Political Waves, by Jeffrey Rowan

2008-11-06T09:00:00.005-05:00

Lessons Learned from the 2008 Election

The 2008 election cycle was endless, at times exhausting, and often exhilarating. It had no shortage of surprises, twists, and turns. Before it starts to recede in our rear-view mirror, let us take stock of some of the lessons that we learned from it.

1) The pollsters were right. Before I get to the accuracy of the public polls, let me toot my own horn for a moment, and remind readers of my own projection from the previous blog entry:

...here is my fearless prediction for 2008. Obama will win the popular vote 53% to 45%, with the remainder going to Ralph Nader and Bob Barr...The final electoral result will be Obama 353, McCain 185.

The final vote total was Obama 52%, McCain 46%. As Maxwell Smart would say, "Missed it by that much!" In terms of the electoral vote, the count now stands at 349 for Obama, to 163 for McCain. Once you award Obama North Carolina's 15 votes (he currently holds a narrow lead) and award McCain Missouri's 11 electoral votes (he currently has a narrow lead), the final tally becomes Obama 364, McCain 196. What that means is that out of the 50 states, I called only one state wrong: Indiana, which Obama won 50% to 49%. Since my arm is aching from patting myself on the back, let's look at the professional pollsters:

The final realclearpolitics.com average of all the professional polls was Obama by 7.6%. Obama actually won by six per cent. With all the tricky variables at play--new voters, young voters, early voters, African-American voters, weather issues--the pollsters have good reason to feel proud. That is an excellent result. Particularly noteworthy among the pollsters was the Pew Research Poll, which called the election at 52-46, and for the second straight presidential cycle, nailed it perfectly. Rasmussenreports.com also called the race perfectly, at 52-46. An honorable mention must be given to the CNN Opinion Research Poll, which forecast a 53-46 result.

People love to bash the pollsters when they're wrong, accusing them of incompetence. They also love to bash the pollsters when they're right, accusing them of sucking all the romance out of politics. In this election cycle, the pollsters get nothing but serious props from me.

2) Our voting process is a disgrace. In the presidential campaign of 2000, had either Gore or Bush won handily in Florida, no attention would have be paid to the atrocious "butterfly ballot" in West Palm, the punch-card voting system with all its hanging chads, nor the problem of voters being illegitimately purged from the rolls. It was the closeness of the race that magnified these issues. Conversely, Obama's comfortable victory in this election has hidden the fact that our election process is still in a shambles, with intolerable lines, non-uniform procedures throughout the country, machines that break down, large numbers of votes that can't be recounted because there is no paper trail, and uneven distribution of machines that disfavor and burden poor communities.

Can somebody please explain to me why designing a voting system that works is so damned complicated? After all, every day millions of people use ATM machines. You walk up to the machine and it asks you, do you want $20, $40, or $60? You then make a choice from these "candidates," it completes the transaction, and produces a paper record of your decision. Millions of these transactions are carried out, error-free, every day. If people had concerns that the transactions were not secure, or that they would be recorded inaccurately by the bank, the system would collapse immediately. For decades, it has worked smoothly. Why on earth can this same technology not be replicated for elections?

Some analysts have suggested that paradoxically, early voting may have had the effect of actually lowering voter participation. This is because many people who observed three hour waits during the early voting period, may have become fearful about going on election day. The Atlanta Journal Constitution suggests that this dynamic occurred in Georgia:

It's possible that the 4- to six-hour lines many voters epxerienced during advance voting scared some people away from the polls on Tuesday, some country officials said. Both Fulton and Gwinett Counties said they saw and early push of voters on Election Day, but lunchtime and after work crowds never materialized. "Could it be that people were afraid of the long line they saw? said Gwinnett County spokesman Joe Sorenson."We definitely expected the polls to be full all day long."

It is estimated that once all the votes are counted, voter participation will be at 64% in the 2008 election, the highest percentage since William Howard Taft beat William Jennings Bryan exactly a century ago in 1908. Surely, however, we can do better than 64%.

3) How (not) to pick a vice-president. Much has already been written about the strange process by which John McCain picked Sarah Palin: He had met her only twice, and there was virtually no vetting of her before the choice. Robert Draper offers an anecdote in his article in the New York Times Magazine that shows how just how bizarre and impulsive the choice of Sarah Palin was:

After that first brief meeting, [top McCain advisor Rick] Davis remained in discreet but frequent contact with Palin and her staff — gathering tapes of speeches and interviews, as he was doing with all potential vice-presidential candidates. One tape in particular struck Davis as arresting: an interview with Palin and Gov. Janet Napolitano, the Arizona Democrat, on “The Charlie Rose Show” that was shown in October 2007. Reviewing the tape, it didn’t concern Davis that Palin seemed out of her depth on health-care issues or that, when asked to name her favorite candidate among the Republican field, she said, “I’m undecided.” What he liked was how she stuck to her pet issues — energy independence and ethics reform — and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage. Consistency. Confidence. And . . . well, look at her. A friend had said to Davis: “The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best — that’s your V. P.”

It is this kind of sophomoric thinking that led to the disaster that was Sarah Palin. Only now that the election is over, are we learning the full story of just how dysfunctional Palin was. FOX News reported yesterday that she had repeated blow-ups and temper tantrums, didn't know that Africa was a continent, and that a staffer who leaked information supportive of her was fired, then rehired, to avoid publicity. Other outlets are reporting that her shopping spree was far greater than originally reported:

According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

But the real problem with Sarah Palin is the same one that she would face in 2012: She's not very bright. Palin's problem was not one of experience, it was one of intellect. Who in their right mind would babble incoherently to Katie Couric that they had an understanding of Russia because Vladmir Putin flew over Alaskan air space?

There is a simple but profound lesson to be drawn from the choice of Sarah Palin: When picking a vice president, imagine them being interviewed for a full hour on Meet the Press. If the image doesn't work, strike that individual from the list immediately. The notion that Palin was ready for the presidency, but not ready for Meet the Press, was one apparently taken from Alice in Wonderland.

4) Miscellaneous. A few quick notes. As inspiring as Obama's victory gathering in Grant Park was, I was a little disappointed, for two reasons. First, Obama's tone seemed jarringly somber for such a upbeat occasion. Likewise, it was disappointing to me that when they cued the music at the end, Stevie Wonder, a staple of the Obama campaign, was not to be heard. I think that the Obama team forgot that the Grant Park audience was not there to hear a ponderous speech; they were there to celebrate the election with a great party! And no scene would have been more perfect than 100,000 people dancing while Stevie Wonder sang that Obama's election was now "Signed, Sealed, Delivered."

Finally, I suspect that I am only one of thousands of people who would stop at various points during the campaign and say to themselves, "God, I wonder what Tim Russert would say about that," or "I wish Tim Russert were here to see that." Russert's absence changed the campaign season in ways both big and small. His loss was yet another bittersweet reminder to all of us how life moves on even after the most talented among us have gone away. Rest in peace, Tim.

2008-11-03T12:08:00.002-05:00

Fearless 2008 Presidential Prediction!

On election day, 2008, there will be 152 initiatives and referenda on the ballots of the fifty states and Washington, DC. Such initiatives range from banning same-sex marriage in California, to changing the age of sexual consent for girls from 14 to 16 in South Carolina, to a prohibiting dog racing in the state of Massachusetts. There is one overarching issue, however, that all voters will be watching: The 2008 presidential election will be a referendum on the question, "Are the presidential polls any good?"

John McCain and his surrogates have been crisscrossing the country, gamely predicting the they will pull off a "Truman beats Dewey" shocker in the election tomorrow. That seems highly unlikely, for three reasons: 1) In the 1948 Truman/Dewey election, when the polls proved so wrong, the science of population sampling was in its infancy, and was far more primitive than the sampling techniques of today; 2) In 1948, pollsters Roper and Gallup were lulled into complacency themselves, ending their polling a week before the election; 3) The sheer number of polls today, and the subsequent averaging of them, is a significant check on sampling error in any given poll.

As I write this the day before the election, three pollsters have just issued their final reports of the campaign:

1) Gallup predicts that independents will break significantly for Obama, with the final result being Obama 55%, McCain 44%. In 2004, the final Gallup Poll showed the race a tie at 49% for Kerry and Bush.

2) The final Pew Research Poll has the race 52% Obama, 46% McCain. In 2004, Pew predicted a 51-48 margin for Bush, nailing the outcome exactly.

3) The final CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows Obama with a 53-46 lead in the election. Four years ago, the final CNN poll showed Bush with a 2 point advantage. Bush eventually won by 3 per cent.

At the statistically rigorous website, fivethirtyeight.com, numbers-cruncher Nate Silver lists the most recent, major, 14 presidential polls. All of them show Obama winning, ranging from the CBS/NYTimes poll, which shows an edge of 13% points, to the IDB/TIPP poll, which gives Obama a 2% national lead. It is noteworthy that the polls that incorporate cell phone sampling in their methodology give Obama the greatest leads. This is presumably because contacting cell phones expands the sample to a younger group of voters, who overwhelmingly favor Obama.

Before I give my own prediction of the popular and electoral outcome, I would be remiss if I didn't give some props to the poll which has predicted the winner of race accurately in 12 of the last 13 elections, stretching back 52 years: The Weekly Reader Poll. Every election cycle, the Weekly Reader takes the views of its readership, school children from K through 12. The only election since 1956 where the Weekly Reader Poll erred, was the Clinton win in 1992, and that was probably because they left Ross Perot off the ballot. Otherwise, the Weekly Reader's national poll of students from has been uncannily accurate. In 1972, the Weekly Reader Poll accurately predicted that Nixon would carry 49 states to only two for McGovern. In 1980, while some pollsters had the race close between Reagan and Carter, the Weekly Reader predicted a blow-out. The kids predict a similar Obama blow-out this year: 54.7 pcer cent for Obama, 42.9 for McCain. The other 2.5% went to other candidates. This result is almost identical to that of Gallup. On the electoral front, it was even more lopsided. The kids forecast a 420 to 118 electoral rout.

One last piece of data: A look at the offshore betting shops shows that they have made Obama a 10 to 1 favorite in the election. That is, order to win $100 betting on Obama, you would have to risk $1000!

So with all of that data to build on, here is my fearless prediction for 2008. Obama will win the popular vote 53% to 45%, with the remainder going to Ralph Nader and Bob Barr. In the all-important electoral count, Obama will eke by in Florida, and Virginia. Obama will also hold on to Pennsylvania, overcoming a surge of white, working class support for McCain. By virtue of superior organization, Obama will also squeeze by in Ohio, with comfortable wins in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and of course, Illinois. Early voting and a massive turnout by students and African-Americans in North Carolina will give Obama a win there. McCain will take Georgia, and will nip Obama in Missouri. Out west, Obama will triumph in Nevada, New Mexico, and gain a sweet victory in Colorado. McCain will escape humiliation in Arizona, and will win Montana and North Dakota. McCain will make no inroads in New Hampshire, and Obama will make no inroads in Nebraska. The final electoral result will be Obama 353, McCain 200.

I invite all readers to show some cojones, and make predictions of your own in the comments section!

Finally, many have told me that they fear a withdrawal phase once the election is over, a letdown from all the campaign excitement. Not I. Personally, I can't wait for the real business of governing to begin under a Democratic administration. And don't try to reach me on Wednesday morning; I'll still be out celebrating!

2008-10-29T08:12:00.004-04:00

"I Am Barack Obama, I Am Barack Obama"

The other day in my car, I was listening to my favorite radio station, XM-radio's POTUS '08 (Politics of the United States), dedicated entirely to the 2008 political cycle. A media consultant named Thom Mozloom happened to be on the air, waxing indignant about the Obama media strategy. The gist of Mozloom's argument was that given the economic circumstances of the day, Obama should be looking at a landslide victory; according to Mozloom, it was Obama's deficient campaign that was keeping the election close.

My reaction was strong and immediate: "What in the world is this guy thinking?" We live in a country that has been closely ideologically divided for decades. Barack Obama is a 47 year old African-American, who, when he first announced his candidacy in February of 2007, was given virtually no shot at winning the nomination, let alone the presidency. In small town America, journalists repeatedly show us that there are significant pockets of resistance to the idea of a president of color. The mere fact that Obama is poised to win this election is amazing. Landslide, indeed!

Just this week, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus visited a Walmart in Logan County, West Virginia, to examine citizens' views about Obama. Here is a sample of what she found:

"If I do vote, it will be Republican," said Charles Mount, a 31-year-old mechanic and registered Democrat. "There's just something about Obama. You hear so much about him being a Muslim. I don't personally believe that but I don't know that. I'm not going to take a chance on the leader of our country." "

"If Barack Obama gets in, it basically will be giving our America away to whatever . . . ," said Jamie Willis, 42, who voted for Clinton in the primary. Her husband, Brent Willis, 37, a contractor and registered Democrat, filled in the blank. "To be brutally honest with you, if Obama goes in there the [blacks] are going to go crazy -- and I'm not a prejudiced person."

Terry Sanders, a court clerk, said he "wouldn't vote for Obama if he was running for dog catcher. His values are completely different from mine. Why's he got a problem with the flag? He wouldn't put his hand over his heart. It casts a lot of doubt about what kind of man is this fellow."

Even more striking is Marcus' comment about these quotes:

These are not incendiary quotes cherry-picked from among multiple interviews or cajoled out of people reluctant to express a view. They came from the first eight people who stopped to answer my questions -- of whom just one said she supported Obama, citing the backing of the mineworkers union.

Obviously, Obama has had to face hurdles that no white presidential candidate would have to confront. If Obama were not black, the internet slurs--"he's a Muslim," "he doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance," "he doesn't respect the flag," or more generally, in the parlance of Sarah Palin, "He doesn't see America the way we do"--would never have gained any traction whatsoever. The fact that two years into Obama's candidacy, these myths still exist, is best explained by Obama's wry comment, "I don't look like the other presidents on the currency."

Thom Mozloom's criticisms notwithstanding, for almost two years, Obama has run a campaign with virtually no margin for error, an incredible feat. To drive home this point, let's try a little thought experiment. Imagine for a moment that Obama carried with him the following baggage:

1) He finished fifth from the bottom of his class in college (McCain).

2) His spouse previously had a drug addiction that led her to steal drugs from her own medical foundation (McCain).

3) He has a daughter who is pregnant out of wedlock (Palin).

4) He has a spouse who for years belonged to group that advocated the secession of his home state from the Union (Palin).

5) He played an unethical role in a previous financial meltdown that cost the taxpayers billions (McCain).

Can you imagine what the right-wing attack machine would do with these facts? FOX News would be beating these issues to death. Well, actually they wouldn't, because no black candidate could survive a presidential race for five minutes with such baggage. The pregnant daughter alone would have people saying, "He's devaluing the presidency with his hip-hop values." That is why I would never saddle Obama with the absurd expectation that "he should win by a landslide." If Obama gets 270 electoral votes, it will be the most remarkable accomplishment in American electoral history. It will be a seismic paradigm shift. The good news, however, is that once a new paradigm is created, it is amazing how we as a country adapt to it, even to the point of forgetting—or perhaps repressing—that the old paradigm ever existed. Let me expand on this point with a brief story:

In 1939, two African-American men, Clarence M. Davenport and Robert B. Tresville, entered West Point, among the first black men to have done so. Their presence evoked outrage. After all, who really believed that black men had the courage, intelligence, values or patriotism to assume such roles? While it was standard for cadets to be assigned roommates, Davenport and Tresville were not only not allowed to room with white cadets, they were also not allowed to room with each other. So each roomed alone. For four years they endured a form of treatment called "silencing," in which white cadets would not speak to them unless for official business. Even in the chapel, white cadets would not sit with them. When Life magazine came to take a picture of Davenport's graduating class, he was excluded from the picture.

Both men became model soldiers. In the 1960's, Davenport was given the Legion of Merit for his command of the 10th Artillery Group, 32nd Army Air Defense Command in Europe. and retired from the Army in 1972 as a full colonel. And Tresville? He became the commanding officer of the Tuskegee Airmen's 100th Fighter Squadron, and in 1944, was killed on a mission off the coast of Italy. I mention these men for two reasons. The first reason is that these men are great heroes, unsung heroes, men who created a new paradigm, a new narrative about our military. The military is now perhaps the most integrated institution in our country, and many cannot even remember a time when blacks were shunned at West Point, and seen as lacking "good American values." The second reason is that Robert Tresville was married to my mom when his plane was lost over the Mediterranean Sea. It is because of the exploits of Tresville and Davenport that we now take for granted the Colin Powells of our nation.

Speaking of Powell, I agree completely with his assessment on Meet the Press that an Obama presidency will be "transformational." A world wide Gallup poll recently showed that three-quarters of the citizens in the 70 countries that they polled are hoping for an Obama presidency. This was true from Asia to Africa to Western Europe. In fact, Gallup only managed to find two countries where McCain was preferred: Georgia, and the Philippines.

This leads me to conclude that--in contrast to the overwrought warnings of Joe Biden--Obama will actually get the benefit of a global honeymoon period once he is elected. Temporarily at least, Al-Qaeda will be defanged, because it will become much harder to recruit terrorists when the American president is a role model in both developed and developing nations. When Obama is elected, black kids will start sitting up straighter in the classroom, and the notion that being studious is somehow "acting white," will lose all its destructive power. And instead of hearing the cynical and confused slogan, "I am Joe the plumber," we will hear children of all colors and creeds from all over the world saying, "I am Barack Obama, I am Barack Obama."

2008-10-23T16:37:00.005-04:00

John McCain and the Politics of Dishonor

John McCain likes to use words like "duty," "honor," and "putting America first," to describe the heart of his presidential campaign. It is clear that McCain sees himself as a lonely island of principle surrounded by a sea of corruption. And there have been occasions--as McCain will be quick to tell you--when he has taken difficult and principled positions on issues: originally opposing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, standing up for campaign finance reform, and taking, by Republican standards, a humane position on immigration.

But McCain's lofty rhetoric hides the fact that in the real world, acting in a principled way can be difficult and elusive. The same person who is a loving father and husband may become a destructive maniac when on the road in traffic; the same person who gives lavishly to his church is also quite capable of embezzling money from the office. The problem for John McCain, is that all too often in his life, when principle and personal gain have collided, it is the principle that has been thrown aside. In life, even the highest ideals often give way to factors like stress, ambition, and greed. For all his high-toned rhetoric, John McCain is a classic example of this. Let's look at some examples of McCain's lapses of honor:

1) The 2000 South Carolina Primary. In January of 2000, George W. Bush and John McCain were locked in a battle for the Republican nomination. The stakes were particularly high for Bush, who had just lost to McCain in New Hampshire by 18 percentage points. Bush had to win, but McCain had the early momentum. Suddenly, a new campaign strategy was hatched by the Bush team. In 1993, Cindy McCain had traveled to Bangladesh and adopted a Bangladeshi child named Bridget. Bridget had a cleft palate which needed medical treatment, and she had dark skin. The Bush partisans saw an opportunity there. During the campaign, South Carolina citizens suddenly began getting phone calls at dinner time, asking:

Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?

Other calls mused about Cindy McCain's drug use, and referred to McCain as the "fag candidate." The view of those on the ground in 2000 is that these calls were the work of Karl Rove, and of Charlie Condon, a Bush supporter and former South Carolina Attorney General. Not surprisingly, both men deny involvement in the vicious and well-orchestrated campaign, but here is what Condon had to say when asked about the smear campaign:

Our primaries have a way of doing that. There is a tradition of it, it is accepted behavior, and frankly it works. There are no regrets about 2000. To this day I don’t have one. If someone did those things, shame on them. But I did see that there was a need for bringing up issues.

So, under attack in South Carolina with poll numbers dropping, what did McCain do? He suddenly became a supporter of the confederate flag. McCain dropped his previous opposition to the confederate flag flying atop the Statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina. Asked by a reporter about his position on the flag, McCain expressed a newfound openness to it:

Personally, I see the flag as symbol of heritage.

McCain went on to lose the South Carolina primary by 11 points. By April of 2000, Bush had become the presumptive nominee. The campaign now over, and with the pressure off, John McCain had yet another change of heart about the confederate flag. In April of 2000, he returned to South Carolina and apologized for his support of the flag:

I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles...I believe the flag should be removed from your Capitol, and I am encouraged that fair-minded people on both sides of the issue are working hard to define an honorable compromise.

This is the quintessential John McCain: No one issues a more remorseful apology than John McCain. The problem throughout his political career is that when he is confronted with the prospect of losing, his principles collapse like an old lounge chair. Shortly after the South Carolina episode, McCain commented to an interviewer that there must be "a special place in hell" for those who had perpetrated the smear against him and his family. Remarkably, however, after blasting the villains who had sabotaged his campaign, McCain had another change of heart, and hired Charlie Condon, the likely culprit in the affair. Ann Banks describes it best in her article in The Nation:

Seven years later, who is running McCain's South Carolina campaign? Charlie Condon, the former State Attorney General who in 2000 helped spread the innuendo targeting [McCain’s daughter] Bridget. If you can't beat them, hire them--even if they've launched racist attacks against your own daughter.

Hiring the guy who smeared your own daughter with racist phone calls, ranks pretty high on my scale of dishonorable acts. The frightening thing about McCain, is that he apparently believes that if the apology is contrite enough, it wipes the slate clean on the bad act that preceded it.

2) The Keating Scandal Take the case of the Keating Five. McCain, along with four other senators, intervened with regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, a man who bilked investors out of billions in the Lincoln Savings and Loan Scandal. Keating was a friend and contributor of McCain, who had given him over $112,000 in contributions, and $13,000 in free trips to the Bahamas. (McCain reimbursed Keating only after Keating became a target of investigators). The intervention of the five senators kept the regulators at bay for two years, allowing Keating’s fraud to continue, which of course worsened the financial tragedy for unwitting investors. Predictably, here is the McCain mea culpa:

The appearance of it was wrong. It's a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do…. It was the worst mistake of my life.

He gives great after-the-fact apologies, doesn’t he?

At the Rick Warren values forum, McCain was asked to describe his greatest moral failing. He responded:

My greatest moral failing, and I have been a very imperfect person, is the failure of my first marriage.

Of course, what he really meant by this, is that he had taken up with a hotter, richer woman, after his wife had been seriously injured in a car accident, had spent 6 months in the hospital and had 23 surgeries.

Based on this, I’ll make a wager right now: After he loses the presidential election, McCain will offer a full-throated apology for his campaign’s use of words like “socialist,” “terrorist, and “celebrity” to describe Barack Obama. But I guarantee that it will be a good apology. That’s what McCain does best…

2008-10-16T09:09:00.005-04:00

Obama Wins the Final Debate

In this election cycle, the conventional wisdom about the presidential debates is that they have been forgettable, poorly moderated, and gave us little new insight into the candidates. After last night's third and final debate, NBC's Tom Brokaw commented, "It seems unlikely that anything we heard tonight really did move the needle." Many pundits have suggested that the debates have been an irrelevant sideshow that has not told us much about the candidates. I beg to differ.

Regardless of the format, or quality of the moderator, debates always serve as a kind of trial by ordeal, an inkblot test for the candidates to reveal who they really are. In this regard, the three presidential debates were a tremendous success. When people criticize the debates, what they usually mean is that this or that debate didn't meet modern standards of entertainment; it didn't divert us in the manner of CSI, Dancing with the Stars, or for that matter WWE wrestling. But such critiques miss the point. I would submit that along with the economic crisis, historians will look back on the debates as the most decisive factor in the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States.

The question going into the first debate in Oxford, Mississippi was, would Obama show the maturity and command that we look for in a president? Would McCain show the grace under pressure and independence from George W. Bush necessary to right the wrongs of the past eight years? I've said it before and I'll say it again: Barring any gross factual or rhetorical flubs--like Gerald Ford liberating Poland in 1976, or Bob Dole complaining about "Democrat wars"--style, or more accurately put, character, trumps substance every time.

And during the debates, character was revealed in spades. From the first debate to the last night's final one--ably guided by Bob Schieffer of CBS--there was utter thematic consistency: Barack Obama was even and reassuring, John McCain was seething and angry. There have long been whispers from McCain's fellow senators about his temper, his tendency to lose control, diss, and berate his colleagues. Before the debates, however, it was easily to dismiss such charges as hype and political jockeying. But the John McCain who couldn't bring himself to look at Obama in the first debate (something he categorically denied when asked about it by George Stephanopoulos afterward), the John McCain who contemptuously referred to Obama as "that one" in the second debate, and the John McCain we saw last night, were all of a piece. This is a man whose emotions are barely in check, who at times looked like he wanted to take a swing at Obama rather than engage him in debate.

McCain was not helped last night by the abundant use of split screen, repeatedly showing McCain while Obama was talking. The television audience was treated to a succession of blinks, eye rolls, flushed faces, and looks of pique from McCain that did nothing to comfort the viewer about his self-control. He looked like the principal of a high school in one of those teen movies who had been challenged by one of his know-it-all students, and was now caught between his desire to maintain his dignity and his desire to strangle the student.

It doesn't surprise me at all that the flash polls showed Obama winning the debate by upwards of 60-30. The situation set up perfectly for him. Obama is far more comfortable as the counter-puncher than as the aggressor. While some pundits judged him as too passive last night, what Obama did was employ a classic rope-a-dope technique: Allow your opponent to keep punching until he becomes increasingly tired, frustrated, and reckless. By the time McCain launched into his pre-scripted speech about William Ayres, millions of viewers, fresh off the latest stock market 700 point downer, were asking, "What's this got to do with the price of tea in China?"

It is ironic that John McCain experienced the same frustration with Obama that Hillary Clinton did. Just as Hillary complained repeatedly about Obama being "just speeches," I knew that McCain had lost it last night when he started referring derisively to Obama's "eloquence." And when McCain groused about Obama's "eloquence" just after Obama had stood up for the right of a woman to have a late-term abortion if her health were imperiled, McCain seemed particularly churlish.

The bottom line is that it is now Obama's race to lose. CNN has him ahead by a staggering 10 points in Virginia, a state where Bush defeated Kerry by 9 points. Obama is ahead by 4 points in Colorado, which hasn't gone Democratic in 16 years. And the Democrats are poised to get some sweet revenge in Florida where Obama has opened up a 5 point lead on McCain. And all of this is partly due to what the three debates revealed: Barack Obama is one of the most reasoned, steady, and disciplined candidates in our lifetime.

2008-10-03T17:24:00.004-04:00

The Vice Presidential Debate: Where Was Gwen Ifill?

Back in the 70's, the tongue-in-cheek, anti-war question was, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" In an embarrassing variation on that theme, the question taken from last night's vice presidential debate was, "What if they gave a debate and the moderator didn't show up?" Simply put, moderator Gwen Ifill of PBS was missing-in-action.The rhetorical battle between Biden and Palin was so unusual that it may have changed the nature of debate as we know it. Palin's strategy was ingeniously simple: If the moderator asks you a question about which you know nothing, simply refuse to answer it, and instead answer one of your own making. The Palin strategy produced a bizarre back and forth in which one never knew what Palin was going to say, because she paid so little attention to the question at hand, preferring instead to simply recite pre-rehearsed monologues. As a result, it wasn't long before the inmates, or should I say the inmate, was running the asylum, and the moderator had abdicated control.

I would grade the participants as follows:

Biden: B+ Biden was as disciplined and on point as I've ever seen him, making his points with a crispness and seriousness befitting a vice-presidential debate, even while Palin tried to distract him with a procession of winks, quips, jokes, shout-outs, and misstatements of fact that sometimes came so fast and furious that it was hard to keep up with her. Biden's grade would be higher if he hadn't seemed so nervous through much of the debate, leading to occasionally garbled sentences.

Palin: C Just for showing up and surviving the ninety mintues, Palin gets a C, though her survival depended largely on being able to dismiss any question that did not conform to the talking points that she had previously memorized. Early on in the proceedings she gave warning that the debate questions were in her view, an evil creation of the mainstream media, and that answering the moderator's questions was optional:

I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record...

Toward the end of the debate, in an oblique reference to her disastrous Katie Couric interviews, Palin continued her criticism of the mainstream press:

I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they've just heard. I'd rather be able to just speak to the American people like we just did.

Ifill: F I'm not sure I've ever seen a debate in which the moderator was as docile as Ifill was last night.There are three basic tasks for the moderator of any major political debate: 1) Set an agenda by raising serious and relevant questions 2) Keep the participants on task so that they follow the agenda at hand. 3) Highlight any lapses of clarity, factual accuracy, or candor with follow-up questions. I don't believe that Ifill managed to accomplish any of these tasks last night.

Ifill was almost certainly affected by pressure from conservative groups, who viewed her upcoming book, Breakthough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, as a serious conflict of interest. In the view of Ifill's critics, her book, due to be released on inauguration day, would obviously be more relevant and more financially successful if Obama won the presidency, than if he did not. There is some truth to this complaint, so it is not unreasonable to conclude that Ifill felt the need to overcompensate during the debate by giving Palin free rein to pick and choose which questions she would answer.

Early on in the debate, I knew that things had gone awry when Joe Biden, in responding to a question about the subprime mortgage crisis, described John McCain as one of the biggest advocates for market deregulation. Ifill offered Palin a chance to respond to Biden's criticisms, and here was Palin's response:

I would like to respond about the tax increases. We can speak in agreement here that darn right we need tax relief for Americans so that jobs can be created here. Now, Barack Obama and Sen. Biden also voted for the largest tax increases in U.S. history. Barack had 94 opportunities to side on the people's side and reduce taxes and 94 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a tax reduction, 94 times.

For a moment I thought I was losing my mind. Tax increases? Who said anything about tax increases!? Am I already losing my memory at such a young age!? Clearly, tax increases were the first line on Palin's list of talking points, and she was determined to raise the issue, come hell or high water.

One of Ifill's many shortcomings during the debate was her inability to ask a question without simultaneously providing multiple choice answers. So she couldn't simply ask something like, "Who was at fault in the subprime mortgage meltdown? Instead, Ifill coddled Palin with this formulation:

Who do you think was at fault? I start with you, Gov. Palin. Was it the greedy lenders? Was it the risky home-buyers who shouldn't have been buying a home in the first place? And what should you be doing about it?

Every time she got such a multiple choice question, Palin breathed a sigh of relief, because she then knew that she could circle "all of the above." Likewise, Ifill didn't ask how Palin would facilitate peace in the Middle East; instead, she threw her a lifeline by suggesting "...is a two-state solution the solution?" Was anyone surprised by Palin's response: "A two-state solution is the solution." Bravo!

In the category of dumb questions, Ifill asked Biden about his statement that he, "would not be vice president under any circumstances." The problem with this question is that Biden said that when he was still a presidential candidate. Show me a presidential candidate anywhere who would say, "Yes, I'm willing to take the second job." It was later, after he had ended his campaign, that Biden told Brian Williams on Meet the Press that he didn't want the job, but if asked, he would accept:

SEN. BIDEN: Unlike most other people, I'm being straight with you. If asked, I will do it. I've made it clear I do not want to be asked.

MR. WILLIAMS: Do not want to be asked. But if asked, the answer, of course, would be yes.

SEN. BIDEN: Of course it would, because the--if the president--if the presidential nominee thought I could help him win, am I going to say to the first African-American candidate about to make history in the world that, "No, I will not help you out like you want me to"? Of course, I'm--I'll say yes.

I watched the interview live on July 22, and found it to be a candid and sincere statement by Biden. Palin was apparently referencing this comment by Biden in trying to defend her own statement that she didn't know what a vice president actually did:

In my comment there, it was a lame attempt at a joke and yours was a lame attempt at a joke, too, I guess, because nobody got it. Of course we know what a vice president does.

Huh? Biden's comments to Brian Williams on Meet the Press were dead serious. This is just another example of Palin winging it with no real knowledge of what she's talking about. Conservative writer Kathleen Parker put if perfectly when she wrote: "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself." By the end of the debate, when Palin had relaxed a bit, she started to tap into her inner Tina Fey, getting more cutesy and folksy by the minute. I hope I never again have to watch a debate where I hear a "shout-out" to the third grade of Gladys Wood Elementary School. I hope I never have to hear canned lines again like "say it aint so, Joe." I hope I never hear the word "maverick" again. And I hope that the Commission on Presidential Debates thinks long and hard before giving another debate to Gwen Ifill.

2008-09-10T18:14:00.008-04:00

Obama, Palin, and the "Witness Protection Program"

In his piece yesterday about Barack Obama in the Washington Post ("Too Cool to Fight?"), columnist Richard Cohen said something profound. While discussing the concept of "swiftboating," Cohen pointed out that swiftboating isn't merely about smearing one's opponent; nor is it merely about spreading falsehoods. The essence of swiftboating, Cohen wrote, is taking your opponent's greatest strengths, and turning them into negatives, liabilities. John Kerry, for example, was so dumbfounded that someone would challenge his stellar war record, he felt it was unnecessary to vigorously defend himself against the charges--a decision he now sorely regrets.

Likewise, who would have thought that the McCain campaign would treat community organizing not as something that embodies basic American virtues like duty, self-sacrifice and commitment to justice, but rather something worthy of contempt? Who would have thought that inspiring millions of Europeans to once again believe in the U.S., would be treated by McCain and company as somehow un-American, and evidence of empty celebrity? And who would have thought that the candidate who excelled at Harvard and became president of the Law Review would be seen as "elitist," while John McCain, who finished fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, and Sarah Palin, who went to six different colleges in six years, would get a free pass?

In considering this Orwellian state of affairs, one has to conclude that swiftboating works not simply because of the virulence of the swifterboaters, it also depends on the passivity of the swiftboatees. It is for this reason that Cohen takes Barack Obama to task for a disappointing, namby-pamby performance on George Stephanopoulos, during which Obama seemed to lack any fight, any passion, regardless of how outrageous the smear against him. When asked whether McCain had picked a running mate who was "capable of being president," Obama could only muster a wan, "Well, you know, I'll let you ask John McCain when he's on ABC." Even Obama's strongest backers have to admit that this is pretty mealy-mouthed stuff. Cohen reached the same conclusion that I reached in many previous blogs, that Obama relies far too heavily on his trademark "cool," and is too slow to anger, to reluctant to fight.

There is an interesting parallel between Barack Obama and the great tennis player and humanitarian, Arthur Ashe. Ashe grew up in a very segregated Richmond, Virginia, and as a promising teenage tennis player, wasn't allowed to play at many of the clubs in Richmond. When he was allowed into tournaments, Ashe knew that he could not engage in any racquet throwing, arguing over line calls, or moments of petulance--standard etiquette for his white counterparts. Ashe knew instinctively that he had to be the perfect gentleman, lest he give the good ole boys reason to kick him out of the tournament. As a result, Ashe became, throughout his life, a model of comportment, and diplomacy. These traits, combined with Ashe's intelligence and empathy, were integral to the humanitarian work that Ashe did in South Africa and elsewhere.

All too often, however, people who are thoughtful, reflective and empathic are mistakenly seen as weak. Even Ashe's contemporary, Billie Jean King, an otherwise very wise woman, once said derisively about Arthur Ashe, "I'm blacker than Arthur is," perhaps the dumbest thing she ever said. My point is this: calm and diplomacy are great traits to own, but there are situations in life where it is passion and fight that carry the day. I believe that Obama is currently in the fight of his life, and he needs to recognize this and squarely engage the opposition.

Since the early days of the primaries, I've maintained that the most significant moment of the campaign was the heated argument Obama had with Hillary on stage in South Carolina. People have forgotten that before that memorable moment, even the black community had not fully gotten on board the Obama campaign. But Obama finally reached the boiling point in South Carolina, after Bill Clinton called Obama's opposition to the war a "fairy-tale," and when Hillary put out an ad claiming that Obama supported the policies of Ronald Reagan. Losing his temper in the South Carolina debate was the best thing that ever happened to Obama. The public got to see that he did have some fight, some fire, and it made him all the more human and authentic. That moment was a game-changer for Obama.

The problem is, we have not seen enough of this. The only other time during the entire campaign that I can remember Obama rising to anger was when Hillary, after repeatedly refusing to say that Obama was ready to be president, all of a sudden decided that the "dream ticket" would consist of her as president and Obama as veep. The raw cynicism of this got Obama's dander up once again, and he mocked Hillary's flip-flop beautifully. He needs to display more of this kind of passion.

So where should the campaign go from here? First, Obama/Biden should absolutely refuse to be boxed in by the fact that Sarah Palin is a woman. They should go after Sarah Palin in the same manner that they would go after John McCain. Yes, temporarily Sarah Palin has rallied the McCain troops. But in picking someone so manifestly unprepared to be president, McCain has created a vulnerability for himself large enough to drive a truck through. Obama and Biden have simply been slow to exploit it. The notion that Palin is ready to be president, but isn't ready for Meet the Press, is another one of those Orwellian absurdities that should be trumpeted by Obama, Biden, or both, every five minutes. I can hear Palin apologists already, saying, "But she's being interviewed by Charlie Gibson!" Fiddlesticks, that's a far cry from maintaining a daily dialogue with the press and with the voters, something one would expect of any candidate.

In keeping with this, the Obama campaign ought to start keeping a daily tally of the number of days that the McCain is hiding Palin from the Sunday talk shows. They should make a big deal out of it, declaring in a daily press release:

"It's been 10 days and counting since Sarah Palin has been in the McCain 'witness protection program.' When will she come out of hiding?"

The Obama campaign should beat this issue like a drum, because Palin's lack of readiness to be president is the ultimate issue, more important than her support for the "bridge to nowhere," more important than her faux opposition to pork barrel projects, more important than her denial of global warming. Smoking out Sarah Palin, and by extension, John McCain's judgment, should be project number one for the remainder of the campaign. And it's become fairly clear that Hillary won't do it. Hillary is content to continue her perfunctory, joyless, I'm-out-here-because-I-have-to-be form of campaigning. Now that Hillary has the luxury of sticking her thumb in Obama's eye by professing such loyalty to the "sisterhood" that she can't take on Sarah Palin, the time has come for Obama to move beyond "nice." He needs to find his inner toughness.

2008-09-02T17:38:00.003-04:00

Is the Sarah Palin Pick About to Implode?

As more information surfaces about vice-presidential choice Sarah Palin, it has become increasingly clear that Palin was a last-second choice on the part of John McCain, and underwent virtually no vetting prior to her selection. Multiple reports have indicated that McCain wanted Joe Lieberman for the position, but encountered such stiff opposition from party regulars that he was forced to drop such a plan. Another prospect, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, was was also unacceptable to the party base, due to his pro-choice position on abortion. That left Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, sorely lacking in both charisma and depth, and Mitt Romney, with whom McCain's relationship is strained at best. It is also clear that McCain was influenced by the tremendous success of the Democratic Convention, and was pessimistic about his chances were he to make a predictable, ho-hum choice for veep. That is why, at the 11th hour, he chose Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, hoping that she would lend a new vitality and pizzazz to the ticket. The problem for the McCain campaign is, the pick was made with such haste, the McCain campaign knew little about her.

Since then, information has emerged which suggests that Palin is a lot longer on drama, and shorter on gravitas than McCain would have hoped. Let's take a look at what we now know:

1) The New York Times reports that Palin has hired a private lawyer to deal with the investigation into whether she improperly used her office as governor to try to get her ex-brother-in-law fired, during his bitter custody battle with her sister.

2) It has come out that during the 90's, Palin was a member of the "Alaska Independence Party," one of whose goals was the seccession of Alaska from the United States. Can you imagine if Barack Obama had belonged to a group which lobbied for Hawaii to secede from the Union? We'd never hear the end of it!

3) Palin campaigned against her own mother-in-law, who was attempting to succeed Palin as the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Much of Sarah Palin's disenchantment stemmed from her mother-in-law's pro-choice views. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, who lost the mayoral race to the candidate that Sarah Palin backed, told the New York Daily news that she is considering voting for Obama.

4) While McCain praised Palin during his introduction of her, for rejecting the infamous "bridge to nowhere," is has since come to light that that before it became a national scandal, Palin was a staunch supporter of the infamous bridge. Further, in direct contradiction to what Palin said during her introduction, Alaska never gave the $400 million back to the federal government; rather, they simply transferred it to other projects. Simply put, during her debut in Dayton, Ohio, Palin fibbed when she said she has returned the money.

5) Depite the reformer label that Republicans have enthusiastically pinned on Palin, we now know that while Palin was the mayor of Wasilla, she brought in 27 million dollars of pork barrel spending, for a town with a population of 7,000. That may be a national record for pork barrel abuse per capita.

