Thirty Seconds Over Doolittle

By Thomas Gangale
9 October 2006

With eight-term California Congressman John Doolittle sinking in the polls, key figures in the GOP (Greedy Old Perverts) recently flew into the Sacramento area on a rescue mission. Dozens of high donors turned out for the $2000 a plate event. About a dozen of those, who happened to be hungry and wanted some food on their plate, paid an additional $2000 for a smoked weenie on a toothpick. A cheese cube was 50 cents extra... if you pre-qualified.

"It's not about the money," famed lobbyist "Casino Jack" Abramoff told a cheering audience. "It's about access."

"Absolutely!" agreed fellow California Congressman Richard Pombo, who is facing his own tough reelection race. "John even treats his closest friends this way. Everybody has to pay for access. His own children have to pony up to get an appointment to see John." He shook his head in admiration. "By God, that's integrity!"

"Anyway, everyone knows you can't buy votes," former Texas Congressman Tom Delay grinned photogenically.

"I've known John since he first got into politics," said former Florida Congressman Mark Foley, principal cosponsor of No Child's Behind Left. "He was a cute kid. I'm here to give him a boost."

"I want the record to show that I am cooperating fully with this campaign," retiring Ohio Congressman Bob Ney declared to thunderous applause.

Former California Congressman "Duke" Cunningham, who was unable to appear in person due to a previous commitment lasting the next eight years, was patched in by video link. "We are here to lend our reputations to John. We want everyone to know that John Doolittle is one of us. Always has been. John will always have a place in our midst." Unfortunately, Cunningham's message suffered due to bad acoustics at his location.

"To call John 'Doolittle' is really doing him an injustice," Delay said. "As far as I know, John's done nothing at all." At that point, Delay covered the microphone while Ney whispered in his ear. After conferring briefly with Abramoff as well, Delay back-pedalled, "On the advice of counsel, I wish to retract my previous statement. I was making a joke, and I wouldn't want my remarks to be misinterpreted. There are a few things that John may have done, and for which he may be indicted."

The audience was also treated to appearances by members of the hastily-formed "Veterans Against Veterans" committee, who lauded Doolittle for having one of the worst voting records on veterans' appropriations. They also wowed the crowd with vague and unsubstantiated accusations against Doolittle's Democratic opponent. "I'd like to know how the hell Charlie Brown got his Distinguished Flying Cross... dogfighting with the Red Baron?"

"Charlie Brown can't even pronounce Vi-et-nam!" another member of the group shouted. "He calls it 'VEET-nam,' so that makes me question whether he was ever in-country. For all I know, he was stateside the whole time, ducking the Air National Guard and snorting coke with George W... well, as I was saying...."

With this, a sullen muttering rippled through the crowd. A third veteran quickly stepped into the breach. "Don't pay Slick much attention, folks! He's probably just having one of his PTSD flashbacks. Thanks to John Doolittle, VA services aren't what they used to be."

He was joined by a fourth brother-in-arms. "We had a saying in the military: 'There's always ten percent that doesn't get the word.' Veterans Against Veterans stands up for that principle. We're all ten-percenters, and we're damn proud if it!"

At this point, the mood began to lighten again. Julie Doolittle, the congressman's wife, supervised the serving of refreshments. Several people remarked on the fact that their glasses appeared to be precisely 85% full. "Well, there are the ten-percenters, and then there are the fifteen-percenters," she quipped breezily. "Don't you know? I always take fifteen percent off the top!"

John came over and put his arm around Julie. "That's right! In the old days, Julie used to cut my hair, and she always took fifteen percent off the top!"

Casino Jack joined in the fun. "This one always gets a few titters," he smirked, barely containing his glee. "Didja hear about the campaign consultant who decided to go to medical school and specialize in breast reductions? He always took...."

So the event turned out to be a huge success. How could it not? It probably won't save the Doolittle campaign, but John and Julie are laughing all the way to the bank. Seriously, folks.

The Whole Man

By Thomas Gangale
Petaluma Argus-Courier
Petaluma, California
27 April 2006

In the Air Force, we used to joke about its four great myths: "the real Air Force," because wherever you were stationed was somehow unrepresentative of the service as a whole; "the regular crew chief," because anyone you went to for a solution was not in a position to provide it; "the big picture," because no matter the pay grade, no one was ever high enough to see it; and "the whole man," because no one had the requisite breadth and depth of skills and experiences to qualify for this description. It was axiomatic that you could serve an entire career and never come across any of these things.

A few days ago, I attended a campaign rally for Charles Brown, LtCol, USAF (Ret.), one of the "Band of Brothers," now 72 strong, veterans who are running as Democrats to take the Hill and win back Congress for the people of the United States. Also speaking at the event was Max Cleland, Capt, US Army (Ret.), former senator from Georgia. I had seen him only once on TV, when he had been head of the Veterans Administration under President Jimmy Carter, and I remembered the astonishing sight of a triple-amputee playing basketball. But on this day, I got to meet him and to hear him speak, and I was astonished several more times and on much deeper levels. The first surprise was to see Charlie lean over Max and put his arms around him, and my first thought was that Charlie was going to lift him out of his wheelchair... surely not! But no, it was a hug, a hug of comradeship, one Vietnam veteran to another.

