By Jason Atkinson, on Fri Apr 20, 2012 at 2:00 PM ET  A great article from Oregon Live on contributing RP Jason Atkinson, and his decision to take a hiatus from politics:
Wearing rubber boots and faded jeans, Jason Atkinson shows off a bridge he built based on a Leonardo da Vinci drawing. Then there’s the horse he’s caring for that’s blind in one eye, a chicken he trained to sit and be petted, an extensive collection of racing bicycles and a YouTube video he made about fly-fishing on the Owyhee River.
And that’s just the first 15 minutes. He’s a classic never-sit-still Type A, with a cell phone that rarely quits beeping and a dozen jobs on the to-do list at his farm in the hills of southern Oregon.
For all that, Atkinson is about to “push the pause button,” as he puts it, on perhaps the most defining part of his life. After 14 years in the Oregon Legislature, including a run for governor in 2006, Atkinson is stepping out of politics and into an unpredictable future.
“I wasn’t at peace,” he says about his decision not to run for re-election this year. Under growing financial pressure at home, he also endured attacks from his own caucus for siding with the environmental lobby and became increasingly unhappy with his own party’s gamesmanship. It was time, he says, to take a break and, like thousands of other Oregonians, look for a better-paying job.
Under different circumstances, Atkinson, 42, would be entering the prime of his political career — an experienced, tested campaigner whose increasingly centrist views offer the kind of statewide appeal Republicans need to win. The fact that he’s heading for the exit ramp speaks volumes about not only his experience in Salem but also about the state of the party he says all but ostracized him.
Click here to read the full piece.
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri Apr 20, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET Cincinnati.com is running a terrific story about how one of my childhood best friends, Bret Caller, and his business partner, Steven Miller (no relation) have used their business saavy for some exceptionally noble purposes — including helping rescue Ethiopian Jews living in abject poverty.
 Steven Miller and Bret Caller, managers and co-founders of Blue Ash-based Viking Partners, don’t do anything halfway.
They’re aggressively capitalizing on the flood of failing commercial real estate loans, and recently made the first two acquisitions – shopping centers in Louisville and near Indianapolis – from their second private equity fund.
 Away from the office, the business partners and friends have established themselves as leaders in the community, largely thanks to their work with the Jewish Federation on a local and national level. Caller also is active in the United Way’s Tocqueville Society, whose members donate $10,000 annually. Miller recently became involved with the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Cincinnati.
Those who know them say their reputations as tough businessmen precede them, as does their belief in the importance of helping others. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, Miller says.
“One of the reasons we do what we do is to provide for our families first and foremost, and secondly to provide for others,” Miller says.
In 2006, they were part of a group that helped rescue and transport Ethiopian Jews who were living in third-world conditions without running water or electricity to Israel. James Miller, the chairman of downtown’s Bartlett & Co. and a Viking investor, first met Steven Miller while he was giving a presentation about the Ethiopia trip.
“The first time I saw him, he couldn’t stop crying,” James Miller says. “It was pretty moving; he can’t talk about Israel without tearing up. The funny thing about it is he’s a very tough guy.”
Click here to read the full article.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Apr 19, 2012 at 10:30 AM ET  Spy Parents
It’s not a movie. That’s Spy Kids. Spy parents is when a parent puts monitoring software on their child’s computer to monitor the websites visited.
I did this to my son when he was about 12 years old. As I looked over the first weeks batch of websites visited, I was pleased to see there were no “inappropriate” websites visited.
Just a lot of kid stuff with an unusually high number of political websites visited. However, upon closer examination, I noticed almost all the political websites were republican-leaning.
I didn’t know what to do.
Was my son a “Closet Republican?”
 Was this the kind of thing I should talk to my child about alone or shouldI involve a counselor?
Was 7 conservative-leaning websites visited (coupled with a Google search for Glenn Beck) in a two weeks period grounds for an intervention?
