Original Face

Huh, what's it mean?

It's New Year's Eve.  Soon the ball in New York's Times Square will drop and we will all sing 'Auld Lang Syne."  The Scottish poet, Robert Burns, is said to have authored it but he said that he just remembered a Highland folk song and wrote it down.  Even when it is translated into the modern idiom, it doesn't make much sense as a song, let alone the song that (because of the band leader Guy Lombardo) has become the standard for ushering out the old and in with the new.

But that's ok.  In fact, it may be just the thing to sing on New Year's.

Like most of what we do for the rest of the year, it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense but somehow it seems to fit.  We muddle along, singing a tune to which we hardly know the words and haven't the foggiest notion of its meaning.  Yet we do it, and not too badly.

Happy new year.  May it be a damn sight better than the last.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
    And never brought to mind?
    Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
    And auld lang syne?    

  Chorus:
           For auld lang syne, my dear,
           For auld lang syne.
           We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
           For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne

We twa hae run about the braes
    And pou'd the gowans fine.
    We've wandered mony a weary foot,
    Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae sported i' the burn,
    From morning sun till dine,
    But seas between us braid hae roared
    Sin' auld lang syne.

And ther's a hand, my trusty friend,
    And gie's a hand o' thine;
    We'll tak' a right good willie-waught,,
    For auld lang syne.

Premature surge

I have a feeling that John McCain's surge is just a few days too early.  As the Huckabee balloon has begun to shrivel under the weight of a number of mis-statements as well as an onslaught of negative ads, John McCain, long given up for dead as a candidate, has emerged as the latest "new" front-runner.  Unfortunately for McCain, it comes just a few days too early.

The Romney people have begun to saturate the airways with an ad buy reminding folks why his GOP credentials are suspect.  From opposing tax cuts (numerous times) to offering permanent residency to any and all undocumented aliens, McCain is out of the mainstream for Republican voters.  While this may not matter as much in New Hampshire where independents can pick up any party's primary ballot, it will have an effect in South Carolina and other "closed" primary states.

Still, McCain's best chance for victory is that the rest of the field hasn't been able to close the deal.  His best chance for defeat will be if his famous short-fuse is ignited by the negative ads and he blows up again.  Which of these two scenarios would you bet on?  I would lay off this wager.  Right now, it's a push.

Come on, Mike, you know you wanna...

There may be a belated Christmas present, or Hanukkah present, for the GOP coming soon.  Indications from City Hall are that the Mayor of New York is inching toward a February announcement of an independent run for the White House.  Baptists like Huckabee and McCain, Mormons like Romney and Catholics like Giuliani should join an ecumenical Republican prayer service asking that the Almighty make it so.  Because if he does, the chances for a GOP victory in the fall skyrocket.

Although Bloomberg fashions himself a non partisan technocrat his positions are classic big-state liberalism of the Great Society variety.  From nanny state decrees on fats and smoking to raising taxes, Bloomberg will only appeal to those voters who otherwise would pull a Democratic lever.  Bloomberg's commitment to spend $500 million of his own money if he decides to run will ensure that his potential to dilute the Democrat vote will be much greater than Ralph Nader could ever have hoped to accomplish.

It also appears that Chuck Hagel, the outgoing Nebraska senator who is fiercely anti-war, will be his running mate.  While the mainstream press will view this as a play for Republican voters, little could be further from the truth.  Hagel has about as much standing in the Party as Lincoln Caffee.  Hagel couldn't have survived a primary challenge for re-election which is the real reason for his decision not to seek an additional term.  The GOP voters are particularly venomous to those they view as apostates, and Hagel is presently apostate number one.

It would make an interesting race in the fall if Giuliani, Clinton and Bloomberg are all running.  What's a Red Sox fan to do in such a situation?

If you know what is going on, you haven't been paying attention

The Iowa primary is just around the corner and all of the pundits and political wags I know and respect are unanimous.  They haven't got a clue what is going to happen in either party. The polls have been all over the map, especially on the Democratic side, with surveys taken approximately the same time having wildly differing results.  To make predicting even more difficult, Iowa is a caucus state, not a primary, and all of these polls can only guess as to who amongst their respondents are actually going to show up and stay the evening to cast a ballot.

That all being said there are a couple of things that can be gleaned.  Most prominently, Romney, for spending an exorbitant amount of money, may not win Iowa.  If he fails there and the McCain phenomenon rolls over him in New Hampshire, his campaign strategy will be in shreds.  Huckabee needs a victory in Iowa to keep his momentum.  Establishment Republicans (Rush, Novak and the Journal's editorial writers) have been blasting away at him on one side while Romney has been smearing him with millions of dollars worth of direct mail and broadcast ads on the other.  It is impressive that this national rookie is still standing upright but these shots have had some effect.  How much is not yet known, especially with evangelical voters in a caucus state.

