A Season of Loss

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"To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven."

Ecclesiastes 3:1

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The last couple of years have amounted to one long season of loss. Frankly, it's wearing me down.

I've been through this kind of thing before, although not quite as extensively as lately. It's been getting to the point where I'm almost hesitant to check my e–mail for fear there will be word that someone else I know has died.

Let me backtrack a little here. I was raised in the South.

And, if you were raised in the South, there are times when — regardless of what your personal religious beliefs may be — a quotation from the Bible is the only appropriate answer to the complicated question of why bad things happen to good people.

For me today, the above quote from Ecclesiastes — which was more popularly known when I was a boy as a line from a song by the Byrds — is the one that keeps coming to mind.

Yesterday, I received an e–mail from one of my high school classmates reporting that the son of another classmate had been killed in a car accident.

I have written of this classmate before, most recently last February after his father, a man known as "Justice Jim" Johnson, committed suicide.

Justice Jim, as I mentioned at that time, was something of a notorious segregationist politician when I was a child. He also lived just down the road from my family, and I spent many afternoons playing with his twin sons, who were my age.

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I found this undated photo of David's twin brother
Danny (left) with their father, Justice Jim (right),
and Danny's daughter at some sort of school dinner.

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Few people outside my own family have known me as long as David Johnson and his twin brother, Danny. When their father killed himself about five months ago, I found myself frequently thinking about my childhood and pondering the bizarre twists and turns of life — the randomness of it all.

I reflected a great deal on myself as a child, and I pondered what I might tell that child if I could go back in time and talk to him. But the well was dry. What could I tell him? I know I had no idea what the future held. Not even a clue. No one does, really, even those whose lives seem to have been pre–ordained. What wisdom would I share with him that might make his life easier?

I had a general idea of what I wanted to do, of course, what I wanted to study in college and all that. But, in spite of my plans and expectations, life has, at times, taken me in totally unexpected directions. It is at such times, I suppose, that I am reminded of how little I really do control.

"Life is what happens to you," said John Lennon, "while you're busy making other plans."

That's OK, I guess. I'm a journalist, by training, experience and inclination, and it can be difficult for a journalist to be in the dark, to not know all the facts, but journalists learn to live with imperfections like that. However, in the last couple of years, it seems like darn near everything is out of control. And there are many times when that is a little too imperfect for me.

I don't know the details of the accident that took the life of David's son, but to be 21 years old and (presumably) healthy and then to die in a car accident seems — to me, anyway — to be perhaps the most random way a person could die.

And the pain of losing your father and your child within a matter of months is something I cannot begin to imagine.

I've never been a fan of Garth Brooks, but he might be on to something when he sings that our lives are better left to chance.

Is there anything good to be found in this? I'd like to think so — for my friend's sake — and for my own peace of mind as well.

As I say, I've experienced seasons of loss in my life, and the one through which I have been living lately often seems as if it will never end. Such seasons have come and gone. In short order, bad times have been followed by good times in the natural ebb and flow of the human existence.

But lately the bad times seem to last longer than they did, and the good times are fewer and farther between. Is that just a normal function of aging?

Or has it been worse in the last couple of years because everything else seems to be so screwed up? You know what I mean — the avalanche effect.

I don't know why the Ecclesiastes quotation keeps running through my mind — unless it is because of the dual message it offers. Yes, it acknowledges that time is short — that, in the words of another popular song, it's later than you think.

But, rather than urge readers to enjoy themselves, Ecclesiastes offers the assurance that there is an appointed time for everything. In hindsight, that time may seem very short, and you may be denied the satisfaction of seeing your goal(s) fulfilled. But if one has faith, it seems to me, one must believe that, in some way, every life — no matter how brief it may be — makes a contribution.

My faith isn't always as strong as I'd like it to be, but I would like to believe that.

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Historical Inevitability

When I was young, I remember my father telling me that America had survived as a nation because it always seemed to get the kind of leadership it needed when it was needed.

