From Mike Gravel’s April 2006 appearance on the quasi-debate quasi-two sided program “HANNITY & colmes”.

…………

HANNITY: Let me ask you about this. You have talked extensively and have been quoted fairly extensively about the idea of a world government.  Do you really believe we ought to have a world government?

GRAVEL: Not right now. We’re not mature enough to handle something like that.

HANNITY: That’s not — I don’t care if not right now. Wait a minute — in principle, in principle, do you support the idea of a world government?

GRAVEL: No, I support the idea of having world peace. Do you know a way how you’re going to have world peace?

HANNITY: That’s not what you said. You said, “A world government,” you said, is something that you would support. Hang on. You said everybody talks about world government in academic theory, you said. But you support it.

GRAVEL: Listen, Sean, I don’t support it right now. I just told you that.

HANNITY: Will you support it later, then?

GRAVEL: How many times do I have to repeat that? Here, first off, we know that if we’re going to ever arrive at peace, we need some type of global governance. Overall. But we’re not mature enough to get it. And how we’re going to get there is — how we’re going to get there is we’re going to get there by empowering the people to make laws in the United States — wait a second, Sean.

HANNITY: But this is an important point.

GRAVEL: After that, it — in the United States, it will go around the world like wildfire.

HANNITY: This is an important — hang on. Wait a minute. Hang on a second.

GRAVEL: Now, once we have a situation…

HANNITY: I want to get this in. Mike, hang on…

GRAVEL: What is it, Sean?

HANNITY: I want to get this in, because this is important. This is important, because the idea you don’t support it now, can’t happen now, but in principle, you really want to move towards a world government. You know what most Americans think when they hear that?

GRAVEL: What?

HANNITY: We’re going to give up our identity, our sovereignty to a governing body that will be as corrupt as the United Nations. Do you really want to do that?

GRAVEL: Wait a second. Sean, how could you make a jump from an organization that is based upon the people rather than nation states? What you’re supporting is the continuation of the nation states.  All I’m saying is we are not mature enough as Americans or in any other country right now to have any real global governance.

…………

There is a bit of a pattern I see from Mike Gravel in his “Philadelphia 2” projects.  The reason that the National Initiative Program will not have the same faults as the State Initiatives is because the State Initiative is controlled by the state and this will be controlled by the people— although he seems to be indicating in this election that his visions of the National Initiative are not as Utopian as he had them in the past and now his argument is that the State Initiatives work pretty well.  The One World Government, which is entirely missing from his presidential platform but he’s advocated in the past and I’m sure I can look up and find some of Mike Gravel’s literature if I wanted to on the web, will not have the same faults as current world global entities — like the UN — because those are controlled by the nation states and the One World Government will be run by the people.  I don’t really know what this means.  His ideas are interesting to me, and I would like to subscribe to his newsletter.
What else are we left with here?  I don’t know.  You decide, I suppose.

Incidentally, I’m a bit chagrined.  I’ve moved up on google from #14 to #13 to #11.  Goddamned it, how much more can I possibly have to say about Mike Gravel?

To explain my ground rules of this long series of Mike Gravel related posts:   I am making it a habit to track the google ratings for Mike Gravel.  As soon as this blog falls onto page 3 of google searches, Mike Gravel will become incognito, and I may well make a concerted effort to never mention him again.  So long as Mike Gravel remains on page one or two, I will oblige with a steady stream of Mike Gravel posts.  I am currently falling, and have slipped from #9 to #11 to #14.  This suggests that I will be done with Mike Gravel by the end of the week.  This is good, because so far as I can tell I only have a couple more things to say about Mike Gravel.

I will note that there is another Mike Gravel who is mucking up the process.  I almost want to send him a missive to yell “Hey!  You’re not the former Senator of Alaska and long-shot presidential candidate!”

— Plunderer and Rapist of the Earth.

