Mountain Views News, Pasadena Edition [Sierra Madre] Saturday, October 8, 2016

B4

OPINION

Mountain Views-News Saturday, October 8, 2016 

Mountain 
Views

News

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

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Joan Schmidt

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SALES

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CONTRIBUTORS

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Bob Eklund

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Kim Clymer-Kelley

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Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Merri Jill Finstrom

Rev. James Snyder

Dr. Tina Paul

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Renee Quenell

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

 
Rich Johnson


PRESIDENTIAL 

CAMPAIGN 

CHEAP SHOTS

 

Well here we are again. Another national 
election. And our two presidential candidates 
have squared off like the Hatfields and the 
McCoys. I found a particularly distressing comment Donald Trump 
had to say about Ms. Clinton in the early nineties: “The First Lady is a 
wonderful woman who has handled pressure incredibly well.” What a 
low blow.

 And speaking of low blows, here’s what Bill Clinton had to say about 
Donald Trump way back in 2012: “You know, Donald Trump has been 
uncommonly nice to Hillary and me. We’re all New Yorkers. And I like 
him. And I love playing golf with him.”

 Okay its gotten a bit worse since then. But is this all rhetorical 
broadswording new? Were presidential campaigns throughout 
our relatively short history conducted with class and good 
sports”person”ship? Let’s pull back the covers of our rich history and 
take a peek.

 In 1800 Democrat-Republican Thomas Jefferson ran against 
incumbent President John Adams. John Adams, member of the 
Federalist party, claimed that electing Thomas Jefferson would lead to 
the “teaching of murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest.” A little 
over the top? Apparently America wanted to be taught that as Thomas 
Jefferson not only won the election but was also relected four years later. 
This relegated John Adams to become the first one-term president.

 In 1828 Andrew Jackson (Democrat) ran against incumbent 
President John Quincy Adams (Republican). Adams attacked 
Jackson’s marriage accusing him of living in sin with his wife Rachel. 
Seems they married before her divorce was final. She became known 
as the “American Jezebel”. Adams even called her the famous Don 
Imus unmentionable word! Oh yeah, and Adams also accused 
Jackson of being a murderer among other things. I guess that’s bad. 
Jackson accused Adams of providing the Russian Czar with American 
virgins as servants while Adams was Minister to Russia. Who won 
the contest? I guess being a murderer is overrated. Andrew Jackson 
became President. And yes, Rachel Jackson became the first Jezebel. 
Ironically, the loss made John Quincy Adams the second one-term 
president, his father being the first.

 In 1848 Whig candidate Zachary Taylor ran against Democrat 
Lewis Cass and third party candidate John Parker Hale (of the Free 
Soil party). Lewis Cass and the Democrats attacked Taylor, also known 
as “old rough and ready” for being uneducated, mean and greedy. 
And of course the Whigs accused Cass of being a liar (And I thought 
calling a politician a liar was a compliment). Well, in this case the liar 
didn’t win. Zachary Taylor became our 12th president. Interesting bit 
of irony: Taylor, a longtime army general warned the south that if they 
tried to secede from the union he would lead the armies himself into 
battle against them. 12 years later his son would become a general in the 
Confederate army.

 Now, don’t you feel better? We are actually much tamer in our 
campaign rhetoric now than in the 1800’s. So lets sit back, grab a bowl of 
popcorn and wait for folding chairs to start flying. And remember that 
we are all Americans first.


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

JOHN L. Micek

 MAKING SENSE by Michael Reagan


HILLARY CLINTON 
CHANNELS HER INNER 
SEINFELD

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- In politics as in comedy, timing is 
everything.

 Hillary Clinton was about halfway through her stump speech 
here Tuesday, stabbing needle after needle into Donald Trump 
and his apparently glancing relationship with the Internal 
Revenue Service, when she paused, smiled and found her inner Jerry Seinfeld.

 “He lost $1 billion in the casino business,” she cracked. “I mean ... who loses money 
running a casino except Donald Trump?”

 Wait... she had a million of them.

 “Friends don’t let friends vote Trump,” she quipped, as the crowd roared.

 Have friends thinking about voting Trump? “I want you to stage an intervention,” she 
joked. The audience ate it up.

 The one-liners, though, had a purpose. They were delivered alongside a heaping 
helping of red meat for the crowd that packed a Shriner’s hall in a leafy neighborhood in 
Pennsylvania’s capital city.

 With a month to go before Election Day, even as the race has tightened elsewhere, 
Pennsylvania is a blue-state firewall for the Democratic nominee.

 A trio of polls from Quinnipiac University, Monmouth University and Franklin & 
Marshall College gave Clinton a lead over Trump ranging from 4 to 10 percentage points 
in Pennsylvania.

 With Pennsylvania’s Oct. 11 voter registration deadline just days away, Clinton and 
her supporters repeatedly exhorted the crowd to register themselves and their friends.

 “I’m closing this campaign the way I started my career, fighting for kids and families,” 
she said at the beginning of remarks that stretched about 45 minutes.

 Frequently interrupted by applause, Clinton told the crowd she was, “Standing up for 
fairness and opportunities; taking on all those kitchen table issues that keep people up at 
night. I’m making sure every family has the tools it needs to get ahead and stay ahead.”

 It was, as in the parlance of 1992, all about the economy, stupid. 