At the time, I guess it struck me as being his personal version of "Manifest Destiny" — i.e., it is America's destiny to get the kind of leadership it needs when it needs it.

I don't remember how old I was when he made this observation to me. I might have been in high school ... might have been in junior high. I don't remember if there was a particular crisis going on when he said that. Could have been anything, I suppose. There was always something in those days — Vietnam, civil rights, Watergate, oil embargoes, etc. — that seemed to be crying out for leadership that never really came.

I guess it's what George H.W. Bush called "the vision thing." (Personally, I was kind of relieved that he didn't call it "the vision thingy." That just didn't seem very presidential to me.)

And I wonder if that belief that my father expressed is a byproduct of living through the Great Depression and the inspiring presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. If that is so, then perhaps it goes beyond my father or even his circle of friends.

Perhaps that is what the majority of the people of my father's generation believe — that America is destined for greatness because great leaders will always emerge when they are needed. That was, after all, their experience in their formative years.

But that hasn't always been the experience of the people of my generation. And sometimes I wonder if the great leaders truly were as great as advertised or if they just looked great when they were compared to those who came before.

Abraham Lincoln, for example, is typically regarded as one of the greatest presidents, and he was preceded (and followed) by strings of presidents who are generally considered by historians to be among the worst in our history.

(I don't mean to suggest that Lincoln was not a great president. I believe that he was. But I also believe there was a certain amount of truth in a comedy bit on a David Frye album in the early 1970s, in which he presented a fictitious conversation between President Nixon and his party rival, Nelson Rockefeller, about how to derail the possible presidential candidacy of infamous party–switcher John Lindsay, the mayor of New York.

(The Nixon character, as I recall, fretted about how good Lindsay would look on television and how tough he would be to defeat in Nixon's campaign for re–election. Rockefeller reassuringly replied — in a reference to a notorious sanitation strike during Lindsay's administration that left mounds of trash piled up all over the city — that "anyone would look very good, in my opinion, standing next to all that garbage all the time.")

The three presidents who came before FDR — Harding, Coolidge and Hoover — ranked in the bottom one–third, according to a survey of scholars conducted by Siena College this year.

If you study the American presidency for any length of time, you're bound to come to the conclusion that we've had a heckuva lot more truly terrible presidencies than truly great ones.

Oddly enough, most of those truly terrible presidencies began with a certain amount of enthusiasm and optimism. With the exception of a few who became president after the previous president's death or resignation, most of the presidents who are today rated as terrible were chosen by the voters in a democratic election.

As ludicrous as it may seem today, people actually did vote for James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce and Warren Harding — and others who are not remembered favorably in the history books. And those people must have been nearly as enthusiastic about electing those presidents as they were when they elected Lincoln or the Roosevelts — or Barack Obama.

Well, regardless of how much enthusiasm accompanied the elections of America's presidents — both the truly great and the truly awful — it is virtually impossible to predict how an individual presidency will be regarded by historians before it has even begun.

However, a genuine historical inevitability (i.e., not a recent phenomenon) has arisen: Except for rare circumstances (which usually involve some sort of international crisis), midterm elections go against the party in power.

But it isn't always so inevitable. In Congressional Quarterly, contributing writer Stuart Rothenberg reminds readers that, until last summer, there was practically no talk among insiders in either party that suggested that Democrats would lose ground in 2010.

Early in Obama's presidency, Rothenberg writes, Democrats were encouraged by several factors ("Republican retirements, Democratic incumbency and financial advantages, and new Democratic opportunities") that indicated to them that, even if the traditional backlash against the party in power occurred, they could minimize their losses. And Republicans, while hopeful, were aware of the considerable damage that had been done to their "brand."

All of this assumed that events would follow a predictable pattern — which, of course, they almost never do.

