Word: schweitzer
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...Actually, the one thing we all have in common is our style," says Ken Salazar. The new Rocky Mountain Democrats are populist, unpretentious, egalitarian and tough. They tend to be avid hunters and fishermen. (I was with Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer one day when he reached into his pocket for a pen and pulled out a 30.06 rifle bullet.) A surprising number of them have backgrounds in law enforcement. Of the Democrats who have been elected Governors in the all-blue stripe of states running from Montana to New Mexico, only Bill Richardson of New Mexico has spent any time...
...Schaller is the author of Whistling Past Dixie, in which he argues that there are 29 electoral votes--two more than Florida has--to be harvested in four Rocky Mountain states that are trending Democratic. "The Democrats can win the presidency hitting singles out here in the West," says Schweitzer, referring to the tiny electoral-vote totals in states like his (which has three). "Or they can keep on trying to hit home runs down South...
...fact, after the Montana state legislature passed the resolution opposing the Patriot Act, Governor Schweitzer decided to put some icing on the cake by pardoning 78 Montanans who had been convicted of sedition during World War I--a far more egregious case of the government trampling civil liberties than the Patriot Act is. "Most of them were German immigrants," Schweitzer told me. "Some of them were arrested for speaking German in public, others for refusing to buy war bonds. We had a big ceremony, and family members from 31 states came to honor their ancestors. It got pretty emotional...
...Schweitzer is one of the great, over-the-top showmen of American politics, sort of like Bill Clinton on methedrine. He's a tall man with a wide open face and a flat northern-plains accent, who keeps up a steady patter of rowdy stories and observations and is perpetually accompanied by his border collie, Jag, which has become a major celebrity in Montana. The Brian Schweitzer Show is so entertaining--he has been featured on everything from 60 Minutes to The Colbert Report--that it's easy to overlook the substance of the man. Schweitzer has a master...
Later I asked Schweitzer how a Democrat could sell that energy pitch in a presidential campaign. "I can do it in a 60-second spot," he said. "Put me on the clock." And he was off to the races: "Folks, we've got a problem. We Americans use 6.5 billion bbl. of oil a year. We produce 2.5 billion ourselves. We import 4 billion from the world's worst dictators. We need to stop doing that. We can save 1 billion bbl. through conservation. Things like more efficient cars, homes and appliances. We can produce another 1 billion...