THERE ARE TWO REASONS why Joe Biden should not run for a second term.
    One is obvious. He's too old.
    The other goes back to something Donald Trump said after he’d been nominated by the Republican party in 2016:
    “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
    That’s the Indispensable Woman or Man Theory – a delusion common to leaders and their partisans in both democratic and authoritarian governments, and one which is as silly as it is dangerous.
    Of 331.9 million people in the United States, only one  is capable of defeating whatever terrifyingly awful candidate the GOP will  choose to run in 2024? And,  there’s only one human fit to govern the United States of America for the next four years?
    Give me a break.
   There aren't two people out of 331.9 million who could successfully run for president and be a good one? Not seven? Not 15.3; not 26; not 1,257?
    Granted, there are few to zero Democrats who currently make me or anyone else I know confident and optimistic about the coming campaign.
    The Washington Post recently ran one of its periodic lists ranking the “top” Democratic candidates. Among the Big 10:
    • J.B. Pritzker
    • Josh Shapiro
    • Jared Polis

   In the Post’s ranking, higher number are worse than lower lower ones. So, J.B. is Number 10; Josh is Number 9; and Jared is Number 4.
    When I first scanned the list, I had absolutely no idea who Number 4 is, and I am both embarrassed and mad at myself about that. Same goes for the other two;  the remaining seven names at least I recognized.
    I’ve attached the list to end of this article. See how many you recognize. In any case, it’s not a great list, except for Number 1.
    You’d think this would undermine my argument that there is no such creature as the Indispensable Woman or Man, because,  if someone is supposed to keep the Free World free, a voter, at Step One, should at least recognize their name, and little pleasure zones should show up on CT scans of our brains when we hear or read their names.
    But it should be noted that despite my shameful ignorance of the list, these folks are  people who have been in the news lately, and who hold important government positions, backgrounds that qualify them for consideration for higher office.
    The "I alone" argument undermines the whole concept of democracy.

ANOTHER ARGUMENT that could reject my No Indispensable Person Theory is Joe Biden.
    Looking back on 2020, Joe may have been the only candidate at the time who could unite the Democrats, and pick up enough Independents and a smattering of Republicans to drive Trump from under his Oval Office rock.
    In my lifetime, Biden has been the best president, which sometimes isn’t saying much. The fact is, most presidents have terrible flaws, just like the people who vote for them. But some of them have been okay, and a few were better than that.
  Anyway, Joe’s been terrific. There’s his fight for the “soul of America;” his vision for huge, progressive spending programs; his ability to run a competent, decent government; how he's set out an inspired foreign policy. These are real accomplishments.
    Remember how bad we felt every day that Donald Trump was president? Now, imagine how bad we’d feel today if Trump were overseeing national healthcare, climate policy, education, inflation control, Ukraine’s defense and everything else that a president does, like go to concerts at the Kennedy Center. 
    But if Joe Biden is the only person whom the Democrats can come up with to defeat the Republican ogre, the Democratic Party and the country is in peril. And I choose to think that's the case.  

 BUT OLD is old.
    Eighty is old; Joe is 80.
   And news bulletin, when you turn 80 you don’t stay that way - you keep getting older. So, on Nov. 20, 2024, Joe will be 82. He’ll be 82 when he’s inaugurated the following January. When he turns over the keys to the Resolute Desk to his successor in early 2029,  he’ll be 86.
    This assumes that he doesn’t drop dead in the meantime.
    I’m 80, and it's one subject I know about.
    A fair number of my contemporaries are in their 80s, and some of them have died. Sure, some died earlier. A reporter friend of mine, who had exactly the same birthday, year and day, as me, died 36 years ago. Some of my friends will live late into their 80s and longer. I’ve interviewed people in their 90s who have crackerjack memories and incisive minds.
    But, in general, don't get your hopes up.
    Our failure to understand all the things that can go wrong with people in their 80s is just as head-in-the-sand fantasy as pretending that people actually don’t die.
    Sure, Joe Biden  could surprise everyone and live out his second term, assuming he gets through this one. The Social Security Administration has a table that estimates that at age 80, an American man, on average,  might expect to live another 8.43 years.
    You could argue that because Joe Biden has been such a terrific president, a good Plan B would be to elect a superior vice president, whom you’d feel perfectly happy, after Joe’s funeral, to fill in for Joe. But if that’s the case, why not have her or him run for the top job in the first place and skip the drama.
    In general, the theory that one and only one person can save democracy is fiction.
    There are lots and lots of people who can do the job of president.
    And they're lots and lots of people who can do it better than Joe Biden has.
    That's true, even if, at this point, we’ve never heard of them or don’t remember their names.
                                                                                  * * *

 THIS ONE was involved the controversy over College Board’s new Advanced Placement course for high schoolers about black history, which the state of Florida so far has disallowed, because of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “war on woke.”
   “As presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value,” education officials said. Among their objections were sections on black homosexuality, black feminism and Black Lives Matter. Imagine: A contemporary black history review without  major discussion of Black Lives Matter.
   The Times’  story on Valentine’s Day dealt with anger among experts in black history to changes that the College Board made in  the course, which seemed to be an attempt to appease DeSantis and his acolytes.
   The College Board has vigorously denied it was swayed by politics. Indeed, the Times story said that some academic experts said they were assured by the College Board that its officials had had “absolutely no communication” with the Florida authorities.
   Which turned out to be pants-on-fire wrong.
   The story made clear that the College Board from the outset expected push-back from Florida, because of the state's new and obnoxious anti-woke law that forbids teaching anything in a way that might cause students to feel uncomfortable about learning what their misbehaving ancestors did.
   So the College Board contacted Florida officials to chat about an early draft of the new course. And, much to the surprise  of the College Board folks, the Florida folks turned out to have little interest in a substantive discussion. A College Board official told the Times that Florida's department of education: “acts as a political apparatus.” Duh.
   Nonetheless, the College Board’s final version of the course seemed to respond to Florida’s public objections. And worse, the College Board added a preface to the course, which seemed to try to reassure DeSantis' worries about "woke's" bad influence on the  young, saying that “A.P, opposes indoctrination … A.P. students are not required to feel certain ways about themselves or the course content.”
   If that’s not appeasement, then Britain’s Neville Chamberlain never tried to make nice with Adolph Hitler at the opening of World War II.
   What inspired me about this round of the controversy is that the advocates for a full and honest course about black history were pushing back against both DeSantis and the College Board, and willing to have a full-throated, public discussion about it.
   “There is no way you can properly teach this material under the rubric of what DeSantis et al are demanding. This is a train wreck,” UCLA’s Cheryl Harris told the Times.
   DeSantis, having tasted blood, decided to drink more deeply. He wondered aloud whether Florida should be allowing any College Board A.P. courses, regardless of the subject, according to the Washington Post. As Chamberlain discovered, appeasement not only doesn't work, it makes things worse.
  
