Month: June 2002

Bush-Giuliani: Is That The Ticket?

As if he needed it, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush scored big recently with the re-election backing of Rudy Giuliani. The former New York City mayor and Bush appeared together at the Florida Professional Firefighters convention in Altamonte Springs and later at a $1,000-per-person GOP fundraiser in Orlando.

At the convention Bush basked in the reflected superstar status of Giuliani and picked up the endorsement of the Florida Professional Firefighters union. He also landed a boffo future TV spot; the Bush campaign had a camera crew in tow for the twosome.

But for all those either savoring or cringing over the joined-hands Bush-Giuliani wirephoto, here’s more to reflect upon. Jeb obviously isn’t the only Bush to have Giuliani’s blessing.

Superimpose George W. for Jeb and you may have the presidential ticket for 2004. Not only does the GOP obviously want to pull out all stops for the re-election of President Bush, but it wants to be positioned in 2008 to hold on to the White House.

Vice President Dick Cheney has a pacemaker and no charisma. He’s also from Wyoming, a state sans electoral clout. He won’t be the GOP standard-bearer in ’08 under any scenario. So why not a Bush-Giuliani ticket in ’04?

R(est) I(n) P(rofit) Obit

R IP: No disrespect intended, but the appropriately lengthy obit of H.K. Wallace, the self-made millionaire co-founder of Lazydays RV SuperCenter, read like an infomercial.

That Lazydays is the world’s largest RV dealership was mentioned more than once. Also prominently noted were sales figures — more than $600 million per year in recreational vehicles. Even RV bragging rights for being “the number one distributor for each of the manufactures it represents” were included.

Film List Fit For A King (Kong)

Yes, it’s another one of those American Film Institute’s lists of “greatest movies” sure to prompt reveries of nostalgia and fits of disagreement. In the case of “the 100 greatest love stories of all time,” there is, of course, plenty of both.

I mean who can quibble with “Casablanca” topping the list? Rick and Ilsa now have more than Paris. The screen epic “Gone With The Wind,” second to nearly none, seems properly placed. From third, “West Side Story,” on up it gets appropriately debatable. Should (7) “Doctor Zhivago” come before or after (12) “My Fair Lady,” for example?

But “King Kong” at 23? Even if it is the original (1933). Even though Faye Ray was a vulnerable babe. C’mon.

Ahead of (41) “Funny Girl,” (50) Shakespeare in Love,” (52) “The Graduate,” (56) “The English Patient” and (61) “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”? And barely behind (20) “From Here To Eternity” and (22) “On Golden Pond,” which are incongruously sandwiched between (21) “Pretty Woman.”

I mean if you’re that enamored of the hackneyed beauty-and-the-beast theme, there’s always, well, (34) “Beauty and the Beast.”

Will Times Cave In To NAACP Demand?

So that megaphone for diversity, the St. Petersburg Times , has been called out by the NAACP. Someone finally noticed that there are more whites on the NAACP’s board of directors than there are blacks on the Times’. Actually there are no blacks at all on the Times’ board, and Andy Barnes, Times chairman and CEO, seems properly defensive.

Barnes, who selects the members of the board for Times Publishing Co., told Darryl Rouson, president of the St. Petersburg branch of the NAACP, that filling executive positions in the company with African-Americans is one of his highest priorities. “No one feels more frustrated about this than I,” said Barnes as quoted in a Times’ account.

Barnes, according to the Times, also told Rouson that he will work hard before he retires in 2004 to appoint an African-American to the board.

Still left unaddressed: a diversity-driven timetable for appointing a white, male conservative.

Pay-Per-Viewers Subsidize Sleaze and Get An Eyeful

It’s now official. America’s most prominent celebrity-rapist, Mike Tyson, was part of the highest-grossing pay-per-view event in history. Joint venture partners HBO and Showtime grossed $103 million on 8.1 million buys.

Once again, the pithy platitude of P.T. Barnum rings too true.

Sure, those 8 million buys represent a lot of suckers who weren’t about to distinguish a fight from a farce. Suckers who didn’t care or notice that Tyson was a shot fighter, an erstwhile bully turned flailing heavy bag. And that Lennox Lewis was bigger, better and — by default — brighter. But then, boxing has always had its cannon-fodder followers.

Unfortunately, those 8 million buys also represent millions of enablers. They made possible the American Scheme and likely some sleazy sequels. Tyson is nothing if not nasty, vulgar, menacing, conniving and criminal, with or without his meds. Combine this with eroded skills and a string of hateful, obscenity-laced press conferences and interviews and the result is an 8-figure payday, which may or may not be enough to get him out of debt.

Although Tyson was fighting for a championship belt, he should have been fitted for a societal straitjacket.