Clinton. despite Hubby Bill's attempts to lower expectations, will be wounded if she loses Iowa.  Her campaign is predicated upon the inevitability factor.  Any showing of vulnerability will make Clinton detractors emboldened.  Edwards needs to at least come in a "strong" third.  Given his populist rhetoric and left leanings of Iowa Democratic caucus goers, he has a decent chance of pulling it off.  However, if Obama comes in third, that could be a fatal blow.

It seems as if the Bhutto assassination is not having much of a domestic political impact.  Pakistan's political fragility and both the Taliban and Al Qaida's strongholds have been taken for granted by the American public.  So long as Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is secure, Pakistan's problems will not rise into our political debate.  Likewise, the success of the Surge is turning this election back to the usual economic concerns of growth and taxes rather than foreign policy, particularly if Bush announces as is expected in the State of the Union of a significant draw down of American forces in the region.

But if any prognosticators tell you how this will all come out...they are lying...either to you or themselves.  So you'll just have to stay tuned.

I'm baaaacck

I took a couple of days off for the Christmas holiday.  Did ya miss me?  Anyway, I'm back on patrol.  It's primary time so lots to talk about and with which to have fun.  So load up and take a seat. 

And a child shall lead them

Perhaps my favorite Christmas memory is from 1968.  Just before my family left for midnight mass, we like most of America sat transfixed by our televisions as the astronauts of Apollo 8 sent back the first pictures of Earth whilst circling the Moon.  Aside from the amazing image on our screen--still 19 inch and black & white--we heard them read the opening verses of the Gospel of John.

Walking a few minutes later to our car for the ride to church, I looked up and saw the full moon in a crystal clear sky.  It never looked so close as it did that night.  I never felt so a part of the universe and so certain of the fact that it all "made sense."  It is a feeling that has never faded.

I pray that the peace of the Christ Child come upon you this Christmas and remain with you forever.

A Christmas faith

Many of the branches of Christianity have a holiday that seems to resonate in a particular way for that part of the Church.  For Orthodoxy it is Easter, for Lutheranism, Good Friday is especially precious and Roman Catholicism's sacramentality is expressed on Maundy Thursday.  Anglicanism has long seen itself as a Christmas faith, particularly sensitive to the theology of transcendence becoming immanence. 

I have written before that Anglicanism is a faith of poetic sensibility.  Its greatest thinkers have been poets who attempt to express the ineffable through verse rather than prose.  Thus who better to read on this eve of Christmas Eve than the present Archbishop, Rowan Williams.  His poem "Advent Calendar" captures well the season, in an most Anglican way.

He will come like last fall's leaf fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

Cool Yule

Tonight, actually at 1 am Saturday morning, it is the Winter solstice.  Every culture has its celebrations for the return of the sun and the lengthening of the days.  In Boston, we are not the exception.  Every year a troupe of singers, musicians, dancers and actors put on a play illustrating one of these traditional festivals.  The "Revels" always ends with the reciting of the poem of Susan Cooper, The Shortest Day.

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!    

             

Almost Donne

Christmas is almost here.  Time to get ourselves ready for the feast to come by spending a little time on the enormity of the Incarnation.  As usual, prose is wholly inadequate to express the Mystery.  It is time for a little more John Donne.  This is the second part of his poem La Corona.

Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That all, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison in thy womb; and though he there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He’will wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy son and brother,
Whom thou conceiv’st, conceived; yea, thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker and thy Father’s mother,
Thou’hast light in dark; and shut’st in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.

This'll Sway 'em in New Hampshire

What does the Manchester Union-Leader and the Boston Globe have in common?  No, this is not a trick question.  Give up?  Both of them have endorsed John McCain in the New Hampshire primary. 

Now I can understand the Globe.  McCain is the sort of Republican which liberal Democrats love.  He bashes his party and in the end can get beaten like a rented mule.  But the Union-Leader? Even though McCain's position papers show him as a conservative, and far more so than someone like Rudy Giuliani, his temperament is so impaired as to make him a danger in the White House.  What is more, he is not the only person who holds or espouses (because I think that like Don Imus, McCain cares more about being the darling of the journalistic elite than maintaining his policy positions) Republican principles.  Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee are consistent conservatives (Romney's principles are written is pencil and change with the office he seeks) who would easily fit under the banner of the Union-Leader's editorial stances. 

The political landscape's tectonic shifting as well should have dictated prudence on the New Hampshire paper's part as well.  The Union-Leader should have held off its endorsement until it saw if the Huckabee boom is a boomlet or a lift-off.

Huckabee's economic populism has been resonating far better than the Wall Street positions of Mitt Romney or Giuliani in the Hawkeye State.  McCain's operations and fundraising have been trashed since last summer and there is little evidence that either paid media or news coverage has re-built his position as a major candidate. In fact, he has the stench of yesterday's fish.  If Huckabee wins Iowa by a convincing margin (which seems increasingly likely), the Romney support in his neighboring state (of course that depends if you consider Massachusetts to be his home state rather than Michigan or Utah) which has always been rice-paper thin, will be torn asunder making the first primary an open contest in which Huckabee's momentum and charisma could very well be dispositive.

And the fact the Boston Globe can't stand him won't hurt him one bit.