There is something about Ralph Nader’s quasi-endorsement of Mike Gravel.  Not withstanding that I don’t think Mike Gravel’s tax views mesh with Nader’s, though I could be wrong (the last president or major presidential candidate to advocate a national sales tax was Herbert Hoover, incidentally — at which point in time the decision was codified to assign the sales tax as a purview of the state government).  But Mike Gravel ated as one may expect an Alaskan politician to act concerning the Alaskan wilderness — Develop it and wage battle against the National Government over there in Washington and the Environmentalists’ land grabs — A Fight For ALASKA, mind you, Defending ALASKA.

Understand that Mike Gravel’s last fight in the Senate put him at odds with fellow Senator Ted Stevens, who had a compromise bill worked out concerning these issues, and who Grael accused of bowing too far to the will of the Environmentalist Lobby.  Understand too that Mike Gravel strung this fight out for the entire session, grandstanding for craven political advantage in the run-up to the 1980 election — where he was already tagged as the most vulnerable Incumbent.  Actually, had Mike Gravel’s re-election come up in any other way beside the Watergate year of 1974, where he was the only realistic Republic Senate pick-up possibility, Gravel would have been a one-term Senator.  Thus, the need for theatrical grandstanding on behalf of defending Alaska against the Federal government and those elitist environmentalists.

But maybe, in the eyes of Ralph Nader, you can place his positioning as ending up where the Environmentalist Community were: opposed.  The Center, as defined by Ted Stevens, will not hold, and around the edges you find the common ground.

On Sunday, I listened to Mike Gravel being interviewed by — well, after This American Life ends at 11:00 am that godawful Car Duo comes on NPR, and a quick flick of the “am/fm” switch brings me to the local Air America affiliate, which has on… what’s it called?  Politically Direct.  With David Bender.  David Bender.  A weekend run-through of what is nationally a weekday hour long program.

A decent fellow, this Mike Gravel.  He gave what would, for good or bad, amount to his answers to some of my “10 Questions for Mike Gravel”, which probably isn’t even the 10 Questions I would post today anyway.

My not-particularly heartfelt propaganda of with preposterously lound angry titles has afflicted me.  I found myself grating my teeth when Mike Gravel reiterated that “nobody who voted for the Iraq War Resolution is qualified for the Presidency.”  Firstly, he listed Chris Dodd as one of those “fundamentally good people” he feels “heartbroken” for saying such a thing against, never mind he did vote no.  Secondly, his 1968 campaign against Ernest Gruening — one of two votes against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, was that of a professed hawk taking down a dove.  George McGovern even helped organize the campus – centered anti-war movement in Alaska to carry on with a write-in campaign for Gruening.  Had he been able to vote, Mike Gravel would have voted to escalate the Vietnam War on — probably up to when the Democratic Johnson made way for the Republican Nixon.  All I know for sure is it wasn’t the Pentagon Papers which shook Mike Gravel into opposing the Vietnam War, since Daniel Ellsburg already fingered him as one of the politicians to shop them to.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander: anyone who all evidence points to as being a vote for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is unqualified for the Presidency, never mind what political changes they make thereafter.  Or so should Mike Gravel’s logic work.
He has clearly heard the problems people have with his 22 percent national sales tax replacing the current income tax, as he expressly said “some liberals and progressives balk at it saying it’s a regressive tax”.  And he went on to argure that it’s an improvement over the current model because the rich can’t just plow through the codes and write their own tax code.  Again, this elicited in me a smirk:  Just like Ross Perot, huh?

Mike Gravel’s argument on behalf of the National Initiative, his pet cause and reason for being, seems to hinge on the denial that corporate interests really have taken over at state level initiatives, and the belief that the populace have shown themselves better stewards of the tax dollars than pandering elected officials.  The answer somehow just failed to connect with the question, and I’m left thinking that that something that may not be a bad idea is ultimately not the defintion of something that is a good idea.