The second jolt was when it came time for me to meet the senator, to shake his hand, and to mouth the conditioned-reflex platitude of what an honor it was, and he leaned forward and pulled my arm toward him, and I realized that I was about to hug him, too. Does your senator hug you? Driving home from the rally at the Fair Oaks VFW post and the fundraising reception afterward, it occurred to me that with only his left hand remaining to him as his primary means of touching the world, it makes sense that Max compensates by pulling the world to his breast and enfolding it with his soul.

But I have jumped ahead of my story, for it was an absolute joy to hear Max speak, and to spend some time becoming acquainted with him. Here was a man of great warmth, humor, compassion, and wisdom. Here was a man who had been blown to bits serving his country in a dubious cause, and who had never stopped loving it or serving it. Here was a man, who in the prime of youth and vigor, must have spent some time wondering whether he was going to live, perhaps some time wishing that he hadn't, then some time struggling to build meaning into whatever life he had left.

Mindful that we live in a time not only when, as George Orwell predicted, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength, but under the malevolent manipulations of Karl Rove and the like, falsehood is truth, courage is cowardice, and loyalty is treason, I can do no more than to let Max Cleland's record of service speak for itself. As to the man himself, I can say that as I got to know him, my dominant impression was of a man whose strength of spirit has healed his soul and triumphed over the loss of much of his body. Incredibly, the more time I spent in his presence, the less noticeable became his physical disability. At length I realized that there really had been only three myths, for I had finally met "the whole man."

Welcome home, Max.

Charlie Brown Launches Second Sortie Against Doolittle for California Congressional Seat

By Thomas Gangale
California Progress Report
Oakland, California
8 September 2007

He had a quiet, matter-of-fact, Iowa way of speaking, but from the first, I saw something in Charlie Brown. I saw an Air Force Academy graduate, an effective leader, an honorable man. I saw the future congressman.

I figured that as he got more experience on the campaign trail, the stiff awkwardness would fall away, and now that the braces were off his teeth, he would learn to smile all over again. But the stiffness and the self-conscious, Washingtonian "I'm afraid to smile" manner made it all the more plain that Charlie was quietly determined.

A newcomer both to the Democratic Party and to politics itself, he was taking on John Doolittle, the seven-term Republican incumbent who had turned California's 4th congressional district into a fiefdom controlled by his political machine. It was one of the largest and most rural of California's districts, stretched along the northern range of the Sierra Nevada, from Lake Tahoe to the Oregon border, encompassing some counties that didn't even have Democratic central committees. The 4th district was the reddest of the red.

It seemed a quixotic quest. Here was an unknown, willing to give up his secure job with the Roseville Police Department to campaign full-time against one of the mighty of the Republican establishment, a close ally of Tom Delay, an ear into which Jack Abramoff whispered. No Democratic congressional candidate had polled higher than the low thirties against Doolittle as he sailed through one reelection after another.

The political pros among California Democrats dismissed Charlie as an impossible dream. "He better raise a million dollars if he wants to be competitive," a top California Democratic Party operative said in October 2005. "That district is not in play," a sitting member of Congress said in January 2006. They looked at the California political map as a static chessboard across which it was impossible to move pieces, a gridlock of safe districts for one party or the other. When top Democrats look at that map, the coast is solidly blue, the east is red, and so it shall ever remain. They know the map, but they didn’t know Charlie.

Charlie, with his understated demeanor, kept campaigning. He won the June 2006 Democratic primary by a comfortable margin. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's website listed the 4th district race as uncompetitive, and continued to do so as the Abramoff scandal broke, Delay posed for his police mug shot, and Charlie's poll numbers climbed into the forties. When he arrived at a television studio to debate Doolittle, local TV news coverage described the crowd outside as giving Charlie "a rock star's welcome." Charlie, the quiet rock star.

In September 2006, when polls showed the race to be a statistical dead heat, the DCCC put the district on its "watch list," and eventually it pumped some money into Charlie's campaign. Up to that point, Charlie and his wife Jan had done it on their own, and they had rattled the Republicans so badly that President George W. Bush flew in to make several campaign appearances to keep Doolittle afloat. A sitting president--“the war president”--brought in to battle political unknowns.

On Election Day, Doolittle eked out a 9,000-vote victory. I don't know if the Democratic pros sat around the next morning playing woulda coulda shoulda. A decent amount of party support early on might have swung those few thousand votes. But, win or lose, Charlie drew heavy fire from Republican forces from outside the 4th district, which might otherwise have been deployed elsewhere to defeat other Democrats.

