Thirteen-year-old editorial assistant Jefferson McCain staffs
The National Affairs Desk, 8:30 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012
ROCK HILL, S.C.
Jimmie Bise Jr. was on the phone when I turned off the exit from I-77 North and hooked a left toward the McDonald’s. We were discussing the finer points of blogger ethics, and the importance of disclosing one’s biases in regard to such controversial topics as a contested Republican presidential primary campaign.
Of course, Jimmie was in a fine mood, ready to fire up a cigarette and recline on his pillow to enjoy the post-coital glow, smiling contentedly about having had his way with the breathless sweat-soaked hussy whose name prior to Saturday was “Inevitability,” but whom Newt Gingrich now calls My Sweet Bitch.
That metaphor might be a bit too vividly kinky for some readers, but my point is that Jimmie had openly declared his support for Newt Gingrich and was thus entitled to an honest day in the Gloat Zone.
So Jimmie and I were discussing this when I pulled into the parking lot of McDonald’s and I told him, “No one can ever doubt the objectivity of the Future U.S. Ambassador to Vanuatu.”
Just then, I glanced up and beheld the frightening sight of a human scarecrow staggering toward my rented Toyota. She was wearing a cheap coat and gestured her solicitation of assistance, but I waved her away, annoyed by this aged burnt-out meth whore’s attempted intrusion. Jimmie and I were laughing about the failure of Romney’s well-funded campaign strategists to recognize my obvious aptitude for diplomacy as I switched off the car.
“Hang on a second, Jimmie,” I said, instructing my 13-year-old son Jefferson to grab my computer bag. Then I started to continue my phone conversation as I got out of the car, but suddenly the phone went dead — dead battery. I sent Jefferson inside to plug in the phone while he set up the laptop, the packing and unpacking of my computer having been his main task as my assistant on this eight-day Carolina campaign road-trip.
From the back seat of the Toyota I grabbed the Sunday edition of The (Columbia, S.C.) State with its banner front-page headline:
GINGRICH ROUTS ROMNEY
I fired up a Marlboro as I scanned the paper, leaning up against the car, and then I looked around to see what had become of the destitute female vagabond who had earlier approached me with her begging gestures. She was nowhere in sight, so I walked around to the front of the McDonald’s, in which direction she had wandered off after I’d waved her away. But she wasn’t there, either.
Had I seen a ghost, some sort of spectral phantom? This possibility bothered me, and the idea crossed my mind that this woman who seemed so haggard with age was probably younger than me. You’ve seen those before-and-after photos showing the ravages of methamphetamine addiction? She was definitely “after.”
Perhaps five or ten years earlier she had been genuinely attractive, but then she got onto the meth and started hooking up with any exploitative scum willing to help her feed her habit and . . .
Well, a hard life like that isn’t exactly “bad luck,” but rather the predictable consequence of bad choices, and it occurred to me that this pathetic woman – prematurely old and compelled to helpless beggary by her habit — might be a fitting symbol of Mitt Romney’s squandered momentum:
Just after the polls closed Saturday in South Carolina, Hogan Gidley was talking to reporters inside Mark Clark Hall at the Citadel, where Rick Santorum was holding his campaign’s Primary Night celebration. Mitt Romney “was going to be 3 and 0 until three days ago,” said Gidley, communications director for Santorum’s campaign, adding that the results of the past two days — including the belated news that Santorum, not Romney, was the winner of the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses — had “blown a hole in [Romney’s] inevitability.”
Newt Gingrich’s victory Saturday took away what was always Romney’s strongest argument: That the former Massachusetts governor’s well-funded campaign machinery made him the odds-on favorite in the Republican field, capable of clinching the nomination early in the primary process, thus uniting the party for the battle to defeat President Obama. The perception of Romney’s inevitability — as the “It’s His Turn” candidate whom GOP voters have so often chosen as their presidential nominee — helped him pile up a huge fundraising advantage over his rivals. Inevitability also helped Romney garner endorsements from eminent pundits like Ann Coulter and popular politicians like South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Despite his relatively moderate record, Romney was endorsed by the conservative editors of National Review, who last month mocked Gingrich with a cover story illustrated by a cartoon depicting the former Georgia congressman as a ludicrous space alien.
All of Romney’s advantages evidently counted for naught when Palmetto State voters went to the polls Saturday, where they delivered a shattering blow to any thought that the “inevitable” Romney might lock up the nomination early. . . .
That’s from my special Sunday column for The American Spectator, which I filed before we left Charleston this afternoon, and which I obviously hope you’ll read. Jefferson and I stopped here at the McDonald’s in Rock Hill, the last chance to score some cheap food and free WiFi before crossing into North Carolina, because I wanted to have a South Carolina dateline on my final post of this epic eight-day journey funded by your contributions to the Shoe Leather Fund.
Ah, yes. Like the shambling she-hobo who suddenly loomed into sight near the rented Toyota in the parking lot, and who then just as suddenly disappeared, I find my habits compel me to a mendicant existence only slightly more respectable than being a meth whore.
A freelance journalism junkie trying to match the travel budgets of major news organization by begging alms online? My resemblance to that shabby old hooker was enough to make my conscience ache as I thought to myself, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Well: The impliied fee-for-service contract involved in this madcap experiment with reader-supported political reporting isn’t quite so degrading as whatever sordid acts lead a meth-head to ruin, although the ironic coincidences sometimes overwhelm my ability to rationalize them away.
Shortly after I sat down at laptop here at McDonald’s, the cellphone rang. “Are you all right?” my wife asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine, why?” Continue reading Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Somewhere, There Is an Island … →
