"What drove you to want to try to assassinate President Ford?"/"Well, everybody asks that. And the thing is that everybody was talking about it."

"They say, 'Where did you get the idea?' I don’t know about the rest of the country, but in San Francisco people were saying this all the time. Number one, we elect our presidents. We don’t appoint them. And Gerald Ford was appointed — and he was appointed by a crook, if you will pardon the expression. So it wasn’t a unique feeling. It was partly that there were other people who had talked about it, who I thought were much more important to what we were thinking of as a revolution, and we really, truly thought there was going to be one. And I thought somebody like me — I was a nobody — it would be better coming from somebody like me and not destroying these people I thought were leaders. If they did this, it would destroy their leadership."

Said Sara Jane Moore, who was sentenced to life in prison but was out on parole and talking to CNN in 2015.

I'm blogging about Sara Jane Moore not because her reason for trying to assassinate Gerald Ford is chillingly resonant today: She got the idea from the way everybody was talking about it.

I'm blogging about her because I see her obituary in the NYT: "Sara Jane Moore, Would-Be Assassin of President Ford, Dies at 95/A mother of four on the fringes of radical leftist movements, she fired at the president outside a San Francisco hotel in 1975. She had hoped to spark a revolution, she said."

And here's a bit of Sara Jane Moore and Squeaky Fromme in the Stephen Sondheim musical "Assassins":

A question I'd like to ask Kamala Harris — it's the question that caused me to vote against Jimmy Carter in 1976.

And I had voted for George McGovern in 1972 and would go on to vote for Jimmy Carter in 1980. 

Here's the question: If you don't win this election, what will you do next?

For Kamala Harris, I mean after you finish your term as Vice President... unless you want to tell me that if you lose the election you'll exercise your power under the 25th Amendment and at least attain the distinction of becoming the first woman President and enjoy the solace of a short stint as the President, perhaps inspiring the nation to long for the full-term presidency we missed or to celebrate you for saving us from the last few months of depending on the declining husk of a President, Joe Biden.

What's the answer? You tell me. Not just what would she say to my question what will you do next. I can imagine an evasive or insincere answer. But what, really, do you think she will do? Will she — like Trump, after losing in 2020 — go on to challenge the winner every step of the way, right up to vying for the nomination and running again in the next election? Will she seek to represent California again, in the Senate or as Governor? Will she withdraw into memoir-writing and speech-giving or some fancy academic post? Could she do any of that successfully if she loses?

***

What did Jimmy Carter say that rubbed me the wrong way? He said he'd just go back to his peanut farm. It made him seem so small to me. And Gerald Ford was already President, so one did not need to try to picture him as President.

Listen to the argument in United States v. Trump. (The issue is presidential immunity.)

From the NYT live-blogging:

"The effort by Ms. Harris to address the root causes of migration, which can take years, is..."

".... unlikely to quickly produce the swift action demanded by Republicans and some Democrats to reduce the overcrowding at the border."

From "Biden Names Harris to Work With Central America on Migration/The president gave the vice president a prominent role in the politically charged issue at a time when thousands of children are being detained in facilities along the border" (NYT).

The "root causes" language is a reference to something Harris said: "While we are clear that people should not come to the border now, we also understand that we will enforce the law. We also — because we can chew gum and walk at the same time — must address the root causes that cause people to make the trek."

Walking and chewing gum at the same time is a metaphor,* initially designed to insult someone who can't do these 2 relatively easy-to-do things simultaneously. It doesn't work too much as a brag, unless you're saying that the 2 things are easy to do at the same time. 

What are the 2 things? There's a huge difference between wanting people not to come + caring about root causes and effectively enforcing all of the law restricting the border + changing the conditions that are causing people to come to the border. 

The first set of things is easy to do, damned near effortless. The second set is nearly impossible, done together or done one at a time. Might as well laugh about doing them together because you know you're not going to make much progress at all on either.

