Thoughts on the 2012 GOP Candidates…

This afternoon, Sarah Palin announced she would not run for president in 2012. Her ostensible reason given was that she could have more influence as an outsider. Here are my thoughts….

First, Sarah Palin will never be president of the United States. This year was her best chance, but her power and influence came from the fact that she was seen as a central figure in GOP presidential politics having been the ‘08 VP nominee, and since the GOP of today doesn’t give second chances she took McCain’s place as one of inner circle of presumptive nominees. Four years later, she bows out of consideration, and the GOP is no more forgiving. Sarah will continue to have influence on the GOP field, and on the election, but from this moment it will be waning. She will probably spend another year or so in the public light, and then retire to Arizona with her family to enjoy the tens of millions she has made from her ‘fifteen minutes of fame,’ and I don’t begrudge her that reward; she has certainly paid the price for becoming a public figure and a lightning rod.

The interesting question is, why? I have to think that there were just enough to the revelations from the McGinnis book to make a presidential run a disaster for Sarah and the GOP. Certainly the Democrats are the champions when it comes to the politics of personal destruction, and in an environment where the incumbent Democrat president cannot reasonably run on his record, I fully expect Obama and the Democrats to go thermonuclear on their scorched earth progrom. The Democrats have no other alternative than to trash their GOP opponent, to persuade the electorate that no matter how bad they think Obama is, the GOP alternative is worse… and they will relish in making it personal. Maybe Sarah and Glenn Rice had a one-night stand, and maybe they didn’t, and maybe this is a he-said/she-said, and maybe like Monica it’s really no one’s business and has no relevance as to her suitability for the presidency… but it won’t play that way. I can’t say that I blame Sarah for not wanting to go through another year of what will make what has already occurred seem like nothing. I will say, however, that she had a good chance of winning as she was definitely the anti-Obama.

Chris Christie has also definitively announced that he won’t run in 2012, so we are left with the current slate of candidates. On the right we have Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann, a little further towards the center we have Rick Perry, with Mitt Romney by his lonesome in the center, Jon Huntsman to his left, and then on the fringe we have Ron Paul. I’ve deliberately left out Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich; both are extremely well-qualified and both are bonafide conservatives, but in this political climate neither is electable… and that is a real pity.

Mitt Romney is the polished, consummate professional in the race. His years of experience in closely-fought campaigns, winning and losing, plus his innate qualities as a businessman, have made him the best-performing of the candidates. He’s always ready with the perfect counter, he knows how to attack his opponents in a likable manner, and he has the appearance and demeanor of a leader. Of course, Romneycare, the Massachusetts universal healthcare approach that has proven to be suboptimal in Massachusetts and that served as partial inspiration for Obamacare, is the millstone around Romney’s neck; extremely unpopular with the constituencies Romney will need to win the nomination and the presidency. That issue combined with his occasional pandering and flip-flopping is why the GOP faithful want someone else to run that they can get behind. I believe he’d make a competent president in the way that George H.W. Bush made a competent president, but I don’t think he is the leader we need at this time.

Michelle Bachmann showed real promise earlier this year at the debates but her recent statements on Perry’s HPV vaccination program have, I believe, knocked her out of serious consideration for the nomination. In my opinion Bachmann wasn’t ready to run this time, but she will be a powerful force in Republican politics for the future.

Similarly, Jon Huntsman has a very good track record but he is seen as too liberal and a little too weird for the average GOP voter. Another person who would make a good president, but not an inspiring one.

I don’t want to waste time on Ron Paul, the Libertarian-leaning candidate. He’s very right on many things, and very wrong on many other things… certainly a good advisor but in my opinion he would make a poor president because the world doesn’t work the way he believes it should… and won’t any time in the near future.

Rick Perry came into the race as the Savior, the One who would save us from Romney. It hasn’t happened. No one gets to be a successful three-term governor by being stupid, but Perry often comes across that way just because he hasn’t taken the time to refine his messaging on his positions. While he has many good qualities that Republican voters are looking for, I think his positions on immigration, in-state tuition for illegals, vaccinations, etc., come across in the mold of a Nelson-Rockefeller-knows-what’s-good-for-you, and his declaration that people who disagreed with him on these subjects “didn’t have a heart” definitely hurt him with his target electorate. Perry is too authoritarian for my tastes; if I want to be lectured to I’ll vote for Obama.

That leaves Herman Cain. A mathematician by training, a businessman, an accomplished turnaround specialist, unassuming, with a bias for action and a willingness to put it out there. Cain’s rise among the other candidates is almost a fortuitous accident. Cain would make a good president, and might turn out to be a great candidate, and he will be able to come right at Obama like no other GOP candidate possibly can.

So, I think Cain will probably get the nomination as Romney and Perry tear each other up and take each other out and disgust the voters while doing so, and there is no other reasonable alternative. I’m looking forward to seeing him debate the One, because I think the American public is fed up with posturing and show over substance after four years of Obama.

My Addictions…

I often get into new hobbies and activities after reading about them. My problem is, I never seem to be able to get into anything half-heartedly. It’s all or nothing.

