Fixing Michigan’s primary problem

Oh, sweet irony. We coulda been a contender.

Michigan’s much-vaunted Jan. 15 primary has ultimately proved useless. So much for power-drunk party hucksters insisting Michigan show those spoiled brats in Iowa and New Hampshire how to really pick a president.

California fittingly will have sealed up the Republican nomination - once again trumping Michigan, which has long hemorrhaged talent and influence to the Golden State.

And slow and steady Ohio on March 4 – or even once-obscure contests in Kentucky and Oregon in May – will have super-sized impact on picking the Democratic nominee.

Stop for a second and imagine the media frenzy in the Mitten State right now if we’d just kept our Feb. 12 contest on the calendar.

We would be ground zero, boasting the biggest primary after Super Tuesday.

For the GOP, Michigan would be hailed as the salvation of Mitt Romney. If he won his home state (his 23rd by last count, as his electoral strategy seems to rest on buying estates in every state) the race would be declared wide open by the talk radio hordes.

Erudite philosophers Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter would rejoice the party wasn’t over yet, thanks to their prescience (of course) and the glorious Great Lakes State.

For the Dems, it would be a decisive battle between the Clinton machine (oiled by Gov. Jennifer Granholm) and the grassroots Barack Obama effort. Whoever could take the lion’s share of our 128-delegate gift basket would emerge the frontrunner.

Michigan’s early primary was erected as Hillary Clinton’s firewall, but it would have been far handier now that she’s broke, dead-even in delegates and facing an electoral map favoring Obama.

So how did Michigan plunge to its default position of irrelevance to the rest of the nation?

Last year, we ponied up more than $10 million for an early primary when we could least afford it, given a $2 billion deficit. But party bigwigs promised if we hold it, they will come.

We all know how that turned out on the D side. There were no rap sessions with a teary Hillary or hope revivals starring Obama. John Edwards never showed up for photo ops at mill closings. Only the leprechaun-like Dennis Kucinich held rallies dotted by those yearning for a glimpse of his glamazon, 20-something wife.

The Dems blew it, thanks to Sen. Carl Levin and Democratic National Committeewoman Debbie Dingell. The DNC jerked all our delegates, followed by Obama and Edwards bowing out.

Senate Democrats could have fixed the mess but demanded a bevy of election reforms in return, which the majority Republicans rejected.

So Hillary won the beauty contest 55 to 40 percent over “uncommitted” or ABC – Anyone But Clinton. But her deficit in the youth vote and staggering loss in Detroit spell trouble here in the general election.

Whichever Dem prevails will have to do serious repair work, having unwittingly left the door open for the moderate McCain. Good move.

The only way to undo some damage is hold a party-funded caucus in a play to win half our delegates back.

Republicans fared better, drawing belated ads and candidate stops as state GOP Chair Saul Anuzis promised. But the primary became a yawning gimme for Romney with only half the Republican delegates at stake.

“Michigan is a good bellwether state,” proclaimed a giddy Anuzis (who still says with as straight face that he doesn’t back the Mittster). “If you can win in Michigan, you can win everywhere.”

Not quite.

The primary allowed party honchos and legislators to bask in the Cult of Mitt for one shining night, partying down like Ronald Reagan had been reincarnated at the Southfield Embassy Suites. It was the zenith of Romney’s run - and then the rude awakening came in South Carolina, Florida and finally California.

So where did our primary hustle get us? Optimists would say Michigan - with its shuttered factories and worst unemployment rate - crystallized the souring economy as the top political issue.

That’s one takeaway from the clichéd CNN interviews of unemployed autoworkers at a smoky Macomb County bowling alley.

Here’s the other: Michigan must be the most pathetic place on earth to do business next to, say, Burma. Why would companies want to set up shop in our decrepit state?

As Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, the patron saint of Michigan economic development, watched the nonstop negative coverage, he probably thought long and hard about retiring.

In the end, the economy is the primary problem we face. No matter how hard the governor hopes, President Bush isn’t going to send us a fat check now that he’s seen our plight on tee-vee.

No, it’s up to us. And I’m guessing we could have found far better investments for that 10 million bucks.

