Congressman Allen West and I have mutual friends. When he won
election in November 2010, his phone number was given to me by
someone who thought I would be a good fit working for him as a
writer and spokesman. We had a pleasant conversation and he
suggested I send my curriculum vitae to his chief of staff. At the
end of the day I held back, leery of being pulled back into a life
of hectic schedules marked by frequent crises.
Now I wonder if I made the right choice, because he needs
some sane, loyal defenders in his camp. Instead I guess we have to
settle for second best; namely, getting him some sane, loyal
defenders outside his camp.
A little background is in order. The Congressman first
came to national attention as Lieutenant Colonoel Allen West.
During the Iraq War, the Lieutenant Colonel was questioning a
recalcitrant terrorist who was not forthcoming with information
about planned attacks in the area. To stimulate the gentleman’s
recollection, the Lieutenant Colonel was said to have fired his
weapon into a metal garbage can to create some cacophonous
acoustics. This was not to the taste of some of his more genteel
superiors and he was in hot water for a time.
When the Lieutenant Colonel resumed civilian life in South
Florida, he announced for Congress as a conservative Republican.
The seat he targeted includes Fort Lauderdale and some of its
beachside environs, as far north as parts of the Palm Beaches. It
had been held for many years by Republican Clay Shaw, who voted
conservative except where money for seniors was involved. Shaw
began winning by narrower margins as more Jews from the Northeast
relocated into the area. Liberal Jews in state politics were
salivating for that slot, which they thought rightfully
theirs.
His slimmest victory came in 2000, when just such a
politician, Elaine Bloom, was ahead in the tally from about the
time CBS called Florida for Al Gore. Shaw refused to concede
because he was down by a thousand votes or so with fifteen thousand
military ballots uncounted, so he said a smiling goodnight at 2
A.M. and went to bed. Bloom angrily gave her victory speech anyway,
which I wound up watching because the Presidency was still
unsettled. Before twenty-four hours had passed, Shaw was declared
the winner by several thousand.
Shaw held on until 2006, when another pol who fit the
profile took him down as part of the Democrat takeover of the
House. This fellow, Ron Klein, won using the time-dishonored
approach of running nonstop ads about how his opponent wanted to
feed dog food to local seniors to leave more money for his
corporate fat-cat friends — a style I like to call “quibbles and
bits.” Upon assuming the seat, Klein tried to be the inverse of
Clay Shaw, a social liberal with nods toward fiscal conservatism in
non-entitlement expenditures.
West took his first run at Klein in 2008, but the Obama
effect helped Klein to hang on. By this point, an alliance had
solidified between Klein and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, whose
district (Pembroke Pines, Hollywood, Davie) was contiguous to his
on its southwestern edge. DW-S, unlike Klein, is blissfully
impervious to nuance in her political thought. She is thoroughly
but not thoughtfully liberal, reflexively but not reflectively
liberal, deliberately but not deliberatively liberal,
contemptuously but not contemplatively liberal. She courageously
does interviews even with hostile hosts, but her responses
predictably consist of rewarmed pap.
When new political winds began to blow in 2010, the
Republican ticket went West and the Democrat ticket went south. In
the waning days of the campaign, DW-S spent a lot of her time
canvassing Klein’s district. Her own was secure, so she headed to
the abutting one and began to butt heads with West. An article
written by West had been reprinted in a motorcycle magazine, so she
organized a public demonstration to tie West to the crude macho
bile these testosterone-poisoned bikers spew. It was a low blow and
West escaped it by staying on the high ground.
Now DW-S has perpetuated her there-goes-the-neighborhood
vendetta against West. While he was absent from the chamber, she
used her speaking time in the House (using “incredulously” when she
meant “incredibly”) to lash out at West for backing the “cut, cap
and balance” bill which will, in her trite rhetoric, gut Medicare
yadda yadda yadda. West was offended that she violated the honor
code of Congresspeople against singling out colleagues for vitriol
in their absence. He dispatched an email calling her vile,
despicable and unprofessional, not a lady and unworthy of respect.
She reacted by publicizing the email.
Now he is being excoriated by all sorts of preux
chevalier types and soul sisters of DW-S for affording her
such disrespect. DW-S is a bigger shot these days, because she was
recently elevated to the chairwomanship (did I put an extra
i in that word?) of the Democrat National Committee. The
elites in Washington Ditzy are lining up with her hyphen against
his adjectives. So it falls to a dashing man-in-the-street,
man-about-town, man-of-the-world, man-for-all-seasons type like
myself to defend him with hyphens to spare.
After all, there but for the grace of God go I. Had he
hired me to write those emails, the language would have been far
more caustic.
