Northwest Indiana Discussion

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt ... 28469.html

Tom McDermott wants to spread the wealth a little. He created a political action committee to try to influence elections statewide. Quite Pastrick-like, he thinks he has the Hammond Mayor's office for the asking, and he's been taking all he can since. Now he thinks he can influence elections and punish those he has a grudge with by spending against them. Why can he raise so much money that he can now send 250k/year to a PAC, another 40k per year to a live-in consultant, and still have funds to successfully defend his lucrative fall back title of Hammond Mayor? What's that smell? It's pay to play politics. He lies as he plies his BS about his love for Hammond like some cad out with his fiance always scanning the room looking to "trade-up". He is a democrat chairman in a punch ten county. The electoral success here has gotten to his head, and that head will be handed to him in any part of the state that is not a dem stronghold. Tom McDermott faces what to him is a Gordian problem...

For now, McDermott still is debating how to pronounce the name of his fund. He's leaning toward "mick-pack," as in McDonalds, but said he also likes how "mack-pack" sounds.

Is Tom McDermott up to that challenge?

Why would he use people from LaPorte County as opposed to using good old Lake County folk? Does LC not have enough seasoned political operatives available? What about all that bitching about Speros taking LC money out of the county?

LaPorte County has a lot of money to be tapped into.

That may be true. I would suggest that he wants to limit the stink associated with anything tied to LC politics.

Argues Lubu in part: "Quite Pastrick-like, he thinks he has the Hammond Mayor's office for the asking, and he's been taking all he can since. Now he thinks he can influence elections and punish those he has a grudge with by spending against them."

Lol. But doesnt he in fact have Hammond, simply for the asking? And it readily appears he intends to use it as his base and HQ from which to plan and finance his campaign. The only question is who or what are the specific objectives? But when it comes to seeking higher office, Mac has little real choice in the matter. Existentially, it is dictated by the necessity of power that he progress and either increase his political stature or die out...fade away into comfortable upper middle-class mediocrity. Citing to Mailer:

"What we're talking is about the existential in politics, the need for a hero, the meaning of politics as the art of the possible. I have made perhaps a hundred small expeditions up the possible tributaries of this theme, and have dilated on the danger of our time — totalitarianism." (corporate and administrative.)

To realize the ontological authenticity yielded by existential self-actualization, adds Mailer, requires (if not presupposes) that, "one must be able to feel oneself—one must know one’s desires, one’s rages, one’s anguish, one must be aware of the character of one’s frustration and know what would satisfy it. The over-civilized man can be an existentialist only if it is chic, and deserts it quickly for the next chic. To be a real existentialist (Sartre admittedly to the contrary) one must be religious, one must have one’s sense of the “purpose”—whatever the purpose may be—but a life which is directed by one’s faith in the necessity of action is a life committed to the notion that the substratum of existence is the search, the end meaningful but mysterious; [and] it is impossible to live such a life unless one’s emotions provide their profound conviction."

Significantly more telling is McDermott's adoption & retention of the image displaying intertwined boxing gloves as the symbol (coat of arms?) thematically framing his approach to the realpolitik of domestic political conflicts. Perhaps it is an unconscious, postmodern iteration of a David out to confront giants in single-combat?

Still, it is existentially telling that McDermott has publicly, in terms political psychology, fixed upon the ring and not the stage. Again, Mailer's meditation during coverage of the 1962 Liston-Patterson bout in Chicago's Comiskey Park. "A man turns to boxing (activist/combative politics) because he discovers it is the best experience of his life. If he is a good fighter, his life in the center of the ring is more intense than it can be anywhere else, his mind is more exceptional than at any other time, his body has become a live part of his brain. Some men are geniuses when they are drunk; a good fighter feels a bit of genius when he is having a good fight."

Mailer went on to argue that this kind of illumination is realized not only from the discipline he has put on his body or the concentration of his mind to getting ready for his half hour in the open, but no, it comes as well from his choice to occupy the arena on an adventure whose end is unknown. For the length of his fight, he's on an adventure whose end is unknown. "For the length of his fight, he ceases to be finite in the usual sense, he is no longer a creature of a given size and dress with a name and some habits which are predictable."

Just a minor meditation.

Right now it does look like it's his for the asking, or the taking if you will. I edited out my view on that for brevity. Speaking of brevity, it looks like McDermott is making all too brief his beauty rest. Is he losing sleep over anxieties? Burning the candle at both ends playing "soccer mom" to the kiddies? In the most recent pictures published of him in The Times, McDermott looks like an aging law school student pulling alternate study then party all nighters consecutively. Also, as McDermott devotes more time to travel and horse trading, will Hammond residents be neglected? If you do one thing, you can't do another. Adding more to his agenda means something else will be subtracted. This brings up his priorities, and is there any higher priority to Tom McDermott than Tom McDermott?

Rising aspirations? McDermott a wanna be in that category. And his past, as well as, current aspirations seem to have failed.

Hasn't his past efforts, to have included with an Indy mayor, run for governor, lt. governor, us senate (in a narcissistic belief he could fill Bahy's shoes) or become a state wide player....

Boy child was quite upset when his efforts to land chairman ship of a regional business organization failed, as well as, efforts to become a lobbyist.

Tom has too much baggage... his methods to win friends and influence people seem to fade the further you go from Hammond. Tom's key assets to negotiate on an issue are to sending code enforcement to someone's door, or have a lop sided Election Board pretend to give a fair hearing on a subject.

As a democratic chairman for lake county, in his own community he has to keep voter turn out low and use every underhanded trick in the book to address his competition in order to retain office.

There hasn't been a real contender since his first run for office, and apparently a guy in a wheel chair came damn close to showing tom the door.

When you can only produce 12% to 16% of the vote in your own community, well that's dismal.