The McCain campaign has issued a series of statements purporting to show that they did serious job of vetting Palin before choosing her. However, the statements raise more questions than they answer. Staffers first told the Washington Post that the FBI had fully investigated her; the FBI, however, denied this, saying that they perform no such function for the candidates. Further, the New York Times found that the McCain campaign never bothered to talk to Palin's associates in Alaska. Here is Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Palin served as governor:

They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community.

Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, questioned whether any serious vetting had been done on Palin, given the universal surprise in Alaska over the choice:

I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called. I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything.

The fact that the McCainites knew so little about Palin diminishes her as a candidate, but it diminishes John McCain even more, making a mockery of his bromides about judgment, experience and prudence during a time of national peril. The selection of Sarah Palin was clearly an amateurish, slapdash process that resulted in a pick that may now blow up in McCain's face.

Of course the most lurid fact to emerge since the choice Sarah Palin is that of her daughter Bristol's pregnancy, a pregnancy putatively in its fifth month. This information was disclosed to to the press in the wake of rampant internet speculation that Bristol, now 17, had been the real mother of Sarah Palin's fifth child, Trig Paxson Van Palin. While I am aware that the internet is rife with false and slanderous rumors, many of which have indeed targeted Barack Obama, the facts if the birth of Trig Palin are so bizarre and unlikely, that they bear further discussion:

On March 5, 2008, Sarah Palin announced at a press conference that she was 7 months pregnant with her fifth child. The reaction to the news was universal; everyone was shocked because she didn't look remotely pregnant. A month later, while presumably 8 months pregnant with a child that she knew would have Down's Syndrome, she attended a conference in Dallas, requiring significant travel by air, itself a bit unusual for someone almost due. As Sarah Palin tells the story, she was in Dallas on April 17, when she began to leak amniotic fluid. Whether her water fully broke is, I suppose, a semantic issue. Despite this sign of impending childbirth and accompanying labor pains, she decided to give her keynote speech at the energy conference she was attending. Then, rather than simply check herself into one of Dallas' fine hospitals, she went to DFW airport, bought a ticket, checked her bags, dealt with the hassle of security, and made a 9 hour trip back to Anchorage (with a stop in Seattle), while not disclosing anything to Air Alaska, and while apparently leaking amniotic fluid. So Palin's version in a nutshell is that she got pregnant at age 44 and at seven months, wasn't showing at all--itself somewhat unlikely--had her water break, and chose not to go to a hospital in Dallas. Knowing that she would be delivering a disabled child that could come at any moment, she instead chose to return to Alaska, simply because she wanted to have her child in Alaska. To say that this strains credulity is the understatement of the year.

It is also important to note that during this time, Bristol had been absent from school for eight months with "mononucleosis," and that some of her schoolmates had reported seeing her looking pregnant. We are now told that Bristol is 5 months pregnant, which would put Bristol's conception at almost the exact time of Trig Paxson Van Palin's birth, conveniently knocking down the notion that Bristol could have given brith at that time. If indeed Bristol is five months pregnant, she could not be the mother of Trig. However, we have to take this on faith; if this was all a deception, why would we get the truth now? If Sarah Palin's version of events is true, it is the coincidence of a remarkable series of unlikely events, whose collective probability is close to zero. A few more troubling revelations about Sarah Palin could doom her to the same fate as would-be attorney general, Harriet Miers, and would-be vice-president Thomas Eagleton.

Finally, in conjunction with the Palin selection, let me say a few words about Hillary Clinton. Regular readers of this blog know that over the course of the campaign, I have regarded Hillary Clinton as a cynical and somewhat destructive figure. It was for that reason that I was overjoyed at the level of unity reached during the Democratic Convention. I said to myself, "Wow, I won't have to talk about Hillary anymore!" Well, with the selection of Sarah Palin, it looks like I spoke too soon.

John McCain's attempt to appeal to and co-opt former Hillary supporters is a gamble, not so much because of the experience issue, but because the success of McCain's strategy depends on Hillary being an accomplice to his plan to drive a wedge between Hillary's past supporters. The fact is, Hillary could undermine McCain's cynical use of Palin champion of women's interests, by simply standing up and saying firmly:

She is a woman, yes. But she stands against all the important things that animated my campaign: Universal health care, the protection of a woman's right to choose, the establishment of a living wage for working families, a progressive tax system that doesn't favor the rich, a major move toward green, renewable energy, and an immediate end to the war in Iraq, with an emphasis on diplomacy. Sarah Palin stands against all of these goals. She is no more a promoter of my agenda than Clarence Thomas has been a promoter of civil rights. I strongly urge any supporters of mine to see through this cynical ploy by Senator McCain, and support Barack Obama for president!

Barbara Boxer has already said words to this effect, and so has has Nancy Pelosi. But the person who really needs to speak out on Sarah Palin is Hillary Clinton. McCain apparently believes that if he can appeal to Hillary's narcissism and sense of victimhood, that she may stay silent while he siphons off some of Obama's support. Who knows, McCain may be right. So far Hillary has issued only the most tepid, innocuous statement about Palin. Over the next 65 days, I'll be watching to see how Hillary handles the Sarah Palin issue, and you can bet that Barack Obama will be watching as well.

2008-07-31T10:32:00.009-04:00

The New Racial Code: Obama as "Arrogant"

It is fascinating to observe the latest criticisms of Barack Obama. From conservatives and liberals alike we have begun to hear a new mantra, "he's too arrogant, he's being presumptuous." Let's be frank about what is really going on here. It is a new racial code.

Virtually everything about the Obama campaign has debunked the conventional wisdom: He outperformed and outstrategized Hillary Clinton in the primary season, and vanquished the Clinton machine. Goaded by John McCain to travel overseas, Obama toured the Middle East and Europe in a manner that was successful beyond all prediction. Despite the wishful thinking of Republicans that Obama would be snubbed and rebuffed by our troops in the Persian Gulf, they mobbed him with joy and excitement. France's Sarkozy and Britain's Gordon treated Obama with uncommon fanfare, and Sarkozy offered that the French would be "delighted" if Obama won the election. The 200,000 cheering Berliners who listened to Obama's speech symbolized something that I blogged about back on May 19, after John McCain's invidious comment that Obama was the "candidate of Hamas":

Moreover, in trying to tie Obama to Hamas, McCain completely missed the point. Hamas aside, Obama is the favored candidate of the entire international community. If there were a world-wide referendum on our presidency, Obama would trounce McCain. He would win in England, he would win in France, he would win in Canada, he would win throughout the world, precisely because he has had the same inspirational effect overseas that he has had at home. The international community is looking for diplomatic leadership.

Finally, Obama has led John McCain in almost every poll since the he became the presumptive Democratic nominee. I list these accomplishments not to sing Obama's praises; I do it rather, to point out how improbable and singular Obama's ascendance has been. Barack Obama's candidacy has been the ultimate "man bite's dog" story, an African-American candidate who has garnered a mass following. This is unheard of in American politics, and we have now begun to see the blowback. It comes in the form of "Who does he think he is!?" To be blunt about it, Obama is now being criticized for things for which no white candidate would ever be faulted. Let's take a look at some Obama's presumed offenses:

1) He's an Ivy Leaguer. The last three presidents, Bush junior, Clinton, and Bush senior, all had Ivy League educations. Clinton also spent time at Oxford as a Rhode Scholar. When did you ever hear carping about their Ivy League connections? When was it ever suggested that any of the three must be "elitist" because they went to Yale, or Harvard, or Oxford? Indeed with George W. Bush, the criticism was precisely the opposite, that his grades may not have qualified him for so fine a school as Harvard Business School. But there was never any hint that the three presidents' backgrounds were in any way disqualifying. But we do hear that about Barack Obama. Just yesterday, when Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's name emerged as a leading veep candidate, one writer suggested that because both Obama and Kaine went to Harvard Law School, the combination might be too "elitist" for the electorate. Huh? The sad truth is, Americans have gotten so used to the idea of African-Americans being underachievers academically, the image of Barack Obama becomes a little unsettling for some. Hence, in the minds of some voters, he becomes "elitist."

2) The "bitter comments." Obama's comments that small town America, when experiencing economic duress, clings to "guns and religion," caused a firestorm. And while it is easy to see how the remarks could be seen as patronizing, I believe that there was more to the reaction. Throughout history, we have gotten used to whites being patronizing and paternalistic toward the black community. What we don't often hear is a black man saying condescending things about the white community. So Obama's comment stood as another man bites dog story. And once again, the reaction of the blue collar community was, "Who the hell does he think he is!? This black guy thinks he's better than we are!"

Yes, Obama's words were ill-chosen, but it was his race that added the extra sting to his remarks. And the sad truth is, Obama's statement that things like guns and religion were hurting his prospects with blue-collar workers was baloney anyway. After all, those issues didn't hurt Hillary Clinton. The real problem that Obama had (and still has) in the hinterlands of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, is that he's black!

It is to his great credit that Obama has learned that the best way to deal with this issue is to address it head-on, rather than tiptoeing around it. That's why Claire McCaskill (still number one on my wish list for veep) introduced Obama this way in front of 2000 cheering, white, Springfield, Missourians yesterday:

They said a young black guy named Barack Obama couldn't get elected to the United States Senate from Illinois. They were wrong... They say he's arrogant, not patriotic, blah, blah, blah...The truth is he's humble, he's patriotic, and he's a devout Christian.

Obama, for his part, added:

Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.

When Obama made the comment about the dollar bills, the audience (mostly rural and white) chucked heartily en masse: They knew damned well what he was talking about.

3. "I am a symbol...." In one of the most ill-conceived and reprehensible columns I've seen in a long time, Washington Post writer Dana Milbank bends over backwards, trying to make his case that Obama has gone from the "presumptive" nominee, to the "presumptuous nominee." Milbank starts out with this curious indictment:

He (Obama) ordered up a teleconference with the (current president's) Treasury secretary, granted an audience to the Pakistani prime minister and had his staff arrange for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to give him a briefing. Then, he went up to Capitol Hill to be adored by House Democrats in a presidential-style pep rally.

Let's be blunt. This is disgraceful stuff. Does Milbank seriously object to Obama meeting with economic advisors such as Paulson, Bernanke, Rubin and Volcker? Bernanke briefed John McCain in March on the potential rescue of ailing firm Bear Stearns, but apparently, Milbank thinks that was fine. Milbank's loopy column notwithstanding, we should be concerned if Obama did not meet with such advisors, not that he is meeting with them. Further, note the language that Milbank uses: In Milbank's parlance, Obama didn't "take part" in a teleconference with Paulson; rather, he "ordered up" a teleconference, as if by a snap of his finger. Obama didn't "confer" with the Pakistani Prime Minister; rather, he "granted an audience to the Prime Minister." I'm surprised Milbank didn't take it a step further and say that Obama "deigned to speak with" the Prime Minister."

But the worst of Milbank's shameful piece is yet to come: Milbank writes that Obama, while meeting with "adoring" congressional Democrats, declared:

I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.

This is the quote that launched a million conservative bloggers, each complaining about Obama's arrogance. The problem is, Milbank butchered Obama's real quote:

It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It’s about America. I have just become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.

Obviously the real quote conveys a completely different meaning, but not the one that suited Milbank's purposes. My question is two-fold: First, how does Milbank sleep at night? And second, does the Washington Post have any editors?

It has become clear to me that over this campaign Obama has been held to a different standard than that of white candidates. What passes for confidence--or even acceptable puffery--among white candidates. becomes unacceptable arrogance if done by Obama. And even the term "arrogance" is a euphemism. What they're really saying is that he is "uppity." My advice to Obama? Keep being uppity; they'll get used to it.

2008-07-24T09:06:00.005-04:00

The Democratic Veepstakes Revisited

With the Democratic Convention approaching on August 25, and the Olympics running from August 8 through August 24, many are predicting that Barack Obama could make his vice presidential choice any day now. With that possibility in mind, it seems appropriate to take a look at the major players in the Democratic veepstakes. Rather than looking at the strongest prospects first, I prefer to do the opposite, using a process of elimination to rule out the also-rans. With that in mind, here they are:

1) Hillary Clinton. The most obvious rule-out is Hillary Clinton. News reports have suggested that the vetting process for Hillary never even got started, as Bill, understandably, was loathe to turn over information about the contributors to the Clinton Library. Such a list of names would almost certainly be controversial, with many of them international billionaires and potentates, and I suspect that neither Clinton wanted the humiliation of divulging that information and then not being chosen. Further, is it just me, or has anyone else noticed how peaceful the political arena has become since Hillary exited stage right? When Hillary was still in the fray, it was a little like having a drunk person at your party; only once they leave do you realize how noisy they were. The chances of Hillary being chosen? Zero.

2) Sam Nunn. Of all the serious veep prospects, perhaps the only disastrous choice for Obama would be former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn. Never seen as a progressive figure during his 24 years in the Senate, Nunn would seriously antagonize the left wing of the party, as many of his past positions have not been in synch with those of Obama. Nunn was a homophobic and reactionary figure during the "don't ask, don't tell" debate in the 90's, he has fought to limit appeals for death row inmates, and voted in favor of school prayer. To pick a running mate so ideologically inconsistent with Obama, for the sake of trying to win the state of Georgia, would be a cynical return to the old politics that Obama has forsworn. The final problem with Nunn is his age. He will be 70 this year. The age issue is quietly one of the most powerful things playing in Obama's favor. To choose a running mate so close to McCain's age would be to undercut Obama's advantage. The chance of Nunn being chosen is small, but it is greater than zero. It would be a collosal blunder.

3) Kathleen Sebelius. Kathleen Sebelius, governor of Kansas, is often talked about as the leading female vice presidential prospect. She's a popular governor of a midwestern state, and her father, John Gilligan, is the former governor of Ohio, leading some to believe that by choosing her, Obama might get a "two-fer," appealing to voters in both Kansas and Ohio. There are, however, two problems with Sebelius. First, she is viewed by many as a wooden, uninspiring speaker. Second, despite her support of Obama, she has been little seen during the campaign. I'm a political junkie, and I've barely seen her during the entire campaign. Given her minimal exposure, it is highly unlikely that she would be chosen..

4) Bill Richardson. Regular readers of my blog know that I've always felt that Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, would add something to the ticket. With his impressive resume (Secretary of Energy, Ambassador to the UN), and his status as a Hispanic, Richardson has some very desirable attributes, as states like New Mexico and Colorado have become important battleground states. While Richardson earned the enmity of the Clintons when he endorsed Obama, I wouldn't expect that to be disqualifying. However, Richardson's low profile recently suggests to me that he is not on Obama's short list. Perhaps the Obama campaign concluded that a Black/Brown ticket was more than the country could handle. I believe Richardson's prospects are currently small.

5) Evan Bayh. Evan Bayh, senator from Indiana, is also the son of legendary senator Birch Bayh. Before his election to the senate in 1998, Evan Bayh was a two term governor, an important line on his resume. Bayh, a strong Hillary Clinton supporter, is the quintessential moderate Democrat, and would be a classic veep choice, a solid, competent and unexciting individual who may not help you that much, but would never do anything to hurt you. It is questionable, however, whether Bayh on the ticket would make Indiana, a Republican stronghold, competitive for the Democrats. Bayh's prospects of being chosen at this point are, like his politics, moderate.

6) Joe Biden. Joe Biden, senator from Delaware for the past 35 years, recently caused a commotion when he said on Meet the Press that he did not want the job of vice president and had "communicated that to the candidate." He went on to say however, that if chosen he would accept the role. When asked about this seeming contradiction, Biden responded:

if the presidential nominee thought I could help him win, am I going to say to the first African-American candidate about to make history in the world that, "No, I will not help you out like you want me to?" Of course, I'm--I'll say yes.

Biden has much to recommend him. While he serves in Delaware, he was born in Scranton, Pa, and his ties to the Keystone State would be very helpful to Obama. Further, Biden has a tremendous resume, serving on both the Foreign Relations Committee and the Judiciary Committee. There are two downsides to a Biden vice presidency. First, he is so influential in the senate that it would be a great sacrifice for the Democrats to lose him from that body. Second, Biden is so verbose, that it is almost guaranteed that at some point in the campaign he will put his foot in his mouth. After all, only Biden would be so loose-tongued as to describe Obama early in the campaign as "clean and articulate." His chance of being chosen is moderate to good.

7) Chris Dodd. Chris Dodd, senator from Connecticut, has served in the senate for 28 years. As head of the Banking Committee he has been a central player in finding a solution to the mortgage crisis, and he offers a progressive voice in the senate that is much in synch with Barack Obama. However, recent revelations that he received favorable treatment on his personal home mortgages from disgraced lender Countrywide, has tarnished both his image and his veep prospects. He took a hit when his hometown newspaper, the Hartford Courant, wrote that it was time that "Dodd got off his high horse, came clean and admit he screwed up." Dodd's chances, once good, are now only moderate.

8) Tim Kaine. It once looked like Obama had a bounty of riches to draw from if he wanted a veep from Virginia. At this point, however, former governor Mark Warner and Senator Jim Webb have taken themselves out of the running for veep. That leaves Senator Tim Kaine as the only game in town. Happily for Obama, Kaine is the best choice of the three anyway. While now a Virginian, Kaine also has roots in the Midwest, havin grown up in Kansas City. Kaine is a first-term governor of Virginia, having succeeded the popular but term-limited Mark Warner. Prior to that, Kaine had been the Lieutenant Governor, as well as the Mayor of Richmond. Kaine is Catholic having done a brief stint as a Jesuit missionary in Honduras during his college years, and like Obama, is a graduate of Harvard Law School. It is a feather in Kaine's cap that he was the first politician to endorse Obama outside the state of Illinois. On the stump, Kaine has been an effective surrogate for Obama. Kaine's unique set of attributes--Midwesterner, southern governor, Catholic, progressive, embodiment of the "new south"--fit Obama like a glove. The fact that Obama campaign recently opened up 20 offices in Virginia shows the priority they have assigned to it. Kaine's prospects for the veep are solid and strong.

9) Claire McCaskill. Claire McCaskill, first-term senator from Missouri, over the course of the campaign has been Barack Obama's most visible, and most trusted surrogate. It is also true, but not generally recognized, that she played a crucial role in Obama's success on Super Tuesday. As the evening wore on, on February 5, states that Obama had been hoping for--California, New Jersey, Massachusetts--began to fall into the the Hillary Clinton column. It was crucial for Obama's momentum to be able to claim at least a "tie" on Super Tuesday. A loss in the battleground state of Missouri would have given Clinton clear bragging rights for the evening. All night long he trailed in Missouri, but late returns that came in around midnight, allowed Obama to eke out a razor thin victory that nonetheless had huge symbolic implications. This was in no small part due to the efforts of Claire McCaskill. Of all the surrogates whom I have watched over the campaign, only McCaskill matches Obama on the charm scale. She radiates both intelligence and warmth, and is the prototypical modern woman: Divorced, successful working woman with six kids and step-kids, McCaskill is an attorney by profession. Before her election as senator, she served as a prosecutor and as a one-term governor of Missouri. Her zeal and good cheer in debate with her opponents reminds me of a latter day Hubert Humphrey. Some have suggested that pairing Obama with a white female might cause some primal resentment in conservative areas of the country, something to be considered. In my view, she is the best campaigner of all Obama's veep prospects, and her selection would further energize the party. Asked about her prospects however by Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press recently, McCaskill smiled and said, "If I were betting, I wouldn't bet on me."

Who do I think will get the nod? Frankly, I have no idea. I'm open to suggestions.

2008-07-15T13:53:00.005-04:00

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the New Yorker

The recent New Yorker magazine cover depicting Barack Obama as a Muslim and Michelle Obama as a gun-toting, Angela Davis style radical, makes one thing perfectly clear: As easy as it sometimes looks, creating a good political cartoon is a very difficult thing to do. The New Yorker cartoon fails badly, not because it is offensive, but because its satirical message is so unclear that it leaves the reader confused rather than amused. The cartoon is "too hip for the room," confronting us, jarring us, without conveying any clear-cut satire or humor. As such, the cartoon falls flat. The mere fact that the New Yorker editors were forced to run around all day trying to explain the cover, reveals how flawed the cartoon was.

As novelist-essayist Arthur Koestler pointed out years ago, all good humor works simultaneously on two levels, as two seemingly incompatible frames of reference collide to produce the explosive result that we call "humor." It could be as primitive as a dignified person slipping on a banana peel, that is, the high and mighty being brought down to size. Or it could be the woman, worried that her son is seeing a psychiatrist, who is reassured by a friend, "Don't worry, it will all work out as long as he is a good boy who loves his mother." When the psychiatric meaning and the everyday meaning of loving one's mother collide, we get irony and humor.

The problem with the New Yorker cartoon is that there is no second frame of reference to help us. We see the image and wonder, is the creator criticizing Obama, is he sympathizing, is he commenting on rumor-mongering? With so little context provided on the cover, we are at a loss as to how to respond, and that is not funny. Indeed, when CNN did a man-on-the-street poll about the cartoon, virtually no one saw it as a hip, ironic statement on viral rumor-mongering during the campaign. Rather, they tended to see it as merely an insulting depiction of Obama. That's not funny.

However, the cover could have been funny: Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist Nick Anderson, the current president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists comments, "“I think, as a piece of satire, it utterly fails." Anderson goes on to say that a caption such as "The Politics of Fear," would have added some context and clarity to the image. He continues:

It would have been even stronger had they shown an enemy of Obama painting the picture, or imagining it in their head.

Personally, I would have tweaked the cartoon by showing two images, a wholesome image of Obama and family, juxtaposed with an imaginary voter's hostile "email" version of Obama. This would have provided context and humor.

Contrast the failed New Yorker cartoon with one by cartoonist Matt Wuerker of politico.com that covers similar subject matter. Wuerker's cartoon depicts four blue collar white males sitting in a bar watching Obama on an overhead television set:

The first one says: Ya know he's a Muslim.

The second one says: And refuses to say the Pledge!

The third one says: And took his oath on a Quran!

The fourth one says: And what's worse, he's an elitist who thinks we're gullible ignoramuses!

Now that's funny! The image of four blue collar whites buying into every scurrilous rumor about Obama, then claiming that they get no respect, is a sad, painful and hilarious commentary on one of the important dynamics of this campaign. As such, it speaks more eloquently about Obama's difficulties with working class voters than virtually all of the so-called communications experts I have listened to on this subject. It is easy for such experts to bring out the cliche that Obama "can't relate" to these voters, or that he "can't close the deal." The fact is that Obama is great with working class indidviduals; he was a success with low income folks on the south side of Chicago. The deeper truth is that even the strongest message can be undermined by suspicion and racism. The New Yorker magazine was making a laudable attempt to address this issue, but failed.

On a related note, sometimes timing and circumstances determine whether something is funny or not. On Sunday, when CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford if there were any differences between the economic policies of George W. Bush and those of John McCain, here was Sanford's response:

Um, yeah. I mean for instance, take, you know, um, uh, take for instance the issue of, uh, of, um (drums fingers), I'm drawing a blank, and, I hate it when I do that, particularly on television....

If you saw this exchange live, it was excruciatingly painful to watch. Blitzer himself said, "It was painful for me, and I was the questioner!" However, imagine a Democratic campaign ad in September, in which an ominous voiceover says, "Can you name any differences between the Bush economic plan and that of John McCain?" Cut immediately to Mark Sanford hemming and hawing without being able to answer. The voiceover then says, "Don't worry Governor Sanford, we can't think of anything either!" I can assure you, in this context, Mark Sanford will be hilarious! And I have to believe that the Obama staff is preparing such an ad even as I write this. And as for Sanford? You can scratch him off the veep list.

2008-06-09T11:35:00.009-04:00

Campaign Post-Mortem: Hillary, Sexism, and Media Bias

1) Hillary. Call me hard-hearted, call me mean, call me the last Hillary-basher, but very little that Hillary has done over the last month has given me any reason to cheer. I understand that now that she has lost, it's fashionable to take part in a pity party for Hillary. But you'll excuse me if I don't join in. Take, for example, her belated concession speech on Saturday. Media mavens fell all over themselves praising her effort. From the likes of Matthews, Russert and Buchanan I heard, "she knocked it out of the park," "she did everything Obama could ask," "she covered every base." In my view, all these bouquets were way over the top, for several reasons. First and foremost, Hillary was only giving the speech because a gun had been put to her head.

Earlier in the week when she spoke to her most stalwart supporters in the New York delegation, the head of the delegation, congressman Charlie Rangel knew that unless she acted quickly, not only would she permanently damage herself, she would take members of the New York delegation down with her. As powerful as Rangel is--chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee--he knew that it would stain his reputation to be seen as stiff-arming Barack Obama for a full week, as Hillary had originally planned. So he laid down the law, and pressured her to get it done by Saturday. Can you imagine? Hillary actually wanted to hold off for a week before conceding to Obama!

Why would she want to delay that long? Because she still harbored the warped view that she could call up super delegates, twist some arms, and get them to change their minds--an amazing feat of self-delusion. I truly believe that on Tuesday, June 3, the whole Hillary campaign experienced a kind of mass delusion. After all, what person in their right mind, on the very night that they lost the nomination, would have a former head of the DNC (Terry McAuliffe) introduce them as "the next president of the United States?" Further, if one really wants to be the vice-presidential choice--as Hillary apparently does--what sane person would simultaneously refuse to concede, insult the winner, and then dispatch surrogates (Lanny Davis and Bob Johnson) to start petitions and lobbying efforts on her behalf for the vice-presidency? This was truly crazy stuff.

The media however, were happy on Saturday that Hillary had done something right, so they could heap praise on her and deflect some of the criticism directed at them for their perceived anti-Hillary bias. The media love-in notwithstanding, for me, it resembled the student who produces a well-written term paper, but turns it in a week late. Nice, but nothing to write home about. One final note about the speech. It was striking to me that when Hillary would toot her own horn, her eyes would light up and her face would assume that classic Hillary-frozen-smile. When she would talk about Obama, however, she never smiled once. Hillary's endorsement of Obama was an act of agony for her.

2) Sexism. One of the misguided notions promoted by Hillary supporters is that sexism played a significant role in the campaign. They point to the taunting sign at the New Hampshire rally that read "iron my shirt," and see it as a broad sentiment, rather than a couple of kids acting out. They point to some of the lines uttered on cable networks such as, "every time I hear Hillary speak, I involuntarily cross my legs" (Tucker Carlson), "she could say 'I want to give Glenn Beck a million dollars,' and all I'd hear is, 'take out the garbage!'" (Glenn Beck), "when she reacts to Obama with the look... looking like everyone's first wife standing outside probate court... " (Mike Barnacle), and "when that voice of hers goes up and hits the high pitch, brother, you know every husband in America has heard that..." (Pat Buchanan).

The problem with these examples is that they are not evidence of a broad antipathy toward women; rather, they are Hillary-specific. Does anyone really believe that if the candidate were Nancy Pelosi, or Claire McCaskill, or Kathleen Sebelius, or Diane Feinstein, that Carlson, Barnacle, Buchanan, et al. would have said the same thing? Of course not, because those women are not seen as calculating, ruthless, or hostile in the manner of Hillary. On the very night that her opponent became the presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton is perhaps the only politician on the planet who would have been boorish enough to insult him with this line about universal health care, "I have been working on this issue not just for the past 16 months, but for 16 years."

But the clearest indicator that sexism played little role in the campaign was that in West Virginia (as well as Kentucky) a place where you'd expect sexism to show itself, males supported Hillary over Obama by 60-30%. When exit pollsters asked men whether gender was important to them, those men who said "yes" supported Hillary 64-29%. Men who said that gender was not important supported Hillary by 59-31%. So men who regarded gender as important actually supported Hillary more strongly than their counterparts. No evidence of sexism there. And here is some final food for thought: Of the 22% of West Virginians who said that "race" was important in their decision, 84% voted for Hillary. Is there any doubt that racism was a far more potent variable than sexism? The difference between the two candidates, however, is that you don't hear Obama whining about it.

3) Media Bias. Perhaps the most wrongheaded, mythical notion in the campaign is that the media were allied against Hillary. In trying to make this point, typically some pundit will adduce a study by one of those media watchdog groups that says something like "Between Super Tuesday and May, the percentage of positive comments in the media about Obama was 65%, compared to only 40% for Hillary Clinton." This is usually followed by, "Aha! Gotcha!" Unfortunately, this is an unforgivably shallow analysis. Simply looking at percentages, without relating them to specific events in the campaign, has no value whatsoever. For example, let's look at what was happening between Super Tuesday and May: Obama went on a winning streak of 12 events. Hillary ran out of money. Hillary lent her campaign millions of dollars. Patty Solis Doyle was fired and Mark Penn was demoted. Of course Hillary was getting bad press. She deserved bad press! The premise that both candidates should get the exact same percentage of positive comments from the media is preposterous. Obama ran the superior campaign, which was reflected in the media commentary. That's not bias, that's called journalism.

4) The Veep Revisited. First, the notion of Hillary as veep is a non-starter. She dissed and attempted to undermine Obama at every turn of the campaign. Were I Obama, I wouldn't let her within 50 miles of the job. And the reason we know that she won't be chosen, is the amount of praise that he's been heaping upon her. This is Obama's way of setting up a "soft landing" when he chooses someone else.

Further, it is trendy to suggest that Obama needs someone to win back Hillary's female supporters. I have a higher regard for her supporters than to think that they would allow John McCain to name the next two Supreme Court justices, that they would imperil a woman's right to choose, that they would let universal health care go abegging, that they would let McCain veto an expansion of children's health insurance again, or that they would vote for a continuation of the war out of some misplaced spite at Obama.

To the contrary, the demographic that Obama needs most is that of white males. I have already given my list of favorite prospects in previous blogs--Kaine of Virginia, Rendell of Pennsylvania, Richardson of New Mexico, among others. But currently my favorite choices are: Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Joe Biden of Delaware, and Bill Richardson. My favorite of those three? Chris Dodd, who is totally simpatico with Obama, who radiates strength and intelligence, and who has strong national security credentials. More on the veep in future blogs.....

2008-06-03T08:07:00.006-04:00

Why Did the Super Delegates Abandon Hillary?

As the primary season reaches its end, it is interesting to ponder why Hillary Clinton couldn't attract more super delegates to her campaign. At the time of Super Tuesday, February 5, Clinton led Obama by almost 100 super delegates (203-113). As I write this, realclearpolitics.com shows Obama with a current lead of 43 "supers" over Hillary (334-291). Even as Hillary has produced impressive victories in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico, her relative support among supers continues to decline. Since Super Tuesday, Obama has garnered 133 more supers than Clinton. So what happened? Here are my thoughts:

1) Hillary misjudged her constituency. Super delegates and average voters are two completely different breeds of cat. The Clinton campaign never quite grasped the fact that a pitch made at ordinary voters might have unintended effects on super delegates. As it turned out, many of the Clinton campaign tactics had the effect of alienating the very super delegates that she needed so desperately.

To give an example, for weeks Clinton has been making the pitch that "I'm ahead in the popular vote." The casual viewer tuning in to CNN, or the voter listening to her on the stump hears this line and is impressed by this new information. The super delegates, on the other hand, hear this claim, and understand it to be a fraud. Having followed this matter closely, they know that Hillary only leads in the popular vote if you award her every vote in Florida and Michigan--two primaries that didn't count--and award Obama no votes in Michigan, where he wasn't on the ballot, and no votes in the caucus states like Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington state, where raw vote numbers were not released. Here is Clinton making this claim in her victory speech in Puerto Rico:

We are winning the popular vote. Now there can be no doubt. The people have spoken and you have chosen your candidate. So when the voting concludes on Tuesday, neither Senator Obama nor I will have the number of delegates to be the nominee. I will lead the popular vote. He will maintain a slight lead in the delegate count.

To the average voter these sound like good selling points. To a super delegate these claims come across as tortured manipulations of the data. Michael Dobbs, the Washington Post Fact Checker, put it this way:

She seems to assume that if she says something loudly enough, and repeats it often enough, it will become true. Her victory speech in Puerto Rico was a minor masterpiece in carefully parsed self-delusion....After the Puerto Rico primary, and the rules changes adopted over the weekend, most estimates now put Obama within 45 votes of the 2,118 needed to secure the nomination. Clinton, meanwhile, is 200 votes away from the magic figure. That is hardly "a slight lead" in the delegate count.

Dobbs went on to award Hillary "two Pinocchios" for her popular vote claims. Clinton's artful use of the vote count plays very poorly with Democratic politicians, in part because it conjures up the image of George W. Bush's selective use of facts during his two terms. Honesty and straight talk are the currency of the realm in the Democratic Party, and when Hillary veers off of this path, her support among supers dwindles.

This same dynamic applies to the recent battle over the disposition of the Florida and Michigan delegates. On October 11, 2007, during an interview with New Hampshire Public Radio's Laura Knoy, this exchange took place:

Laura Knoy: "So, if you value the DNC calendar, why not just pull out of Michigan? Why not just say, Hey Michigan, I'm off the ballot?"

Hillary Clinton: "Well, you know, It's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything."

By contrast, here is Hillary Clinton speaking to senior citizens in Florida 10 days ago:

....people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded.... We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe...Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people...So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote. It is the single most important, privilege and right any of us have, because in that ballot box we are all equal. You’re equal to a billionaire. You’re equal to the president, every single one of us.

To the elderly voters of Sunrise, Florida, this is effective campaign rhetoric. To the super delegates, who are fully aware that Clinton originally fully supported the decision that decertified the Florida and Michigan primaries, this is outrageous stuff. Once again, Hillary's rhetoric smacks of the kind of manipulations that prevailed during the Bush years. An outlandish comparison between DNC policy and the Zimbabwe elections is a good way to energize your supporters, but it is not an effective way to woo super delegates.

2. The super delegates envision Obama as the better president. In the final phase of the primary campaign, Hillary Clinton's main theme has been that she is more electable than Obama. This notion has not gained much traction with supers for several reasons: First, as the polls constantly shift, the case could be made for the electability of either candidate depending on which poll you cite. At this moment for example, the realclearpolitics.com projection of the general election shows Obama with 228 electoral votes in hand, and Hillary with 229 electoral votes. Second, the fact that the general election is five months away makes all such polls fairly meaningless. It is mind-boggling to consider that the amount of time between today and the general election--154 days--is actually more than the time between the Iowa Caucuses and today--151 days. That's an eternity in political time! And finally, the super delegates all along have been concerned less with electability than they have a more fundamental issue: Who would make the better president?

Despite the fact that the stated policy differences between Obama and Clinton are miniscule, it is likely that each candidate would be dramatically different as president. That is because one's success or failure as president depends as much on leadership style, coalition building, atmospherics, and ability to inspire, as it does on one's concrete ideas for the country. And if Barack Obama sometimes seems too cool in his personal style, Hillary's problem is just the opposite: She brings drama and confrontation wherever she goes. The super delegates remember well why the phrase "politics of personal destruction" became so prevalent during the term of Bill Clinton. The world of the Clintons is filled with both victims and victimizers.

After claiming back in the 1990's that she and her husband were the victims of a "vast right-wing conspiracy," Hillary has recently suggested that she is now the victim of a left-wing conspiracy, in which the media is complicit. Further allegations of sexism, and "disrespect" toward Hillary have raised the temperature even more during the campaign. While such claims by Hillary are once again effective in mobilizing her base, they have little purchase over super delegates. While Hillary was exhorting her supporters to attend the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting on Florida and Michigan, in the hope that they would pressure the committee into awarding Hillary a bushelful of delegates, Obama was sending out a memo to his supporters urging just the opposite, good behavior and decorum. The petulance and unruliness of the Clinton supporters in Washington did nothing to win over super delegates.

Obama and Clinton have marketed themselves with quite different brands: Since the beginning of his campaign, Obama had claimed that he would offer a new and more principled form of leadership. Clinton has claimed she is tough enough, even ruthless enough to beat the Republicans at their own game. Interestingly, both candidates have lived up to their billing. But as five members of Bill Clinton's cabinet have endorsed Obama, as Hillary has lost the endorsements of erstwhile friends such as Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, and Chris Dodd, it has become clear that only one of those brands represents the change that the majority of Democrats so desire.

2008-05-19T07:57:00.007-04:00

Bush, Obama, and Appeasement

Despite all the ink that has been spilled over George W. Bush's remarks in Israel, nothing that I have read so far, captures what I believe happened during Bush's trip to the Knesset. Let me offer my view:

Unlike Dick Cheney, who wears his unpopularity with the American people like a badge of merit, President Bush, despite his game facade, is deeply wounded that seven years into his presidency, he is setting new records for disapproval. A recent CNN poll found that while Bush's 28% approval rating hovers slightly above that of Richard Nixon (24%) and Harry Truman (22%), Bush's disapproval figure of 71% surpasses Truman's all-time high of 67%, qualifying Bush as the most unpopular president since the inception of polling. Worse, our current president is increasingly compared, unfavorably, to his own father, a one-time president who is seen as a "wimp" by many in his own party. Such disapproval has to rankle the president, a gladhanding good-ole-boy known for handing out pet names to members of the press.

It is with this backdrop that Bush traveled to Israel, one of the few countries on the planet where he is still held in high regard. Instead of the usual protests and demonstrations, in Israel Bush was greeted with bouquets. Here is how the International Herald Tribune put it:

Israeli officials have heaped accolades on Bush during his time here, a pattern that continued Thursday when Dalia Itzik, the speaker of the Knesset, said Bush was "a great friend, one of the greatest we've ever had."

Understandably, when he gave his speech to the Knesset, Bush was basking in the warm glow of Israeli support, standing before a community that finally understood him, that realized that he was not stubborn, incompetent, or over his head in foreign affairs, but rather strong, tough-minded and visionary. So enveloped in the bosom of Israeli support was Bush, that he lost all perspective, and had what I call a "Dixie Chick moment," a sudden loss of perspective when one feels so in tune with one's foreign audience, that one forgets how one's remarks will be greeted back home. As the president decided to play historian, here were his fateful comments:

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

In a matter of a few seconds, not only did Bush manage to stir up a hornet's nest in the U.S., he also managed to encapsulate in one paragraph everything that has been wrong with the Bush foreign policy. Let's look not at the politics of his comments, but at the merits:

When Bush refers to "some ingenious argument," he has already veered off track. Diplomacy does not consist of "ingenious arguments" that swiftly and magically win over the opposition. Diplomacy is a long, hard, incremental, adult process that takes place over time and is marked by peaks and valleys, periods of frustration and success. Bush seems to have a digital view of negotiation; it is a one-shot effort that either works or it doesn't. Throughout his two terms, the Bush approach to diplomacy has been marked by a kind of intellectual laziness. His initial conceit was that the Middle East region was going to be so overwhelmed by the "shock and awe" of American victory in Iraq, that democracy and American values would simply spread like wildfire through the region. Small wonder then, that we ignored the Middle East for most of Bush's presidency. Who needs negotiations when we can simply spread democracy through military means? Because of this naive fantasy, we wasted six years that could have been spent trying to improve Israeli-Palestinian relations.

A second problem with Bush-as-historian is his reference to "terrorists and radicals." It has become a standard ploy among politicians to play the "terrorist" card whenever they don't want to deal with a particular group or country. In fact, the use of this term has become an all purpose bogeyman. Was the Soviet Union during the Cold War any less "terrorist" than our adversaries today? Was it not state sponsored terrorism to have gulags in Siberia, to pervert psychiatry to the demands of politics, and to terrorize not only its own people, but those of the entire Eastern Bloc? Yet, in spite of this, we negotiated with the Soviets. Indeed, the whole notion of deterrence was based on such negotiations. Further, as a terrorist and radical, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is small potatoes compared to Mao tse Tung, who Nixon met with in 1972, the beginning of a new and healthier relationship with China. Currently, we've already negotiated with Libya's Khaddafi, formerly an avowed terrorist, causing him to foreswear his nuclear ambitions, and are knee deep in negotiations with Kim Jong Il. Given this, Bush's use of the "don't negotiate with the terrorists" line is preposterous and hypocritical.

The truth is, the entire Bush tenure has been marked by a phobia about diplomacy. Bush and company were dragged kicking and screaming into diplomacy with the North Koreans because of the gravity of Korea's nuclear development. and have recently only reluctantly and grudgingly started making overtures to the Iranians. The prevailing mindset in the Bush administration is that negotiation is for sissies. Real men get what they want by rattling sabers, or worse.

