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Galen for Governor!

Monday, July 28, 2003

• TITLE: "Galen for Governor"

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• "� Susan Estrich �" Regular Mullsters know that Susan and I do a more-or-less weekly bit on the Fox News Network arguing about the political news of the week.

• "� Residency �" Here's the background on the residency requirement issue:

  The California constitution requires five years of residency to be Governor but a footnote says "it is the opinion of [the office of the California Secretary of State] that this provision violates the U.S. Constitution."

  According to The US Constitution a person is eligible to be a U.S. Representative if they are 25 years old, and been a citizen of the US for seven years and a U.S. Senator if they have reached 30 years of age and have been a citizen of the US for nine years.

  In both Article 1 Section 2 and Section 3 the only residency requirement is that a citizen, over 30 must "when elected" be "an inhabitant of that state�"

  I'll spend a month in California, if necessary.

• "� palindrome �" From the Merriam Webster's Unabridged:

  Function: noun
  Etymology: Greek palindromos running back again, from palin back, again + -dromos -drome
  1 a : a word, verse, or sentence (as "Able was I ere I saw Elba") that reads the same backward or forward
  2 : a number (as 18181) that expressed in arabic numerals has the same value when reversed

• "� Reagan Administration �" This was a long time ago, so I was a little fuzzy on some of the details. It turns out that the now-SENIOR political correspondent for the Washington Post, Dan Balz was on the case.

  You can read the Washington Post story here.

  The deal was, the International Monetary Fund was up for a re-authorization vote in the U.S. House. There was language in the bill which forbad any money being loaned to any nation which practiced apartheid - which was, of course, aimed solely at South Africa.

  The language contained a series of reasons why, if a country practiced apartheid, it was a barrier to good economic policies, bad labor practices, and so on.

  A feisty Representative by the name of Phil Gramm (who, as a sidebar to a sidebar had been a Democratic member of the House, had been stripped of his committee assignment by the Democratic Leadership because of Gramm's support of President Reagan's economic policies, became a Republican - but not by simply walking across the aisle as so many others have done, but by resigning from the House, becoming a Republican, getting elected and serving as a Republican member of the House and later the Senate until his retirement last year) proposed an amendment which added the words, "or Communism" to the bill any place the word "apartheid" appeared.

  I was the Director of Public Affairs at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) at the time and I thought it would be a swell idea to do a press release into the district of any Democrat who voted against the Gramm amendment.

  Not only did we send these releases to the media in those districts, we also sent the release to every major DONOR of those Democrats.

  The Democrats were angry with me, the Republicans on the House Banking Committee were angry, the Republican leadership of the House was angry with me, the White House was angry with me � The only guys who weren't angry with me were Newt Gingrich and Phil Gramm.

• Mullfoto of the Day:
  
  
  Nothing spectacular about this Mullfoto except I liked it. This is a statue of George Washington at Washington Circle which is at the confluence of "K" Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, 23rd Street, and New Hampshire Avenue.
  
  
  

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  World War I Poster
  

•     Mullings' Catchy Caption of the Day:
  
  Two Down �

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