When I tuned in, a few minutes into the program, I did not know who I was listening to and I couldn’t make him out.  His soliloquays about repairing our educational system for better connectedness and civic engagement, his comments on how no president has dared mention the Military Industrial Complex since Eisenhower left and his general dispensation to the period of political history from the New Deal to Kennedy struck me as a somewhat more nostalgic version of this type of wise elder statesman of the Left like Howard Zinn and (a bit more aristocratically) Gore Vidal and Lewis Lapham.  He clearly wasn’t any of them — nor was he Bill Moyers — his speech wasn’t as garbled.  Tending to tie strands of history into a bit of a knot, standing on a higher plane than the electoral politics that gets bogged down in temporal and passing fits of pettiness.  I don’t know  if this is a compliment or not, but it is what it is.

For what it’s worth, I don’t see any reason for those entities that chart those somewhat inane Horse Race “Power rankings” of which presidential candidate is up, or down, or sideways to stick Gravel — speaker at that recent DNC winter meeting of some words that at least reverberated to a few points out there — lower than some other candidates who aren’t about to be elected either.  Mike Gravel has to be higher than Joseph Biden or Tom Vilsack, right?

Coming soon: another preposterously angrily titled Mike Gravel entry, this one about his stances on the Environment.  He was an Alaskan politician, what do you think he did on that one?

It almost seems like it was simply part of the book promotion, in part of a larger Congressional Sex Scandal, for the fictionalized and overly sensationalized book The Washington Fringe Benefit — the type of fiction that slices about by naming actual people named “Joe Smith” “Zoe Bith”, and on like that.

That is, the allegation that her sexual services were exchanged to Mike Gravel in exchange for a vote.  From The Associated Press, June 14, 1976:

Former Representative Kenneth J Gray said today he was meeting with Justice Department investigators to prove he could not have influenced support for the National Visitors Center by telling Elizabeth Ray to have sexual relations with Senator Mike Gravel, Democrat of Alaska.

Miss Ray has told Federal investigators she had sexual relations with Senator Gravel during a small party on Mr. Gray’s houseboat on the Potmac River on the night of August 10, 1972, after Mr. Gravel told her to do so.

At any rate, the strange footnote in American political history, time forgets for good reason, and…

Washington Fringe Benefit?  Really?

Don’t worry. I think I only have two more of these in the offing.

There are two things worth considering from this paragraph from Nicholas Lemann’s Washington Post article “The Great Alaska Feud”, published 9/30/1979:

In 1968 both Gravel and Stevens ran for Gruening’s Senate seat. Gruening was the grand old man of Alaska — the territorial governor for 14 years before statehood, a medical doctor, a newspaper editor, and the author of a fine history, “The State of Alaska” — but he was also 81 years old and politically vulnerable. Gravel went after him aggressively, using their age difference (he was 38) and the Vietnam war (he was then a hawk, Gruening a prominent dove) as his issues. Gravel waged Alaska’s first sophisticated media campaign. He trekked all over the state showing a high-quality, half-hour film that probably won the election for him. “Mike Gravel,” the film said, “is on the sunshine side of 40.”

In reference to the DNC meeting words of “Given the extreme importance of any decision to go to war, and I am anguished to say this, it’s my opinion that anyone who voted for the war on October 11––based on what President Bush represented––is not qualified to hold the office of President.”, which is a broadside against Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and — do I have to mention him? — Joseph Biden. In a sense, we can almost narrow it down to Edwards, because he has gone the furthest in repudiating his vote for the war and thus fits Mike Gravel’s profile a bit better in relation to:

(he was then a hawk, Gruening a prominent dove).

If Mike Gravel can change his opinion based on new evidence (and poll numbers), why can not John Edwards? (The other possibility is that Gravel’s hawkishness in the 1968 election was political calculation, and once in office, he changed his mind to where his mind was really at. Who knows?)
Consider too this statement from Mike Gravel.:

“But the fear of opposing a popular warrior President on the eve of a mid-term election prevailed. Political calculations trumped morality, and the Middle East was set ablaze. The Democrats lost in the election anyway, but the American people lost even more. It was politics as usual.”