One of the most prominent conservative arguments against negotiating with countries like Iran is that high-level contacts between the two countries will only give the Ahmadinejads of the world more "prestige," making them stronger as adversaries. It is amazing how widespread this viewpoint is. The reality is just the opposite: We greatly enhance our own prestige by reaching out to negotiate with our adversaries.

The whole world looks to the US for diplomatic leadership, and is deeply disappointed when we drop the ball, as we have during the Bush administration. Further, critics of diplomacy with rogue regimes, ignore one of its most important benefits: When an American president, or high-level diplomat visits one of our adversaries, he is talking not just to the rulers of that country, but to its people as well. It is important to remember that one of our primary goals is to bolster the moderate elements that exist in rogue nations. Visiting a country and having tough, frank, and respectful negotiations with its leaders is a far more effective means of supporting its moderate factions than is standing on the sidelines engaging in name-calling. Here is a lesson for neocons everywhere: Regardless of how much the citizens of a country dislike their own leaders, they are still alienated and offended when outsiders mock, vilify, and demonize those leaders. They take it personally. That is why the Bush propensity for long-distance name-calling has been so counterproductive. That is why idiciocies like John McCain singing "Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran," is so dumb and juvenile. That is why Hillary Clinton gratuitously reminding Iran that we can "obliterate" them, damages rather than furthers our interests.

Many commentators have already pointed out that conservatives have played the "appeasement" card during virtually diplomatic advance since the 1950's, from Eisenhower's first meeting with Khrushchev, to the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the SALT Treaties and beyond. Unabashed by how many times they've been wrong, they continue to play this card, despite the obvious fact that talk not only is not appeasement, talk is the centerpiece of a civilized society

Finally, let me offer a few words about John McCain's toxic statement that Barack Obama is the candidate of Hamas. McCain intended his remark as a below-the-belt swipe at Obama's judgment and patriotism. It is the height of foolishness from McCain that American voters should base their decisions on what our adversaries say about our political candidates. If Al Qaeda issued a statement saying that George Bush was their worst enemy, would that mean he deserved a third term? Of course not. Whatever his intention may have been, whatever Osama Bin Laden might say about him, for the last six years Bush has been the greatest recruiting vehicle that Al Qaeda ever had.

Moreover, in trying to tie Obama to Hamas, McCain completely missed the point. Hamas aside, Obama is the favored candidate of the entire international community. If there were a world-wide referendum on our presidency, Obama would trounce McCain. He would win in England, he would win in France, he would win throughout the world, precisely because he has had the same inspirational effect overseas that he has had at home. The international community is looking for diplomatic leadership. It is to Barack Obama's credit that he has had the insight to see through the "appeasement" trap.

2008-05-13T12:41:00.004-04:00

Barack Obama and the Problem of Race

I have to admit that at the outset of the Obama campaign I was wrong when I said, "Sure there will always be some whites who would refuse to vote for Obama due to his race, but those folks wouldn't vote for the Democrat anyway." I assumed that over the course of the campaign, within the Democratic Party Obama would receive if not universal support, at least universal respect. I was wrong. Increasingly, we have seen race and racism play a role in the Democratic primary season. An article in today's Washington Post offers disturbing examples of whites--typically from blue-collar districts--who all too readily admit that they will not vote for an African-American for president. As a prime example, the Post article provides a statement published in a local newspaper by none other than the mayor of Tunkhannock Borough, an area in northeast Pennsylvania near Scranton:

Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him. No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office.

How can anyone not be disturbed by the image of a public official perpetuating long discredited internet myths about Obama in a local newspaper? In another example, an Obama worker who was wearing an Obama T-shirt at a polling place near Scranton reports that a Clinton supporter came up to her, pointed at her T-shirt, and said, "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?"

Sentiments such as these have been heard by Obama campaign workers all too often in Pennsylvania, in parts of Indiana, and in West Virginia, and embody a kind of of paradox: As Barack Obama has become better known and more successful in his effort to secure the Democratic nomination he has engendered more resentment from certain segments of the electorate. Let us try to understand what is behind this dynamic:

In 1965, after the march on Selma, Alabama, Martin Luther King while standing on the Alabama Capitol steps, uttered these words, in a little remembered but profound speech:

The Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow... And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man.

The need to feel that however troubled our own lives may be, there is someone or some group that is worse off, is an insidious part of our social and political fabric. Indeed, the tabloid press has built a billion dollar industry by exploiting this dynamic: By chronicling celebrity divorces, by detailing every drug problem of the well-connected, by showing us that acclaimed actresses have cellulite too, the tabloids reassure us that we're not so bad off, and society's luminaries are not so well off as we had thought, which makes us feel better. Conversely, Obama's success has left some people feeling theatened. The white worker in Kokomo, Indiana who has been laid off sees not only Barack Obama as rising to new heights, but the African-American community in general, a thought which may leave him feeling left behind and unsettled, regardless of how much he stands to benefit from Obama's economic reforms.

Even Obama's comments in San Francisco about working-class bitterness have been somewhat misunderstood. In trying to explain his difficulties with blue-collar voters, Obama was actually bending over backwards to dispel any notion that race was a factor. His initial discussion was a defense of blue-collar whites against any charges of racism. Here is Obama just before he made the "bitter" comments:

People are misunderstanding the way the demographics in this contest are broken up the way they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to white working class don't want to vote for the black guy. There were intimations of this in an article in the Sunday New York Times today--kind of implies it's sort of a race thing. That's not what it is."

It was only after this comment, that Obama got himself into trouble by trying to find an alternative explanation for his lack of support in the white, blue-collar community. Had he simply said, "Look, people simply need time to familiarize themselves with a black guy named Barack Obama," he would have avoided a lot of trouble, and would have said something true to boot.

Another wrinkle in this campaign however, is that Obama has been very successful as a post-racial candidate. His critical win in Iowa, his showing in New Hampshire, his impressive vote totals in rural Nevada, not to mention his wins in places like Vermont, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Utah, and Minnesota show that in much of America, Obama has managed to transcend race. So what distinguishes the places he's won from the places where he's struggled?

I would submit that in states like Utah and Wyoming that have virtually no black people, there is no sense of competition between whites and blacks, which minimizes the tendency to engage in racial scapegoating. As such, folks tend to see Obama just as he is, as an inspiring politician with a set of progressive proposals. Paradoxcially, in more multi-cultural states, ethnic groups are more likely to compete for money, jobs, and for social status. As a result, resentment and suspicion of Obama is heightened. The divide between blacks and Hispanics in California is another example of this.

In the 1950's it was a rite of passage for black jazz musicians to travel to Europe, particularly France, where they were thrilled to find a people who not only respected their craft, but who respected them as individuals. Jazz great Miles Davis wrote of his joy at being able to go to a restaurant in Paris without having to worry about whether they would seat him. The France of 50's was white, homogenous, and compared to the U.S., relatively color-blind. Since then, however, an influx of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East has transformed France into a multi-cultural entity, and we now watch it going through growing pains, as "Rightist Front" and anti-immigrant groups play upon ethnic divisions. Surely the France of the future will be a better, richer, more diverse and more interesting place; but it now has serious work to do to resolve the tensions of its multi-cultural population.

In a similar way, the Obama campaign has brought to light some of the fault lines of American culture, showing the work that we have yet to do. Having said this, having outlined what I see as the racial problems of the 2008 campaign, I still believe that for Barack Obama, the future is bright. Here's why:

1) In the primary season when both candidates had virtually the same policy agenda, it was easy for the folks in Altoona and Scranton to say, "Heck, they're both for universal health care, they're both against the war, they're both against the Bush tax cuts, they're both promoting 'green jobs,' they're both saying the same thing! I'm gonna vote for the white candidate!" The convergence of views between Clinton and Obama has fed the racial dynamic; when there are few policy differences, matters like character, leadership style, gender, and race, become paramount. Such a choice, however, becomes far more difficult when the voter is confronted with a stark contrast in policies between John McCain and Barack Obama. In the battle between Obama and McCain there will be real issues to sink one's teeth into.

2) In the general election, all of the political leaders--Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio, Governor Joe Manchin of West Virginia, will be stumping for Obama, making it more likely that their blue-collar supporters will come around. Nor will we have Hillary, stoking racial divisions by implying that Obama can't win the vote of "hardworking... white Americans." Obama having the backing of the entire Democratic establishment with change the atmosphere in these states considerably.

3) Finally, I believe that this will be an election where Obama's vice-presidential choice will matter. His choice will have both practical and symbolic value in terms of muting the racial issue. A Tim Kaine, an Ed Rendell, a Ted Strickland will go a long way toward reassuring blue-collar white voters that "the blacks" are not "taking over." Ironically, however, Obama's most creative option would be to choose Bill Richardson, the hispanic Governor of New Mexico. This would be the equivalent of throwing a thirty yard pass downfield, scrambling the electoral map, and putting the Southwest, Florida and Texas in play like never before.

A black/brown/white progressive coalition? Heck, in this season of hope and surprises, why not?

2008-05-08T08:55:00.003-04:00

After Indiana--What Now?

Hillary Clinton's poor showing in both North Carolina and Indiana, virtually sealing the nomination for Obama, may actually have been a blessing not only for Obama and the Democratic Party, but for Hillary herself. Conceding the nomination to Obama sooner rather than later, might save Hillary not only millions of dollars that she will probably never see again from her campaign, but it could also save her reputation within the party. I say that because over the last several weeks the Clinton campaign has taken on a sour and cynical tone that could, if continued, create lasting damage for Hillary. Take, for example, the first Clinton conference call held after Indiana and North Carolina: Spinmasters Geoff Garin and Howard Wolfson were reduced to boasting about how well Clinton had done with the "white vote" in those states (We were running even with white voters two weeks ago, but earned a significant win, 24 points"). Their numerous references to white voters, "swing voters," "blue collar voters," and "working class voters," were all designed to send one not-so-subtle message: We're the white candidate, he's black candidate, we can attract blue collar white voters and he can't. It is the toxic and desperate hope of the Clinton campaign at this point that there is enough resistance to a black candidate in the hinterland, that the remaining super delegates will come running toward Hillary. For a Democratic to base a campaign strategy on racism among lower class whites is one of several unseemly subtexts in the Clinton campaign.

Also, yesterday, Lisa Caputo, Hillary's former press secretary, was suggesting that Hillary might want to keep the nomination fight alive, just to see if "the other shoe drops," in other words, if they can find something damaging about Obama between June and August. The notion that Hillary would contemplate spending the summer rooting against Obama, in the hope that she might be able to ambush and sabotage the presumptive Democratic nominee, tells you everything you need to know about the Clinton campaign. It's far more about Hillary than it is the Democratic Party.

It is likely, however, that the elder statesmen in the party like George Mcgovern, who yesterday shifted his allegiance from Hillary to Obama, may bring this agonizing campaign to a conclusion. When even devoted Hillary supporters like Sen. Diane Feinstein speak out ("I think the race is reaching the point now where there are negative dividends from it, in terms of strife within the party. I think we need to prevent that as much as we can"), it would seem that the end of the campaign is near. Once the nomination fight does conclude, the Democratic party, which has been holding its breath for the last two months, will be able to exhale, and will experience a tremendous burst of energy. For example, the choice of Obama's running mate will itself be exhilarating event. It will be Obama's first major decision, and will be important both in practical terms, and in terms of symbolically unifying the party. Let's look at some of Obama's options:

1. Hillary. Obviously, there's already much speculation about the prospect of an Obama/Hillary ticket. I believe such a ticket would be a mistake for several reasons. First, I think that after such a bruising, exhausting nomination battle. Obama owes himself the kindness of picking a running whom he actually likes. After all, potentially he will have to work in close quarters with this person for eight years. There are many other players who would bring much to the ticket for whom Obama has far greater regard than Hillary. Yes, it would serve as an olive branch to Hillary's many supporters, but I've always believed that those polls suggesting that 30% of Hillary's voters would defect from Obama were completely bogus. Polls taken in May, in the heat of a primary battle, say nothing about the general election, in which an entirely different atmosphere will prevail. Also, by putting Hillary on the ticket, you may wind up with the worst of all worlds: You further unify the Republicans, and still have to worry about "friendly fire" from the Clintonistas. I would steer well clear of Hillary, who proved during the campaign that she is the true embodiment of the old politics.

2. Tim Kaine, governor of Virginia. There are many things to recommend Tim Kaine as Obama's running mate. Kaine is a southern governor, but grew up in the Midwest, having roots in Missouri, another important swing state. Virginia embodies the shifting demographics of the south, is a state that is solidly in play for the Democrats in 2008, and is a state that showed Obama much love during the primary season. Kaine is Catholic having done a brief stint as a Jesuit missionary in Honduras during his college years, and like Obama, is a graduate of Harvard Law School. Is it striking that he was the first politician to endorse Obama outside the state of Illinois, and on the stump, Kaine has shown himself to be an effective surrogate for Obama. Kaine's unique set of attributes--Midwesterner, southern governor, Catholic, progressive, embodiment of the "new south"--fit Obama like a glove.

3. Ed Rendell, governor of Pennsylvania. One of the reasons that I strongly believe that the atmosphere in the general election will differ markedly from that of the primaries, is that figures like Ed Rendell will be backing Obama, rather than opposing him. Rendell, a staunch Clinton supporter during the primaries, always showed Obama great respect even while fighting against him, and stated numerous times during the heat of battle that if Obama won, he'd work his butt off for Obama in the general election. Rendell is the popular governor of a big state, he's Jewish, a demographic that Obama needs to shore up, and he has a military background. Picking Rendell would be a wiser way of extending an olive branch to Hillary supporters than picking Hillary herself.

In providing this short list of veep prospects, I have left out the politician who I have found to be the most compelling during the primary season, because the politician I have in mind is too new to the scene and is not the obligatory white male. But in an ideal world, I would like to see Claire McKaskill, senator of Missouri as Obama's veep. Mckaskill has perhaps been Obama's most visible, and most winning surrogate over the campaign, consistently making the case for him with great intelligence and geniality. Also, on Super Tuesday, McKaskill may have saved Obama's nomination by delivering Missouri to him in a cliffhanger. Just as Super Tuesday was starting to trend Hillary's way, the squeaker victory in Missouri gave Obama a tie in the battle of perceptions, that set the stage for the tremendous winning streak that followed Super Tuesday. A hearty tip of the cap to Claire McKaskill.

Are there obvious (or even "sleeper") veep prospects I have left out? Let me know.

2008-04-19T07:39:00.003-04:00

Political Potpourri: The Philadelphia Debate and Beyond

The Debate. The morning after Philadelphia debate, I woke up and turned on my TV, only to find that a media consensus had already developed about the performances. On MSNBC, the anchors of "Morning Joe" were quoting--and agreeing with-- the New York Times' assessment that it was Obama's "weakest debate performance." Media groupthink was in full blossom. Other pundits suggested that Obama had looked, rattled, weak, and unsure of himself. My reaction was one of surprise. Perhaps I had watched a different debate than did the vast punditocracy, but in the debate I watched, Obama had done quite well. Was I mistaken, or had the pundit class missed the forest for the trees? Let's examine:

On his MSNBC show, Joe Scarborough asked pointedly, "How could Obama not know that they were going to ask him about Reverend Wright and the 'bitter' comments?" Huh? Obviously Obama knew that he would be asked those questions. What he didn't know was that Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous would fixate on those questions for 52 minutes. It should have been clear to Scarborough that Obama had made a conscious decision to not get in a spitting match with Hillary during the debate; for that decision he has been pilloried by many in the media.

Just as he could have used his large financial advantage in Pennsylvania to blanket the airwaves with ads decrying Hillary's Bosnia fabrication, so he could have played attack politics during the debate. Obama simply chose to take the high road, understanding that neither he, nor the Democratic party would benefit from the tit for tat fracas that the moderators were looking for. He could have attacked Hillary on numerous fronts, but declined.

Take, for example, one of Hillary's favorite themes, the notion that all her "baggage" has been explored already, and that this has given her a kind of clean slate with the electorate; the idea is preposterous. It is precisely because of her baggage that Hillary would go into a general election with some of the highest negatives ever recorded by a candidate. Further, all of the many issues where Hillary has been accused of shading the truth--Travelgate, Filegate, her windfall profit in the cattle futures market, her knowledge of the Jennifer Flowers affair, even her fabrication that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary (he climbed Mount Everest five years after Hillary was born and was unknown before then)--are things that the Republicans would gleefully recycle during a general election, but which Barack Obama is far too principled to raise. Hillary's claim that she has been "fully vetted" notwithstanding, let me address one other issue that the Republicans would raise if she were the nominee:

Chelsea Clinton and 9/11. One week after 9/11, Hillary went on NBC's Dateline, and later the Today Show and claimed that Chelsea had been jogging near the World Trade Center during the attacks on the Twin Towers:

She had gone on what she thought would be a great jog. She was going down to Battery Park, she was going to go around the towers. She was going to get a cup of coffee and - that's when the plane hit!

The problem with this story is that Chelsea has subsequently written that she was at a friend's apartment, asleep, four miles from the World Trade Center, when the first plane hit. This fabrication has something in common with Hillary's Bosnia untruth; it is an unnecessary lie, told entirely for purposes of self-aggrandizement. Here is former Clinton associate Dick Morris on the 9/11 untruth:

So why did Hillary make up the story about Chelsea? Most likely it was because her co-senator (and implicit rival for the voters’ affection), a real New Yorker, Charles Schumer (D), spoke of his daughter, who attended Stuyvesant High School, located next to the Trade Center, being at real risk on Sept. 11. Hillary needed to make herself part of the scene.

Once can only cringe when reading this story.

Who Won? From where I sat, Obama actually came out ahead in the debate, for two reasons: First, even during the debate, he objected to the tabloid nature of the questions, and earned the respect of the viewing audience by refusing the invitation of the moderators to engage in mud wrestling. In addressing Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, he reminded me somewhat of Joesph Welch during the McCarthy hearings, decrying the flawed nature of the proceedings. Second, the debate so saturated the electorate with tabloid issues, that it actually put to rest "bittergate" and allowed Obama to get back on his populist message. And for anyone who hasn't understood the meaning of Obama's phrase "a new kind of politics," the Philadelphia debate demonstrated it perfectly. As Obama noted the next day, Hillary "was in her element," being able to lob hand grenades at her opponent. There are, however, times in life when being "not in one's element" is a good thing; that tawdry debate was one such time.

Is Obama tough enough? Since the debate, Obama critics have been quick to raise the question, "How can he stand up to Kim Jong-il if he can't be aggressive during a debate?" The answer is a simple one, but one that the pundit class keeps forgetting: The reason that the Democratic race is so dominated by trivia, gaffes, and personality issues is because there are no serious policy differences between the two candidates. It is because there are no major differences between Clinton and Obama that the campaign has devolved into nitpicking and mudslinging. Indeed, those watching the debate the other night breathed a sigh of relief that we weren't treated to 15 minutes of argument over mandated versus non-mandated health care. We no longer care about such policy minutiae. Once the general election starts however, the vast differences between the Republican and Democrat will once again elevate policy to center stage, and the nature of the discourse will improve considerably. I will guarantee that at that juncture, we'll see Obama's full toughness.

Does Hillary still have a chance? With each passing day, Hillary's chances of winning the nomination get smaller. The flow of superdelegates declaring for Obama is slow, but inexorable, and yesterday's endorsements of Obama by ex-Senators Sam Nunn (Ga.) and David Boren (Ok) were profoundly symbolic, because these men represent the conservative wing of the Democratic party. Another symbolic endorsement was that of Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's former Secretary of Labor. Astonishingly, Reich becomes the 5th member of Clinton's Cabinet to endorse Barack Obama. The others are former Secretary of Energy and Ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson, former Commerce Secretary William Daley, former Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta, and Federico Pena, who at different points was Clinton's Transportation secretary, and Energy secretary. This speaks volumes about which candidate is the uniter and which is the divider. As I've stated before, Hillary's days are numbered.

2008-04-12T10:52:00.003-04:00

Has Obama Become a One-Hit Wonder?

One often sees in the music industry an artist who bursts onto the scene with an exciting and original new sound. Once successful, however, this artist who was so daring at first, begins to play it safe, zealously guarding his success. The musician who was once so dazzling and edgy, after tasting success makes a headlong dive for the middle of the road. I use this example because, as we wait out the seemingly endless span of time before the Pennsylvania primary, my worry is that Barack Obama has become the political version of our music star. The Obama campaign that once was so inspirational has given way to a politics of safety and centrism. Worse, the authenticity which catapulted Obama to success seems to be fraying around the edges.

To be fair, Obama is currently in a strange electoral limbo: Having a sizable lead in the race for the nomination, while at the same time not able to put Hillary away, his campaign has once again gone into a kind of prevent defense. The Obama we observe these days is more concerned about making a mistake than he is about putting out an authentic message.

Trailing in Pennsylvania by 5-10 points, Obama's principled view of campaigning doesn't permit him to exploit Hillary's Tuzla fabrication, or the fact that Bill Clinton received an $800,000 payment from a Colombian trade group that supports the Colombian Free Trade Agreement, while Hillary was arguing against it. Nor has Obama spoken out about Hillary's chief strategist, Mark Penn, who was also wallowing in hypocrisy, promoting the Colombia Free Trade Agreement though his lobbying firm, while the Clinton campaign purported to oppose it.

The problem with the Obama campaign is that such a passive strategy creates little opportunity for Obama to peel away the needed votes from Hillary in Pennsylvania. The very issues that draw voters to Obama--character, integrity, and the striking disparity in competence between the way the Obama campaign has been run, and the chaotic, dysfunctional Clinton campaign--seem to be taboo subjects for Obama. Simply put, Hillary has run a terrible campaign, a fact which speaks quite poorly for her executive skills. But have you ever heard Obama raise this issue in a campaign speech? Never.

Obama's lack of killer instinct may, from a character standpoint, be a positive. He is a nice guy. But from a political standpoint, it leaves him at great pains to close the deal with the American voter. Obama is apparently willing to take the risk that he can run out the clock on Hillary, and back into the nomination. But what worries me more than the timidity in Obama's campaign style, is the manner in which he has become risk-averse on the policy front. Let's look at two of the issues where Obama has recently forsaken principle for what is politically safe:

Hamas. Perhaps the biggest policy difference between Obama and Clinton is Obama's readiness to engage in dialogue with our adversaries. After seven years of a Bush administration that preferred name-calling and antagonism toward rogue regimes over diplomatic outreach, this is a welcome change. The prospect of real dialogue with the likes of Raul Castro, Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong-il, is a major upgrade from the childish Bush doctrine. But when Jimmy Carter announced this week that he would go to Gaza to meet with Hamas, we suddenly found that Obama's pledge to meet with rogue regimes was not as iron-clad as we had thought. Here is Obama on dialogue with Hamas:

It is not a state and until Hamas clearly recognizes Israel, renounces terrorism and abides by, or believes that the Palestinians should abide by previous agreements ... I don't think conversations with them would be fruitful.

Huh? This is perhaps the dumbest thing that Obama has ever said. It contradicts the heart of the Obama doctrine, which maintains that dialogue with our foes is essential to the promotion of peace. Hamas is the democratically elected representative of the Palestinian people. It has not only the backing of the majority of Palestinians, it controls all of Gaza. The idea that Obama puts forth, that somehow Hamas exists in a special universe of malevolence as compared to Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il, is preposterous, and shows just how insecure Obama feels about his Jewish support. In fact, the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, published a poll in February showing that 64% of Israelis support the idea of direct talks with Hamas. Even Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Advisor of George Bush the elder--along with numerous international experts--has expressed his support for negotiations with Hamas. Not only is such pandering to the Jewish community beneath the dignity of the Obama campaign, I don't believe it will win him a single vote. Obama would earn far more respect from both the Jewish community and electorate at large if he simply said the following:

A bedrock principle of the Obama administration is that we will seek dialogue with international groups with whom we have profound disagreements. Just as 50 years of antagonism toward Cuba did not advance the interests of either the US or the Cuban people, so the absence of a serious diplomatic initiative in the Middle East during the Bush term has neither served the Israelis nor the Palestinians in moving toward a peaceful resolution. The Obama administration will be far more focused on diplomatic surges than military surges. We will have careful, constructive dialogue with the leaders of the Palestinian people.

Obama's inconsistency on this issue threatens the intellectual integrity of his entire diplomatic approach.

Gays. When Obama gave that riveting speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, he invoked all the opposing groups that he hoped to bring together, rich and poor, red and blue, black and white, gay and straight. Yet, one rarely hears Obama use the word "gay" anymore. His avoidance of gay issues boiled over this month, as the Philadelphia Gay News, frustrated that Obama would not give them an interview, published on its front page their interview with Hillary Clinton, and left a blank space to signify Obama's refusal to speak with them. Here is the editor of the Philadelphia Gay News, Mark Segal, talking about their decision:

We don't put ads on our front page, so we didn't lose any money by doing so. Although, no publisher wants a blank space in their paper! Or as we call it, you know, creative white space! [laughs] We wanted to make it clear from the very start that we had done our research. And I think what is shocking is that the campaign has not been able to refute our facts. It has been 1,522 days since he's spoken to local gay press.

That goes back to 2004. That's not acceptable. I am the former president of the National Gay Newspaper Guild, and last week, during a break in the meeting, former publishers and editors were sitting around the table, and half of them were Obama supporters. And we all started discussing the fact that practically every one of them has gone after Obama for an interview — and they've all gotten the runaround!

And here is an excerpt from the editorial that the Philadelphia Gays News ran:

At this point in the Democratic presidential campaign, we're able to view the candidates by their actions. And we have found that Sen. Barack Obama would rather talk at the LGBT community than with them... The fact is that Obama has spoken with the gay press only twice, and one of those interviews...was in 2004, before he became a U.S. senator. The other limited interview occurred after controversy erupted when his campaign added an anti-gay minister to his tour of the South. It has now been 1,522 days since Obama has been accessible to our community.

My question here is simple: What in the world is Obama thinking? Does he really think it will cost him votes to sit down with a gay editor and reaffirm his support for civil unions, workplace anti-discrimination legislation, and the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell?" Yes, one should fault Obama here on principle, but one should fault him even more on his political judgment. These issues are simply not that controversial and polarizing anymore. I can understand why John McCain refused an interview with the Philadelphia Gay News. But for Barack Obama to be scared of talking to the gay press, while at the same time Hillary is holding an Elton John fundraiser is ridiculous.

Speaking of Elton John, I liked his first album, and hated all the rest of his stuff. Obama would do better to follow the example of the Beatles: If you want to make a lasting difference, keep challenging your audience and don't pander.

2008-04-01T09:12:00.003-04:00

Can Hillary's Campaign Last Much Longer?

Hillary Clinton's vow to continue her candidacy all the way through August is giving many Democratic loyalists heartburn. Clinton ominously told the Washington Post on Sunday, ""If we don't resolve (the dispute over Michigan and Florida), we'll resolve it at the convention -- that's what credentials committees are for." The prospect of the Democratic race lasting until the Denver convention in August has caused scores of Democrats to break out in a cold sweat, as they envision open warfare during the late summer months. I'm here to reassure all the nervous nellies in the Democratic party that this frightening scenario will never come to pass. Here's why:

1) Money. One of the dirty little secrets of this primary season is that the Clinton campaign is broke. As of the latest reporting to the Federal Elections Commission, Clinton had 11 million dollars in cash, 9 million dollars in debts, and 5 million that she had personally loaned her campaign in February. When you do the arithmetic, that puts her 3 million dollars in the red. Worse, the website politico.com reported yesterday that the Clinton campaign has for the last several months resorted to a time-honored strategy of money management: stiffing vendors. Numerous vendors, from caterers in New York, to photographers and event planners in Iowa, to telecommunications companies all over, have reported that the Clinton campaign is simply not paying their bills. These vendors, terrified that they will never be paid, have gone public, warning other small businesses to get money up front from the Clinton campaign before providing any services. Here is how politico.com described Hillary's money crunch:

She owed Iowa’s Sioux City Art Center Board of Trustees $3,500 for catering and venue costs, New Hampshire’s Winnacunnet Cooperative School District $4,400 in event costs, Qwest $24,000 for phone service, various branches of the Iowa-based supermarket chain Hy-Vee $15,000 for food, beverages and catering, and $7,700 to Ohio and Massachusetts branches of the theatrical stage employees’ union, for equipment costs.

In fact, about a third of the nearly 700 individual debts Clinton reported at the end of February were for various types of “event expenses,” including $319,000 for catering and venue costs, $420,000 for equipment, $11,000 for photography and $9,000 for security.

In addition to her many debts to the small businesses that set up her campaign events, it is now clear that many of her top staffers have gone unpaid:

Some of Clinton’s biggest debts are to pollster and chief strategist Mark Penn, who’s owed $2.5 million; direct mail company MSHC Partners, which is owed $807,000; phone-banking firm Spoken Hub, which is waiting for $771,000; and ad maker Mandy Grunwald, who’s owed $467,000.

Barring a major influx of cash, it is unimaginable that the campaign can continue to function carrying this kind of debt. It is certainly true that historically, many presidential campaigns have taken years to pay off accumulated debt, sometimes settling on pennies on the dollar, so the Clinton campaign is not unique in this regard. However, when companies become aggrieved enough to go public and label the campaign a deadbeat operation, it raises the specter of a public relations disaster. When your campaign is based on the notion of "getting American back to work," and that of empowering the little guy, it seems morally untenable to balance your books by stiffing the many companies that set up your rallies and town hall meetings.

It is interesting to reflect on the source of Hillary's money problem. By conventional standards, she has actually raised a substantial amount of money during this election cycle. Further, there are many supporters who would like to contribute more to the Clinton campaign. They are prohibited however, by campaign finance law. Campaign finance law limits individual contributions to a candidate during the primary season, to $2300. Many of the well-heeled individuals who have supported the Clinton campaign would love to pitch in another $10,000--or more. Their hands are tied however, by the legal limits. The Obama campaign, by contrast, has a large army of small contributors--50 to 100 dollars--who are well below the legal ceiling and can continue to financially support his campaign.

As I have stated many times before, Hillary's threshold for embarrassment is astonishingly high, so she may decide that a reputation as a deadbeat is a small price to pay for the survival of her campaign. However, it is a difficult sale to make, to go into Johnstown or Altoona, preaching populism while refusing to pay your bills. Asked about the matter on MSNBC yesterday, Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson said artfully, "We're paying our bills in a timely manner."

Disinformation. As consumers, we are shockingly naive about accepting at face value candidates' statements about the future of their campaigns. The day before he dropped out of the race, John Edwards was telling us that poverty was the "fight of my life," and he would continue his candidacy until the convention. The next day, when he suffered another last place showing, this time in his birthplace of South Carolina, he was forced to confront reality and leave the race. And if I may digress for a moment, how can a man who has designated poverty the fight of his life still not have endorsed a candidate by now, any candidate? If John Edwards allows the North Carolina primary to come and go without making any endorsement, without helping the Democratic party move beyond its current gridlock, he will have left a lasting stain on his reputation. Mitt Romney, one day before dropping out of the Republican race, was assuring voters that he was in the race to stay. That was presumably before his wife got him behind closed doors and beat the daylights out of him for spending the family fortune.

What I am saying is that candidates' bold statements that they will "fight to the last day," should be taken in the same vein as the sports owner who declares that his manager's job is secure; usually that means that the manager should put a "for sale" sign in front of his house. And so it is with Hillary's recent statements. All of the bravado that we hear is for public consumption, to reassure potential contributors, and to maintain the morale of her supporters. Make no mistake about it, barring an exceptional showing in Pennsylvania, the Clinton campaign is on life support. And the public is starting to recognize this fact, as the Gallup tracking poll shows Obama's national lead over Hillary ballooning to 10 points yesterday, and leveling off at 8 points today.

North Carolina. Even if Hillary manages to deliver a win in Pennsylvania, she is going to run into a buzz saw in North Carolina. The Tar Heel state is made for Barack Obama. With African-Americans making up half the Democratic electorate, and a significant number of upscale, educated whites in the "research triangle" of Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, it would take a miracle for Hillary to be competitive in the state. The latest Gallup poll shows her trailing by 18 percentage points. She will suffer a crushing defeat in North Carolina, not unlike her losses in Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina. And if she should lose in Indiana on the same day (May 6), her campaign will come to a screeching halt.

So the next time you hear a Democratic operative wringing his hands and predicting doom for the party, just think about the array of land mines that lie in front of the Clinton campaign. It won't be long now.

2008-03-20T21:21:00.004-04:00

Debunking the Fallacy of "Racial Symmetry"

In the aftermath of Barack Obama's speech about race, Clinton supporter Lanny Davis wrote a short essay about the speech. After generously praising Obama for the "brilliance" of the speech, and reaffirming his great respect for Obama, Davis went on to pose several questions which he felt, even after the speech, still clouded the Obama candidacy. One of Davis' questions was the following:

If a white minister preached sermons to his congregation and had used the "N" word and used rhetoric and words similar to members of the KKK, would you support a Democratic presidential candidate who decided to continue to be a member of that congregation?

The question posed by Davis is an interesting one, but not for the reasons that he assumes. Transposing Jeremiah Wright's race to white in order to assess the objectionableness of his words, is in fact not a legitimate form of analysis. In situations where a black person's behavior is in question, it is typical for whites to pose the ultimate gotcha question, "what if a white person had done that!?" Let me explain why that analysis has little value:

Let's do a thought experiment: Suppose a white college student goes to his state university and tells the dean that he would like to start a "White Student Union," a club devoted to the cultural affairs of white students. The dean tells the enterprising student, "No, such a club would not be acceptable." Not to be deterred, the student writes a letter to the student newspaper, denouncing the dean's refusal, and states that he is a victim of discrimination. After all, the outraged student argues, "there's been a Black Student Union at this school for 20 years, and nobody has complained about that! I'm the victim here."

In lodging this complaint, the student has fallen prey to the widely held fallacy of racial symmetry. This view, held by many, but rarely examined, holds that all behaviors by whites and blacks are morally equivalent and should be judged through the same prism. Unfortunately, often this view often makes no sense.

The answer to our aggrieved student is, of course there's a Black Student Union! At our hypothetical State U., 90% of the facilities, resources and organizations cater--quite understandably--to the dominant white culture of the campus. When the African-American students set up their club, it was not a racist initiative; rather it was a support group that recognized that these students were a severe minority on campus, and benefited from bonding together to maximize their shared culture and experience.

By contrast, the proposed "White Student Union" would be a redundancy. Who needs a club specially devoted to white students' needs? That's what the school was set up for in the first place!

Just so that my point is crystal clear, let's look at a second example. Suppose a white businessman, a creative and enterprising fellow, decides to start a new cable channel. In seeking capital for his venture, he sends out hundreds of letters, telling prospective investors that his channel will be called, "White Entertainment Television." When the responses come back, universally telling him, "uh, no thanks, all my funds are already committed right now," our businessman is surprised. "Geez," the discouraged businessman wonders, "how could Robert Johnson do so well in setting up Black Entertainment Television, and I can't raise a nickel for my white channel?" The reason is simple, the two businesses have no equivalence either as business ventures, or as moral activities. When Robert Johnson founded BET in 1979, blacks were a grossly under-served population in the entertainment industry. By contrast, a new network devoted to whites, would almost certainly be an exercise in in-your-face bigotry, and would serve no marketplace niche. So once again, these two behaviors, by people of two races, are superficially similar, but are completely asymmetrical in terms of their moral significance.

In other words, given the vastly different histories of blacks and whites, simply switching the race of the actor for purposes of analysis can be perilous and even foolhardy, because one cannot presume a moral symmetry between the two sets of actions. Let's now go back to the example posed by Lanny Davis:

The first part of Davis' question--what if a white minister used the N word--makes no sense whatsoever. Reverend Wright wasn't using the N word as a term of abuse. Rather, he was pointing out in his sermon that unlike Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has never been called the N word. Now one can argue whether or not that fact necessarily gives Barack Obama any deeper understanding of race relations. That's a separate issue. But the use of the N word by Wright is quite distinct from that of a white minister using it in an abusive context. The comparison is absurd on its face.

The second part of Davis' question, "if a white minister....used rhetoric and words similar to the KKK," also seems to be a bit confused. While I myself found Wright's words to be needlessly inflammatory, he wasn't talking in the manner of a KKK member. Rather, he was likening the U.S. government to the KKK. While one might conclude that both forms of rhetoric are objectionable, they are hardly the same: If a white minister uses the language of the KKK, he is typically preaching hatred and violence toward America's minorities; what Reverend Wright was doing, by contrast, was scolding the U.S. government for not adequately protecting America's minorities. Again, when scrutinized closely, Davis' question is comparing apples and oranges.

Let me make it clear that I am no fan of Jeremiah Wright's sermons. Beyond the hyperbolic content, the belligerent tone alone would put me off. That said, it is still necessary to understand that the level of anger in Trinity United Church of Christ and in many other black churches has to be understood in terms of the historical context of the congregants, whose economic status, level of health care, and school systems would be seen as catastrophic if they were characteristic of the white community. One of the things I like about Barack Obama is that unlike Lanny Davis, he understands this fact. Here is Obama, talking about his church and minister:

Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

Here's Obama on Reverend Wright:

He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

In answer to Lanny Davis, there is no comparable white minister out there to whom we can compare Jeremiah Wright. Please rethink your analysis.

2008-03-18T11:30:00.002-04:00

What Obama Saw in Reverend Jeremiah Wright

The emergence of tapes of Barack Obama's minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, delivering sermons which harshly condemn the United States, and suggest that 9/11 reflected "the chickens coming home to roost," have created the biggest crisis of Obama's political career. Had the tapes comes to light earlier in the campaign, they might have derailed Obama's candidacy. Even at this late date in the campaign season they have put his campaign squarely on the defensive, and play into deep seated fears in the white community that a black president cannot adequately represent all the American people. They also feed the urban myth, spewed over the internet, that somehow Obama lacks patriotism, and that if in office, he would pursue a black, retributive agenda rather than one that seeks the common good. Such questions have been part of a whispering campaign against Obama since the beginning of the primary season, and are now being asked loudly by his critics.

The interview done on "60 Minutes" by Steve Kroft with citizens from southern Ohio, illustrates perfectly the unease that a segment of white America has had with the Obama candidacy long before they ever heard of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Here is Kroft, before the Ohio primary, asking one blue-collar worker who he planned to vote for:

Man: I'm leaning toward Obama. [but] there's a couple issues with him I'm not too clear on.

Kroft: Which issues?

Man: Well I'm hearing that he doesn't even know the National Anthem. He wouldn't use the Holy Bible. He's got his own beliefs, the Muslim beliefs. A couple issues that bothers me at heart...

When Kroft informed him that none of those things were true, the man seemed genuinely startled. While I would doubt that the interviewee actually voted for Obama anyway, the release of the Wright tapes will have almost certainly fueled his fears, as well as causing many serious individuals to ask how Obama could have associated himself with Pastor Wright for so long. A cottage industry has developed to explain this issue. Didn't Obama know that Pastor Wright's views were a ticking time bomb? Doesn't their relationship cast doubt upon Obama's judgment after all?

The worst analysis I've heard of the Obama/Wright relationship was the one put forth by William Kristol and Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday. Here is Kristol:

....he just joined the largest church in the area for political reasons, for opportunistic reasons....

Here is Juan Williams:

.... he joined the church to solidify his credentials as authentically black, because it is the largest church in South Chicago....he exploited it up to a point....it speaks to his character and his judgment.

These bits of analysis are well off the mark, for several reasons. First, Obama began going to Trinity United Church of Christ in 1987, before he had even gone to law school. At that time, Obama was hardly--as Kristol and Williams suggest--a politician on the make, but rather a young man searching to find himself and his place in the world. At the time, he was working as a community organizer, was dealing with many pastors in the Chicago area, and was preparing to leave Chicago for Harvard Law School. For Obama, Trinity was not a source a racial polarization as many now see it; rather it was a unifying presence in the community, a place where the black middle class sat next to laborers, where those who ran the school system sat next to those who struggled within it, where black intellectuals worshiped along with those who were still mastering their reading skills.

It was during one of Obama's first visits to the church when he heard Wright sermonize about a painting by British Victorian artist George Frederic Watts, called "Hope." The painting shows a bruised and battered woman sitting atop the globe with a harp that has lost all but one string. The world below her is in disrepair, and she has fared no better. After describing the many hardships that beset the many members of his congregation, Wright intoned:

And yet consider again the painting before us....a few faint notes floating upward to the heavens...She dares to hope.... She has the audacity....to make music...and praise God...on the one string... she has left.

