Potential Presidential Candidates (40 posts)
25. JimP
Sat, Feb 6, 1999 - 1:38 PM/EST
Gayle
The "amazing" comment is a reference to the speed that email flies around the globe, not a reference to the post about the three candidates.
26. This could start a fire...
Sat, Feb 6, 1999 - 10:46 PM/EST
Gayle
JimP, the reason I decided to put that candidate post up is because of things I've seen discussed in other forums. Among the extremist and more right-leaning groups is a general consensus that our presidents should be so moral as to be almost perfect. They appear to want someone who is God-like. To look at those three candidates, the third would best meet the requirement...until we see who it is.
27.
Sat, Feb 6, 1999 - 11:07 PM/EST
Gayle
"What I cannot determine, at least in my mind, is some medium, some line between the disgusting display of prurient interests we have today, and the complete disregard of the candidate's personal life we had when Kennedy, and FDR were President. Where's the middle ground?"
Journalism 101 might have a clue to a medium ground...unbiased reporting.
There wasn't a complete disregard for the personal lives of past presidents, but there was a respect for their privacy. There were glimpses into first families lives, but reporters seemed to understand that more than one person would be hurt by revealing any sexual escapades. Some things were considered 'hands off' out of respect. The media, and many in the public domain, have forgotten what respect is. Many feel they should have their noses into everyone's business and tell the world all there is to know.
The rule in news reporting today is far too often the Bottom Line.
28. OK, I sit, leg elevated, corrected.
Sat, Feb 6, 1999 - 11:22 PM/EST
JimP
I fully agree that there are those who want our president to be almost perfect. I believe that your post, Gayle, did startle me. I showed it to my wife, and she had the reason to begin to ask questions. When I tried to get her to make a pick from the info given, she would not. I do not believe she is that different from most people in this respect. She is very different in many other respects, mostly in her willingness to put up with me. She describes our political relationship as a left wing radical married to a right wing hun. I hasten to add that she tends to speak in wild swings.
I still feel that there must be a middle ground between the closed knowledge base of the forties of FDR and through the early sixties of JFK, and that of the open market on scum we have indulged ourselves in in the nineties. Gary Hart wasn't the first, but he sure did seem to fan the flames.
I don't know the answers. I completely believe in open societies. Open computer systems work best. Open markets provide the best economic incentives across the range of nations. Open information on goods and services we buy is essential for informed consumption. Open meetings of out city councils and their committees is essential to full disclosure.
To me, these are deeply held conservative tenets. McRostie may not agree. And, then I come against a question about knowing too much about a candidate. And, I want to say, "Yes, I can know too much." But, I stop myself from saying that, because it is not true, at least not in my mind.
I would sincerely hope that our nation begin to be able to discern between the irrelevant, the important, and that which is neither. How do we do so? We come full circle to education, and to open societies.
That's more of an answer than you probably wanted. I'm in a very verbose mood this evening.
Regards,
Jim
29. Thanks, Gayle
Sat, Feb 6, 1999 - 11:26 PM/EST
JimP
My post was being typed as your post 29 was entered. You have answered some of my questions.
Jim
30. Isn't it funny...
Sun, Feb 7, 1999 - 2:53 AM/EST
Gayle
Re: the list
My reaction was instant suspicion of C...he seemed too good to be true. I thought of A and B as 'characters'. Like your wife, I couldn't make a choice between them.
31. By the way...
Sun, Feb 7, 1999 - 3:01 AM/EST
Gayle
I'm married to a Republican turned Conservative Democrat. Sounds like we have similar type marriages. I won't tell you which of us talks in wild swings. ?:)
32. Elizabeth Dole
Thu, Feb 11, 1999 - 9:16 PM/EST
Gayle
** After her appointment to head the Red Cross, Eliz. Dole gathered a special team of political advisers to examine Red Cross actions, both managerial and scientific, with a political sensitivity to what might help or hurt Bob Dole's presidential ambitions.
** When Bob Dole was looking for backing from the Christian Coalition prior to the Republican primaries, Eliz. Dole ordered a rewrite of the AIDS prevention manual to coincide with the Christian right's beliefs on homosexuality, premarital sex and condom use. To support Dole's standing with the Christian right, Eliz. Dole, while in office at the Red Cross, gave many speeches about her born-again Christian commitment.
When B. Dole was courting the Christian right, religious conservatives in NC, TX, MS, and OK had recently passed laws tot mute the discussion of sex education. Red Cross chapters and AIDS clinics across the country were on hold awaiting the arrival of their new AIDS manual. Enter E. Dole's special team: When the president of Americans for a Sound AIDS/H.I.V. Policy (A.S.A.P.), which has close ties to the conservative Christian movement, objected to the Red Cross AIDS material, Mrs. Dole consulted with her team and halted publication.
