By Roy Exum at the Chattanoogan.com
From all the way out in Oregon comes the news that there is a new breed
of candidate in that state’s upcoming Senate race who I would really
like to talk to over a couple of beers.
There is a fabulous commercial, now the rage of the popular
Internet site YouTube, that features Steve Novick talking politics with
a guy in a bar and, when his listener has trouble with the screw-cap on
his beer bottle, Novick uses the hook prosthesis he wears on his left
arm to pop the top as he deplores “politics as usual.”
Next weekend, when St. Patrick’s celebrations are held in Oregon’s
bigger cities, there will even be a beer called “Left Hook Lager” doled
out in one of the most delicious political primaries across our nation
and what caught my eye was not the beer commercial as much as this
fresh new face on a political scene that has left me cynical and
contemptuous of most elected officials.
I have found that on almost any given week I learn of some new
politician on either the state or national level who has turned out as
a bum somewhere in America. Further, both the Republican and the
Democrat parties are increasingly distasteful to me, the latest rancor
coming from the Tennessee GOP when it identified Barack Hussein Obama
in such a mocking way.
So I have focused on the new wave of politicians hopefully coming
into play and, while some of my views differ from those of Steve
Novick, a 45-year-old lawyer seeking Oregon’s Democratic nomination for
the Senate, I would probably vote for him on sheer principle. I believe
this nation of ours has never needed a new infusion of pluck and
courage any more than it does right now.
This time last year all thought Hillary Clinton would waltz to her
party’s presidential nomination, but Obama’s magnetic appeal – and his
underlying promise to rid us of status quo - has turned that primary
into a frenzied horse race that today is neck-and-neck down the stretch
for home.
This time last year John McCain wasn’t given much of a chance, but
the Republicans have now picked the former prisoner-of-war as the
choice for November. The early decision is heralded, they say, because
the GOP can now focus on its Senate races, while the former First Lady
and the Illinois senator swap insults and bickering.
A key Senate race will be in Oregon where the incumbent is a
Republican on shaky ground named Gordon Smith. The trudging Democratic
machine had it all prepared for the state’s Speaker of the House, Jeff
Merkley, to challenge Smith, but Novick has added a delightful twist
with his refreshing swagger.
Born in New Jersey with birth defects that included no left hand
and missing fibula bones in his legs, Novick moved to Oregon at age 10
as a stunted but brilliant child. When state financial woes closed the
junior high school he was attending, he said to heck with it and
enrolled at the University of Oregon, where he graduated at age 18.
He was also the youngest in his class at Harvard Law, earning that
degree at age 21, and by then people realized within his bent
four-foot-nine frame there beat the heart of a lion.
Novick, spurned by the state’s Democrats who have already given
their loot to the somewhat lackluster Merkley, has in turn shown a
light regard for party hierarchy to the delight of many in that camp.
And, just like Obama has found so apparent, Novick’s quick rise
may indicate the voting public is straying from party loyalty in favor
of a freshness that I feel is so sorely lacking in today’s political
arena.
The fact Novick is using his own physical disability as a positive
thing is a good indicator of what is to come if he beats Merkley.
Novick is calling himself “The Fighter with the Hard Left Hook”
and thus far he’s lived up to his name. His liberal leanings may be a
little much for the general populous when the election takes, but what
matters to me is that here’s a guy who is fed up with what he sees and
he is determined to do something about it.
Although I sit almost a continent away, I admire that and it would
be a lot of fun to sit around and drink a beer or two with this new
breed of politician. While it is clever to see him use that hook to pop
off a beer top, the better show is in his pluck and grit and, boy,
people like that are the ones who’ll get my vote.
