Peter King of Sports Illustrated has a regular
mini-feature called “Things I Think.” His are all on sports, of
course. The first ones in this column are on sports, too, so I
hereby steal his approach, with attribution.
I think this Super Bowl could be a great one. I
predict a win for Coach J. Harbaugh (a stale joke already)… and his
Baltimore Ravens.
I think the best Super Bowl ever was the one in
which the Giants used David Tyree’s miraculous “helmet catch” to
squeak past the Patriots and deny them the immortality of an
undefeated season.
I think the other absolutely superb Super
Bowls, in reverse chronological order, were: Giants over Pats
again, last year; Steelers over Cardinals, with Santonio Holmes
pulling off a touchdown in the last minute while barely getting
toes on both feet in bounds; Patriots over Panthers (field goal
with four seconds left); Patriots over Rams (another last-second
field goal); Rams over Titans (tackle on one yard-line on last play
of game); Giants over Bills (missed last-second field goal);
Forty-Niners over Bengals (the “John Candy drive”); Colts over
Cowboys (underrated game, because it was so sloppy, but it was
hugely entertaining, and ended with a five-seconds-remaining field
goal); and, tenth (not in chronological order), even though it
wasn’t quite as close, Saints over Colts, because of the Saints
long, star-crossed history and the comeback from Katrina.
I think if I had two players in their primes to
build a team around to win a Super Bowl, I would go with Joe
Montana and kicker Adam Vinatieri. Yes, a kicker. I want somebody
imperturbable, with a great leg, on my side if the game is on the
line. My coach would be Vince Lombardi. But if I wanted a coach to
guarantee a truly exciting game, win or lose, it would be Bill
Belichick, who not only has overseen an amazing five super-close
Super Bowl games as head coach, but also was the defensive
coordinator who figured out how to slow down the Buffalo Bills’
incredibly high-powered offense in order to win the 1991 Super
Bowl, 20-19.
I think, switching sports, that Tiger Woods’
runaway win in the San Diego tourney is a portent of another
monster year. Suddenly, by midsummer, all the pundits will again be
saying that Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 profession major victories
is in serious danger – alas.
I think Woods will never be as beloved as
Nicklaus has become. He’s just not warm enough or personally
thoughtful enough. And he doesn’t lose with enough grace.
I think, switching to politics, that personal
grace is a key, oft-overlooked character trait that is essential
for any republican (small ‘r’) leader to achieve the sorts of
things that look great in the rearview mirror of history. George
Washington had a fiery temper, but showed personal grace aplenty.
Abe Lincoln needlessly abused executive power, but he exhibited a
deep and abiding grace and compassion. Ronald Reagan famously kept
a near-impenetrable personal bubble around him so that only Nancy
truly got “close” to him – but he was a man of both grace and
graciousness, a man who did countless, unpublicized acts of
generosity for strangers.
Barack Obama has no personal grace. None. He is cold. He is
petty. He is bitter. He will never achieve greatness. Oh, he will
make a mark – it’s already a bad one – but he knows nothing about
rallying a broad consensus behind him; instead, all he knows how to
do is divide and (attempt to) conquer. Dividers aren’t great souls,
and they aren’t great leaders.
I think Obama’s most notable (and notorious)
legacy, Obamacare, will at least partially collapse, via both the
courts and the market, before he leaves office. Four more, serious
constitutional challenges to Obamacare remain (in terms of subject
matter; in terms of lawsuits, the number is not four, but dozens).
At least one of them, and maybe two or three, will succeed in
invalidating not just some regulations, but in invalidating some of
the legislative language (and perhaps the whole law). Meanwhile,
the whole contraption will soon prove so unwieldy that the health
care market will develop all sorts of end runs around the law, and
the public will become increasingly enraged again.
I think Boeing’s problems with their Dreamliner
plane are a sign of deeper corporate rot. This is a company for
whom politics and bullying take precedence over excellence of
product. If I were the Pentagon right now, I would be very, very
nervous about the air tanker being built by Boeing.
I think even the National Republican Senatorial
Committee will have a hard time blowing the 2014 Senate races. I
expect major pickups by the GOP. I also think that in Louisiana,
Mary Landrieu’s best move if she wants a political future is to
not run for re-election, but instead to announce she will
run for president. She can position herself as the lone real
moderate in a sea of lefties, and win a plurality of votes in
enough states to put herself on somebody’s VP list. But if she runs
for re-election in Louisiana against, say, U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy,
she will lose.
I think, unfortunately, that conservatives will
be in bad position again in the Republican presidential
race in 2016 – because, just as has repeatedly happened since
Reagan left the scene, there will be clearly a greater number of
solid conservatives than of moderates seeking the nomination, so
the moderates will be dividing fewer votes, and one of the
moderates will again win a series of pluralities and, thus, the
nomination. The good news is that both Bobby Jindal and Paul Ryan
are already trying to sound tonally more moderate without
giving up conservative bona fides, showing that they
understand the need to at least partially bridge their way out of
the media-imposed ghetto of “right wing only” candidates who can’t
find primary votes on the center-right. If a conservative candidate
is indeed going to win the nomination, he or she will need to earn
the votes of millions of moderate Republicans – and to do that,
tone is incredibly important.
I think that neither Hillary Clinton nor Joe
Biden will be the Democratic nominee in 2016. I think the RNC needs
to be starting serious opposition research, right now, on
Andrew Cuomo, Martin O’Malley, Joe Manchin (although it should also
try to get Manchin to switch parties after 2014), John
Hickenlooper, Mark Warner, Deval Patrick, and others. The time to
get damaging stories (true ones only; no cheap shots) out is well
before the campaigns start. The stories need to be vetted and
confirmed even by the establishment media long before they can
appear to be mere political attacks.
I think there remains a wide opening on the
right for a good and principled communicator to step forward and
re-explain conservatism, and the virtues of limited government, to
hundreds of millions of Americans who either knew not Reagan or who
have, in the intervening decades, forgotten his lessons.
I think, on second thought, that Coach J.
Harbaugh will lose this week’s Super Bowl…..
Photo: UPI
