{"id":279,"date":"2006-06-01T14:56:26","date_gmt":"2006-06-01T14:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.ruudmedia.com\/gsc\/?p=279"},"modified":"2017-12-06T15:03:46","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T15:03:46","slug":"whats-in-a-name-if-youre-phil-angelides-plenty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/whats-in-a-name-if-youre-phil-angelides-plenty\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s In A Name? If You\u2019re Phil Angelides, Plenty."},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/span>hat\u2019s in a name?\u201d the fair heroine asks her star-crossed lover in Shakespeare\u2019s Romeo and Juliet. \u201cThat which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,\u201d Juliet concludes.<\/p>\n

But that was before anybody met Phil Angelides. The state treasurer and Democratic gubernatorial candidate has a long history of gratuitous name-calling\u2014and no one would ever mistake his over-the-top epithets and nasty appellations for a sweet-smelling posie.<\/p>\n

The snarky Angelides once referred to Ronald Reagan as a racist. Reagan may have been oblivious to the plight of the minority underclasses, but few who knew him could think of this avuncular optimist as being racially motivated or biased.<\/p>\n

In 1991, as chair of the California Democratic Party, Angelides compared Gov. Pete Wilson to David Duke. Now, along with most Democrats, Wilson is not one of my favorite former governors. But it\u2019s a tad of a stretch to liken him to a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan\u2014a comment a Los Angeles Times editorial termed \u201cugly\u201d and \u201cuncalled for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just last fall, when the Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the same-sex marriage bill, Angelides put out a press release equating Schwarzenegger to both George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. I\u2019ve been pretty critical of Arnold since he took office, but likening this generally moderate officeholder to two hard-core Southern segregationists is, well, a bit hyperbolic.<\/p>\n

But Angelides\u2019 name-calling and vitriol hasn\u2019t been limited just to those in the other party.<\/p>\n

In 1991, while serving as state Democratic chair, he publicly described Democratic United States senators as \u201cwimps.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the \u201994 Democratic primary for state treasurer, Angelides ran ads against former state Senate President Pro Tem David Roberti outrageously accusing this very decent man and honorable Democrat of condoning the murder of abortion doctors and of being a crook.<\/p>\n

Almost every California newspaper roundly condemned Angelides\u2019 character-assassination campaign. The San Jose Mercury News called his tactics \u201crapacious.\u201d Longtime Los Angeles Times political columnist George Skelton denounced one Angelides\u2019 ad as \u201codorous\u201d and \u201cone of the sleaziest in years.\u201d The Orange County Register labeled him a \u201csmearmeister.\u201d The San Francisco Chronicle blasted the negative campaign as \u201creprehensible\u201d and \u201ca new low,\u201d and compared the ads to the infamous Willie Horton spot from the \u201988 presidential campaign. The Los Angeles Daily News called it \u201chysterical mudslinging.\u201d The Fresno Bee condemned Angelides\u2019 campaigning as \u201ctasteless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even one of Angelides\u2019 predecessors as state Democratic Party chair, Peter Kelly, denounced Angelides in a letter as \u201cdisgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the nonpartisan California Journal awarded Angelides their \u201cJunkyard Dog of the Year\u201d award for his campaign\u2019s \u201cboorishness,\u201d accusing him of \u201cringing a slime-coated cowbell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, you get the drift\u2014arf, arf.<\/p>\n

Now, fast forward to the current campaign, only the second time Angelides has ever faced a viable Democratic primary opponent. Angelides has tagged Steve Westly as a \u201cBenedict Arnold\u201d for joining Gov. Schwarzenegger\u2014and every other major Democratic officeholder in the state except Angelides\u2014in 2004 in support of the deficit-reduction bond that kept the state out of default. Other charming terms he has laid on Westly for this same supposed offense are \u201cArnold Lite\u201d and \u201cArnold\u2019s Twin.\u201d<\/p>\n

But at the two candidates\u2019 third and final debate, Angelides really decided to go postal. In the course of just one hour, he likened Westly to, of all people, Richard Nixon, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh\u2014and asked Westly, a 25-year Democratic activist and former party officer, to his face whether he wasn\u2019t running in the wrong party primary.<\/p>\n

Hell, for that matter, Angelides has even called me names. At the state Democratic convention last month, he denounced me by name as the \u201cKing of Mean.\u201d (I guess this is a backhanded compliment coming from a guy the Washington Post once called a \u201cchampion smear artist.\u201d)<\/p>\n

I suppose we really shouldn\u2019t be surprised. In 1991, Angelides told the Modesto Bee he admired the Republican attack machine that made mincemeat of his pal, Michael Dukakis. \u201cSometimes you\u2019ve got to scream at someone, hit them over the head with a 2-by-4 or punch them,\u201d he told the Los Angeles Times that same year. The next year, he asked the St. Petersburg Times, \u201cDo I think it is legitimate for us to punch [Republicans] in the groin? Absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n

In April of \u201992, he promised the New York Times that in the upcoming presidential campaign, \u201cWe\u2019re going to play tough. Let me tell you right now, it\u2019s going to be a mean, vicious, ugly campaign.\u201d And it certainly would have been had Angelides, instead of Bill Clinton, had his way. (Probably a losing one, too.)<\/p>\n

But did this supposedly brilliant fellow learn nothing whatsoever from the near self-immolation last year of Schwarzenegger, the man Angelides most loves to hate? The governor\u2019s quick and almost-disastrous slide into public opprobrium came about in large part because he promised to be a bipartisan problem-solver, but quickly metamorphosed into a partisan name-caller.<\/p>\n

Democrats were \u201cgirlie men,\u201d \u201cthe Three Stooges\u201d and \u201closers.\u201d Teachers and their state organization were \u201cthose poor little guys.\u201d Labor unions were \u201cevil.\u201d Nurses were \u201cspecial interests,\u201d and he would \u201ckick their butts.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Arnold biography \u201cFantastic,\u201d author Laurence Leamer observes of Schwarzenegger\u2019s practice against his bodybuilding opponents: \u201cIt was not enough for Arnold to defeat his opponent. He had to taunt and denigrate him until there was little left but bad memories.\u201d Stripped of the pecs and abs, this could be a perfect description of Phil Angelides and his campaign history.<\/p>\n

So, if voters were fed up with a partisan name-caller last year, why would they take to a bipartisan name-caller this year?<\/p>\n

To be Phil or not to be Phil. That\u2019s the soul-searching question Democrats must grapple with as they choose their nominee in the June primary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s in a name?\u201d the fair heroine asks her star-crossed lover in Shakespeare\u2019s Romeo and Juliet. \u201cThat which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,\u201d Juliet concludes. But that was before anybody met Phil Angelides. The state treasurer and Democratic gubernatorial candidate has a long history of gratuitous name-calling\u2014and no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}