SO, GOOD FOR THE SCHOLARS for putting the screws to the College Board, and not letting Florida off the hook.
   Good for Israeli citizens on the march for democracy.
   No guarantees, of course, as to how things will turn out.
   But it's the effort that counts.
   Two  Valentines right there on the front page, from those who dare to hope and more: to do something besides wishing things will be okay, by taking to the streets and by speaking up.

  The Florida Laboratory might resonate with fans of horror movies, in which a mad scientist –  a mad political scientist – operates a dungeon, well-equipped with the tools of torture, wherein he conducts various demented experiments, utilizing as handy test subjects  vulnerable inhabitants of his personal island – or peninsula.
   The DeSantis lab in the last four years has been developing various strains of cultural hatred, such as Florida's attack on transgender kids – outlawing transgender girls from completing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, and Florida's “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bars teaching of gender issues in lower grades.
   For his work on “Don’t Say Gay,” DeSantis used an actual lab rodent, namely Mickey Mouse, punishing the Disney corporation for its opposition to the bill by revoking the Mouse empire’s privileged control of its vast Disney World theme park.
   Sometimes DeSantis has conducted teachable moments  outside the lab, to give “sanctuary” communities a taste of Florida's immigration troubles, as he did last September by sending two airplanes to Texas – that’s right, Texas – to pick up about 50 mostly Venezuelan immigrants and fly them to Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the deep blue Massachusetts mainland.

IF THERE'S A UNIFYING THEME to the Florida Lab’s work, it's to stamp out the contagious liberal virus known to laypersons as “woke.”
   Indeed, in his Second Inaugural, DeSantis explained how non-Floridian jurisdictions, besotted with wokism, have coddled criminals, corrupted public education, burdened taxpayers and practiced “medical authoritarianism.”
    Which, thankfully, has not been the case in the Sunshine State:  

   I CAN'T THINK of a modern instance since George Wallace declared “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" at his 1963 inauguration as Alabama governor, in which a Southern governor has sounded so intentional about perpetuating oppression of its black citizens.
   “Woke” started out as a positive word, conveying racial awareness, consensus and healing. But it's also been repurposed by right-wing alchemists like DeSantis as a racial slur.
   Woke entered my brain late in the game  – it’s an old brain, and a slow one – during the George Floyd incident, in which a policeman murdered a man in plain view, in plain daylight – and the nation came to an understanding of what it means to be black in 21st Century America.
   Woke made it into Florida law as the ‘Stop WOKE Act” - Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act, later renamed the Individual Freedom Act – outlawing teaching of racial topics in a way that would make students feel guilt or “distress” about the sins of our forebears. The legislation, partially blocked for now by a federal judge, aims to protect purported victims of classroom brutality in instances of this kind of  classroom scenario:

 THE FLORIDA LAB'S WORK also includes thought control. A recent legislative proposal would forbid colleges and universities from spending money on programs that promote “diversity, equity and inclusion programs,” often labeled by the acronym,“DEI.”  Among other provisions would be an attempt to weaken tenure for professors, which protects academic freedom.
    Then there's the recent move by Florida education officials to throw out a new national College Board Advanced Placement course for high school students on African American history, saying that “as presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” The officials later explained they were offended by discussions of Black Lives Matter, black homosexuality and black feminism.
   Last week, the College Board issued a revised version of the course, which included removal of a section on Black Lives Matter from the main “framework” of the course, suggesting only that the Black Lives Matter movement might be a subject of an individual student's research project. College Board officials said the changes predated the Florida assault on the course; but DeSantis’ fellow right-wingers had their knives out much earlier, too, so the College Board’s defenses sounded hollow.
  However,  the course remained a powerful powerful review of black history – and Florida’s move to cancel the course seemed another example of “where woke goes to die.” You can see the scope of the course at this link to understand what Florida students will be missing if state officials stick to their decision.

DESANTIS PRETENDS that  his woke attacks are not anti-black, but a call to common sense. Indeed, he disguises his racist experiments  in various ways – promoting a state art and essay contest for Black History Month, and populating  his website with photos of the governor standing side-by-side with black National Guard soldiers and other persons of color.
   But you don't have be woke to realize  that’s just camouflage for what’s underway in the  Florida laboratory.
   On paper, DeSantis has a formidable resume for a practicing political scientist: graduate of Harvard and Yale; legal advisor to the Navy's legendary Seal Team One; federal prosecutor; Congressman, and at 44, not objectionably too young or too old.
   Donald Trump's alarming presidency - the only one to try to overturn an election - tempted some people to welcome DeSantis as one Republican who might break the GOP's fever for Trump.
   But DeSantis' record says otherwise: it's a warning as to what to expect if Ron outflanks Don in the next race for the White House, and replaces him at the Resolute Desk.
   So, there's no reason for wishful thinking, no chance for pleasant surprises if DeSantis becomes The One.
   There will be nothing to cheer, and plenty to fear. 

 THERE ARE TWO important points to make in Biden’s case:

• Point One: It doesn’t matter - probably. It would indeed be surprising if Biden had a suspect motive in hanging onto the relatively small amount of papers that have surfaced, assuming he knew about them in the first place. Whereas with Trump, there were lots more papers and he and his gofers tried really hard to cover them up. And because Trump is always up to no good, it’s always possible that he held on to some key papers because he planned to use them for some Donald Trump evil purpose.
• Point Two: The Biden matter is best appreciated for the fact that it provided yet another chance for us to hear from the “real” Joe Biden. As often is the case with the current commander-in-chief, controversies prompt refreshing “blunders,"  in which he candidly blurts out exactly what’s on his mind.

   This happened when a second bunch of papers was found, not at the Washington office he used after the vice presidency, but at his home in Delaware. And they reportedly were not even in the house, but in Joe’s garage!
   "By the way,” Biden told reporters,  “my Corvette's in a locked garage, so it's not like they're sitting out on the street.”

 IN JOE BIDEN'S WORLD, there can be no more special place than where he parks his beloved 1967 Corvette Stingray.
   A gift from his often-mentioned late father/hero, Joe, Sr., the convertible can do zero to 60 in 5.8 seconds, according to a 2020 piece in the Detroit Free Press. It has a four-speed, stick shift transmission and a 350-horsepower engine, which allowed him, he once told Jay Leno, the comedian and fellow car enthusiast, to push it to speeds of 160 miles an hour.
   “I love this car,” Biden said in a 2020 campaign commercial, in which he used the car as a prop to demonstrate his bona fides as a regular car guy, while also promoting the U.S. auto industry, along with Corvette-maker General Motors’ plans to produce electric-powered vehicles.
   So, sleep tight America, if classified documents were in a garage with the Stringray, they might as well have been in the White House Situation Room, or the vaults of the National Archives, or wherever they are supposed to be.

