This coulda fit here or Politics, figured I'd put it here.Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005Bad Day: You wouldn't want to have been a White Sox fan at the White House staff meeting this morning. The boss and all the other Texans were already grumpy from staying up till 2:20 a.m. to watch the Astros lose the longest World Series game in history. Now they have to spend the rest of the day watching some suit from Chicago serve up indictments.
This morning's split-screen highlights of the president's mother suffering through last night's loss and the president's staff suffering through this week's waiting game raise the uncomfortable question: Is Texas cursed?
Texas is the second-largest state in the nation. Yet in its entire storied history, the state has produced two presidents, both of whom crashed and burned after five years in office, and two baseball teams, neither of which had even made the World Series until this year. Now the Astros are one game away from elimination, and Bush is one indictment away from a similar fate. (Quibblers: Bush 41 was a Connecticut Yankee who vacationed in Maine; Ike was born in Texas but grew up in Kansas.)
Not even Oliver Stone could have imagined the eerie parallel between Bush and LBJ. Both men overcame the soft bigotry of low expectations to enjoy surprising electoral success. Both brought Texas-sized ambitions to the White House and insisted that America could binge on both guns and butter. Both squandered their high-flying popularity by mismanaging foreign entanglements. In their fifth year in office, both watched their own party sour on cronies they nominated for the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Astros fans have every right to assume their team is cursed. When this season began, the four teams whose fans had waited the longest for their team to make the Series were from Chicago and Texas.
Both Chicago teams are famously cursed: The Cubs haven't won the Series in nearly a century; the Sox haven't won in four score and seven years. Cubs fans blame the Curse of the Billy Goat; Sox fans blame the Black Sox scandal of 1919.
By contrast, if the Texas teams are cursed, nobody outside Texas has shown much sympathy, or even noticed. Both the Rangers (born in Washington in 1961 and transplanted to Arlington in 1972) and Astros (born in 1962) are expansion franchises—rather like Texas itself. So, even though neither had even made the Series until this year, both are still too young to tug at the heartstrings of America's most nostalgic pastime.
Texans no doubt seethe at this traditionalist bias of the baseball press corps. In its Series preview, the closest the Washington Post could come up to identifying a curse was that Houston's original Colt .45s logo included a "smoking gun." Down in Texas, fans must have rolled their eyes and scoffed that only liberal elite city boys would consider a smoking gun to be a curse.
Rain DeLay: After watching Astros relievers serve up not one, but two, game-winning home runs in Sunday night's thrilling White Sox victory, and another one last night, it's hard not to consider another uncomfortable question: Is Houston on the take?
Scrawny White Sox outfielder Scott Podsednik, who won Game 2 with a 400-foot blast, hadn't hit a home run in over 500 at-bats in the regular season. Last night's hero, Geoff Blum, hit only one other home run for the Sox this year, and his batting average for Chicago was right at the dreaded Mendoza line.
Here in Washington, we already had other reasons to suspect that Houston was on the take. Throughout the Abramoff scandal, conservatives have wondered why devout fundamentalist Tom DeLay led the fight to kill anti-gambling legislation. Perhaps Abramoff is DeLay's Arnold Rothstein, the man who cursed Chicago all these years by bribing the Black Sox to throw the 1919 Series.
Famed Texas partisan Paul Begala, a zealous convert from New Jersey, will be quick to offer a more compelling explanation—that the source of the Astros-Rove curse is Bush, not Texas. Karl Rove is a Bush creation (and vice versa). Astros owner Drayton McLane raised more than $100,000 as a Bush Pioneer in the 2004 campaign. He credits President Bush for encouraging him to buy the team.
The former President Bush and his wife are Astros regulars, and last night Bush 41's national security adviser Brent Scowcroft was in the stands cheering the team on—which is more than he will do for the Bush administration.
Under the Curse of the Bush theory, the Texas Rangers have never made the Series because the president used to run them. That could also explain the apparent curse upon former Rangers. Rafael Palmeiro, a Bush contributor who ruined his career by taking steroids and lying about it, holds the record for most games without ever playing in a World Series. Alex Rodriguez, a Bush contributor who has earned hundreds of millions popping out in clutch situations, may one day hold the record for most home runs by a player who has never reached the World Series. But first he will have to pass ex-Bush Rangers Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa, whose career has seen one curse after another: Texas to Chicago to Angelos.
It's not fair to curse a whole state for one man's handiwork. So, best of luck tonight to Houston and the Lone Star state. And here's today's survival tip for Sox fans in the Bush White House, and Democrats in Washington: Respect your opponent's pain, and keep your mouth shut. ... 11:57 A.M. (link)