For all those pay-per-view voyeurs who made it happen: Thanks for subsidizing and perpetuating all that’s wrong in society and in human nature.

And to P.T. Barnum: apologies. Not even you could have envisioned this.

Bob Buckhorn: No Longer Waiting In The Wings

Bob Buckhorn. Love him or loathe him. But you can’t ignore him.

In politics, it’s often said, the name of the game is name recognition. For mayoral candidate Buckhorn, the name game is one he plays well. He’s been a fixture at City Hall for 15 years, starting in 1987 when he came on board as a 20-something special assistant to Mayor Sandy Freedman. Since 1995 he has been a media-magnet member of city council.

Last summer he was first to formally announce for a mayor’s race that was nearly two years out. He hit the ground running for office — with a pollster and consultant already on board and financial supporters identified. The idea was to be so daunting from the get-go as to intimidate or maybe co-opt some competition. The former Penn State lacrosse player was playing the other contact sport he loves.

These days he’s rolling out a slick, detailed “Blueprint” for the city showcasing his community commitments and plans for “transitioning Tampa to the new economy” via technology application. He would, among other things, appoint the city’s first Chief Technology Officer.

The 42-year-old Buckhorn doesn’t miss much. He remembers names, returns calls, follows up, works crowds, walks neighborhoods. When he is at his desk, it may be plunked down on someone’s lawn. Sure, it’s hokey, but it’s also a populist metaphor for neighborhood priorities.

He’s been notably outspoken on some high profile, galvanizing issues such as supporting the controversial city ordinance banning lap dances and trying to shut down Voyeur Dorm. As a result, some see him as a moralizing crusader. Others look to a quality-of-life champion. Still others view him as the consummate political opportunist. Many, of course, see what they want to see, but no one is blinded to the reality that few can top him for sheer visibility.

But knowing the Buckhorn name and recognizing the Buckhorn visage is not nearly the same thing as knowing Buckhorn. So says Buckhorn.

For example, there’s the perception that Buckhorn has been lusting for the mayor’s job since first setting foot in City Hall. That kind of calculated ambition is considered poor form by a lot of folks.

Buckhorn doesn’t deny that he’s been gearing up for this race since Sandy Freedman was a rookie mayor. He just disagrees that such a long-running aspiration is some sort of character flaw.

“What I’m preparing for is what amounts to being the CEO of a half-billion-dollar company with 4,500 employees,” explains Buckhorn. “Only in politics is it considered unseemly to hone your craft. This is a job you don’t just parachute into.

“For 15 years I have been working on making this city a better place,” he insists. “The biggest impact I can have is as mayor.”

While he has been an impact player for most of those 15 years, Buckhorn concedes another possible edge on the sword of name recognition.

“A lot of people only know me through TV,” he acknowledges. “It’s easy to characterize me based on one or two issues. Lap dancing obviously is one. In fact, it’s not even on the radar screen of my agenda. It’s simply one component, pure quality of life. But based on that, a lot of people probably thing I’m some right-wing Republican. I’m a Democrat.”

Actually a Democrat who sounds a lot like Rudy Giuliani cleaning up Times Square. Buckhorn also signs on to the “broken windows” approach to urban governance, saying he’d target “quality-of-life” issues such as code violations, dumping, vandalism and prostitution.

“You take care of the fundamentals first,” he states. “Sidewalks and potholes will take precedence over cutting ribbons,” he has said more than once.

He has pledged to appoint a Go Davis-like deputy mayor for neighborhoods and community empowerment.

He wants to “give everyone a seat at the table,” he’s fond of saying. “If we’re not relating to that single mother in College Hill, it doesn’t matter what happens in Culbreath Isles. We’re all in this together. Right now we’re more of a crowd than a community.”

While Buckhorn obviously hopes that populist message resonates in enough neighborhoods, he’s sensitive to charges that he’s not downtown friendly enough.

“The focal point of downtown must be the waterfront,” underscores Buckhorn. “It’s for tourists, conventioneers and us. It must be an 18-hour-a-day environment. Every weekend there has to be something. Be it jazz or blues or Irish music.

“I was a critic of using CIT (Community Investment Tax) money for the arts and the trolley,” recalls Buckhorn. “But that’s behind us. I will be committed to making them work. And Tampa can’t succeed without more housing downtown.”

Neither can Tampa succeed without asserting itself internationally and regionally — especially within the I-4 corridor, emphasizes Buckhorn.

“We are the Gateway to the Americas,” he says. “The mayor is the key political figure in it. He’s gonna have to go on the road like (Orlando Mayor) Glenda Hood gets out. That really helps. From a business standpoint, we ought to be cleaning their (Orlando) clock.

“The mayor of Tampa is the dominant political figure in the corridor,” says Buckhorn. “As I-4 goes, so goes Florida’s economy. It’s all part of competing globally.

