Town Hall Outtakes

It’s not often that Tampa gets mentioned in the State of the Union Speech. But it happened recently as President Barack Obama was underscoring points about infrastructure and jobs and where he was heading the following day to make a ($1.25-billion) down payment on high-speed (Orlando-to-Tampa) rail. In the aftermath of his UT visit, these Obama outtakes:

·         “I’m excited. I’m going to come back down here and ride it.”

·         “It’s fast, smooth and you don’t have to take off your shoes.”

·         “Nobody should go broke because they chose to go to college.”

·         “I won’t walk away from you (on health-care reform).”

·         “I’ll be honest with you. Joe (Biden) and I are pretty smart politicians. We’ve been at this a while. The easiest way to keep your poll numbers high is to say nothin’ and do nothin’ that offends anybody. That’s true. That’s how you do it.”

·         “Change never comes without a fight.”

·         “We didn’t seek this office to push our problems off or take the easy road to the next election. We ran to solve problems. Problems that have been nagging at America for decades. We want to solve them for the next generation. To get tough stuff done.”

·         “‘If Obama loses, we win.’ That can’t be a platform. That’s not a mindset equal to these times. All of us should be rooting for each other.”

Conventional Wisdom?

            Here we go again.      

Another presidential convention beckons: summer of 2012. Once again Tampa, a two-time bridesmaid, is a finalist for a mega, high-profile Republican gathering that could bring in as many as 50,000 delegates, politicians and media. Once again this city’s “Mr. GOP,” fundraiser extraordinaire Al Austin, is chairing the bid committee. Tampa lost out to New York in 2004 and to Minneapolis-St. Paul in 2008. Salt Lake City and Phoenix are the competition this time.

So, what’s different now? The city is less amenity-challenged; downtown is more attractive. Less formidable competition. Zero city money will be involved. And Florida has a Republican governor who is on the case to deliver a major economic-impact event to his home, battleground state.

In fact, Gov. Charlie Crist has already cut a video touting Tampa to the Republican National Committee. Recall Crist’s Miami-enamored predecessor who, for all his Beltway connections, did nothing for Tampa in its previous bids. Thanks again, Jeb!

And who knows? If Tampa’s bid is successful, the governor’s role could even wind up on a “Crist For Senate” campaign brochure.  

The site-selection committee will be here soon, possibly in April. A final decision will be made by early summer. Well before hurricane season.

Quoteworthy

·         “I’m excited. I’m going to come back down here and ride it.” – President Barack Obama referencing the $1.25-billion federal grant to start building a high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando.

·         “To make it a true success, the regional mass transit is going to have to come through.”—state Sen. Charlie Justice, D-St. Petersburg.

·         “There are a lot of stupid voters out there who will fall prey to the Tampa Tribune and St. Pete Times.” – David Caton on how a new transit tax might pass in November.

·         “But the promise of high-speed rail can only come to fruition if the administration defies near-term political pressures for small upgrading projects and instead lays the foundation for a network that will revolutionize train service much like the interstate highway system transformed automobile travel 50 years ago.” – Mark Reutter, Progressive Policy Institute, and former editor of Railroad History.

·         “We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy (Haiti) was just exacerbated by one of them. –David Brooks, New York Times, paraphrasing Lawrence E. Harrison, author of “The Central Liberal Truth.”

·         “What we’re trying globally to recover from is a total lack of regulations.” – Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“I’m not sure where Glenn Beck’s future is. But as traditional journalism loses clout, new media formats will rise with new values.” – Dan Amundson, research director, Center for Media and Public Affairs.

Sports Shorts

·         How weird is it that as awful a season as the Bucs had this year, one of their three wins was against a team, the New Orleans Saints, that will be in Sunday’s Super Bowl? The NFL, of course, would delight in reminding everyone that even for demonstrably bad teams, the “any given Sunday” shibboleth still applies. And that “parity” is more than marketing boilerplate.

·         Anyone else tired of the overuse – and positive connotation – of “swagger” in sports? As in athletes or teams – University of Miami football comes readily to mind – who have regained their “swagger” and are so much better for it. What’s wrong with merely playing with the confidence that is a byproduct of being good and practicing hard? Doesn’t that speak volumes? Why condone, encourage — and celebrate — insolence, bluster and conceit? Or is the genie of boorishness beyond rebottling?

Racial Inanity Update

First it was Harry Reid – of “negro dialect” and “light-skinned” fame. We know what he meant by those archaic comments that clumsily referenced Barack Obama. White America, still the country’s largest voting bloc, wouldn’t have voted for a perceived racial hustler. Or a grievance candidate. A President Sharpton wasn’t happening. No kidding.

Now we have Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” hearing it from the usual suspects for his effort at praising the president’s “post-racial” persona in his State of the Union Speech. But amid his effusive riff, Matthews said, “I forgot he was black tonight for an hour…I mean it’s something we don’t even think about.”