 WAIT JUST A FRIGGING MINUTE," you’re saying, trying not to use swears.
"Isn’t that liberal hypocrisy, saying mishandling classified documents is a crime when it involves Donald Trump, but mere carelessness when Boy Joey does it?"
   Yes. And no.
   Yes, if you are Attorney General Merrick Garland, and you decided not to investigate. Instead, Garland, having appointed a special counsel to look into Trump’s paper crimes, now had to do the same thing with Biden, to demonstrate the Department of Justice's impartiality in dealing with politically charged matters.
   The same goes with the media. Reporters are professional skeptics. It’s their job to ferret out any less-than-favorable possibilities within the Biden Papers' Scandal or the Trump Papers' Scandal. What's good for the goose... type of thing.  Less nobly, it’s the media's chance to show that they’ll write negative stories about Biden, just like they do  with  Trump, although neither press critics nor Trumpsters will ever take that seriously.
   Taking a less jaundiced view of the Biden papers is, in fact, hypocritical for the president's  supporters, but the opposite is especially the case for two-faced Republicans, as they play pin the tail on the donkey, while ignoring the elephant in the room.
   After all, Republicans are the princes of hypocrisy in everything that they do and say, and in everything that they don’t do and don’t say. They don’t care about the substance of the two cases, just as long as they can attack Democrats.
   If there is a lesson for Democrats in the Biden disclosures it’s that presidents are absolutely flawed, and their supporters are always at risk of being disappointed and embarrassed by their leader’s stupid mistakes.
   Of course, Biden and his staff should not have put any classified papers in the wrong places, even closeted with a beloved sports car, thus “imperiling" his political future, although not necessarily national security.
   And when it comes to public relations, Team Biden should not have violated the first law of crisis management, allowing “bad news” to dribble out day after day, instead of quickly getting the whole story out, so the media people would lose interest and move on to the next crisis in the news cycle.
   In the end, we should admit that the secret papers' controversy is small stuff for Biden, and probably for Trump, too, and that bias drives our views in both instances.

A FRIEND recently told me he’ll be disappointed if the Mar-a-Lago paper chase turns out to be the only offense that Garland and his crime fighters come up with. I agree, except that if that’s all that will send Trump to the slammer, I’ll settle for that.
   Mainly, we need to relax and smile once in a while.
  Let's keep some perspective, hoping that we don’t have to wait too long before Joe Biden, a genuine American good guy and a confessed dangerous driver, gets another chance to tell us what he’s really thinking.
   Varoom.

THE PROVIDENCE PHOENIX
May 31 - June 6, 2002

Linc: Better than you think
Lincoln Almond has been a pretty effective governor, but his popularity pales in comparison to Buddy Cianci, since he's not entertaining and doesn't get the politics of symbolism

BY BRIAN C. JONES

THE LONG-AWAITED PLUNDER DOME TRIAL, another in the endless sagas of government corruption that have plagued Rhode Island throughout its history, is underway, and there's public fury with a politician. Headlines trumpet the officeholder's blunders: secret lists, hidden contracts, budget overruns.
   "I'm getting treated like I'm Richard Nixon," complains one of the politician's top aides.
   And a caller to the WHJJ-AM talk show hosted by John DePetro is on the horn, ranting about the politician's shameful ways. This guy, the caller scolds, had a chance to go Ground Zero after hijacked airliners demolished the World Trade Center in New York, and he didn't have the decency to represent Rhode Island at an American shrine.
    Who is this rascal?
   Certainly not Providence Mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr., who, with three Plunder Dome co-defendants, faces 29 counts of running City Hall in Rhode Island's capital as a criminal racket.
   Nope, Cianci's ratings never have been better. Several months ago, a Brown University poll showed that 63 percent of respondents believe he's doing a good or excellent job, and political scientist Darrell M. West, who oversaw the poll, believes these numbers remain accurate.
   No, the scoundrel of the moment is the governor of Rhode Island, the not-so-excellently-perceived Lincoln C. Almond. Almond's approval ratings are awful, half those of the indicted mayor. Only 34 percent give the governor high marks, while nearly one out of four Rhode Islanders surveyed in the poll say Almond's performance is "poor."
    Why? Almond has given voters much of what they've asked for, starting with seven years of scandal-free government, delivered by a man who puts on no airs as he works to adjust the mundane but vital nuts-and-bolts of public service -- such unexciting "asset protection" projects as road maintenance and college dormitory repairs.
   By contrast, Cianci spends his days in federal court, where witnesses spin tales of envelopes packed with bribe money, spiteful abuses of public power, and the sale of government jobs. After court, without missing a beat, Cianci crosses to the other end of Kennedy Plaza, where he interviews candidates vying to be the city's next chief of police.
   With little more than seven months left in Almond's tenure, a powerful case can be made that he'll be leaving office with a respectable record that contrasts with the widespread scorn he's receiving.
   Here's a partial list:

• By one count, there are 41,000 more jobs in Rhode Island than when he took office in 1995. The unemployment rate, which was then more than seven percent, is now about four percent. Big-name companies like Fidelity Investments and Dow Chemical actually have squabbled with each other for the right to build new facilities and boost their workforces (Almond helped mediate their dispute).
• There's a half-billion dollars worth of construction going on at the state's colleges, reversing decades of decay.
  
• The state is recognized nationally for having one of highest levels of health insurance, thanks to a state program that Almond brought into its own.
  
• Rhode Island's much-scarred and scorned highways and bridges are under repair and getting smoother and sounder every year.
  
• The state bond ratings are improved, so less taxpayer money is squandered on interest.
  
• Taxes are down. Really. The state income tax rate has been lowered nearly 10 percent, just as Almond vowed it would be when he took office. And some other "anti-business" taxes are being phased out, too.
• And most of all, as the squalid details of Plunder Dome are recounted daily in US District Court, the Almond administration's corruption record is as spotless as the gleaming marble of the State House.

