My Point of View, By Ebenezer Howe

The new year is upon us. Some people like to look back on the past year, reflect on it and make resolutions mostly along the line of being better or doing better. Of course, this is in the eyes of the beholder. I do not partake in this since in my mind I am so pure there is no room for additional goodness. But I did, and I have no idea why, start thinking of how politicians manipulate words and figures and when I first took note of this. It was in 1983 and Tim Penny was the freshman representative for the 1st Congressional District in Washington, D.C. He was sworn in on Jan. 3, 1983.

This is the opening paragraph of a news story Jan. 10, 1983, from Helen Thomas, UPI White House Correspondent: “WASHINGTON — President Reagan, declaring “I’ve had it up to my keister” with leaks to the press, directed White House staff members Monday to exert tighter control over all interviews with reporters.”

Tim had been on official duty seven days at that time. I don’t know if it was that evening or the 11th, Penny’s staff issued a harsh rebuke to the president for taking the name of Kiester in vain. Please note the difference in spelling and thought. This of course came from Tim’s staff and not directly from him. But I would think it was approved by Tim or his chief of staff, unless it was from his re-election team in action after seven days. This type of stuff comes from the PR (public relations) folks, and, yes, they have college degrees in this, and some of it is paid for by our tax dollars in action. My point is not to pick on Tim Penny; he was probably above average as a Congress critter. I think why I remember this is mostly because he grew up in the township just south of where I grew up; local guy makes good, and my mom had a Tim Penny tri-fold roof mounted election sign on her car that stayed there well after election night.

This sort of stuff is not limited to the other side.

Just last week I got one from the Downey for governor campaign. It was a graph comparing his four-year reign of the state party to Matt Dean’s two years as chairman of the committee that oversees Health and Human Services and to Jeff Johnson’s eight years on the Hennepin County Board. Downey’s graph (four years) was on percent of reduction in both MNGOP budget and monthly debt service. Dean’s graph (two years) was an increase in the Health and Human Services budget and increase in state spending. Johnson’s graph (eight years) was an increase in the Hennepin County budget. That is like comparing cumquats to peaches and grapefruit. The Downey campaign must have used those two because he sees them as strongest competition or maybe next week he hits the others with same misleading attack game.

This is not to disparage Downey’s campaign or anyone else’s campaign. It is meant as a notice to PR folks that we see through this sort of B.S. and would like it to stop. The truth and true comparisons seem to work better.

On the GOP side there have been nine candidates for governor that I have official announcements from and one other guy, no official announcement. I think only six are still active. I have heard eight of them and think all six of the still active candidates would make an OK governor and three would be great. Probably all nine or 10 would be better than what we have now. Of the three mentioned above, all are in my top five.

I don’t know if Dornink or Bennett’s campaigns took part in this sort of misleading endeavors last election cycle. I asked them not to send me stuff as I was busy putting up their signs with Donald Trump’s and they had my vote.

The most frequent negative comment on Trump that I hear is, “I wish he would quit tweeting.” That should have been put to rest by CIA Director Pompeo on a Sunday morning show Dec. 2. From an article in The Hill: “CIA Director Mike Pompeo said on Saturday that President Trump’s Twitter habits have actually helped his agency gather and understand intelligence.”

Keep tweeting, Don!

Back to my gripe with PR folks — why don’t you guys pass and keep a resolution to refrain from the wild misrepresentations and manipulations of the figures. Why not use the whole spreadsheet and the whole quote and define the context from which they come.

Have a Happy New Year!

Alden resident Ebenezer Howe is chairman of the Freeborn County Republican Party. His views do not necessarily reflect the views of the local party members.