Should I explain that some of my closest friends are republican and that this is nothing to be ashamed of?
In fact, there were groups and fundraising activities for people who eventually make conservativism a “life choice” —even though many Democrats don’t believe it is really a “choice?”
Read the rest of…
John Y. Brown, III: Honoring My Son’s Choices
By RP Staff, on Thu Apr 19, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  For three generations, John Y. Browns have been active Democratic politicians in Kentucky.
John Y. Brown Sr., my great-grandfather, was an avid supporter of FDR’s New Deal while serving a term in the US House of Representatives and was a champion of various liberal causes in Kentucky’s state House for several decades.
John Y. Brown Jr., my grandfather, served one term as a Democratic governor of the Commonwealth and was the national chairman for the Democratic Telethons of the early 1970s.
My father, John Y. Brown III, was a two term Democratic Secretary of State and delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1996.
Being the fourth John Y. Brown, most people would expect that I would follow the tradition and become a Democrat. However, when I turn 18 later this month, I plan on registering with the Republican Party. It has been a decision that I have thought out fully and feel good about—even if it appears to break with a family political tradition.
 As my political philosophy developed over the years, it became clearer and clearer that I was drifting rightward. My father would tell me that he believed the temperament we’re born with influences our political philosophy—as much as our ideas and beliefs. My personal political journey has confirmed this in many ways. Every time I heard about an issue where there was major disagreement between the political parties, I found myself siding with the Republicans over the Democrats. Eventually, I stopped resisting this and embraced my inclination toward a conservative political philosophy.
Read the rest of…
John Y. Brown, IV: Why I’m Registering As a Republican
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Apr 11, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET Having teenagers is a gift.
Not necessarily a gift that I would have picked out for myself. For example, like brides-to-be pick out for their bridal registry.
More like a sort of gag gift. That gets a knowing laugh at a party when opened but not as big a laugh as you’d hoped.
Because you begin to realize it’s not really a gag or a gift. So you put it in the corner and hope your spouse will know what to do with it and put it away for you. And not tell you where it is.
But you find it and after ignoring it many times you decide one day pull it out and read the instructions. And realize unlike most gifts, it doesn’t come ready-made.
The gift depends entirely on how much time you spend working on it. Like a Rubik’s Cube. You never figure it out.
But working on it makes you a smarter person—while simultaneously reminding you how incredibly dumb and limited you are. And makes those watching you play with it–your teenagers–realize they don’t have to be that smart or talented or together to make it in this world.
And they love you (and learn a lot) by watching you try–in front of them.
And they –your teens–are amused that you try to teach them the secrets of the Rubik’s Cube while daily failing to figure it out…And shocked when you get mad at them for not listening.
After all, why should you be mad? You’re playing with your gift.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Apr 9, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET I try to think each night before going to bed of what I’m grateful for that day.
One item on tonight’s list is not having to have any more “birds and the bees” talks with my children.
I was reminded tonight of my first attempt which did not go the way I had planned.
Finally ready for the talk (me, that is), I launched into it with my son when he age 9. I thought he’d be fascinated and want to know details and pepper me with curious questions.
Instead he interrupted me, “OK. Stop. I don’t want to hear anymore. That’s just gross. You act like picking your nose is gross–well, that’s way grosser. You have to promise me it won’t happen again until I’ve moved out of the house to go to college.”
So, the conversation that had begun with me anxious about trying to explain human reproduction and nervous I’d fail, ended up with me proud that my son was already planning to go to college at age 9.
I guess it all worked out somehow.
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Apr 4, 2012 at 7:00 AM ET  My dad and I circa 1968 On this day in which we remember the tragic assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., we re-run this piece — in which the RP honored King, his father, and contributing RP Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s father — that first appeared at The Recovering Politician on April 4, 2011.