Obama writes in his book "Dreams from My Father" about this moment:

As the choir lifted back up into song, as the congregation began to applaud those who were walking up to the altar to accept Reverend Wright's call, I felt a light touch on the top of my hand. I looked down to see the older of two boys sitting beside me, his face slightly apprehensive as he handed me a pocket tissue. Beside him his mother glanced at me with a faint smile before turning back to the altar. It was only as I thanked the boy that I felt the tears running down my cheeks.

This, not a crass political calculation proffered by Kristol and Williams is the essence of Obama's bond with the Trinity United Church of Christ. It is the fact that Trinity backs up rhetoric with action. It provides care for the elderly, offers hospice care, money for college bound students, charity for historically black colleges (many of which have fallen on hard times), is an important source of anti-drug work in the community, and serves as a support and resource center for ex-prisoners trying to make their way back into society. That is what drew the then skeptical Obama to this place of worship. And it was this church that helped Obama find his identity as a black man in society. Wright became a mentor and a father figure for Obama, who had never really known his own father. And I suspect that if we knew the Wright that Obama knew, removed from the pulpit, rather than the caricature drawn from YouTube videos, he would emerge as far more compelling individual than the ranting figure that emerges from the tapes.

My point is a simple one, that understanding the work of a church and a minister through a handful of YouTube excerpts hardly does justice to the entirety of the work of that church. Just as a Catholic can attend services and derive great spiritual uplift, while still leaving behind the messages of homophobia, sexism, and archaic views on sexuality, so I believe that Obama got the same kind of uplift from Wright, while forgoing the over the top rhetoric and appeals to race. It may be that Obama, like his Republican counterpart Mitt Romney, will feel obligated to give a broad address, explaining his almost familial closeness to Reverend Wright, explaining the overwhelmingly positive work of his church, while also explaining the ways in which Obama's and Wright's political views differ. If he does, he might want to start with one of the eloquent passages from his book "Dreams of My Father":

And if a part if me continued to feel that this Sunday communion sometimes simplified our condition, that it could sometimes disguise or suppress the very real conflicts among us and would fulfill its promise only through action, I also felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams.

"The audacity of hope!" I still remember my grandmother, singing in the house, "There's a bright side somewhere...don't rest till you find it."

2008-03-12T18:49:00.003-04:00

Political Potpourri: Pennsylvania and Geraldine Ferraro

1) Pennsylvania. As the democratic primary in Pennsylvania gears up, the latest electoral news has to buoy the Obama campaign: Not only did Obama win Mississippi by a 61-37% spread in popular vote, not only did he claim 17 delegates in Mississippi to Clinton's 11, but we now learn that Obama actually won the delegate race in Texas. According to CNN, when you combine delegates won in both the Texas primary and its accompanying caucuses, the latest estimate shows Obama with 99 delegates to Clinton's 94. As a result, between the states of Texas, Wyoming, and Mississippi, Obama has padded his delegate lead over Hillary Clinton by 13, and now leads by around 130 delegates (pledged and Super combined). This obviously puts extra pressure on Hillary to "run up the score" in Pennsylvania. The question is, is Hillary capable of a big win in Pennsylvania. In fact, is she capable of winning it at all?

While the demographics look favorable for Hillary--a larger number of blue-collar whites than the national average, a lower number of African-Americans than the national average, and a larger number of voters over 65 than the national average--discussions of the this primary typically omit one important wild card: Barack Obama has six full weeks to introduce himself to the Pennsylvania voters. In other words, this campaign may resemble the build-up to Iowa or New Hampshire more than it does that of Ohio or Texas. Obama will be able to hold his trademark rallies, but with a full six weeks, he will also have the time and space to do retail campaigning at business sites, at town meetings, and at people's homes. It is well established now that Hillary begins every state with a 10 to 20% lead in the polls; Pennsylvania is no different. But given the luxury of six weeks of campaigning, this could become a neck and neck struggle if Obama is bold enough to do the following:

a) First, he should completely rewrite his stump speech. Obama's stump speech, which served him so well in the early stages of the campaign, is now as stale as week-old toast. He needs to incorporate new ideas into his speech, ideas both big and small. The speech needs to be tailored to the specific economic needs of Pennsylvania, while still containing broad, visionary themes. In Pennsylvania, Obama should downplay slightly "the politics of hope," by this time a somewhat tired phrase. Instead, he should run aggressively against the politics of cynicism. Hillary Clinton made a colossal blunder in Mississippi by touting Obama as a "dream" running mate, because it completely undercut her dismissive "he's not ready" message, showing it to be just another Machiavellian tactic. Were I Obama, I would beat this like a drum in Pennsylvania:

Can anybody believe Hillary any more when she talks about "experience?" When she needs votes in Texas, she brings out the red phone; when she wants to siphon off my supporters in Mississippi, I suddenly become the "dream" vice president. It doesn't get much more cynical than that. If anyone ever needed a definition of the old politics, that is it!

Not a day would go by when I wouldn't mock her "dream team" statements.

b) In talking to workers, Obama should show something that we almost never see from him, anger, outrage, indignation. Being preternaturally "cool" plays well in academe, and it's fine in jazz circles, but if you're touring The Hershey Company, or Heinz, or Allegheny Industries, you had better show that there's some blood in your veins.

2) Geraldine Ferraro. Ferraro's bizarre comments to the effect that Obama would not be where he is were it not for his race, tells us a lot not only about Ferraro, but about the country as a whole. Her comment is simply a cruder, uglier version of the position that numerous women have taken recently in interviews: They have come to believe that in politics, there is more discrimination against women, than against a black man. Normally I steer clear of foolish "my group is more discriminated against than your group" arguments, but the position taken by Hillary supporters is so flawed that it needs to be addressed. In the entire history of the U.S. there have only been four black governors. Since Reconstruction there have only been three black Senators. These facts hardly suggest a great receptivity to African-Americans in high office.

The notion of there being overwhelming resistance to a female president is actually a gross misreading of Obama's stellar political rise: He has been such a compelling candidate, his message and character have been so successful in drawing support, that bedazzled political observers have lost sight of just how singular and extraordinary Obama's accomplishment is. One year ago, the prospect that an African-American would be poised to win the Democratic nomination was all but unthinkable. It now stands as a profound irony that Obama has been so successful that that the Geraldine Ferraros of the world have jumped to the foolish conclusion that anyone could do it, or even more preposterous, that Obama's race actually helped him secure the nomination. The truth is, Barack Obama is the only African-American in the country who could have accomplished what he has done. He has outlasted a very deep and talented group of Democratic candidates, and he has done it in the midst of a scurrilous, guerilla email campaign that variously casts him as a Muslim, an Al Qaeda plant, and a foreign agent bent on destroying the U.S. By contrast, Hillary began the campaign as the candidate of inevitability, and at the outset of virtually every state primary she has had large, comfortable leads. The fact that Obama has won twice as many states as Clinton has nothing to do with any resistance to a female candidate; rather, it is because she has run at best a mediocre campaign, marked by shortsighted thinking, financial mismanagement, and organizational chaos.

When Ferraro's comments blew up in her face, Ferraro first accused those who criticized her as being "reverse racists." When that didn't work, she tried to backpedal slightly:

I said in large measure, because he is black.... let me also say in 1984 -- and if I have said it once, I have said it 20, 60, 100 times -- in 1984, if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been the nominee for vice president.

Even when she tries to show some humility, Ferraro gets it wrong: Yes, her gender was one reason that Mondale picked her as his vice-presidential nominee. The operative word is picked. Ferraro didn't have to campaign for a spot on the ticket, Mondale simply picked her. By contrast, Obama has participated perhaps in the longest, most grueling primary season in history. His campaign has been a model of both grass-roots organization and of inspiration. Every vote that Obama has gotten has been well earned.

Finally, let's take a look at the respective responses of Clinton and Obama to Ferraro's statements. You be the judge. Here's Clinton

It’s regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides, because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal.

Here's Obama:

I just think that if somebody in my campaign suggested that Senator Clinton was only where she was because she's a woman, people would take great offense and rightly so, because she a very accomplished person, who is running a terrific and tenacious race.....

If anyone has any doubt about which candidate has the most grace and humanity, all one has to do is read these initial responses to Ferraro's rancid remarks. For Hillary, as usual, it's all about politics; the subtext of her comment is "his campaign does it too." For Obama, it's about principle; rather than taking the opportunity to attack Hillary, he goes out of his way to pay her a great compliment in the midst of this fiasco. Enough said.....

2008-03-05T17:32:00.006-05:00

Memo to Barack Obama: Get Tough Before It's Too Late

After having beaten Hillary Clinton in twelve consecutive contests, Barack Obama's losses in Ohio and Texas have halted his momentum, and have dealt a blow to his own aura of inevitability. As many observers have noted, last night's losses pushed the "re-set" button on the presidential race. Both campaigns must now start rethinking their endgame. This is especially true for Barack Obama.

On January 21, on the eve of the South Carolina debate, I urged Obama to respond forcefully to the Clinton campaign's charges that he had flip-flopped on the Iraq war, and that he had supported the views of Ronald Reagan. No presidential contender, I warned, could let such charges stand without losing the respect of the voters. To his great credit, Obama was thinking along the same lines that night, and confronted Hillary fiercely in that South Carolina debate. While pundits expressed horror at the contentiousness of the debate, I still maintain that the spat was transformational for the Obama campaign. The electorate at large, and Obama's African-American base in particular, needed to see that Obama could be a fighter.

Such confrontation however, does not come naturally to Obama. To be sure, his charm, warmth, and equanimity have put him in good stead in the presidential race. His personality has been essential in reassuring a predominantly white electorate that is always skittish about the prospect of an "angry black man." Obama has shown that he is capable of being a president for all the people.

The problem is, there is a flip side to Obama's vaunted cool and ease: He is somewhat conflict-averse. The same attributes that make him successful in one situation, can become a hindrance, crutch, a cop-out in other situations. There are times when Obama needs to confront, engage, and even attack, when he merely takes refuge in placidity. In the latter stages of the battle for Texas and Ohio, Obama was not only out hustled by Hillary Clinton, more importantly, he was out toughed by her. In the final days, he stood by and caught charge after charge, without adequate response.

Obama has relied so heavily on his charm and unflappability, that he has come to rely excessively on these qualities. When your opponent says, "With respect to answering the red phone at 3 in the morning, I have experience, Senator McCain has experience, and Senator Obama has a speech that he gave," you need to respond clearly and forcefully. Obama did not. Obama's disappointing showing in Ohio and Texas in part stemmed from Hillary's ability to cast herself effectively in the role of "Commander in Chief," while Obama was put in the role of the naive boy scout. Let me be blunt about it: By adopting a soft prevent defense in the face of withering criticisms from Hillary, by refusing to play any offense, by not punching back effectively, Obama has been placed in the position of--dare I say it?--a sissy. That is no way to win the support of a trucker in Akron, or a bricklayer in Sandusky.

And while Obama, perhaps armed with a false sense of security, had settled into a passive role, Hillary, with her back against the wall, has had both guns blazing. The amazing, even shocking support given Hillary by "Saturday Night Live" cannot be underestimated. Hosting the show, SNL alumna Tina Fey, did Hillary a world of good, by bringing to the surface Hillary's dirty little secret-- the fact that people view her as unacceptable because she's perceived as a bitch. Said Fey:

Maybe what bothers me the most, is that people say that Hillary's a bitch. Let me say something about that: She is. So am I. And so is this one [pointing at Amy Poehler]. You know what? Bitches get stuff done!

When Fey uttered those words, I imagined millions of women around the country--all of whom have felt the sting of being put down as "too pushy"-- jumping to their feet and cheering. The SNL skits were a major boon for Hillary, for three reasons: First, they gave a patina of "hipness" to Hillary, not often thought of as young or hip; second, they lampooned Obama as a goofy, grinning pet of the media; third, they made a virtue of something that was formerly taboo, being in touch with your "inner bitch." Clinton benefited from each.

So what should Obama do? Simply put, he should tap into his own wellspring of anger and indignation. When you are trying to establish a new, affirmative, principled politics, there are two ways that you can go about it: 1) You can simply refrain from attacking your opponent, a tack which is ultimately foolish and self-defeating. 2) Or you can hit back at an unprincipled opponent, as long as your criticisms are sincere, accurate and conscientious. For example, I heard Obama on CNN this morning answering a question about "the red phone at three in the morning." Obama responded that if it were a matter of one's resume rather than one's judgment, "then John McCain should be answering the phone." This is at best a weak reply. What he should have said is this:

Hillary still doesn't get it. If all we're doing is looking at resumes, why don't we nominate Dick Cheney? He's got more experience handling crises than anyone. Or how about Don Rumsfeld? Who has more experience than him? Her ad completely misunderstands what it takes to be president. Besides, even using her own criteria, Hillary fails the test. She has no such foreign policy experience, short of serving tea to foreign potentates!

One of Clinton's standard campaign gambits is to refuse to say whether she thinks Obama is qualified to lead the nation, implying that she secretly thinks he isn't, but is too nice and diplomatic to say so. Such statements should elicit sharp, consistent attacks from Obama:

Nobody with any intelligence and competence who serves with me in the Senate has the slightest doubt about my capabilities as a president: Chris Dodd, 27 years in the Senate, Ted Kennedy 46 years in the Senate, Jay Rockefeller, 24 years in the Senate, have all worked extensively with both Hillary and me. And you know what? They've each endorsed me. The message here is obvious: The odd person out here is Hillary; the fact that she can't acknowledge my qualifications is a tired campaign ploy, and tells you a lot more about her, than it does about me.

The tactical principle is very simple: Every time that Clinton practices the old politics of character assassination, Obama should make her pay a price. He should call her on it relentlessly. Take, for example, this gem from Hillary: "Barack Obama thinks that only your children should have health insurance."

Obama should hit back in this manner:

Beware of politicians who will say anything to get elected. Hillary knows full well that my health insurance plan is portable, cost-controlled, and available to any American who wants it. This is yet another distortion, another example of the old politics.

Or how about the consistent claim that Hillary makes, that she "won" Michigan and Florida?

You know, it takes a special kind of gumption to sign a pledge that the Michigan primary wouldn't count, watch your opponents all withdraw their names from the ballot, and then claim victory for yourself. The claim is no less ridiculous and unprincipled now than it was a month ago. As for Florida, in any state in where there is no campaigning, Hillary would win by virtue of simple name recognition. Had there been no campaigning in Virginia and Maryland, she would have won those states too. After we did campaign, Hillary lost them both big time. Given that, those Florida results mean nothing.

The controlling idea behind Obama's endgame should be that of unmasking Hillary's misrepresentations. A candidate who doesn't play straight with the electorate creates numerous vulnerabilities for herself, numerous points of attack. Obama's responsbility to his own campaign is to highlight those vulnerabilities. Hillary has found her "inner bitch." Obama needs to find his own.

2008-02-27T08:31:00.004-05:00

Please, Let Cleveland Be the Final Debate!

Please Lord, make last night's debate from Cleveland the final Democratic debate of this election cycle! After having watched all 20 debates, and seen countless iterations of the "my health care plan is better than your health care plan" argument, I'm here to say that there is very little meat left on the bone. When two candidates have virtually the same policy prescriptions across the board, and still must distinguish themselves, it leads to minute, Jesuitical distinctions on health care and foreign policy that matter far more in the realm of political point scoring, than they do in the realm of real people.

To my great relief, last night's debate almost certainly signaled the end of this interminable campaign. If Hillary needed something dramatic to happen to change the dynamics of the race, she was sorely disappointed. Not only did Obama not make any major mistakes, it became clear last night that they could hold 15 more debates, and Obama would still not make a fatal gaffe. He is simply too smart, too poised, too disciplined, and too intellectually agile to make the kind of mistake that she so desperately needed. Indeed, during this "trial by ordeal" known as the Democratic primary season, Obama may have set a record for the fewest errors ever. The only significant mistake I've observed in the entire campaign was his unattributed use of Governor Deval Patrick's "words don't matter" language. And that issue was completely blunted by the fact that Hillary has borrowed language rather liberally herself. Otherwise, Obama has been an astonishingly consistent performer.

So who actually won the Cleveland debate? Obama did, not because his answers were better than Hillary's, but for another reason: Over the last two weeks as the race has intensified, major differences in temperament have emerged between the two candidates. I never thought I would say this, but as Hillary's position has gotten more dire, a note of hysteria has crept into her campaign as she lurches from persona to persona. It began when she tried to achieve a soft, warm moment at the close of the Austin debate by telling Obama what "an honor" it had been to campaign against him. The problem with her effort was that it worked too well. Many in the audience believed that it was a quasi acknowledgement that Obama would be the nominee. When the debate was over, and she huddled with her consultants, they almost certainly said to her, "What did you do!? You gave people the impression that we're giving up the race. You demoralized our supporters and contributors. Go say something to show that you're still in the fight!" What resulted was Hillary's unfortunate "Shame on you Barack Obama....meet me in Ohio!" speech. Watching the clip of Hillary scolding Obama like he was a seven year old child makes one cringe, and suggests a candidate who is not only losing her grip on the race, but on her emotions as well.

While Hillary has flailed around looking for a persona that can connect with the American people, Obama's unflappability has emerged as one of his biggest assets. His calm during the storm has served to completely frustrate her, as she searches in vain for a point of attack. This frustration has reached a point where she is now reduced to playing a victim role, blaming the press for her misfortunes. Hillary's latest theme is that press bias against her is the cause of her political failings. She knows this is so, because they said so on Saturday Night Live!

This notion of press bias, which has been accepted by some in the media, needs to be debunked immediately: To simply tally up the number of positive and negative press filings about each candidate to determine press fairness, is a misguided form of analysis. Instead of simply counting the number of up and down stories, one first has to determine whether those stories accurately reflect reality. For example, Hillary has gone from being the "candidate of inevitability" to the presumptive loser. As such, the press has had the role of explaining her decline. That means discussing issues like financial mismanagement, giving up on caucus states, not strategizing beyond Super Tuesday, not filing a complete slate of delegates in Pennsylvania, the misadventures of Bill Clinton, the inability to find a consistent message, the replacement of top staffers, and the loss of eleven straight contests. In explaining such campaign shortcomings, one has to talk in the negative. Obama has simply run a better, more organized, more farsighted campaign than has Clinton. Further, his trajectory during the campaign has been consistenty upward. Because of this, it is fitting and appropriate that more positive stories have been written about Obama.

As lengthy and exhausting as the primary season has been, it has accomplished its mission: that of revealing both issues and character. It is a sad irony that at its close Hillary has transitioned from the strong, competent, "inevitable" nominee, to that of the self-pitying, victimized female from whom the mean media have stolen the nomination. I expect in upcoming polls we'll see more Clinton slippage. I further expect that Obama will win either Texas, Ohio, or both, and that this historic chapter of American politics will come to a close.

2008-02-20T10:15:00.010-05:00

After Wisconsin--Can Hillary Accept Losing with Dignity?

On the night of the Wisconsin primary, watching Hillary Clinton give her third straight "I won't admit that I lost" speech in Youngstown, Ohio, was an exercise in surrealism. In this era of cell phones and IPods, virtually everyone in that Youngstown crowd knew that the Wisconsin primary had already been called in Obama's favor, and that she was en route to a 9th straight loss. It had to be confusing--and depressing--to see Hillary, fake smile at the ready, behaving like it was a birthday party. To Obama's credit, after watching five minutes of Hillary's shtick, when it became clear that once again she wasn't going to concede, congratulate, or confront reality, he had seen enough. He started his own victory speech from Houston, Texas ("Houston, I think we've achieved liftoff here!") and summarily knocked her off the air waves, as every network switched to his speech. It was fitting karma for Hillary, who is not only hemorrhaging votes every week, she's hemorrhaging class.

The latest parlor game among the punditocracy is that of giving Hillary Clinton free advice on how to salvage her campaign. Pat Buchanan says that she has to "drop a bomb," "go nuclear," in other words make her campaign even more negative than it has been. Chris Matthews says that she should pound away at Obama's perceived short legislative record. The problem with these suggestions is that they all miss the forest for the trees: What about the option of simply running an affirmative campaign, and if you lose, you lose, but you do it with class and dignity?

Yes, I understand that 2008 was supposed to be Hillary's turn. Hillary is frustrated, even offended, that her self-professed experience hasn't been embraced by the electorate. Experience!? If experience were really the critical attribute, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd would be competing neck and neck for the nomination right now. Indeed, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd both would have made terrific presidents. Imagine Biden's disappointment, given his real 36 years of experience in the Senate (as opposed to Hillary's "35 years" of pretended experience), to see his campaign gain no traction. Imagine how disappointed Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd was, to move his family to Iowa months before the primary, but to never rise beyond 1% in the polls? My point is this: When these two men, giants in the Senate, saw their campaigns begin to falter, they didn't start throwing brickbats at their competitors, they didn't start strategizing about which scorched earth tactic they would adopt. What they did was make an assessment of their campaign prospects, and bow out gracefully, without turning the race into a guerilla war.

Biden and Dodd withdrew in this manner in part because they are classy dignified guys, and in part because they might have been branded as boorish idiots had they not done so. Only to Hillary Clinton do we grant the option of turning the race into a nuclear war. It is only Hillary Clinton who would contemplate calling up not just super delegates, but pledged delegates, to try to get them to go back on their pledges. It is only Hillary Clinton who would lay claim to the Michigan delegates when the primary didn't count, and when other candidates had taken their names off the ballot. It is only Hillary who would claim that her opponent is in hiding, because he only wants 20 debates, not 23. In large measure, it is Hillary's very narcissism and sense of entitlement, her insistence that she is owed the nomination, that is turning off voters all over the country.

As Obama becomes the overwhelming favorite, his campaign begins to face a different type of scrutiny. It is not surprising when more media guns get turned in his direction. However, MSNBC's Chris Matthews may have outdone himself with aggressiveness last night. In a rather bizarre piece of gonzo journalism, Matthews was interviewing Democratic Texas state senator Kirk Watson, and asked Watson to name any piece of legislation produced by Obama. Here is part of the awkward exchange:

Matthews: You are a big Barack supporter aren’t you senator?
Sen. Watson: Yes I am.
Matthews: Name some of his legislative accomplishments.
Sen Watson: What I will talk about is more what he is offering the American people....
Matthews: Sir, you have to give me his legislative accomplishments.You support him for president. You are on national television. Name his legislative accomplishments, sir. Can you name anything he has accomplished, SIR?
Sen Watson: I'm not going to be able to name you specific items of legislation....

As the interview ended, and the camera came back to Matthews and Keith Olbermann, Olbermann was clearly embarrassed by the over-the-top interview, but the steroidal Matthews continued his assault: “He is here to defend Barack Obama and he had nothing to say. That’s a problem. Why do you think they call it Hardball?" Replied Olbermann, “But this isn’t Hardball. We are doing the election results.” The exchange between Matthews and State Senator Watson has gotten lots of airtime simply because people love viewing a train wreck. But the implication by Matthews, that it tells us something meaningful about the Obama campaign, is preposterous. It tells us only that Watson came to the interview ill-prepared. Here is a primer for all the Kirk Watsons of the world:

1) In the Illinois state legislature, Obama sponsored tough campaign finance reform along with former Senator Paul Simon.

2) In the Illinois state legislature, Obama was an influential force in the establishment of a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois. In line with this, he passed a bill requiring that all interrogations of homicide suspects be videotaped.

3) In the Illinois state legislature Obama pushed through both ethics reform and health care reform.

4) In the US Senate, along with Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold (WI, who was surprisingly invisible during the Wisconsin Primary), Obama sponsored the greatest ethics reform package in the history of the Senate.

5) Obama and Republican Dick Lugar (IN) sponsored legislation that commits the U.S. to working toward the non-profileration of conventional weapons, including shoulder-fired missles and anti-personnel mines. The legislation bears Obama's name.

6) Obama and Republican Tom Coburn (OK) sponsored the Coburn-Obama Transparency Act, which created a publicly accessible website which lists every organization that receives federal funds, along with the purpose and amount of those funds.

This is just a small sample of Obama's legislative work, and two things are clear about his efforts: They are meaningful, and they are bipartisan. In other words, Obama's appeal to a post-partisan presidency wasn't something that he hatched yesterday. We can only hope that soon, Hillary will start accepting the idea of herself as a senator again, and become a partner in an Obama post-partisan presidency.

2008-02-15T17:56:00.002-05:00

Reflections on the Obama Stump Speech

For all the progressive elements of the Obama campaign, there is one way in which he is a definite throwback: his ability to give a speech. No contemporary politician--with the possible exception of Ted Kennedy on a good day--moves an audience the way Obama does. The days of the memorable, stemwinding speech are long gone. If you ask individuals to name a great speech, they will either come up with MLK's "I Have a Dream," which was 45 years ago, or will reference a historic speech that they never actually heard. Modern politicians are expected to be smart and articulate, but they are rarely stirring. Even the speeches of the great orators of the past, a William Jennings Bryan or an Abraham Lincoln, sound quaint and over-the-top to the modern ear. These days, we prefer our political information to come in pithy sound bites, "McSpeeches." It is for this reason that Obama's ability to move the electorate with rhetoric has hit the campaign like an atom bomb.

Never has the oratory of a modern candidate elicited so much passion from his followers and so much envy and resentment from his opposition. I can't remember in my lifetime another example of politicians trying to discredit an opponent's rhetoric in the manner that we're seeing in this race. I'm sure that Hillary Clinton dearly wishes that she could take back that moment in the Manchester, New Hampshire debate, when she blurted out in frustration, "we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered." That amazing line will continue to haunt Clinton throughout the campaign, as Obama still refers to it in his current stump speech. The idea of a Democratic candidate running against optimism is almost unthinkable; but there Hillary was in the heat of the battle, all but acknowledging that Obama's message of hope was driving her batty. Since then, pooh-poohing his rhetoric has become a fixation with her.

When I travel outside the Beltway, which I do frequently, I have the admittedly annoying habit of asking the political views of those with whom I come into contact. When I do, I'm constantly surprised at how little attention the average citizen pays to the 2008 race. I regularly run into well-meaning and likeable folks who have no idea which office Obama holds, what state he represents, or where he is from. As disappointing as this might be, it does explain why Obama, and all his counterparts, have a standard stump speech that they give day after day--many Americans simply have not heard it before!

Because I get XM-Radio's POTUS '08 channel (channel 130) which offers many live, unfiltered speeches from the campaign trail, I have access to lots of campaign oratory. Nowadays, when I hear Obama's stump speech, I no longer mist up the way I once did; instead I get a nice, familiar feeling, and I feel like one of those movie-goers from the 1970's, who, while watching "The Rocky Horror Show" for the 30th time, would call out the lines along with the actors. When Obama notes that "George W. Bush will not be on the ballot this year," I wait for the cheers and hoopla that will follow. When Obama adds that "my cousin Dick Cheney won't be on the ballot either," I listen for the collective giggle that is surely on the way. By the time Obama tells his audience with mock ruefulness that he had hoped he'd be related to someone "cool," rather than Dick Cheney, his folksy humor has the audience eating out of his hand. And even though I've heard the line 20 times before, I'm chuckling along with them. And later, when he discloses that his father abandoned the family when Obama was two years old, and that he was mostly raised by his grandparents in Hawaii, he gives his audience the payoff:

The odds of my standing here in front of you today were very slim. We didn't have money. All my folks had to offer me was love, education, and hope...

At that point Obama has told the audience something meaningful about himself; he has hinted at the major struggles of his life, and that is something that everyone in the audience can identity with.

All that said, Obama does have his many critics. What about their complaint that he's "a talker, not a doer, that he's "all hat and no cattle," that he's "in the talking business, not the solutions business." The idea that Obama offers no specifics is a grand myth which has been repeated over and over until some believe that it's true. In fact, in his regular stump speech he discusses in appropriate detail his policy prescriptions on the war, on ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, on his health care plan, on his proposal to add 18 billion to the education budget, on his proposed four thousand dollar per year tax credit for needy college-bound students (provided that they agree to participate in "national service"), and on job creation.

The misconception that Obama offers no substance is partly a byproduct of this primary race. The electorate isn't looking for policy minutiae because there are virtually no major policy differences between the Democratic candidates! While Hillary has tried to make much of the difference between their health care plans, you couldn't slide a credit card between their policies on most issues. Another reason that some feel that Obama lacks substance, is the very power of his speeches: He is a bit like the girl who is so pretty, that those who see her are intimidated, and defensively leap to the conclusion that if she's that good-looking, she must be dumb. If Obama's speeches are that inspiring, they must be hollow, right?

As pitch-perfect as Obama's ear is, I still think I think he could tweak his basic speech a little. He sometimes forgets--or maybe ignores--how much the audience wants to participate along with him. We see that in the "yes we can" chants that arise spontaneously while he is talking. It is for this reason that I wish he would bring back his trademark "fired up, ready to go" chant, along with the compelling story about how he picked up that line during a campaign stop in South Carolina. The audience loved it, and even dour John McCain uses it now.

By the time Obama finishes his stump speech, no matter how many times I've heard it before, I am smiling and feeling good, and I realize something important about his speechmaking: You could give him Hillary's text, and Hillary his text, and he'd still give the better speech. That's because what he's offering is more than a policy agenda; it's an attitude, a leadership style, a way of looking at the world, a new and more principled way of participating in politics. Does this make it a "cult of personality," as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has maintained? Not in my view. From where I sit, Obama offers the mustard, the ketchup and the beef.

2008-02-13T13:00:00.009-05:00

Has Hillary Clinton Run out of Options?

Hillary Clinton was not only trounced last night in the Potomac Primaries, she was humiliated. After all, those who voted last night were Hillary's neighbors during the Bill Clinton administration, people who have watched the Clintons at close range for 15 years. For Hillary to be noncompetitive not only in DC, but in Maryland and Virginia as well, is a profound rejection not only of her campaign, but of her personally. Hillary got it right in that candid moment in New Hampshire: people simply like Barack Obama better than they like her. Not only did she lose her 6th, 7th, and 8th contests in a row, she compounded the losses with a significant campaign blunder. Knowing that the results would unfavorable in the tri-state area, she fled to El Paso Texas last night, and staged a campaign rally, never once mentioning what had happened in the Potomac Primaries.

During her speech in El Paso, Clinton never congratulated Obama, never spoke of the losses, and never even acknowledged that she had been in three primaries last night. Different strokes for different folks, you say? I would submit that this behavior, little discussed in the media as of this writing, is precisely why Hillary's share of the electorate continues to hemorrhage. In this era in which "keepin' it real" is the mantra of choice, Hillary's robotic and unfeeling style serves to repel rather than attract the voters. A more grounded candidate, one with better political instincts, would have said the following to her El Paso audience:

"As you might expect, we're disappointed in our showing in the primaries tonight. And I'd like to congratulate Barack Obama for his victories. But I can assure you that we're not discouraged, we're not disheartened. And I promise you that I'm going to redouble my efforts to bring home a victory in the great state of Texas. But to do so, I need your help, every one of you!"

By contrast, what did Hillary do? She pretended that those inconvenient primaries never happened. Had she simply offered the above speech, it would have sent a completely different message, that she can deal with temporary failure, reflect on it, pick herself up, and gird herself for the next battle. Unfortunately, her fatal flaw is her difficulty in acknowledging failure. Carl Bernstein, in his 628 page biography about Hillary, reached a similar conclusion, calling Hillary "soulless." Bernstein offers an anecdote about Hillary that speaks volumes about her and about this campaign.

In 1975, Hillary Clinton was a rising star in Washington, DC., with an apparent unlimited future. She stunned many of her friends when she decided to follow Bill Clinton, newly elected Attorney General of Arkansas, to Fayetteville, Arkansas. Friends wondered at the time how she could subordinate her tremendous career prospects in DC to those of Bill Clinton. Carl Bernstein offers one possible explanation:

On November 3, the District of Columbia Bar Association notified Hillary that she had failed the bar exam. For the first time in her life she had flamed out — spectacularly, given the expectations of others for her and even more so her own. Of 817 applicants, 551 of her peers had passed, most from law schools less prestigious than Yale. She kept this news hidden for the next thirty years. She never took the exam again, despite many opportunities. Her closest friends and associates — Webb Hubbell, Jim Blair (Diane’s husband), Nancy Bekavac, Betsey Write, Sara Ehrman — were flabbergasted when she made the revelation in a single throwaway line in (her autobiography) Living History. “When I learned that I passed in Arkansas but failed in D.C., I thought maybe my test scores were telling me something.”

Those who knew her best speculated that she must have felt deep shame at her failure, and that her self-confidence — always so visible a part of her exterior — was shattered by the experience (though many first-rate lawyers, even Yale Law graduates, had flunked the bar on their first try). There can only be conjecture about what turn her life — and the nation’s — might have taken had she not failed the exam.

Hillary Clinton's inability to acknowledge vulnerability or error reverberates through both her personal life and political career. Small wonder she has contorted herself into a pretzel at times, rather than acknowledge that her vote for the War Resolution was a mistake. Ironically, her best moments during this election have been those fleeting moments when she has let her guard down and shown us a trace of the real person underneath: the tears in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the acknowledgment in New Hampshire that "it hurts my feelings" that voters seemed to like Barack Obama more than they liked her. Both of these displays of emotion stimulated a great wave of sympathy for Clinton, and contributed to her upset victory in New Hampshire. It is very revealing about this campaign however, that the woman who made Hillary cry, Marianne Pernold Young, wound up voting for Obama. When asked why, Pernold responded, "Because later, when I went to hear Obama speak, he made me cry!" Even Clinton's recent admission that she had loaned her campaign five million dollars, generated millions in sympathetic donations from her supporters. The problem for Hillary is that her deeply human side is far too elusive, only emerging briefly when she is under duress.

Finally, it may be that time is running out for the Clinton campaign. She has tried virtually every tack available to bring down Obama. In the early stages of the campaign she was condescending. Later, in New Hampshire she brought out Bill with his scorched earth attacks. It worked, but only temporarily, eventually creating a backlash that is still being felt. Then she tried an appeal to her "35 years of experience" which has never really caught on; nor has her criticism that Obama isn't "tough enough" to stand up to the Republicans. After all, how do you call someone "soft" who's beating the hell out of you? Her options now are very limited. Further attacks from Bill would only alienate the electorate, and contribute to more Clinton fatigue. Moreover, the early attacks from Bill were successful largely because Obama was far less well-known than he is now. By this time, Obama has passed every test, and has shown all the attrtibutes that people once questioned about him--stamina, toughness, gravitas, consistency, and the ability not only to take a punch, but to throw one.

Last night, I did notice during Hillary's speech in El Paso, that she has made one last pivot, offering a newly crafted message: In the old spirit of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," she is now preaching the politics of hope, sounding every bit as idealistic as Obama! Someone is bound to tell her though, that they saw the original, and it was better.....

2008-02-10T07:22:00.001-05:00

Super-delegates, Florida, Michigan, and other Democratic Messes

The current Democratic presidential race embodies that old chestnut "beware of what you wish for." In this election cycle, Democrats had hoped for a strong field of candidates who would galvanize their supporters and produce large turnout in the primaries. They got it. But what they also got was a race so close and so competitive that it may fracture the party like none since the 1968 Chicago Convention, in which Hubert Humphrey secured the nomination in the midst of bitter anti-war protests. This year, the source of controversy is that of the "super-delegates," who may turn out to have a decisive role in picking the party's nominee.

Super-delegates are the 796 party officials (for example, all members of Congress), and prominent figures (for example, former Speaker of the House Tom Foley), who are not elected by voters in the primaries, but instead are free to vote for any candidate they choose. As a result, their existence serves to diminish the impact of the primaries, the means by which candidates actually earn their delegates. Because the super-delegates represent 20% of the 4,049 delegates at the Democratic Convention, in a tight contest, their support may be crucial for one of the candidates to reach the 2025 votes needed to win the nomination.

Super Delegates, whose very existence weakens the voice of the voters, are a painful example of how bad rules and policies can stay in place for years as a result of inattention, bad judgment and inertia. Any entity which is capable of undoing the intent of the voters is a potential source of mischief, embarrassment, and scandal for the party. The last thing that a political party needs is to foster the impression among voters that their vote doesn't matter. As such, the super-delegates are a public relations disaster waiting to happen.

Established after the 1980 presidential election, in which Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan, 44 states to 6, super-delegates were a means for party officials to re-establish some control over the nominee selection process--of course at the expense of the voters themselves. In the very next election cycle in 1984, the super-delegates showed their muscle: Going into the convention in San Francisco, insurgent Gary Hart and establishment candidate Walter Mondale were deadlocked at the end of the primary season. However, Mondale, a former vice-president, had sealed away a large number of super-delegates early on, long before Hart's campaign had even become competitive, and eased to the nomination as result. Mondale went on to lose 49 of 50 states to Ronald Reagan, in one of the worst landslides in presidential history.

The prospect that one candidate will arrive at the Democratic Convention in Denver with a lead in earned delegates, and have that lead overturned by the super-delegates, is a doomsday scenario that now terrifies party officials. Democratic National Committee member Donna Brazile, herself a super-delegate, put it forcefully in an interview on CNN:

"If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party. I feel very strongly about this. ... There's no reason why we should decide this election. I feel very strongly."

Accordingly, some Democratic leaders are calling for an end to super-delegates, and for them to play no role this year. Frankly, I have no idea whether that is even possible procedurally. What I do know is that if the super-delegates decide the nomination, and the outcome runs counter to that of the voters, it will be a titanic (all puns intended) blow to the Democrats' presidential prospects.

A few quick thoughts about Florida and Michigan: In my view, the DNC did absolutely the right thing in decertifying the Florida and Michigan primaries. Had they not, it would have sent a signal to the states that it was okay to move their primary dates up, and to try to leapfrog other states. Chaos would have resulted. The question now is what to do with the faux elections that took place in Florida and Michigan? One solution is to simply strip the states of any delegates, and adjust downward the number needed for a candidate to achieve a majority. This runs the risk of unduly alienating Florida and Michigan voters. A second solution is for the two states to have a do-ever, and schedule caucuses sometime in early summer, for which the candidates would campaign in a normal manner. The upside is that it would be highly empowering to the voters, since the outcome could have a significant impact on the race. The downside to this is that it would be costly and unwieldy. The third solution would be to simply award the two states' delegates based on the candidates' percentages nationally. In other words, if Obama had won 44% of all votes nationally, he would then get 44% of the delegates from Florida and Michigan, just as Hillary Clinton would get her exact percentage. I could accept any of these three solutions. As for Hillary Clinton's claim--offered with a straight face and no apparent embarrassment--that the decertified primaries should simply be "recertified," and counted at face value--one in which she was the only name on the ballot, the other in which nobody campaigned--fuhgetaboutit!

2008-02-06T10:41:00.000-05:00

Super Tuesday, a Bummer for Both Obama and Clinton?

Super Tuesday was intended to be the day to end all primary days. Most observers (including me!) expected that a cascading series of 22 primaries would offer great clarity, and reveal the de facto nominee of the Democratic party. To the contrary, a day later, the Democratic picture is more scrambled than ever. As I write this on Wednesday morning, my hunch is that there is mild disappointment in both the Obama and Clinton camps. Each camp has reason to be relieved, but each also has reason to be disappointed:

1) Hillary Clinton can't be pleased that out of the 22 races contested on Super Tuesday, she lost 14 of them (I'm awarding Obama New Mexico, where he currently leads), and won only 8 of them (Arkansas, Arizona, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oklahoma, New York, and Tennessee). Further, all six states that held caucuses went to Obama (Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota). Obama's strong victories in each of these caucus states has to alarm Clinton. Clinton also has to be agonized that she led in Missouri for the entire evening, until results finally came in from St. Louis and Kansas City, and he passed her in the political equivalent of a last second buzzer-beater. Missouri enjoys a somewhat mythic status, because it since 1904, it has voted for the presidential winner in every year except 1956. While it may not be clear for a few days, Obama supporters predict that when the dust settles, they will have won more overall votes and more overall delegates on Super Tuesday.

