Center for a New American Security

The Economist once called it "enlightened mountain Republicanism." For whatever reason, Tennesseans have long looked to retired Sen. Howard Baker (McCallie '43), a moderate Republican who forged compromise across the aisles until retiring from the Senate to be Reagan's chief of staff after Iran Contra, as the model for how senators should behave. When Republican senators have lurched too far to the populist right, as Sen. Bill Frist did during the Terry Schiavo mess, their approval ratings have plummeted. The same explains why the once admired former Sen. Al Gore lost the state of Tennessee in 2000 after he was perceived to have lurched too far to the left in the 1990s. Regardless, Sen. Lamar Alexander reminded me yesterday why I supported him in his last campaign, and Sen. Bob Corker (Chattanooga City High School '70) locked up my support for his next election campaign. It would have been all too easy for my two Republican senators to have been petulant drama queens about the New START treaty, but instead here is what Sen. Alexander said yesterday:

And here is Sen. Corker:

It almost makes up for Basil Marceaux:

Way to go, WTVF-TV Channel 5. After idiots at one of Nashville's television stations aired this ridiculously irresponsible and fear-mongering report on a group of apparently peaceful Muslims who have been living in rural Tennessee since the early 1980s, someone spray-painted epithets and Crusader crosses all over a mosque in Nashville. Watch this report and tell me if this in any way approximates responsible journalism. The hero of the story ends up being the rural country sheriff, John Vinson, who refuses to take the bait he's offered from the reporter and instead says reasonable things like, "The way I look at it, their customs are obviously different from most people in Stewart County. But still, they have a right to that."

Which just goes to show you that we Tennesseans are tolerant, good-natured people at heart until some carpetbagger reporter shows up trying to cause trouble. I mean, really, what must people at Northwestern's famous school of journalism think of this alumnus? The essence of this dude's report is, "We cannot say for sure that these people are not terrorists, so we're going to show some footage of terrorist training camps." Unbelievable.

[To be fair, I think this is the first time "Tennessee" and "Islam" have ever appeared as tags on the same post.]

Update: The Columbia Journalism Review weighs in.

While it is true I am still heartbroken from this weekend's loss, I am also crashing on a writing assignment and thus not posting much today. I have a lot of links I am going to dump in the next 24 hours or so, though, so be patient.

That's how The Economist once described the brand of Republicanism embodied by the legendary Senator -- and McCallie old boy -- Howard Baker of Tennessee*. And as I listened to one of my current senators, Bob Corker, talk about Afghanistan a few weeks ago on CNN, I was struck by how well-informed and thoughtful he was in what he was saying about the conflict and the president's policy. Considering Corker's only prior foreign policy experience involved trying to get Volkswagon to move a plant to Chattanooga, I was impressed. The same goes for my other senator, who responded to Dick Cheney's "dithering" remark in what I thought was a statesmanlike way.

"I think President Obama is entitled to take sufficient time to decide what our long-term role ought to be in Afghanistan. Then I think he should come to Congress and say to the American people what that plan is and see if he can persuade us and all of the American people of the rightness of it because he needs to have support all the way through to the end of that mission, so I want him to take the time to get it right."

Considering how many Tennesseans serve in the combat arms branches of our nation's armed forces, that's exactly the right response. And a reminder of why I donated to the senator's last campaign.

*Just to give you an idea how well-respected Baker was, Mama Muqawama -- who turned 60 yesterday -- is a die-hard Democrat, but anyone caught slandering the hallowed name of Howard Baker in our house when I was growing up would have been summarily shown the door.

One of the world's brighter young Afghanistan scholars sent me an email asking if this was a movie about Pashtuns. Because all us mountain people fight over the same three things: land, women, honor. Often the three are related.

Barack Obama must be trying to win the State of Tennessee in 2012. Because there is no surer way to the hearts of Lady Vol fans than to beat UConn.

I returned to Tennessee from Lebanon at the beginning of December and thought I was ... back in Lebanon. My congressman, Zach Wamp (McCallie '76), had plastered pictures of his face all over the state like it was Zghorta or someplace. He wasn't even running for anything (yet). The pictures just said "Zach Wamp: Strong Leadership for Tennessee." I asked my mother if Tennessee had become a banana republic since I was gone and if Zach Wamp was now the Dear Leader. No, she said. "He just wants to be the next governor but can't say anything just yet."