We know what he meant. Critics need to get off the politically correct, nuance-and-parse beat. Those wanting to criticize Matthews can take legitimate issue with how he interrupts guests, waxes absolutely obsequious around his favorite civil-rights heroes and icons — and called Obama by his first name throughout the 2008 campaign.

Presidential Detail

Even members of the media who cover the White House continue to be impressed by President Obama’s command of details across a wide range of topics. It’s nothing a Teleprompter can help with. Witness the questions the president fielded at last week’s town hall meeting after his formal address at the University of Tampa. They ranged eclectically from the Middle East and gay issues to high-speed rail and small business loans.

But he could have used some staff help on one matter. He had no idea why a UT student was bedecked with colorful “New Orleans” style beads. No one had clued him in on Gasparilla, the city’s signature event that was just two days away.

It couldn’t hurt to have the president of the United States reinforce a “Yes We Can Be Responsible” message to would-be parade goers. A lot of them were there.

Gasparilla’s Learning Curve

Gasparilla 2010, both the children’s parade and the pirate invasion, have come and gone. What have we learned?

·         A family-oriented, lemonade-fueled crowd, however huge, can co-exist with an adjacent neighborhood. 

·         A serious, concerted effort to warn and rein in those responsible for mayhem in the past seemed effective. But “wet-zoning” is still a mixed message.

·         Half as many spectators; three times as many arrests. A “zero-tolerance” message has been sent.

·         Next year, provided it doesn’t rain, will demonstrate where we really are in the learning curve. May Ye Mystic Krude be banished for good.

State Of The Backdrop

Enough has already been said in judgment of the president’s State of the Union address last week. Media minds were already made up once they skimmed their advance copies. Political partisans didn’t have to wait that long. Much of the public, already predisposed to outsourcing its ideology, merely awaited their preferred spinmeisters – from the fawning to the furious.

For what it’s worth, I thought Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina nailed it. “He sort of took us to the principal’s office, didn’t he,” rhetorically asked Burr. Indeed, the president inveighed against obstructionism and all those who put party and pollsters before country.

The SOTU speech has long been Exhibit A for awkward political theater. It’s just worse now, because civil discourse is increasingly passé. While the president is talking national security, health-care reform or jobs stimulus, viewers are privy to an agitprop live audience – from quirky and sometimes rude body language to the rise and fallout from applause lines.

Saturday Night Live did a satire three days later, and it wasn’t effective. How do you satirize a parody? The president should be reporting to Congress, not lecturing it. That’s lamentable, not funny.

But while the dynamics of a SOTU address aren’t likely to change, there is something that can be altered. How about re-arranging some of the furniture?

How about re-locating the vice president and the speaker of the house so that they don’t constitute an up-close-and-distracting backdrop to the president during his speech?  And it’s not just the nodding, Cheshire cat-grinning Joe Biden and the human blink-a-thon, Nancy Pelosi. Same would have gone for the jumping-jack routines of Dick Cheney and Denny Hastert, Al Gore and Newt Gingrich or even Gerald Ford and Carl Albert.

We’ve been in this medium-is-the-message era for a while now. We know what works. It’s not fair to frame the speaker — let alone the president of the United States addressing all Americans — in such a fashion.

The cut-away shots to posturing pols — or even a naysaying Supreme Court justice — are TV staples. That’s a given for everybody but C-Span. Even though our politics are regrettably divisive, let’s at least give the president our undivided attention.

The San Antonio Rays?

This much we should all be able to agree on. The Tampa Bay Rays should remain here. And by “here” we mean Tampa Bay. And by “Tampa Bay” we mean the best possible place in this multi-county, metro market of 3.2 million residents. The best possible place for a viable stadium in this asymmetrical market with demographic sprawl and no mass transit (yet).     

Would that common sense and enlightened self-interest were enough. The most modest estimate of the Ray’s economic impact on this area is in excess of $130 million annually. And on a more visceral level, how cool was it that the hometown Rays made it to the World Series in 2008?

Not that we needed reminding, but the ABC Coalition, the Pinellas-skewed committee of savvy business leaders charged by former St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker to assesses the Rays’ stadium status, formally said downtown St. Pete won’t do. An ill-suited cat-walk house located on the market’s western fringe has no big league future. Even though the Rays have contractual obligations to play at Tropicana Field through the 2026 season.

No one with a credible opinion, however, believes that will happen. With a competitive team and a well-regarded organization, the Rays ranked 23rd of 30 Major League Baseball franchises in attendance last year. Big marquee series with the defending champion Philadelphia Phillies and perennially contending Boston Red Sox, for example, averaged less than 20,000.

There are a number of factors – dearth of corporate headquarters, surfeit of lifestyle options in the summer and relocatees’ competing allegiances – that are Tampa Bay reality and ongoing challenges. But an obsolete, misplaced stadium can’t be one of them. Not for a regional franchise.

