The Seattle Times Postman On Politics

Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen throws patience to the side

When Kevin Pritchard was fired hours before the NBA Draft last year, it signaled more than just a change at the top of the Trail Blazers' basketball operations staff.

It marked a decisive change in the way owner Paul Allen would run his professional basketball team in the future.

According to Allen's spokesperson, David Postman, the Blazers owner learned a lesson after his messy and public divorce from Pritchard: He waited too long to take decisive action.

"He has less patience for what he sees as dysfunction," Postman said of Allen. "If something is not working, there was a time when he would let it go on longer in hopes that it could be fixed. But he would concede that he has less patience for that today."

That impatience surfaced again in May when Allen fired general manager Rich Cho 10 months into his tenure, leaving the Blazers without a full-time general manager for Thursday's NBA Draft.

Postman would not elaborate on what Allen felt the "dysfunction" was with Pritchard and Cho, and the reasons for both dismissals have been vague. Allen wrote in his recently published memoir that Pritchard had "management" issues. And Cho's surprising ouster was characterized by Miller as a bad "fit" because of "chemistry" issues with Allen.

To outsiders, the Blazers had taken the appearance of an unstable franchise, and Allen that of a volatile and eccentric owner. While there's some truth to that overall characterization of Allen, his management of the Blazers has been predictable and for the most part steady, according to those who have worked for him.

Interviews with three of Allen's longest tenured executives – Bob Whitsitt , Steve Patterson and Larry Miller – paint Allen as a thorough, well-studied, calculating owner who more often than not defers to his executives to make decisions, sometimes against his better judgment.

At the same time, Allen is portrayed as involving trusted, albeit less-qualified, friends to consult on decisions, which some say have maligned or at least complicated basketball decisions.

Those strengths and weaknesses have created a hit-and-miss tenure since Allen bought the Blazers in 1988 for $65 million.

After all, Patterson says if Allen had his way in the 2005 draft, Deron Williams would have been in the Blazers backcourt, not Martell Webster and Jarrett Jack.

The Seattle Times: Postman on Politics

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Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so. In an interview in Bellevue this morning Gingrich said Bush should call a joint session of Congress the first week of September and talk about global military conflicts in much starker terms than have been heard from the president.

"We need to have the militancy that says 'We're not going to lose a city,' " Gingrich said. He talks about the need to recognize World War III as important for military strategy and political strategy.

Gingrich said he is "very worried" about Republicans facing fall elections and says the party must have the "nerve" to nationalize the elections and make the 2006 campaigns about a liberal Democratic agenda rather than about President Bush's record.

Gingrich says that as of now Republicans "are sailing into the wind" in congressional campaigns. He said that's in part because of the Iraq war, adding, "Iraq is hard and painful and we do not explain it very well."

But some of it is due to Republicans' congressional agenda. He said House and Senate Republicans "forgot the core principle" of the party and embraced Congressional pork. "Some of the guys," he said, have come down with a case of "incumbentitis."

Gingrich said in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the administration, about the need to recognize that America is in World War III.

He lists wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, this week's bomb attacks in India, North Korean nuclear threats, terrorist arrests and investigations in Florida, Canada and Britain, and violence in Israel and Lebanon as evidence of World War III. He said Bush needs to deliver a speech to Congress and "connect all the dots" for Americans.

He said the reluctance to put those pieces together and see one global conflict is hurting America's interests. He said people, including some in the Bush Administration, who urge a restrained response from Israel are wrong "because they haven't crossed the bridge of realizing this is a war."

"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away:

"Israel wouldn't leave southern Lebanon as long as there was a single missile there. I would go in and clean them all out and I would announce that any Iranian airplane trying to bring missiles to re-supply them would be shot down.

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