   "Almond never has been indicted for anything, and is probably the most honest politician the state has ever had," says West, the Brown professor. "In a lot of respects, he's been a remarkable governor."
   In fact, the hurricane of corruption that devastated Rhode Island in the past few decades brought in an era of reform and clean government at the state level, led first by former governor Bruce Sundlun, then by Almond.
   "Keep in mind how he was elected in 1994," West says. "After a major recession and the banking crisis, voters wanted a non-politician, and that's what they got."
   In largely incorruptible states such as Vermont or Maine, eight years without scandal might be taken for granted. But in Rhode Island, it's worth remarking on, and even Almond's critics praise him on this point.
   It was only a few years ago that former governor Edward D. DiPrete completed 11 months in the ACI after pleading guilty to charges of bribery and extortion. Two of the last four state Supreme Court chief justices resigned rather than risk impeachment. Brian Sarault, the ex-mayor of Pawtucket, took to selling cars after completing his prison term for corruption. And a good part of the state's citizens have vivid memories of their life savings being locked away for years after the corruption-caused crisis that forced closing of 45 credit unions on New Year's Day in 1991.
   But Lincoln Almond's status as the un-politician of Rhode Island politics certainly hasn't helped his public standing. Although intelligent and genial in one-on-one conversation, the 65-year-old governor is one of the worst orators in Rhode Island history, speaking in a molasses-like monotone that has his listeners glued to their watches.
   Almond moves his 6-foot-6-inch frame in such a shuffling way that just his exit from the State House in time for supper stokes rumors that the governor is not only dull, but lazy.
   The governor often seems to have a tin ear when it comes to the symbols, and sometimes the substance, of politics - as evidenced by his unstinting and unpopular support for a container port at Quonset Point. When things aren't moving fast enough for his critics, the charge is that Almond is off at his weekend second home, an offense made all the worse because the house is in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, instead of Bonnet Shores.
   For his part, Almond expresses satisfaction that he's been able to maintain his private life.
   To not do so, he says, "becomes very dangerous. I think we do have some politicians who, because of circumstances, and unfortunately, that's the way they are, they have no life other than politics, and Buddy Cianci is one of them. I mean, Buddy can go out every night because, you know, that's where he is. I just do not want to be a full-time politician. I'm not cut out for it. And I'm not saying I'm not a politician, because all governors are politicians. I'm a politician. I'm not backing away from that. But I don't want to be a full-time politician."

THE UN-POLITICIAN hasn't strayed from his modest beginnings. After he was elected, he still was mowing his own grass at his house in Lincoln, just over the border from where he grew up in impoverished Central Falls. His idea of a night out remains dinner with his wife, Marilyn, at Chelo's. He traded in the state's gubernatorial limousine for an SUV (albeit an enormous Lincoln Navigator) because it was more practical in winter and, he says, better suited to getting work done and accommodating his large frame.
   And Almond always makes the neighborly gesture. During a huge April Fools Day snowstorm in 1997, Almond took to the highways to spot check snow plowing, and when he came upon car mired in a drift, got out and started pushing it himself.
   Thus, in an era of public distrust of politicians, Almond seemed the perfect cure: homegrown and honest, a graduate of Central Falls High School and the University of Rhode Island, and for more than 20 years, US Attorney for Rhode Island, hounding drug dealers, gangsters, and corrupt public officials.
   In federal investigations of Cianci's first administration, Almond racked up 30 indictments, 22 convictions, and 16 prison sentences.
   Almond was the first governor to be elected for a four-year term, one of several structural reforms of state government meant to give the chief executive a better shot at deliberative, long-range decision-making, and supporters say he took full advantage of the changes.
   He began with two key interests, which he saw as parts of the same goal: improving education, and spurring the state's economy. Get a good education, Almond believed, and you could get a good job. He went to public high school, then to public college. And anyone else could do that if they had the same opportunity.
   "Education was a huge part of his life," says a source close to the Almond administration. "For John Chafee, it was Yale and the Marines. For Lincoln Almond, it's URI. It really, really is an enormous part of his life."
   So immediately, Almond began pouring money into the state's colleges, and in the past seven years, higher education spending has increased nearly 50 percent, and elementary and secondary education, more than 60 percent.
   One of Almond's first acts was to convert the state agency in charge of business expansion into a more business-like Economic Development Corporation (although the EDC was hardly free of questionable practices under former director John Swen, who resigned after Almond criticized the agency's misuse of credit cards), and he started the Economy Policy Council, to brainstorm the state's business needs and economic future.
   Almond also dusted off a scheme to invent new Rhode Island-based businesses that was originally proposed in the administration of governor J. Joseph Garrahy: a series of business "greenhouses" that would turn local university research into new industries.
   The Samuel Slater Technology Fund, with only $15 million in state money, has created 55 "seedling" companies. In biotechnology alone, five of 23 biotechnology startup firms have raised $60 million in venture capital.
   The governor, who had opposed the proposed Providence Place Mall as a candidate, was pragmatic enough to realize the economic and psychological potential of bringing retail business back to Providence. He eventually worked out what he termed a less risky venture for the state to help support the mall, which got built for an overall private and public investment of more than $400 million, with more than 150 stores opening.
   Almond worked on very mundane, but critical elements of state government.
   One, according to his former budget director, Stephen P. McAllister, is "asset protection," fixing up state buildings, ranging from the State House to worn-out college dormitories and laboratories, but using current funds, rather than borrowing. This, along with early repayment of banking crisis bonds, has helped decrease overall borrowing, and resulted in improved ratings from two of three national bond-rating agencies. This means that the state, when it does borrow, pays lower interest rates.
   Similarly, Almond steered the state's gasoline taxes into transportation, bolstering both highway projects and the state's mass transit bus system. He launched a "fix-it-first" approach to highway work, repairing roads rather than building new ones, meaning a quicker, less-costly upgrade of the state's low-rated highways.
   At the same time, George H. Nee, secretary-treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO , argues that Almond has taken a progressive approach to controversial social issues, not acting, as Nee puts it, "like a Republican." Nee credits the governor for funneling millions of dollars into inner-city schools, much to the chagrin of schools in the suburbs, which are perceived to be Almond's home turf (since he's a former Lincoln town administrator).
   Another un-Republican development during Almond's administration, Nee says, has been the growth of the RIte Care program, a plan to use federal and state Medicaid dollars to improve the health of pregnant women and children.
   Under Almond's former welfare director (and now congressional candidate) Christine C. Ferguson, RIte Care has grown to cover 116,000 low-income adults and children -- more than one out of every 10 Rhode Islanders. It's one reason why more people here are covered by health insurance than in most other states.
   Ferguson, who herself was being pushed by welfare advocates and liberal Democrats in the General Assembly, persuaded Almond to back what is regarded as a kinder and more effective version of welfare reform, in which Rhode Island gives mothers more time, education and resources, such as childcare, to help them leave welfare than other states.
   Almond also gets high marks for his judicial and cabinet appointments. Some department heads were held over from Sundlun, and some were brought in from the outside, such William D. Ankner, who heads the Department of Transportation.