2) Barack Obama has to be disappointed that he could not break through in large industrial states that looked promising for him going into Super Tuesday. New Jersey, for example, where Obama lost by 10 percentage points, was a state for which the Obama camp had high hopes. Likewise Massachusetts, where Obama lost by 15% (56-41%), in spite of endorsements from Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and governor Duval Patrick. Obama also has to be displeased that Clinton won California, the big enchilada, by 9 percentage points (51-42%), even though late polls had showed him surging ahead. (It will be interesting to see how pollsters Zogby and Rasmussen explain the California results. Zogby's final poll showed Obama ahead by a whopping 13 percentage points).

So what lessons can we draw from Super Tuesday?

First, the idea of a hyper-compressed 22 state primary was a bad idea. Candidates cannot possibly wage real campaigns in all those states in the short period of time available. The specter of candidates frantically working 20 hour days and covering 6 states per day in order to reach their constituencies, is both crazy and unnecessary. In the future, blocks of states should be staggered, perhaps in groups of six, and held a week apart. This would benefit both candidates and voters. It would allow candidates to truly do justice to each state, and give each state the attention it deserves. It would also allow the electorate the opportunity to digest the flood of information that emerges from so much electoral activity.

Second, is has become clear the Hillary Clinton will continue to be a very formidable contender, because she has two big structural advantages during the primary season: In virtually every primary in the Democratic party, not only do female participants outnumber men by 55-45%, it has become clear that among white women, there is a far more profound identification with Hillary Clinton than most pundits predicted. In California, for example, Clinton won 60% of the women's vote, despite Obama's endorsements from Oprah, Caroline Kennedy, and California first lady Maria Shriver, who came onboard at the last moment, and delivered an electric speech at an Obama rally. These are three of the most powerful, compelling women in the country, and the fact that they could not move the dial more for Obama shows the solidarity of Clinton's female support. One might even say that white women are the ultimate firewall for Hillary Clinton: When the excitement for Obama reaches a certain level (as it did in New Hampshire, for example), women rise up as a phalanx of support to stem his his surge.

Third, the upcoming electoral calendar gives Obama great reason for optimism. This coming weekend, 234 delegates will be at stake in Louisiana (primary), and caucuses in Washington state, Nebraska, Maine, and the Virgin Islands. Given the strength of his performance in caucus states, Obama has the possibility of running the table in those contests. Moreover, on Tuesday, February 12, the "Potomac Primary" takes place, with contests in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. At this moment, Obama is a comfortable favorite in each of these primaries. By next Wednesday, Obama could be even or slightly ahead in the delegate count.

As close as the delgate count is between Obama and Clinton, do I think that the race will eventually go the Democratic Convention in Denver? No, but I do believe that the race will continue through March and April with dramatic and decisive primaries in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylania.

2008-02-01T05:59:00.000-05:00

Who Won the "Super Duper" Debate?

Here's my quick take on the Democrats' debate from the Kodak Theater in Hollywood: First, it was a great debate, that lived up to its billing. The absence of John Edwards significantly heightened the stakes, turning it into a mano a mano affair (for you linguistic sticklers out there, mano a mano means "hand to hand," signifying one on one combat, not "man to man," as is so often believed). Some will say that because the debate was cordial throughout and lacked fireworks, that it was boring, or a disappointment. I strongly disagree.

The two-person format gave both candidates the time and space to discuss the themes of the evening--health care, the economy, foreign policy, electability, and character--with a level of depth not seen in any previous debate. The atmosphere was intelligent, studious, measured, and respectful, but still competitive, as both candidates were called upon to highlight the small, nuanced differences in their policy prescriptions. Both candidates also resisted moderator Wolf Blitzer's reflexive attempts to sensationalize the discussion and turn it into a food fight.

So the all important question is, who won? I thought the debate was a draw. Both candidates were poised, upbeat, and in command of their arguments, with Clinton perhaps edging Obama in the health care debate (her universally mandated health care seems to be the more elegant and ambitious policy), and Obama coming out on top in the foreign policy discussion (it is always useful to be reminded of how difficult it was to oppose the war when he did, and just how prophetic his original anti-war speech was). So if in fact it was a draw, what does that mean? Who does it benefit? Bill Schneider, CNN's guru of polling and research, believes that a draw benefited Hillary Clinton:

"I thought overall, his position tonight was still that of the challenger, and she was effectively the incumbent. Barack Obama needed to peel votes away from Clinton. He made some progress on the Iraq issue. But how many Democrats are still more concerned about Iraq than about anything else?

To the extent that the debate was a draw, it helps Clinton.

Why? Because holding his own wasn't enough. Obama’s task tonight was to make the case that there were huge differences between them. Just holding his own and looking presidential was not enough — he had to convince Democrats who like her that there’s a reason she shouldn't be the party’s nominee."

I disagree with Schneider here and believe that the draw benefited Obama. Here's why: There is an enormous reservoir of passion in the Democratic electorate for Barack Obama. The concern about him has always been, does he have the seasoning, the command of the issues, the understanding of the mechanisms of government, the gravitas, to match his inspirational tone? The wonkish nature of the debate benefited Obama by putting to rest all those concerns. We always knew that Hilllary was a wonk, that she had a complete command of facts and figures, but would Obama be able to match her in a one on one debate where there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide? Last night, Obama showed why he's the last man standing in the race; his natural charm and poise were every bit equaled by his command of policy details. Sure, he can give a lofty, inspirational speech, but he showed that if you want to get down and dirty with policy details, he can go toe to toe with anyone. After all, he wasn't elected president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 for nothing.

For Obama, the big hurdle has always been the voters' comfort level with him. Has he been on the scene long enough, do we know enough about him, is he in fact, "a roll of the dice?" For example, it's been striking to observe how slow Obama's popularity in each primary state has been to generalize to the nation at large. It's as if voters are saying, "You did well in Iowa, but I'm not convinced; you did well in New Hampshire, but..." Moreover, in the Latino community, some organizers have noted that some voters aren't even sure who Obama is. Well, if he did need to re-introduce himself to California and the nation last night, he passed the test in fine fashion. As the much more likeable candidate, I believe that with a draw last night, Obama did what he needed to, to unleash all the passion and desire for change that exists in the electorate. The latest Rasmussen tracking poll in California (rasmussenreports.com) shows Hillary with a shrinking lead, 43-40%. I'm betting that the day after the debate, Obama's crowds will be larger than ever, and that he'll go on to win California.

2008-01-30T09:56:00.000-05:00

The Politics of Inauthenticity

John McCain's victory over Mitt Romney in Florida, 36% to 31%, was a severe blow to the Mitt Romney campaign. In a state in which no independent or crossover voting was allowed, and in which 68% of Republican voters told exit pollsters that they were either "enthusiastic" or "satisfied" with the Bush administration, Romney had hoped that he would establish himself as the conservative's choice. It didn't happen. The outcome also humbled the many pundits who said that if the voters gave priority to the economy, Romney would win, and if they chose the Iraq War as the nation's major issue, McCain would win. Such conventional wisdom turned out to be flat wrong. Exit polls showed that 45% of voters judged the economy to be the central issue of the campaign, as compared to 14% who gave priority to the war. The conventional wisdom notwithstanding, McCain beat Romney comfortably in both groups.

What does this mean? First, it means that voters don't choose their candidate based on simplistic binary logic ("I'm worried about the economy, therefore I'll vote for Romney"); it also indicates to me that predictions of how people will vote based on a catalogue of issues always omits one of the most significant variables in voter decision-making, that of character. It is the character issue that dogs Romney in this campaign. Support for Romney is compromised by the perception that he has reinvented himself as a Reagan Republican specifically for this election. Throughout the 2008 campaign, Romney will continue to be burdened by the perception of him as inauthentic. When people joke that Romney is "too perfect," when pundits confide in us that "all the candidates dislike Romney," it is not simply a reference to his perfect hair and great wealth. Rather, it is a reference to fact that there is a broad perception of him as plastic, as having no ethical center, as an empty vessel that morphs and panders to every constituency that he faces.

I had my own epiphany about Mitt Romney during the Republican YouTube debate in November in St. Petersburg, Florida. During that debate, a 72 year old retired Brigadier General named Keith Kerr, who is an openly gay man, discussed his exemplary 43 year career in the military, and challenged the Republican candidates to explain why they felt that openly gay individuals should not serve in the military. What followed was an predictable series of platitudes by the candidates about "unit cohesion" and "morale." Then, however, debate moderator Anderson Cooper surprised Romney with the following question:

"Governor Romney, you stated in 1994 that you looked forward to the day when gays and lesbians could serve 'openly and honestly in our nation's military.'" Do you stand by that?"

After a brief deer in the headlights look that betrayed a feeling of "oh my god, they found that quote from Massachusetts!" Romney said, "this isn't that time, this isn't the time. We're in the middle of a war right now..." Apparently, Romney's humanism toward gays in the military applied only in the event of perpetual peace on earth. Undaunted, Cooper pressed Romney two more times, "But do you still look forward to that time?" Romney then hemmed and hawed and wouldn't recommit to the clear statement that he had made during the Massachusetts campaign in 1994.

It was at that moment that I realized, "Wow, this guy has no core beliefs whatsoever. There is nothing that he believes that he wouldn't reverse if it were politically convenient!" Indeed, if you go back and look and at his statements on abortion, gay rights, gun control, and even Ronald Reagan ("I was an independent during the time of Reagan/Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan/Bush." 1994), his earlier views were each stated with the same unctuous sincerity with which he voices the opposite today. It is precisely because of McCain's image as a stark contrast to Romney's inauthenticity that Republicans who distrust McCain's conservatism are willing to vote for him. McCain has become the default choice.

Hillary Clinton is equally inauthentic as Mitt Romney, but in a somewhat different way. While her core beliefs have generally remained constant over her political life, she shares one fatal flaw with Mitt Romney, an almost complete lack of shame. It was very instructive to watch her on "Face the Nation," the day after losing in South Carolina. Moderator Bob Schieffer began the questioning by asking her:

"Senator Clinton, they often say that we learn more from our losses than we do from our victories. You took a real drubbing last night in South Carolina. What did you learn?"

The question was particularly significant, because Clinton had in essence refused to give a real concession speech the night before after her loss. Concession speeches aren't simply empty acts of courtesy; they are an opportunity for voters to observe a human response from a candidate after adversity. They are a way for the electorate to process and understand what happened in an election, by getting some guidance from the losing candidate. Because Hillary Clinton had not made such an offering the night before, Schieffer was determined to elicit this from her. All he was looking for was something on the order of, "Well Bob, it was a disappointing defeat. We obviously didn't get our message out. We'll do a better job on Super Tuesday." Unfortunately, no such answer was forthcoming. Clinton simply was not going to answer the question. She responded, "Well Bob, I congratulated Barack Obama and thanked the people of South Carolina," and then launched into her stump speech, both avoiding the question, and talking for so long that it was hard for him to ask another question. The seven minute interview became an exercise in futility as Schieffer tried to get Clinton to acknowledge mistakes in the South Carolina campaign, but she was in full denial mode.

It is this penchant for denial, the inability to acknowledge mistakes, the inability to be reflective, and as a result, self-corrective that not only impairs Clinton as a candidate, but makes her a kindred spirit of George W. Bush. Both perceive any acknowledgement of weakness on their part as fatal to their goals, rather than as a normal, positive, human trait. Individuals who cannot acknowledge mistakes are not only prone to making them, they are likely to persist in those mistakes in the face of negative results. The Iraq War in a case in point.

This character flaw in Hillary Clinton was highlighted last night in Florida, as we saw her throwing a faux victory party for a meaningless election. After all, what person of any character and dignity, signs a pledge with her fellow candidates to boycott and invalidate a primary, and then once it takes place, declares herself the winner? You would think she would be above such tactics, but there she was last night, her frozen smile at the ready, taking credit for a win in a primary where nobody campaigned and where no delegates were at stake, now arguing that the election should count! The polite word for this is chutzpah; the more accurate term is Nixonian. It falls to the American people to determine whether, on both sides of the aisle, the politics of inauthenticity will prevail or will be repudiated.

2008-01-27T07:40:00.000-05:00

The Obama Victory in South Carolina

When the South Carolina polls closed at 7PM, MSNBC, armed with all the exit polls, maintained a cautious posture, saying that Obama would win "by a substantial amount." The Associated Press, however, had no such inhibition, calling the contest "a rout" from the outset. It's hard to imagine a more satisfying victory for Obama: His vote total doubled that of Clinton, as he collected 55% of the vote to her 27%. If ever there was a case of "instant karma," this was it. The Clintons had played the role of schoolyard bully during the campaign, and when Obama stood up to them, the South Carolina electorate turned on the Clintons in droves.

In my last blog, I had strongly urged Obama--under attack at the time--to not only fight back vigorously, but also to make character a central part of his critique of the Clintons. To my great satisfaction, he did exactly that in Monday's debate, and surprised a lot of people who had never seen Obama's tougher side. The contentious debate was often messy, loud, and unpretty, and made a lot of observers very uncomfortable. However ugly, it was also very necessary; it was essential for Obama to draw a line in the sand, and show that he had the toughness and resolve to punch back when hit.

The aftermath of the SC debate was a study in media groupthink: A predictable chorus of voices rose up telling us how deplorable the arguing was, how the issues had been ignored, how both candidates had hurt themselves. I disagreed then, I disagree now, and the results of the election validate my view: Despite the media’s universal use of words like "bickering" and "squabbling" to describe the debate, such terms do an injustice to what actually happened. The truth is simply that some things are worth arguing about. When your opponent says that your opposition to the Iraq War is a fairy tale, or accuses you of endorsing Reaganomics when you've spent your political career opposing the Reagan agenda, then you have to fight back. Did the electorate react badly to Obama's newfound toughness? Exit polls from the election suggested that many voters condemned both Clinton and Obama, and that John Edwards may have benefited. However, in this case, I think the polls lie.

Any time you ask the man on the street what he thinks about arguing, displays of temper, or negative campaigning in politics, he will give you what he thinks is the “intelligent” answer: "Oh I think it's terrible. The candidates should be talking about the issues!" Such answers are usually phony. Most voters would be at great pains to give you an issue by issue rundown of the candidates’ positions. Rather, voters make their choices far more impressionistically, and care little about policy nuances. Obama's moxie during the debate in my view, actually enhanced the public view of his resolve, toughness, and depth of character, particularly in the black community.

And what about race, so prominently discussed in the SC campaign? While, Obama has almost perfect pitch politically, I do believe that he made a mistake during the run-up in SC: Obama should have said more clearly and more frequently that his quarrel with the Clintons wasn't about race, it was about honesty. In South Carolina, the role of race was way overplayed, and the extent of the Clintons' dishonesty was much underplayed. When former Chairman of the South Carolina Democratic party, Dick Harpootlian accused the Clintons of behaving like the late Republican hatchetman Lee Atwater, Wolf Blitzer of CNN immediately jumped to the conclusion that Harpootlian was talking about playing the race card. More likely, Harpootlian was talking about the politics of ruthlessness in general, not race per se. After all, does anyone doubt that if Obama were white, and was seriously challenging Hillary for the nomination, that the Clintons would be behaving in exactly the same manner? In keeping with this, I have a campaign slogan for Obama: “It’s about the truth, stupid!” There's a reason why the politics of personal destruction became the norm during the Clinton years, and why many fear going back to that ethos. Bill Clinton was asked by a reporter to comment on the tone of the campaign, and Clinton's response was both honest and very telling: "You think this is a dirty campaign? Man, if you think that, you haven't been in many campaigns."

Obama's victory speech was a thing of beauty. His post-election speech in Iowa had been highly praised, but this one was better, because it also contained the hard lessons that Obama had learned over the past two months. The speech was warm and inspirational, but it was equal parts tough and cautionary, letting his followers know that no one was going to hand him the nomination, and that the campaign would likely get more bitter from here.

A few parting thoughts: The attack ad that the Clintons used, implying that Obama supported “special tax breaks for Wall Street. Running up a $9 trillion debt. Refusing to raise the minimum wage or deal with the housing crisis” may someday be seen as a turning point in this campaign. It was so patently dishonest and sleazy, and generated so much criticism, that Hillary was forced to pull the ad after 24 hours. It’s the closest we may ever see the Clintons to exhibiting shame… Finally, the endorsement that Obama received today from Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg in the New York Times is highly symbolic. While Ted Kennedy has expressed his desire to stay neutral, she is a more than adequate proxy for him. It will be interesting to see if any more big names sign on this week after Obamas's triumph. It's been quite a week. I suspect that the Clintons now view Obama with newfound respect as an adversary; they now know that he can not only sing, he can fight too…

2008-01-21T18:30:00.000-05:00

Obama's Missed Opportunity

The recent detour that the Democratic campaign took into racial politics, was not only unfortunate, it was also avoidable. If Obama had intervened sooner and smarter after Hillary's MLK remarks, he could have framed the the issue in a way that both strengthened his campaign, and avoided the intellectual mud wrestling that eventually took place. Let's review:

The recent fracas began during the New Hampshire debate, during which Hillary--panicked by the polls and by the excitement that Obama was generating--made a desperate statement during the debate, when she told Obama that he shouldn't be giving people "false hopes" about what was possible. This, coming from a Democrat, was a truly extraordinary statement, since hope and idealism are the mother's milk of the Democratic party. Obama should have immediately addressed this comment forcefully, decrying the cynicism of Hillary's remark, and playing up its incompatibility with the ideals of the Democratic Party. After all, what serious Democratic candidate disses the notion of hope, except one who is anxious to score a point at any cost? Instead, Obama soft-peddled the issue, only later making academic references to the role of hope in the American Revolution, the women's suffrage movement, and the civil rights movement. It was the latter comment by Obama that provoked Hillary, at great pains to win the argument, to minimize the role of Martin Luther King, and to play up that of Lyndon Johnson.

Hillary's comments about Martin Luther King were a major gaffe, not because her remark represented some underlying racism. Rather, it was a gaffe because it represented another cynical attempt to win the argument at any cost, to get in the last word. In truth, Hillary has the same appreciation of the role of Martin Luther King that all Democrats have. However, in her zeal to chip away at Obama's inspirational message it suddernly became necessary to minimize MLK's role in the Civil Rights Act, so she took her shot. Her statement was outrageous not because she believed it, but because she didn't believe it. It is this cynicism, this willingness to say anything to score a political point that has recently characterized the Clinton campaign, and which plays into the worst stereotypes of the Clintons. This should have been a major teaching opportunity for Obama to educate the voters not about racism, but about opportunism and cynicism. He didn't take it.

In a similar example, when Bill Clinton went to Hanover, New Hampshire and told students that Obama had told the New York Times in 2004 that he didn't know how he would have voted on the war resolution, Clinton knew full well that it was a fib. A look at the NY Times story shows this. Here are Obama's words: ''What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.'' By leaving out the last sentence, Clinton managed to turn Obama's statement upside down, and create a false impression. Once again, this should have been a powerful teaching opportunity for Obama to contrast for the voters the "old politics" vs. the "new politics."

Indeed, many voters still aren't sure what Obama means when he discusses the old and new politics. Well here was a paradigm case: The difference between old and new politics isn't how fast you would withdraw troops from Iraq, or how many citizens would receive health care under your plan. Rather, the new politics is about campaigning--and governing-- based on a set of strong principles that one adheres to even under difficult circumstances. The new politics is about speaking honestly about your opponent even when it would be convenient to do otherwise. Obama should be pointing out repeatedly that the candidate who uses falsehoods throughout the campaign will also have no compunction about fudging the truth once he or she is in office. And he should be taking every opportunity to point out the Clinton distortions and mischaracterizations, not one by one and piece by piece, but rather as a broad and corrupt campaign strategy in which anything goes as long as it works politically.

In doing so, Barack would also accomplish a second important goal, that of showing that he is up to the fight. No one gains the White House unless they have some serious fight in them, and currently there are many in the country who question whether Obama has the stomach to go the distance. He needs to demonstrate clearly that being an idealist and being a fighter are in no way incompatible. He needs to show that he can stand up when necessary and say to his opponent, "Your campaign is based a set of serial distortions that speak volumes about your character." And Obama has to stop worrying about coming across as "nice." At this point in the campaign, it's not as much about manners as it is moxie.

2006-02-21T06:33:00.000-05:00

Dick Cheney and the "Oprah Defense"

From the chaotic and destructive response to those Danish cartoons, we can glean two powerful insights: 1) Cartoons can sometimes pack a greater wallop than written criticism; 2) It is often more hurtful to be mocked than to be simply criticized. The Islamic rioters realized what most politicians come to know, that few things in life sting more than being broadly lampooned.

It is one of the hazards of political life that the powerful are often undone not by large, spectacular misdeeds, but rather by small, seemingly trivial acts that subject them to ridicule. Such small actions take on a larger-than-life, metaphorical meaning when they happen to correspond to some suspected flaw in the individual’s character. The perceived flaw may be well-known and openly discussed, or it may be some vague unspoken impression that the public has formed about an individual. Once that public intuition has set in, it may take only a small stumble to trigger massive ridicule that leaves a lasting impression.

A perfect example of this is the case of presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. In 1988, Dukakis was running as a can-do guy, a competent technocrat, the author of the “Massachusetts Miracle,” an economic recovery in the state that he had governed. By September of 1988, Dukakis’ image has slipped significantly. He was increasingly seen as a bland, ineffectual figure with questionable leadership ability. Seeking to fix his sinking image, Dukakis traveled to a General Dynamics plant in Michigan, and proceeded to hop into an Abrams MI tank with a combat helmet on. The resulting photo was so unbecoming, so wimpy (some likened him to Snoopy) so absurd that Dukakis became an instant laughingstock. Unwittingly, he had created his own “living cartoon,” and had confirmed the public’s worst suspicions about him.

Likewise, Dan Quayle veered into cartoonland the day that he traveled to Munoz Rivera School in 1992 for a photo op at an inner city school in Trenton, New Jersey. While participating in a student spelling bee, Quayle made the mistake of trusting an erroneous flashcard which had added an “e” to the word potato. When a student had spelled the word properly, Quayle interjected that an “e” was missing. Quayle’s gaffe became a world-wide story and a defining moment in his political career. Had the same stumble occurred to a politician who was respected for his intellect, it would have been a one-day story. However, in Quayle’s case it became another “living cartoon” that was so powerful that Quayle felt compelled to devote an entire chapter to it in his autobiography, “Standing Firm.”

The discussion of Quayle—or should I say quail—segues perfectly into the latest episode of a vice-president creating his own cartoon, that of Dick Cheney. As suggested earlier, a misdeed only becomes a cartoon only when it serves to highlight some deep public intuition about an individual. The hunting incident in which Cheney shot friend and fellow hunter Harry Whittington exemplifies this dynamic in a much more complex way than the aforementioned examples. This is not simply a case of “this guy is a wimp” or “this guy is dumb.” Rather, the Cheney shooting incident works on multiple levels and speaks volumes about not only Dick Cheney, but his boss as well. The first theme that emerges from the incident is about truth-telling vs. denial. The NY Times put it best:

“The vice president appears to have behaved like a teenager who thinks that if he keeps quiet about the wreck, no one will notice that the family car is missing its right door.”

The image of Cheney, in the aftermath, avoiding meetings with Senate colleagues, slipping out side doors, ducking all press contact, is a horrible reflection on his ability to accept responsibility, to communicate honestly with his constituents, in short to be a stand-up guy. Indeed there is broad suspicion out there that if host Katherine Armstrong had not reported the shooting, Cheney might have attempted to cover it up completely. The Times’ use of the image of a teenager is very apt here; there is something shockingly non-adult about the Cheney response to this mishap. Worse though, it is a perfect analogue to Cheney’s behavior since 9/11. Throughout the Bush tenure, Dick Cheney has inhabited an alternate universe, refusing to recognize facts that have long since become clear to the rest of us: Has anyone ever heard Cheney renounce his statement that we would be greeted with flowers in Iraq? Two years into the war he was still trying to defend this statement on Meet the Press. Long after any Saddam-Al Qaeda connection had been debunked, Cheney was still making the rounds spreading the administration fantasy that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had met with Iraqi officials in Prague. Cheney never met a fact that he couldn’t ignore or deny. Has anyone ever heard him acknowledge the folly of his 2005 statement on CNN, “I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." Of course not, because tough guys like Dick Cheney don’t do corrections or apologies.

Another way of putting it is that neither Cheney nor his boss is prone to any reflection, a serious handicap for leaders in a complex world that requires constant adjustments on the fly. The lead-footed response to Katrina, the tendency to pretend that officials who have failed miserably have somehow succeeded (e.g., George Tenet, Tommy Franks, Paul Bremer, Michael Brown), the history of bad judgment compounded by excessive secrecy, the lack of any sense of obligation to all citizens of the country—all of these things are illuminated by Cheney’s post-shooting behavior.

So far, however, these flaws of Dick Cheney seem more tragic than comic. The cartoonish aspect of the incident comes from two additional features: First there is the obvious “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” metaphor. The fact that Cheney, the grim, devoted, anti-terrorist can’t even shoot at a covey of quail without endangering those around him is painfully funny to those of us who feel like we’ve been taking birdshot from this guy for six years.

But the most hilarious aspect is the incident was Cheney’s explanation for his behavior: He was just too sensitive a guy to face the public right away. That’s right, Cheney is actually offering an Oprah defense to explain his inappropriate behavior: He was too emotional, too upset to do the right thing; at core, he’s just too sensitive a guy. The interesting thing about Cheney’s self-defense is that, in my view, he’s telling the truth! I believe that after the shooting, Cheney was embarrassed, ashamed, mortified, and wanted to find a hole to crawl into. Who wouldn't? The problem is, when a public official who is “adult” feels this way, he stands up and faces the music, as John Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, looked for a hole and crawled into it, revealing himself to be what was long suspected, one of the many warrior-wimps in this administration. Cheney, like so many neo-cons, is the guy who got five draft deferments to avoid the military, but insists that everyone else go fight. If he is incapable of facing the public after this blunder, what level of honesty can we expect from him concerning a real war where 2,500 men and women have been killed and where 17,000 have been maimed?

Dick Cheney’s presentation of himself as a tough guy, a no-nonsense leader who knows realpolitik, has given way to that of an adolescent who runs away after hitting the baseball through the picture window. It is the fraudulence of Cheney’s image that is so painfully funny, that created such a classic and instant lampoon.

Finally, as I watched Cheney flounder through this episode, he kept reminding me of someone. Finally I figured out who it was: His fellow Wyomingers, the cowboys from Brokeback Mountain! Those two fellows were Cheney prototypes: Terse, tough, competent on the outside, chaotic, troubled, and confused on the inside. The difference is, those two guys had the whole weight of the society against them. What’s Cheney’s excuse?

2005-12-24T06:20:00.000-05:00

Does Bush Really Believe in Democracy?

Four years ago, when George W. Bush peered into Vladmir Putin’s soul and found a kindred spirit, there was broad amusement at the president’s gooey take on the Russian leader. Little did we know then the irony in Bush’s observation: Since that time, the governing styles of both men have followed a distinctly undemocratic arc. The disclosure of unauthorized domestic spying by the National Security Agency is the latest in a series of power grabs by the Bush White House, which cumulatively threaten to rise to a constitutional crisis.

When the domestic spying issue first came to light, one obvious question arose from all quarters: Why would the president conduct unlawful spying on American citizens, when he could he could have easily gone to the FISA (Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court, which had been set up precisely for that purpose? Senator Joe Biden, one of the original drafters of the FISA Act in 1978, was asked this very question by Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, Sunday:

Sen. BIDEN: I just don't get it. He already has the authority under the FISA court to go in and intercept anything he wants up to 72 hours. This is neither, I think, legal, nor is it necessary what he's been doing. It is a little bit frightening how broadly he asserts his authority as commander in chief, where the guy hasn't shown very good judgment on torture or a lot of other things.

SCHIEFFER: What you're saying, though, in your view, that he has broken the law. Why would he do that, Senator?

Sen. BIDEN: Well, why would he do what he did on torture? Why would he have, you know, gone outside the Geneva Convention? Why would he have put us in that spot? The judgment of this operation has not been very good, and we're rushing to judgment on these things. And if he needed a change in the FISA court, all he had to do is contact the Congress.

Biden’s confusion over Bush behavior made perfect sense at the time. That is, until we subsequently learned more about the nature of the domestic spying. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on December 21, former Deputy Director of the CIA, John McLaughlin, let the cat out of the bag:

BLITZER: …correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't there a different standard for… a FISA court wiretap, as opposed to the kind of wiretaps that the president had authorized without court orders? MCLAUGHLIN: …for FISA you need probable cause that someone is involved in terrorism in order to get -- or in some illegal activity to get the warrant. With the activity that NSA was carrying out, the trigger was somewhat softer. You needed something to the effect of a reasonable reason to believe that the person was involved in some kind of illegal activity or terrorist activity.

Notice the euphemism that McLaughlin slips in, that of a “somewhat softer” threshold for a non-FISA wiretap. What McLaughlin really means is that Bush and company created their own new wiretapping standard, which enabled them to run roughshod over the protections built into the FISA Act. In the Bush universe, checks and balances are for wusses. In order to vanquish the terrorists, we need to act more like the terrorists.

When the White House didn’t like the existing domestic spying law, rather than go to Congress and get it modified to meet current technology and new security demands, the Bush team simply chose to ignore the law. The executive branch disregarded all need for judicial oversight, and began to wiretap American citizens without supervision. All this, despite the fact that the FISA court traditionally has shown great deference to the executive branch in authorizing wiretaps. The problem for the Bush administration was that the FISA court, however permissive, still operates under the standard of “probable cause.” Therefore, the president would have to establish a probable link between an American citizen and Al Qaeda before the court would permit electronic surveillance. The Bush team clearly had a different idea. They wanted to set up an electronic dragnet, to go on a fishing expedition—unmonitored, unrestricted—one that those persnickety judges would have found unacceptable.

Indeed, the recent resignation and apparent protest by FISA court judge James Robertson, has given rise to an additional theory of administration mischief: Some are now suggesting that the NSA modus operandi was to conduct widespread, unauthorized eavesdropping, only to later go to the FISA court if it thought it had something useful, using the ill-gotten evidence to make its case. There is much speculation that Judge Robertson quit because he felt that the unlawful methods of the NSA had tainted the entire FISA process. Such tactics by the NSA would be a bit like a police unit breaking into homes indiscriminately, seizing evidence, and then later using that evidence to ask for a search warrant.

Nor is it reassuring to hear former CIA official McLaughlin claim, “This was an extraordinarily valuable tool for filling in a lot of blanks in our intelligence collection.” I will agree with him on one point: It is true that if we suspended civil liberties in the U.S, allowed for no-knock searches of homes, stopped people on the street and frisked them randomly, we would uncover more criminal activity. The former Soviet Union proved convincingly that by ignoring human rights, you can minimize crime. However, who would want to live in such a society? If George Bush wants to preempt the Fourth Amendment, his obligation is to go to Congress and address this matter.

However, my problem with Bush isn’t simply this latest example of the trampling of civil liberties. My problem is that from the start, he has never understood what was needed to combat terrorism. This war can never be won by simply squashing the adversary militarily. From the get-go, Bush has conducted the war on terror as if it were a traditional battle with a nation-state, as if by killing enough insurgents or seizing enough territory, we could achieve victory. This mindset gave rise to such dumb public relations stunts as the “terrorist deck of cards,” with regular updates on how many of the “cards” had been captured. What Bush never grasped was that unless and until the right diplomatic and political foundation is laid, terrorists are a vast and infinitely renewable resource. Indeed, if we found out tomorrow that Osama bin Laden were dead, it would make no difference to the magnitude of global terrorism.

For years we have grossly overplayed the challenge that global terrorism poses to our military, and have underplayed the challenge that it poses to our moral and spiritual resources. The war on terror can’t be won simply with bunker-busting bombs. Rather, any military success must be fortified by a steadfast adherence to democratic principles. The war on terror has repeatedly forced us to reevaluate how much we really believe in these principles, and how firmly we embrace them. It is in this area that the Bush administration has failed so miserably. Instead of demonstrating to the world that even in times of uncertainty and stress, we believe so strongly in human dignity and the rule of law that we embrace these principles even when we know that our adversary does not, George Bush has consistently regarded democratic checks and balances as wimpy and annoying inconveniences.

From the moment that 9/11 occurred, the Bush administration has made extraordinary efforts to chip away at core democratic institutions and values. Everything from specious legal arguments to circumvent the Geneva Conventions, to kidnapping individuals on foreign soil, to holding detainees incommunicado, to mocking and degrading detainees’ religious beliefs, to arguing that “torture doesn’t work” while simultaneously demanding that the CIA be allowed to use it, the administration’s response to terrorism has been a horror show. The human rights failings of the Bush administration have stripped us of any moral high ground, have embarrassed the nation, and have made us look like hypocrites on the subject of democracy. Such failings have made our task far more difficult throughout the world. Indeed, it is now apparent that following Abu Ghraib, the whole character of the Iraqi resistance changed, as we had stoked the flames of the insurgency by playing to the worst stereotypes of American conduct.

Beyond the Bush missteps on human rights, there is an additional fact that is rarely discussed, but needs to be said: Despite the great unease that Americans have felt since 9/11, despite the further possibility of attacks on our soil, we are among the least vulnerable nations in the world. We have no enemies on our borders, and are separated from the breeding ground of terrorism by a gigantic ocean. While attacking the U.S. may represent a bigger “prize” than, say, Spain, England, France, Saudi Arabia, or Bali, we are infinitely less accessible than those other countries. And when we sometimes feel unsafe, we should compare our situation with that of two countries who share a border, have a disputed territory, and have nuclear weapons (Pakistan and India), or a country with vicious insurgents (Sri Lanka), or countries wracked by both poverty and sectarian friction (much of the Middle East). These nations are infinitely more at-risk than we are, yet we expect them to abide by appropriate standards of human rights. If we can’t abide by civilized notions of conduct, how do we expect them to do so? If we can’t maintain a respect for the rule of law in our relatively comfortable circumstances, how do we ask it of Pinochet, Milosevic, Syria, or the strongmen who run Burma? It is easy to embrace the rule of law when things are going smoothly; the test of a democracy is embracing the rule of law in times of trouble.

Every time Dick Cheney shoots off his mouth about our need to leave open the torture option, every time a story emerges about an innocent German citizen kidnapped off the streets and flown to Kabul to be tortured by the CIA, every time Condoleeza Rice looks an interviewer in the eye and says, “I’m not a lawyer, but the Constitution allows the president to wiretap American citizens,” we look less like a great nation, and more like a confused and corrupt superpower. And that’s a hell of a poor way to win over the hearts and minds of the world community.

2005-11-05T11:22:00.000-05:00

Rove, Libby, and the Right-Wing Talking Heads

Even the most hardened political observer had to be stunned by the Republican efforts at damage control following the five-count indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby. In the past week, the usual spin was delivered with such cynicism that it descended to new levels of intellectual dishonesty. Let us take a look at what some of the prominent Republican apologists were saying last week:

1) Deborah Orin, editor, New York Post. Certainly one of the more shameless commentaries of the week came from New York Post editor Deborah Orin, while interviewed by Chris Matthews on Hardball. Clearly Orin had decided with respect to Leakgate, that the best defense of the administration was a good offense, with no regard for factual accuracy. Here is Orin:

“it appears that contrary to what a lot of people would like to claim, Valerie Plame was not a covert agent, nor was she outed…She was not covert. She was not covert. If she had been covert, there was law they could have charged under.”

At this point, an incredulous Matthews interjected, asking why an outraged CIA would have referred the matter to the Justice Department in the first place, if Plame’s status was not undercover. Responded Orin: “I'm saying that it is very unclear whether the CIA was telling the truth…”

So there you have it. According to Deborah Orin, the culprit here was not an irresponsible and malicious White House, but rather a dishonest CIA. This theme of blaming the CIA for White House corruption was first sounded on Meet the Press by pundit William Safire:

“…the most important thing is the whole basis of the political charge that came out of the CIA, which was desperate to try to cover up its own mistakes and its own huge failure in this case, this was an attempt by the CIA to get a Justice Department investigation of a law that had not been prosecuted in--once, perhaps in 25 years. And everybody is walking around thinking, 'Well, you see? There was a conspiracy to undermine or uncover an agent.' Well, there wasn't. It was not. And he said it very clearly. And so I think we ought to keep that in mind.”

So from the Orin/Safire perspective, there was a conspiracy, not by the White House, but astonishingly, by the CIA to misreport Plame’s status, with the goal of turning itself into sympathetic agency, at the expense of the White House. Fortunately, we have an impartial referee to whom we can turn on the matter of Valerie Plame’s status. Here is what Patrick Fitzgerald had to say in his press conference:

“Before I talk about those charges [against Libby] and what the indictment alleges, I'd like to put the investigation into a little context. Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but it was not widely known outside the intelligence community. Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life. The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well- known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It's important that a CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security. Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003.”

Fitzgerald couldn’t have put it an more clearly in his press conference: Valerie Plame was an undercover agent, who cover was “blown,” both by Robert Novak and those who passed the information to him. And yet, even in the face of Fitzgerald’s crystal clear statement, Deborah Orin, not to be deterred, brought out the right wing canard that “everyone in town knew about Valerie Plame:

“how come Hugh Sidey [Washington Editor of Time Magazine] submitted an affidavit trying to keep Matt Cooper from having to testify that said everybody in Washington knew it?”

Huh? The fact that Sidey was grasping at straws, trying to keep his employee out of jail, hardly proves that there was any merit to his claim. To all those who allege—and they pop up repeatedly on FOX News—that Valerie Plame’s spy status was an open secret, I only have one thing to say: Name me one unauthorized person who knew Valerie Plame’s identity. I don’t need twenty; I don’t need a hundred, just one. I’d like to hear from that person.

2) William Safire, New York Times. As noted earlier, Bill Safire, the gold standard of Republican apologists, was in full throat on Meet the Press last week, offering this assessment of the Scooter Libby indictment:

“…everybody is walking around thinking, ‘Well, you see? There was a conspiracy to undermine or uncover an agent.’ Well, there wasn't. It was not. And he [Fitzgerald] said it very clearly. And so I think we ought to keep that in mind.”

Actually, Bill, Patrick Fitzgerald said nothing of the sort. Simply because the conduct of White House officials did not rise to the level of a criminal offense does not mean that there wasn’t a broad White House attempt to expose Valerie Plame. Safire’s remarks are akin to saying, “We all know that Al Capone was only convicted on tax evasion, so we can all rest assured that he never extorted any money, or killed anyone.” Further, it is worth remembering that presumed spy and right wing whipping boy Alger Hiss was never convicted of espionage, only perjury. Safire’s remarks notwithstanding, every common sense understanding of Leakgate tells us that there was a White House conspiracy afoot. Not a conspiracy that met all the standards of a federal criminal statute perhaps, but one despicable enough for the White House to try to hide it.

There are two provisions within the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 that make it devilishly difficult on which to convict someone. First, it is important to note that the law was principally designed to protect agents overseas. While not explicit in the statute, the legislative history of the law dictates that in order to fall under the law, an agent must have served overseas within the last five years. If an otherwise clandestine agent has been back in the U.S. on rotation for over five years, any scoundrel who acts to expose that agent can take legal refuge in that technicality. In such a case, while criminal sanctions would not arise, does that make the exposure any less heinous? Hardly. Secondly, based on the statute, the individual who outs the agent must clearly be aware of the agent’s covert status. Hence, the person who does the outing can get much legal mileage out of professing confusion as to the agent’s status. It was most likely through these two loopholes that Libby, Rove, and the rest of the White House, caught a break from the Special Prosecutor.

A few final words about the Plame case. Columnist Robert Novak not only exposed Plame’s identity, he maliciously took it one step further and named the front company that she used in her cover [note: If she were not covert, why would she even need a front company?]. It is likely that other agents scattered around the globe used that same company name for their cover. If true, the outing of Valerie Plame immediately tipped off hostile elements overseas as to whom our covert operatives were. Since these operatives would likely be, like Valerie Plame, “NOC’s”—those working with nonofficial cover—they would be completely on their own if found out by a hostile government, a truly frightening thought. While we will never know the extent of the damage caused by the leak, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame’s husband, recently pointed out on “60 Minutes” one additional repercussion from Leakgate. Because Wilson had served as Ambassador to several countries while his wife worked covertly for the CIA, as a result of the outing of Valerie Plame, no wives in our diplomatic corps will ever be viewed again in the same benign manner.