That’s what ABC, after 18 months of study, duly noted. Moreover, it highlighted the three best Trop alternatives, two of which – West Shore and downtown – are in Tampa. Proximity to population base and better demographics had everything to do with it. That, however, was not a finding that met favor with St. Petersburg officials.

But they more than simply disagreed. Neither City Council nor new Mayor Bill Foster – seemingly channeling former candidate Kathleen “Honor the Lease” Ford – were even willing to listen to an ABC presentation.

In effect, they are unwilling to listen to reason. Before 2027 rolls around, the Rays will be long gone from the Trop. That’s a given. The operative question is: will they be the Gateway-based Tampa Bay Rays, the Tampa-based Tampa Bay Rays or the San Antonio or Portland Rays?

The provincial, counterproductive, head-in-the-sand response by St. Pete officials is disturbing. Somebody in authority over there needs to take one for Team Tampa Bay. If parochialism wins, the region loses. And the Rays are out of here.

Parade, Park Celebrate Family

It was a good week for Tampa.

First the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development notified the city that it would be getting $38 million in stimulus money – most of it for the Encore project. Encore is a potentially catalytic, public-private venture that will redevelop the former Central Park Village, 28 acres between downtown and Ybor City.  

Then word spread that President Obama and Vice President Biden would be holding a town hall meeting at the University of Tampa this week. That, of course, generated a major morale buzz about the prospect of Florida getting serious dollars for a high-speed rail line from Orlando to Tampa.

Last Saturday, it was Tampa’s ever-burgeoning, increasingly popular Children’s Gasparilla Parade. An estimated 200,000 were in attendance. The following day: the official debut of the much-anticipated Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park in downtown.

Signature Success

For those of us all too familiar with the street party from hell that the adult version of Gasparilla has been devolving into, the Children’s Parade is a welcome reminder of what we have that is uniquely Tampa. It is a special, signature fun time.

No longer is the Children’s Parade a token gathering of parents and kids. Now it is a really big deal with some 100 floats and more than 50 participating krewes. Plus marching bands and dance squads. It even comes with its own air show and fireworks extravaganza.

But most importantly, it comes with spectators on hand for all the right reasons. It is family oriented – black, white, brown; African-American, Anglo, Hispanic. It is vintage Tampa. Chi-chi corporate tents don’t crowd out the hoi polloi. Kids on the shoulders of dads. Little ones in strollers and tykes – not tankards – in wagons. “Wet Zones” feature lemonade. Port-o-let queues are orderly and, well, sober.

This is not the Bud Blight crowd. Beads are bestowed without breasts being bared. There is no need for St. John’s to open its “Safe House.” It’s a parade without arrests – and a celebration of Tampa and its families. It’s not an invasion of punks and drunks.

This Saturday, of course, will be the adult version. But it’s also the debut of “zero tolerance” for those who can’t abide by civilizational norms. “Responsibility is the Key” is the official theme. We’re hopeful; a lot of commendable pre-planning has occurred. There’s ample precedent that a mega signature event need not be a rite of pissage. We were just reminded that those arriving for a huge family-friendly parade know how to enjoy themselves without quality-of-life tradeoffs.

Tampa’s Got “There”

For the longest time, OK forever, Tampa hasn’t had a bona fide, designated gathering spot. To celebrate. To rally. To vent. To enjoy. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, there was no “there there” in Tampa. Downtown was public square-challenged.

Now there’s Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park. It’s more than a postcard pretty, $43-million, scenic landmark.

It’s eight acres of greenery and interactive fountains and features a playground, a dog run, restrooms, a concert stage, art displays, a boat dock  – and a construction trailer where a new restaurant will be built. It’s the gateway to and frontage for two art museums, and it has revamped and revitalized a sizable chunk of the Riverwalk.

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio seemed more than perky and positive, as is her unflappable wont, at the ribbon-cutting. She was emotional and viscerally proud.

“It taught me the importance of perseverance,” she said. “Progress only happens incrementally. You have to give a vision time.

“In the worst of times, we have built the best of assets,” she added. “This city never folds. Our mindset is growth and investment. …This is a beautiful day for our city.”

Iorio reminded the diverse crowd, which included families, public officials, civic activists and even former Mayor Bill Poe, that “This belongs to you. Downtown is everybody’s neighborhood. As we improve the city of Tampa, we improve it for everybody. This is a drawing card for the entire region.”

The regional theme was well underscored by all the speakers. From New Tampa to South Tampa, from SkyPoint to Seminole Heights: Curtis Hixon would be everybody’s public square, everybody’s front lawn. The inclusiveness was palpable, even with a notable — and understandable — exception.

“You can throw a football, kick a soccer ball!” proclaimed Iorio. “But, no, you can’t skateboard. No.”

Good.

And by the way, have you noticed the Poe Garage lately? The configuring of the contemporary museum tandem actually complements it. Artfully done.