Today — as on every April 4 — as the nation commemorates the anniversary of one of the worst days in our history; as some of us celebrate the anniversary of the greatest speech of the 20th Century; my mind is on my father. And my memory focuses on a winter day in the mid 1970s, sitting shotgun in his tiny, tinny, navy blue Pinto.
I can still remember my father’s smile that day.
He didn’t smile that often. His usual expression was somber, serious—squinting toward some imperceptible horizon. He was famously perpetually lost in thought: an all-consuming inner debate, an hourly wrestling match between intellect and emotion. When he did occasion a smile, it was almost always of the taut, pursed “Nice to see you” variety.
But on occasion, his lips would part wide, his green eyes would dance in an energetic mix of chutzpah and child-like glee. Usually, it was because of something my sister or I had said or done.
But this day, this was a smile of self-contented pride. Through the smoky haze of my breath floating in the cold, dense air, I could see my father beaming from the driver’s seat, pointing at the AM radio, whispering words of deep satisfaction with a slow and steady nod of his head and that unfamiliar wide-open smile: “That’s my line…Yep, I wrote that one too…They’re using all my best ones.”
He preempted my typically hyper-curious question-and-answer session with a way-out-of-character boast: The new mayor had asked him—my dad!—to help pen his first, inaugural address. And my hero had drafted all of the lines that the radio was replaying.
 This was about the time when our father-son chats had drifted from the Reds and the Wildcats to politics and doing what was right. My dad was never going to run for office. Perhaps he knew that a liberal Jew couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in 1970s Kentucky. But I think it was more because he was less interested in the performance of politics than in its preparation. Just as Degas focused on his dancers before and after they went on stage—the stretching, the yawning, the meditation—my father loved to study, and better yet, help prepare, the ingredients of a masterful political oration: A fistful of prose; a pinch of poetry; a smidgen of hyperbole; a dollop of humor; a dash of grace. When properly mixed, such words could propel a campaign, lance an enemy, or best yet, inspire a public to wrest itself from apathetic lethargy and change the world.
Now, for the first time, I realized that my father was in the middle of the action. And I was so damn proud.
– – –
 Click above to watch my eulogy for my father My dad’s passion for words struck me most clearly when I prepared his eulogy. For the past two years of his illness, I’d finally become acquainted with the real Robert Miller, stripped down of the mythology, taken off my childhood pedestal. And I was able to love the real human being more genuinely than ever before. The eulogy would be my final payment in return for his decades of one-sided devotion: Using the craft he had lovingly and laboriously helped me develop, I would weave prose and poetry, the Bible and Shakespeare, anecdotes and memories, to honor my fallen hero. In his final weeks of consciousness, he turned down my offer to share the speech with him. I will never know whether that was due to his refusal to acknowledge the inevitable, or his final act of passing the torch: The student was now the author.
While the final draft reflected many varied influences, ranging from the Rabbis to the Boss (Springsteen), the words were my own. Except for one passage in which I quoted my father’s favorite memorial tribute: read by Senator Edward Kennedy at his brother, Robert’s funeral:
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Read the rest of…
The RP: My Father, RFK, and the Greatest Speech of the 20th Century
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 at 1:00 PM ET My friend Billy Reed — who happens to also be the dean of Kentucky’s sportswriters — wrote an incredible piece on Kentucky basketball last week for Si.com prior to the UK/UofL showdown. I share it with you here to demonstrate the kind of writing I aspire to — someday:
Outside my home here in Louisville, all hell is breaking loose. Insults and predictions are dropping like bombs. Rational people are fleeing bars and restaurants in search of sanctuary. Offices have become battlegrounds, families are being torn apart, and minor events such as weddings are being reorganized. I now know what Edward R. Murrow must have felt like when he was reporting about the siege of London during World War II.