_________________________

* "The term is recorded in a Texas newspaper in [1964]. President Lyndon Johnson allegedly said that then-Congressman (and later president) Gerald Ford couldn’t 'fart and chew gum at the same time.' As early as the 1900s, it was observed that women talk a lot and chew gum a lot, but don’t 'talk and chew gum at the same time.' Entertainer and cowboy philosopher Will Rogers was described in 1926 as 'the only man in the world who can chew gum and talk sense at the same time.' It’s probable that the saying 'walk and chew gum at the same time' developed from the earlier 'talk and chew gum at the same time.'" That's at Quora. To speculate more coherently: People said women can't "talk and chew gum at the same time," then some crude fellows thought it was funner to say "walk and fart at the same time" — because walking and farting is a very funny subject. (I've seen George Carlin demonstrate the hilarity.) Then it got turned around for fun to LBJ's "fart and chew gum at the same time." Then it got cleaned up into the present-day corruption, "walk and chew gum at the same time."

"I had been in the Oval Office a hundred times as vice president or more... But I had never been up in the residence."

"And one of the things — I don't know about you all, but I was raised in a way that you didn't look for anybody to wait on you. And it's — we're — I find myself extremely self-conscious. There are wonderful people that work at the White House. But someone is standing there and making sure I — hands me my suit coat, or..."

From the transcript of Biden's CNN Town Hall last night.

Anderson Cooper expressed surprise that Biden had never been in the residence part of the White House? Obama never had him over?

Biden continues. I'll add a page break because this is very rambly:

"The general sense seems to be that Republicans and conservatives in Congress and think tanks and the media are just going to Don Draper the last four years."

Writes Jonathan Last in "Break-Ups Are Hard To Do" (The Bulwark), embedding this:

This is the more apt clip:

"What about the Dingell Norwood bill?"

I'm reading a post by my son at Facebook:

Jennifer Rubin argues in the Washington Post that Biden’s opponents shouldn’t expect to take the lead by beating him in the primary debates. She gives historical examples, but see if you can find a flaw in her argument about the 2000 election:

"There are precious few instances in which a candidate’s debate performance destroyed his chances. President Gerald Ford’s infamous remark “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe . . . I don’t believe the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union" was the rare exception to the rule that a single answer can doom a candidates. Then-Vice President Al Gore’s sighing, eye-rolling and obvious disdain for then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the 2000 general-election debates did him no favors, but it’s hard to conclude those debates were decisive in an election that was essentially a tie."

Here's how I responded to John over at Facebook:

It's maddening to hear that "it’s hard to conclude those debates were decisive in an election that was essentially a tie." If it is the case — and I think it is — that Gore ought to have won easily, then falling back to the tie position is a big difference. It's EASY to conclude the debates were decisive... or as we like to say around the house as shorthand for losing a debate "What about the Dingell Norwood bill?"

"Nowhere is the left more nuts than on climate. Biden, the 'reasonable' person on stage, says 'no more fossil fuels'..."

"...in his presidency. Think about this, folks. No oil, gas, coal. No diesel trucks, airplanes, fighter jets, chainsaws."

Tweets Kimberley Strassel.

I couldn't believe it when I heard it last night:

BIDEN: We will end any subsidies for coal or any other fossil fuel. But we have to also engage the world while we're doing it. We have to walk and chew gum at the same time.

BASH: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Just to clarify, would there be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?

BIDEN: No, we would -- we would work it out. We would make sure it's eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those, either -- any fossil fuel.

I said out loud at the time: "So, no more airplanes?"

To be fair, I think it's likely that Biden understood the question to mean is there any place for government subsidies and that's all he's thinking of eliminating. Alternatively, he means to eliminate coal and he uses the term "fossil fuel" without realizing it includes oil and gas.

***

Here's the etymology of the word "fossil":

1610s, "any thing dug up;" 1650s (adj.) "obtained by digging" (of coal, salt, etc.), from French fossile (16c.), from Latin fossilis "dug up," from fossus, past participle of fodere "to dig," from PIE root *bhedh- "to dig, pierce."

Restricted noun sense of "geological remains of a plant or animal" is from 1736 (the adjective in the sense "pertaining to fossils" is from 1660s); slang meaning "old person" first recorded 1859. Fossil fuel (1833) preserves the earlier, broader sense.