Governor’s financial panel members look to ’09 budget

By Susan J. Demas
For the Enquirer

Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Tuesday trumpeted an ambitious education and economic development agenda during her State of the State address, but vowed not to raise taxes this year.

The Democrat will fill in some of the fine print when she unveils her fiscal 2009 budget next week. The House Fiscal Agency forecasts the state is on track to be $275 million in the black.

But missing from her 53-minute address were many recommendations made by her own Emergency Financial Advisory Panel on solving the state’s short- and long-term budget problems.

In January 2007, Granholm appointed the bipartisan, 12-member panel chaired by former governors William Milliken, a Republican, and Jim Blanchard, a Democrat. The group (nicknamed the 12 Apostles) penned a 19-page report on Feb. 2 as the state was facing a $3 billion shortfall for fiscal 2007 and 2008.

"I honestly don't know how many people read our report," Blanchard said.

That sentiment was echoed by several members of the panel -- former state Senate Majority Leader Dan DeGrow, former state Rep. Don Gilmer and former U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz.

"The report is applicable today as it was when it was written," said Schwarz, I-Battle Creek. "I would make a strong suggestion for all men and women in the Legislature to reread it. Some of them never read it in the first place. This should be their top priority. The bell rings as soon as the governor's State of the State and it's not going to be any easier in fiscal 2009."

The report’s general theme of solving the state's structural deficit with “cuts, reforms and revenues,” popped up frequently in speeches by Granholm and other Democrats. Last year, she and lawmakers struck an 11th hour deal to increase business and income taxes by more than $1 billion and allow competitive bidding for school employee health insurance, which Republicans have tried to get through for years.

Schwarz called last year’s cuts and reforms “nip and tuck.”

“The fact remains, you can clearly point out structural problems. The structural deficit is still there," Schwarz said. "Taxes and spending and the structure of state government still have significant problems."

"My advice would have been to solve it all at once so you don't have to do it again," said DeGrow, R-Port Huron. "(Former Gov.) John Engler always said, 'If you have to take a hit, take it early, so you get it over with and don't have to take the hit again.'”

Several of the report’s recommendations, like the Internet tax, were left on the cutting room floor. The report notes the growing service sector is not taxed, but the Legislature made little headway, passing and quickly repealing last fall a tax on a hodgepodge of services.

But in spite of last year’s messy budget wars, Blanchard says he “remains optimistic about Michigan’s future.

“It’s too great of a state to be kept down,” he said.

Making the cuts

On Tuesday, Granholm made scant mention of cuts and reforms, besides promising to slash red tape for businesses by making Michigan a regulatory “one-stop shop.”

Though Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, said the governor had “borrowed a page from the Republican playbook” with her promise not to raise taxes, his caucus wants action to reduce spending and make government leaner.

"It's time to focus on reforms and making investments to lead Michigan into the future," agreed Gilmer, R-Augusta. "We're still providing more government than we have the resources to pay for it."

The Emergency Financial Advisory Panel made several recommendations, including cuts to the $2 billion Corrections budget. Michigan incarcerates more than 50,000 at a cost of $31,000 per prisoner. The nonpartisan, Lansing-based Citizens Research Council reports Michigan could save $500 million if its incarceration levels matched other Midwest states.

Gilmer urges a bicameral, bipartisan committee meetings taking 30 to 40 hours worth of testimony on sentence reform, rehabilitation and recidivism.
The report also said skyrocketing state employee and retiree benefit costs need reform and schools and local governments must consolidate services.

DeGrow said the state could restructure revenue sharing with local governments. The time might be right to let local taxpayers decide what priorities they want to fund instead of getting a blanket amount of state revenues, he said."In an era where state government is so strapped, do we fund something that's optional?" DeGrow said.Consolidation needs to happen on both the local and state levels, Schwarz said.

"There are 19 state departments and I'm not sure they're all necessary," he said. "There can be a consolidation of functions — I'll leave it at that."

Strategic investments

In her State of the State, Granholm did address some of the panel’s findings.

She pushed spending on infrastructure to create 28,000 jobs. She also proposed several education initiatives, such as incentivizing colleges and universities to turn research into businesses. Her Michigan First Health Care Plan providing access to the uninsured popped up, although the state has been in a holding pattern, waiting on a federal waiver for several years.

