Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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California? Where's California.

Wednesday, January 17, 2001

Bill Clinton moving out of the Oval Office is beginning to take on the appearance of the less-than-excellent tenant who moved out leaving piles of stuff he didn't want to carry away him in the garage and the attic.

In addition to the dicey economic climate, Clinton is leaving an enormous mess in California. And, because of that pesky 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which prohibits more than two terms, Bill Clinton ain't runnin' so he is not quite as interested in California as he was when he went there every three-and-a-half days for four straight years to raise a few stray bucks.

A Reuters headline says it all: "White House says up to California to solve power crisis."

A scant six months ago, the White House would have had FEMA set up a portable generator the size of Nevada to prove Bill Clinton's fealty to all things Californian.

Now that his Presidency is being number in the hours, that Reuters head could have been: "Bill to Gray: Hard cheese, don't care if you freeze."

On the John Ashcroft front, he surprised no one who has followed his career when he said he would enforce all the laws, even those with which he disagrees. The headlines? "Ashcroft to enforce Abortion Rights" as if his pledge to enforce the law was a newsworthy event.

A more interesting development attached to the Ashcroft hearings was a statement by the NAACP that it would, "fund major information campaigns over the next four years in the home states of lawmakers who vote to confirm President-elect George W. Bush's nominee to head the U.S. Justice Department," according to a wire service report.

Here's the fun part. The NAACP is proclaiming its intention to utilize SOFT MONEY in order to punish pro-Ashcroft Senators. Memo to Hill Reporters: Ask Democratic Senators who have stated their intention to support McCain-Feingold how they intend to answer the NAACP's invitations to fund raisers for this effort.

Down the hallway from my stairwell office, sits a perfect example of why politics attracts some of America's best young talent. This person - the finance director of PIC - is named Mary Kate Johnson. She's about five foot nothin', 28 years old, and weighs about 98 pounds.

She's cute and she has an infections giggle. And she runs the finance division with the ruthless efficiency of George Patton wrapped in the personality of Doris Day.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee will raise in the area of $40 million. A good deal of it is directly the result of Mary Kate and her team.

If Mrs. Johnson were in most major corporations, she might have had to wait 15 years before she would have gotten to run a major department in a $40 million business.

Politics - not just Republican politics, by the way - is almost a pure meritocracy. If you do the job, you get the next, higher job. But typically you are judged pretty harshly - you won or you lost. You hit your fundraising goal or you didn't. The event looked good or it looked amateurish.

The other great thing about politics is the fact that it's like sports: There's always next season.

The 13 billion people who have responded in the affirmative to attend this weekend's inaugural activities have begun to arrive. My fervent wish for a massive snow storm is not, apparently, going to be granted.

When the Will Call office was about to open, executive director JJ Phillips suggested that the Presidential Inaugural Committee have little packets of Hershey's Kisses and other candies to help sweeten the experience should the lines get too long, and the wait too stressful.

Rick Hohlt, a veteran of many a major political event, suggested installing magnetometers.

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