IT'S HARD TO FAULT ALMOND for his motives in one of his major controversies -- and failures -- a botched attempt to convert the huge former Navy facilities at Quonset Point in North Kingstown into a container port.
   His goal was to increase jobs. In the four decades since the Navy abandoned the 3000-acre plot, the state has labored to turn it into a giant industrial base, and, in fact, more than 136 business, employing 6400 workers, operate out of there.
   But what generated rebellion not only within North Kingstown, but throughout the state, was the industrial-strength scope of the project: the fact that it called for filling in up to 204 acres of Narragansett Bay.
   Almond maintains he never supported the bay-filling idea. But he's clung to the idea of some sort of container port. The issue is so polarizing that none of the current candidates for governor back the port, and most won't even support his plea for an environmental study.
   Almond's steadfastness -- call it stubbornness -- on issues like the port helps stoke his critics' anger.
   Leonard Lardaro, a URI professor who gives Almond generally decent marks on improving education and fighting a costly repeal of auto taxes, faults the governor for pushing the container port so relentlessly. Lardaro says Almond has generated such opposition that it will be hard for others to quickly develop Quonset Point to its full potential.
   Similarly, Almond's persistent opposition to gambling has created many enemies, from supporters of increased slot machines at facilities in Lincoln and Newport, as well as backers of the Narragansett Indian tribe, which wants to build the state's first full-scale casino, as tribes have done so successfully in Connecticut.
   Criticism from supporters of an Indian-backed casino has been so personal that one of the state's black leaders, Keith W. Stokes, executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, says he has had to defend Almond against charges of "racism."
   "To use that term is disingenuous" in regard to Almond, says Stokes, who Almond appointed to the Economic Development Corporation. The EDC itself is headed by Tom Schumpert, an African-American who rose to prominence because of his adept handling of the collapse of the Harvard Pilgrim HMO in Rhode Island when he was Almond's director of the Department of Business Regulation.

ALMOND'S CENTRAL WEAK POINT is the same attribute that made him so appealing to voters eight years ago: his political clumsiness.
   Often, the un-politician simply seems clueless when it comes to the sensual, symbolic side of politics.
   "He doesn't really do a lot of things that a good governor needs to do in terms of the symbolic dimension of his office," says Brown's West.
   Thus, Almond missed the real point of the Quonset Point debate - that filling in even a tiny portion of Narragansett Bay would upset Rhode Islanders from Woonsocket to Westerly. The Bay is untouchable territory in Rhode Island.
   When Almond late last year faced big budget shortfalls because of the recession, he proposed slicing off $5 million the General Assembly had allocated to create affordable housing.
   Again, he missed the point: that housing advocates had worked for a decade to get the state to allocate a token amount of money for housing. It took weeks of demonstrations -- including the spectacle of police hauling four ministers from the State House -- for Almond to get the message and propose a compromise that eventually doubled the money for housing.
   Even on petty symbols, Almond blunders. When there were recent questions about spending for a National Governor's Convention, Almond withheld the names of people who had stayed at a hotel at state expense, forgetting that ever since Watergate even the suggestion of a "cover-up" touches a nerve.
   And certainly Almond has trouble missing big symbols. When the airliners struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, Almond failed to understand the importance of symbolic gestures in responding to terrorism. After President Bush proposed increased National Guard patrols at airports, Almond passed on the idea, saying he was satisfied with security at T.F. Green State Airport.
   He was right, but missed the point that jittery travelers felt better seeing soldiers at the terminal. (Almond did relent, but Guardsmen still showed up without M-16 rifles.) A month after the attacks, Almond had a chance to join 10 other governors in touring Ground Zero.
   Almond, who had been at education "summit" in New Jersey, said he thought it was more important for him to get back to Rhode Island, as the state continued to struggle with the crisis.
   Mayor Cianci, of course, did not make that kind of mistake. In a separate trip, Cianci directed a caravan of police cruisers and trucks to Ground Zero, and with his personal photographer in tow, the mayor shook hands with rescue workers and oversaw delivery of supplies to Ground Zero.
   It's Cianci, ironically, who may be most responsible for Almond's bad image. The mayor is an entertaining, imaginative speaker. A radio talk show host when he was forced from office in 1984 after admitting he had assaulted his wife's lover, Cianci is the self-appointed spokesman for Providence's -- and Rhode Island's -- renewal in the past decade.
   Almond, engaging in private, is inarticulate in public.
   "You won't find him on Imus In the Morning," says Kenneth M. Bianchi, one of Almond's closest allies, currently director of the state authority that oversees the Newport and Mount Hope Bridges.
   Cianci, of course, can be found on Don Imus's enormously popular radio and many other places.
   The ubiquitous mayor can better than hold his own with the show's acerbic host, as was the case when Imus recently brought his program to Cianci's adopted home at the Biltmore Hotel in Providence.
   He devoted virtually the entire program to the Plunder Dome trial, with a series of parody songs, and an appearance by the mayor, who is under a judge's gag order not to talk about trial. Imus decreed that a happy ending to the Plunder Dome affair would be an innocent finding for Cianci.
   All of which must infuriate ex-prosecutor Almond, who, after Cianci was indicted, demanded that the mayor step down. Not that the mayor was inclined to follow any advice from Almond. Cianci once described Almond on an earlier Imus program as "a tall guy [with] big, big shoes . . . you could put outboard motors on the back of those shoes and head up the river."
   Even with his legal troubles, the mayor rarely misses the chance to enthrall out-of-town reporters and expound on the "Renaissance" of Providence.
   (Asked about the mayor, Almond says, "If you've got a record like that, you better be out every night, and you better be out Saturdays, and you better be out Sundays, and you better be telling jokes, because you have to deflect as much as you can from the substance of what occurs in your own community. Now, could he ever survive as governor, with that kind of record? No. Of course, he couldn't. He's been able to survive in Providence because of the old model of patronage and political machine and controlling both parties, and you are able to do that. But he was never successful running for statewide office.")
   The level of fascination placed in Cianci distresses and mystifies good government types like H. Philip West Jr., director of Common Cause of Rhode Island, whose reform drive helped create the four-year terms for governor and other general offices.
   "I think it's a sign of danger in politics that the enchanting mayor comes out with higher ratings," West says.
   West, who blames Almond for a change of membership on the state Ethics Commission that he believes has undermined that panel, nonetheless thinks Almond has done a good job, including standing up to the General Assembly over the so-called separation-of-powers issue, in which some people claim that the Rhode Island legislature has too much power compared to the executive branch.
   "What Almond has done that no governor has done before is that he has dared to take on the General Assembly on separation-of-powers," West says.
   But other observers assert that Almond's lack of political instinct is, in fact, a fatal weak point in the art of running government.
   Bill Lynch, state Democratic Party chairman, praises the Republican Almond for being honest, and says that he does not want to be hard on him, since the governor is in his final months of office.
   But Lynch says Almond has done little more than put the state on "automatic pilot," and squandered the opportunities of a mostly boom economy to make permanent improvements. Quonset Point, the port debate aside, should be much farther along as an economic resource, Lynch says.
   "He became a lame duck much earlier than other governors, and I'm not sure that's a good thing for the state," Lynch says.
   John DePetro, the hyperactive host of the radio talk show where Almond received such a pasting from a listener about his Ground Zero absence, believes part of Almond's problem is his failure to master the demands of modern news media.
   Not that the media itself is blameless, DePetro says. The media and its audience look to politicians to keep them amused, he says, which is why DePetro thinks Cianci gets so much attention, and Almond so little.
   "Cianci remains far and away the beloved one," DePetro says. "I've heard very little anger about him. If anything there is disappointment that the party may be coming to an end."
   On the other hand, DePetro says that his show's listeners never call to praise or even defend Almond.
   "He's broken the cardinal rule," DePetro says. "He's not entertaining."