Nearly 15 months ago, Rothenberg writes, "my newsletter ... noted that 'small Republican gains would seem the most likely outcome' of the midterms, adding that the House 'is not at risk in next year's elections.' "

Even though conditions were bordering on the horrific when Obama took office, there seemed to be a willingness on the part of the public to give him and his Democrats in Congress plenty of time. Polls seemed to confirm this. When he became president, Obama's approval ratings tended to be in the 60s. But those days ended by June of 2009. For the next several months, Obama's approval ratings mostly languished in the 50s, and they have been almost entirely in the 40s since the start of 2010.

"My point in resurrecting all these numbers and projections," says Rothenberg, "is that it was not always inevitable that Republicans would make large House gains, no matter what you may read and hear now."

And he's right about that. If you don't believe me, look it up.

Now, approval numbers in the 40s don't tend to make a president an asset on the campaign trail — but, historically, a president's party still can do reasonably well in a midterm election, as Rothenberg points out.

But that isn't a sure thing. Even FDR, who enjoyed an approval rating in the 50s at the time of the 1938 midterms and was the beneficiary of a wartime approval rating in the 70s during the 1942 midterm campaign, saw his party lose ground. It can be argued, though, that no other outcome really was possible. In 1938, Democrats held 75 of 96 Senate seats and 333 of 435 House seats; in 1942, they held 66 Senate seats and 267 House seats.

In hindsight, there was nowhere to go but down.

On the other hand, FDR's successor, Harry Truman, faced a different problem. His party had fewer seats to defend in both houses of Congress, but Truman's approval rating fell below 50 in the late spring of 1946 and continued to decline, settling in the mid–30s by Election Day. Truman's Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the stock market crashed in 1929.

The Democrats regained control of Congress in 1948, when Truman pulled off his famed "upset" triumph in his campaign for re–election, and he even enjoyed a brief surge in popularity early in 1949. But he dropped below 50% for good more than a year before the 1950 midterms and, by the time Americans went to the polls in November 1950, Truman's approval rating was in the upper 30s or low 40s. His party retained control of both chambers but lost six Senate seats and 29 House seats.

As the years have gone by, the lesson appears to be this: Once a president slips below that 50% approval level, it seems to be increasingly difficult for his fortunes — and, by extension, his party's fortunes — to bounce back, particularly in this era of 24–hour cable news.

To modern observers, George W. Bush is the most flagrant example of this, but it would be a mistake to blame it exclusively on the CNNs and the Fox Newses of the world. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson received the highest share of the popoular vote that a presidential candidate ever received, but after the summer of 1966, he seldom enjoyed approval ratings that exceeded 50 — and his party began a downward trajectory that continued through several election cycles.

For the most part, Bush's approval rating fell below 50% — permanently — after the Terri Schiavo episode in the spring of 2005. By the time that Democrats regained control of both chambers of Congress in November 2006, polls were reporting approval ratings in the 30s.

Obama's rating isn't as low as Bush's — but he had much farther to fall. And the wound that has been suffered by those who supported him two years ago and now feel, to varying degrees, betrayed by the gap between the expectations and the reality — a stubbornly high unemployment rate in spite of Obama's insistence (all evidence to the contrary) that he focuses on job creation every day; two wars that continue to rage on in spite of Obama's insistence during the campaign that he would bring them to an end; a three–month flow of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico that made Obama seem impotent — is deep.

Obama and his supporters are tumbling into a trap I have seen before. Some men — Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton come to mind — are successful in their campaigns for the presidency in part because they blame conditions on the other party, but that turns out to be a double–edged sword. No matter how long it took for the bad conditions to surface, voters expect immediate (or almost immediate) improvement.

In the absence of evidence of such improvement, Obama and the Democrats resort to reminding voters that they inherited this mess from the previous administration. When a president focuses on what he inherited rather than what he is doing about the problem, he loses the confidence of the voters.

"Actions, indeed, do have consequences," Rothenberg writes. "In this case, the combination of an aggressive Democratic agenda, a weak jobs recovery and a large deficit has created a political environment very different from the one 18 months ago."