Panel members want the state to prioritize infrastructure and education, strategically investing in areas research shows will attract businesses and skilled workers.

"You still hear voices that we should cut taxes by $1 billion," Gilmer said. "That would completely destroy any opportunities to invest in our infrastructure, things for people to take notice of Michigan."The gas tax — which hasn't been raised since 1995 — should be on the table to fund road projects, Schwarz said.

Higher education has taken the hardest hit by the budget crisis, he said. Funding has been slashed by 11 percent from 2002 to 2007, the Presidents' Council, State Universities of Michigan reports. Tuition has soared, with most of the state’s 15 public universities last year passing double-digit tuition hikes.

"We've already damaged that a lot," DeGrow said. "Say what you will about Gov. Engler, but he valued higher education. We never cut higher ed."

If Schwarz could pass on one piece of advice to leaders during this year’s budget negotiations, it would be: "Have the courage to do what's right, not what's expedient."This isn't going to be easy to try to run a state of 10 million people with a rapidly changing economy with a government structured for the 1960s. Be bold and courageous."

The ‘09 budget: Let them eat cake

Nobody can feel your pain like Jennifer Granholm and she was in fine form Tuesday night.

After last year’s rancor and recriminations over the budget crisis, the governor reemerged at the State of the State as the great healer, a pro-business prophet looking to lure development and lead us back to the promised land of no new taxes.

“People are angry,” Granholm said at the start of her speech. “…Let’s be honest, that anger is aimed at us.”

Though Michigan continues to careen down the road of recession, Granholm offered up her can-do oratory, promising tax breaks for businesses in fast-growing industries, help for those trapped in foreclosure agony and a slew of new programs.

Using her honeyed tone – part cheerleader, part Mother Earth – to full effect, the governor swayed some of her conservative critics (though not state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, R-Kalamazoo, who in a flash of class, scrawled snarky blog posts during her speech).

Granholm imbibed the new designer drug of bipartisanship – something just about everyone in Lansing says they’re on, but they don’t get an hour to testify about it on tee-vee. You can’t beat that kind of PR.

But the real stroke of genius was that the governor cannily cut the legs from under the GOP’ election strategy – with a smile.

She beat the anti-tax drum hard – something a beaming Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop called “borrowing the Republican playbook.”

But that effectively stole the thunder from House Minority Leader Craig DeRoche, who’s vowed to take back the majority by (what else?) hitting the Dems on taxes. He looked particularly sour Tuesday, but denied the guv had outfoxed him.

“It’s not an election line (for us),” the former Speaker sniffed. “It’s what we believe in.”

Granholm’s strategy started with a carefully placed Associated Press interview in December that grabbed headlines across the state.

“The most important thing I learned is I’m not ever going to raise taxes again. It’s too hard. It’s too impossible,” she declared.

She could say that with supreme confidence because budget estimates show Michigan will stay in the black this year (thanks to those evil tax hikes).

So it’s time to roll out the feel-good programs – high schools that work, alternative energy Centers of Excellence and more early childhood education.

You can have your cake and eat it, too. No higher taxes this year, just “creative financing.” (Something Republicans also found irresistible when they ran the show during the last two decades – beats cutting spending).

Granholm plans to scrounge up $550 million by refinancing debt, selling bonds and reinvesting part of the state pension fund.

Her economic stimulus plan – especially creating jobs through much-needed infrastructure projects – shows promise. But don’t expect a big boost to higher ed, the best long-range economic development tool Michigan has in its arsenal.

And there were key pieces missing from the puzzle, ostensibly to come in the far less glamorous budget unveiling next week.

Where are the cuts? Where are the reforms? You don’t need to be a rabid right-winger to know much more needs to be done.

Just take another read of the blue-ribbon, bipartisan Emergency Financial Panel report penned a year ago by 12 leaders with hundreds of years’ combined experience in budgets, business and government.

Or in the case of some esteemed lawmakers, try skimming over the scant 19 pages for the first time.

“I honestly don’t know how many people read it,” a glum former Gov. Jim Blanchard told me last week.

Well, it’s never too late to get religion or give a few of the 12 Apostles a jingle. I have it on good authority they’d love to hear from you.

The fact is, Michigan’s government is still engineered for the 1960s. We have a bloated Corrections budget growing far faster than revenues, as we incarcerate 50,000 people – and counting.

