* Alex Sink is on the proper side of the issues. Would that she were governor. Would that she becomes C.W. Bill Young’s successor. Would that she had David Jolly’s smooth, on-camera presence.
* We know how the endorsement game goes, so it’s no surprise that Marco Rubio has endorsed David Jolly, who keeps tacking to the right of the late Congressman Young. But Jolly’s response to Rubio’s support was beyond enthusiastic gratitude. “It’s the highest honor of my life to have your endorsement,” gushed Jolly. Actually, it may be beyond helpful in that classic swing district.
* Many of us wax concerned over younger generations not “reading the minutes of previous meetings”–not knowing enough history. We’re also aware that current events can’t be outsourced to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. You have to know what satirists are satirizing.
That’s the context for the insights of Zach Messitte, the president of Ripon (Wisconsin) College, who still teaches a course he calls “American Foreign Policy and the Movies.” He notes the increasing value within the hype, excess and mass appeal of movies such as “12 Years a Slave,” “American Hustle,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Captain Phillips,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Zero Dark Thirty” and even “Apocalypse Now.” And he puts a big onus on the movie industry to do more than just make money.
“As long-form journalism retreats and the attention span for international news shrinks, the movies are a critical rough draft of history that affects higher education,” he underscores. “It is imperative that Hollywood’s best pictures continue to get these stories right, because they lay the groundwork for the next generation’s understanding of the world… .”
Oliver Stone would agree.
* The most recent (Nov. 18-20, 2013) CNN/ORC poll showed John F. Kennedy topping the approval list for the last nine former presidents. Finishing closest to Kennedy (90 percent) were Ronald Reagan (78) and Bill Clinton (74). Then came Gerald Ford (67), George H.W. Bush (62), Jimmy Carter (60), Lyndon B. Johnson (55), George W. Bush (42) and Richard Nixon (31).
No surprise that JFK was first. For all of his risky behaviors and modest domestic record, his Cuban Missile stand-down of his own hardliners, who outnumbered him and included LBJ, transcends all. The world, not just the U.S., still owes him.
Reagan was more than the “amiable dunce” of Clark Clifford’s assessment, but not that much more. He was the fortuitous beneficiary of a key global partner: Mikhail Gorbachev.
Monica Lewinsky, impeachment procedures and the definition of “is” cost Clinton points and offsets the black-ink economy of the late 1990s. The unelected, undistinguished Ford is a surprising fourth. Imagine if he hadn’t pardoned Nixon.
Bush Sr., who actually presided over the end of the Cold War, arguably deserves better than a “read my lips” legacy. Jimmy Carter will never escape the onerous trifecta of micromanager, stagflation and Tehran hostages. Vietnam–the deaths, wounds and foreign-policy precedent–more than cancels out Johnson’s political acumen that resulted in Great Society programs.
I’d swap the places of “W” and Nixon. I’ll take the geopolitically-savvy conniver over the clueless guy answering to Dick Cheney.
* Speaking of polls, by now we’ve all seen the Atlantic Council’s well-publicized survey showing that a majority of Americans and more than 60 percent of Floridians now favor normalizing relations with Cuba. Other majorities for normalizing: Hispanics and residents of Miami-Dade County. And the chairman of the nonpartisan Atlantic Council board of directors: Jon Huntsman, the moderate Republican who was a 2012 GOP presidential candidate.
* Look who’s back in the news: George Zimmerman. No, not for brandishing a weapon or cuffing a girlfriend. But sitting for a self-serving interview with the Spanish-language television network Univision. The major takeaways: He struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder; he never realized Trayvon Martin was unarmed; he owes his lawyers $2.5 million; he blames the media for making him notorious; he wears a bullet-proof vest; he lives off his parents; and he would like to go back to school to study, uh, law.
And one other thing: He expresses no regrets about the shooting. None. That’s unconscionably insensitive–and Stand Your Ground outrage-inducing all over again. It’s also really dumb–in any language.