Live from Music Row, Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
Michael, when I was thinking about what to say at the opening of this particular show, I’m looking at Washington as it sits now, and I remember a conversation that I had years ago with the great Fred Thompson when he decided to run for the Senate.
It surprised me that he said he was going to run. And I asked him why. And he said because I think I can make a difference. And he was up there for eight full years. He served the last two years of Al Gore’s term and then all six years of his own term, having beaten Jim Cooper in the original election and then winning re-election by about 40 points.
And I asked him at the end of the eight years, I said, senator, you said that you wanted to go to Washington because you thought you could do some good, and I’m wondering if you think you did some good. He said Crom, I accomplished absolutely nothing that I wanted to accomplish.
And he says that the way our institutions and this is a long time ago, maybe the year 2000. If you’re a college student today, you don’t even have a memory of Fred Thompson being in the Senate. That’s an interesting thing. I’m reading a lot of history these days because I’m enjoying it.
I’m learning a lot because I think that by reading about history, you get a perspective on things. And there are two stories recently that came up that I then examined. When FDR became president, total federal spending was $6.5 billion, $6.5 billion. It’s gone up a thousand times since then. A thousand times.
The human mind cannot understand what that change has been. And FDR, by the time his first term was over, the public was turning against him because he hadn’t turned the economy around. What he had tried to do was he had tried to spend, tax, and spend his way out of the Depression. And that didn’t work.
The Second World War is what got us out of the Depression. Then I read another article recently about the Yom Kippur war and what Richard Nixon did when the Syrians and backed by the Soviets and the other Arab countries, Egypt, attacked Israel. Nixon did not hesitate.
And he said, we’re going to support Israel, and we’re going to send all the equipment needed for them to win. Not to tie but to win. And then the Pentagon didn’t do anything. And Kissinger told Nixon, he said, your order was issued over a week ago, and not a single piece of equipment has left a US Air Force base.
He calls the Air Force and the head of the Air Force said, well, we haven’t figured out what planes to send. He said, send anything that will fly. Do you understand that order? Send anything that will fly and send it today. Do you understand that order? Yes, sir.
Yes, Mr. President. I understand that order. And so they sent hundreds and hundreds of planes. And it was just the visibility of all those planes that caused the Soviets to back out of their support for Egypt and Syria, and Israel won the Yom Kippur war.
And so you look at what’s going on now, and you listen to Karen Jeanne-Pierre, or whatever her name is. I call her the French lady because it’s easier. And it doesn’t matter what the economy is doing. They tell you it’s doing fine, and then they say, the president said the other day it’s doing fine.
Therefore, I don’t know why you’re asking me why it’s not doing fine. The president’s doing fine. And that’s all we need to hear, and that’s all we need to know, is it’s doing fine. Because the inflation numbers have come out, and inflation is not now on a monthly basis not going down, it’s still above six percent.
And you look at the price of housing, you look at the price of food, you look at the price of fuel, and everything, everything is higher. You look at the price of rent; all these things are higher. A new car today cost $47,000. Just three or four years ago cost $33,000. So it’s a huge increase.
And you have an administration, and this is what’s so frustrating, that is doing absolutely nothing good about it. I think the whole thing can kind of be summed up in the way Pete Buttigieg acts as Secretary of Transportation. He’s more interested in the color and sexuality of the pilots in the cockpit and the drivers of the trains than he is in their competency.
So you have all of these plane accidents now, you have all these tower problems with the controllers, and now you see this train accident in Ohio, and you can still find quotes about Buttigieg talking about construction projects and not having enough people of color working on the construction projects that are the infrastructure that underpins our very country.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
