Indecision Internationale: London Mayoral Election - The Morning After
Tired of American politics? Then why not look overseas and take solace that it's not quite as insane as the London Mayoral election? Some limey named Rich Johnston wraps it up for us:
You know that feeling when you slowly wake with a sore, heavy head? As you peel your saliva-encrusted jaw from the sheet, try to turn the blurred random shapes dancing across your eyelids into a semblance of reality, and try to answer the nagging thought that last night, after the seventeenth vodka shot, you may have done something very silly indeed? Oh yes, you slept with your cousin, someone filmed it on their phone and it's already a Featured Item on YouTube.
That's how London is starting to feel. Late Friday night, Conservative candidate Boris Johnson was crowned mayor of London, beating the two-term incumbent Labour candidate Ken Livingstone.
The mayoral election coincided with a number of local elections across England and Wales, and the Conservative Party cleaned up, pushing Labour into third place behind the Liberal Democrats -- the worst result for Labour since they began measuring these sorts of things. Compared to his political compatriots, Ken held up remarkable well in London, with almost half the votes…but an emphasis on the "almost."
And so the Conservatives have taken the crown jewel of London Mayor and will expect to use it as a stick to beat Labour until the General Election in two years time. And if they had to use a populist bumbling gaffe-prone oaf in order to do it, then them's the breaks. They can always surround him with right-minded people to make sure he does the right thing and says as little as possible.
London will have a long holiday weekend to think about exactly what it has done. With an Olympic ceremony to plan for, a new public transport system to build and probably the odd bombing to cope with along the way, was it wise to elect the political equivalent of a Teletubby to grand office? Will anyone be able to look each other in the eye come Tuesday?
The next four years will, of course, be entertaining. If Boris fails, he will do so spectacularly and with much hand-waving and hopping about. If he succeeds, then we will enter a new Golden Age of Boris as Big Brother inmates stand for Parliament, daytime TV presenters take over the High Courts and children's entertainers start a political revolution. Piers Morgan for King? It might just happen. And Boris has created hope and aspiration for all -- for if he can become mayor then any Londoner has a real fighting chance of being elected pope. Get those chimneys smoking, cardinals!
And as for Ken? Stepping down from the last job he ever wanted, rejected after eight years by the city he loves more than his five children from three women, all he has to console himself with is taking over Boris Johnson's extremely lucrative position on the public speaking circuit, working his own hours, sniping at both Boris and his own Prime Minister, and pulling in far more than his salary as Mayor of London.
How will he ever cope?
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Apparently Boris Johnson can't use a computer properly. That'll be fun.
Tom, Gordon Brown isn't a left wing socialist...
Why is this not a bigger issue?
March 20, 2008, 8:54 pm
Photograph of Bill Clinton and Rev. Wright Surfaces
By Kate Phillips
The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and President Bill Clinton at a prayer breakfast at the White House in September 1998.During one of the most difficult periods in the presidency of Bill Clinton, he addressed a group of clerics at an annual prayer breakfast in September 1998 just as the Starr report outlining his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was about to be published.
Among those in attendance, was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., who is seen shaking hands with Mr. Clinton in a photograph provided today by the Obama campaign. Mr. Wright’s relationship with Senator Barack Obama, as his longtime pastor, has been the subject of considerable controversy in recent days because of incendiary excerpts of sermons Mr. Wright gave at their church, Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago.
In providing the photograph to The New York Times, the Obama campaign appeared to be trying to divert some attention to the Clintons after a week in which Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Wright has left him facing one of the biggest challenges of his campaign. There is nothing in the picture or the note that addresses whether Mr. Clinton had met Mr. Wright prior to the White House meeting or whether he or Mrs. Clinton knew anything about Mr. Wright’s views.
The invitation to the breakfast.
The invitation’s envelope.Asked for a response tonight through email, Howard Wolfson, a top aide to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, wrote, “Urgent indeed — a picture — oooooooo!”
Senator Clinton’s spokesman, Phil Singer, sent along this reply to a request for comment:
In the course of his two terms in office, Bill Clinton met with, corresponded with and took pictures with literally tens of thousands of people.
A thank-you note from Mr. Clinton to Mr. Wright. (Click to enlarge)Mr. Wright was invited to the 1998 prayer breakfast, and in addition, he received a thank-you note from former President Clinton for his expressions of support about six weeks later.
According to an account by James Bennet, former White House correspondent who has since left The Times:
With tears in his eyes, President Clinton told a roomful of clerics this morning that he had sinned, speaking just hours before the world was presented a painstaking account by prosecutors of when, where and how.
Addressing an annual prayer breakfast at the White House, Mr. Clinton drew on the New Testament, the Yom Kippur liturgy and Ernest Hemingway as he made his most abject confession yet of personal failure, while declaring that he would defend and redeem his Presidency.
‘’I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned,'’ he admitted softly, saying that after resisting expressions of contrition he had reached ‘’the rock-bottom truth of where I am.'’
For the first time, Mr. Clinton also asked for forgiveness from Monica S. Lewinsky, on the day that the details of their intimate relationship — details that he had denied and struggled to suppress — poured out through the Internet, whose wonders as a tool of communication he has so often extolled.
Mr. Wright is not mentioned in the article. Also visible in the photograph is Vice President Al Gore.
And according to the newly released schedules of Mrs. Clinton by the National Archives of her years as first lady, she was in attendance, too.
Her schedule reads:
“Religion Leaders Breakfast (w/POTUS)” in the East Room from 9-10:30 a.m.
Format:
- The President and First Lady are announced into the East Room and proceed to their tables.
- The Vice President makes remarks and introduces The President.
- The President makes remarks and introduces Dr. Reverend Gerald Mann.
- Dr. Reverend Gerald Mann gives blessing.
- Breakfast is served.
- Following breakfast, The President opens discussion.
- Upon conclusion of the discussion, The President introduces Dr. Reverend James Forbes.
- Dr. Reverend James Forbes gives benediction.
- The President, First Lady, and Vice President depart.
PARTICIPANTS: Approx. 130 guests to attend.
The wording of Mr. Clinton’s thank-you note to Mr. Wright, dated Oct. 28, 1998:
Dear Pastor Wright:
Thank you so much for your kind message.
I am touched by your prayers and by the many expressions of encouragement and support I have received from friends across our country.
You have my best wishes.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
Boris Johnson is not an oaf. You should pay attention to what Boris actually says rather than how he says it. The man is an actual genius and the articles of his I've been reading over the past several years proves it.
So boo hoo he isn't a left-wing socialist. Well look where a left-wing socialist Chancellor/Prime Minister has got us. I'd take Boris as PM over Gordon Brown any day of the week. You at the very least know it would make the interviews easier to watch.
I wonder if Boris could become the patron saint of London.
What a wonderful day for politics. What if something like that happened in America. Eneryone got sick of the chaos of the Democratic mess, while getting fed up with McCain, then on election day they said "what the fuck I'm not voting for either. Then we wake up and realize that we elected Ralph Nader. Oh to dream.
This guy is fucking nuts. I love it. Over the weekend, I was following this race and the papers even had it wrong. Specifically, The Observer. Also, I had a flood of emails saying Boris had lost. WTF? Y'all think it's weird here? Smell my taint. No way. We're at 98.6 degrees compared to the land across the pond.