Trump stiffed vendors; he played fast and loose with the tax code and he dragged 
the bankruptcy laws behind him with the same dogged insistence as Linus from the 
“Peanuts” comic strip, throwing it around his shoulders and over his face at the slightest 
hint of danger.

 And sure, it may have been perfectly legal for Trump to take advantage of Lincoln 
Tunnel-sized loopholes in the tax code to claim a nearly $1 billion loss in 1995 that may 
or may not have sheltered him from paying taxes as “Friends” went from first-run and 
well into reruns.

 But that didn’t make it any less slimy.

 And Clinton, sensing an opening, went for it, again and again and again.

“It’s not only what he did, but how he did it,” Clinton said, referring to Trump’s patchy 
history in Atlantic City’s casino industry and the trail of broken promises left in his wake. 
“I’m talking painters and plumbers and dishwashers ... I’ve met some of these people and 
I take it really personal.”

 Clinton pounced on Wall Street, telling the crowd that “We can’t ever let Wall Street 
wreck Main Street again. We put some strong regulations on the banks ... I think we 
could do some more.”

 The remarks were jarring. It wasn’t tough to recall that Clinton made a bundle giving 
speeches to the very Wall Street banks she now wants to bring to heel. 

 Still, it was a message that resonated with an audience that cut across a crowd that was 
cross-section of the African-Americans, older working-class voters and millennials that 
Clinton has to lasso if she wants to win a state integral to her White House chances.

 “It might be legal, but I don’t think it’s moral,” Conner Dodd, 29, a law student from 
Wexford, Pa., near Pittsburgh, said of Trump’s reported tax dodges (which he’s repeatedly 
defended). “I don’t want someone who outwits the law to run our country.”

 Adelaide Steely, a Harrisburg mother of three sons, two of whom served in the Army 
and Marines, took Trump’s tax habits personally. Not paying his fair share meant the 
New York mogul didn’t do his part to support the Armed Forces who keep the country 
he aspires to lead safe, she said.

 “That really ticks me off,” she said.

 In her speech, Clinton summed it up in a line:

 “Donald Trump is the poster boy for so much of what is wrong with our economy,” she 
said.

The crowd in Harrisburg bought it - now she has to keep selling it until Election Day.

——

© Copyright 2016 John L. Micek, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

An award-winning political journalist, Micek is the Opinion Editor and Political Columnist 
for PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. Readers may follow him on Twitter @
ByJohnLMicek and email him at jmicek@pennlive.com.

PERFECT PENCE

Now that was a debate.

 The Mike Pence-Tim Kaine bout Tuesday night wasn’t the 
main event of 2016.

 It was what they call in boxing an “undercard” match. It was 
a contest between two natural lightweights – the VP candidates. 

 There was no exciting 12th round knock out.

 But Pence and Kaine engaged in a good, spirited political 
fight that provided much more substance and entertainment 
value than the Trump-Clinton debate.

 Pence easily won on points, both for what he said and what he didn’t say. In their 
post-debate analysis everyone from Rachel Maddow to Sean Hannity agreed on that.

 Poor Tim Kaine. Everyone – even his wife – also agreed that he made himself look 
like a rude jerk by interrupting the moderator and Pence way too many times.

Kaine was wound up so tight in the opening rounds that the presidential debate 
commission probably should have ordered a drug test to see if Kaine was on some 
sort of performance drug.

 Seriously, though, I hope Trump was watching Pence’s debating style closely.

 I hope he has been studying the video over and over to see how Pence deflected or 
ducked his opponent’s punches and pivoted to offense.

 Pence not only showed Trump how to win a political debate, he was an absolute 
gentleman while doing it.

 He didn’t have to say derogatory things about women or Latinos or Muslims. He 
didn’t suggest using nuclear weapons to fight crime in Chicago.

 And when Kaine tried to drag him down a rat hole by making him defend 
something dumb or insulting Trump had said, Pence kept his cool and flicked the 
example away as silly or untrue.

 The major criticism from some Republicans and Trumpsters was that Pence didn’t 
do more to defend Donald Trump.

 But the reality is, you can’t defend half of what Trump has said and Pence could 
have wasted two weeks of air time trying.

 Pence was perfect Tuesday night. What he did won’t move the needle for Trump’s 
chances to win next month, but it moved the needle on his future.

 Twenty minutes into the debate lots of people, including those I watched it with, 
were saying, “Gosh, I wish Mike Pence was on the top of the ticket.”

 It’s obviously way too late for the GOP to make that happen, but Pence might be 
the top choice of Republicans in 2020 if Trump loses to the Clinton Crime Family a 
month from now.

 The only thing that concerns me about Pence’s pummeling of Kaine is that Trump 
was so quick to take credit for it.

 The next day at his rallies Donald was doing his usual “Look at me” routine, praising 
Pence and boasting he was his first hire.

 Sorry, Donald. As I tweeted, your first hire was actually campaign consultant Paul 
Manafort. How did that work out?

 Trump’s the clear underdog, a raw amateur up against a political heavyweight. He 
has to win his debate with Hillary Sunday night or at least fight her to a draw.

 Pence has shown him how the professionals do it.

 Whether he can learn to box with Hillary without tripping over his huge ego may 
determine whether Trump ends up the 2016 champ or the 2016 chump.

——-

Copyright ©2016 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, 
a political consultant, and the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s 
Press). He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan 
Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.
com. Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter. 

 Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For 
info on using columns contact Sales at sales@cagle.com.


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