40 Days and Nights

Then Obama was led up by the Spirit into the desert of central Pennsylvania, between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, to be excoriated by the Clintons.  And he campaigned forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was bloodied.  And Hillary came and said to him, "If you are a worthy nominee, denounce these words of your spiritual mentor."  But he answered, "I will not.  Judge not by 30-second, YouTube sound bytes alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of Reverend Wright."

Do the six weeks between the Mississippi and Pennsylvania primaries feel like the longest forty days since Jesus wandered into the Judean wilderness, or is it just me?  Who's responsible for the scheduling around here?  March 11 to April 22?  That is simply too much time for these two candidates to fill without resorting to potshots, flights of fancy, and name-calling.  Our primary system isn't set up to handle this much downtime.  We need a caucus or primary every ten days -- two weeks, tops -- to blow off the steam built up by the media's micro-coverage of the hand-to-hand combat between the campaigns.

Let's face it.  The journey from Mississippi to Pennsylvania (with the sole exception of Obama's reluctant speech on race in Philadelphia) hasn't been kind to either candidate's image.  It's turned into a political Bataan Death March, a battle of attrition as Barack and Hillary trade weary haymakers and ineffective counter-punches.  

Clinton's multiple recollections of her landing in Tuzla, Bosnia after evasive maneuvers, and their subsequent scramble to avoid sniper fire on the tarmac, are not supported by video evidence.  Millions have now watched her accepting flowers and strolling among the assembled honorary troops when she was supposed to be running for safety.  

How far does Hillary think she has to go with this tough-enough-to-be-commander-in-chief facade?  She clearly voted to authorize a war she didn't believe in as a cynical attempt to raise her perceived testosterone level for an upcoming run at the presidency.  She continues to align herself with McCain as the only two candidates who have somehow cleared the ready-to-lead bar.  Now this fiasco.  The scary thing is, I'm not sure she doesn't believe her story.  I'm afraid  she sees herself as some sort of Robert Duvall figure, a Lieutenant Colonel Billory Kilgore in a pantsuit, standing tall on the tarmac, hands on hips, while those around her duck and cover, bullets whizzing every which way, as she gazes out towards the snow-capped hills surrounding the city and barks, "Charlie don't ski!"  

Then there's the embarrassment of watching her cast moral judgement upon Obama for his sticking by Rev. Wright as his pastor and the man who introduced him to Christianity.  Man, if there's ever been a pot living in a glass house while calling the kettle black.  Who has she been hanging out with for the past thirty-seven years?  I keep expecting Michelle Obama, never one to bite her tongue, to reference Paula Jones and Marilyn Jo Jenkins and Monica Lewinsky et al,  and reply to Hillary's, "He would not have been my pastor," comment with, "Well, he would not have been my husband."  But I guess some folks understand that certain relationships are none of their business.

Obama hasn't come through this unmarked, himself.  There was a certain amount of disingenuity to the way he approached the Wright controversy.  He insisted that he hadn't actually ever been in a Trinity United pew when Wright delivered any of his incendiary sermons.  Only as it became increasing likely that evidence to the contrary would surface did he relent and admit that, yes, he had been present for some of Wright's controversial remarks.  To his credit, he then defended the body of Wright's work and deftly turned the controversy into an opportunity to address race in the big picture, but it had to be a tad deflating to the true believers, nonetheless.  He could have gotten out in front of it earlier (like when he announced his candidacy).  What, he didn't see this coming?  Hard to believe.

And, oh yes, almost forgotten but not gone is poor John McCain.  He's spent the intermission  trolling around aimlessly, like a barracuda in an empty swimming pool, looking for someone to bite.  His handlers don't want him wasting any good ammunition on either Democrat right now.  He couldn't do anywhere near the damage they're managing themselves.  Absent a foe, he's reduced to discussing policy.  Some of which, unavoidably, is domestic.  And which includes, most unfortunately for McCain, the economy.  A subject he has readily admitted he doesn't understand.  

His confusion sometimes leaves him at odds with himself.  This week, Obama and Clinton both released their plans to deal with the sub-prime mortgage crisis.  Both favor government rescue plans for homeowners that would cost in the neighborhood of $30 billion.  McCain's pull-his-cord-and-hear-him-talk reaction was, predictably, "it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who acted irresponsibly."  Right.  Take personal responsibility, let the markets decide, et cetera, et cetera.  Yet, he's firmly behind the Fed's decision to lend Wall Street firms, hip-deep in guano as their high-risk pigeons come home to roost, up to $400 billion at bargain basement rates to bail them out after they've created this mess.  Classic supply-side reasoning.  

McCain's trouble is, he's not Ronald Reagan.  It was Reagan's peculiar genius that he could get up in front of an audience of regular Americans, the middle-class and even the poor , be it in a church parking lot or on national television, look them in the eye and sell them on his "it's morning in America" fantasy.  That everyone who was willing to work hard was going to wind up rich.  It's what kept him in office for eight years -- people voting against their own economic interests.

Well, I don't think McCain can pull that off.  Times are rough and they're about to get a whole lot rougher.  He's going to have to come up with more than Bush's tax cuts to defeat either Clinton or Obama.  

Unless they finish each other off in Pennsylvania.  Twenty-five more days.  Jesus.

 

Go Ahead and Fight

The blogosphere spends a good deal of time and energy hyperventilating about the mainstream media.  Glenn Greenwald is a frequent, bombastic critic.  Today he examines the way the media reports the Iraq War.   Of late, he has focused on the MSM's cozy relationship with Senator John McCain.  The Daily Howler is always good for a mugging -- today's victim is Maureen Dowd.  And for a classic example, read Matt Taibbi's outraged reaction to the press conference George W. Bush threw on March 11, 2003.  The piece should be read in its entirety, but it ends like so:

This was just Bush's eighth press conference since taking office, and each one of them has been a travesty.  In his first presser, on Feb. 22, 2001, a month after his controversial inauguration, he was not asked a single question about the election, Al Gore or the Supreme Court.  On the other hand, he was asked five questions about Bill Clinton's pardons.

Reporters argue that they have no choice.  They'll say they can't protest or boycott the staged format, because they risk being stripped of their seat in the press pool.  For the same reason, they can't write anything too negative.  They can't write, for instance, "President Bush,  looking like a demented retard on the eve of war..."  That leaves them with the sole option of "working within the system" and, as they like to say, "trying to take our shots when we can."

 

But the White House press corps' idea of "taking a shot" is David Sanger asking Bush what he thinks of British foreign minister Jack Straw saying that regime change was not necessarily a war goal.  And then meekly sitting his ass back down when Bush ignores the question.