She then asked the Red Cross board of governors to review the manual and tone down language and illustrations. The revised documents placed a greater emphasis on "individual responsibility"--the politically salable euphemism used by the extreme right in discussions ranging from welfare to teen pregnancy. The revisions emphasize the difference between prevention of AIDS and risk reduction, downplaying the use of condoms and instead stressing abstinence.
The manual was now not based on biology or science, but was slanted to religious points of view. An official line memorandum was distributed: "Mrs. Dole asked the Board to become involved in order to ensure there would be no false perception that politics had entered into the issue." At the time, B.Dole defended his wife for carefully avoiding potential conflicts between her job and his campaign. "Elizabeth has been very scrupulous in trying to keep the Red Cross out of it," he said. The revisions not only cost the Red Cross financially, they cost it professionally.
33. E. Dole cont'd
Thu, Feb 11, 1999 - 9:28 PM/EST
Gayle
** Eliz. Dole recommended at-large seats on the Red Cross's board of governors to Senator Dole's political contributors and longtime backers.
** The political advisers interfered in day-to-day Red Cross decisions, frustrating the charity's professional staff and contributing to an exodus of many senior technicians, volunteers and other crucial personnel. Under this politicized leadership, the Red Cross's much-touted "transformation" program to assure a safer blood supply fell short of its goals and was behind schedule.
Having the special political team vet all policy decisions--not just for public relations potential but for political implications--is described by a former member of the Red Cross International Services Committee, Manning Warren III, a professor of corporate law at the University of Louisville: "Elizabeth has been virtually inaccessible to most people at the Red Cross." "If you tried to schedule a meeting with her, she'd have Jenna Dorn or Mari Will or one of her other screeners call to ask you for your agenda. Every meeting was carefully orchestrated, and she was always noncommittal when you asked her about a decision."
34. Politics, as usual.
Thu, Feb 11, 1999 - 9:48 PM/EST
JimP
I'll print these posts for my wife, who currently thinks that Elizabeth Dole may be the woman who first sits as President.
But my wife is one of the most able thinking persons I have ever known, and she will ask for sources. Since these posts seem to be a continuing series, will they be followed by sources?
Regards,
Jim
35. Yep...
Thu, Feb 11, 1999 - 10:07 PM/EST
Gayle
I found things in The Nation and The New York Times. I've condensed this a lot, but the soul is here. Here's more:
** The Red Cross had been battling with the FDA., the federal agency charged with overseeing it, over the charity's handling of the nation's blood supply. To force corrections, the F.D.A. imposed a legally binding consent decree setting a strict timetable for ending sloppy practices. On the stump, B. Dole vowed to fire F.D.A. Commissioner David Kessler--and was joined by Mrs. Dole at campaign rallies that bashed the F.D.A. as too powerful and overreaching. Simultaneously, in Congress, Dole sponsored and pushed Republican legislation to clip the agency's wings. One of the G.O.P. bills targeted the F.D.A.'s ability to regulate the blood supply.
The Red Cross agreed to fix its error-plagued blood program, but continued to have problems and became the subject of a Congressional hearing. Mrs. Dole's special team urged her to announce the program formally in a press conference only 3 months after arrival to give the impression of action, to buy time with the F.D.A. and to score a significant public relations victory.
Not bothering to consult field personnel in advance, Mrs. Dole called a news conference on May 20, 1991. She said the Red Cross would spend $120 million on the reorganization, describing the plan as "the most dramatic and far-reaching public safety step the Red Cross has taken in its history." The announcement had the intended short-term effect. The speech generated glowing editorials around the country. But executives in the blood industry had a different opinion of the transformation program: "Shutting down all of our blood banks for 8 weeks would have caused total chaos in the medical community--it simply couldn't be done." "It would have involved massive layoffs." "This was the first in a series of major decisions which Mrs. Dole announced first and planned later."
Meanwhile, the Red Cross corporate headquarters began to generate scores of press releases crowing about the transformation program. But instead of buying time from the F.D.A., the statements promised more than the organization could deliver in two years, and that began to have disastrous consequences. When the 2 year deadline couldn't be met, the FDA went after the Red Cross.
Eliz. Dole continued to make decisions with her team's input, instead of using the Red Cross medical experts. With lack of clear guidance from corporate headquarters, the transformation program began to lag further and further behind schedule and ran millions over budget.
36. E. Dole cont'd
Thu, Feb 11, 1999 - 10:23 PM/EST
Gayle
In 1993, the Food and Drug Administration filed suit against the American Red Cross in Washington district court accusing the organization of broad regulatory violations in its blood centers. The document set, and said criminal charges would be filed against Red Cross executives if the organization did not make changes in the allotted time. Heading the list of those whom the F.D.A. held legally responsible was Elizabeth Dole.
By negotiating with a Senator and several other well-placed individuals, she was able to have her name, and the names of her senior staff, removed. According to a well-placed source privy to the negotiations, "Elizabeth became extremely concerned to the point of paranoia about our failing to meet the conditions of the decree--and especially how that would look for her politically."