Health care costs for state employees and retirees are spiraling out of control. We have 1,242 townships, 553 school districts and millions of dollars in needlessly duplicated administrative costs.

That’s just a start. With the limited cash Michigan has, we need to spend it wisely.

Now the bad news. Don’t look now, but the Mitten State hasn’t licked its structural budget deficit.

We don’t tax services, the growing sector of our economy, thanks to a bizarre last-minute plan last fall that enraged the hypersensitive business community and poisoned the well. It remains to be seen what effect the Michigan Business Tax surcharge will have on attracting new capital. And our income tax is outmoded – a graduated rate with more exemptions is a better fit.

The good news is, we probably could restructure without hiking taxes and stave off future $2 billion budget shortfalls.

But that would mean bringing up the dreaded t-word again. And with that bodacious bipartisan vibe we’ve got going, who wants to be a major buzzkill?

Gambling on the Clintons

Bill Clinton is back, scarlet-faced and shaking.

He’s everywhere on the campaign trail, browbeating reporters, unloading wild accusations of voter fraud and smearing his wife’s “fairy tale” opponent, that uppity Barack Obama.

Since leaving the Oval Office, Clinton’s gone the Jimmy Carter redemption route, embarking on admirable ventures to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, stop global warming and assist those suffering with AIDS.

Now he seems ready to chuck that all just to play Boss Tweed.

Clinton clearly is on a mission to preserve his legacy via Hillary and take back their rightful place running the country.

With all due respect, Mr. President, there are sick children in Africa who need you a hell of a lot more than we do.

Clinton’s conduct is unbecoming for a former commander-in-chief. He’s the junkyard dog of the most despicable presidential campaign this cycle that’s floated falsehoods like Obama is a Muslim drug dealer.

Not one, but two racial stereotypes. The Clintonites are setting us back 50 years and fracturing the country.

More importantly for them, they’re dividing the Democratic Party.

On paper, it looked like there was no way even the Dems could screw up losing the White House this year.

The economy’s tanking, the Iraq war remains unpopular and our Republican president largely is considered a colossal failure.

GOP presidential hopefuls are hacking each other apart. No one’s conservative, pro-life, anti-immigrant, pro-tax cut or religious enough, leaving them to squabble like, well, Democrats and split up the primaries.

Meanwhile, the Democratic field was an embarrassment of riches with charismatic, cerebral candidates and boatloads of cash to boot.

As always, we’ve underestimated them, thanks to the Clintons’ scorched earth tactics.

If they can’t have the presidency, no Democrat can.

Obama recently came under fire for telling the truth (just as John McCain did when he told Michiganders to say auf Wiedersehen to many auto jobs).

“I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom,” Obama told a Nevada newspaper.

Absolutely. It was former Speaker Newt Gingrich who led the charge on the Contract with America. Republicans pushed to end welfare as we know it, privatize Social Security and christen the Department of Homeland Security.

Obama didn’t say these were brilliant ideas or remotely beneficial for this country. But there was vision.

What was Bill Clinton’s agenda? He never bothered crafting a New Deal or Great Society. His centrist Third Way was all about getting elected. There was no blueprint for governing, which is why his grandest initiative – Hillary’s health care plan – fell flat.

And that’s why, even in my Communist college days, I could never pull the lever for him.

In the end, the Clinton presidency was defined by the GOP – their Contract, their government shutdown, their impeachment of him. Even if you see him as the wronged hero, that still doesn’t make him a leader of great fortitude.

Obama further committed heresy by adding:

“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.

“I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. … He just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was: We want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

Poor Sen. Obama. While these are undisputable historical facts, he found out there’s no room for that sort of thing in elections.

Not when you’re gambling against the Clinton machine, which painted him as a born-again reactionary. (He promptly lost the slot machine state).

But Reagan was the maestro of messaging: Government is the problem, not the solution. That’s the paradigm in which we still live. It defined Michigan’s budget battle last year – and it’s why some courageous lawmakers might lose their jobs.

Democrats need to learn from the past – the successes of Reagan and FDR – and grapple with new realities of terrorism, globalization and failing schools. They can’t afford to play the race or gender card.