It wasn't much of a win for Doolittle, it was more like snatching a slow and agonizing political death from the jaws of a quick and merciful one. Even though he got to keep his house in the Washington suburbs for two more years, he had to suffer the FBI as unwanted but warranted visitors as the Abramoff scandal continued to unravel. And whereas Doolittle easily defeated his primary challenger in 2006, he faces at least two challengers in 2008, with a third weighing his options. There's blood in the water, and the sharks are circling.

Meanwhile, Charlie Brown is stronger than ever. He has two years of campaigning experience, where before he had none. He has a campaign organization, whereas he and Jan started from scratch to nearly unseat Doolittle. And this time, they're not alone. This time they have early support from the DCCC and Democracy for America.

Charlie smiles now, and with good reason. He heavily damaged the target on his first mission, one that others said was hopeless. A second sortie will finish off the target. On 7 September, at Auburn Airport, I saw Charlie and Jan take off on their new mission. As they flew northward to campaign stops in Grass Valley and Quincy, they looked out over the Sierras, and also over the political landscape that they had changed.

Charlie Brown Launches His Second Campaign

Today my friend Charlie Brown officially kicks off his second campaign to unseat John Doolittle in California's 4th congressional district. He'll be speaking in several places throughout this very large district. I'll be at one or two of them. Another of my retrospective series will be several pieces that I wrote about Charlie's first campaign. Below is the first of them. Written in August 2005 and published a few months later, it describes how we met by chance, and the shared connection to the past we discovered.

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A Soldier of Peace Launches His Campaign
By Thomas Gangale
Petaluma Argus-Courier
Petaluma, California
30 November 2005

In August I attended a Democratic fundraiser in Grass Valley in the hope of getting a few minutes of face time with Art Torres, California Democratic Party chair. Serendipit-ously, I also met Lt. Col. Charles Brown, USAF (Ret.), who was exploring the possibility of challenging the Republican Congressman John Doolittle for the very "red" 4th District, which runs from Roseville to the northeastern corner of California.

After talking to me for a while over some chicken and potato salad, Charlie was called to the podium. During his speech, he mentioned that whenever he is in Washington, DC, he visits the Vietnam Memorial at a time of day when it's quiet. His voice wavered when he spoke the name of the last fatality of the war, who was killed during the rescue of the SS Mayaguez crew, a merchant vessel that the Khmer Rouge had captured in international waters. Charlie had flown a chopper that day in May 1975.

After I had my conversation with Sen. Torres, I tracked down Charlie and said, "You were at Koh Tang Island. Did you know Bob Undorf?"

"Sure. FAC [foward air control] pilot. OV-10 [a small, slow, unarmed, propeller aircraft]."

"Wow! He was my squadron commander! Small world! He turned off the Pentagon on his radio and ran the operation his way."

"Everyone turned off the Pentagon! The F-4s [fighter-bombers] were screwing things up. Undorf took off in his OV-10 on his own authority and got the operation on track." Major Undorf understood that the key to success was to listen to the people who had their butts on the line.

That's a metaphor for the Charles Brown for Congress campaign. Charlie was a life-long Republican, but now he's turned them off. It's no longer the party he first joined, and it's screwing things up. Just like the armchair quarterbacks who were trying to direct the Mayaguez operation from half a world away, the Republican Party is out of touch with what's really going on. So now, Charlie is ready to run the operation his way and get it on track. And, he'll listen to you, the people who have their butts on the line, because you are the key to success. He officially announced his candidacy in October.

Charlie, like so many Boomers, is one of Graham Nash's "Soldiers of Peace." We served in uniform because we believed in our country even when we didn't believe in some of the wars it fought. We former military officers have studied Sun Tzu and understand, "He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight." It was plain to most of us that Iraq was the wrong fight. So it's time for us to bring it home, "now fighting for children, for homes and for wives."

We understand that America will not last much longer as a great military power if we let things rust and rot here at home. The neoconservatives are not true to traditional conservative values. They have mortgaged America to the top of the Capitol dome. Some of our most dangerous economic competitors hold most of that paper, thus the Republicans have recklessly placed our children's future in those foreign hands. The Republicans' decades-long campaign to starve and dumb-down the American public education system is making it impossible for our children to work smarter than our overseas competitors, so they are now forced to work cheaper.

A well-balanced economy is a national security issue. A strong educational system is a national security issue. A secure Social Security system is a national security issue. A healthy work force is a national security issue. A clean environment is a national security issue. A government of integrity -- that isn't in the pocket of war profiteers and energy spot-market gamesters, that doesn't "out" its own intelligence officers, and that doesn't defy the law of civilized nations and alienate its allies -- is a national security issue.

Charlie will tell you that he's no pacifist. There are times when one must fight. But victory lies in knowing when to fight, and Charlie has the experience to make that judgment. He wants to bring our people, including his own son, home from Iraq. "The old warriors don't want you to hurt any more."

Welcome home, Charlie.