Because of that concern, Dole asked a member of her special team, Michael Goldfarb, and the senior vice president of the Red Cross's national operations group, retired Gen. William Reno, to begin an investigation of the biomedical services division, even though that division had just spent thousands of dollars on an internal audit that found no safety problems in the Red Cross blood supply.
"Elizabeth asked her own team to go behind the scenes to find out where the money was being spent, and why certain projects weren't completed." She didn't tell anyone about her decision until the review was about to begin.
"Between the consent decree, all of the changes we were being asked to make and all of the turmoil in national headquarters, morale within the Red Cross reached the point of crisis," recalls blood services regional officer Tony Dombroski. "All around the country, doctors and nurses and lab technicians left the organization. We saw a mass exodus of all of the best staff who had worked at the Red Cross who really knew blood banking."
In 1995, the last year for which Elizabeth Dole had responsibility, the blood division reported its largest deficit ever--$113 million, after losing $50 million the year before. This resulted in an $84 million loss for the Red Cross, the largest in its history. To finance the major deficit, national headquarters borrowed $11 million from blood services regions; more than $60 million from the chapters, including a substantial sum from the disaster relief fund, which was recently repaid; and $22 million from the pension reversion fund. It has also responded the way many organizations respond when they're looking down the barrel of a major deficit: It froze wages, cut its staff by more than 5 percent and raised prices on the blood products it sells to hospitals.
37. Interesting...
Thu, Feb 11, 1999 - 10:58 PM/EST
Gayle
Interesting: In 1995, Senate majority leader Bob Dole introduced legislation to curb the power of the F.D.A. Coincidence? Maybe. A conflict of interest? No doubt about it. This year, Bob Dole's close ally, Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, is pushing a bill specifically targeting the F.D.A.'s regulatory duties, while House Republicans are advocating a more extreme bill that would allow the blood-banking industry to hire its own private contractors to inspect blood banks. The same bill allows the pharmaceutical industry to hire its own consultants to test the safety of drugs and other medical devices, and would take away the F.D.A.'s power to review computer programs used by blood banks--a particular concern of the American Red Cross, which has spent millions of dollars trying to satisfy the F.D.A.'s requirements and still hasn't completed its computer revamping.
38. Eliz. Dole cont'd
Thu, Feb 11, 1999 - 11:01 PM/EST
Gayle
For years Elizabeth Dole had traveled the country speaking to Christian right groups about her faith. By continuing to do this after she headed the Red Cross, she helped address some of Bob Dole's strategic political problems. Thus in a 1994 speech before the Here's Life group sponsored by the Campus Crusade for Christ in Jacksonville, Florida, Mrs. Dole told her audience about her spiritual reawakening: I had built up my own little self-sufficient world. I had God neatly compartmentalized, crammed into a crowded file drawer of my life, somewhere between "gardening" and "government." That is, until it dawned on me that I share the predicament, that the call to commitment Mordecai gave to Esther is like the call which Jesus Christ presents to me.... Life is not just a few years to spend on self-indulgence and career advancement. It's a privilege, a responsibility, a stewardship to be lived according to a much higher calling--God's calling. This alone gives true meaning to life.
Even in lectures to nonreligious groups, Dole's rhetoric often reflects that of the religious right. For example, in an address she made at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, in 1994, she said, "In our effort to create a more tolerant society--through government, our schools, our entertainment industry and elsewhere--we may be edging dangerously close to knocking out the moral underpinnings of a virtuous society, the checks on behavior that allow freedom to function. And as we do, we are in danger of losing the claim on the hearts of our children that America has always had on our own."
Pleasing the Christian right is of course important for the presumptive G.O.P. candidate for President. On April 2, Pat Robertson, head of the Christian Coalition, stated that Bob Dole would probably not be the Republican Party's nominee for President without the backing of his group, and indeed its support was seen as crucial in Dole's decisive victory over Pat Buchanan and his other rivals in the South Carolina primary in March.
In The Doles: Unlimited Partners , Elizabeth told why she decided to leave her job as Secretary of Transportation so she could hit the 1988 campaign trail full time for her husband. On the surface it appears her remarks could as easily apply to her current leave from the American Red Cross: "I was setting aside one important cause to take up another, to play a significant part in the drama of national politics and in the selection of the leader of the free world."
But as her actions, the documentary evidence and the professionals around her testify, she seems to have been playing that part during her entire four years at the Red Cross, making politics a true blood sport.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The above information is from the author named below. I checked what facts I could through the New York Times and Washington Post archives.
Linda Heller's writing on medicine and health has appeared in many national magazines; a former health columnist for Redbook, she currently writes a column for Parents. Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute. The article was coordinated by Robert Parry, director of the fund's investigative team.