That slang usage — meaning "old person" — could be used on Biden. Maybe he's the fossil that should be rejected.

Anyway, the first usage of "fossil" in the figurative sense referred to the government. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson (in 1844): "Government has been a fossil; it should be a plant."

The first use to refer to a person came from Charlotte Brontë (in 1857): "When a man endures patiently what ought to be unendurable, he is a fossil."

***

What Biden was said was dumb, and while he was saying it, he evoked an old expression about dumbness. He said, "We have to walk and chew gum at the same time." The original line was "He's so dumb that he can't walk and chew gum at the same time." That was a President talking about a man who later became President. LBJ said it about Gerald Ford. Or so the fit-to-print newspapers reported. It's necessary to add that he really said "He's so dumb that he can't fart and chew gum at the same time."

"What's the most pointless argument you've been passionately involved in?"

A Reddit discussion. The top-rated answer is:

My junior year of high school I got into a very heated debate with my friend over whether Cheetos were considered chips. After half an hour of yelling about this he finally called frito-lay headquarters to ask their opinion on the matter. I was right, they're not chips :)

Via Metafilter, where somebody says:

I remember an epic argument about whether Minnesota is "almost in Canada."

And:

A famous argument I remember having was whether or not the crust of the bread is indeed considered to be "bread" itself, or if it is in fact another, distinct product known as "crust."

I'm amused by that use of the word "famous."

Here are some things I've found myself arguing about far longer than sanity would advise:

1. Whether butterflies are insects. I found myself resorting to statements like: "If you don't think they're insects, what do you think they are? Birds?!!???"

2. At what age do you become "middle aged"? I was in my 20s and saying "middle age" must start by 40 or 45 because it's considered the longest period of one's life, and I was talking to a woman who was almost 60 and wouldn't even concede that she was middle aged. One of her arguments was that the President of the United States — Gerald Ford, in his early 60s — shouldn't be considered middle aged yet because he played golf.

3. Who was conceived in the "immaculate conception"? I was at a dinner party with Madison academics and their spouses in the 1980s and got hooted down by people who sure the answer was Jesus. I was hampered by: a. No iPhone and no Google to make the correct answer obvious, b. Not seeing any social benefit in arguing about religion at a dinner party with people who were ready to be so ignorant and assholian about religion, c. Thinking about how much money I could make taking bets and distracted by the static of the idea that it would not be religiously correct.

4. Whether it is possible to picture infinite planets. I was willing to concede that there could be an infinite number of planets, but stood firm on my own personal subjective inability to imagine such a thing. How can you argue with that? I was with someone whose point of view was: How can you NOT argue with that? I could not be left alone with my imaginative shortcoming. I said I understood the idea of infinite space and could imagine infinite space, but a whole planet.... I'm picturing each one with a number on it. You never run out of numbers. So how could there be any planet that could not have a number to go with it? I don't need you to agree with me, you can even pity me in my disability, but leave me alone with it. NO!!! It's as though my non-infinite-mindedness was contagious and he had to cure me so he didn't catch it. Or maybe he was so angry because he did catch it and it horrified him.

"Jolen cream bleach turns the mustache on your upper lip to the exact color of Richard Gephardt's hair, which is better than its looking like Frida Kahlo's mustache, but it's still slightly hairier than you mean it to be."

Wrote Nora Ephron, a while back.

I'm finding that this morning, because Dick Gephardt is in the news today, blogged here, where William asked "How did Gephardt spend so many years in public life without being relentlessly mocked for his orange hair. I guess back then people were more tolerant of orange hair...."

Also, Bob Shrum, in "No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner," describes a Dukakis ad (in 1988) that mocked Gephardt by showing a "gymnast with comically dyed orange hair dressed in a suit... trampolining and tumbling forward and back and forward and back again" with the voice-over describing Gephardt's various flip-flops.

So orange hair got mocked, even in the old days. It's not just something invented recently to attack Trump. I certainly remember Reagan's hair getting mocked, especially since he denied dyeing it. The much-repeated joke attributed to Gerald Ford was: "Ronald Reagan doesn't dye his hair, he's just prematurely orange."