They can't write what they think, and can't ask real questions.  What the hell are they doing there?  If the answer is "their jobs," it's about time we started wondering what that means.

Now, putting aside the fact that Taibbi often reads as if he slept with the Complete Works of Hunter S. Thompson under his pillow while he was in journalism school, his attack is absolutely justified and on the money.  As are Greenwald's and The Howler's.  On the big questions of the day -- the war, the economy, FISA, Guantanamo Bay -- the press has basically given Bush a pass.  As for their relationship with McCain; I'd say the Arizona maverick slapped the last remaining fatty links of journalistic integrity down next to those slabs of baby backs on the grill at his Sedona ranch and burned them to a crisp.  Here's a bit of Washington Editor of Time.com, Ana Marie Cox's defense of the grilling, or lack thereof, at the McCain ranch:

"...Maybe we missed the ones you want asked; questions on behalf of the public (although I -- we all, I think -- would appreciate if you agitate while also showing some humor and basic manners).  You might also start a blog and then try to get the campaign to let you on the bus.  They've done it before.  (Though I'm sure it's harder now than it was last fall.)

On the larger issue of the relationship of McCain and the press.  Well, it's a worthy topic and more complicated than I thought it would be when I started covering him.  You could,  as they say, write a book on it."

Really puts your questions about an independent press to bed, doesn't it?  Clarence Darrow she ain't.  

Jacques Steinberg wrote a piece in the New York Times today about the Boys on the Bus.  In it, he says, 

"In the past, one advantage for those reporters who committed to spend as many as two years on the campaign trail was that they were often vaulted into the White House press room; many of those assigned to cover the next president will not have had the benefit of such seasoning..."

I've never understood why a serious reporter would want to work in the White House press room.  I mean, if your ambition is to root out corruption and follow a story wherever it leads, damn the consequences, and all that.  You sit there, waving your hand in the air,  hoping for Scott McClellan or Tony Snow to call on you, at which point he'll wait until your lips stop moving and then repeat the talking points he led off with and move on to Helen Thomas.  Seems like third grade all over again, except most of the students are smarter than the teacher.  I can't imagine it being very satisfying. 

And if campaign reporting is basically training for the White House, just how stimulating can it be?  You listen to the same stump speech ad infinitum and wait for the candidate to wander down the aisle to the back of the plane somewhere over Idaho and repeat the same talking points that they went over at the last speech and are tweaking to cover on the next one.  Then maybe have a donut.  Not exactly to be confused with meeting Deep Throat in a parking garage.

I don't want to knock it too hard.  It's a job.  A well-paid one with opportunity for advancement.  Advancement to where?  TV, of course.  Become a big shot, White House correspondent talking head, like David Gregory or John Roberts.  At that point, you never know.  You get up one morning, Tucker Carlson's been canned, and you've got your own show by lunchtime.  

But it's not really news reporting, is it?  I've always appreciated the BBC term for an anchorman.  It's newsreader or, sometimes, news presenter.  Which is really closer to what Katie Couric is doing than anchoring, when you get right down to it.  Because if that's what she is over at the CBS Evening News, the anchor, they're going to need a smaller boat. 

It's easy to take potshots at the MSM.  And it's part of the job description of the blogger.  The more chum the big boys ladle out, the more frenzied our efforts to reach that hand and bite it off.  It's good for the MSM, too.  The blogosphere serves as a kind of omnipresent ombudsman reminding them to watch their ass.  As Jack Shafer wrote on Slate:

"What can bloggers do that professional journalists can't?  Because bloggers answer to no one, they need not worry if the dispatches cause the chairman of the board of General Motors to stop talking to the publisher -- or placing ads.  Their independence gives them a subversive strength, one that undermines the cozy relationship the press has with its corporate cousins and government.  The unmediated nature of blogs, which frightens so many professional journalists, is really a plus.  With so many bloggers writing outside the bounds of authority, they've become impossible to silence or censor, and their provocations help keep the national debate going at full tilt."

All  true.  The danger for bloggers, ironically, is that they can become so righteous, so convinced of the validity of their voice and the voices of their like-minded commenters in the personal kingdom they've created, that they forget the value of the dissenting voice.  They can become exactly who they are criticizing.  Take William Kristol.  Please.  No, but seriously,  a few months ago, the New York Times added Kristol as a columnist to their Op-Ed page.  Seemed, to my mind, an awkward fit, which made it, also to my mind,  an interesting concept.  What better way to consider the opposing view?  They could sit him over there in the corner next to David Brooks, give him someone to eat lunch with. 

But some have not been particularly welcoming.  Brad DeLong responded to Kristol's yawn over Barack Obama's race speech by saying:

"When Kristol's column hit the New York Times building Sunday night, it should have rung some alarm bells.  David Shipley should have gone to Carla Anne Robins who should have gone to Andrew Rosenthal.  They should have said:

'Hey!  Wait a minute!  Kristol was enthusiastic about race-talk a week ago, when he thought it was a way he could knife Obama.  If we publish this, we'll be even more of a laughingstock than we already are -- Kristol is pumping our credibility as an organization dry.  We need to call him and tell him to reconsider:  tell him that he can't use our space to make fools of us as well as of himself, and that our readers have a memory at least a week long and will remember what he wrote last time.'

They should have gone to Bill Keller, and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger.  Jill Abramson and John Geddes and Jonathan Landsman and Dean Baquet and Richard Berke and Tom Bodkin and Susan Edgerley and Glenn Kramon and Gerald Marzorati and Michele McNally and William Schmidt and Craig Whitney -- at least one of them should have weighed in, reminding Rosenthal and Sulzberger that when the editorial page dynamites its own credibility it dynamites the credibility of the news pages as well.  None of them did.  Invertebrate cowards, all."

Well.  Other than the best argument for an editor I've read in . . . well, ever . . .  this is ridiculous.  (Jesus Christ, was he going to go through the entire masthead?  I kept expecting him to stop, his point made, but the names kept coming and coming.  It was like waiting for a long, slow, freight train to pass by at a railroad crossing when you're late for work).  No respectable paper's news pages are reflective of or influenced by its editorial department.  Nor should any respectable reader confuse the two.  It was a sound decision by the Times to add a conservative voice to the page, even if they did choose a hack like Kristol.  DeLong and other liberal bloggers should be the first to recognize the significance of expanding the political spectrum at any MSM outlet.  It's why we do what we do -- to fill the void created by the corporate media's refusal to entertain real dissent.  

Reading a conservative voice at the Times is always a good thing.  It's no different than Charlie Rose interviewing Iraqis about the war and their feelings towards the U.S. occupation of their country.  Or Obama giving white America an insight into what is being said by blacks when we're not in the room.  

Dissent is healthy.  It's the path to an educated public.  And a free one.  

In Defense of Sour Grapes

Perhaps Hillary is right -- Obama's not ready to be president.  Perhaps being elected three times as an Illinois state senator and once as a U.S. senator doesn't qualify him as sufficiently seasoned to assume the role of commander-in-chief.  Maybe Clinton's two terms as an elected official and her years as first lady trump his four terms and years as a community organizer and make her, hands down, the wiser choice.  Sure, she voted for the Iraq War resolution.  Yes, she did lobby hard in support of NAFTA (although you wouldn't know it by listening to her campaign in Ohio and Pennsylvania) back in the days when she was refusing to bake cookies, opting instead to gain that magic elixir,  experience, at the coattails of her husband.  And granted, her handling of the White House Travel Office scrum exhibited the same imperious hand as did her slamming of the door marked, "Keep Out" behind her as she and her team proceeded to botch their first crack at health care.  Most recently, her pursuit of the presidency has been marked by fits and starts, a seemingly endless hunt for her elusive "voice," and blatant mismanagement of her finances, forcing her to lend the campaign money earned god knows how (we're still waiting to see her and Bill's 1040 -- anytime now would be good).

But maybe all of these experiences d0 add up to a wisdom superior to that of the 46-year old Illinois upstart and his three years time spent in Washington.  Maybe it really is how many years you spend, not how you spend them.  Empirical evidence to the contrary along the lines of Lincoln (two years in the US House), FDR (three years as governor of NY), Theodore Roosevelt (two years as governor of NY and six months as McKinley's V.P.), Wilson (two years in the US House), Eisenhower (no elected experience),  James Monroe (no elected experience) and Hoover (no elected experience) might argue otherwise, but okay.  If the experts say so.  Experience is vital. 

Go ahead, HRC and McCain.  Have at it.  May the more experienced head prevail.

Unhappily, not winning the nomination this year might be the best thing that ever happens to Obama.  Seriously.  Have you looked around lately?  

This war is going nowhere fast and the economy is going south even faster.  The claim that we will end our occupation of Iraq in 2009 is a broken campaign promise waiting to happen.  While McCain's vision of an extended stay is unpopular amongst all but the most pugnacious, it's probably the most realistic reading of how the situation will play out.  And, as a cherry atop our martial sundae, we're gearing up for yet another wild, wild, mid-east stare-down, this time  with Iran.  Every ship and jet we move into the Persian Gulf makes some level of shooting war more likely.  

Back home, Alan Greenspan predicts the most dire financial straits in sixty years lie ahead.  People are loathe to admit the homes they over-borrowed to acquire are worth less than they paid for them so the housing market will be predictably slow to stabilize.  As the price of oil goes up, the value of the dollar goes down.  The Fed bailed out Bear Stearns by orchestrating JP Morgan Chase's takeover and by underwriting $30 billion worth of Bear's sub-prime, mortgage-backed bonds.  (That's on our dime, by the way).  Do we believe this was an isolated incident?  Hardly.  Lehman Brothers and UBS are two more investment banks with huge sub-prime exposure.  The Fed can't afford to let them fail, either.  Perception is everything on the Street and if any of these giants fail they could spark a run on banks and create a domino effect.  The economy grew by just 0.6% last quarter, it's worst performance since 2002.  That six-tenths of a point margin of growth is going to allow the administration to avoid using the dreaded term "recession" next month, as it is defined by two consecutive quarters of declining GDP, but it's coming, as sure as our $300 dollar stimulus checks are going to make everything  all right.  

This is about as bad a hand as an incoming president can be dealt.  It has taken seven long years of hard work for Bush and his cohorts to achieve this level of dysfunction.  You can sense that the pressure is off now that the end is in sight.  They can relax.  Their work here is done.  Bush is doing the soft-shoe shuffle on the back porch for the press corps and crooning sophomoric country ditties bemoaning the unfair legacies of Harriet, Brownie and Scooter.  Cheney has emerged from his cave and weighed in on the country's condemnation of the administration's prosecution of the Iraq War with the brilliantly concise, "So?"  Such chutzpah.  Their contempt for the public is truly breathtaking.  

It's almost impossible to foresee the next president prospering against these odds.  Why not let Hillary, or better yet, McCain, reap the rewards of the Bush clan's work?  Obama could spend a few more years in the Senate polishing his bipartisan credentials reaching across the aisle to pass progressive legislation with the help of the clear Democratic majority.  Or, if Clinton promises to play nice, he could accept the number two slot on the ticket, thereby giving the oh-so-sensitive and skittish electorate four to eight more years to ameliorate their fears of a black man with a strange name in the White House.  He would be perfectly positioned for a run in 2012 or even 2016, at the ripe old age of fifty-four, while Clinton absorbed the inevitable pounding that Bush's folly must engender.  

There's just something ironic about waiting all these years for a qualified, transformative, electable, minority candidate and, upon being presented with Barack Obama, realizing that this is the ultimate no-win situation.  So, although it smacks of heresy to his loyal following, perhaps it's worthwhile to consider the flip side here.  Obama's got another thirty years of public service ahead of him.  Is it in his best interests to spend the next four in hell?   

Lethal Neocon Propaganda

It's a pipe dream to entertain the notion of an Iraq free of U.S. forces anytime in the foreseeable future. 

 I'm not going to repeat the popular progressive misrepresentation of John McCain's quote that we could stay in Iraq for a thousand or a million years as far as he was concerned.  Any analysis free of political agenda makes it pretty clear that he was referring to a presence along the lines of our long-term deployments in Japan or South Korea.  To claim that he was implying that the current situation could continue into the next millennium is disingenuous.  However, he is firmly in the military solution camp and supports a muscular presence until the killing stops.  Until the killing stops.  As Iraq is in the midst of a civil war, that might be awhile.

Clinton and Obama both seem intent upon ending the war and pulling out all combat troops within a year.  They would begin drawing down between one and two brigades a month, leaving a nebulous, unspecified number of support troops to, "strike at terrorists, train Iraqi soldiers and protect American interests."  This pace is faster than most field officers in Iraq deem prudent and they feel it would leave us without enough force to deal with the situation on the ground.

The Democratic candidates' plans are fiction.  Sound-bite strategies to pave the way to the White House along the campaign trail.  At best, they should be taken as optimistic suggestions, much like Hillary's "universal" health care plan.  Even she admits that the health care battle will be fierce and that's why it's necessary to start with the absolute goal of universal coverage.  It's like any act of barter -- you start as low (or as high) as possible and give up as little ground as you can.  