3) David Brooks. Let us conclude with David Brooks, the right-leaning New York Times columnist, who perhaps won the “Pollyanna of the week” award with his comments on Meet the Press:

“the American people have to know that the wave of hysteria, the wave of paranoia, the wave of charges and allegations about Karl Rove and everybody else so far is unsupported by the facts. So what we have is a serious indictment of a senior government official, but we do not have a cancer on the presidency.”

Oh yes we do, David, oh yes we do.

2005-10-30T08:17:00.000-05:00

Leakgate: The Cover-up vs. the Crime

Throughout the CIA leak investigation, pundits have raised the question repeatedly, “Why would White House officials lie and obstruct justice?” Hadn’t they learned by this time the age-old principle that it is the cover-up that gets you in more trouble than the original misdeed? For all the head-scratching that is going on in Washington, there is a clear explanation for the cover-up of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby (not to mention George Bush and Scott McClellan), an explanation that contradicts the conventional wisdom. Simply put, there was a method to their madness:

1) The Myth of the Cover-up vs. the Crime. One writer summed up the behavior of the Bush administration this way: “It seems nobody learned the most profound lesson of Watergate: the cover-up is worse than the crime.” But is it really? There is a rather straightforward reason why government officials rarely adopt the strategy of timely truth-telling: Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, telling the truth can also get you in major trouble. Let’s look closely at the circumstances surrounding Leakgate. The actions of Libby and Rove are typically discussed in terms of a turf battle between the White House and the CIA, in terms of the frantic efforts of the administration to prop up arguments for WMD, and in terms of a blame game between different government agencies. While all the factors may have contributed to a culture of fibbing, the most powerful factor motivating the Bush administration is almost never mentioned: The upcoming 2004 presidential election. Nowadays, with the campaign a dim memory, and the election a fait accompli, we forget how tense, uncertain and dramatic the run-up to the election was.

In the summer of 2003, it was crucial to the Bush Administration to establish itself as the party of patriotism and counterterrorism, as the preeminent guardian of national security. When Leakgate first surfaced, critics of the administration pounced on the obvious hypocrisy of a leadership that claimed to be serving the national security, but was willing to play fast and loose with the identity of a CIA operative. In February of 2004, I wrote about the political problems of the Bush reelection campaign, predicting that the president would soon take devastating public relations hit “when the grand jury indicts someone from his administration for outing Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, a covert agent in the CIA. Scott McClellan, White House Press Secretary, and Mary Matalin, former advisor to Vice President Cheney have already been called before a grand jury. This case may soon explode on several levels…” At the time, I expected such actions to be imminent. Little did I know that the case would take two years to unravel.

Imagine the impact on the presidential election if in February, March, May, or in the summer of 2004, if the administration had simply told the truth. It was on June 10, 2004 that Bush made his famous--and disingenuous-- pledge to fire anyone in his administration responsible for the leak. At the time he expressed both outrage at the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity, and ignorance about its source. Had the administration simply come clean on the leak, as conventional wisdom would dictate, it would have had a nuclear impact on the 2004 election. The soon-to-be-named Democratic nominee—John Kerry—would have gained a significant foothold in the “I’m tougher and more patriotic than you are” debate that served as the core of the presidential campaign. If the top aides of the President and Vice President were definitively known to have leaked Valerie Plame’s identity, and worse, were known to be in the Special Prosecutor’s crosshairs, the entire campaign would have been turned on its head. Bush and Cheney would have lost their most valued advisors, would have suffered a great loss of credibility, and with a shift of a few votes in Ohio, John Kerry may have won the election. The mission of the Bush administration was a simple one: Kick the can down the road long enough to at least make it through the election. And if Libby, and possibly Rove, had to fall on their swords later, in 2005, or 2006, wouldn’t that be a small price to pay for winning the election?

2) The Melting Away of Reporters’ Privilege. Given the boundless cynicism of the Bush team, the false statements that Libby and Rove made to both the FBI and (under oath) to the grand jury, were nourished by their expectation that their journalistic contacts would hold fast and refuse to unmask them. Indeed, the entire administration played, used, and conned the journalistic fraternity, ultimately playing the angle that the reporters would not give up their sources. How else does one explain Scooter Libby’s howler to the grand jury that it was Tim Russert of Meet the Press who told him about Valerie Plame? Russert and NBC resisted giving information to the prosecutor—for about a minute—and then soundly debunked Libby’s lie, telling prosecutor Fitzgerald that Valerie Plame’s name had never even come up in Russert’s conversation with Libby. If that wasn’t clear enough, Russert subsequently repeated this fact on Meet the Press.

Probably the first reporter to cooperate with the prosecutor was the scoundrel who first made Plame’s name public, Robert Novak, whose craven silence throughout this episode will serve as a further blight on his reputation. However, it was a full two years into the investigation, in June of this year, that Time Magazine’s Matthew Cooper agreed to testify, after litigating the matter and losing before U.S. Court of Appeals. The last holdout was New York Times writer Judith Miller, who, in going to jail for 85 days, positioned herself as a model of journalistic integrity. Ironically, Miller’s conduct during the Leakgate saga—misleading editors, refusing to let editors see her notes, and arranging with Scooter Libby to intentionally misidentify him as a “former hill staffer”—is now seen as so ethically flawed that NY Times Ombudsman Byron Calame recently wrote, “It seems to me that whatever the limits are put on her, the problems facing her inside and outside the newsroom will make it difficult for her to return to the paper as a reporter.” I have said this before, and I’ll say it again: Journalistic privilege is not, nor should it be, absolute, and Patrick Fitzgerald did a service to all of us by distinguishing between the journalistic protection of worthy whistle-blowers, and that of scoundrels, by distinguishing between insignificant legal matters and those of great national moment, and by knowing the difference between a leak that serves the public interest and a Nixonian dirty tricks campaign. The reporters involved in this story both retarded its exposure and also ultimately brought crucial facts to light. Initially, however, the principle of journalistic privilege gave Scooter Libby the false hope that he could concoct, in Fiztgerald’s words “a compelling story” that would never be contradicted.

While prosecutor Fitzgerald says that most of his work has been completed, there is still much for journalists to do. Scant mention has been made either by the prosecutor, or by the press of the role of the President in Leakgate. With respect to Bush’s involvement, there remain two stark options: Either his lieutenants lied to him over a period of months and years, or he has known for some time who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame. If Bush knew, he owes the nation an explanation for his silence in this matter. If Rove and Libby lied to him, by what rationale does Karl Rove continue to serve in the White House? I dearly hope—but don’t expect—that the case of Scooter Libby will go all the way to trial, with no plea bargain. The witness list alone, not to mention the testimony, will be riveting.

2005-09-14T18:19:00.000-04:00

What We Learned from Katrina

The long-term significance of Hurricane Katrina has been summed up with simple eloquence by Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourner’s magazine: "Sometimes it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster.” It goes without saying that the recent disaster on the Gulf Coast turned a powerful microscope on the nation’s social ills. The shame that Americans have been experiencing in Katrina’s aftermath is both deep and broad in scope. The core cause of this shame was the recognition that we could not administer properly to our own citizens in a time of crisis. That shame however, was aggravated by the knowledge that this failure was visible to the rest of the world in the form of wretched poverty, starving individuals, and dead bodies floating for days in pools of water. Ironically, even the well-meant offers of aid that poured in from other nations added to our embarrassment, as we were forced to see our international image as that of a crippled, helpless giant. From the perspective of the Bush administration, is there anything worse than having Venezuela offer us aid? Finally, our shame has been magnified by viewing the deep pockets of poverty that were revealed in New Orleans. This “underclass,” usually an abstraction, whose concrete reality is hidden from us, suddenly came into startlingly plain view, with its conditions of hopelessness, starvation, and despair; conditions so powerful on our television screens that we could almost reach out and touch them.

Jim Wallis’ point however, goes further. His statement suggests that the poor of New Orleans were experiencing a disaster long before Katrina ever hit. Katrina’s role was to force all of us to observe the city’s destitute citizens, huddled within one building, in a manner so poignant and riveting that this time we could not turn away from them. And once we had seen the poor of New Orleans, the cat was out of the bag: The poverty wasn’t just about one delta city. Rather, it was a metaphor for the poor all over the country, people without means, without stable employment, without political voice, who constantly exist only one hardship away from catastrophe. Our moral imperative now was to do something about it.

What about the racial and class dimensions to Katrina? Beyond the fact that the black and the poor live in the most flood-vulnerable sections of New Orleans, did race and class affect the vigor of the federal response to the disaster? I think the answer is clearly, yes. However unpleasant the thought, the longstanding history of the nation is that we have consistently failed to value the lives of all citizens equally. Rather, our valuation of life and death has chronically been tainted by all sorts of factors: race, social class, professional status, intelligence, attractiveness, etc. Take the case of the disappearance of white, blonde, 18 year old Natalee Holloway in Aruba. However compelling and newsworthy, Holloway’s disappearance generated a media response 100 times greater than that of any person of color who has ever been listed as missing. Indeed, while names like Holloway and Jon Benet Ramsey come easily to mind as objects of national concern, few people can name any such African-American victim.

In another recent example, the billions of dollars paid out to survivors of 9/11—however appropriate and right-minded—have left Oklahoma City survivors scratching their heads. It is hard to make a case that the suffering of 9/11 survivors is any more compelling, or worthy of compensation than that of Oklahoma City survivors. And yet, as a nation we made exactly that determination. In part, this was because the 9/11 disaster felt more national in scope; we all felt that we had a stake in a tragedy wrought by a foreign enemy. But beyond that rationale, I believe that the nation made a reflexive judgment that because the fallen of 9/11 were prominent, the leaders of industry, the best and the brightest, their deaths were more tragic, more compelling, and more valuable than those of the fallen in the Federal Building of Oklahoma City. And if Oklahomans feel that this judgment reflects class distinctions, I would not disagree with them. Nor am I saying that such distinctions are conscious, or the result of some conspiracy; rather they are collective judgments that are made almost unconsciously.

And so it was with the victims of Hurricane Katrina. No one in the Bush administration said, “Heck, they’re just poor black people. Let’s just sit on our hands for awhile.” There was no conspiracy against the citizens of New Orleans. No one was out to get them. Instead, the blunder was passive: No one in the federal government was attentive enough to see the magnitude of the suffering, and for three days, authorities did not act in a way that was proportionate to the disaster. Much has been made of the non-response to Katrina as showing a lack of preparedness for a terrorist attack. One commentator on CNN said, “If it had been a terrorist attack, the response would have been equally inadequate.” I disagree. Had it been a terrorist attack, the federal government would have seen it from the get-go as a national rather than regional concern. The response would have been immediate, massive, and robust. By contrast, the poor people huddled in the Superdome, or stranded on rooftops simply did not trigger the same urgency.

Are there any silver linings in this massive cloud? Yes, the renewal of concern about poverty in the nation is one silver lining. In fact, we’re already seeing a conservative push back on this issue. George Will wrote disdainfully two days ago of the “$6.6 trillion of anti-poverty spending,” disbursed since 1964. In dismissing the notion that we should renew our anti-poverty efforts, Will offers his three rules for combating poverty:

“Graduate from high school, don't have a baby until you are married, don't marry while you are a teenager. Among people who obey those rules, poverty is minimal.”

Well that pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? In the world of George Will, poverty could be ended next week if only those irresponsible poor people would just shape up. Perhaps the lone role of the federal government then would be to hand out cue cards carrying Will’s words of wisdom. Because I live in the real world, I know that even Will’s goals can only be attained with the help of significant support from the federal government. Allow me to offer my own three rules for combating poverty:

1) Create a genuine livable wage floor for all citizens. Each time there is a proposal to put the minimal wage on a par with inflation, businesses kick and scream that recessionary unemployment will result. Once the raise occurs, however, the sky does not fall, and the dire predictions turn out to be fiction. Give the working poor a livable wage!

2) Pass universal health care. We don’t feel appropriate shame about the 45 million people without insurance, because, like the underclass of New Orleans, we can’t see or comprehend the misery. Provision of health care to all citizens is not only the just thing, in the long run it’s the economical thing.

3) Most importantly, disconnect the public school system from each community’s property taxes. The notion that rich communities are entitled to quality schools, commensurate with sizable property values, and poor communities are entitled to inferior schools as a result of their own tax base, is an outrage. If we based the quality of a community’s water, plumbing, and electrical grid on their tax base, there would be a storm of protest. Yet, we accept uncritically the notion that manifestly unequal funding of public schools is a just system. Create a level playing field for all the public schools in a state!

Hey George, I’ll accept your three rules, if you accept mine.

Finally, many have tried to find some biblical significance in the devastation. I have a more secular take: The natural disaster was a tremendous karmic blow delivered to the Bush administration. Every episode of Bush administration incompetence and posturing during the last five years, every failed attempt at blame-shifting and denial (“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”), every attempt at using ignorance and poor intelligence as a defense (“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees”), every failed attempt at PR (the pathetic, cosmetic flyover in Air Force One), came back to club the administration over the head. The weight of public opinion has been so strong in this case, that Bush could not even follow his usual MO of defending and rewarding incompetence (awarding the Medal of Honor to Bremer, Tenet, and Franks). His breezy attempt to prop up disgraced FEMA head Michael Brown collapsed in a heap only days later. And Bush’s recent acknowledgement—two weeks after the disaster—that the federal government screwed up, is a remarkable departure for him. The fact that Bush actually felt compelled to acknowledge a mistake, truly confirms that a sea change has occurred in attitudes toward the administration. Perhaps that is the real silver lining in the dark cloud of Katrina: Millions of Americans are reevaluating this administration in the fresh knowledge that after the devastation of Katrina, the emperor has no clothes.

2005-08-10T11:42:00.000-04:00

Peter Jennings: An Appreciation

For once I agree with the conventional wisdom: The death of of Peter Jennings at age 67, does mark the end of era. Back in the time of Rather, Brokaw, and Jennings, we took our news hard, straight, no ice, no sugar, no artificial sweetener. Jennings was serious, passionate, and demanding about the news, and the way that it should be presented. It doesn’t surprise me that colleagues at ABC recall what a strict taskmaster he was, and the manner in which all stories were subjected to Jennings’ exacting editing before they made it on the air. I recall during Jennings’ marathon coverage of 9/11, the many times during an exchange with a correspondent that he surprised his counterpart by challenging his or her information, or questioned some piece of speculation. It was reassuring to see. Further, rather than offer those faux ad-libbed questions to correspondents after their reports, that are in fact scripted in advance, Jennings had a different approach. Long time Pentagon correspondent John McWethy ruefully spoke of how Jennings would never tell McWethy in advance what he was going to ask. Recalled McWethy,

“I never had a clue what he was going to ask. He would say, ‘I don’t want you to become stale, McWethy.’ Stale? I often was caught completely off guard. He loved it; I hated it.”

White House correspondent John Cochran had his own anecdote:

“Peter never liked the ties that I wore, and he would call my wife and say, ‘You’ve got to buy him better ties.’ He didn’t do it out of meanness. He just thought that I should look a little spiffier if I was going to be on World News Tonight.”

Jennings’ success was the triumph over all those who believe that worldliness and sophistication were somehow un-American traits. He triumphed over all those media scolds who constantly claimed that he was “biased” and “too liberal” in his views. In fact, I have little doubt that Jennings—like his journalistic forebears Walter Cronkite and Edward R Murrow-- was politically progressive. But it wasn’t ideology that made them great; it was intelligence, passion, hard work, and solid news judgment. He triumphed over the whispering campaign that followed him around, that he was “anti-Israel.” In fact, Jennings realized long before most people did, that the Middle East was not a zero sum game. One side’s success did not mean that the other side automatically lost. He communicated his view that progress would come only when right-wingers in Israel stopped talking wistfully about “greater Judea and Samaria,” and when Palestinians stopped talking about “pushing the Jews into the sea.”

The thing that resonated so strongly with his audience was that underneath the sophistication, underneath the slight Canadian lilt, underneath the good looks, Jennings was decidedly old school. He embodied the classic view that not only does the news matter, but each citizen keeping track of the news matters. From his more than 40 years of broadcasting, perhaps the quintessential footage of Jennings is of him as a 24 year broadcaster for Canadian television, interviewing a disaffected and slightly disheveled young man. “Had you planned on voting next year?” Jennings asked. “I don’t know, I haven’t decided on that yet” the man answered, looking sheepishly into the camera. His answer, however, didn’t satisfy Jennings. “Do you know how many political parties there are?” Jennings persisted. When the young man couldn’t answer, Jennings continued, “Do you know the name of any of them?” It is rare to see a newsman take such an activist, even antagonistic position with a man-on-the-street, and some would say that Jennings’ style during the interview was hectoring and unseemly. However, this is precisely why I watched Jennings throughout the 90’s. His view was that stuff matters, and it’s everyone’s obligation as good citizens to pay attention.

It is a sad irony that on 9/11, Peter Jennings made perhaps the dumbest decision of his life. He decided to start smoking again after having stopped decades earlier. It is a measure of how profoundly he was affected by those events, that he felt compelled to do something that was so obviously harmful. Also spurred on by 9/11, two years later Peter first received his American citizenship, in part to express his solidarity with the American people.

How do we know that a profoundly new news era is upon us? Because now that Dan Rather has stepped down, there are hints from reliable sources that CBS is talking with Katie Couric about taking over the anchor chair. Now, to be sure, I like Katie Couric, and have found her to be delightful over the years. That said, I have trouble picturing her confronting Nixon at a press conference during Watergate, reporting on the integration of the University of Alabama while being heckled and spat on by mobs, or for that matter, breaking the Abu Ghraib story. The age of infotainment is upon is, where ratings and market share rule.

Or is this just history repeating itself? Jennings’ death interestingly recapitulates that of his journalistic ancestor, Edward R. Murrow. Murrow, a lifelong heavy smoker, also died of lung cancer, in 1965. By the late 1950’s, Murrow, a giant in the news business, was increasingly at odds with his parent company CBS. The passion that marked his World War II broadcasts and his expose of Joe McCarthy in the early 50’s, no longer found the same public support in the quietist, Eisenhower years. He found his airtime shrinking. In 1957, Murrow’s pioneering documentary series “See It Now” was cancelled, with CBS chairman William S. Paley complaining about the show, “It gave me a stomach ache.” In 1958, at a convention of the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Murrow issued a broadside, calling them “fat, comfortable, and complacent.” He went on to rap television for "being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us." Forty-five years later, we are worrying about the same thing. I don’t know whether that’s frightening or reassuring. I do know this: In the endless battle between apathy and involvement, Peter Jennings will be missed.

2005-07-24T15:37:00.000-04:00

Rovegate Revisited: The Contours of a Conspiracy Emerge

Back in February of 2004, I wrote about the political woes of the Bush reelection campaign, predicting that the president would soon take a tremendous public relations hit “when the grand jury indicts someone from his administration for outing Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, a covert agent in the CIA. Scott McClellan, White House Press Secretary, and Mary Matalin, former advisor to Vice President Cheney have already been called before a grand jury. This case may soon explode on several levels…” It turned out that I overestimated the speed of the wheels of justice by a year and a half, and underestimated the ability of the administration to stonewall special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Now, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that the White House evasions of 2004 have reaped a bitter harvest. With each new revelation about Rovegate, there is growing evidence that Fitzgerald is looking into broad obstruction of justice charges against Rove, Scooter Libby, and assorted White House role players.

Last week we saw a new strategic ploy by Karl Rove, who let it be known through his lawyer, Robert Luskin, that it was a journalist who first informed him about Valerie Plame’s covert identity, rather than a government source. What a perfect story! It wasn’t, says Rove, the White House who disgracefully outed Plame; rather, it was some loose-lipped member of the fourth estate. For a brief moment, this factoid gained some traction and gave Bush apologists hope, as Republican Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman went on Meet the Press, to trumpet Rove’s innocence and demand an apology from all Rove’s detractors.

Rove’s version of events however, has collapsed under scrutiny. A huge problem arose when Rove could not “remember” which journalist it was who first told him about Plame. This memory lapse was too convenient and self-serving for even Republican partisans. According to the Washington Post, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby took this gambit even a step further by identifying NBC correspondent Tim Russert as the original source of Libby’s information. Russert however, has not only denied telling Libby about Plame, he denied having any such knowledge in the first place. So the attempts by both Rove and Libby at political ju-jitsu, at deflecting blame from themselves, and throwing it back on the press corps, not only have failed to pass the smell test, they may even rise to the level of perjury.

An additional problem for Rove emerged back in 2004, when Matt Cooper of Time Magazine agreed to testify before the grand jury, but only about his contacts with Scooter Libby. According to testimony leaked to the Washington Post, Cooper testified that he, Cooper, brought up Valerie Plame to Libby, who replied, “I heard that too.” This testimony was reportedly a surprise to the prosecution, who immediately asked Cooper where he had learned about Plame in the first place. Cooper refused to answer the question, reminding the prosecutors that he had only agreed to discuss his contacts with Libby. It was this turn of events that led the Special Prosecutor to take the case to the Supreme Court, to compel Cooper to provide the missing information. Only after being rebuffed by the Supreme Court, did Time Magazine and Cooper give up the source of the information: Karl Rove.

The fact that Rove was Cooper’s source is significant on several levels. First, it suggests that Rove was not completely candid in his testimony before the grand jury, and most likely omitted his contact with Cooper. What may have emboldened Rove to withhold information from the grand jury was the fact that there existed no White House record of his conversation with Cooper. Because Cooper had called Rove and was patched through the White House switchboard, no phone log of the contact was generated. It is possible that Rove made a bad gamble in his testimony before the grand jury, reasoning that the absence of a phone record and Cooper’s continuing pledge of confidentiality would allow Rove to deny that he was Cooper’s source. It was a gamble that Rove lost when the Supreme Court ruled against Time Magazine, and Time editor Norman Pearlstine agreed to turn the records of Cooper’s conversation with Rove over to the special prosecutor. A second way that Rove’s involvement is significant, is that it reminds us of how important reporters’ testimony has been in the unraveling of this scandal. To date, journalists Matt Cooper, Tim Russert, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, Andrea Mitchell of NBC, and of course Robert Novak have all provided information on the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity. In trying to unearth the full extent of White House machinations, it is not hard to see why prosecutor Fitzgerald has pressed jailed NY Times reporter Judith Miller so forcefully to give her testimony. She may have significant information on who broke the law, and when.

In the past week, the final pieces of the Rovegate puzzle may have emerged. The contours of a conspiracy have come into view, as new names such as Colin Powell and Ari Fleischer have surfaced: On July 7, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell boarded Air Force One, to accompany President Bush on his trip to Africa. Powell carried with him a three page memorandum from the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) that discussed Ambassador Joe Wilson’s fact-finding trip to Niger. The memo, marked with a classified “S” (“Secret”), contained the information that Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent, and that she had participated in the CIA meeting in which Wilson was given the task of going to Niger. Of all the facts in this paragraph, the most important one to note is the date: July 7: One day earlier, on July 6, Joe Wilson had just published in the NY Times his rebuttal of White House claims of an Iraq-Niger uranium connection. How coincidental is it that Powell is boarding Air Force One a day later, armed with a State Department brief about Wilson’s trip and Wilson’s wife?

It is important to remember the political climate of July, 2003. The White House was urgently involved in selling the Iraq War, it was still involved in selling the notion of WMD, and most importantly, it was involved in selling the reelection of George W. Bush. There were powerful pressures on the administration to shore up its argument for WMD in Iraq. If a broad based scheme was hatched to discredit Joe Wilson, by suggesting that he was hiding behind his wife’s skirts, the first place one should look is that Air Force One flight to Africa. Officials on the flight with Powell included senior advisor Dan Bartlett, press secretary Ari Fleischer, and White House chief of staff Andrew Card. Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald, no fool, has not only interviewed the principals, he has taken the step of subpoenaing phone logs from Air Force One. At this juncture, Fitzgerald may have in hand a lush flow chart of phone calls that emanated from that airplane. There is one additional White House official whose name is often left out of the discussion, who may have been central to the scheme: George W. Bush.

We will probably never know the extent of the damage done to the CIA by the outing of Valerie Plame. Obviously her future role as a covert agent has been short-circuited, but we will never learn of past contacts who were compromised. But we can gauge the amount of damage from the anger expressed by past CIA agents who testified on the Hill this week. Here is Jim Marcinowski, a former CIA case worker:

"Each time the political machine made up of prime-time patriots and partisan ninnies display their ignorance by deriding Valerie Plame as a mere paper pusher or belittling the varying degrees of cover used to protect our officers or continuing to play partisan politics with our national security, it's a disservice to this country.”

Former CIA analyst and Republican Larry Johnson, directed his ire at President Bush:

"We now know from press reports that at least Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were involved, and instead of the president being first and foremost concerned, in my judgment, with protecting this country and the intelligence officers who serve it, we're confronted with a president who's willing to sit by to this day while various political operatives go around and savage the good reputations of people like Valerie and Joe Wilson. This is wrong. This should stop, and it could stop in a heart beat if the president would simply put a stop to it. He hasn't. That speaks volumes."

In a recent blog, I suggested that the absolutist refusal to testify before the grand jury by jailed reporter Judith Miller was inappropriate in a case that had implications for both national security as well as White House corruption. The revelations that have come from reporters’ testimony this week have done nothing to dissuade me from this point of view. Joining me in this view is eminent investigative reporter Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, who on July 22, told Lou Dobbs on CNN, “the case of release of somebody's name, that is the crime. If you can't get it any other way then I think you have to go to the reporter.” Here is a further exchange between Dobbs and Pincus:

DOBBS: The protection of sources, confidential sources, Judith Miller is certainly not, and nor have you at any time suggested you are above the law, nor has any journalist, but they are paying the penalty for what the law requires. Do you believe that ultimately this will have a chilling effect on the ability of the press if this continues, this trend, to break important news in the public interest?

PINCUS: I know a lot of people in my profession say that. More than half of the people I deal with are in the intelligence field, and they take risks every day, giving me information that is classified, could cost them their jobs, could get them in trouble. I haven't had any diminution of sources.

Furthering this viewpoint was Constitutional scholar Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago, who last week testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on reporters’ privilege. Stone was asked by Senator Arlen Specter whether he agreed with the decision of Time Magazine editor Norman Pearlstine to turn over relevant information to the special prosecutor. Here is Stone’s response:

“I believe that reporters, like the rest of us, should follow the law when the law is clear, and when they have exhausted all their legal remedies, as was true in this case. There are circumstances when I believe civil disobedience is appropriate, but I think they should be reserved to those situations in which there is a reasonable case to be made that the legal system itself, or the system of government, is oppressive, or unjust, or immoral. In this situation, I think there is a profound disagreement about public policy. But I think if that’s all there is…then there is a responsibility to comply with the law, so I agree with Mr. Pearlstine. I think it was the correct thing to do.”

It should be noted that ironically, much of the information in this blog entry stems from current, illegal leaks of grand jury testimony to the Washington Post, itself a strong argument against the idea that a great “chilling effect” has taken hold. I predict that not only will the Rovegate conspiracy be unveiled in detail soon, but moreover, that investigative journalism will survive, as vibrant and viable as ever.

2005-07-13T15:29:00.000-04:00

Rove, Rogues, and Reporters' Confidentiality

Few recent controversies have had as many disturbing elements as that of the Karl Rove-Valerie Plame caper. If the notion of a high White House official leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent isn’t troubling enough, much of the resulting spin and analysis has managed to further muddy the waters. Let’s examine some of the problematic pieces of this puzzle:

Reporters and Confidentiality. On July 6, NY Times Reporter Judith Miller was jailed at a detention center in Alexandria, Virginia for refusing to divulge her source in the exposure of CIA agent Valerie Plame. One of the striking aspects of this development is that apart from those within Miller’s journalistic fraternity, there has been little public sympathy for Miller. One reason for this is that many people, like me, are skeptical of the very principle that Miller is upholding. Her notion that a reporter’s obligation to her source is absolute, seems overdrawn, lacking in nuance, and grandiose in nature. By way of explanation, let me offer a comparison. As a psychologist, my profession truly does depend on confidentiality. (By contrast, 99.9% of legitimate journalism takes place without concern for anonymous sources.) Few people would visit a therapist if they thought that the details of their discussions were open to public scrutiny. Such confidentially is formalized within the psychology profession, not simply asserted or claimed, as is often the case with reporters.

However, even the confidentiality between therapist and patient is not absolute. I know it, and all my patients know it. If you come in and tell me that you’re harboring homicidal thoughts about your ex-wife, and then proceed to tell me that you’ve bought a gun and are monitoring her daily schedule, then we have a problem. If I seriously believe that you may act on these impulses, then I have a “duty to warn” your ex-wife. Will such an action on my part undermine your trust in me as a helper? Almost certainly, but nonetheless, that is my ethical obligation. Likewise, if a patient indicates to me that he or she is abusing a helpless individual—a child or elder—I have an obligation to report this as well, preempting the confidentiality. In addition, certain criminal proceedings could conceivable lead to my case notes being subpoenaed. If this took place, it is possible that I could see this as an inappropriate intrusion into the privacy of my patient. In that event, I would do what Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine, and Judith Miller of the New York Times did: I would fight such a request for information in court. However, once I had exhausted this remedy, once the court had ruled against me, I would turn over the information. While there may be a therapist out there who has gone to jail rather than violate therapist-patient confidentiality, I do not know of one. Indeed if I chose to take such a course of action, virtually any patient of mine would be so amazed as to wonder whether I was of sound mind. No patient would ever expect me to defy a court order, go to jail, and sacrifice my profession on their behalf. In other words, confidentiality is important, but it is not absolute. It can be trumped by matters of significant public concern. I know that, my patients know that, but Judith Miller doesn’t seem to get it. Let me hasten to add parenthetically, that in twenty years of practice none of the aforementioned issues have ever arisen in my work.

Rove Was Using Miller and Cooper. Once we accept the idea that confidentiality is not absolute, but may be preempted by matters of great public importance, it is necessary to look to the specific facts of each case. The case of Valerie Plame was hardly a situation where an idealistic whistle-blower was offering information that would advance the public good. Rather, this was a dirty tricks effort, an attempt to discredit and punish a critic of the Bush administration. Amazingly, Miller is leaving her family and taking a leave of absence from her work to protect someone who was a scoundrel, who was using her, and who was in fact putting out information designed to obfuscate the public record, not clarify it. The leads to the next problem with this story:

Valerie Plame Was a Red Herring. Currently, Republican apologists are breathlessly telling everyone who will listen that Karl Rove simply wanted to set the record straight, that it was Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame who sent him on his fact-finding mission to Niger, not CIA director George Tenet. I guess Karl Rove’s cynical thinking was that if he could transform the image of Wilson’s trip to Niger into a trivial mom and pop affair, he could negate the damning information that Wilson found on his trip, that Iraq had made no attempt to secure enriched uranium from Niger. The fact is, as I write this, I have no idea who specifically authorized Wilson's trip, and it makes not the slightest difference. It could have been the George Tenet, it could have been an idea suggested by Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, which was subsequently authorized by higher-ups in the CIA, or for that matter, it could in fact have been the Good Humor Man! It makes no difference. Joe Wilson was and is a serious man, a former acting Ambassador to Iraq (the last man to see Saddam Hussein before Operation Desert Storm in 1991). During the Clinton administration, Wilson was the Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998. During his diplomatic career, he had served in Niger, Togo, and South Africa, and is obviously well-connected in these countries. In other words, he was the perfect person to check out the Niger-uranium connection. And to the Bush administration’s great displeasure, the information that he brought back from Niger not only contradicted the WMD fiction that the administration was weaving, Wilson was right! Bringing Wilson's wife into the discussion was a cynical and vindictive way of changing the subject.

"I Didn't Accept His Waiver." Observing both Miller and Cooper, one has to be struck by the level of grandiosity and self-importance that they have assumed. Take, for example, Miller’s statement to the judge, that because she had no intention of giving up her source, there was no good reason to jail her, because it would serve no useful purpose. Huh? Any other lawbreaker making such a plea would be laughed out of court. Miller's incarceration serves as both pressure for her to cooperate, and deterrence to any future individual who contemplates the same course of action.

As for Cooper, it would seem from recent news stories that Rove waived his right of confidentiality months ago, but Cooper chose not to accept the waiver. Because the waiver came from a broad White House order that everyone concerned must waive their confidentiality, Cooper regarded this as illegitimate and nonbinding. Huh? You mean Karl Rove signs a waiver releasing you from confidentiality and you don’t accept it because you regard it as “coerced” and “not specific enough.” It seems to me that if Karl Rove signs a blanket waiver, then Rove has spoken. The waiver speaks for itself. It’s not up to the reporter to either accept or reject the waiver. I suspect that when Cooper ultimately did accept the waiver, it was because, toothbrush in hand, he was faced with jail that day, not because anything about the waiver had changed.

"I Didn't Know Her Name; I Didn't Leak Her Name." This laughable assertion by Karl Rove is an attempt to sidestep criminal liability in the outing of agent Plame. Rove’s position apparently is that if he never used her name, he wasn’t exposing her. Fiddlesticks! The moment he says that Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife is a CIA operative, he has exposed her. Once that information is out, any idiot can find her name: One could Google Joe Wilson, one could ask one of Wilson’s neighbors what her name is, one could even call her kids’ school and ask for her name for the “phone tree.” It isn’t her name that counts; it’s her position and identity. Once it is public knowledge that the covert CIA agent is the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, she is fair game for any evil-doer out in the world. And even if no harm actually befell Ms. Plame, Karl Rove successfully and disgracefully neutralized her career forever.

Isn't It Really Bush Who's On the Hot Seat? Let us not forget that all these events originated during the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign. If Rove had emerged as the culprit prior to the election, it would have had an explosive and perhaps transforming effect on the campaign. Here is Bush on September 30, 2003:

"Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing.”

Here is White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan commenting on October 7, 2003:

"If someone sought to punish someone for speaking out against the administration, that is wrong, and we would not condone that activity. No one in this White House would condone that activity. . . . "It's absurd to suggest that the White House would be engaged in that kind of activity. That is not the way this White House operates."

The central political question right now is, would Karl Rove engage in this sort of mischief without first clearing it with his boss? That seems highly unlikely. On the minuscule chance that Rove went off on a rogue campaign of his own, it still leaves the president in an extremely vulnerable position: After the scandal erupted, and Bush demanded cooperation from his staff, either Rove told Bush the truth, or he didn’t. If Rove told Bush the truth, then Bush has been lying and stonewalling along with Rove for two years. If Rove didn’t fess up to his boss, then he should have been fired—yesterday.

Perhaps this episode will turn out to be a blessing in disguise. I suspect that soon we will have laid out before us the full duplicity, cynicism, and corruption that have been the hallmark of this administration for years.

2005-07-06T08:45:00.000-04:00

The Truth about Troop Levels in Iraq

One of the great mysteries of the Iraq war is why more American troops have not been deployed. Two years into the war effort, Iraqis’ access to electricity is little better than it was during the Saddam era (6-8 hours a day); insurgents are streaming across the Syrian border unchecked; around Baghdad citizens are afraid to casually walk the streets. For two years running, Senators McCain, Biden, Hagel, and Lugar have returned from trips to Iraq with the same message: We need more troops to police and stabilize the country, to help patrol the Syrian border, and to participate in the training of the Iraqi defense forces. Senator Joe Biden toured Baghdad on Memorial Day of this year, and reports that every military leader he talked to on the ground told him that more troops were needed in Iraq. And yet, Bush in his speech on Tuesday said exactly the opposite, that the military command in Iraq has told him that troop levels are fine. This claim is one of the most puzzling aspects of the war: The issue of what the commanders in Iraq believe about troop levels is not some unfathomable mystery; any news organization should be able to answer this question. Here is Joe Biden, commenting to CNN after the president's speech:

“I was there Memorial Day -- not one single general, not one single major, not one single colonel I spoke to you -- and I spoke to, I think, all of them, all of the major players -- not one of them said they had enough troops. Not one. And you've been reporting that. Your folks have been going out to Iraq. Your folks in Iraq have been interviewing the military guys on the ground. I don't know who's talking to the president.”

Biden’s experience notwithstanding, here is the president in his Fort Bragg speech:

“If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job.”

Now let’s be blunt about this: Someone is lying here. Frankly, I don’t think it’s hard to figure out who the liar is. In a time when insurgent attacks have increased to an average of 60 per day, it is almost impossible to argue the number of security forces in Iraq is adequate. Indeed one of the most significance moments of the Iraq War occurred before the war had actually begun. On February 25, 2002, top army general Eric Shinseki told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “several hundred thousand soldiers” would be necessary to occupy and stabilize Iraq. Upon hearing this, the administration, intent on selling the war at that time, reacted with a fit of petulance. When Shinseki retired shortly thereafter, not one administration official attended his retirement ceremony, despite the fact that at the time, Shinseki was the Army’s highest ranking general. As bizarre as it sounds, one can argue that the planning of the war from start to finish, has been a failed and juvenile attempt to prove Shinseki wrong. Further, it is noteworthy to take a look at troop levels in Iraq compared to those in Kosovo and Bosnia. Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post, writing in 2004, offered these insights:

“It wasn't as if the administration couldn't calculate the number of troops it would need to secure Iraq. If troops were required at the same ratio that they were deployed in Kosovo, then 480,000 troops would be needed in Iraq, according to James F. Dobbins, who'd served as the Bush administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and who was a former ambassador at large to Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia. If we wanted to deploy troops at the same ratio we had in Bosnia, we would have needed 364,000 soldiers patrolling Iraq.”

The obviously inadequate troop levels have been a major burr in Bush’s side, and in his Fort Bragg speech on June 28, he decided to address this issue:

“Some Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so important, why don't you send more troops?....Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are in fact working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave.”

The fact that this passage--with its utterly cockamamie logic—hasn’t gotten more attention from the mainstream press, suggests the press wasn’t paying close attention. Higher troops levels wouldn’t signal to the Iraqis that we plan to stay forever. Indeed, the ordinary Iraqi doesn’t give a damn how many troops we deploy; he cares about whether he can walk outside his home without being shot at, whether he can turn on his lights for more than 7 hours a day, and whether his children are safe. The average Iraqi knows that we’re itching to get the hell out of Iraq. The average Iraqi yearns for nothing more than stability, and is shocked that after two years of occupation, the American military have produced precious little of it. Indeed, one of the greatest boons to the insurgency has been the incompetence of the occupying force in providing basic services to the Iraqi people. One shopkeeper in Baghdad was quoted as saying, “When the Americans came, we had great hope, but now they are stumbling around like drunkards.”

Nor, as Bush suggests, would an increase of forces undermine any handoff of responsibility to the Iraqi forces. Part of the problem with the standing up of an Iraqi army, is that the nation is overwhelmed with violence. Chaos itself impedes the training process. Anything that would stem the flow of new insurgents over the Syrian border, anything that would produce better policing in the Sunni triangle, anything that would offer greater protection to political officials in Iraq, anything that would speed up the training of Iraqi forces, would facilitate the transition to Iraqi self-governance, not undermine it. Since the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis, 52 senior government or religious figures have been assassinated, a shocking figure.

The obvious question then is why doesn’t the administration simply bite the bullet and send more troops to Iraq? Two answer is two-fold: First, sending more troops would be a tacit admission that they have been wrong about troop levels all along, and we all know how loath Bush is to admit a mistake. Second, with recruitment levels down, and our military stretched to the breaking point, deploying more troops would be politically unpalatable. Already, soldiers are being sent back to Iraq for 3—count ‘em—3 tours of duty, for many soldiers and their families, a thankless and demoralizing state of affairs. Here is Marine Lance Corporal Marty Mortenson, emailing his mother just months before he was killed in Iraq:

"I am really sorry about [forgetting] your birthday . . . I am so stressed out that it is really bring [ing] me down. . . . I have had so much on my mind . . . going off to war 4 the 3rd time isn't easy."

Having survived two tours of duty in Iraq, Mortenson spoke to a friend shortly before leaving on his third tour that he feared for his safety:

“It's like three strikes, you're out. I have a feeling I'm not going to come home."

On April 20 of this year, Marty Mortenson was killed by a roadside bomb, the thirteenth Marine to be killed on a third tour of duty. Richard H. Kohn, a former chief of Air Force history at the Pentagon was asked to comment on this trend:

"If they have to go back a second or third time, particularly a third time, is it really fair? I would call that an extraordinary burden.”

The administration knows that increasing troop levels creates the risk that young men who have served heroically such as Marty Mortenson, along with their families, will reach the boiling point and begin to express their frustration at the burden they’ve been asked to assume. It is for this reason that the administration has decided to stick to its head in the sand. It is for this reason the Bush persists in offering us an “Alice In Wonderland” version of troop requirements in Iraq.

