Disorganzation

Two stories in the news today, both about odious politicians, are somewhat connected. Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick plead guilty to lying under oath to cover up an affair in a lawsuit settlement, leading to his resignation as mayor of Detroit and a four-month prison sentence.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin, currently campaigning with John McCain in Michigan, continued her line about being like Barack Obama for leading people as a mayor of a small town, just as he was a community organizer, but that she had actual responsibilities. She seemed to imply that community organizers in large cities are no more than militant black people out to make trouble, while a mayor of a white suburban town can organize things and get legitimate results by virtue of elected office.

Kilpatrick's resignation as Motown's mayor seems to feed in to the idea that urban minority activists and political leaders who seek power are ineffective at best, corrupt at worst. Nowhere is this belief more potent than in Detroit's white working-class suburbs. Macomb County, Michigan is the home of the famous "Reagan Democrats," blue-collar workers who are registered Democrats but vote Republican in presidential elections. They are former Detroit residents who left the city after the 1967 riot and are known to fear the black residents they left behind. Moreover, they don't want to see their tax money go to help any inner-city minority populations. Republicans have stoked racial paranoia among the white working class and middle class for years, and Palin, coming from Alaska (one of the whitest states in the Union) seems to be living up to that tradition.

John McCain really wanted Joe Lieberman as his running mate, but the party wouldn't allow it. So much for being a maverick.

Even Kwame Kilpatrick was more rebellious than McCain has recently been.