Now, on the eve of his primary contest in 1980, with Mike Gravel considered the most vulnerable Senator in the entire chamber, the man who “Single-handedly stopped the draft” … from the Associated Press, June, 11, 1980, on the creation of the Selective Service — which is, in effect, a Draft in Waiting.:

Registration foes accused liberals of abandoning the fight.

“It’s too bad Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho), Charles Mathias (R-Md.), Edward Kennedy and Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) didn’t consider this important enough to show up for today’s debate,” said Barry Lynn, chairman of the Committee Against Registration and the Draft. None of them voted yesterday.

Political. Expediency. Trumps. Morality. Unless Gravel distinguishes his strongly stated chest beating on ending the draft with allowing for the Selective Service to commence, which if someone were less chest boisterous about it could be done.
Then there’s the strange facet of politicing that makes a virtue or vice out of either age or youth. Every politician worth his salt would do so, based on the circumstances. He trekked all over the state showing a high-quality, half-hour film that probably won the election for him. “Mike Gravel,” the film said, “is on the sunshine side of 40.” versus Gruening — the territorial governor for 14 years before statehood, a medical doctor, a newspaper editor, and the author of a fine history, “The State of Alaska” — but he was also 81 years old...

I hear that Condelleza Rice and George W Bush have a sexual fling going on.  It pops up in — probably not the National Enquirer, but one of the tabloids that is more spurious than that one — from time to time, with Luara Bush apparently sidled off into separate corners.  The radio program the Stephanie Miller Show has turned this into a a running gag of “Shh.. You can’t mention those spurious rumors!”

That recent spurious book about Hillary Clinton — Ed Klein’s The Truth About Hillary, posits that Hillary Clinton had a number of Lesbian relationships in her college years, or more precisely strongly implied.  The source for these spurious rumours are pretty much trogldytes with a serious culture clash.  Basically this statement found here sums it up.  But also we have The National Review mulling it over with Joe Klein, without coming across terribly well.:

NRO: How many times do you use the word “lesbian” in your book? Why point out she had friends who were lesbians? Do we need to go there?Klein: Hillary’s politics were shaped by the culture of radical feminism and lesbianism at Wellesley College in the 1960s. This is paramount in exploring the political life of Hillary Clinton.

So.  Whatever.  “The Visitor Center: Bungling and Deception” by Blaine Harden, from November 17, 1980 in the Washington Post on what brought to pass the dream of … the dream of…

The plan that Gray promised on Nov. 27, 1967, to turn Union Station into the National Visitor Center was neither perspicacious nor farseeing.  The plan was a hodgepodge of wishful thinking, outright deception and bad judgment.  It has unfolded as an almost unparalleled example of congressional bungling.  For what was supposed to save Union Station without costing “one cent of taxpayers’ money,” Congress has spent or committed itself to spend more than $117 million.  Those millions have been spent on one of the world’s most expensive uncompleted parking garages and on a restoration project that’s actually helped destroy the monumental train station.  Up to $90 million more may have to be spent to fix it.

What is it a Gray?

In Washington, Gray was a flashy dresser, favoring wine-colored velvet suits, multicolored slacks, bow ties and his trademark: high gloss patent leather shoes.  He used country expressions such as “that stuff won’t wash” and “that calf won’t suck.” His constituents bought him a $100,000 jet helicopter, which he used to fly between Washington and his district.  He had what was then known as an eye for the ladies; his staff consisted of some of the most attractive young women on Capitol Hill and he personally hired a blond named Elizabeth Ray in 1972.

And Jimmy Crack Corn and Why Should we care, within the purviews of blogging about irrelevant presidential contenders?

According to Elizabeth Ray, the major source in the congressional sex-scandal revelations in 1976, a condition of her employment was that she have sex with Gray’s friends.  Ray claimed that Gray ordered her to have sex with Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) on the evening of Aug. 10, 1972, to ensure his support for the visitor center.  Colleen Gardner, another major figure in the sex-scandal revelations, told a grand jury that she saw Ray and Gravel having sex that night on a houseboat that Gray owned and kept in a Washington marina.  Both Gray and Gravel have denied the allegations.