In more than a half century of covering basketball in Kentucky, I thought I had just about seen it all. Heck, even though I was just a kid in 1955, I remember the flag over the state capital building in Frankfort being lowered to half-mast because Georgia Tech had ended the Kentucky Wildcats’ 129-game home winning streak (still the national record). That was my first clue that basketball wasn’t just a game in my native state.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t prepared for the madness that surrounds me this week. I guess I always knew that Kentucky and Louisville would someday meet in the Final Four. But I never dreamed that it would cause all serious work in the Commonwealth to grind to a virtual standstill. I never dreamed that Anthony Davis’ brow would get more radio and TV time than anything since Muhammad Ali fought Joe Frazier for the first time in 1971.
To put it into context, this is Super Bowl week in Kentucky. Even folks who only have a casual interest in hoops — yes, we do have some of those — are suddenly expressing opinions and making bets and generally acting like fools.
Naturally, the national media has been in town this week, trying to ferret out basketball crazies to interview. This makes me nervous because when they find somebody like the guy who has the UK logo in his glass eye, it doesn’t exactly reflect well on us. But we can’t deny the obvious. You may have heard about the two senior citizens in Georgetown, Ky., ages 69 and 72, who almost came to blows arguing about Louisville and Kentucky during their dialysis treatment.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  Sports can bring people together. It can divide us, too.
In sports we find heroes to admire and role models who are coping with the game they play so well… in similar ways we find ourselves coping with life. But unlike us they show courage, confidence, and skill….we want to have these too. But don’t.
So we watch and try to learn. And cheer. And talk trash. And cry on the inside (and sometimes the outside too) when our team fails.
And when they win ….on a night like last night….we swell up with great pride.
Because sports also symbolizes factions, groups, and even states.
The “team” we cheer for identifies us. They represent us. When our sports team wins, we win. When our sports team is superior, we somehow feel superior. When they fail, we feel their pain and question ourselves.
They–our athletes–remind us we are not alone but part of something bigger— something more important. A community that ties us together and reinforces our worth– in some vague way. And not just our worth….but our worth among “our people.” Our tribe.
Sports is at once inherently frivolous and yet unquestionably profound. On the one hand, so arbitrary; and on the other hand, so primitive and instinctive.
We humans seem to need conflict and great causes and great battles. Athletic competition has served as a substitute for war. A tool for diplomacy during Cold War detente. And an avocation and form of entertainment during peacetime.
And last night…sports has provided about as much fun as a 4.4 million people can have sitting down. And make those same people feel a good deal prouder of about their state. And a little bit prouder of ourselves. For tonight, at least. And maybe tomorrow, too.
And you thought it was just a silly game with a ball….
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  (Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images) What a night! Or should I say what a morning?
The girls and I woke up at 3AM here in Florence, Italy to watch our beloved University of Kentucky Wildcats capture their eighth NCAA national basketball championship.
Sheer euphoria.
I’ve tried for a few years to put into words what the Wildcats mean to me, as well as their profound impact on my home state. It really is more than a kids’ game — Kentucky basketball delivers sound public policy.
For my fellow members of the Big Blue Nation; for the uninitiated who don’t understand what the fuss is all about; and for the cynics who decry the professionalization of amateur sport, I offer my latest column for The Huffington Post: “Why Kentucky Basketball Matters.” Enjoy:
An uninformed visitor to my old Kentucky home this week might conclude that they’d mistakenly walked onto the compound of a Prozac-fueled utopian cult.
An odd but euphoric delirium had descended upon the hills, hollers and hamlets of the Bluegrass State. Men and women walking more upright, a bounce in their steps, a huge grin on their faces. You couldn’t meet a stranger: In grocery stores and city parks and shopping malls, neighbors who months before felt nothing in common were now greeting each other with warm words, high fives, and fist bumps.
Weeks from now, we’ll return to our regional camps, our partisan corners. But for now, we’re united; the sun’s shining just a bit brighter.
The Wildcats have once again won the national championship. Kentucky basketball matters.
Click here to read my full column in The Huffington Post.
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A great article from Oregon Live on contributing RP Jason Atkinson, and his decision to take a hiatus from politics:
