Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

I intended on a long entry on Bob Shrum, the prime consultant for Al Gore and John Kerry's noted presidential election victories. Suffice it to say it was the worst political experience of my life, I yelled at him, and he never showed any remorse. (He called Kerry in '04 "the unwinnable election" if that gives you any idea.) So I'm abandoning my effort to come up with a summary of said event; I'll send out my notes to anyone who wants them.

So instead of that, I'll move on to writing about things that happened two weeks ago, namely Colin Van Ostern's op-ed on New Hampshire's state slogan. This is my favorite Colin Van Ostern story: back when we both worked on Team Edwards, he was our New Hampshire press secretary and I watched TV from Raleigh. So I'm watching TV one day when who should show up live on MSNBC but Colin, representing the Edwards campaign and just kind of shooting his mouth off. The top-level campaign folks in Raleigh were livid; at the very least Colin should have asked for permission, and they very well might have said no. But when he's already on TV, what are you going to do? All they could do was watch. But then it got amusing: everyone was watching, waiting for a slip-up, hoping he wouldn't ruin the campaign on live TV, and then eventually someone said, "you know... he's actually really good." He did a terrific job.

So that's Colin Van Ostern. Somehow he got an op-ed into the Concord Monitor a couple weeks ago. What compelling topic did he discuss?

New Hampshire isn't just about quaint villages. It is about the many different ways people find freedom and a better quality of life.

Live Free of Die can help the economy by attracting not just tourists but also shoppers and new employers. Whether you agree with our state tax environment or not, we should do our best to maximize its benefits. And that means selling visitors and new businesses on our tax advantage, our philosophy of restrained intrusion into people's lives and our belief that we all have a chance to take our future into our own hands and succeed.