That's how one needs to look at the two proposals for leaving Iraq.  Start with a year and then see how long it will really take.  Eric Rosenbach, executive director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School, predicts, "Four years, optimistically, and more like seven or eight years" until Iraq is self-sufficient.  West Point professor Brian Fishman warns, "...when you talk about some kind of end for American troops, it's certainly in terms of years."  Anyone who takes specific campaign promises to heart, well, either they haven't been paying much attention over the years or they have a serious case of heartburn.

So, I'm willing to grant that the complexities of Iraq make our leaving within the next couple of years unlikely, even impossible.  That being said, is there any goddamn way to get McCain and Bush and the rest of his neocon stooges to quit labeling a measured drawdown of American men and women as a "hasty retreat?"  They've latched onto that tired phrase like a Nebraska housewife clutching her handbag in Times Square.

A hasty retreat is what the French beat in the face of the Germans' offensive from the Somme in June of 1940.  It's the option you chose in high school through your girlfriend's bedroom window when you heard her father coming up the stairs. 

Today marks the completion of the fifth full year of the Iraq War.  That's 1,827 days, counting leap years.  3,990 American troops have been killed, 29,395 wounded.  60,000 troops have completed their service commitments but been forbidden to leave the military until their units return.  8,000 Iraqi military and police killed.  89,000 Iraqi civilian casualties.  4.5 million Iraqi refugees.  $5-7 trillion in estimated costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.

THERE IS NOTHING HASTY ABOUT THIS!  This is an agonizingly slow, protracted death of a thousand cuts.  We are spending $12 billion dollars each month on this war.  Two Americans die each day.  EACH DAY!  

Do you think their families would consider this a hasty action?  Best case scenario, let's say HRC or Obama gets elected and, against the advice of the hawks at the table, ends our Iraqi involvement by 2011.  Do you think the families, friends and loved ones of the troops killed between now and then would consider this a hasty retreat?  I don't either.

Look, you want to make a case for a continued presence in Iraq, then do so.  But deliberately stigmatizing any and all reasoned plans to escape the clutches of an unreasoned and unreasonable war as a "hasty retreat" is unconscionable.  It disrespects those who have already died in this game of chicken Bush initiated and it disrespects the thousands who will die in the years ahead.  

From MLK to Barack Obama

Hillary Clinton is a gifted politician.  Watching her give a press conference like the one she held today in Philadelphia, one cannot help but be struck by her mastery of policy and the facility with which she moves between subjects.  She was absolutely fluent on both the troop surge in Iraq and the decisions the Fed has made over the past couple of days to stabilize the faltering economy.  In short, she's a big-time wonk.  I have few doubts that her grasp of the issues and extraordinary intellect would serve her well were she to sit in the Oval Office.

But then there's Barack Obama.  The speech he gave this morning on race in America illustrated clearly the difference between what he brings to the table and what both Clinton and McCain have to offer.  Now, unlike Geraldine Ferraro, I do not think that being a black man gives you a leg up on the competition when running for the presidency of the United States.  It does, however, legitimize your positions and feelings expressed when discussing the history and current status of racial divide and intolerance in America.  It just does.  If you want to discover how AIDS affects a community, go talk to a gay man or a drug addict who uses needles.  If you want to get to the bottom of the effects of racial oppression, you're probably best served by starting in the black community in this country.

Obama made the most important speech today this nation has heard since Martin Luther King's words, "I Have a Dream," thundered across the mall as he spoke to the March on Washington from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.  King said:

"I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.  Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells.  Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.  You have been the veterans of creative suffering.  Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.  Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.  It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the meaning of its creed:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood."

That speech, as much as any single event, emboldened President John Kennedy's civil rights position and allowed Lyndon Johnson to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after Kennedy was assassinated.  It gave a voice to America's hopes and fears and laid bare the fields of oppression sown by state-sponsored segregation and racism.  As white Americans, we could no longer credibly view blacks as them.  They were us.

It was a landmark moment.  But old prejudices and fears die hard, as the Rev. Wright controversy reminds us.  This country still has much work to do.  It is still a nation of rich vs. poor and the haves choose not to live amongst the have-nots.  Most of the haves are white.  Most of the have-nots, are not.  It's denial to pretend that the disparities in this country do not create animosities between those who eat well and live comfortably and those for whom each day is a struggle.  Often we are happy to engage in that pretense, but it doesn't make it any more true.

We have an opportunity to take a huge step here.  In his speech, Obama said:

"...in this election, we can come together and say, 'Not this time.'  This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children.  This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem.  The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy.  Not this time."

And he said:

"This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag."

And then he said:

"I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country.  This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.  And today, whenever I find myself doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation -- the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election."

Barack Obama is another, the next, landmark moment.  It is so rare, perhaps to the point of being generationally unique, to encounter a figure who can bridge the divides that traverse this country, be they racial, economic or religious.  Who can speak to all Americans without playing on mistrust and ignorance.  A Farrakhan or Wright often fall short and end up speaking only to their base.  King was the master and his legacy is supported by his towering achievements.  We would not be where we are today without his leadership.  

But it is Obama now who is speaking to those "sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners."  It is Obama who is inviting us to take a seat at the "table of brotherhood."  Obama is the dream of which Martin Luther King was speaking.  He's multi-colored, multi-cultural, non-ideological.  He's the perfect conduit through which we can open a national dialogue and perhaps come together as a result.

These moments don't come often.  This would be the second of my lifetime.  The speech that Obama gave today transcended politics.  It would have been easy for him to renounce categorically the Rev. Wright and all of his provocative statements.  It would have been the politically correct move.  The right move to help him get elected.  But that's not why Obama is doing this.  He's bigger than that.  It's what separates him from Hillary Clinton.  She is a political machine and her mind can crunch electoral odds and the political outcomes of comparative policy positions with the best of them.  But Obama's mind works with a creative brilliance that makes accessible to him an extra dimension.  It allows him to take a potential depth charge like Rev. Wright's sermons and transform it into an opportunity to move this country forward.  He's not willing to play politics-as-usual with an issue so crucial to our future as a nation.  If falling short in his quest for the presidency is the price he has to pay for not choosing the politically expedient road here, so be it.   I believe it's a sacrifice he's willing to make.  The stakes are that high.

Obama Can't Afford To Be Wright

Barack Hussein Obama has a God problem.  And it's not the one I've written about before, wherein ignorant and incurious Americans -- many of whose votes he's going to need to win the Democratic nomination and general election -- believe he's an unpatriotic Muslim, in large part because of his middle name.  For the sake of argument, let's assume he can overcome that inane storyline over the next few weeks and months and convince the overwhelming majority of the voting public that he is a good Christian and loyal American.  