40 years ago today: Squeaky Fromme, 2 feet away from President Ford, points a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol.

A Secret Service agent grabbed the gun, which contained bullets, but had no bullet in its chamber.

Last year, a tape of her interview with a mental health examiner was released. In the interview, done shortly after her arrest, Fromme explained the "X" mark that she and other followers of Charles Manson had on their foreheads:

"Well, it has different levels. On one level it is a cross that's a following cross. On another level it is an 'X' and the 'X' is we are marked out of the system as it stands. We don't go along with it."

She commented on her use of LSD:

"I became aware of the possibilities of different realities as seen through different eyes, as seen through the Chicanos for example. I traveled in my mind into their world, the east Los Angeles. And then I traveled into the ghetto and I traveled into high society."

Here's some video containing interviews with Ford and Fromme looking back on the incident. Notable quote from from: "Of course, I could have shot him, and to me, his life didn't mean more to the redwoods to me."



The comments there (at YouTube) don't take assassination too seriously: "She didn't kill anyone." "Fuck. We could have been rid of that dip-shit." Even those who seem to take it seriously can't be serious: "She remains unrepentant of her actions and her mullet."

Fromme is now 66 years old. She's been out of prison since 2009.

Justice Thomas decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow.

I burnt out trying to read (and blog) all 5 of the Obergefell opinions yesterday. I was getting annoyed slogging through the Chief Justice's long cogitation about restraint after getting through Scalia's relatively playful romp through the topic (and the frustrating fuzziness of the majority opinion), and I just couldn't get to the work of Justices Thomas and Alito.

But let me finish the task I assigned myself and move on to live-blogging my reading of the Thomas dissent (which is joined by Scalia):

The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. 

This is an excellent beginning, highlighting the main problem with using substantive due process — the idea of fundamental liberties (the "right to marry") — rather than equal protection. It's easy to see that the government is subject to equal protection limits as it hands out benefits, but maybe liberty should have only to do with being left alone to do what you can do on your own without interacting with the government.

So I'm very interested in what Thomas has to say about equal protection (which I think makes the most sense as the basis for the right), but he has almost nothing to say. He drops a footnote early on, observing that the majority says it's using equal protection, but it's "clearly" only using it "to shore up its substantive due process analysis." I agree, but when you're finding a right, one is enough. If you're rejecting the claim of right, you need to reject both grounds. Thomas should at least have articulated a legitimate government interest to be advanced by excluding same-sex couples from the legal institution of marriage. In my view, it cannot be done. (Listen to the oral argument to hear the ludicrous implausibility of the connection between the government's asserted interest — that children grow up with their biological parents — and the restriction of marriage to opposite-sex couples.)

Do Americans get the Midwest? Can a candidate with a midwestern accent and demeanor ever get elected?

When's the last time we elected a Midwesterner President? Ford doesn't count. He wasn't elected. You have to go back to Eisenhower and by the time we elected him, he wasn't just from Kansas anymore. He was from The World — The World War. And Kansas isn't even really the Midwest I think of as the Midwest. It's too far south. When's the last time we had a President from the North that is not the East?

Here's a list the home states of all the Presidents. I was surprised to see that I could have said we have a President right now from the Midwest! It never occurred to me — even as I rewatched that Bloggingheads segment — to think of Barack Obama as a Midwesterner, despite his connection to Illinois. His demeanor and his accent don't come across as midwestern. I think of him as coming from Hawaii.

I think we've never had a President from the North that is not the East. We've had a lot of Presidents from Ohio, and in that video clip, where I'm talking about Scott Walker's chances as a midwestern-style person, Bob Wright gets fixated on Ohio Governor Kasich, but Ohio isn't what I mean when I say Midwest. Note that I have lived in Wisconsin for the last 30 years, so I have an idea of the Midwest (and the North), but I consider myself from the "mid-Atlantic region," born and mostly raised in Delaware — just about exactly at the place where the Mason-Dixon line would cross if the mapmakers hadn't switched to using a compass when drawing the head on the little man called Delaware....