 BUT HOLD ON
   Many of us are sleeping better these days; we’re a tad more cheerful; we have other things besides politics to talk about.
   It’s because some terrific things happened in the midterm elections. Although Nov. 8 seems fading fast in the rearview, it’s still encouraging that the Republican takeover of local, state and federal governments flopped. Democrats held the Senate. Republicans took the House, but by a small margin.
   And Donald Trump declared for president, which is excellent news for Democrats, since he's the one unifying figure that can inspire an always squabbling party, increasing the chances that someone normal will go to the White House.
   Although the recent planetary environmental conference ended in disgrace, with no new limits on greenhouse gasses and empty sounding promises by big polluting countries to help tiny, non-polluting countries, there is growing recognition of the danger, and  plenty of practical steps underway to do something about it. For example, it seems unlikely the auto companies will reverse their drive to build electric cars.

 MEANING there's lots to reflect on this Thanksgiving.
   I think the most important is that millions of people of goodwill have never stopped hoping and caring about making the world a better place.
   They do this despite the frustrations of being almost powerless. And despite the pain and strain that are the byproducts of hope and caring; they know and accept that’s the price they pay to stay in the game.
   I’m not talking about people who have more power than most of us: the candidates, government officials, corporate chieftains, political organizers, volunteers, media barons, pundits, reporters, broadcasters, podcasters, forecasters.
   The people I’m thinking about are everyone else, with just their puny one vote each and their disgust with Donald Trump as he savaged our democracy, having watched almost helpless;y as he got away, and keeps on getting away, with Constitutional crimes, among other, more ordinary, offenses.
 
I WILL REMEMBER 2022 as the year in which millions of people did not abandon their embrace of kindness, commitment to lawfulness and respect for decency; they kept faith with fundamental, human values of progress.
   That faith was a real, if nearly invisible force, one that was impossible for pollsters to measure or for the pundits to recognize.
   But, multiplied millions times, almost powerless, but always caring, hopeful individuals formed the essential consensus that held the country together and defined its character.
   They are the custodian's of what Joe Biden calls "the soul of America."
   I’m not arguing that it’s enough to sit in our kitchens and living rooms and just wish that things will turn out okay. A democracy depends on its citizens doing real things every year, in every election, like voting, following the news, donating to candidates, attending school board meeting and even running for office.
   But goodwill – made up of hope and caring – is the core that makes a nation move forward.
   I’m in awe of the people who have kept the faith.
   Thank you.

 BUT HOW ABOUT YOU AND ME?
   You’re kidding, of course. The consumers of news, the readers, listeners, viewers, Twitter followers and the subscribers are but a parenthetical afterthought in the algorithm that determines what the champions of the First Amendment decide to cover, or not.
   I, as one customer, had questions I wanted answered from accounts of the Mar-a-Lago event.
   Would Trump actually run for a second try at a second term? I’m nearly always wrong when I make predictions, and I was certain that Trump would NOT seek a second term. So, I was curious to see  just how far off the mark I was.
   Moreover, for those of us who don’t follow the day-to-day antics of Trump’s presidential afterlife, the announcement would be a good time to catch up:

• What is the guy like these days?
• Is he physically fit?
• Mentally in the game?
• Does he still need both hands to hold a water bottle?
• Has he put on weight?
• Is the comb-over still an engineering masterpiece?
• Is he still liquid-tan orange? If so, how bright the hue?

   Can Trump still wow a crowd? Stand still at a podium? Does he need help on the stairs? Does he still have the “it,” that mysterious ability that allowed him to turn primary opponents into lapdogs, and crush Hillary Clinton (I know, she won the popular vote), and could he still give Sleepy Joe a run for the dark money?
   Would he say anything about the shellacking the Republicans received in the midterms? And whose fault would it be? Certainly not his. Would he have new insulting names for Florida Gov. Ron  De-Sanctimonious, plus more ominous hints about Ron’s supposed unsavory background?
   Granted, I could have missed them, but I wasn’t able to find a satisfactory next-day newspaper account, one of those traditional comprehensive first drafts of history stories crammed with lavish quotes, expert paraphrases, full transcript on Page 8, top-to-bottom description of what he was wearing, the kind of wardrobe review that even accused serial killers get on the first day of their trials.
   I did find a recording on C-Span, which you’re welcome to watch, if you have 1 hour, 17 minutes and 47 seconds of your life that you don’t care about. CLICK HERE for the link.
   Or you can settle for my half-baked, partisan and incomplete “report.” 

