Trying to find a little perspective
Perspective?
That’s what I was looking to find when I peeked at some of the columns I’d written for this space ten years ago.
My how things have changed.
I wrote notes for each of the hundreds of those columns (more than 600 of them) to help me form my opinions.
For instance, in a note I wrote on January 28th, 2009 (just ten days after Barack Obama was sworn in), a prominent Republican had an unusual take on the new president.
Speaker of the House, John Boehner, said, “He seems like a nice guy.”
In that same note, I wrote, “As if on November 4, 65 million people didn’t already know that.”
I wrote another note ten years ago tomorrow, that Obama’s job approval numbers according to Gallup stood at 67 percent.
Perspective?
President Trump’s job approval number in the Gallup poll during his first 766 days in office, has never been within 20 percentage points of 67 percent.
His highest job approval was in June of 2018, which was 45 percent.
By March of 2009, Obama had somehow come under attack for his so-call “anti-Catholic values.”
I wrote in a note on March 25, 2009, that Newt Gingrich had made that claim after the new president had been invited to give the commencement address at Notre Dame.
Perspective!
I wrote a note below Gingrich’s statement that indicated that he had little room to talk about another person’s “Catholic values.”
First, he wouldn’t even become a Catholic until four days after I wrote that note (on March 29, 2009).
Second, Gingrich, himself, had quite a colorful track record in the “Catholic — or any other religion’s — value’s” department.
He was on his third marriage.
That’s not a scandal.
But he divorced his first wife, Jackie, while she was recovering from cancer surgery.
Besides, the potential presidential candidate was quoted as saying, “She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer.”
Six months after Gingrich’s divorce from his first wife was final, he married his second wife — Marianne.
In 1993, he started having an extramarital affair with — Calista — who would become his third wife.
Gingrich filed for divorce only a few months after his second wife was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
So, Mr. Gingrich probably should remain mum when it comes to discussing anybody’s Catholic values.
Perspective.
I found one note that I wrote in May of 2009, which seems mighty peculiar today.
The Republican governor of Texas was hinting that Texas could secede from the Union.
That governor’s name was Rick Perry.
To put Perry’s hint about secession into the proper perspective, that wasn’t his oddest public pronouncement.
He claimed, during a presidential debate in November of 2011, that he would abolish three agencies of government.
After forcefully blurting out the first two agencies (the Departments of Commerce and Education), he forgot the third.
He had to be reminded that he wanted to get abolish the Environmental Protection Agency.
I found a note dated May 3, 2009, that the outspoken Republican member of the U.S. from Minnesota — Michele Bachmann — had hatched a conspiracy out of thin air.
“I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s when the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama. I just say it’s an interesting coincidence,” she said.
That’s a complete falsehood.
There have been two swine flu outbreaks. And they were both during Republican (Ronald Reagan’s and Gerald Ford’s) administrations.
Perspective.
It seems that swine flu ceased to be a national political issue with Bachmann’s statement.
In 2009, there was that devastating terror attack at Ft. Hood.
There was some opportunistic bellyaching among Republicans that President Obama wouldn’t call it a “terror attack.”
That led to former White House press secretary Dana Perino to make an astonishing statement.
“We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term,” she bragged on Fox News.
PERSPECTIVE!
Where was she on September 11, 2001?
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.