I am an insider/outsider in the Midwest. I think I get the cultural style that one sees in people like Tim Pawlenty and Scott Walker who seem too bland for outsiders. I mean that I also get The Not Getting of It. It might help that my mother and her family were from Michigan. Bob is from Texas, which is a big place, so maybe that's why he blithely groups Wisconsin with Ohio. He also sneered at the notion that Delaware is the South. I forgot to ply him with the question whether Texas is the South, but we were running out of time.

This post has become a grab bag of issues, so I'll load in one more, because news broke as I was writing this: "Lindsey Graham officially launches presidential exploratory committee." In the Bloggingheads clip embedded above, I talked about the problem of a Southern accent for a Republican candidate and say I think Americans have trouble with Lindsey Graham because of his accent. But the discussion of Midwesterners is not so much about the accent — though it is a problem if it's too exaggerated (as in the movie "Fargo") — it's the modest, low-key, seemingly bland style. But that problem could be an advantage. People might be in the mood for modest blandness. Of course, Scott Walker's opponents won't accept that picture of the man. They demonize him. How do you demonize modest blandness? Oh, it's an old game here intra-Wisconsin.

Was the whip inflation now button designed by the person who designed the smiley face?

A question I'm asking now because I'm reading the book review that's the first thing that comes up in a Google search when you ask that question.

Leave it to [Rick Perlstein, author of "The Invisible Bridge"] to note that the WIN buttons peddled by Ford to promote a desperate “Whip Inflation Now” campaign were “designed by the same guy who invented the yellow ‘smiley face.’ ”

I'm not believing that. What guy are we talking about? I thought the origins of the smiley face were shrouded in mystery. Speaking of "shrouded,"  I think the origins of the smiley face are as shrouded in mystery as the Shroud of Turin.

Here's the relevant passage from Perlstein's book:

The White House had approached a Madison Avenue advertising agency...

Would it kill him to name the ad agency?

... which came up with the slogan: Whip Inflation Now. WIN. Forty-two minutes into the address Ford explained how "a very simple enlistment form" would appear in the next day's newspapers. At that, the president pointed out in his lapel, next to his red-white-and-blue tie, the snazzy little button designed by the same guy who invented the yellow "smiley face." 

What guy?

When's the last time the worse looking of the 2 major party candidates won the Presidency?

A question I raise in the comments to this morning's body fat post.

Here's a list of all the candidates through American history. I'd say the answer to my question is 1976. But Jimmy Carter had a big smile that people responded to, and Ford had reached the presidency via Richard Nixon, who was quite unattractive, and people saw Nixon through Ford. That is, I could wriggle out of conceding that the "last time" was as recently as 1976. But what's the point? We get stopped at the next notch, 1972. Nixon was distinctly less pretty than George McGovern. Nixon was also less pretty than Hubert Humphrey in 1968, not that Humphrey was at all cute. 1964 was also a clear case of the uglier guy winning, LBJ being perhaps the ugliest President ever, and Barry Goldwater looking quite good. One more step back and we get to 1960, the strongest case I remember seeing beauty boosting a candidate across the line. And everyone talked about it (and still talks about it).

It's interesting that after that 1960 beauty contest, we got our spate of the uglier candidate winning. Why? The ugliest man ascended to the Presidency after the assassination of the handsome idol, and it was not odd that he was elected shortly thereafter. It took almost 20 years for us to revert to choosing the handsomer man, but ever since — more than 3 decades — we've chosen beauty.

This year, the GOP has made a strong choice in the beauty contest. It's not clear who's handsomer. Of course, it's clear if we average in the VP component, but the VP beauty boost is an iffy proposition. It didn't work — at least not enough — for John McCain or John Kerry. But I'm thinking if only Gerald Ford had picked someone prettier than Bob Dole....

100 years ago today: "Arthur Eldred, a 17-year-old Boy Scout from Long Island, became the first person to earn the Eagle Scout rank."

"Eldred's initial accomplishment was to complete the requirements for the rank of Eagle Scout only six months after that supreme award in American scouting was announced in April 1912." 