“This city is on the verge of bustin’ loose,” assesses Buckhorn. “We have the tools and the potential. There’s no excuse not to be the dominant economic entity in the Southeast.”

One other thing, reminds Buckhorn. “I don’t mumble. You may not agree with me, but you always know where I stand.”Even when seated at a desk — on your neighbor’s lawn.

Foreign Policy Myopia: Potemkin Village People and the Miami Sound-Bite Machine

What President Bush knew about 9/11, and when Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton and Cynthia McKinney think he knew about it will remain forever problematic. The best any committee will come up with is that the F.B.I. would have been better off with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. in charge.

But if you are looking to find fault fairly with a president during time of war, look no further than Bush’s two most recent foreign policy sorties. The one to Moscow, the former capital of communism, and the one to Miami, the current centerpiece of Cold War nostalgia.

Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin recently co-signed a ballyhooed agreement to cut respective nuclear arsenals by two-thirds — or reducing the warheads on each side to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012. “This treaty will liquidate the legacy of the Cold War,” declared Bush.

As if. This is the Potemkin Village of nuclear treaties.

What it will do is take most of these warheads out of service — but not destroy them. And the Administration pushed for this provision. Many U.S. warheads will be put in storage like so many recalled Firestones stacked behind the showroom. Others will be kept to cannibalize or to test for reliability.

U.S. security, as we now know too well, is far from failsafe. This is unsettling.

But Russian security, even with U.S. help, is rife with scary scenarios. Erstwhile Soviet Union republics have already proven problematic when it comes to accounting for their old nukes.

As a result of this treaty, the world’s most pressing nuclear issue — stored nukes targeted by terrorists — goes unaddressed. This isn’t disarming. This is disturbing.

As to the president’s panderfest to Miami’s exile community, it gave political expedience a bad name. What’s really a concern in Latin America are Colombian anarchy and drugs, Venezuelan oil and Hugo Chavez and Caribbean islands and tax havens — not Cold War relics.

Bush made disingenuous demands for Castro to hold free elections, permit independent trade unions and the like and held out the julienne carrot of some humanitarian aid, scholarships and direct mail delivery. The mean-spirited, counterproductive economic embargo, as everyone knows, will live as long as Castro does.

While the President directed his Miami sound-bite machine at the rabidly anti-Castro crowd, he also spoke, in effect, to a broader audience. Here’s what most others heard:

“I care very much about the small, shrill group of self-appointed, Cuban-policy spokespersons in South Florida. So does Jeb. I encourage them to continue to use their veto power over U.S. foreign policy on all matters Cuban. Otto Reich and I are standing by. And we know they appreciated our efforts to sandbag Jimmy Carter.

“I obviously care so much less about what other Americans — former presidents to farmers — feel on the subject. Ditto for the rest of the world, including average Cubans. Incidentally, I obviously have no problems with the fact that — embargo notwithstanding — some of them receive subsidies from South Florida relatives totaling more than $800 million a year. Good; they need it.

“One other thing. Ironically, I hope Castro doesn’t take me up on the free elections goading. He’s the only leader most Cubans have ever known, and he would run against opposition easily characterized as traitorous, American stooges. He would also, of course, run against the U.S. — ‘Uncle Scapegoat.’ And Jimmy Carter’s return to validate the vote would be more than I could stomach.

“Viva La Habana Pequena.”

Campaign TrailMix

Charlie Miranda and Dick Greco go back a number of years, and it’s no secret that their relationship is strained by the dynamics of the mayoral race. Miranda is less than pleased that the mayor looks so favorably upon the candidacy of (read: discreetly helping) Frank Sanchez. By now, this was supposed to be a Miranda-Bob Buckhorn face-off.

Here’s Miranda’s take: “I’m p.o.ed. Just tell me. I know they’re helping. But that’s life. That’s politics.”

Fund-raising is also a fact of political life, and Miranda lags far behind both Buckhorn, who’s been waiting in the wings and preparing for years, and Sanchez, the return-of-the-native candidate with the boffo resume.

“I won’t be part of an auction,” says Miranda, who revels in his underdog role. “I could raise as much money as anyone else if I wanted to kiss up — and beg.” For the record, Miranda is aiming to raise $150,000. He’s about half way there.

Here’s the fund-raising take of Sanchez, who passed $250,000 a fortnight ago. “My least favorite campaign activity is fund-raising. But campaigns cost money. And opponents can get vicious. You need the wherewithal to rapidly respond.”

Sanchez’s response to those critical of his Tampa hiatus is unequivocally unapologetic. “That’s like saying what I’ve done with my life the last 20 years has no value,” he says. “Filling pot holes and attending council meetings is important, but not the only way to offer value to your community. My sense is that the people of Tampa feel the same way.”