Skip to main content

George Who?

By



I bet you didn't see this one coming.  I sure didn't.  George Pataki has to be the least likely of Presidential candidates, nearly ten years out of a job, not that very many even knew him when he served three terms as governor of New York.

It seems George is trying to cash in on his leadership following 911, judging from his video clip.  It didn't help Mayor Ray in 2008 and I doubt it will get much play in 2016.  The funny part is that he announced his candidacy in New Hampshire.  I guess he thinks this will give him a leg up in the state primary, the first in the election cycle after the Iowa caucuses.  It's the only hope he has of making his mark early in the Republican primaries.

However, Pataki looks like another one of those vanity candidates hoping to get some free publicity and land a spot on Fox News.  He hasn't seemed to be doing much with himself since he stepped down as governor in January, 2007.  He set up a "Leadership and Learning Center" in Peekskill, New York, best known as the original home of Crayola Crayons.  His organization doesn't get much notoriety, and he isn't a favorite on the Republican speaking circuit.

Pataki's reign as governor was largely uneventful except for 911 and his attempts to spur the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site.  Sadly, not much was done, as a battle developed between the city, state and private developer, Larry Silverstein, which thwarted construction for years.  George had lost favor among much of the conservative faithful of his party during his long tenure, including the New York Post, which ran a scathing attack entitled Good Riddance upon his departure.

The biggest problem facing him is reconciling his social liberalism with the ardent social conservatism so prevalent in the GOP.  This is a guy who supported gay rights in his state and is pro-choice, which is going to put him at odds with the Republican base in most states.  One of the hot button issues emerging in this campaign is gay marriage, with no less than a dozen GOP governors pushing legislation that would make it difficult for gay couples to enjoy the social privileges normally associated with marriage.  The Log Cabin vote in the GOP is quite small.

More likely, he will shy away from these social issues as others have done.  Mitt Romney essentially disowned his gubernatorial record in Massachusetts last time around.  I guess George is hoping he can successfully reinvent himself on the campaign trail as well, but at 69 that is an arduous task with so many young guns vying for the top spot.

Maybe George sees himself in the mix for a cabinet or other high-level job if a Republican wins the White House, maybe even Ambassador to the United Nations?  In 2007, he briefly served as George Bush's delegate to the UN General Assembly, focusing on terrorism and (gulp) climate change during the GA session.

The more the merrier, I say, but George is going to have a hard time making the cut for the first debate scheduled for August 6 on Fox News.  Only the Top Ten polling candidates will be invited.  Good luck, George!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more