They need, at long last, to develop a vision. They won in 2006 without one due to revulsion over the war and Republicans being dragged from the Capitol in handcuffs. But luck never lasts long.

Bill Clinton lectures that voting for Obama over Hillary’s experience is a “roll of the dice.”

Four or eight more years of nonstop politicking and reactive policy? If I were a Democrat, I’d bet on Obama.

Mitt won’t work miracles for Michigan

Bad news, kiddies.

I know Uncle Mitt - who you haven’t seen since Cher and bell bottoms were mod - missed you very much and came bearing gifts last week.

He was so sorry he’d abandoned the auto industry his dad championed to make millions in international markets (though you know he’s too proud to admit it).

And he felt real bad about missing your birthday, tiger.

Brandishing that can-do smile and the sincerity of a 1970s game show host, our man Mitt promised the return of fab ‘50s-style manufacturing jobs, $20 billion in federal aid and a pony for everybody in the Mitten State.

Groovy. Only it ain’t gonna happen.

Meanwhile, mean old John McCain - who spent a chunk of the Me Decade tortured by the North Vietnamese (bummer) - told us some of those jobs aren’t coming back. Instead, we need to harness Michigan’s world-class college system and invest in emerging technologies like green energy.

Reality, man. It’s a bummer, too.

So the majority of voters in Tuesday’s GOP primary decided to deny the realities of the new economy. The Mittster was their man.

As a Harvard MBA, Romney, of course, knows McCain and virtually every economist in Michigan is correct. But selling “optimism” and the now-ubiquitous commodity of “change” makes for better sound bites.

McCain employed the dicey strategy of holding town hall meetings across the state in which he openly invites people to spar with him, unlike any other presidential hopeful.

Oh, how they did Sunday in the right-wing hotbed of Howell – on stripping citizenship from American-born kids of illegal immigrants, President Bush’s tax cuts, campaign finance reform and more.

But the thousand-strong crowd respected him and erupted in a frenzy. Honesty can inspire.

If his advisors had let McCain be McCain and do more of those events in Michigan over the last year – instead of endless fundraisers, party establishment schmoozing and confabs with anti-tax zealots working to unravel his candidacy – I think the primary would have gone quite differently.

Contrast McCain with Romney, who ginned up emotion Saturday at a kitchen table chat with an unemployed Marshall worker. The catch? It was a set-up with a staffer’s mom, something Marvelous Mitt forgot to tell the media (oops!)

Evidently, integrity is an overvalued asset in this CEO’s campaign.

Romney also got a pass on his Michigan roots (though he tastelessly reminded us on the stump his parents are buried here). In reality, the heavily hair-sprayed tycoon is the poster child for the brain drain we’re all supposed to revile.

As the former baron of Bain Capital, Romney perhaps instinctively knew staying in his home state was a bad risk as the auto industry nosedived, so he headed off, curiously enough, to the place all good Republicans jeer as Taxachusetts.

Now running as an outsider (the most hackneyed theme in politics), Romney says he’ll shake up Washington and stand up for Michigan. This, of course, underscores the fact that Bush doesn’t give a damn about the Big Three – he refused to meet with them for years.

But the most pro-Bush voters and the fiscal delusionists ganged up to vote Romney, according to exit polls. Go figure.

They’re about as consistent as their candidate, who’s amusingly stalked by a dude dressed as a dolphin named “Flip Romney” to highlight his pliable positions on abortion, immigration, stem-cell research, gay marriage and government health care.

Malleable Mitt has a new campaign theme for every state, as well as a shiny, new multi-million-dollar attack ad buy. In Michigan, he outspent McCain at least 3 to 1.

Romney is who you want him to be. Someone get the schizophrenic candidate a psychiatrist, stat.

But there’s one thing Romney is remarkably consistent on: military service. It wasn’t for him (God bless missionary and student deferments).

A hawk on the Vietnam War (and now Iraq), he was no principled conscientious objector. To fervently support a war without feeling any call to sacrifice is the worst form of hypocrisy and cowardice.

Service isn’t for any of his five strapping sons, either. But fighting terrorists isn’t the only way to fortify America.

As Mitt merrily explained last summer, “One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president.”