   THE SUMMARY: He’s the same old Donald, just not as much.
   THE LONG VERSION: What I saw was a low-volume version of Trump. He seemed weary and drawn, and he spoke calmly, almost dispiritedly, reminding me of an over-the-hill college professor delivering, with the help of his yellowed notes, the same worn out lecture that’s been putting freshmen to sleep for generations.
   He seemed wistful at having to explain the basics of Trump World, sort of like having to review World War II with the freshmen  - who were the combatants, and who won.
   First, outlined The Glory:
   When I left office, the United States stood ready for its Golden Age, our nation was at the pinnacle of power, prosperity and towering above all rivals, vanquishing all enemies and striving into the future, confident and so strong.
   Then the Betrayal:
   The blood-soaked streets of our cities are cesspools of violent crime… Our southern boarder has been erased and our country is being invaded by millions and millions of unknown people, many of whom are entering for very bad and sinister reasons.
   He glowed a mild shade of orange. The comb-over was expertly executed. His suit looked expensively tailored, ensuring that its wearer would appear unfat to the unforgiving eye of a high-def TV camera. His tie was red. Every once in a while, he’d increase his volume, as if a hidden prompter gave him the loud whisper to Raise Your Voice.
   As to substance, there were some surprises:
   Unless I missed it, he did not mention, at least directly, the Big Lie: his claim that he actually won the 2020 election. He did say that going forward, elections surely need reforming – he was in favor of voter ID, same-day voting, counting all votes on election day. And make no mistake, elections are a mess:
   It’s horrible what is happening with our election process. I will get that job done It’s a personal job for me. I take that personally.
   Subdued as he seemed to me, Professor Trump was still cruel and mean. Here's an example, his plan for "justice" reform, which I don't know if it was new, or just that I hadn't heard it before, how Trump would to ask Congress for legislation to deal firmly with drug dealers:
    We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.
   (I found it interesting that Trump still figured he had to work with another branch of government).
   And, while not explicitly adopting it, he spoke admiringly of an approach to controlling drug selling to one that he claimed China’s President Xi Jinping had personally shared with him:
   You have an immediate and quick trial. By the end of the day,  you’re executed.
   Not that Trump was recommending such a “terrible thing” in the U.S. But on the other hand, “they have no drug problem.”
   As for the midterm elections, Trump chose to look on the sunny side: he bragged that lots of his endorsed candidates had fared well in primaries and later, and that most of all, Republicans should rejoice in taking back the House from the Democrats, instead of grousing about its slim margin.
   Nancy Pelosi has been fired. They  (Republicans) said: "Let’s win by 40 seats." I said: “If you win by two seats, be happy.”
   Trump emerged as a generous and considerate host to his Mar-a-Lago guests:
   Sit down. I feel guilty having you stand. You have been standing for this  whole event. I feel very guilty. I don’t want that to happen.
   There were familiar contradictions:
   One one hand,
   It is not enough to complain or oppose… I never wanted to be a critic.
   On the other,
   I am a victim. I am a victim.
   And he promised that in The Restoration, Job One would be to get rid of his tormentors at the FBI and the Department of Justice, to root out “the festering rot and corruption of Washington D.C.”
   The actual declaration of his candidacy, about 18 minutes into the speech, was a classic mashup of bombast and modesty, plus another of his remembered conversations that never took place:
   In order to make America great and glorious again, I am announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.
   Thank you, all of you. So many incredible friends and family here tonight. It’s a beautiful thing.
   People say: "How do you speak before so many people?" When there is love in the room, it is really easy. You ought to try it sometime.

 IT HURTS WHEN THE MEDIA screws up, because so much of the time, it does terrific work and democracy fails without it.
   And I acknowledge that the Hive's under-coverage was not without its humorous moments. Both the Times and the Post practically hid their minimal stories on Page One, and I can’t help but think that the editors understood Trump’s rage the next morning when seeing that he wasn't the day's most important story.
   The tabloid New York Post carried off that job off best, not mentioning Trump by name on its front page, but running this headline:
            FLORIDA MAN MAKES ANNOUNCEMENT. Page 26
   Still, it’s sad that the Hive has not learned its lesson: never underestimate (downplay) Donald Trump.
   He wins primaries; he wins general elections (well, one, at least); he corrupts everything and everyone that gets near him. He led an insurrection and so far is getting away with it, just like he always gets away with whatever it is. He wrecked our foreign policy.  Murdered thousands of Americans by his bungled approach to Covid. He gave permission for racial bias and hatred to spread viciously and casually throughout the land.
    He is too dangerous, too awful, too sinister, too destructive to be ignored or downplayed
   America deserves better. Not just a better president. But a better, more humble, more independent, less lockstep, less arrogant media.

 AN EASY WAY to get a sense of Miller’s work is the “Toy Soldiers” series I referred to at the beginning of this piece, mainly because Part 5 – “Black Tuesday” –  is readily available in one of the Journal’s  self-published “How I Wrote the Story” handbooks that reprinted outstanding Journal stories, along with their writers’ accounts of what they did to produce them.
   You might expect Miller’s Hasbro story to focus on a carefree bunch of elves bouncing around the corporation’s Pawtucket, R.I. headquarters, whistling while turning out new versions of  G.I.  Joe, Play-Doh, Mr. Potato Head and Monopoly. Instead, Part 5  begins with a distressing round of firings, in which the company tossed some of its top executives and creative talent under one of its Playskool busses in a desperate plan for corporate survival, bigger profits and love from Wall Street investors.
   The piece begins with a hired consultant’s video instructions about the proper way to fire your workforce:  do it with “security” out of sight, but handy in case things get out of hand during individual sessions that should last no more than 7 to 10 minutes, since  “more time is usually not productive.”  
   Miller wrote how things played out:
   In restrooms, women were sobbing. The terminated were emptying drawers and clearing off desks; their phones were dead, their card keys useless for locks. A senior executive who’d been let go had trashed his office. But nearly everyone else signed their releases, took their severance packages and went numbly into the perfect blue day.
   Nice summary. But the real power of the account is what the reader hears from The Fired, from the people who fired them and from the chairman of the board, Alan Hassenfeld, who green-lighted his top lieutenant plan to arrange and carry out the firing campaign; the chairman compared corporations to heart patients in need of  radical surgery: 
   “… the blood flow and the oxygen can’t get to the heart properly. And after a while it strangles and people have a complete blockage. Sometimes  you have to do bypass surgery in order to get the freshness and blood flowing again.”
   How did Miller know all of this? “Immersive reporting,” which he did not invent, but perfected.
   In the Habsro case, he persuaded Hassenfeld and other brass to let him inside their Fortune 500 lair,  to roam its offices, restrooms, boardrooms and cafeterias to witness  day-to-day operations, to talk to and hear from many of its players – winners and losers – and finally to chronicle, objectively and in detail, what really happened in the place where  G.I. Joe was born and where he was loved - for as long as he stayed true to his mission, returning positive net income.
   It sounds crazy, I know. What fool would ever let Wayne Miller or any other reporter anywhere near them? But Miller did that, making other people’s lives his own, living with and staying with his people for as long as it took, and it always took lots of time.
   During my own Journal career, a mere 35 years that overlapped some of Miller’s 41, I could barely tolerate an interview that lasted more than one hour, and I grew antsy at the prospect of having to spend two hours, much less a full day with somebody I was writing about. Part of that is a personal touch of attention deficit disorder. But for me, much of journalism’s narcotic appeal is not just the adventure of the story you’re working on today, but the prospect of the next one, and the one after that, always something new, different, amazing and fresh.
   But Miller did this immersive thing over and over and over. He did it with a big league surgeon (he was given his own locker in the physicians’ changing room so he could easily access the guy’s operating suite), a NASCAR racing team, a high school senior class, a politician, welfare recipients  and persons with developmental disabilities. Hours, months, years of reporting. Then the series. Then the book.