Argue if you must that an increased deficit was a necessary evil to halt the economic erosion. Voters don't see much in the way of job gains — and that is the bang for their bucks that the voters are looking for.

In recent weeks, Rothenberg has written that:

• A total of 88 House seats (76 held by Democrats) are in play this year, and Republicans are projected to gain 28–33, but "it is important to note that considerably larger Republican gains in excess of 39 seats are quite possible."
  
  A gain of 40 seats would give the Republicans control of the House.


• Democrats, who currently control 57 seats plus two independents who generally vote with them, now look likely to lose five to eight seats in November.
  
  That's roughly what the projection has been for awhile, but the bad news for Democrats is that Senators Boxer, Feingold and Murray are only slight favorites for re–election.
  
  Voters clearly have doubts about the Republicans controlling the Senate, and Rothenberg concedes that "[t]he chances that the next Senate will have a Republican majority are not great, but even three months ago there were not enough Senate seats in play to imagine a Republican gain of 10 seats. Now there are, with 11 Democratic seats definitely competitive."

Rothenberg isn't the only political analyst who anticipates rough sledding for the Democrats this fall.

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, runs the Crystal Ball, which has been uncannily accurate in its projections over the years. Currently, the Crystal Ball expects Democrats to lose seven Senate seats and 32 House seats, narrowly retaining control of both chambers.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, who worried about the midterms earlier in the summer, seems to have had a change of heart and has said recently that he expects Democrats to hold Congress in the midterms.

Perhaps they will. But if they don't, Democrats should remember what Rothenberg says:

"It didn't have to be this way."

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Oklahoma's First Lady

I used to live in Oklahoma. It's an interesting place — not nearly as backward or one–dimensional as some folks seem to think but, at the same time, most assuredly right wing in some of its political views.

Oh, sure, Oklahoma may seem a little stagnant politically. It has voted Republican in presidential elections 14 of the last 15 times, and far too many Oklahomans seem to share the opinions of their senior senator, a political Neanderthal who was first elected to the Senate when I was living there — in a special election to choose the successor for David Boren, who had resigned to become president of the University of Oklahoma.

And women and minorities have not been too successful in statewide races.

It's possible, given the fact that so many Oklahomans are full– or part–blooded native Americans, that Oklahoma has elected someone with at least a partial native American ancestry as its governor or one of its senators.

But all of the people who have been governor or senator from Oklahoma have been indisputably male — and, although one black Oklahoma politician in recent memory (J.C. Watts) has risen to national prominence, most of the winners of statewide races in Oklahoma have been (apparently) Caucasian.

Well, Oklahoma voters are going to make history of a sort this November.

The state's lieutenant governor, Jari Askins, a Democrat, was nominated by her party this week to run for governor. She will be opposed by Rep. Mary Fallin, who was the first woman elected lieutenant governor.

Thus, the stage is set for Oklahoma to elect a woman governor for the first time in its nearly 103–year history.

A couple of weeks before Oklahoma Democrats and Republicans held their primaries, the Rothenberg Political Report was calling the race to replace term–limited Democratic Gov. Brad Henry "safe" for the Republican nominee.

An Oklahoma Poll released shortly before the primaries seemed to support that conclusion, with Fallin leading Askins by six percentage points — but that finding was much closer than the double–digit advantages previous polls this year have shown.

Of course, that Oklahoma Poll also showed Askins trailing her primary opponent by 16 percentage points. But she pulled off an upset, winning by less than 1,500 votes, for which she has given considerable credit to former Oklahoma Sooners and Dallas Cowboys coach Barry Switzer.

Switzer endorsed Askins last week — and, clearly, one should never underestimate the power of a Sooner coach to influence Oklahoma politics. Switzer, after all, endorsed Henry in 2002 — and helped propel him to the first of two gubernatorial victories.