A decade ago I happened to be browsing magazines in the local Barnes and Nobles, and ran across the ARRL’s QST with an article about building your own high-performance amateur radio transceiver. To make a long story short, I bought the magazine, read the article, and then thought How cool would it be to build a radio and then be able to talk around the world on it? Within six months I had obtained my Amateur General license with operating privileges on the worldwide HF bands, and bought and built the Elecraft K2 kit featured in that magazine. A year later I had several ham radios for HF and VHF/UHF, and had talked from Seattle to Tanzania, Kamchatka, Argentina, and the South Pole on 5 watts of radio power. Think about that for a moment… with less electrical energy than a powerful flashlight and without any infrastructure (read: Internet) I was able to communicate around the world. That is pretty amazing, isn’t it?

I won’t even go into my addiction for firearms that led me into opening what was, at the time, the state’s largest indoor shooting range and gun shop. Suffice it to say that I learned a very powerful lesson: never turn your avocation into your vocation. Why not? Because you spend all of your time working at what should be fun, and then when you have some leisure time you don’t want to spend it doing what you do all of the time.

My latest addiction is motorcycles. It started innocently enough, after watching a fly fishing video:

Western Alpine Fly Fishing for Bass

In the video, the fisherman gets into the remote lake by loading his gear onto a ‘80s-era Honda CT-110 motorcycle. While fly-fishing has also been a less intense addiction than most others for me, the motorcycle piqued my interest as a better way to get into remote areas than loading up a pack frame on my back and hiking a couple of miles from my truck (for those of you who don’t live out West, this is BIG country). So, I kept my eye open for a CT-90 (the original ‘70s-era version) or CT-110 at a reasonable price, and picked up a ‘70 CT-90 a few months later.

The CT-90 was an excellent motorcycle for a new rider. My previous experience had been as a teenager swapping out the use of my air rifle for an afternoon to a neighbor who had a CT-70; his parents were totally against guns, and mine didn’t want me to have anything to do with motorcycles, so we’d trade and each get to enjoy a little forbidden fruit. Later on, I rode a motorcycle just TWO times as a adult; once on a friend’s Suzuki 400 and another time on a co-worker’s Kawasaki 750 (the 750 was too big for me, and I almost put it down trying to get started… once I had sufficient speed up, it was easy to ride and turn, and I was able to successfully ride down to the end of the parking lot, turn it around and ride back to a stop). At any rate, the automatic clutch and bicycle-like brakes (a lever on each handlebar, plus a rear brake pedal on the right side) made it enough like a bicycle to make the CT-90 a good beginner’s bike. However, it’s low power and lack of a clutch, the attributes which made it good for beginners, became weaknesses as my interests progressed. (BTW, it’s for sale… a 1970 K2 with less than 1500 original miles in great condition.)

My next bike was a Honda CRF230L, a dual-sport (street-legal but capable of off-road riding) that I picked because it was a Honda dual-sport. Here in Washington state, you cannot operate an unlicensed (not-street-legal) motorcycle on the unpaved forest roads in the state and national forests, and that is a large amount of the unpaved roads and trails in the state and throughout the West, so a street-legal bike is a necessity unless you want to be restricted to your own land or the few crowded designated ‘off-highway vehicle’ (OHV) areas. I chose the Honda because of Honda’s well-deserved bullet-proof mechanical reputation, and I chose this particular bike instead of something larger like Suzuki’s DRZ400 or the Honda, Suzuki, and Kawasaki 650 dual-sports because of it’s light weight and low saddle height. I’ve owned the bike since February and it’s been an enjoyable way to work on my riding skills. It’s also a good tool for spending time with my son; he has a Honda XR70 that I bought him for his 10th birthday which allows us to go trail riding together.

Even though the CRF230L is a great motorcycle for what it is, my addiction made me want something more suitable for longer distances on paved roads. The 230L gets a little squirrelly at highway speeds with its knobbies, and the 223cc engine is not meant to be run at high RPMs for hours on end. I don’t mind throwing it in the back of my pickup and driving to trail heads, but what about riding around Mount Rainier, or around the Yakima River canyon for a day? Nope… I needed a road bike.

After test-riding various Harley Sportster-based bikes, plus a few Yamahas, Kawasakis and Suzukis, I decided what I didn’t want: anything super-high performance, anything that made me lean forward, anything that made it easy to lift the front wheel off the ground with some injudicious use of the throttle and/or clutch, anything with a high saddle height, anything that made its horsepower well up in the RPM range. That pretty much ruled out most of the sport bikes, and a lot of the ‘adventure’ bikes like the V-Strom, the KLR650, and the big Beemers. I found that I liked everything about the Harleys except for the fact they were Harleys: a fine motorcycle but I definitely do not fit the demographic of the typical Harley rider. That was when I stumbled across an article about Honda’s DN-01, a concept bike that was Honda’s modern interpretation of a sports/cruiser combination that had been brought into production. Honda calls it a ‘crossover.’