Mitt comes first. Only then can we get to that pesky maxim of “duty, honor, country” Gen. Douglas MacArthur noted builds courage, character and hope in a man.

So, boys and girls, what exactly do you think President Romney’s commitment will be to the state he skeddadled from five decades ago?

My advice: Don’t cash that check yet, Michigan. Somehow, I doubt your native son’s good for it.

‘I Am Woman, See Me Cry’

What a sad night to have ovaries in America.

On Tuesday, tears evidently were enough to catapult Hillary Clinton to victory in New Hampshire.

The electoral Athena, reported to have callously coached her own daughter never to brandish emotion, turned on the waterworks Monday when a voter innocuously asked, “How do you do it?”

(And cringingly added, “Who does your hair?”)

“It’s not easy,” the Warrior Princess intoned gravely. And then her corneas glinted with something we humans know as teardrops.

Pundits did a 180 from their heavy breathing over Barack Obama’s win in Iowa into to breathless bewilderment that Hillary hath emotions, after all.

I imagine the tears were hard for Clinton to muster. It had to be a masochistic moment for her, although given her well-known marital history, she’s used to that.

But nothing else had worked, so why not.

Wait, you say. Isn’t it possible that her whimpering was real?

Of course, dear.

It couldn’t possibly be a MacBethian strategy in concert with Bill Clinton’s assault on the media’s “fairytale” coverage of Obama and her campaign’s wide-eyed insistence that if Hillary kept her loss down to double-digits, it would be a victory.

This couldn’t be the culmination of her “Likeability Tour” through Iowa a few weeks back, the saddest campaign concoction in recent memory evoking images of a hapless spinster selling herself and her 28 cats on Match.com.

Sorry folks, the candidate brought those sexist stereotypes on herself.

They’re on par with Clinton’s rendition of, “I Am Woman, See Me Cry.” Not exactly a gutsy feminist anthem.

For the record, I am an unabashed feminist who thinks the word has gotten a bad rap and should be embraced by all men and women - conservative or liberal - who can agree that the fairer sex is not chattel.

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to first- and second-wave women’s libbers who chained themselves to buildings and sat in jail so I could have the right to vote in this election and a column in which to grouse about it.

My liberal friends tell me I am exactly who should be voting for Hillary. St. Gloria Steinem herself has decreed it is our moral duty to install a woman in the White House.

Amen, sister. But as a student of history and a humanist, I fervently believe in electing the right candidate for the times.

And I think the Clintonian era of psychodrama and scandal has passed. Consider the fact that the entire premise for Hillary ’08 is a throwback to 1950s seedy pulp fiction.

She’s being slickly sold as the candidate of experience, having already done an eight-year stint at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Yes, but it was on the tea and crumpets circuit. Her grandiose health care initiative was one of the biggest domestic failures in modern history and Clinton was never trusted with anything that consequential again.

That is, until Bill couldn’t keep from pawing a bawdy intern and Hillary became - you guessed it - emotional. So distraught, in fact, that the only thing that could console her was running for a Senate seat up in New York.

When married to a serial philanderer, it’s good to find a hobby.

Clinton stood by her man – and on his broad shoulders to launch her own political career.

That makes her presidential campaign remarkably anti-feminist in my book. (Though I suppose she can take comfort that no one can top reliable GOP nut-job Pat Robertson, who called feminism a “socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”)

Naturally, my heresy has just invited hate mail that I would never dare castigate a man, a black man or Bessie the cow like this.

Yeah, check back with the overwhelmingly male legislators I inveigh against week after week.

Look, I’m not delusional enough to contend we’ve busted the glass ceiling and live in magical Equalityland now. I’ve been paid insultingly less than male reporters with less experience. My mug shot often garners more speculation than my prose.

No doubt, Hillary Clinton faces unique challenges as the first top-tier female presidential contender.

But her next move is utterly predictable: to obliterate Obama with a barrage of unseemly and unfounded attacks, probably employing others to do it (like, say, a perennially sorry spouse).

What we need now is a person of honor in the Oval Office, who will pledge an end to that kind of hyper-partisan, cancerous politics.

Hillary’s not our girl, to steal her own campaign line. She’s masterfully lined the old boys’ club behind her, playing the politics of personal destruction like it’s a parlor game.