I don’t have easy access to any media from that time-frame, but I suppose it would be mildly entertaining, but ultimately pointless.

A google search shows that a search for “Mike Gravel” lists this blog on page one of searches. The stats page has been nonfunctional ever since the struat.com arena of blogs and webpages was moved to a different server, so I don’t know for sure, but I am fairly confident that a decent swab of traffic comes with the fact that I’m so high up on an obscure topic that has wide but not deep news mentions.

I should run with it. In the interest of picking apart a presidential campaign that is permanently affixed to “#10” in the horse race, where the candidate smiles and nods when asked if this is about providing a platform to advocate the National Initiative, I will proceed.

April 19, 1992. The Seattle Times. “‘Outsider Perot Knows Politics From the Inside”. Marc Gunther and Barbara Demick.
I think I figured out Mike Gravel’s motivation in advocating a 22 percent sales tax.

In 1975, Perot hired a silk-stocking Washington lobbyist to place a seemingly innocuous amendment in a tax bill that, before its defeat, would have given him the biggest personal tax break in history.

As the Wall Street Journal later reported in a front-page expose, the amendment would have provided “what may be the most gigantic tax break in history for one person. That person is H. Ross Perot . . .”

Had it become law, the amendment would have resulted in the Treasury writing a check for at least $15 million to Perot. Others would have benefited, too, but not to the same extent.

The amendment was drafted on Perot’s behalf by Sheldon Cohen, a prominent Washington lobbyist who learned the inside moves of tax-law politics as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service under Lyndon Johnson.

Rep. Phil Landrum, D-Ga., who sponsored the amendment, received a $1,000 campaign contribution from Perot the previous October. On the Senate side, a similar amendment was sponsored by Sen. Mike Gravel, D-Alaska, who had received a $5,000 campaign contribution from Perot in 1974.

So, Mike Gravel wants to replace the current tax code with a high sales tax to stop Mike Gravel from taking a campaign donation from Ross Perot in exchange for advocating a bill written by Perot’s lawyer for the express purpose of lining Ross Perot’s pocket with more money.

That makes some sort of sense.

George Ripley: Do your readers a favor and interview Mike Gravel. I think you’ll find a great deal of substance.

If you say so. Here. I float these questions into cyberspace.

I. The primary issue that you are pushing is the National Initiative Process. Thinking about it, I don’t see how it will particularly affect American governance, quite frankly, and I’m imagining it evolving much as the State Initiative works, which you yourself have said, is dominated by corporate interests. How will this be set up so that it is not state-controlled or apt to be purchased whole-scale by corporate interests so that it really does represent that “paradigm shift” you say it is going to?

2. In any National Initiative measure I have seen laid out, the power to declare war will be moved from the Congress to the Public. We’ve already passed this point where Congress has ceased declaring wars and simply passes Congressional Authorizations for the Use of Military Force — and, quite frankly, even the Congressional Authorization seems to be fading away — I worry about future presidents using Bush as a precedent in his general demenor of what he believes “Commander in Chief” means. Unless you can explain how this particular attitude may change, I picture the Congressional Authorizations simply being transferred to Public Authorizations, and — because the President has a bullhorn and the channels for information and propaganda, the public will be reticient in letting military adventures proceed — when Congress passed the Congressional Authorization to use force in Iraq they pretty closely matched public opinion. This means that I once again don’t picture the Initiative Process having much of a real-world impact on another major issue that you are pushing — War and Peace. Using our situation in Iraq as a case study (though Vietnam probably serves as well, but I don’t believe in Vietnam the Congressional reaction was to pass pointless non-binding resolutions), I can not come to a formation as to whether the American public would be any more or less reticient to remove ourselves from an unpopular war.

3. I see your “Maverick” label coming up in your plans to change the tax structure to rely heavily on a 22 percent national sales tax. What I keep seeing other Democrats thinking, and what I thought when I first saw your campaign, was “Regressive” and “Steve Forbes like”. So, are you going to (a) convince them that this is a good idea and is in league with the traditional prinipals or (b) convince them that the rest of your candidacy is so compelling that they should overlook this?