I think Rothenberg probably is right. This is really looking like a Republican year nationally, and, in Oklahoma, that makes this election Fallin's to lose — but, with Switzer on her side, I wouldn't underestimate Askins in this campaign.

Sometimes, of course, elections are largely symbolic, demonstrating in a way that virtually nothing else can how we have either grown or regressed as a people.

I've always felt, for example, that the 1960 election was symbolic with a Catholic winning the presidency. In the historical context, the outcome was about America's willingness as a predominantly Protestant nation to trust a Catholic to be its leader. It was on a lesser level, really, that the battle between the nominees, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, was waged.

Forty–eight years later, with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton battling for the Democratic presidential nomination, it was unavoidable that their duel would be regarded in the history books as symbolic — and then, when Obama won the presidency, the entire election earned, at the very least, recognition for its symbolic value.

The stakes aren't nearly so high in Oklahoma this year, but, even though there has been no discernible "plot" to deny women positions of authority there, circumstances have conspired to prevent women from governing the state — even though women have served as lieutenant governor for the last 15 years and could have become governor at any time if the incumbent had died or resigned.

This is an opportunity for Oklahoma to tear down that wall.

In 2010, nearly one–fifth of the U.S. Senate seats are held by women. If the current Supreme Court nominee is approved, one–third of the members of the highest court in the land (memorably referred to as "the Brethren" in Bob Woodward's 1979 book on the Court) will be women.

And Clinton, who came up short in her quest for the nomination, has risen to unexpected heights as the nation's secretary of state.

Having a woman in high office is not a new thing for most Americans. And Oklahoma will belatedly join that club in November.

Welcome to the 21st century.

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There Must Be a Better Way

To this point, I have avoided jumping in to the Shirley Sherrod business.

But an issue has been raised that I simply must address.

Let me start by saying that, for 30 years, ever since its debut when I was a journalism student at the University of Arkansas, I have admired what Ted Turner wanted to do and sought to do when he created Cable News Network.

It isn't an easy task, providing people with up–to–the–second information about news as it develops, but CNN has done an admirable job of trying to tell people about the events that have shaped their world and altered their lives in the last three decades.

I realize that CNN has many competitors today — not just on cable but on the internet as well — and the pressure to be the first to report something is intense. CNN, it seems to me, has made a valiant effort to maintain high journalistic standards, and that isn't always an easy thing to do.

Sometimes CNN has had to sacrifice speed for accuracy, which is a difficult but often necessary choice to make.

A year ago, in fact, in the media frenzy surrounding Michael Jackson's death, nearly every cable and online media outlet — except for CNN — reported by mid–afternoon that Jackson had died. Why didn't CNN go ahead and report what we know now to be true? Because CNN, unlike all the other outlets, was waiting for someone in authority at the hospital to confirm the news.

All the other outlets were going with the opinions of people who may have been in a position to observe Jackson or to report an absence of vital signs — like, for example, the emergency response folks who responded to the 9–1–1 call and took Jackson to the hospital — but they did not have the legal authority to pronounce someone dead.

Once CNN had that confirmation, it joined the chorus.

As the Shirley Sherrod saga has unfolded in recent days, though, it seems that CNN — which recently announced that it was scrapping the Associated Press as a content provider, in part as a money–saving strategy and in part because of CNN's desire to establish its own brand in the newsgathering business — has yielded to the pressure, and the standards I always admired in CNN seem to have taken a back seat to expediency and scapegoating.

Yesterday, as Alana Goodman of the Business & Media Institute writes, CNN's Kyra Phillips and John Roberts ranted about those who "blog anonymously" and use that anonymity to write things that, to put it mildly, probably would be considered libelous in what used to be called the "Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual."

The implication was that anonymity on the internet makes it possible for people to be smeared and their lives and careers to be destroyed — even though it was clear to everyone long before Phillips and Roberts engaged in their witch hunt (which glossed over the fact that the credible and responsible journalists, including those at CNN, took the blogger's word at face value, as did the administration) that the blogger in this case was not anonymous at all.