I'm sure it's exasperating.  It's like trying to convince strangers that you love your mother.  Of course you love her.  She's your mother.  Yeah, but prove it.  You see?  It's tougher than it looks.  However, he's a very smart guy and a gifted communicator -- he might pull it off.  

However, this little tempest that's brewing with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor as well as spiritual advisor of twenty years, could turn ugly fast.  Here are some highlights from a sermon Wright gave in 2006, noted in a Wall Street Journal editorial today written by Ronald Kessler and included in the McCain campaign's packets of news clips it distributes to the press:

"We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he began.  "Racism is alive and well.  Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run.  No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse (Jackson) and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body."  

Mr. Wright thundered on:  "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put (Nelson) Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there.  We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."

His voice rising, Mr. Wright said, "We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means . . . "

". . . We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . ."

Three years earlier he sallied forth with,

"the government gives them (black Americans) the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.'  No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people.  God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.  God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Never mind that most of what he says is true -- that's irrelevant to the matter.  What is germane is that it's difficult to see how a black candidate, whom some percentage of the public already suspects is Muslim, can win over the hearts and minds of the conservative Democrats and swing Republicans he will need, guided, in part, by a spiritual sherpa who seems to be channeling Malcom X, circa 1964:

"We are Africans, and we happen to be in America.  We are not Americans.  We are a people who formerly were Africans who were kidnapped and brought to America.  Our forefathers weren't Pilgrims.  We didn't land on Plymouth Rock; the rock was landed on us.  We were brought here against our will;  we were not brought here to be made citizens.  We were not brought here to enjoy the constitutional gifts that they speak so beautifully about today.  Because we weren't brought here to be made citizens -- today, now that we've become awakened to some degree, and we begin to ask for those things which they say are supposedly for all Americans, they look upon us with a hostility and unfriendliness."

Malcom spoke those words forty-four years ago and they still resonate today.  But if he had lived, and had preached them last month in a church in Chicago, a church where Obama was a long-time member, they would not have helped Obama's cause.  Anymore than Wright's powerful and moving words are helping him.  For one thing, they call to mind Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's quasi-endorsement of Obama, a gift he's still trying to return unopened.  There are just too many people happy to jump at the chance to make the specious connection between Obama and Wright's position and, in no time, Pennsylvania voters will be pretty sure that Obama said, "God damn the United States of America," sometime, somewhere back there in a Chicago speech or maybe when he was giving a sermon.  Or something.   

It's a fine line Obama has to walk between telling the truth and telling America what it wants to hear.  Faith and hope are powerful concepts and may yet prove capable of bridging the yawning chasms of race and class and faith that divide this country.  They may prove capable.  But Wright's sermons, if Obama remains unable to separate himself from them, just might sink his candidacy.  It's an open question whether America is ready for a black president.  It's a sure thing they're not ready for an angry black president.

I realize that Obama isn't angry, and he isn't Rev. Wright, and that he has denounced those sermons.  That he has compared Wright to, "an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with."  That's fine.  That's reasonable.  But it may not be enough.  Not for the people whose vote still hangs in the balance.  It's a shame he has to court those votes.  He must feel like Groucho Marx, not caring, "to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."  But the reality is that he needs those swing votes and, to get them, he must get out in front of this mess. 

 There's an absolutely brilliant piece over at TPM by one of its readers, The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve.  It lays out the differences between Obama/Wright and the Clintons/Ferraro.  Which is helpful, as far as it goes.  

But a more accurate comparison is to be made with John McCain and Pastor John Hagee.  Both Wright and Hagee are religious leaders.  Neither speaks for the campaigns.  Both have made extremely incendiary comments about various Americans.  And both have been denounced without being totally rejected by the candidates. 

McCain has taken plenty of flak for parsing his renunciation of Hagee's endorsement.  Given the similarities in the circumstances, isn't it fair to hold Obama to the same standard?  Granted, there is a degree of difference between the two preachers' messages.  That degree being truth.  In Wright's defense, racism is alive and well, we do ignore the Palestinians and we do act supreme.  On the flip side (Hagee's), a good case can be made for the Catholic Church not being "the whore of Babylon," that Hurricane Katrina was not God's judgement upon New Orleans sinners, and that all Muslims do not have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews.

But this isn't about truth, it's about perception.  Obama is running as a unifier.  He can't afford to be put next to Wright's words, pitting blacks against whites, and expect to brush them off as the ravings of an old coot.  Sometimes the truth will set you free.  But sometimes it will wedge you in between a rock and a hard place, too. 

 

Clinton Fatigue

Somebody needs to drop a butterfly net over Geraldine Ferraro's head.  She's gone 'round the bend.  As a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton, does she really think her off-the-reservation rants that Obama is leading the race for Democratic nominee basically because he's a black man are actually helping her candidate?  Does the Clinton campaign?  One wonders, based on their refusal to disassociate themselves from her in much the same way that John McCain continues to stand by his man, the Reverend John Hagee.

This is a perfect example of what makes HRC so problematic for many Democrats.  She is running a campaign that is too clever by half, much like the Clintons' two terms in the White House often proved to be.  Hillary and her staff profess disappointment in the divisive comments made by high-level surrogates and supporters but refuse to cut ties with the transgressors.  In other words, she gets the negative campaign benefit of the offending remark, the public relations benefit of crying foul, and the political benefit of retaining the support of the individual responsible for the attack.  Basically, she's Claude Rains in "Casablanca," pocketing his roulette winnings as he closes down Rick's Cafe upon "discovering" gambling on the premises.    

Ferraro is merely the most recent example.  In January, BET founder and Clinton supporter Robert Johnson referred to the drug use Obama has written about in his past, claiming that the Clintons were involved in black issues,

"...when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood -- and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in the book."

When the eventual and inevitable apology came forth, Johnson further insulted our collective intelligence by releasing the following (through the Clinton campaign):

"My comments today were referring to Barack Obama's time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else.  Any other suggestion is simply irresponsible and incorrect."

What a crock.  Clinton spokesman Jay Carson, when given the opportunity to denounce and reject this fairy tale, endorsed Johnson's explanation, saying, "That's not what he was talking about."  Carson further responded that Clinton, "has made (it) crystal clear to supporters and staff alike that no one should engage in negative personal campaining."

To be fair, the Clinton campaign does take action when the fish are smaller.  New Hampshire campaign co-chair Bill Shaheen was asked to step down after he said,"

"the Republicans are not going to give up without a fight...and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use."

The campaign's reaction was that the comments "were not authorized by the campaign in any way."  Hillary personally apologized to Obama, assuring him that this campaign had no place for negative personal statements.

