Kelly Hawes - Howey Politics

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Sunday, September 20, 2020

Kelly Hawes: Arguing about politics

ANDERSON – A lot of people will vote to give Donald J. Trump another term as president. It won’t matter what some anonymous sources might claim he said about our nation’s veterans or about the men and women who gave their lives for our country. Heck, it wouldn’t matter even if the president’s supporters could hear the words come out of his own mouth. It didn’t matter when they heard him say what he said about John McCain. It didn’t matter when they heard him bragging about sexual assault in that infamous “Access Hollywood” tape or when they saw him with their own eyes poking fun at a handicapped reporter. It won’t even matter now that they can hear him, on tape, confirming that he knew what he was telling us about COVID-19 was a lie, that he knew this virus was five times more dangerous than the common flu even as he assured the American people they had nothing to worry about.
Kelly Hawes: Our tweeting president

ANDERSON — The war between our president and his favorite social media platform escalated in the wee hours of Friday morning. Just before 1 a.m., the president sent out a tweet about the rioting in Minneapolis. He called the demonstrators “thugs” and promised to take action to halt the violence. “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he tweeted. “Thank you!” Less than two-and-a-half hours later, Twitter took action. “This Tweet violates our policies regarding the glorification of violence … and the risk it could inspire similar actions today,” the company said. Hours later, the official White House Twitter account posted the same message, and Twitter again took action. “As is standard with this notice, engagements with the Tweet will be limited,” the company said. “People will be able to Retweet with Comment, but will not be able to Like, Reply or Retweet it.” The president is no stranger to outrageous messages on Twitter. Take his latest attack on Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Kelly Hawes: Everyone wants to reopen

ANDERSON — No one is happy about this. Least of all newspapers. With businesses closed, advertising revenues have plummeted, and many newspapers have been forced to make some difficult choices. Some have closed. So, no, newspapers are not peddling stories of gloom and doom just to make a buck. No one really wants to read stories of misery and death. No one wants to write them. Not a single person delights in the news that millions of Americans have lost their jobs. No one cheers when another business files for bankruptcy protection or shuts its doors. No one celebrates as fellow citizens struggle to put food on the table or keep a roof over their heads. COVID-19 has slashed a wound in our economy that might take years to heal. Some of the jobs the virus has taken will never come back. Lots of us are getting grumpy about being stuck at home. Working in your pajamas might have some appeal for a little while, but the attraction begins to fade after weeks on end. And those Zoom meetings have helped businesses and families stay connected, but will anyone really be disappointed when we can go back to meeting face to face?
Kelly Hawes: How the news media can regain the public trust

ANDERSON – As the clock wound down on 2019, two things happened related to the state of journalism in this country. NBC’s Chuck Todd devoted an entire edition of “Meet the Press” to the topic of disinformation in the age of Donald J. Trump, and the Newseum closed its doors for what might have been the last time. Situated just down the street from the White House, the 11-year-old museum featured a gallery of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs and a display dedicated to journalists who had been killed while doing their jobs. It included the bent and twisted World Trade Center antenna set against a backdrop of newspaper front pages reporting on the terrorist attack that brought down the New York City landmark. The Newseum was, in short, a monument to journalism and the 1st Amendment. In explaining its decision to close the museum, the Freedom Forum said it could no longer sustain the expense. Perhaps the facility had been overly ambitious. Too big, too expensive.
Kelly Hawes: It will take an election to judge speaker transition

ANDERSON — House Speaker Brian Bosma says his goal is simply to ensure a smooth transition. The plan is that his hand-picked successor, State Rep. Todd Huston, will spend much of the coming session as something of an understudy, learning the tricks of the trade during Bosma’s farewell tour.
“Most of it you see, and most of the members see, is out here at the podium,” Bosma said. “The vast majority of the job is conducted elsewhere, behind the scenes trying to bring policies to a close and people together to move Indiana in the right direction.” The 62-year-old Bosma is Indiana’s longest-serving House speaker. He first held the reins from 2004 to 2006, before giving them up when Democrats won control of the House of Representatives. He won the job back when Republicans regained power in 2010. The party’s leaders seem to be on board with Bosma’s succession plan. Take this statement from the party chairman, Kyle Hupfer. “During his service in the House, Todd has demonstrated the dedicated, thoughtful and principled leadership needed to serve as speaker,” Hupfer said in a prepared statement. “Brian Bosma leaves behind a historic legacy of accomplishment that will continue with Todd Huston now at the helm.” Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb issued a statement saying that Huston had already proven himself to be a strong leader. “Having a year to learn from Speaker Bosma will prove invaluable,” the governor said.

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Coats calls for bipartisan election oversight commission

"The most urgent task American leaders face is to ensure that the election’s results are accepted as legitimate. Electoral legitimacy is the essential linchpin of our entire political culture. We should see the challenge clearly in advance and take immediate action to respond. The most important part of an effective response is to finally, at long last, forge a genuinely bipartisan effort to save our democracy, rejecting the vicious partisanship that has disabled and destabilized government for too long. If we cannot find common ground now, on this core issue at the very heart of our endangered system, we never will. Our key goal should be reassurance. We must firmly, unambiguously reassure all Americans that their vote will be counted, that it will matter, that the people’s will expressed through their votes will not be questioned and will be respected and accepted. I propose that Congress creates a new mechanism to help accomplish this purpose. It should create a supremely high-level bipartisan and nonpartisan commission to oversee the election." - Former national intelligence director and Indiana senator Dan Coats, in a New York Times op-ed published Thursday morning.

Woodward on why Coats didn't speak out on Trump

Bob Woodward, the author of the new book “Rage” discussed the way in which President Trump diminished former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and former DNI Dan Coats and why he thinks Mattis and Coats have not publicly spoken about the president. “It’s almost a book in itself,” Woodward said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday. “This was a man who was a senator from Indiana. He was retiring and he was offered this job from Mike Pence, and felt he could not say no. He went in with these Republican values and was stunned, shocked and, in a way, just ground down from Trump’s refusal to accept reality.” Woodward said that at one point Mattis and Coats talked after a National Security Council meeting. “Mattis says that Trump has no moral compass. And Coats says, ‘Donald Trump,’ their leader, ‘does not know the difference between a lie and the truth.’ They were in the latter phase of their lives. (Trump) pulled all of these stunts in a way that led them to the point where, in Coats’s case, his wife Marsha said to him, ‘Look, Dan, God put you in this job. You’re not just failing the country, yourself and your family, but God and you need to get organized.’ Trump expelled him when it did not serve Trump’s purposes.” - Brian A. Howey, publisher