There are many legitimate issues that have been raised by this unpleasant chapter, but internet anonymity is not one of them.

I do believe that internet anonymity is an issue that needs to be addressed — and probably will be addressed as communications law evolves, through legislation and court rulings, to include technology that didn't exist when the original laws were written — but not in the context of this particular issue.

Managing editors in newsrooms all over the country need to talk to their reporters and editors about journalistic standards, double–checking the facts, things like that. Barack Obama — or someone authorized to speak for him — needs to talk to his administrators about how to handle allegations against subordinates, especially in this highly charged, polarized atmosphere.

And we all need to talk about scapegoating, to revisit constitutional guarantees that a person is entitled to know the charge(s) against him/her and to face his/her accuser(s). A person who is charged with a crime that might cost him/her liberty and possibly life is entitled to a lot of things that Sherrod apparently was denied, by both the media and her employer.

In the context of this matter, internet anonymity raises entirely separate issues — primarily freedom of speech, which, for a legitimate journalist, means freedom of the press.

Freedom of the press, I was told in journalism school, was guaranteed to those who owned a printing press. In the 21st century, I suppose that could be amended to freedom of the computer, which really has been around since the late 20th century. And, like the belief that access to just about everything on the internet should be free — once one has paid the monthly admission price, in the form of an internet account — freedom of the computer is considered a given.

If you have a computer, so the thinking goes, you are free to post what you want. There are consequences, it is believed, that await those who carelessly post revealing pictures or objectionable comments. Nothing, after all, is truly anonymous on the internet — not with all the ways there are to track a person's electronic fingerprints.

In spite of their obvious applications in more practical fields, like business and banking, computers have long been billed as the best all–purpose tool for self–expression, whether one is a writer, an artist, a photographer, a filmmaker, a musician, whatever.

And a lot of people use blogs to share what they write or sing or sculpt or paint or photograph with others.

It truly has been freeing for the creatively inclined — but, having said that, I feel compelled to note that, with some of the things that are being posted, I have been sure for quite awhile that it was only a matter of time before something would have to be done to demand accountability and prevent bloggers from posting irresponsible rumors and gossip.

Such restrictions have existed in print journalism for a long time, and they have evolved as the term "media" expanded to include radio and television — and will have to expand further to include the same issues as they apply to the internet.

The sense of anonymity that many bloggers use as a shield behind which they can say what they please — as well as the mistaken belief that the concept of "fair comment" will defend them against all lawsuits (it won't) — must be addressed at some point. I believe these and other issues will — and should — be addressed.

But the Sherrod case does not provide the appropriate stage for that discussion. For Phillips and Roberts to speak of internet anonymity in connection with this matter whitewashes their own culpability, as well as that of CNN, the other all–news networks and the administration.

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A Postscript

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Today, I located the cartoon by my ex–college classmate that I mentioned yesterday, and I thought it would be appropriate to post it.

I discovered that my memory must have been playing tricks on me because it doesn't exactly call Bill Clinton the "Comeback Kid." What it actually says is, "Kid Comeback."

Oh, well, it't still a darn good cartoon. If you lived in Arkansas in those days, you know how dead–on those caricatures of Clinton and Frank White were.

And I still believe that cartoon inspired Clinton to call himself the Comeback Kid the night of the New Hampshire primary in 1992. After all, Michael Gauldin worked for Clinton for many years.

Thanks again, Mike, for the laughs ... and everything else.

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Life Influences

In every life, I suppose, there is a point when someone influences that life and nudges it in the direction that ultimately will define it for good or ill.

Sometimes, people have several influences like that. I was one of those people. My mother really got the ball rolling, encouraging me to write from a young age. Her mother–in–law — who went to college at a time when that was not the sort of thing most young women did and had gone on to a career as an English teacher — reinforced the message.

There were certainly influences on me from outside the family. When I got to high school, I came under the influence of my journalism teacher, who took the rare step of keeping me on the newspaper staff for a second year even though her practice had been to do that only for those students she had chosen to be the editor of the paper.