Then there was the county coordinator in Iowa who forwarded an email stating that Obama was a Muslim.  They got right on top of that -- the volunteer resigned.  Patty Solis Doyle (perhaps reading from the same memo that was later recycled by Hillary in New Hampshire) proclaimed, "There is no place in our campaign for this kind of politics."

What she really meant was, there's no place in our campaign for these kinds of statements coming from the rank and file.  When it's a Bob Johnson, or a Geraldine Ferraro, or even a Bill Clinton making comments that are baiting at best and flat-out racist at worst, we'll turn the other cheek and you should too.

In counter-point, senior Obama foreign policy advisor Samantha Power called HRC, "a monster," in a Monday interview with a European newspaper and her resignation was accepted by Thursday.  It's called taking responsibility.

I'm not suggesting that Obama is getting unfairly raked over the coals in this campaign.  He gets more than his share of doting press.  (Maybe not John McCain levels but then, he doesn't throw personal BBQ's for the boys on the bus, either).  This is, after all, the biggest of leagues and they're fighting for the largest of prizes.  Bill suggesting that South Carolina is a state in which African Americans do well is not exactly Joe McCarthy smearing loyal Americans as Communists or Karl Rove swiftboating John Kerry.  The gloves are off in the battle for the Democratic nomination and Obama will have to show that he is tough enough to mix it up with the old-school politicians who are not about to go gently into the night.  If he can do so, he will emerge a stronger candidate, better qualified for the full-scale war that lies ahead.

But it doesn't change the fact that the Clintons' act is growing old.  Pandering to their base with the politics of fear, saying one thing today and the opposite tomorrow, calling for change while employing the same old tactics they've decried when they were used against them -- these are classic Clinton strategies.  In 1996, Dick Morris called it triangulation, and it worked.  Today it looks more like old-fashioned manipulation.  We'll see how it turns out.  

In any case, I do think Ms. Ferraro should be led back to her seat and given something to keep her busy.  She's not helping anybody.

We Need You, Governor. Now More Than Ever.

I'm typing as quickly as I can because things change quickly around here in the Big Apple.  Yesterday, Eliot Spitzer was a straight-arrow, no-nonsense, hard-line prosecutor-turned-Governor, voted into office by the largest margin in New York history.  Today he is fodder being passed around Letterman's and Leno's writers' rooms.  Word has it that he won't be resigning just yet, so, as of this moment, this posting is still relevant.  Read fast.

It's hard to imagine him surviving this debacle.  But, hey, it was hard to imagine Larry Craig finding the nerve to continue serving the Republican "values voters" of Idaho after his botched attempt to procure gay sex in a bathroom  at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport, some 3 years after allegedly taking Washington DC's Union Station perhaps a bit too literally and engaging in oral sex there with a 40-year-old professional man with close ties to Republican officials.  It was hard to imagine Marion Barry winning re-election as mayor of Washington, DC after being caught on camera smoking crack with former girlfriend and FBI informant Rasheeda Moore, the "bitch" that "set him up."  Shoot, it was hard to picture President Clinton having the cojones to provide close, personal, hands-on attention to a 21-year-old White House intern while he was under investigation for the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit, and then look America in the eye and argue that the Lewinsky relations were not sexual.  Please.  

Obviously, my imagination isn't up to the task at hand anymore.  This has become fantasy world.  These guys have clearly stepped through the looking glass.  

That being said, let's get back to the current fiasco.  Governor Spitzer was allegedly a repeat customer of the Emperor's Club, an exclusive team of working girls providing cultured relief to men of substance throughout the U.S. and Europe.  How cultured, you ask?  Your top earners, at the seven-diamond level, commanded upwards of $5,500 per hour!  

To put that in perspective, Stuart Appleby is a member of the Professional Golfers' Association.  He just finished tied for 10th place in their tournament last week in Palm Harbor, Florida.  For his week's worth of work, he earned $127,200 or about $5,500 per hour.  Appleby is #19 in the world rankings.  Think about that.  There are only eighteen men in the world better than Appleby at what he does and he makes about what Spitzer pays his hookers.  The slogan for the PGA Tour is, "These Guys Are Good."  The Emperor's Club motto should be, "These Girls Are Great."  'Cause there are a lot more women out there who can do what Spitzer's paying for than there are guys who can tee it up with Stuart Appleby.  And many of those women will beat Emperor's price, too.  My point is, these escorts must really have some skills.

Anyway, the knee-jerk reaction is to demand Spitzer's head on a stick.  Kick his hypocritical ass out the door and hope that's the last we hear from him, right?  Pundits and columnists are champing at the bit to slap a big, red "A" on Albany's own Hester Prynne.  

Well, hang on for just one second here.  Maybe we're missing the forest for the sleaze.  

There was another story that ran today, with little fanfare in the wake of the Spitzer scandal.  A study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 1 in 4 teenage girls nationally has a sexually transmitted disease.  That's over three million afflicted young women.  Only around half of the girls included in the study admitted to having sex which means that nearly half of all sexually active teenage girls have evidence of an STD.

Where does the governor of New York fit in all of this?  Well, you'll recall that he seems willing to pay handsomely for an exercise that, when done right, can admittedly seem magical.  But, let's face it, he could probably hop in the back of his limo and cruise the streets of Manhattan for an hour and find a comparable substitute on most any street corner for a fraction of the cost.  So why the outrageous premium?

The answer may lie buried in the transcripts from the wiretapped conversation between one of the escorts Spitzer hired and her booker.  He tells her that Client 9 (Spitzer) sometimes wants his women, "to do things that, like, you might not think were safe."  For those of you living in Utah, that means he prefers his entertainment without protection, prophylactically speaking.  Skin to skin, as it were.  And he was obviously willing to pay for it.

Well, now he has.  His hedonistic hubris threatens to destroy his reputation, his career and his life.  But, I say, why not look at this as an opportunity to make some lemonade?  Here we are,  faced with a nation of impressionable young girls, many of them obviously in need of a role model.  Unhappily, many of these youngsters have already contracted an STD through the practice of unsafe, unprotected sexual activities.  What better use of his bully pulpit than for Governor Spitzer to crisscross the state of New York this spring, preaching on the dangers of sexual irresponsibility?  In some cases, it can cause chlamydia.  In others, it could lead to impeachment.  As he hones his message he could expand his journey throughout the tri-state area over the summer.  By this fall he could conceivably have covered all of New England, like the autumnal foliage, in his own personal Shame and Redemption Tour.  Outside of Christmas morning, there's nothing we Americans enjoy so much as the chance to do some forgiving. 

Come on, Governor.  Let's turn that frown upside-down.  Make this something we can all learn from.  You know . . . for the kids.

