Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Parts I, II, & III: The Trip to Reagan National, Getting Through
Reagan National, The Flight to Atlanta
Part IV: Atlanta: The Home of the Braves and the Land of the
Free Local Calls
Part V: I Find the Lines
Part VI: The Plane to Washington

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Getting Used to the News

Monday, October 15, 2001

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From Indianapolis, Indiana
RNC Campaign Management College

Published reports indicate some 41,800 died in traffic accidents in the year 2000. No one, that I know of, has said in the past month that they don't want to drive because it is too dangerous.

We have assimilated the fact that, although 42,000 people lost their lives in car wrecks, it has to be weighed against the - what? - 100 billion trips in cars that year?

If 42,000 out of 100 billion - one trip out of every quarter million - results in a fatality, those are pretty good odds. But there is something else: About 42,000 people die in car accidents EVERY year. So it has become, not just a tiny risk, but an acceptable risk digested over a long period of time.

Think about this: If there had never been anyone killed in a car accident prior to 2000, and starting on January 1, 2000 114 people per day, every day, began dying on the highways what do you think the major issue in the Presidential campaign would have been?

By now, we would all be driving in rubber cars. At a Federally-mandated 13 miles per hour.

One person - as of this writing - has died of anthrax. I am in no way attempting to diminish the death of Bob Stevens, in Florida. Not at all. He, very likely, died of a terrorist attack just as wicked as those which caused the deaths of those people in New York, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon.

On Saturday morning, I flew here from Atlanta. As we landed we could see a US Airways 737 parked at the far end of a taxiway surrounded by trucks with flashing lights. I asked the lead flight attendant if she would ask the pilot to drive over that way so we could see what was going on, but she said she didn't think he would do it.

It was, of course, the plane which was diverted when a flight attendant found a powdery substance in an overhead. That substance turned out to be starch used to keep plastic items from sticking together.

A man on a plane in California was, essentially, wrestled to the floor when another passenger saw him attempting to place a powdery substance in the plane's ventilation system. It turned out that the man opened a greeting card out of which fell ... confetti.

There is a fabulous Catchy Caption of the day on the Secret Decoder Ring today.

Reuters reported that "over 1,000 people" in New York, Florida and Nevada have been tested for anthrax. Only two people, Mr. Stevens and Erin O'Connor, an assistant to TV news anchor Tom Brokaw, appeared to have contracted the disease.

Founding Mullings sponsor, Public Opinion Strategies, has been looking at attitudes of Americans since September 11th. Their latest data indicate that 94 percent of Americans sampled have felt angry since September 11; 87 percent have felt sad; and, according to the study focus groups have evoked such emotion-laden words as: violated, apprehensive, and perplexed.

Note, that being "apprehensive" is not the same as being frightened, much less terrified.

A good deal was made on the cable news channels over the weekend about the "mixed messages" coming out of the Administration: On the one hand being asked to go about our normal business; on the other being warned by the FBI that new attacks might well be expected over the weekend.

Americans are showing signs of an unexpected societal maturity: We ARE able to go to malls. We ARE able to take the kids and the dogs out for walks. Given the loading on the airplanes I was on, we ARE able to fly on commercial aircraft.

But we are also able to understand we are still in danger and that danger might come from any direction at any time. Much like driving your car on an interstate highway.

The hotel at which I am staying is directly across the street from the RCA Dome where the Sunday night NFL game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Oakland Raiders was played.

Someone asked if I thought we should try to get tickets for the game. I declined. I had no desire to be there, even though I like football. I didn't think anything would happen, but ...

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