Marginalia Americana 6: Our Fates Lie in the Hands of These People Too

Wyoming elects one House member and two Senators. (Go figure.). Barbara Cubin, the Republican incumbent in this overwhelmingly Republican state is fighting for dear life to hold on to her seat against the no-name Democratic candidate, Gary Trauner. (Okay, he does have a name.). No, this has nothing to do with the Bush administration, and everything to do with her in-your-face threat to bitchslap the wheelchair-bound Libertarian (yes Libertarian) candidate, an MS patient. In a last-ditch stab at negative campaigning:

"The guy's from New York. It's not a good fit. He's too liberal. He's just not familiar with Wyoming's issues," said Cubin spokesman Joe Milczewski.
"For example, in New York City, you don't have a wolf problem. We have a big wolf problem in Wyoming." (New York Daily News, 01 Nov. 06)

I suppose the takeaway here is that the wolf problem in Wyoming is a federal issue. Incidentally, Mr. Trauner has lived in Wyoming for 16 years.

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John Kerry has done it again. I take his word for it that he meant President Bush, not high school dropouts who join the Army and ship out to Iraq. But his demonstration of a total lack of a funny bone and his initial rage at the rest of the world for misunderstanding him were vintage Kerry.

He is the latest in a long, bipartisan line of public figures going back from Al Gore (inventing the Internet) to Howard Dean (the Scream) to Edmund Muskie (the New Hampshire meltdown) to Richard Nixon (uh…) who never fail to elicit the media's enmity. Then there are the people who seem to get a free pass (Condoleezza Rice, in contrast to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, comes to mind). Likeability is an important factor in determining which way the media will spin a story that can break in either direction.