent look at the political landscape in 2008 that brought him around. That’s the value of intelligence on the other side. Other morons in the Congress are so galvanized by ideology that they won’t take an intelligent look at the issue itself, much less how it might affect their own political futures.