The leaders of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), assuming it would take several years for any boy to earn the required 21 merit badges, hadn't yet devised a final review system for Eagle candidates; they hadn't even settled on a design for the medal....

Out of the more than 115 million boys who have passed through the Boy Scouts of America in the last 102 years, approximately two million have become Eagle Scouts, a 2% rate that has climbed to about 4% of all scouts in recent years....

Many went on to notable careers and distinguished service to the country. The list of famous Eagles over the last century includes movie and television stars, six Medal of Honor recipients, Nobel Prize winners, novelists, a number of astronauts (including most Shuttle astronauts), Tuskegee airmen and Japanese-American internees, congressmen, senators and governors, an endless number of corporate CEOs and university presidents, a U.S. president (Gerald Ford), and the first man to walk on the moon (Neil Armstrong). But there are other, perhaps less obvious, Eagles as well: sexologist Alfred Kinsley, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and Washington's disgraced ex-mayor Marion Barry....

"President Obama's newest campaign commercial was filmed inside the West Wing of the White House..."

"... an act that campaign finance experts and good government groups generally agreed was legal if not particularly commendable."

Staffers for President George W. Bush say they expressly avoided filming campaign ads within the West Wing itself....

Previous presidents saw no such lines. When President Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996 he was featured in the Oval Office... President Ronald Reagan's 1984 convention documentary featured the Oval Office and the Roosevelt Room....

In 1976, President Gerald Ford was filmed working with his top advisers in the Oval Office itself and speaking directly to camera in an interview with a tell-tale curving wall behind him....

Four years later, President Jimmy Carter was filmed in the Oval Office for a reelection ad....

So what's the big deal? Must a President live up to the George Bush standard? That's awfully rigorous!

Obama's Poland gaffe — you know, it was a Poland gaffe that lost the election in 1976 for Gerald Ford.

What Obama said was "Polish death camps," a terrible misstatement, carelessly referring to the geographic location of the camps without noticing the implication that that the Polish people ran those camps.

What Gerald Ford said, in a crucial debate with Jimmy Carter, was: "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, an there never will be under a Ford administration." In a 1989 interview, Jim Lehrer asked "why did you say that?"

"Time to walk over to the polls and do the traditional thing of deciding who we're going to vote for on the walk over."

It's the Wisconsin primary today, and we're following the old family tradition of talking on the walk over and making the final decision at that point. I say it's an old family tradition because in 1976, I set out to walk over to the polls with my then-husband RLC, and we actually had to sit down at one point and talk it through. We were still for Jimmy Carter when we sat down, but by the time we got up to continue the walk to the poll, we were for Gerald Ford. We'd both voted for McGovern in 1972, and I would continue to vote for all Democratic presidential candidates — with the sole exception being 2004 — to this day (including voting for Carter in 1980, when he lost).

I like not deciding until I mark the ballot. I enjoy the free and flexible — flowing — mental state. As long as I have to pay attention to all the politics, every day.

So I say the quote that is the post title out loud, and the dialogue continues, with many lines, most of which I've forgotten, but one of which is "Time for you to do the traditional thing of voting for whoever I tell you to vote for."

Who will Althouse vote for?
	Gingrich, because she's a contrarian.
	Paul, because he's so cute and constitutional.
	Romney, because he and his boyfriend Paul Ryan are dreamboats.
	Santorum, because that's who Meade, the winger, will tell her to vote for.
pollcode.com free polls

"Most days Mr. Boehner, 61 years old, spends the early-morning hours vacuuming his apartment or ironing."

"He eats breakfast alone at Pete's Diner, a cramped eatery a few blocks from the Capitol, and checks his Facebook page on an iPad. At night, he stops whatever he's doing at 10 o'clock."

That's my favorite part of the WSJ's profile of John Boehner.

Boehner's got a nice, humble image that suits the times — these post-Pelosi times. I like the picture of the man who's replacing the woman being a man with a vacuum cleaner...

... and it's not even a metaphorical vacuum cleaner. (I seem to remember a magazine cover illustration of Gerald Ford after the Nixon resignation. He was vacuuming the Oval Office.)