And all along the way, she still plays the victim.

For that, you can cry me a river, honey.

The race I’d like to see

One of the first things transplants learn about Iowa City - which trumpets itself as the mecca of the Midwest - is that it’s not like the rest of the Hawkeye State.

As a University of Iowa freshman in the ‘90s, I was confronted by hills banned in most corners of corn-fed territory, a vibrant theater scene and a disturbing nickname.

Yes, in some unenlightened hamlets, I.C. is known as “N-town” for its rather unremarkable diversity. But the Big Ten town is an aberration from 95 percent white Iowa, which is enough to make some folks squeamish about sending their kids there.

So am I surprised that Iowans fell in love with Barack Obama on Thursday?
In a word, no.

The brilliant senator and former constitutional law professor has a commanding, yet thoughtful timbre that dances on the edge of evangelical zeal but never succumbs. For the most jaded among us, it’s jarring to see Obama and a crowd dissolve into a deafening mutual admiration society, as I witnessed in Chicago this summer.

A wunderkind whose presidential hopes were dismissed for months by pundits as a pipe dream, Obama flourished in the intimacy Iowa offers by hitting barbecues and fire halls, inspiring folks and hustling for every vote.

There’s a clear parallel with former Gov. Mike Huckabee, the big winner on the Republican side, who followed a similar strategy. When both men speak, they shed the Washington glad-handling dialect and appear to be (gasp) genuine people.

In a cynical age in which everyone professes to hate politics, Obama connects with people one-to-one, tempting them to believe in “hope” – or at least something greater than themselves.

That’s led many a media-type to crown him as the “next Kennedy,” a tired rite of passage since 1968. Of course, every progressive claims to be RFK’s heir (John Edwards currently is the most boisterous pretender).

Now I have a long, unbridled love affair with the speeches of Robert F. Kennedy. Politicians could learn a lot from his lifelong quest against injustice and tortured immersion into the Brooklyn slums and California migrant camps.

But Kennedy comparisons are usually overly simplistic, aggrandizing or just plain wrong. Obama may be a spellbinding speaker, but his measured persona is quite different than that of a populist streetfighter.

Though a Democrat through and through, Obama ditched the partisan rubric while devising plans for health care, the economy and Iraq based on meticulous research, reaching out to the other side of the ideological divide.

That’s one key to Obama’s stunning nine-point upset of Hillary Clinton in Iowa. Turnout was huge – more than double than the GOP’s – and 59 percent were new caucus-goers. The Illinois senator nabbed them, as well as independents and crossover Republicans.

For that reason, Obama could turn out to be a far more formidable general election candidate than anyone thought – if he makes it that far.

But there’s always the issue of race. Remember the 2006 Michigan Civil Rights Initiative that effectively killed affirmative action? Polling was neck and neck, but no one was shocked when it passed 60 percent. Why? Because people lie about race.

Still, the majority of caucus-goers made a public statement (literally – there’s no such thing as a secret ballot) that they were going with the man with a Kenyan father and a Kansan mother.

That, in and of itself, is remarkable. Iowa, to my knowledge, has never elected an African-American (or a woman) to either house of Congress or the governor’s mansion.

Here’s what did surprise me: People didn’t surrender on the second ballot to the safe choice of Edwards, the down-home, union-loving (white) guy thought to be the runner-up for many. When the vote-trading starts at precincts, electability becomes the watchword and southern pols get a Democratic edge.

Let’s not forget that some cynical liberal columnists have declared the surest way for the Dems to lose the White House three times straight is to go with a chick or a black guy.

But Thursday showed things are definitely changing in Iowa (which no one has noticed has become more urban and less white). For Obama to be the newly anointed national frontrunner does send a powerful message around the globe about race – be it conscious or unconscious.

And it sets up the tantalizing possibility of a real race in November with folks we’re not yet irritated by.

I’ll leave you with one increasingly likely scenario: Obama vs. John McCain, the now odds-on favorite in New Hampshire and Michigan. This could be the first substantive campaign in decades between two independent-minded candidates, a respectful clash of generations, plans and worldviews.

My money’s on the wily POW who survived the Hanoi Hilton, but like any political analyst, I’m paid to be wrong.

Either way, I’d sure like the chance to find out.