It was fortunate that there were at least three engaging
individuals on the podcast this week. I wasn’t one of them. From flubbing the
opening news story about the accordion bomb scare to mistakenly putting the
Sikh temple tragedy in Illinois instead of Wisconsin I just didn’t
bring my A game Friday.
It didn’t matter. Paul and our two guests were strong enough
to carry the show. This is the second time we’ve had Roger (“The Rog”) Caplan
and Chris (“Ox”) Oxenham and it certainly won’t be the last. These two guys
hadn’t met until we first put them together for our version of politics from the left
and the right. Roger is a hired gun loco politico consultant working mostly for
the Dems. I say mostly because at heart I think he sees himself more as a political mercenary.
In fact Roger played a role in helping Chuck Ecker upset Liz Bobo for county
executive back in 1990.
And speaking of Liz, Chris Oxenham, no fan of liberal politicians, uncharacteristically came to Liz’s defense for deciding to skip the special
session on gambling completely. “Let me do something crazy and defend Liz Bobo
on this one, slightly.”
That may be a first and a last.
Chris Oxenham is a Repub operative. I first met Chris when
he was helping Delegate Warren Miller in his reelection campaign and now he’s helping
out Allan Kittleman in his exploratory campaign for county executive. He’s also
promoting Bob Ballinger in his quest for a seat on the school board.
Despite their opposing political views, Chris and Rog have a
nice chemistry together, particularly in this type of freewheeling format.
There was also a surreal moment when I asked Rog if perhaps
the real goal of extending council term limits was to try and entice Courtney Watson not to challenge Guy Guzzone in a primary. As if on cue, a brief moment of silence was followed
by a piano somewhere in the background tapping out about three single notes.
You can listen to the 71st episode of “and then
there’s that” here.