2005-06-22T14:07:00.000-04:00

Political Potpourri: Amnesty International, Joe Biden, and CNN

Joe Biden for President. Let me be among the first to lend my support to the presidential aspirations of Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. Regular readers of this blog know that I’ve been a Biden supporter for several years, and felt that he, rather than John Edwards, should have gotten the vice-presidential nod in 2004. Sunday, on Face the Nation, Biden formally announced his intention to seek the presidency:

"My intention now is to seek the nomination. But it may very well be that by the end of the year I find out I can't raise the money, I can't get the support, in which case, then, the best thing for me to do is find someone to support. But that's my intention now. And we'll see."

Biden’s straightforward discussion of his 2008 goal, reflects one of his great strengths as a politician: He is one of the most credible, plain-spoken, spin-free politicians in Congress. Since the war’s inception he has been the most farsighted, authoritative voice on American foreign policy. For two years now, Biden has been warning Bush that we have too few troops in place, that our approach is not sufficiently multi-lateral, that we’ve been late and lethargic about training Iraqi forces, and that the “happy news” progress reports from the Bush administration both confuse the public and damage the administration’s credibility. Biden, who just came back from his 4th trip to Iraq, is one of the few commentators to point out that the best measure of our success in Iraq is not the number of insurgent attacks; rather, it is the amount of raw sewage piled in front of people’s homes, it is the quality of the electrical grid and whether Iraqis can turn on their lights at night. Biden is that rare war critic who is also a bipartisan guy, a bridge-builder, and a straight-shooter.

Biden also offered another shocking piece of information on Face the Nation. He told host Bob Schieffer that when fallen soldiers return to Dover, Delaware (Biden’s state), the Defense Department will not let Biden view the returning caskets:

“I'm allowed in the military base. I'm not allowed to go to the mortuary. I'm not allowed to be there when the flag-draped casket comes in. As a matter of fact, Bob, one family asked me whether I would meet their son who was tragically gunned down, actually car bomb in Iraq. This is several months ago. I said I would be honored to be with them. They wanted me to come with the minister. They wanted me through the whole process. The commander of the base told me that he couldn't allow that to happen…until he cleared it with the Pentagon. So in order for me to literally go in and accompany a mom and a dad and a son to pick up the body of a dead son, a young Marine killed in Iraq, I was not just able to do it as a senior United States senator, former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee…”

I have only one word for this situation: Disgraceful.

The End of the “Capital Gang”. CNN, reeling from its decline in ratings, has finally waved the white flag of surrender to rival FOX news. After 17 years, it has cancelled its signature roundtable opinion program, “The Capital Gang.” Sadly, this Saturday, June 25, will mark the end of the program. Why would CNN cancel such a venerable and influential program? The answer is simple: Tired of losing audience share to FOX, CNN is now trying to reinvent itself as the “hard news channel.” (This, despite its nauseating blanket coverage of the Michael Jackson trial.) Apparently, the "suits" at CNN misguidedly think that the existence of an opinion program undermines one's image as a hard news channel. CNN’s cancellation reminds me of the time that ABC’s “This Week” ended its own roundtable segment, when it banished Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts in favor of George Stephanopoulos. And you what what? A year later, their roundtable segment is back, with rotating panelists who include Sam and Cokie.

Last Saturday, the Capital Gang reminisced about some of its most memorable moments, including the time pompous, right-wing, moralist William Bennett came on the show during the Florida election controversy of 2000. Bennett waxed indignant about the Gore campaign, calling Gore surrogates “goons” and “thugs,” before being put soundly in his place by Al Hunt and Mark Shields. With a twinkle in his eye, Hunt summed up the donnybrook during last week’s show: “Bennett came looking for a fight, and you know what? He got one!”

A second memorable moment came circa 1990, when Pat Buchanan was moderating the show. The prince of darkness, Robert Novak, groused that the “gay lobby” had taken over the Democratic party. Upon hearing this, a fed up Mark Shields erupted, “Bullshit, Novak. That’s bullshit.” A suddenly gentile Buchanan cautioned Shields, “Mark, this a family show.” Shields, still annoyed, retorted that they would edit out his expletives. Responded Buchanan, “Mark, we’re live!”

While I have chosen two of the more heated exchanges from the show’s archives, week in and week out, the Capital Gang offered an enormous amount of light to match its heat. The core message of the show for seventeen years was that some things are worth arguing about, and if argued well, make for excellent, entertaining television. Let us hope that the show is reincarnated on another network, and kicks CNN’s rear in the ratings. Finally, kudos to Al Hunt, Mark Shields, Margaret Carlson, Kate O’Beirne, and Robert Novak for their years of good work.

“The Gulag of Our Time”. The strident reaction to Amnesty International’s description of Guantanamo Bay as “the Gulag of our time,” has exposed one of the major problems with the American self-image and its foreign policy. The Bush administration’s narcissistic view is that because we are well-intentioned in our foreign policy, the rest of the world should share our presumption that we are above scrutiny, beyond international law, and exempt from criticism. The right wing chafes at the notion that we might be subject to the World Court, or that we should be constrained by those pesky Geneva Conventions, or that we should pay our dues faithfully to the UN. Recently, Chris Wallace, moderator of FOX News Sunday, was belligerent from start to finish in interviewing Amnesty International's USA Executive Director William Schulz, and expressed this narcissistic fallacy perfectly:

WALLACE: Mr. Schulz, if I ask you, when you accuse the Bush administration of, in using your words, "atrocious human rights violations," where do you fit into that equation the liberation of 50 million people from oppressive regimes?

SCHULZ: These are two entirely different questions... you know, someone can do a good thing one day and a bad thing the other and it doesn't vitiate the bad thing that they have done good things as well. That is not the point. Amnesty tries to hold one plumb-line universal standard to every government: - to Chile, to Cuba, to North Korea, to China - every government. And the United States applauds Amnesty when we criticize Cuba and North Korea and China. Indeed, that Secretary Rumsfeld, who just called us reprehensible, that is the same person who quoted Amnesty regularly in the run-up to the Iraq war when we reported for 20 years on Saddam Hussein's violations - years during which Rumsfeld himself was courting Hussein for the U.S. government.

All governments are imperfect. Even the best can pursue courses of action that are stupid, contradictory, and self-defeating. The indifference to post-war planning, the criminal negligence embodied in Abu Ghraib, and the housing of detainees off American shores in an attempt to circumvent US law, are appalling failures of the Bush administration that warrant sharp criticism. The human rights report issued by Amnesty concerning Guantanamo Bay is 308 pages long, but it articulates the corruption of the Guantanamo detentions succinctly:

"Attempts to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and quasi-management speak, such as 'environmental manipulation, stress positions and sensory manipulation,' was one of the most damaging assaults on global values."

Amnesty International is one of the true heroes of our time, and I hope that it will keep reminding George W. Bush that governments who don’t truly trust democracy and the rule of law, become very poor salesmen of democracy and the rule of law.

2005-06-03T09:20:00.000-04:00

Did the 49ers' Diversity Video Go Out of Bounds? No.

I never thought I’d say this, but “grow up, San Francisco!” The diversity-training video for the San Francisco 49ers football team, created by public relations director Kirk Reynolds, and subsequently leaked anonymously to the San Francisco Chronicle, has all the makings of a full-fledged scandal: A top team official has been fired, voices have been raised in both protest and apology, and finger pointing is the order of the day. Unfortunately, this is another cultural tempest in a teapot. On the plus side, we are all indebted to the San Francisco Chronicle, which, in its wisdom, posted the full video on its website, allowing all interested parties to view the video and form their own opinions about it (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/01/MNNINRSXCRPTS.TMP&type=universalnewads). Considered by some to be yet another cultural low point, the video site, at this writing, had received 200,000 hits. The video has generated many reactions from all quarters: shock, disappointment, sadness, outrage. You will get none of that from this writer. To the contrary, my reaction to the video was one of surprise, surprise that San Francisco is apparently not nearly as hip a town as I had thought it to be.

First, let me describe the video, because it has been mischaracterized in many news stories that I have seen. All NFL teams give their players an orientation each year, offering guidance to the many individuals who will suddenly find themselves major public figures, often in brand new communities. The orientation offers advice on dealing with the media effectively, on using the team resources if one feels misquoted or mischaracterized, on dealing with legal problems, and on conducting oneself in a worthy manner. The training preaches respect for the many different parts of the community, as well as an ongoing mindfulness that one is representing not just oneself, but a larger organization. Not surprisingly, players find such sermons about good conduct and good citizenship to be boring, condescending, and aversive. With this in mind, public relations director Kirk Reynolds decided to spice up this year’s presentation, by assembling a series of humorous vignettes, set in different parts of San Francisco. The goal of the video was to grab the players’ attention, and through humor, communicate the dos and don’ts of good conduct more effectively than had been done in the past. The vignettes are adult in nature. They are raunchy, sometimes silly, sometimes juvenile, sometimes instructive; they are broadly satirical, poking gentle fun at different segments of the San Francisco community. Reynold’s video is also at times quite witty, well-scripted, hilarious, and self-effacing. Indeed the butt of much of the humor is Reynolds himself.

The “storyline” of the video is a simple one: PR Director Reynolds poses as the mayor of San Francisco, and takes his players on a tour of the city, illustrating the kinds of challenges, obstacles, and subcultures that they will confront in their lives. On his tour, Reynolds-the-mayor is treated to the full exotic flavor of the city-by-the-bay, and plays a kind of straight man, a “Mr. Magoo” character, who has trouble following his own wise counsel. Does the video work, comedically? Yes, in my view it offered more than a good chuckle, contained an underlying message, and was certainly a hit with players. If the video had aired on the Comedy Channel, it would have produced guffaws. If Leno had done something similar, it would have been seen as a laugh-riot. Why, then, was Reynolds fired? Why is the mayor of San Francisco up in arms? Why are elements of the gay community upset? Why is Reynolds himself, running around issuing apologies to everyone who will listen? Because the video is edgy, it is sometimes juvenile, it is offbeat, it is at times x-rated, and as such, is vulnerable to puritanical attacks from anyone with a moral axe to grind. Folks who couldn’t care less that there are 45 million people in this country with no health insurance, have gotten worked into a lather over the fact that 49er players watched two lesbians making out. To which I say, big deal.

Let us emphasize that this is not a Janet Jackson situation, where Jackson forced her nudity on unsuspecting Super Bowl families. Rather, this was an in-house tape, geared solely for football players, designed to acquaint them with the problems they might encounter in their new roles. We on the outside only know about the tape because some bluenose within the organization sent the tape to the Chronicle with the following (anonymous) cover note:

“...these men are nothing but thugs and hoodlums (who) must be taught through images of pornography and humiliation in order to understand simple lessons like 'treat others with respect. "

"Obviously," the offended letter writer continued, team officials don't "practice what they preach" when it comes to diversity.

"I pray to my lord and savior Jesus Christ you will do the right thing and bring this matter forward to the proper people who will stop programs like this ever to be made again.''

The sender further threatened to send out more tapes if his (or her) moral outrage was not addressed.

The manner in which the tape was tailored to its audience can be seen through one of its “actors,” 49ers’ linebacker, Julian Peterson. Peterson had just ended a contract holdout, a dispute involving millions of dollars. In the video, Peterson plays a panhandler who says he will “tackle for food.” A dismissive Reynolds tells him to “get a job.” Needless to say, the scene was a big hit with Peterson’s teammates.

Earlier, I commented that numerous articles have offered distorted descriptions of the video. For example, a standard description of the video refers to its “racial slurs.” I take the term “slur” to mean a derogatory or hostile descriptor. I’ve watched the entire video, and cannot find one racial slur. Rather, there is an exaggerated, stereotypical portrayal of a Chinese person, portrayed by 49ers former trainer, George Chung, who is Asian. The byplay between Reynolds and Chung is quite funny, the send-up of the Asian community teasing and playful at worst, and hardly worthy of the heat that it has generated, particularly since the film pokes fun in all directions.

A second mischaracterization suggests that the film is hostile to the gay community. Yes, there is a lesbian sex scene in the video, but the message of the vignette is “be tolerant of all members of the community.” Unless you believe that all lesbian sex is inherently evil and immoral, I’m forced to ask, what’s the problem here? If the material in the video offends, then don’t watch it.

Other critics of the video scored Reynolds for portraying the mayor as a sleazy, morally challenged politician. C’mon, is San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom so comedically challenged that he doesn’t realize that the portrayal is all in good fun? Get over it!

A final criticism of the video goes as follows: “If there is nothing wrong with the video, why is Kirk Reynolds now saying that it was a serious mistake?” Here is Reynolds:

“It was contradictory to my values and beliefs and contradictory to the team's values. I completely apologize to anybody who was offended."

While Reynolds’ apology may be 100% sincere, there is certainly another factor fueling his apology: He needs a job. Trying to defend the video in the current puritanical climate is no way to find a new job. I sincerely hope that he does land on his feet. Clearly he’s a creative guy. In the world of stand-up comedy one often hears the expression that a comedian failed because he was “too hip for the room.” Unfortunately, Reynolds was too hip for the town…

In closing, here is a sample of reader comments to the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Who cares? It was designed to be seen by a select audience and was perfectly aimed at that target. It doesn't seem any worse than the Paris Hilton hamburger/soft porn ad that you don't have to be a 49er employee to see..." Jill

"It was worse than "inappropriate" -- it was offensive and a real heartbreaker for Chinese American 49er fans like my son and I. Come on, Niners -- get with the program. It's 2005, not the 1950s..." Norman

"Inappropriate is in the eye of the beholder. In our Chicken Little society, there are plenty of people who are offended by anything they don't like. It was inappropriate if you were forced to watch it. If you saw it and laughed and are now outraged because it is public, you're a hypocrite..." David

"Even if it was meant to be funny, lines were crossed since the tape was used for HR purposes. I wouldn't think twice if the video had come from Comedy Central, but this came from an NFL team..." J.J.

"It appears to me that (PR man and videomaker Kirk) Reynolds attempted to intentionally exaggerate stereotypes to mock those stereotypes. I got it.'' Anna

"Everyone involved in this business should be dismissed -- not because anyone who took offense, but because the entire thing was so tediously unfunny.'' Ted

"Is the video insensitive? Yes. But ... it's the same type of satire that has (comedian) Dave Chappelle as the No. 1 show." 49ers safety Tony Parrish

2005-05-24T08:02:00.000-04:00

Newsweek Was Right After All

The conventional wisdom is that Newsweek’s report on the desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay was factually wrong, poorly sourced, and represented the descent of another major news organization into sleazy journalism. Criticism of Newsweek has caused the magazine to issue a formal retraction, and to retreat with its organizational tail between its legs. Newsweek’s own mea culpa notwithstanding, allow me to offer a minority opinion, a heresy if you will: Despite all the uproar, the Newsweek story was and is fundamentally correct. Further, a serious look at the evidence suggests that much of the criticism of the article has been far more cynical and misleading than was the article itself. Before addressing the charges against Newsweek, let us be clear about what Newsweek wrote. The short piece, appearing in Newsweek’s May 9 Periscope section, detailed guards’ intentional damage of the Koran and their mistreatment of detainees. The article went on to indicate that a report from the military’s Southern Command acknowledging these abuses was imminent. Now let’s look at the major charges against Newsweek and its handling of this story:

1) The story was uncorroborated and based on rumor. This charge is true in one narrow respect: The Newsweek story indicated that the military itself—the US Southern Command--was poised to confirm the abuse of the Koran at Guantanamo. While a military investigation is ongoing, the military insists that no such confirmation is forthcoming. So in making such an attribution, the Newsweek article was off the mark. However, this issue is largely a red herring. The real issue is not whether the military was about to fess up; the real issue is whether the alleged events actually happened, particularly since we know that the military is chronically late in accepting responsibility for misconduct. Far more important is this heart of the Newsweek story: Did Guantanamo Bay guards show contempt for the Islamic religion generally and the Koran specifically? There is overwhelming evidence for the accuracy of this claim.

Ever since 9/11 there has been a theme of unchecked disrepect for the Islamic religion showed by prison guards. Back in March of 2004, I wrote about the widespread roundup of Islamic men for minor immigrations violations that took place immediately after 9/11. Eight hundred men were housed at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. A subsequent Justice Department investigation into treatment of those detainees (none of whom, it turned out, had anything to do with 9/11), found not only physical attacks upon the detainees, but the following verbal abuse:

“Whatever you did at the World Trade Center, we will do to you… You’re never going to leave here…Don’t ask any questions, otherwise you will be dead.” When detainees prayed, officers said, “Shut the fuck up! Don’t pray, fucking Muslim. You’re praying bullshit.”

Such treatment, which took place well before the US ever invaded Iraq, was a portent of things to come. The sexual sadism practiced at Abu Ghraib had a clear component of religious desecration; forcing men to be naked and commit sexual acts in front of female guards was a clear attempt to degrade the prisoners not only personally, but spiritually. But what about the Koran itself? Is there any evidence that military guards at Guantanamo knowingly defiled the Koran? Yes. White House protestations notwithstanding, there is abundant evidence of intentional mistreatment of the Koran. Much of the evidence is laid out in the Los Angeles Times’ May 22 story, “Dozens Have Alleged Koran’s Mishandling.”

The Los Angles Times article offers a catalog of horrors from former detainees, human rights groups, and the International Red Cross, describing the intentional and provocative mistreatment of the Koran. Examples include a dog carrying a copy of the Koran in its mouth, a guard urinating on a copy of the Koran, guards deliberately stepping on the Koran, and the writing of obscenities in the holy book. In the face of such allegations, the military response is predictable, that former prisoners are making up these stories. This line of defense, however, carries little weight, for two reasons: First, allegations made by the International Red Cross have consistently been far more credible and timely than information provided by the military; second, the misdeeds that have already been confirmed by unbiased individuals are at least as abhorrent as the acts alleged in the Newsweek piece. For example, CBS’s “60 Minutes” recently documented how Guantanamo detainees were sexually taunted by female interrogators in a way that targeted the men’s religion. Ponder this question: Which is worse, stepping on a Koran, or smearing fake menstrual blood on a detainee, then denying him water to wash, rendering him unfit for prayer? Clearly, if a prison guard will do the latter, there is little evidence of any conscience that would prevent him or her from doing the former. Both actions are so grotesque, that one cannot even determine which is worse. Here is the statement of Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Mazouz who was picked up in Pakistan shortly after 9/11. Recently released from Guantanamo, he was interviewed by telephone from his home in Marrakech, Morocco:

"They tore it and threw it on the floor. They urinated on it. They walked on top of the Koran. They used the Koran like a carpet."

Moreover, abuse of the Koran, like the abuse of detainees took place in every theater of the war. The following account from the LA Times story is appalling:

Ahmad Naji Abid Ali Dulaymi, who was held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for 10 months, singled out a soldier or noncommissioned officer known to detainees only as "Fox." He said prisoners were forced to sit naked, were licked by dogs, and were soaked in cold water and then forced to sit in front of a powerful air-conditioner."

"But frankly," he said, "the worst insult and humiliation they were doing to us, especially for the religious ones among us, is when they, especially Fox, tore up holy books of Koran and threw them away into the trash or into dirty water."

"Almost every day, Fox used to take a brand new Koran, and tear off the plastic cover in front of us and then throw it away into the trash container…”

Such allegations by former detainees are so abundant, and so available for any organization to investigate, it casts serious questions about the Southern Command’s passivity on this matter. By all appearances, the military is simply stonewalling.

2) Newsweek should have anticipated the reaction to such an inflammatory story. I find this assertion laughable. If the Islamic world did not riot after the Abu Ghraib disclosures, if it did riot after reports of interrogators using fake menstrual blood to humiliate prisoners, why should Newsweek anticipate rioting after a brief story about abuse of the Koran? This story, after all, is simply one additional sand pebble on a very long beach. Indeed one could argue that it was not this story that caused the upheaval, but rather the cumulative weight of all the stories of military misconduct that finally triggered a backlash in the Islamic world. And why shouldn’t the Islamic world be upset? The Bush administration continues to learn over and over again, that if you want to spread democracy and respect for law, you have to show that you believe in democracy and respect for law.

3) If even the story were true, Newsweek shouldn’t have printed it. This notion, advanced by such models of humanism as Pat Buchanan and Robert Novak, is one of the more frightening ideas to emerge from this story. Novak and Buchanan apparently believe the press should simply be a propaganda arm of the military. The very notion that the press should overlook violations of the Geneva Conventions because to do otherwise would make the military look bad, strikes at heart of the press’ role in a free democracy. Novak and Buchanan notwithstanding, the exposure of abuse of the Koran will actually help the US in the long run because, like an unruly adolescent, the Bush administration has to be repeatedly reminded that there are serious international consequences to bad conduct.

It is true that Newsweek could have tightened up it sourcing of the story; it could have found additional evidence for its charges; it could have treated the story with more gravity and placed it in a different part of the magazine. However, when all the dust has settled, we’re going to find that fundamentally, Newsweek was right in the first place.

2005-05-16T22:45:00.000-04:00

Bush, Bolton, and the Politics of BS

Few people would describe CBS anchor Bob Schieffer as a journalistic bomb thrower. Instead, words like courtly, gentile, and avuncular are more suited to Schieffer’s journalistic style. However, even Bob Schieffer was fed up on Sunday, in his commentary on the White House reaction to the Cessna airplane scare. White House spokespeople such as Scott McClellan and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley had repeatedly made the straight-faced claim that failing to tell the president that a civilian airplane was about to be shot down over the White House was perfectly in keeping with crisis “protocols.” They insisted that there was no need to interrupt the president's idyllic bike ride. This notion was so silly and unbelievable that Schieffer had to call them on it:

“Now wait a minute. No need to know his wife had been taken to a bomb shelter, the vice president and congressional leaders were being whisked to secret locations, the Capitol and the White House were being evacuated?”

Schieffer continued:

“Please. Common sense -- to be sure, a resource that is seldom used in Washington -- tells us that communications equipment failed, or someone just made a bonehead mistake. Not exactly indictable offenses. But this White House is genetically incapable of admitting even a minor mistake, so spinners found themselves arguing the president is so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things that he didn't need to be told until all the smart people around him had fixed the problem.”

And finally, using a velvet glove over an iron fist, Schieffer delivered a blow to the solar plexus:

“I've known a president or two in my time and I've yet to meet one who thought he was inconsequential, or who appreciated having himself pictured as such, especially by his own people. I sure wouldn't.”

Schieffer, in his gentile fashion, has managed to pinpoint something spectacularly wrong about this administration: It has no shame, it lives in denial, it is constantly in “spin” mode. The Bush administration is so insecure about its lack of competence, it feels that to acknowledge even the slightest mistake, is to risk having the whole house of cards fall down. A president with a real sense of self-confidence would have stridden to the microphone after the event and said something like:

“Some of the crisis management people screwed up by not notifying me immediately. I’ve made the necessary corrections to the system, and I can assure you that it will never happen again!”

The problem is, it is impossible to imagine the president saying anything so straightforward and obvious. Instead the White House deals with every problem through denial, bravado, stonewalling, and make-believe. No president with half a brain would be anything but irate at being kept out of the loop while Capitol Hill was in a state of panic. Even from a public relations standpoint the incident makes the president look like a mental dwarf whose input is unneeded or unwanted during a crisis. But the administration refuses to say what everyone already knows: They screwed up. If this were simply an isolated case, it was be tolerable. But this is thematic in this administration.

Take, for example, the practice of “rendition,” that of sending detainees to countries with questionable human rights records for interrogation. It is quite obvious that this amounts to a torture-by-proxy scheme, yet the administration persists in claiming that there is an ethical basis for rendition. Listen to this curious exchange from the president’s March 16 press conference.

Q Mr. President, can you explain why you've approved of and expanded the practice of what's called rendition, of transferring individuals out of U.S. custody to countries where human rights groups and your own State Department say torture is common for people under custody?

THE PRESIDENT: The post-9/11 world, the United States must make sure we protect our people and our friends from attack. That was the charge we have been given. And one way to do so is to arrest people and send them back to their country of origin with the promise that they won't be tortured. That's the promise we receive. This country does not believe in torture. We do believe in protecting ourselves. We don't believe in torture.

Q As Commander-in-Chief, what is it that Uzbekistan can do in interrogating an individual that the United States can't?

THE PRESIDENT: We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured when we render a person back to their home country.

It is disturbing enough that this practice has become a mainstay of the war on terrorism; it is more disturbing that the president offers such a cavalier, half-baked justification of it. What on earth does it mean that we get a promise from Uzbekistan—which just gunned down 700 of its citizens during civil unrest—that they will not torture prisoners? We haven’t adhered to our own pledges not to torture. How on earth can we trust the Uzbekistans and Libyas of the world not to do so?

That the president can be so dismissive of questions about “rendition,” and with a straight face is shameful.But the most glaring case of the administration’s shamelessness is that of the nomination of John Bolton. There may exist on record a worse nomination, but this may be the most cynical nomination ever offered. In an earlier blog, I suggested that sending Bolton to the UN was a way of kicking him upstairs, getting him out of the policy-making wing of the State Department. Everything I’ve heard since has convinced me more of this idea. Listen to Senator Paul Sarbanes discussing the testimony elicited from Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff:

“Larry Wilkerson, who was Secretary Powell's chief of staff, described to the committee staff the kinds of problems he had on a daily basis in dealing with Bolton: Assistant secretaries, principal deputy assistant secretaries, acting assistant secretaries coming into my office and telling me, 'Can I sit down?' And I would say to them, 'Sure, sit down. What's the problem?' 'I've got to leave.' 'What's the problem?' 'Bolton.' When asked if he got similar complaints about other undersecretaries, he replied, ‘On one occasion, on one particular individual. The rest were all about Undersecretary Bolton.’ In summarizing his experience with Bolton, Wilkerson stated, ‘I think he's a lousy leader. And there are 100 to 150 people up there that have to be led. They have to be led well, and they have to be led properly.’”

The significance of this isn’t simply that Bolton was a bad manager; it was that his bad reputation preceded him. Everyone knew that he was a nuisance, a pill, in short, more trouble than he was worth. This is why speculation is rampant that Bolton’s UN nomination was not a first prize, but rather a consolation prize, for a man who really wanted to be Condi Rice’s deputy.
It was painful to listen to the Republicans during the May 12 Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing. There are a lot of decent Republicans on the committee, Lugar, Hagel, Murkowski, among them, who are deeply troubled, and can’t turn a blind eye to the flaws of this nomination. So each Republican senator awkwardly listed his or her misgivings about John Bolton, only to then suddenly do a sharp pivot and say, “I’m voting for this nominee, because I believe a president deserves to have his choices confirmed.” This line became a mantra during the hearing.

As I watched the hearing, each Republican seemed to be holding his or her nose, while voicing support for Bolton. Listen to the words of Chairman Lugar:

“Secretary Bolton's actions were not always exemplary. On several occasions, he made incorrect assumptions about the behavior and motivation of subordinates. At other times, he failed to use proper managerial channels or unnecessarily personalized internalist views. The picture is one of an aggressive policy-maker who pressed his missions at every opportunity and argued vociferously for his point of view. In the process, his blunt style alienated some colleagues, but there is no evidence that he has broken laws or engaged in serious ethical misconduct.”

Talk about a strained endorsement! Lugar feels compelled to assure us that Bolton has committed no crimes!

Listen to a sample of comments during the hearing from Lisa Murkowski, Republican senator from Alaska:

“He can be focused, but he can be over-aggressive. It's also become clear to me that when Mr. Bolton has made up his mind about an issue, it can be difficult to change that mindset…”

“I found Mr. Bolton's comments [about North Korea] to be inflammatory at a time when we were trying to promote diplomacy in the region. And it seemed to me that if he was willing to fan the flames with disparaging rhetoric at that point in time, it was a question to me as to how he would conduct himself in New York. And it was an issue that we brought up at that initial meeting. I also understand that Mr. Bolton remarked during his confirmation hearing that he'd received a thank you from then- Ambassador Hubbard for his speech, saying that the speech had been helpful and it would do them some good in South Korea. And yet, when I reviewed the transcript from the interview with Ambassador Hubbard, it was very clear that Hubbard's intent had not been to thank Mr. Bolton for the speech itself, but for making some factual changes to the speech so as not to spread the flames any further. And I have to agree with Ambassador Hubbard's assessment that the speech did not advance the president's objective of verifiably dismantling North Korea's nuclear program through negotiation…”

“I believe that there is a pattern of Mr. Bolton pushing that envelope on whether he could or could not say, in trying to push policy that was perhaps more ambitious than the administration might be willing to go...”

“I do believe that how one treats not only those on a similar level of authority, but also those with not as much power, it says a lot. It says lot about them as a person and how they will work with others. And then in this position in the U.N. our representative needs to be able to work with others to build those relationships…”

But just when you think that Murkowski has seen enough, and is prepared to vote against Bolton, she lets all the air out of the balloon:

“But at the same time, I recognize that this is the president's nominees. The president deserves to be surrounded by individuals that he trusts…”

There's that mantra again...

So there it is. Democrats are horrified by the nomination. Republicans are having trouble finding positive things to say about John Bolton. The White House was sloppy in its preparation, and apparently thought that it could shuffle Bolton off to the UN (technically, a lower level position than Bolton currently has) with little resistance or objection.

The Bolton nomination was a major mistake, both domestically and internationally. Further, it was one that Chairman Lugar warned the White House about in advance. Most presidents would withdraw a nomination this divisive and embarrassing. But this president has little capacity for embarrassment. This is not about John Bolton any more; it’s about winning at any cost, about looking strong. It is about the pathology of an administration that would rather appear strong than right. To that end, they’ll keep pushing for this flawed nominee, regardless of how much pottery he breaks. While other administrations would be feeling shame, this one, true to form, pushes blindly forward.

2005-05-06T08:12:00.000-04:00

Corey and Paula: The Messy “Paulatics” of American Idol

This year, I made a solemn promise to myself, that after writing three blog entries about American Idol last year, I would now walk the straight and narrow and steer clear of Idolmania. My best-laid plans went awry, however, when the Paula Abdul-Corey Clark brouhaha erupted, setting off my b.s. detector. To my dismay, I began to feel an invisible force beyond my power, dragging me, kicking and screaming to my computer. At that point, I was helpless.

The allegations of an improper relationship—a sexual affair--between contestant Corey Clark and judge Paula Abdul raise many interesting issues—not terribly complicated issues, mind you—but interesting ones. Please allow me to wade into the thicket of charges and countercharges, and sort out the sense from the nonsense:

1) Did Clark and Abdul have an inappropriate, sexual relationship? Of course they did. At this point, anyone who thinks otherwise would have to assume that Corey Clark—a kid who arrived at American Idol without a cell phone, a car, or a fixed address--somehow had the wherewithal to manufacture telephone records that show countless phone calls between the two over a period of months. Doubters would have to explain how Corey gained detailed intimate knowledge of Paula’s house, including even the “dog ramp in the guest room” for her three dogs (“Thumbelina, Tulip, and Tinkerbell” ). They would have to tell us how Corey could describe Paula’s Jacuzzi and the television that stood above it. They would have to explain how Clark could have come into possession of a bottle of prescription cough syrup from the Beverly Glen Pharmacy, with Paula Abdul’s name on it. They would have to assume that Clark had orchestrated a broad conspiracy that included not only his two friends (who say that they met Paula at the interestingly named “Club Lingerie”), but also included an employee from a Sprint cell phone store who confirmed that Clack and Abdul came in together to activate a cell phone. Anyone doubting Clark at this juncture would also have to assume that Clark enlisted his parents in the conspiracy. The parents’ own phone records show numerous incoming calls from Paula, and they report answering the phone many times, speaking to Paula when she was calling for Corey. Anyone doubting the relationship has an enormous burden to meet, a mountain of evidence to explain away.

2) Why hasn’t Paula stood up and defended herself? This question is easy: Because Corey’s allegations are true, and Paula wants to avoid making statements that could later be seen as outright lies. When the charges first surfaced, I was curious as to whether Abdul would make a clean, clear denial. It never came. Instead we heard careful, secondhand statements from her spokespeople that she would “not dignify” his charges with a response. We also heard Abdul describe Clark’s allegations as “hideous and mean.” However, significantly, we never heard her describe the charges as untrue. Rather than stand up and give a full accounting of this episode, and if need be, apologize to Idol-nation, Abdul is currently in full stonewall mode, hoping the charges will go away. That alone speaks volumes about her sense of responsibility.

3) Isn’t all this irrelevant, since it is the audience that votes a contestant in or out? The answer is a resounding no. Up until the final 12 contestants have been chosen, it is the judges, not the audience, who determine the fate of each contestant. So, from the round of (approximately) 200 contestants, through the round of 12, Clark and Abdul were carrying on romantically at night, while she served as his head cheerleader during the day. Furthermore, even if judges had no impact on voting at all, the guidance that he received, the emotional and financial support, and the comfort of knowing that he had one of the judges in his, er, pocket, would have made for an enormous advantage. Like most reality series, American Idol is in part about conquering stress and adversity; being able to spend nights with one of the judges would certainly be a major a stress-reducer. Indeed, knowing what we now know, the scenes of Paula leaping to her feet to praise Corey, after having picked his song and bought his clothes, are enough to make one cringe.

4) Is FOX taking the charges seriously? Well, yes and no. Clearly the most cynical party in this entire saga is the FOX network itself. Their statement that they intend to investigate the charges but they need Corey Clark to help them, is absurd on its face, and is little more than a delaying tactic. FOX doesn’t need Corey Clark to come talk to them directly. The charges have been in the public domain for weeks, and unless FOX made a strategic decision to bury their head in the sand, they’ve already done their investigation. The simple truth is, FOX already knows that the charges are true, and the network is now thrashing around, buying time, trying to come up with a strategy of damage control. Fact-checking Clark’s allegations could be completed in a matter of hours. Just in case FOX is as dimwitted and helpless as it pretends to be, here’s a simple suggestion on how to investigate this case: Call Paula into your office, and ask her point-blank, “Did you have an affair with Corey Clark?” If she answers “no,” then tell her that you need to inspect her phone records for the first 3 months of 2003. By all appearances, FOX and Abdul are engaged in a little two-step right now, entitled “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

5) Isn’t Corey Clark simply drumming up publicity for his upcoming CD? Of course he is. He is trying to cash in, in the best way that he can. It’s quite convenient and strategic for him make the charges now that he is resurfacing with an album, but that in no way negates the strength of his evidence. Further, it is not hard to understand why Clark would go public: He is still wounded and bitter over his dismissal from American Idol (as a result of an arrest record). One of the themes of American Idol is the intense pain and despair that the contestants experience—at every phase of the competition—when they are rejected. Corey’s fellow contestants, interviewed on the ABC expose "Fallen Idol," used words like “depressed” and “suicidal” to describe their feelings after being voted off the show. Imagine then, what it was like for Corey Clark, a kid with no means, but full of dreams, who is sleeping with a 40 year old judge and among the final 12 contestants, to be publicly humiliated and abruptly kicked off the show. In addition to his very embarrassing dismissal from the show, virtually all contact with Abdul ceased overnight. He is bitter, vindictive perhaps, but having seen the evidence, I have little doubt about the basic accuracy of his charges.

6) But why would Paula risk everything to have a fling with a 22 year old contestant? Because when one is unhappy and emotionally needy, it impairs judgment and can lead to stupid decisions. Paula, herself, has already chronicled in People Magazine this year, her many emotional struggles in life, including chronic pain, a neurological disorder, problems with painkillers, bulimia, and two divorces. And don’t kid yourself into naively thinking, “But Paula could have had anyone she wanted.” It is no easier to have a fulfilling relationship if you’re a Hollywood star, than it is if you work at Walmart in Peoria. It only seems that way from afar. Clark quotes Paula as saying to him in their first telephone conversation that she wanted be like a “mother” to him. Then, he says, she amended that: “No, more like a sister—well, more like a special friend.” In Corey Clark, Paula found exactly what she needed, someone whom she could mother, befriend, and with whom she could share a romance. From the outside looking in, it of course looks ridiculously foolish. But telephone calls of 111 and 155 minutes in length are indicative of the nature of their relationship.

7) Can Paula remain on the show? Unless FOX wants to make itself a laughingstock and a model of hypocrisy, the answer is no. Remember, FOX has now run afoul of the very holier-than-thou standard that it asks contestants to meet. It is, by the way, a standard that I’ve always found outrageous. So what if one of the contestants (Frenchy) posed on a porn site? Does that disqualify her from becoming a pop star? Of course not, no more than Vanessa Williams, whose racy pictures have long since been forgotten. The absurdity of American Idol’s phony moralism, is that it would exclude the greatest stars of the rock era. Think about it: From Jerry Lee Lewis, to Chuck Berry, to James Brown, to Jim Morrison, to Jimmy Hendrix, to Janis Joplin, to Mick Jagger, to Johnny Cash (indeed the list is endless), all have had serious scrapes with the law. And all have made enormous contributions to music and pop culture. It is a fitting irony that FOX has found out that what goes around, comes around, with the integrity of its most successful show under fire.

8) What should FOX do now? Fox should simply cut its losses and come clean with the public. It should ask Paula Abdul to apologize to the show’s audience and contestants, and it should replace her. It should see this as an opportunity to revamp the show and improve it. If possible, it should recruit Naomi Judd to replace Paula. As a judge on CBS’s recent Star Search, Judd was everything that Abdul was not: creative, independent, witty, thoughtful, as well as warm. She would make a terrific addition to the show. And while FOX is making changes, it should scrap the problem-ridden voting system that allows each person to cast hundreds of votes on behalf of his or her favorite, thereby clogging the phone lines and causing many would-be voters to give up. The integrity of the voting process would improve a thousand-fold if FOX enforced a “one phone line, one vote” rule. American Idol will survive this scandal, but it will almost certainly do so without Paula Abdul.

2005-05-02T10:14:00.000-04:00

The Marvelous but Maddening Internet

It is a truism that the computer and the Internet are two of the most transformative technological advances since the printing press in 1450. And like most technological advances, they not only have served to shrink the world, but also to level it. Level it? Yes, the fact that one of the world’s most valuable commodities, information, has now become globalized, means that individuals who formerly had no access to the latest knowledge, can now absorb it, build on it, and capitalize on it in unheard of ways. The manner in which the information is used might be scientific, it might be commercial, or it might be political or philosophical. The wonderful byproduct of this is a world with a more even playing field, where folks from the most remote areas of the world can not only learn more, but can compete better industrially. The globalization of labor markets is not only being driven by economics; it is also being driven by the outsourcing of information. No one has captured the way in which the world is both shrinking and democratizing better than Thomas L. Friedman, the New York Times columnist, whose latest book, “The World is Flat,” is the articulation of this powerful trend. Friedman states:

"I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat. I was doing a documentary for the Discovery Times Channel about "outsourcing." After 60 hours of interviews with Indian entrepreneurs who wanted to write my software from Bangalore, do my taxes from Bangalore, trace my lost luggage from Bangalore, read my X-rays from Bangalore, and draw my Disney cartoons from Bangalore, I realized that something big had happened--that the world had been flattened--and I needed to write about it."

There is a flipside, however, to the revolution spawned by the Internet. When dealing with the digital world, one can never escape the oft stated principle of “garbage in, garbage out.” The great thing about the Internet is that connects us with the multiplicity of information sources in the world (Friedman comments that currently, only 35% of Internet searches take place in English). The bedeviling thing about the Internet is that it connects us to so many flawed and misleading information sources, each masquerading as truth.

I first became aware of this when I was involved with a college scholarship organization which chose its awardees based, in part, on student oral presentations about contemporary issues. Students would typically offer a dizzying array of facts and statistics, and occasionally would be challenged by one of us on the judging panel: “Where does that statistic come from?” The answer all too often was a blank “I found it on the Internet,” without any reference to the source or its reputability. In other words, for many, the Internet has achieved an aura of self-validation: If I saw it on the Internet, it must be true. This can lead to a proliferation of both misinformation and intellectual laziness.

Another maddening thing about the Internet is the number of holes that exist in the blanket of information it offers. Am I the only person who has surfed the net in utter agony, looking for a basic piece of information like how old someone is, or where they went to school, without being able to find it? Yes, I can find out what they had for breakfast, or who they are dating, or how much they paid in taxes, but I can’t find out where they graduated! It is alarming how often that search engines can tell you everything but what you’re looking for.