Well, now he is officially running for governor (to replace the widely popular and competent centrist Phil Bredesen), which means he feels a need to get on the national teevee whenever possible. The results are ... well, hilarious. Watch this video. My favorite part of this is around the 2:40 mark when he says that health care is a privilege and not a right. (The news reader just owns him.) My second favorite part is when he starts talking about them Mexicans, a peace-loving people with whom the State of Tennessee has been inexplicably locked in a blood feud since 1846. (Tennessean James K. Polk asked for 2,800 Tennesseans to go fight in Mexico. We sent, like, half the state -- 30,000 -- largely because our single men had nothing better to do. Hence, the "Volunteer State." Don't even get me started on how many Tennesseans won Texas its independence a decade earlier.) Folks, this guy is going to win in a landslide.



Update: Good arguments can be made for a more limited form of government, and I am more sympathetic than you suspect toward those arguments. But I just have a tough time reconciling the fact that -- in a nation of so many professing Christians -- we allow so many people to live without health care and simply don't give a ****. I don't claim to know the nature of God, but I suspect we might have a tough time explaining how we as a "Christian" nation could have let so many of our underprivileged slip through the cracks. On an unrelated note, one of the readers noted Zach Wamp does not have a college degree. This is true. He dropped out of the University of North Carolina and struggled with a horrible addiction to cocaine in his early twenties. But I have always thought his recovery from that addiction was one of his more endearing qualities. (Although had he not hailed from such a well-off family he might not have received the treatment he needed...)

The following is an honest-to-goodness conversation that just took place between me and my mother in her kitchen:

"Mom, do you think gays have the right to be angry with Obama for choosing Rick Warren to give the invocation?"

"I just think people need to let [Obama] reach out to all people and groups in America and to stop insisting he pursue some narrow agenda...

[Several seconds pass.]

...But this crap about not having any Southerners? I'm mad as hell. I gave him money! People from Chattanooga drove to North Carolina to campaign for him! [Mom says "North Carolina" like it's Senegal.] He should appoint someone from the Southeast! I gave him money!"

"Yeah, but who could he appoint? And for what? I mean, there's Harold Ford ... and who else?"

"You! He could appoint you!"

Well! Do you hear that, Transition Team?!

[Note: Like all mothers, Abu Muqawama's has a ridiculously inflated estimation of her son's worth and talents. Which is always charming, if amusing. In my opinion, everyone should have a mother who thinks her 30-year old graduate student son would be a completely rational choice for Secretary of Defense.]

Readers: Don't everyone get excited at once, but Road House is on AMC right now. I spent a more-enjoyable-than-it-should-have-been evening in Beirut a few months back watching Road House dubbed into French. C'est Dalton!

Real heroes, meanwhile, were on display yesterday at Fort Bragg. I'm sure you all saw this in the Post:

As Ford and Staff Sgt. John Wayne Walding returned fire, Walding was hit below his right knee. Ford turned and saw that the bullet "basically amputated his right leg right there on the battlefield."

Walding, of Groesbeck, Tex., recalled: "I literally grabbed my boot and put it in my crotch, then got the boot laces and tied it to my thigh, so it would not flop around. There was about two inches of meat holding my leg on." He put on a tourniquet, watching the blood flow out the stump to see when it was tight enough.

Then Walding tried to inject himself with morphine but accidentally used the wrong tip of the syringe and put the needle in this thumb, he later recalled. "My thumb felt great," he said wryly, noting that throughout the incident he never lost consciousness. "My name is John Wayne," he said.

Jaysus.

Finally, your eponymous blogger was procrastinating this past week and went for a tour of his local distillery. Photo below. I am now prepared to explain the differences between Tennessee whiskey and bourbon whiskey. I can't believe I grew up in Tennessee without ever having visited before.

Check out this article in the Atlantic on the investigation into the Hariri murder. I know we have a lot of Lebanon-watchers here on the blog, and I'm sure they will note the lack of any interviews with pro-March 8th politicians and spokespersons. But this article is worth looking at if only for my friend Kate's great photo essay accompanying the article. (Kate dropped out of college at 19 and moved to Chechnya. Yeah, she's that brand of amazing.)

[The story of my run-in with the drunken editor of Newsweekhas been deleted.]