4. The 1972 Democratic Convention. You played a part with a strange speech where you offered yourself up for McGovern’s running mate (Alaska’s 3 electoral votes would serve the party well, I suppose), then almost immediately withdrew yourself that slot. Was this simply grand-standing, a flight of whimsy admist what was considered a historically open convention (the polar opposite of 1968 — though about as unsettling to the television audience), or what?

5. Is The Gravel Administration moving toward Energy Independence? (Why we are in Iraq, right?) My eternal cynicism on the matter has an Alaskan politician heavily promoting drilling in ANWR, and any politican trying to navigate our national politicspandering in the Corn Belt (re: Iowa) by pushing, pointlessly, Ethanol.

6. Just what do you envision a World Government Organization, stronger than the United Nations as you’ve said, doing? And when will this World Government convene? How is it going to enforce the minimal and universal standards that its set up to, I suppose, enforce?

7. Is there anyone in American politics you particularly admire? Is there anyone in office today you can picture Daniel Ellsburg trying to float the Pentagon Papers to, or are they all boneless wonders?

8. As noted by wonkette.com, National Journal ranked the candidates and didn’t bother to include a photograph of you. ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16710815/ ) Has your campaign sent them a photograph? Also, a bit more seriously, I’ve wondered about the state of your campaign from the beginning. Your appearance at that leadership conference suggests that you will at least be appearing in the debates. How do you imagine your campaign getting some traction into the national consciousness? Are you just going to have to come up with some clever sound bytes to use in the opportunities the media is forced to cover you, and convince people like me that this campaign is not simply a platform to advance your pet issue of the National Initiative?

9. Are you on Richard Nixon’s fabled Enemies List? Are you allowed a facsimilie copy to frame and hang on the wall?

10. The War on Terror. There is a man, presumably in Pakistan, named Usama Bin Laden leading what he considers a “Holy War”. He struck the US on 9/11, one of several attacks on the soil of the “Free World”, and the Quasi-Free World. The War in Iraq has demonstrate the limitations of American military power, in case anybody had forgotten, as well as has limited the power of American military power. Bush, for whatever reason, decided to open up a Front in Iraq and make it the Central Front. I presume that your plans in Iraq include disengaging and engaging the regional powers, who have as much an interest in not allowing Iraq descend into chaos as we do. This should change the scene, though not necessarily make it better. So, the question is simply: “The War on Terror” and the problem of Islamic Extremists: what will we do short-term, mid-term, and long-term and how do we reconcile whatever contradictions therein?

There. 10 Questions. It will now float in cyberspace, doint what I do not know.
I suppose just for kicks I should come up with roughly 10 questions for every one of the candidates. And I may just well do so.

A question:

Looking down this list of Contributions by Employer from Individuals for Mike Gravel …

Who is the Houston Talk Show Hoston who donated $500 to his campaign?

I think Alex Jones heralds from Houston. Is that it?

Via Wonkette, we have as good an illustration, from the National Review “ranking” of the Democratic candidates, the strange plight Mike Gravel has situated himself in:

The old “File Photo Not Available”.  I’d recognize that face anywhere.

The rest of the list is here.  For the Republican side, I will note that Ron Paul is not mentioed, even though if he were to run he would surely beat out their #10 man, Jim Gilmore, and there’s as good a chance as any that their #5 man, Chuck Hagel, and even #6 Newt Gingrich aren’t a’running.

Incidentally, Mike Gravel is being invited to DNC meetings that serve as cattle calls for the presidential candidates.  The Democratic National Committee will hold its annual winter meeting to highlight “Strong Leadership for America’s Future” in Washington, DC from February 1-3, 2007. The meeting will feature presentations from the Democratic Presidential contenders on their visions and ideas for America’s future.  And there’s Gravel.  He has met a line of dermarcation into legitimacy in that front.