(I do have just one last question, though, before we put this little incident behind us.  Remember the prostitute, Kristen, whose booker told her Spitzer liked it dangerous?  Well, her response in that situation was, "listen dude, do you really want the sex?"  Dude?  For $5,500 an hour I'd at least expect, "Big Boy."  Or, "Sugar Daddy."  Maybe, "Hot Stuff."  But Dude?  C'mon, Kristen.  Show a little respect.  That's our governor you're talking about). 

To Tell The Truth

Honesty is overrated.  

Not in a doctor or a reporter.  We count on them telling us the truth, as best they can ascertain it.  And not in a lover.  We open ourselves up to them and trust that they will embrace our vulnerabilities without using them against us.  And certainly not in a politician.  We have no expectation of honesty from that crowd, so we don't bother rating it, over or under.

No, what I have in mind is the publishing business, specifically the genre of memoirs.  There have been some high profile memoirs drawing attention of late that appear to have taken some liberties with the Truth, from embroidery to complete fabrication.  

Most recently is "Love and Consequences," by Margaret B. Jones (or Margaret Seltzer if you want to know the truth).  It's your basic updated Ragged Dick story about a mixed-race girl growing up in South-Central L.A. among the Bloods and Crips.  All very uplifting apparently, and pretty much universally praised, until it was discovered that Seltzer is white and was raised in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley, a long way from the mean streets of the barrio.

Then there's the odd case of Misha Defonseca.  In 1997 she published a memoir entitled, "Misha:  A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," detailing her trek across war-torn Europe from the ages of 7-11, basically raised by wolves.  It sold poorly in America but was extremely popular in Europe, eventually serving as the basis for an Italian opera and a French film.  She recently revealed that her real name is Monique De Wael and that the wolves that raised her were actually her grandfather and, later, her uncle.  Her only trek was walking back and forth to elementary school in Brussels.

And, most infamously, there is "A Million Little Pieces," James Frey's account of his addiction to drugs and his road to recovery.  His biggest mistake wasn't embellishing his stories for added emotional punch -- although he did plenty of that.  His fatal error was making Oprah feel like a fool after she championed his work in her book club, leading to the sale of 2 million copies in its first three weeks.

These examples, along with others, are causing the publishing business to take a long, hard look at the way they research, promote and publish memoirs.  It's a big to-do and it's a big waste of time.

It shouldn't ultimately matter whether a memoir is strictly factual.  It's from memory.  Nobody's memory is accurate.  When you were a child and your grandmother told you stories about your mother or father when they were your age, did you really take them as gospel?  (Well, you probably did, but you were five at the time.)  Looking back on them as you got older you realized that they were stories spun to entertain you, fairy tales without the magic beans and glass slippers.  Just because your grandmother stretched a point here or there doesn't make her a liar or the stories any less valid.

Memoirs are no different.  They are a story from a specific point of view, filtered through the personal history and idiosyncrasies of the author, meant to evoke an emotional response from the reader.  I don't curl up with a memoir to learn history.  I read it to follow along on a journey through the eyes of the person who was there.  If I have to choose between an anecdote being factually accurate or emotionally resonant, it's no contest.  Give me something I can feel.

As far as I'm concerned, as soon as I read the words, "A Memoir," on a book, I have been duly warned:  this book is a work of memory and imagination, a mixture of fact and fiction.  It's not autobiography, which claims to report the details of the subject's life in an objective manner.  It's more nuanced;  a good memoir will elicit feelings in the reader by how it tells a story, not just through the details of the story.  I'd rather read Frey's harrowing account of undergoing root canal without anesthesia than learn that the oral surgeon put him under, completed the procedure, and that he woke up with a sore mouth.  Which works better as a metaphor for an addict rubbed raw by the process of trying to kick his habit cold turkey? 

It's rare that an author is able to breath life into a story so that it grabs the readers and transports them to a place that's truly unique.  The writer talented enough to perform that magic shouldn't be condemned because of where they decide to shelve his book at Barnes & Noble.

Embellishment, exaggeration, white lies; each has its place.  Seriously -- you don't really want to know how those pants make your ass look, do you?

Are The Dems Broke(ered)?

Two things are clear after watching the results from the Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont primaries last night.  

First and foremost, the only thing of which I'm absolutely certain is that I have no idea how this is going to end, and I wouldn't turn my back on anyone who says they do.  CNN has Obama with 1321 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1186.  MSNBC scores it Obama-1307, HRC-1175.  And AP's calculations show Obama with a 125 delegate lead, 1275 to 1150.  I mean, these organizations have reporters, pundits, researchers, interns.  They've got the internet.  They've got Chuck Todd, for chrissakes, and they can't agree on a number.  Agree?  They can't even come close.  Given the variables in play -- the Clintons' inexorable refusal to to lose, the whims of the super delegates, Obama's reluctance to enter the fray, HRC's decision to go dirty, the closeness of the contest, the nature of the states she has won vs. those he has, the Michigan and Florida balls still waiting to drop -- it seems improbable that this doesn't carry forward to the convention in Denver.

Second, it's at least as easy to see this ending badly for the Democrats as it is to picture Obama or Clinton raising a hand in oath on the steps of the Capitol next January 20th.  Fractious conventions don't bode well for the party doing the arguing.  1952 was the last truly brokered Democratic Convention.  Adlai Stevenson defeated Estes Kefauver, Avril Harriman and Richard Russell in three rounds of voting.  Stevenson went on to lose to Eisenhower in the general.  As the Real Clear Politics article I  linked to points out: 

Both the Democrats (1952) and the Republicans (1948) lost after their last multi-ballot conventions.  Similarly the GOP lost presidential elections in 1912 and 1940 after bitter convention fights, while Democrats lost after multi-ballot conventions in 1920 and 1924.  More recently, the 1968 debacle in Chicago, featuring riots outside the convention hall and near riots inside, showed just how difficult it is for a badly divided party to win.

What may take place this summer won't technically be a brokered convention.  The party slapped a coat of whitewash over that seedy image of fat, old, white guys sitting around in back rooms, smoking cigars and drinking whiskey as they trade political favors back and forth like so many baseball cards.  Now they're called super delegates and they are distinguished party elders, looking out for the good of the Democratic cause.  Make no mistake about it, though, it would be a veritable auction to see who could sell their vote to whichever side offered the most pork.

Kathy Gill, at About.com, wrote an excellent summary of the path the Democrats have taken to arrive at whichever circle of hell they currently inhabit.  Super delegates were created, in theory, to nudge the nomination towards the candidate with the best chance of winning the general election.  To take it out of the hands of the unwashed masses, so to speak, and let more sophisticated heads prevail.