Speaking of search engines, just today I made a striking discovery about the two most used search engines, Google and Yahoo: They seem to have markedly different ideological leanings! Here is what happened: I checked the news on Google, under the search term “John Bolton,” to find the latest on the embattled, disgraced nominee. The headlines I found on Google were something of a shock:

Bolton Advocate for US Interests. SentinelSun.com
The Strange Case against John Bolton. Washington Times, Washington, DC
Bolton Carries “GOP Soldier” Mantle. Fort Wayne Gazette.
Never Shy, Bolton Brings a Zeal to the Table. NY Times
The Lynching of John Bolton. GOPUSA
Bolton, Not Nice but Good. Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

My god, I thought, Google has managed to find every apologist for John Bolton and put them front and center on its first search page! In amazement, I turned to Yahoo:

Another Powell Aide Finds Bolton Lacking. International Herald Tribune
Official Says Bolton Flouted Travel Rules. Yahoo news.
More Complaints Pile Up Against Bolton. Free Internet Press
Bolton’s Nomination is Questioned by Another Powell Aide. NY Times
Ex-officials Said to Detail Bolton’s Call for Ouster. Boston Globe.

To be sure, both search engines had some headlines in common:

Bolton Blunt, but Effective. Newjersey.com
Murkowski Reaffirms Support for Bolton Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Clearly, one would get a decidedly different perspective on John Bolton’s prospects for confirmation depending on which search engine one chose. I have always preferred Yahoo to Google, because it allows one to do Boolean searches (e.g., Bolton AND Bully) for greater search specificity. Nothing I’ve seen on Google will make me switch any time soon.

A final source of frustration on the Internet is the quantity of bad journalism that one finds. Take the story that caught my eye this morning:

"Oklahoma Coach Quits After Using Racial Slur." AP

The story described the resignation of University of Oklahoma baseball coach Larry Cochell, after uttering a racial slur to two ESPN correspondents:

"ESPN said Friday that Cochell, who is white, used a slur after praising a freshman outfielder, who is black, during two pre-broadcast interviews Tuesday."

I read story after story about this incident and learned such trivia as how long Cochell had been on the job (14 years), what his win-loss record was (1330-814), how ambivalent Oklahoma residents were about the incident, and how regretful OU President David Boren was to fire Cochell. What I never learned in any of these stories was the one thing I wanted to know: What the hell did Cochell actually say!? Anyone who has reflected on race, and the use of racially offensive terms, knows that not all racial slights are equal. There are many degrees of offensiveness, depending on the words chosen, the context, the individuals involved, and their perceived motives. Anyone who has heard a Chris Rock monologue, or read Randall Kenndy’s treatise on the N-word, knows that context can make a world of difference in judging offensiveness. Knowing this well, I must have scanned 40 different versions of the story, without gaining any insight into what was actually said—itself a fascinating commentary on the extreme delicacy of newspapers in their discussion of race. Finally, after a light bulb went on in my head, I went to the originator of the story, ESPN. At last, I found it:

"Cochell was speaking with play-by-play announcer Gary Thorne when he called Dunigan [an OU baseball player] over to praise him for staying in school. When the freshman returned to the field, Cochell told Thorne, "There's no n----- in him." The network informed the school that Cochell used similar language in an interview with ESPN analyst Kyle Peterson.
The interviews were not taped, and Thorne and Peterson didn't know Cochell had used similar language in both instances until they spoke with each other days later, ESPN director of media relations Josh Krulewitz said."

It is clear from the context, the Coach Cochell, went out of his way to hang himself, offering up racial slurs to two separate ESPN correspondents, gratuitously and out of the blue. As is characteristic of unconscious racism, Cochell, clearly thought that he was paying his player a high compliment. The incident is somewhat reminiscent of the firing of Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis, who naively volunteered on “Nightline” in 1987 that blacks were not becoming managers or GM’s in the major leagues because they did not have the “necessities” for those high level jobs. Later, many came to Campanis’ defense, pointing out that few front office people had been as supportive of the team’s black players as Campanis. However, the stupidity and naiveté of his remarks overrode these factors. Likewise, it should be pointed out that the families of the two black players on the team spoke out in support of Cochell, and wanted to retain him. However, after going out of his way to toss out racial slurs to two reporters, there was no saving Cochell.

The point here is that this story only becomes truly interesting if one is willing to dig into it; the most prominent articles about it on the net leave out some of the most thought-provoking facts. As such, it is a metaphor for the marvelous but maddening Internet: Yes, the Internet is flattening out the world, but be careful: It is constantly throwing you curve balls!

2005-04-25T17:26:00.000-04:00

The Bolton Fiasco

The nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations is as dead as a doornail. As more allegations emerge and new evidence surfaces to corroborate the old allegations, the smart money says that the Bolton nomination will not survive until May 12, the date of the next Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote on him. But long after John Bolton has been sent back to his office in the State Department, there will remain fascinating questions about this nomination:

1) How on earth did the Bush administration nominate Bolton for this post in the first place? After all, the record of John Bolton constituted a perfect storm of disqualification from the get-go: 1) Prior to being nominated, he had already communicated to all who would listen his lack of respect for the UN as an entity. He told the Federalist Society in a colloquium that “the UN does not exist.” All that exists, he said defiantly, was “the United States, who will work along with other nations, if and when it is in our interest.” Just in case he had not shown his full contempt for the UN, Bolton went on to say that “if the UN building lost its top 10 floors, it wouldn’t make any difference.” 2) He has shown little respect for the intelligence apparatus that undergirds foreign policy. When Bolton’s desire to play up Cuba’s biological weapons capability was reined in by Christian Westermann, the intelligence analyst assigned to Cuba, Bolton was indignant, telling Westermann’s supervisor, Thomas Fingar, that “he wasn't going to be told what he could say by a midlevel INR (Intelligence Research) munchkin analyst." 3) His approach to those less powerful, both personally and internationally, has consistently been authoritarian and top-down, making him a poor choice to work with the member nations of the UN.

One of the best lines of Bolton’s Foreign Relations Committee hearing, came from ranking member Joe Biden in his opening remarks to Bolton and the committee:

“Mr. Bolton, some of your supporters have compared your going to the UN to Nixon going to China; my concern is that you will be more like a bull in a china shop!”

Biden hit the nail directly on the head: How did someone so dramatically wrong for a post wind up in this position? Did Bush and Condi really think that Bolton was an appropriate choice as UN Ambassador? It seems unlikely, especially at this point in history, when our relationship with the UN is still reeling from Colin Powell’s bogus case for war in Iraq. Or is it more plausible to think that Bolton’s nomination was a way of “kicking him upstairs,” getting him out of the policy making wing of the State Department, and out of Condi’s hair? I have to believe that the Bolton nomination was the White House’s (and the State Department's) way of ridding itself of a nuisance, particularly since Bolton’s reputation for malice and intimidation was well known.

It is a measure of how accepting we are of political spin, that we would even for a moment, take seriously the idea that an individual who is completely hostile to an organization is the right person to reform it. Yes, a vegetarian might have some good ideas on how to reform McDonalds; an atheist might have some good ideas about how to reform the Catholic Church. But no one would ever consider putting such individuals in charge of the reform effort, for two reasons: First, because their views would be incompatible with the very mission of those organizations; second, because they would never gain the trust of the members of those organizations. My best guess is that the administration was arrogant and sloppy with this nomination, didn’t thoroughly vet the nominee, and didn’t anticipate the array of charges that would come not from Democrats, but from Republicans who had worked with him. Now Bush finds himself in a morass that he can’t get out of.

2) How has Bolton’s nomination survived this far, given that he lied to the Foreign Relations Committee? Regardless of what one thinks about Bolton’s management style, fibbing under oath to a Senate committee should lead to one’s nomination being pulled immediately. Clearly Bolton was at the very least shading the truth, when he pooh-poohed the idea that he had tried to get intelligence agent Westermann fired: "There is nothing there, there, and I would put it all out on the public record - all of it." This despite the fact that everyone involved in the episode, from Carl Ford Jr., the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, to Thomas Fingar, who was Ford’s deputy, to Westermann himself have given sworn testimony that contradicts Bolton. The facts seem clear: Bolton tried to have Westermann removed from his job.

Recently, a more obvious fib has come to light that may be harder to wiggle out of. In 2003, just before the beginning of international talks over North Korea’s nuclear capability, Bolton gave a speech savaging Kim Jong Il. The U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Thomas Hubbard, twice asked Bolton to change the tone and language of his speech, to no avail. When he was asked by the Senate Committee what diplomatic purpose was served by the speech, Bolton responded:

"I can tell you what our ambassador to South Korea, Tom Hubbard, said after the speech. He said, "Thanks a lot for that speech, John. It'll help us a lot out here.'"

Unfortunately for Bolton, Hubbard has since testified to the committee that he made no such approving remarks to Bolton, before or after the speech, and added that Bolton had hung up on him and refused to attend a dinner around that Hubbard had arranged for him. Bolton’s statement can only be seen as a self-serving, bald-faced lie, one which was contradicted not by a partisan Democrat, but a Bush Republican appointee. It is ironic that it is the Republicans with whom Bolton worked, like Carl Ford and Thomas Hubbard—not to mention Colin Powell--who have administered the deepest wounds to Bolton.

3) Why hasn’t George W. Bush himself taken a hit for this nomination? After all, Bolton now is simply a man playing a waiting game, twisting in the wind, struggling to salvage something of his reputation. It is the President who put him in that position by making such a foolish nomination. Further, this episode can hardly be said to be cost free for the nation. Member countries of the United Nations have been following this soap opera in astonishment, wondering why with so many international issues at stake, Bush would choose to stick his thumb in the UN’s eye’s by sending John Bolton there. I can understand why Senate Democrats have held their fire against the president; they don’t want to be seen as engaging in partisan piling on. However, that is precisely where the likes of Howard Dean comes in. Isn’t tough talk Dean’s stock in trade? The head of the Democratic National Committee should be beating this issue like a drum, focusing on the national embarrassment produced by this nomination.

And to the dismay of the damage-control folks in the White House, this mess is going to get worse before it gets better. The most recent allegation comes from attorney Laura Finney, who worked with Bolton in the early 80’s at USAID, and at the time was working on the UN Development Program. Bolton pressed Finney in 1982 to try to get UN delegates to try to weaken World Health Organization rules on how infant formula could be marketed in the developing world. Finney refused Bolton’s request, telling him that it was well known that infant formula could be deadly in the developing world, because mothers used it with tainted water. In her letter to Senater Barbara Boxer, Finney wrote that Bolton

"shouted that Nestle was an important company and that he was giving me a direct order from President Reagan….He yelled that if I didn't obey him, he would fire me….I said I could not live with myself if even one baby died because of something I did. . . . He screamed that I was fired."

Bolton was not able to fire her, Finney wrote, but did move her to a basement office with no windows. One suspects that the number of ugly anecdotes concerning John Bolton is only limited by the amount of time one has to collect them.

Finally, while I am assigning blame in this fiasco, let me say a few words about moderate Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, the man originally thought to have the deciding vote on the Foreign Relations Committee. Chafee, who could smell the stench of this nomination from day one, has shown little if any courage during this saga. Indeed up until the time that the first committee vote was to be taken, Chafee--no profile in courage--had done little beyond offering mealy-mouthed, half-hearted statements in support of Bolton. It was only when Republican Senator George Voinovich spoke up and said that he could not support this nominee, thereby giving Chafee the political cover that he needed, that Chafee discovered that he had some backbone after all! Voinovich is now being pilloried by his own party, who charge that since Voinovich had not attended many of the hearings before that, that his opinion shouldn’t count. Apparently Voinovich’s critics assume that he doesn’t get C-SPAN, read the newspaper, talk with other committee members, or read memos prepared by his staff, either.

One can only hope that this episode will end with an appropriate, capable, consensus choice for ambassador, with the White House properly chastened, and with the Democrats feeling their oats at having mustered some cojones.

2005-03-10T05:00:00.000-05:00

An Old Song with a New “Rendition”: Torture

David Ignatius, in his March 9 column in the Washington Post, “Rendition Realities,” makes a good faith attempt to decouple “rendition”—the act of sending suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation—from torture—the act of inflicting pain for the purpose of extracting information. Ignatius suggests that there may be appropriate reasons for exporting detainees for interrogation. The essay, however, falls far short of its goal of justifying limited, appropriate rendition. Indeed, by the final paragraph of his piece, Ignatius finds himself knee-deep in contradiction. He begins by suggesting that critics of rendition (such as me) may be greatly overstating the link between rendition and surrogate torture. Here is his explanation:

“The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the CIA believes that torture works. But in 30 years of writing about intelligence, I’ve never encountered a spook who didn’t realize that torture is usually counterproductive.”

While I'm sure that this is an accurate account of Ignatius' personal experience, it completely misses the point. Yes, if you interview an intelligence agent in some formal setting, he will almost always give you the conventional line that torture is counterproductive. But in times of crisis, when information has dried up, when superiors are demanding better intelligence, few agents in the field believe this in their gut. Rather, they believe that if they can just ratchet up the level of pain a notch, the detainee will soon become a fount of valuable intelligence. If this weren’t the case, we wouldn’t be seeing--pardon the term--“tortured” memos coming out of the Justice Department and Pentagon, attempting to justify the mistreatment of detainees. We wouldn’t be seeing hair-splitting arguments by the White House and the Defense Department over who is and isn’t covered by the Geneva Conventions. Nor would we see the pandemic of murder and brutality that has flowed not only from Abu Ghraib, but from detention centers in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, the Baghdad Airport, and Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, not to mention the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, where petty immigration violators were systematically brutalized after 9/11.

A second glaring problem with Ignatius’ defense of selective rendition is that he assumes that the CIA and army behave in a fully rational manner. No rational organization would have operated in the lax, cavalier, indifferent manner of the US military command with respect to the treatment of Iraqi detainees. For example, it took no particular foresight or wisdom to know in advance that brutality against detainees would be a significant ethical and public relations concern in Iraq. It took no particular insight to realize that mistreatment of detainees could have a highly toxic effect on our attempt to win over the Iraqi citizenry. Despite this, prior to the Abu Ghraib revelations, no safeguards whatsoever were in place to prevent excessive force. No serious oversight was exercised to guarantee that even under difficult circumstances, the US would adhere to democratic principles and to international law. To the contrary, available evidence suggests that soldiers on the ground were encouraged to circumvent international law.

Moreover, recent information from Guantanamo Bay indicates that not only were Guantanamo prisoners mistreated, they were mistreated in ways that directly targeted their religious beliefs. It is amazing for example, that the American press has paid such scant attention to the fact that American female operatives went so far as to pretend to smear menstrual blood on Islamic detainees so as to make them feel unclean, disrupt their prayer, and destabilize them psychologically. However, the fact that these indecorous acts have gotten little press in the US doesn’t mean that the rest of the world hasn’t taken notice. Simply put, if we want to incite and recruit more terrorists, there is no more efficient way than to commit outrages like smearing menstrual blood on Islamic detainees.

The final problem with the Ignatius defense of rendition, is that it assumes that torture occurs first and foremost as an interrogation technique. I don’t believe that. To the contrary, most torture occurs simply because it is sadistically satisfying to the torturer. Does anybody who has seen the Abu Ghraib photos seriously believe that there was any interrogation or epistemic value to the brutality? Of course not. The purpose of what happened at Abu Ghraib was simply the degradation of the prisoners for its own sake, that is, for the pleasure of the torturers. Why did they do it? Because they were bored, frustrated, and felt demeaned by their roles as jailers; and finally, they did it because they could. The sad truth is that in the fog and chaos of war, too often a mentality develops of “if you can’t join them, beat them, degrade them.” Far from relaxing safeguards against torture by sending prisoners to known human rights violators, our ethical obligation is to do just the opposite.

White House officials must have been gnashing their teeth on Sunday, as they watched former CIA agent Mike Scheuer—the man who set up the rendition program—discuss the practice of rendition on “60 Minutes” with a kind of breezy, deranged candor. Check out this exchange between correspondent Scott Pelley and Scheuer about the rendering of detainees to Egypt:

Scheuer: They don't have the same legal system we have. But we know that going into it. And so the idea that we're gonna suddenly throw our hands up like Claude Raines in 'Casablanca' and say, “I'm shocked that justice in Egypt isn't like it is in Milwaukee,” there's a certain disingenuousness to that.

Pelley: And one of the things that you know about justice in Egypt is that people get tortured.

Scheuer: Well, it can be rough. I have to assume that that's the case.

Pelley: But doesn't that make the United States complicit in the torture?

Scheuer: You'll have to ask the lawyers.

Pelley: Is it convenient?

Scheuer: It's convenient in the sense that it allows American policy makers and American politicians to avoid making hard decisions. Yes. It's very convenient. It's finding someone else to do your dirty work.

Asked later by Pelley whether he thought it was appropriate to gain information from torture, Scheuer didn’t hesitate for a second. “It’s OK with me,” he volunteered, with a chilling lightheartedness. So, Ignatius’ assurances notwithstanding, here’s a spook who clearly believes that torture works. Further, if anyone has any doubt that the goal of this outsourcing of detainees is to find surrogates to do our torture for us, all one has to do is scan the list of countries to whom we’ve been rendering detainees. It reads like a Who’s Who of human rights violators: Libya, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Macedonia, and Uzbekistan. Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, describes the interrogation techniques used in Uzbekistan as being medieval in their gruesomeness:

"Techniques of drowning and suffocation, rape was used quite commonly, and also immersion of limbs in boiling liquid."

Parenthetically, when Ambassador Murray complained to the British government about these appalling means of extracting information, he was recalled from his post four months ago. This suggests to me the torture is not only counterproductive, not only unethical, but it is also somewhat addictive for those who use it.

Finally, Ignatius ends his piece with an ethical vignette that also seems to undercut his previous assurances that torture is unproductive:

“Before you make an easy judgment about rendition, you have to answer the disturbing question put to me by a former CIA official: Suppose the FBI had captured Mohamed Atta before Sept. 11, 2001. Under U.S. legal rules at the time, the man who plotted the airplane suicide attacks probably could not have been held or interrogated in the United States. Would it have made sense to "render" Atta to a place where he could have been interrogated in a way that might have prevented Sept. 11? That's not a simple question for me to answer, even as I share the conviction that torture is always and everywhere wrong.”

Unlike Ignatius, I have no trouble answering this ethical problem: No, it would not have made sense. The minute you start down the road of torture, your ability to distinguish yourself from the Pinochets, the Milosovices, the Saddams, is enormously compromised. Our ongoing use of it is both an ethical disgrace and a public relations disaster for democratic values. After all, if we don't believe in the humane treatment of prisoners, why should anyone else?

2005-02-11T07:19:00.000-05:00

The Simple, But Oh So Complicated World of George W. Bush

Conservatives and liberals have a basic difference in their view of the world. Conservatives see the world as a simple, straightforward place, comprised of basic truths that get mucked up by liberal nuance, fuzziness and “relativism.” Liberals, on the other hand, see the world as a complicated place, one which is ill-served by conservatives’ tendency to see it as simple, black and white, and absolute. Never has the rift in these warring cosmologies been clearer than during the Bush II presidency. Take for example the pre-2000 George W. Bush. Remember him? The one who told us with great confidence that he didn’t believe in nation building:

“I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean we're going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not. Our military is meant to fight and win war. That's what it's meant to do and when it gets overextended, morale drops… I'm going to be judicious as to how to use the military. It needs to be in our vital interest. The mission needs to be clear and the exit strategy obvious.”

Wow! What ever happened to that vision of the world? Bush also told us during that second debate with Al Gore that American forces were extremely overextended in the world (apparently because softhearted Democrats wanted to take democracy everywhere). He then went on to say that the dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians “won't be on my timetable. It'll be on the timetable that people are comfortable with in the Middle East,” presaging the stagnation and chaos in the Middle East that would ensue during his presidency. Finally, in the year 2000, Bush repeatedly gave voice to one of his most simple and cherished solutions to Middle East violence:

“I think it's important for this nation to develop an anti-ballistic missile system that we can share with our allies in the Middle East, if need be, to keep the peace.”

Now, when was the last time you heard anyone seriously press for a Star Wars anti-ballistic missile program? We’ve gone from talking about a Stars Wars shield, to trying to figure out how we can get more armor for Humvees, in order to ward off crude, homemade roadside bombs. The simplicity of the conservative worldview also played a large role in our nation’s reaction to 9/11. In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush was praised greatly for his strength and leadership. Indeed the tragedy has been credited in some quarters with jumpstarting the Bush presidency. But was this image of strength and leadership accurate? Here is an alternative view on what happened after the attack on the twin towers: In the wake of 9/11, the world abruptly, for a brief moment, assumed the simple, stark, black and white contours that the president had been telling us about for years. For that brief moment, it was suddenly a world of good guys vs. bad guys, freedom vs. terror, us against them. The world had morphed into George Bush’s life-long image of it, and when he stood before the nation and told us that we were going to defeat this axis of evil, he gave the appearance of strength and wisdom. There was one nagging problem, however. The world doesn’t really fit this image; it’s far more complicated.

What happened subsequently was that this window of simplicity, when the world was painted in black and white, closed in a hurry. Soon, Bush had to face many not-so-simple questions: Were the Saudis, for example, now our friends or our enemies? When he stood on that aircraft carrier, was the war over, or was it just beginning? Would a democratically elected, but theocratic government in Iraq be a good thing or a bad thing? Were those pesky French our historical allies, or mischievous thorns in our side? (It must be noted that conservatives who were busy vilifying the French while chomping on “freedom fries” took scant notice of the fact that the French predicted virtually every failure that has taken place in Iraq.) And how about the Pakistanis? Were they now good guys or allies of the bad guys? These, and similar quandaries have served to unbuckle the “simple” neo-conservative notion that there was an easy, military solution to the problem of Iraq.

The dueling liberal and conservative worldviews were acted out beautifully last Sunday on “Meet the Press,” as moderator Tim Russert hosted, in separate appearances, Donald Rumsfeld and Teddy Kennedy. In interviewing Rumsfeld, Russert, like so many before him, was trying to get an answer to a question that has taken on metaphysical inscrutability: How many trained Iraqi troops are there? Are there 120,000 as Condoleezza Rice insists, are there 14,000 as Joe Biden believes, 136,000 as Rumsfeld recently stated, or 40,000 as General John Myers recently estimated? Here was Rumsfeld’s response:

“There are people that are trying to make this more complex, for whatever reason, than it is. It's not complex. …let's go to Dick Myers' comment. We have 136,000 Iraqi security forces, excluding the 70,000- plus in the site protection, and they are in the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Defense, and there's a lot of different types. Some are policemen and they walk a beat. Some are border patrol and they sit on a border in a patrol place. Others are in commando units and they operate in a region and go in on special assignments. Still others are in the regular army, and they're being trained for that type of function. A small number of them, as Dick Myers said, something like 40,000, are highly mobile, can move anywhere in the country and be sustained. We have 136,000. The implication that the rest are not useful is silly. It's nonsense. The policeman on the beat outside your office doesn't need to be mobile and sustainable and go into Los Angeles.”

But Russert wanted to know, like every other American, how many Iraqis are currently prepared to take the place of American soldiers. He persisted, “How many Iraqi security forces do we need fully trained and capable of fighting insurgents?” Responded Rumsfeld:

“Well, the answer to that question is not complicated. We need as many as are needed. If you have an insurgency that's this level, you'll need X. If you have an insurgency that's that level, you'll need X-plus. And if you have an insurgency that's quite low, you'll need X-minus. And to think that you can sit here today and--I mean, no one predicted the level of the insurgency as it is today.”

This answer is quintessential Rumsfeld: condescending, supercilious, and of course non-responsive. Despite the apparent “simplicity” of this matter, at the end of a rather lengthy discussion, we had no better idea of Iraqi preparedness than we did at the beginning. While griping throughout the interview about liberals’ need to overcomplicate things, Rumsfeld told us virtually nothing.

Then Ted Kennedy appeared, and Russert was intent on showing us that he could be as tough on one as on the other. After talking foreign affairs with Kennedy, Russert turned to domestic matters, and brought out his best fast ball:

“We have a situation where the number on people in Social Security is going to double. People, rather than spending 15 months, are going to spend 15 years. In 2018, the Social Security Trust Fund will begin to draw down, and in 2042 run a deficit, according to the trustees of the fund. What is your plan? What will you do? If the president's wrong, what would you do specifically to fix Social Security?”

Without missing a beat, Kennedy responded:

“The president's program to make his tax cuts permanent is three times what's necessary to fix the national--to fix Social Security. Let's start with that.”

Russert, for his part, was caught off guard. He had thought that he had Kennedy on the run. Russert thought that Kennedy was going to respond with the typical pabulum about convening a bipartisan panel to find vague, unspecified ways to tweak Social Security. What he got instead was a real answer: Let’s rescind at least one-third of the president’s tax cuts, and fix Social Security! Russert tried to recover, to get back on the offense:

MR. RUSSERT: But we have....
SEN. KENNEDY: Let's start with that. You've asked the question and I'm giving you an answer.
MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, with Social Security, with Medicare, we have $5 trillion of unfunded mandates, and we are sitting here saying we simply roll back the tax cut on the top 1 percent or grow our way out of it?
SEN. KENNEDY: Well, wait a second now. You asked about Social Security. Now do you want to know on the Medicare how we ought to go to deal with the Medicare? I've given you a very good way to resolve the...
MR. RUSSERT: So you would roll back the president's tax cuts.
SEN. KENNEDY: That's a possible--for one-third, he wants to make it permanent. You can roll back just one-third of it and solve the Social Security problem. I think that ought to be on the table. It's interesting, when the president spoke the other night, Tim, he never mentioned what his answer was. He never told us what his solution was for the out years.

Ah, it was a beautiful moment! The ballyhooed simplicity of the conservatives had turned into a morass of unanswered questions, illusory troop counts, budget numbers that don’t add up, and fixes (read "privatization") that don’t fix anything. By contrast, one of the stalwarts of much maligned liberal fuzziness, had offered a very clear vision of the future: We need more money! And if we continue to gut the treasury in order to make the wealthy wealthier, we will do grave damage to our society.

So the next time someone tells you that conservatives have a simple, straightforward, even theological view of the world, don’t ask them something complicated, like “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Instead, ask them something simple like, “How many trained Iraqi troops do we need?” Don’t be surprised if they change the subject.

2005-02-02T08:10:00.000-05:00

Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby”—Sadly, the Fix is In!

This blog has at its core a contrarian spirit, the view that when too many people believe something too earnestly, the truth often lies elsewhere. Rarely has this contrarian impulse been triggered more strongly than after my viewing of the Clint Eastwood movie Million Dollar Baby. Warning: The following discussion is meant only for those who have already seen the film. If you haven't seen it and plan to, either stop reading, or proceed at your own peril, because what follows is almost certain to spoil it for you. The film, a leading Oscar nominee, has earned universal praise as a tough-minded, minimalist study of family dynamics, boxing, and right-to-die issues. Rave reviews notwithstanding, I found it to be a melodramatic, contrived film that struck the wrong psychological note at virtually every turn. Allow me to list the faults of this woefully hyped film:

1) The first problem with the film is the tired, trite use of Morgan Freeman as the benign, omniscient narrator/janitor. Haven't we been down this road before, in better films like Shawshank Redemption and Driving Miss Daisy? One exasperated critic ruefully suggested that the movie should have been called "Driving Clint Eastwood," or "Million Dollar Redemption." There is an important difference, however, between Baby and its predecessors: In Shawshank, Freeman was the narrator, but his character was a central agent in the action, on equal footing with that of co-lead Tim Robbins. Shawshank Prison became the ultimate leveler: within its walls, all men became equal—that is, equally powerless--making for fascinating alliances, and a film of timeless merit. In Million Dollar Baby, however, Freeman is little more than a prop. His narrative wisdom is thin, his character insignificant, his talent largely wasted. Memo to Clint Eastwood: If you're going to use someone of Freeman's stature in your movie, give the Brother something to do! In fact, each of the leads basically borrows from past performances: Hillary Swank reprises her trailer trash persona from previous movies; Clint does his perennial tight-lipped-but-oh-so-profound shtick. Admittedly, both do these characters well, and the movie could have worked, had the storyline held together. But it doesn't hold together:

2) The first howler in the plot line occurs when trainer Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) takes aspiring female boxer Maggie Fitzgerald (Hillary Swank) under his wing and sets up her first professional fights. He buys her a warm-up robe with the Gaelic phrase "Mo Cusha" inscribed in it. Before long, Maggie's success and winning style have Irish fans chanting "Mo Cusha, Mo Cusha." This becomes her tag, her moniker. Absurdly, Eastwood would have us believe that despite the fact that this phrase has become her calling card, Maggie never knows what it means. Ridiculous. The phrase would have been translated in every news story, have arisen in every interview, would have become part of Maggie’s identity. Maggie's obliviousness to the meaning of phrase is nothing more than an amateurish contrivance: At the end of the movie, when she is in bed on a respirator, this set-up allows Frankie to tell her melodramatically that it means "My darling, my blood." But for that scene to work emotionally, the audience has to accept the idea that she was the only person in the world who didn't know this, despite the fact that her fans were chanting it at every fight. Such a plot device might pass muster on an afternoon soap opera, but not a serious movie.

2) The second howler occurs once Maggie earns enough money from her growing success to buy her mother a new house, freeing mom from the trailer community. The mother, an unvarnished, hillbilly shrew not only hysterically spurns the offer, fearing that it will jeopardize her welfare check, she tells Maggie to stop boxing because "they're laughing at you here." Now think about this for a minute: Maggie, according to the movie, has become an international star at this point, with fans on two continents flocking to her bouts, and we're asked to believe that she is a laughingstock and a disgrace within her own community? Absurd! There is no imaginable circumstance in which Maggie would be more popular in Dublin than in Missouri. Even the sassy, “uppity” Cassius Clay was thrown a parade by racist Louisville after winning the Olympic gold medal in 1960 (despite the fact that certain restaurants still wouldn't serve him). But it is clear why Eastwood uses this unbelievable characterization: He feels the need to make Maggie as big a martyr as possible, the idea being that if he casts her mother as an unreconstructed ogre, this will make Maggie more sympathetic to the audience. In fact, Eastwood got it all wrong: A supportive mom who yet feared for her daughter's health and safety would have been much more on key, and would have served the film far better than the cartoonish character that Eastwood has created.

3. When Maggie finally gets her title shot, she faces a bruising, brawling woman who looks frighteningly mannish. This choice again reflects Eastwood's heavy-handed need to martyr Maggie: In this film, Eastwood can't simply give Maggie a tough, skilled opponent; rather, he has to give her someone who is the incarnation of evil. Surpisingly, he seems to have no confidence that the poignancy of Maggie's life will come through naturally. As a result, he stacks the deck, making all of the antagonists in her life caricatures. True to her evil appearance, Maggie's opponent, during a moment when the referee has stopped the fight and Maggie's back is turned, rushes over and clubs Maggie over the back of the head. As a result, Maggie hits her head on a chair, suffers head trauma and spinal cord damage that makes her a quadriplegic. The outrage of this scene is that we discover later that Maggie's opponent, by virtue of this act, won the fight. Huh? You don't win championship boxing matches by running over to your opponent during a break, and clubbing them over the head from behind. This scene alone shows that Eastwood has no conception of boxing, and has confused it with the theatrics of professional wrestling. When the central scene in the movie is this unbelievable it tears a gaping whole in the entire movie. The conduct of Maggie's opponent was not only outside the rules of boxing; in real life it probably would have triggered a criminal complaint.

4. As a result of her neurological trauma, Maggie is paralyzed from the neck down, and unable to breath on her own. Frankie summons Maggie's family to her Las Vegas hospital for support. At this juncture, the cartoonish character development continues: The family members ignore Maggie--a quadriplegic--for six days while they go to Disneyland! Clint, we get the message! She's been emotionally abandoned, and only has you to take care of her. But we didn't need to get hit with a sledgehammer to understand this! When the family finally shows up at the hospital, fresh from Disneyland, the scene is so over the top as to be cringeworthy.

5. Maggie's tragedy has so undermined her quality of life, that she tells Frankie that she wants him to disconnect her life support and let her die. This creates an ethical crisis for him and he consults with his priest. His touchy, prickly relationship with his priest is in fact the most real, believable, compelling relationship in the movie. The priest tells him in no uncertain terms that it would be wrong, but Frankie’s heart tells him otherwise. One night, he slips into Maggie's hospital room, expresses his care for her, explains "dramatically" what "Mo Cusha" means, administers a pain-killer, disconnects Maggie's respirator, and the deed is done. Of course, in the facile world of this movie, this is apparently not treated as a criminal act, and there is no apparent investigation that we know of. Such real-world inconveniences would get in the way of the plot. While Frankie’s mercy killing as an act of love is quite moving in the moment, it comes after such a series of psychologically flawed scenes that it is hopelessly contaminated. While I credit Eastwood with trusting the audience with such a risky ending, it is ruined by the fact that his earlier heavy-handed direction showed no trust of the audience. This movie is not Oscar-worthy, and is vastly inferior to the pitch-perfect Sideways. However, my gut tells me not to bet against Million Dollar Baby. Alas, the fix is in.

2005-01-30T08:42:00.000-05:00

Howard Dean for DNC Chairman

The remaining seven candidates for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee gave a full audition yesterday in New York City. Each pitched his or her qualifications before members of the committee who will be electing the new chair on February 12. In what was to me a quite pleasant surprise, Howard Dean has emerged as the front runner for the position. The choice of the next DNC chairman will be an important step for the Democrats, not only because that individual will be one of the most visible faces of the party for the next four years, and not only because he or she will be responsible for rebuilding unity and cohesion. The choice will also be important because it will reflect the Democratic Party’s autopsy of the 2004 elections. The selection will make a clear statement as to what went wrong in 2004, and how the Democrats, in their collective wisdom, think it should be fixed.

I am surprised by Dean’s front-runner status, because for some months now, inside-the-Beltway Democrats have made Dean something of a whipping boy for their craven view that in order to win elections, Democrats have to foreswear their principles and run away from northern politicians. Indeed, not long ago, when this very issue came up on CNN’s roundtable show, “The Capital Gang,” liberal panelists Al Hunt and Margaret Carlson both made light of Dean’s interest in the chairmanship, treating Dean as if he were radioactive. It is a sign of Democrats’ returning sanity that they have begun to once again give Dean credit for his considerable political strengths.

It is true that Dean lacked both the finesse and the personal charm to secure the Democratic nomination. However, what he did accomplish was remarkable: 1) He was dead right about the war when very few others were; 2) He transformed the terms of the political debate during the Democratic primaries; 3) He gave Democrats a booster shot of pride by reminding them that there were certain bedrock principles that were nonnegotiable; 4) He established the internet as a viable, even essential means of intra-party communication and money raising; 6) He added many voters to the Democratic rolls, and filled Democratic coffers. Beyond these accomplishments, Dean has one overarching asset that he would bring to the DNC chair, one, ironically, that hurt him as a presidential candidate: He relentlessly speaks the truth.

I’m sure that everyone has no trouble remembering that Dean earned a reputation during the primaries for sticking his foot in his mouth. The irony of these so-called gaffes by Dean is that they were all important truths that no other candidate had the guts to utter. Take for example Dean’s pronouncement about the Palestinians and Israelis:

“…the United States has another important role to play in the region -- that of an honest broker at the negotiating table -- with the trust of both sides and able to facilitate direct talks between the parties. The U.S. must be able to understand the needs of both sides in order to help them find a truly lasting and comprehensive settlement through direct negotiation.”

"We do have a special relationship with Israel. We would defend Israel if necessary. I think that is well-known. However, we are also the only country capable of bringing peace to the Middle East, and when we sit at the negotiating table, we do have to have the trust of both sides or we will never succeed."

Dean also commented that our policy must be “evenhanded, that "it's not our place to take sides" and that "enormous" numbers of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories would have to be dismantled. Such sensible words, uttered during the steroidal atmosphere of the primaries, created a frenzy, whipped up by both Joe Lieberman and John Kerry. Said Lieberman:

"When you start to say, in very loaded terms -- particularly when Israelis are under assault by terrorists, not unlike the situation we find ourselves in -- that America shouldn't take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, that's a break in more than half a century of the American foreign policies carried out by presidents of both parties, and it's very harmful…"

Lieberman’s comment (consistent with his recent fawning support of Condoleezza Rice), is on its face fatuous, and is the kind of statement that plays well during a primary season, but falls apart under even the slightest scrutiny. Lieberman talks as if the tilted policy of the last 50 years in the Middle East has led to great successes. To the contrary it has produced an endless cycle of targeted assassinations, suicide bombings, bulldozed homes, land grabs through expanded settlements, escalating hatred, and tragic loss of life on both sides.

Not long after Lieberman’s statement, John Kerry piled on, in the pandering fashion that foretold why he would eventually lose to the weakest sitting president in recent memory. Said Kerry:

"…it is wrong that Governor Dean has proposed a radical shift in the U.S. policy toward the Middle East."

In the pressurized atmosphere of the primaries, Dean eventually issued a statement, saying that perhaps “evenhanded” was the wrong word to use. The important point here, however, is that Howard Dean was absolutely right in the first place. He tells truths that others don’t dare utter, which is precisely why he was and still is the conscience of the Democratic Party. It was not Dean’s views that undermined his candidacy during the primaries; rather it was his rather tough, gruff, sometimes charmless presentation. However, I am convinced that such personality quirks will not hinder him as chair of the DNC; indeed such toughness may add to his leadership.

Dean’s second piece of truth-telling that got him into trouble was his advocacy of campaigning hard for “NASCAR dads,” southern white males who for years have been voting Republican:

“I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickups trucks…We can’t beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats…”

While Dean’s clumsy formulation ultimately had the effect of inflaming both southern conservatives and northern liberals, at core he was offering another truth that the Democratic party needs to embrace: There is a significant voting bloc in the south that ought to be captivated by a party that doesn’t believe in corporate welfare and regressive taxation, a party that supports a living wage and universal health care, and is committed to stopping the hemorrhaging of jobs overseas. The problem, according to Dean, is that in order to engage this voting bloc, one has to “show up.” That is, the Democratic Party has to get its hands dirty and fight for these votes, rather than writing them off.

The blowback that Dean’s remark elicited from the likes of both Zell Miller and John Edwards, contained a theme that we’ve been hearing since the time of George Wallace and Lester Maddox: “No Yankee has the right to come down here and tell us what we should think!” Oh yeah? If we can presume to tell Fallujah, Beijing, P’yongyang, Caracas, Darfur, and Tehran what they should think, why the hell can’t we tell Oxford, Mississippi about its own problems? The time for pandering to the South, condescending to it, treating the entire region with kid gloves, should be long over. If Howard Dean can bring about that refreshing change, more power to him.

However, none of the aforementioned statements mortally wounded Dean’s candidacy during the primaries. Rather, it was a third statement, yet another simple truth, uttered about the Iowa Caucuses, that sunk Dean as a candidate: In the heart of campaign season, two weeks before the Iowa Caucuses, NBC news released videotape of statements that Dean had made four years earlier about the Iowa Caucuses. While speaking to an audience in Canada, Dean referred to the Iowa Caucuses as “dominated by special interests,” which “don’t represent the centrist tendencies of the American people; they represent the extremes.” To underscore his point, Dean continued:

"Say I'm a guy who's got to work for a living, and I've got kids…On a Saturday, is it easy for me to go cast a ballot and spend 15 minutes doing it, or do I have to sit in a caucus for eight hours? I can't stand there and listen to everyone else's opinion for eight hours about how to fix the world."

What Dean did, once again, was say what no one else was willing to say: The Iowa Caucuses are a disgraceful process that wind up disenfranchising thousands of people who have kids, jobs, and families and can’t possibly attend a caucus for 7 hours on a Saturday in the middle of winter. Obviously, however, Dean’s comments did not sit well with Iowans, and the NBC story marked the beginning of the end of his campaign. But it is the triumph and the irony of Howard Dean that all of his so-called blunders were important verities that the Democratic Party should both listen to and embrace.

If Howard Dean is given the platform of chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, we will all benefit from hearing such truths. And after the disappointing, vacillating, Hamlet-like performance of John Kerry, we can only hope that the party has collectively seen the wisdom of picking a chairman who at times may be willful, but who is rarely wobbly. Come February 12, I’ve got my fingers crossed.