Outrageous Vulnerabilities
It's Still The Economy, Stupid
In Week Before Labor Day, Pointless
Palin's No Shrinking Violet
Danger Signals
Palin's Learning Curve
Obama Off-Balance from Palin Flip-Flops on O'Reilly
Johnny's Got A New Girl
Martha's Big Adventure - Enquiring Minds Want to Know
Abstinence Education Is Still A Good Idea
Crying Wolf On The Economy While Ignoring Real Perils
The Dems Do Denver
JFK: Democrats' Role Model?
Palin, Pregnancy And The Pulpit
Sarah's Choice
Convention(al) Reflections
Farewell To An American Hero
The New Life of The Grand Old Party
Want Real Change? Quit Nominating Lawyers!
Harper's Index
Don't They Have Birth Control Up In Alaska?
Professor Bush's Economic Nostrum
Saving The GOP And The Unbearable Lightness of Being Sarah Palin
Building The Bridge
Married Liberals With Children
Mosdirection In Minnesota
Logical Consequencse
Which Ticket Really Will Deliver Change Voters Want?
The Perfect Stranger
Game On: Let The Race Begin
Michelle Obama: Family-Values Feminist -- Or Phony?
The Role of A Lifetime
What's So Terrific About Mccain's Palin Pick?
The Four Stages of Conservative Female Abuse
Later Conventions Make For A Strange Election Season
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'RomneyCare' Should Keep Mitt Off McCain Ticket
Most Sarcastic Campaign Ever
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Confessions of A Third-Rate Sexist
Mccain Veep Criterion: 2 'X' Chromosomes Are All That's Needed
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A Human-Resources Handbook
Palin's Gender Alone Won't Sway Women Voters
The RNC's Unconvention
Palin's State Reaps The Windfall Profits McCain Decries
Finally, We Care About A Teen Pregnancy
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Palin Has Tall Mountain to Climb
McCain Palin Can Join the Club -- Interview with Pat Toomey
What Standards?
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We've Come A Long Way, Baby
Impulse, Meet Experience
Gustav's Silver Lining



Listening To The Governors
David Broder 7/17/2008
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PHILADELPHIA -- When the luck of the draw made him the chairman of the National Governors Association in this, the centennial year of its first meeting -- with President Theodore Roosevelt -- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty knew how and where he wanted to celebrate the occasion.

He invited all the living former governors to join those now in office at this birthplace of the Republic. And so it was that on Saturday evening, a disappointing turnout of 27 state executives mingled with 32 of their predecessors around the Liberty Bell to toast our unique form of government.

I have been covering these meetings since 1962, and there have been many memorable moments. At that session, in Hershey, Pa., Nelson Rockefeller of New York threw a civil rights resolution on the table -- just to watch the Democrats fight among themselves -- and Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings of South Carolina responded by launching the first and only filibuster I've ever witnessed at these sessions.

Back when governors took themselves less seriously than they do now, they put the whole conference aboard the S.S. Independence in 1967 and sailed it from New York to the Virgin Islands and back. In 1975, when Louisiana's Edwin Edwards hosted the conference in New Orleans, the oil and gas industry,
on the last night, loaded up several fake paddle-wheel steamboats with more clams and oysters and booze than I've ever seen -- and people got seriously wasted.

This year was no match for that, but for four hours on Saturday, in the new home of the Philadelphia Orchestra, historian Richard Norton Smith and journalist Cokie Roberts led the governors in a discussion that was the best I've ever heard from them.

I like listening to governors because they live in the real world. They are close to their constituents and, unlike members of Congress, they have to balance their budgets and make hard choices. They have less time or tolerance for political games. All of that -- and more -- was on display in Saturday's dialogue.

It began on a high note when Smith asked them to reflect on the concept of states' rights. Linwood Holton of Virginia, who a generation ago sent his young children to what had been an all-black school in Richmond, said, "For 100 years, states' rights was used as a shield against the Constitution -- a code word for white supremacy. When I was governor, I had the opportunity to say, after all these years, Virginia is part of this Republic. And, with Doug Wilder, we became the first state to elect an African American governor."

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