The baton had been passed.

I was, thus, encouraged to pursue journalism in college, where I learned reporting from a man who built his reputation as a reporter for the New York Times and the paper where I later worked for nearly five years, the Arkansas Gazette. And, of course, in college, I learned about the great journalists who were before my time and whose influence can still be seen in professional newsgathering today, even though the tools that are used and the methods by which the news is delivered are far different from what they knew.

Then I entered the world of professional journalism and embarked on a path that eventually brought me back to the classroom, where I remained for four years. Then, for reasons I prefer not to discuss here, I gravitated in a different direction.

Life does that to you sometimes. Some people follow storybook career paths that seem to have been etched in stone from the moments of their birth. Others follow more fluid paths that twist and turn, perhaps taking them completely away from their original objectives.

"Some folks' lives roll easy," sang Paul Simon. "Some folks' lives never roll at all."

And some folks — like Roy Hobbs in "The Natural" — sorta get sidetracked.

I guess that's what happened to me. But I hope I'm moving in the right direction again. In precisely one month, I will start a new job as an adjunct (i.e., part time) journalism instructor at the local community college. I've been trying to prepare myself to enter a classroom for the first time in 14 years, and I'm already anticipating the many ways I could stumble.

But I'm also thinking of those who influenced me along the way and trying to remember the things they taught me. Because I want to be able to pass along to my students their desire to seek the truth, their commitment, their integrity.

If I can do that, then my efforts — and the efforts of all who influenced me — will not be in vain.

In my formative years, there were many influences I never met — Woodward and Bernstein, whose determined reporting reminded everyone how important the journalist's watchdog role is in a democracy; Walter Cronkite, who was probably more trusted than any man except maybe the pope; Mike Royko, a columnist whose writing I once compared to another great American journalist, Mark Twain, in a paper I wrote in college.

And a fellow named Daniel Schorr, who occupies a unique role in the story of the Watergate scandal.

In late June 1973, John Dean revealed in his Senate Watergate committee testimony the existence of Richard Nixon's infamous "enemies' list" — a list of prominent people from a variety of professions who were perceived as enemies by the Nixon White House.

Schorr, a protege of Edward R. Murrow, was a correspondent for CBS News in those days. The list had been submitted as evidence, but it had not been reviewed by anyone at CBS. Schorr was asked to read the list on the air and was startled to come across his own name at #17.

"I tried not to gulp," Schorr told PBS' Terence Smith, "I tried not to gasp. So I read on. Mary McGrory, Paul Newman, now back to you."

I always liked Dan Schorr. He was an unassuming sort, always aware of the important people and important events on which he reported (and his career spanned the second half of the 20th century) but seldom self–conscious. I remember reading a paperback copy of his book, "Clearing the Air," when I was in college.

It was one of the most inspiring books I've ever read.

So I was saddened when Schorr — who was about the same age as Cronkite, who died a little more than a year ago — died earlier today. He was 93, the victim of an unidentified illness.

I was sadder, though, to learn of the passing of another influence on my life, a fellow named Michael Gauldin.

I went to college with Mike. We worked on the school newspaper together at the University of Arkansas. I was assigned the student government beat when I was taking reporting, and the student paper picked up my articles. I wound up covering student government for Gauldin and the rest of the editorial staff for a couple of years.

I was acquainted with Mike, but I wouldn't say we were friends. We didn't go out for a beer together after exams or anything like that, but I learned a lot about dedication from his example.

And he had a lot of talent. Everyone saw that, I think — the journalism faculty, his classmates, everyone. Gauldin was a military journalist between his high school graduation and his enrollment in college, then he wrote and edited some after graduating and served as press secretary to Bill Clinton when he was governor, but I always felt cartooning was his true calling. He used it in many of his jobs. And he did so masterfully.