 WHY DID THEY TRUST HIM?  Was it the fact – which Miller readily shares – that he’d graduated from Harvard? But Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz also went to Harvard. So, It’s a mystery.
   What’s not a mystery is that Miller did not abuse that trust. His access to and relationships with his sources brings to mind the toxic hypothesis by the  late writer Janet Malcolm. Malcolm famously wrote about another writer, Joe McGinniss, who wormed his way into the trust of Jeffrey MacDonald, a doctor accused of slaughtering his family, then wrote that he thought MacDonald was guilty.
   Malcolm declared all writers to be scoundrels, first pretending to be their subjects' pals, only to leave them for dead when they started writing,  “preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.''
   Miller put the lie to Malcolm’s jaundiced theory. I never heard about anyone charging Miller with betrayal, deceit or even of a false note. I don’t remember anyone suing the Providence Journal – a company with lucrative pockets – for libel or deceit due to one of Miller’s stories.
   Miller not only had the trust of his news subjects, but also his editors and ultimately the paper’s top brass. One reason was that if Miller’s series were expensive, they also were exclusive. The inside story was the only kind of story that no competitor –  print, radio, TV, Internet site, podcast – could match. Hasbro, or at least its products, may have been household names to families and their children, and its headquarters a fixture on the Rhode Island landscape, but no one except Wayne Miller could tell you the real, inside story of how Hasbro toyed with its rivals and played the zero sum game of Wall Street.
   Thus, Miller was able to harness what were  the Journal’s vast resources, paycheck after paycheck, roll after giant roll of newsprint. And then book after book. I mean real books, from respectable publishers, books with hard covers, dust jackets and Library of Congress identification codes.
   This did not make Miller popular with everyone in the Journal newsroom. Some of his colleagues felt Miller’s leash was too long. Yes, he put in time on routine chores required by a daily local  paper, working the weekend rotation, rushing to breaking news locations. But his desk was often vacant for days at a time, and there was grumbling about how he spent his exclusive Miller Time.
   But Miller Time was not “free” time.  He used to tell me that he got up 5:30 a.m. morning so he could put in a couple of hours on his various projects – including novels he wrote just for fun, being a huge Stephen King fan. He doted on his two daughters and son. He was the chairman of the public library in the small town of Burrillville, where he lived for years, and where he hand-built an extension on the family’s house, which became his office and library. Simply put, Wayne Miller was and is the antithesis of a time-waster and malingerer.
   Another factor is that Miller is fast. I know that newspeople are supposed to be speed demons with “Hey, Sweetheart, get me rewrite” posters on their walls, who can turn out stories just as they are happening.  But Miller is really quick. We once teamed up on some project about the Journal’s writing program (that’s correct, the paper had its own writing improvement project, one aspect of which was the aforementioned “How I Wrote the Story” books). Miller and I divided the work evenly; he finished in half the time it took me.

FINALLY, MILLER HAS MORE than a little of the entrepreneur in him. He sees possibilities for new or expanded ventures, especially in places where you don’t expect to find them. One example I’ve mentioned: newspaper series that lead to books.
   Another example:  “Story in the Public Square.” It’s a weekly TV program, mainly interviews with writers, filmmakers and other “story-tellers.”  Miller helped the Journal  team up with Rhode Island PBS, the state’s public TV station and Salve Regina University, whose Jim Ludes, PhD,  executive director  of Salve’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, is the program’s  co-host. Miller’s website says the broadcast airs in “22 markets,” has a podcast and is carried on satellite radio.
   I’ve just touched the surface.
   And I repeat that you could write something like this, and a lot longer, about many of the other women and men who have worked at the Journal, people who are my personal heroes, and who are, or should be,  international journalism's super heroes.  
   And it’s true Miller could not have done what he as without the Providence Journal and its resources. And that the Journal is just one of thousands of newspapers across America that now have disappeared or are about to. As I mentioned, the Journal once had a staff of 350; it’s website today lists a staff of 32, which includes Wayne Miller and another reporter who left when he did, and of course,  who aren't there.
    Yesterday, just as I was finishing this piece, Miller, now 68, announced his promised next big thing, another collaboration with Salve Regina University and Ludes, which they call Ocean State Stories, "a new media outlet serving Rhode Island residents that will be devoted to long-form journalism about issues of importance."
   Will this project live up to its promise? It's vision? Its hype?
    G. Wayne Miller was there for the  Providence Journal’s best years, and he did his part to make them extraordinary.

 BECAUSE RHODE ISLAND IS SO SMALL – you can drive end-to-end in about an hour, even on the state’s notoriously chewed up roads,  you’d think that the door-to-door stuff was simple, and you could meet at least half of the state's one-million residents on any afternoon.
   Nope. Even a small state is a lot of territory to cover.  It’s possible we visited 300 “doors,” as the campaign’s jargon called its curated addresses on its “turf” lists, possibly a few more than that.Whatever the total, we talked to just a fraction, and at best convinced maybe 15 to vote, and just a few to do so for “our” guy.
      I actually thought our impact was minuscule and actually pathetic. But, we all agreed it was better than sitting home, listening to the pundits and prognosticators, doomsayers, sneering at the Democrats, whipping up images of the Red Wave rolling over the Ocean State.
   We kept each other’s spirits up, even after the campaign was over. McPhillips, who put in a long Election Night as an official Providence city poll worker, emailed me the day after:
   “My personal belief is that Fung would have triumphed had you not knocked on every (word used in newsrooms, but never printed)  door in the 2nd district. Well done!”
   Absolutely untrue. The campaign’s software indicated that McPhillips went to more “doors” than I did. And if you add in those that Young visited, and the extra ones she insisted we try, as if she were still handing out reporting assignments, I was always outmatched.
   But we weren’t alone.
   I don’t know how big a staff and volunteer force Magaziner jsf fielded. In the end, he ran a combined campaign with Gov. Dan McKee (who won big), and Magaziner had huge labor union support – his campaign chief was the daughter of a top AFL-CIO official, and one of his field offices was in a Carpenters Union hall.
   I met a friend who was a veteran of progressive causes, and who lived in the same section of Cranston where I was assigned one day. She told me how she personally was organizing that neighborhood, canvassing day after day and planning a big push the day before, and the day of, the election.
   And there were telltale clues that some of our assigned territories had  already been visited :  Seth campaign  cards stuffed into door jams, faded and  lying on welcome mats.
   It’s possible that scores, maybe hundreds of individual and team efforts built up;  and as the polls were showing Fung ahead, more and more people became as driven as we were to do their part, so that all of these combined into a critical mass that virtually willed Rhode Island not let America down.
   Maybe the TV debates helped. Magaziner, state treasurer for seven years, got stronger and stronger with each one. Maybe Rhode Island Democrats tolerated Fung as a small city Republican mayor, but would not like to have a Republican in Congress. Maybe Rhode Island was just too Blue, even for a well-liked Republican.
   Nobody really, actually could explain it.
   But this I know, for sure.
   Election Night was magical.  But it was just one night, just one election.
   The U.S. has become a country where every election is a desperate, do-or-die event, with democracy always on a cliff's edge. It never ends.
   As much, or as little, that we can all do, we cannot rest, because it will never be over. That is what Donald Trump and his thugs have done to our democracy, one that we can never take for granted.
   Victories don’t last.
   There will never be a time, not in our lifetimes, when we can hang up our Magaziner T-shirts.