Pale Rider Redux

MODESTO â€”  He drifted out from the Texas plains. He was a tall, thin man with high cheekbones and pale blue eyes. He squinted a lot. He carried his money in a bag. It was a big, big bag, and it bore this inscription: “Dad.â€�

People learned not to ask the stranger what this meant. He was not pleased by suggestions that he was just another rich son of an oil tycoon, out chasing fancies and piddling away daddy’s hard-earned fortune. He preferred to believe he had played no small role in building the family pot.

One day he rode into Santa Barbara, as orderly and old-fashioned a community as can be found in California. On a lively night, it might be called staid. Well, Santa Barbara was in for some excitement now. Shake hands, the stranger told the townsfolk, with your new congressman.

They laughed at this upstart, called him a carpetbagger. He reached for the moneybag. And a short time later he was on his way to Washington. He left California pretty much as he had come--a stranger without a tan. He had, however, taught the Old Guard in Santa Barbara a couple lessons in the New Politics. Like, never laugh at an outsider. And never, ever laugh at money.

*

Not much is known about how he spent his time in Washington. He was only there a year or so, and then he was back. The House of Representatives had not scratched his itch. Shake hands, Michael Huffington Jr. told California in his toned-down Texas twang, with your new You-Ess Senator.

They had laughed at him again, at first. Then he went $5 million deep into the moneybag. Now he is the GOP nominee, hurtling through the San Joaquin Valley on a campaign bus. It rolls down California 99 past parched grasslands and auto wrecking yards and abandoned hot dog stands shaped like giant oranges. To a native it is ugly and familiar and thus beautiful. Huffington barely looks out the window. By now questions about whether he knows California well enough to represent it seem to bore him.

“My God,� he says, “how long does it take to get to know a place?�

It’s the same with the wealth issue. He doesn’t believe voters care how much of his own money he will spend--$5 million, $10 million, $15 million, “enough.� The issue, he insists, is Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Although he has been on more than one federal payroll, Huffington intends to paint himself as the Washington outsider and his opponent as a government insider, a hack. And thus, as so much dead meat. It’s nothing personal. “Is she a nice lady?� he says. “Sure she is. But there are a lot of nice people in the world.� He smiles, and squints.

To her credit, Feinstein does not seem to be laughing. Maybe people finally are wising up a bit about Huffington. He won’t sneak up on her as easily as the others. Huffington understands this particular fight will be tough. Feinstein packs a pretty mean pocketbook herself. In fact, Huffington explains, he ran in part simply because no other Republican could beat her. No one else had the name recognition, or at least the money needed to buy the name recognition--�except maybe Clint Eastwood.�

*

It is Eastwood, of course, who so often plays the stranger from hell or High Lonesome in spaghetti Westerns. That, though, is the movies. Huffington has cast himself in the pale rider role for real. He has come to California to take a Senate seat, and the self-appointed keepers of political protocol can howl all they want about fair play and decency. He aims to do it.

Why? Well, because behind that hard squint, behind that pile of Texas oil patch money, behind all that naked ambition, there ticks within Michael Huffington a proverbial heart of gold. “Most business people don’t want to be involved in politics,� he says. “They don’t want to spend their money. They want to keep it.� Not Huffington. No sir.

The reason he wants to be U.S. senator, he says, is that he’s a born altruist. He wants to teach the nation how to give again. Social programs simply do not work. Neighbors must learn again to help neighbors. The federal government must “get out of the way.� He’s here to light a fire of volunteerism--not because he wants to cut loose the poor, not because voters always will rally around promises of lower taxes. Because he wants to help.

Or so swears the stranger. It’s an appealing notion, however fanciful, and if he can persuade enough people he’s sincere, Huffington might well be California’s next senator. And he has brought along a powerful tool for persuading people. He keeps it in a big, big bag.