After I graduated from college (the year after Gauldin did, although he was several years older and had already married and begun his family by the time we met), I saw his cartoons in newspapers from time to time, and I remember clipping one that was always my favorite. It was drawn to mimic the old–fashioned "tale of the tape" boxing posters that showed both fighters in an upcoming bout with their height, weight, reach, etc., listed below their pictures. Above their pictures were their names and the nicknames by which they were known.

Bill Clinton was beaten for re–election while Gauldin and I were in college. In those days, Arkansas' governor was elected to two–year terms so Clinton ran again two years later and faced the man who had beaten him in the last election.

Both Gauldin and I had graduated from college by that time. I was working as a general assignment reporter. He was working as a reporter and, apparently, a freelance cartoonist as well. His cartoon presented that electoral battle as a boxing rematch, with Clinton's nickname "The Comeback Kid," neatly summarizing the entertainment angle of that campaign.

That was 10 years before Clinton claimed that the voters in New Hampshire had made him the Comeback Kid. And that cartoon remained on my refrigerator until I took a new job and left that apartment.

Anyway, Gauldin, too, passed away today. Apparently, he was a victim of cancer.

Next month, when I'm addressing my students, I hope I will be guided by the memory of these two dedicated journalists.

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The Way the Wind Blows

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"You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows."

Bob Dylan

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The House joined the Senate today in supporting an extension of unemployment benefits.

The unemployed will welcome the money. Rent must be paid. Food must be purchased. Clothes, too — and if you're unemployed and you've got minor children, you've got back–to–school items (clothing, notebooks, textbooks) to think about as well.

Jobs are gone, but day–to–day expenses continue.

But, in many households, even the basics have been put on hold for the last couple of months because Congress could not agree to extend benefits.

I know a lot of people who have been out of work for a long time. Folks in Congress like to describe the unemployed as unmotivated, lacking ambition, preferring to collect from the government than find a job. But the problem is that there just haven't been any jobs out there — and no one in Washington has been making much of an effort to encourage job creation.

None of the unemployed sought this, and none (to my knowledge) would rather live on unemployment checks than paychecks. But what choice have they had?

Both the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for the way they have allowed unemployed Americans to become their political pawns.

Since Democrats like to talk so much about blame, let's get that part out of the way from the start, shall we?

This whole thing really got started when the Republicans in Congress — who had no problem with spending money they didn't have back when they controlled Congress and the White House and then needed the Democrats' help to pass the banking bailout in the fall of 2008 — have rediscovered their frugal roots. Thus, when the opportunity came up — in an election year — to strike a blow for PR by refusing to extend unemployment benefits until they could be demonstrably funded, they took it.

Took it? Hell, they jumped at it.

Then Congress took its Fourth of July vacation. Happy Independence Day.

Now, Congress is on the verge of dismissing for its summer vacation. And, when it returns, many lawmakers will be preoccupied with their campaigns for re–election back home — so it's unlikely that anything will get done.

Polls have been showing that Americans have been more worried about jobs than anything else for quite awhile. And they're understandably surly about the lack of interest they perceive in their lawmakers.

So, earlier this week, Barack Obama took the opportunity to publicly call for an extension of the benefits and criticize the Republicans he so eagerly sought to appease last year.

Don't get me wrong. Obama was right to criticize the Republicans. But he and the Democrats deserve just as much blame as their Republican counterparts. Obama did not exercise his presidential authority and insist that Congress remain in session back in the late spring/early summer until something was done about unemployment benefits.

And the unemployed were made to suffer some more.

Now, with all indicators showing that the Democrats are facing major setbacks at the polls in November, they have decided that they prefer not to alienate a group as large as the unemployed/underemployed/partially employed. So they belatedly passed the benefits extension today. Presumably, Obama will sign it into law soon.

But that's why this bill was passed today. Neither party wanted to be seen as hostile to people who are down on their luck. They both want the unemployed to vote for them in November. They both would like to save money — but they both want to be elected more.

Shame on both of you.

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