The DN-01 is a different beast. Unlike sport bikes it has a fairly long wheelbase (62” versus the mid-50” range), is heavy (595 lbs versus mid-400 lb range), and has a low saddle (28” versus 31” or thereabouts for most street bikes). It also has a 680cc V-twin engine, a great design for a cruiser that pulls well at low revs, unlike the typical high-revving inline-4 crotch rocket engines. Perhaps the biggest difference: there’s no clutch. The DN-01 uses Honda’s HFT (Human-Friendly Transmission) hydraulic automatic transmission that is much more like a car’s transmission than the typical CVT found in motor scooters. However like a CVT the gear ranges are infinite. The combination of electronics and mechanical wizardry in the HFT allows for 100% lockup for maximum efficiency yet the transmission ratios can be continually adjusted to provide the best combination of engine RPM for a given speed and power demand. The result is an incredibly smooth riding experience… just twist it and go.

I test-rode a DN-01 down in Oregon a month ago while on business, and decided to buy it after the dealer made me an offer I couldn’t refuse (about half the original MSRP). The DN-01 has sold well in Europe, but not so well here in the US, probably due to the fact that it was introduced during the middle of our Great Recession and at a fairly high factory MSRP. At any rate, the few that are left at dealerships are often priced very aggressively. A week ago I returned to Oregon on business, planning ahead by arranging a one-way car rental and bringing only soft luggage and a Giant Loop Coyote bag to cart everything home in.

While I was at the dealership I also picked up a new Shoei Hornet dual-sport helmet, as I knew my offroad helmet and goggles would be insufficient to multi-hour interstate trips. The Hornet is touted as a true dual-sport helmet, as it can be used on the street with a clear shield, or the shield can be easily removed and the rider can used goggles. However, the one drawback of the Hornet is that you must remove the visor before riding at high speeds, otherwise the wind resistance is so great that your head is pulled back. Don’t ask me how I know this! At any rate, I returned to the dealership before heading off to Seattle, removed the visor and stowed it in my computer backpack, bought a new Joe Rocket Ballistic 7.0 jacket as well to augment my inexpensive nylon mesh jacket, and after cramming the old jacket into the coyote bag, lashing the bag to the back of the DN-01, and then lashing my backpack on top of it, hit the road. Of course, by then it was almost 8 pm. No way to get home before dark, so I figured I’d head north and stop for the night when the twilight faded.

After a quick discussion with a few folks who were hanging out at the shop, I decided against heading northwest on Oregon Hwy 30 to Rainier Oregon and then hopping over the Columbia River on the Longview Bridge. I’ve driven this route several times, and ridden it on a bicycle several times also as it is the last 50 miles of the Seattle-to-Portland double century ride, but riding west into the sun on a two-lane road didn’t seem like all that good of an idea. Instead, I hopped on Hwy 26 back east 10 miles to Portland, and then got on I-5 and headed north.

At first I was very nervous, not having any experience riding on a controlled-access highway at high speed and on a new motorcycle, but that soon faded. Wind blast was an issue also; I was not used to the tremendous air resistance encountered at highway speeds, and the occasional gusts caused by semis. And, as I crossed the I-5 bridge across Columbia River north of Portland, the 20 mph wind coming through the Gorge from the Pacific to the eastern Oregon deserts had me leaning to the left just to keep the bike going straight. The temperature dropped as the sun set and by the time I hit Woodland, about 25 miles north of Portland, I was starting to shiver, so I pulled into a McDonald’s for dinner, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a medium hot chocolate. It took me a while to warm up, even sitting inside a warm restaurant and drinking hot chocolate, so I decided to ride for another 10 or so miles, and then spend the night in Kelso. I made it to the Red Lion before it got completely dark, and only realized after I had taken my helmet off to check in how many small bugs were stuck to my visor!

After a good night’s sleep, and a little sleeping in, I was a little worried about the remaining trip. Riding a motorcycle at highway speeds requires one’s full concentration, and is very fatiguing. Certainly this is something that can’t be done for several hundred miles without taking stops every hour or two… and I wanted to be in Seattle by 2:30 to make a phone call to the East Coast. I got everything packed up and headed north around 11 am, stopping to get gas and then deciding to eat just after noon in Centralia, about 100 miles and 2 hours from Seattle. Getting some food inside made me feel a lot more energetic and optimistic, so after taking a picture of myself in the window, and a picture of my loaded motorcycle, it was time to move on.

The last part of my trip went without incident. By now I was used to how the bike handled, and the wind blast. Running at 75 mph, the bike really ate up the miles, and the warmer daytime temperature was very comfortable. I made it back to Bellevue and up to my office with a minute to spare.  As I rode the couple of miles to home on surface streets after the call, I already missed the exhilaration of leaning into the wind, and into the turns, of looking over my shoulder, signaling, and then accelerating into a lane change. Of being alone with my thoughts while being completely in the moment, of  not consciously thinking anymore about maneuvering and countersteering but just doing, of being one with the motorcycle. That is my latest addiction, and I think I’ll need another fix very soon.