It's ironic, isn't it, that it was the Democrats who were so unhappy with their constituents' preferences, the likes of McGovern, Mondale and Carter, that they devised a way to make the process less democratic?  

Like it or not, this is the game as the Democrats have designed it.  It appears increasingly probable that neither Obama nor HRC will arrive in Denver with the required number of delegates to claim the nomination.  They will need the backing of the super delegates to reach the magical 2025.  The arguments for how a super delegate should cast his super vote are old hat by now.  Obama backers insist he must echo the wishes of his constituents and Clinton fans think he would be better advised to vote his "conscience" and back whichever candidate would best serve the party going forward.  

Both sides act like this matter is up for debate.  It's not.  Super delegates, also referred to as unpledged delegates, are clearly free to cast their support to whomever they choose.  The only incentive to mirror their constituents' votes is that what goes around, comes around.  Most of them will presumably have to answer to those voters the next time they run for office.  And, being politicians, it stands to reason that most of them will find that argument persuasive.

But, I say, if you're going to have the damned toys, you might as well play with them.  What's the point of reserving a hotel room for the guy if he's just rubber-stamping the people's will?  Either get rid of them and select the nominee on the basis of the way the people voted or use them as they were designed, as DNC member Elaine Kamarck called, "a sort of safety valve," to protect us from ourselves.  

It might all be moot, anyway.  A few more months of Hillary driving up Obama's negatives (along, ironically, with her own) and it won't matter which Democrat emerges in August.    

I know.  It's crazy.  The process is akin to turning the wheel of the RV over to your four-year-old as it barrels down I-95 and going in back to lie down and take a quick nap.  But this is what Democrats do.  Hey, if you enjoy the lockstep, become a Republican.  

Obama's Next Move

Obama backers' biggest fear was crystalized last night on 60 Minutes.  Steve Kroft sat down with a handful of Ohio Democrats to discuss the election.  One of the guests was Kenny S., a middle-aged man who was losing his job at the NewPage paper plant which was closing by year's-end.  Kenny is straight out of central casting in the roll of  Average Joe, Middle America.  He was forthright, likeable and self-reliant.  He asked for no sympathy in the face of his impending unemployment and loss of the health insurance that enabled him to care for his MS-stricken wife.  In short, a stand-up guy, a true Democrat.

When asked who he was voting for, he replied that he was leaning towards Obama but. . . 

Kenny:  "There's a couple issues with him I'm not too clear on.  I'm hearin' he doesn't even know the national anthem.  He wouldn't use the Holy Bible.  He's got his own beliefs, with the Muslim beliefs . . . couple issues that bothers me at heart."

Kroft:  "You know that's not true."

Kenny:  "No.  I'm just . . . this is what I've been told."

It's a fifteen-second clip that will have the Karl Roves and Mary Matalins choking back giggles of ecstasy as they try to maintain a straight face for the cameras.  The perfect illustration of how good they have gotten at their nebulous smear campaigns.  

My natural inclination is always to dismiss these attacks.  They're ridiculous and beneath response.  Who in their right mind would question the patriotism of a man who has dedicated his life to making America a country where all of her citizens have the opportunity to realize their dreams?  What could be more patriotic than that?  I was likewise inclined to dismiss the 2004 attacks against the war records of John Kerry and, perhaps most absurdly, Georgia's Max Cleland.  How did that work out again? 

Evidently, there are people out there, lots of them, who listen to this garbage.  They believe.  And, even when they don't necessarily believe (Kenny didn't seem 100% comfortable stating his concerns to a national audience), they have doubts.  And those doubts fester and mutate under the intense pressure of increasingly negative attacks until they wake up one morning firmly convinced that Obama is a Muslim racist whose wife is a traitor.  

Much of the coverage today-- on television, in newspapers, across blogs -- is focused on these smear campaigns.  It would be wonderful to be able to ignore the attacks, treat them with the lack of respect they deserve.  Unfortunately, Kenny shows us why that's not possible.  If the accusations and innuendos are just left unanswered, the right wing has won.  Many of the voters who still have reservations about a candidate (Obama in this case but it could be any candidate in any election) will give in to their inner fears and believe the worst the politics of hate and fear can conjure up.

Obama needs to hit this hard, with the most effective means at his disposal.  To date, he has responded to each new slur immediately and reasonably.  But counter-punching isn't enough.  He needs to take the fight to the slanderers and libelers on the biggest stage he can command.  Tomorrow night, when he addresses another of his packed halls on national TV after the votes have been counted, he should share with the country his personal definitions of patriotism and Christianity and how his life has embodied those ideals.  He shouldn't be vindictive towards his attackers.  The optimistic, above-the-fray tone of his campaign has been spot-on to this point and he must continue with it.  His belief in the transformative power of hope is his greatest advantage over both HRC and John McCain.  He needs to sit with his speechwriters and create another masterpiece, like he gave us after Iowa and again after South Carolina.  

His speech in Houston after winning Wisconsin was fine, but it bogged down a bit in the details, almost as if he was proving to his critics that his campaign was just as much about policy as it was about poetry.  It was fine for the faithful but I'm not sure it inspired many conversions.

Obama's strength is oratory.  He is uniquely able to connect with people of all races, faiths and political affiliations through the power of his words.  There are lots of Kenny's out there, teetering on the fence.  Obama, you need to write them a poem.  Read it to them tomorrow night.  They'll be listening.   

America Imprisoned

There was an amazing story in the New York Times this past Friday.  Summarizing a report put out by the Pew Center On The States, it said that the United States now has greater than 1% of its adults behind bars.  We have almost 2.3 million men and women living in jail or prison.  One in nine black men between the ages of 20-34 is locked up, as is one in 36 Hispanic men.  To put it all in perspective, China imprisons roughly 1.5 million of its citizens.  That is out of an adult population of about 1 billion, over four times greater than America's 230 million as of 2007.  Russia incarcerates the third highest number of it's citizens, with best estimates coming in around 890,000 prisoners out of an adult population somewhere around 117 million.  (The report is full of these kinds of statistics.  It's like a twenty-page Harper's Index; entertaining and disgusting at the same time). 

I find those numbers staggering.  We like to promote this country as the freest, most tolerant society in the world, home of opportunity, advanced thinking and an unparalleled quality of life.  Never mind that in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2005 quality-of-life index, we actually placed 13th, behind basically all of western Europe and that shining beacon on a hill, Singapore.  We tsk-tsk the human rights abuses of China (ranked #60)and Russia (#105), and the iron thumbs under which their people are forced to live.

Yet, it is only America that finds it necessary to lock up more than 1 in every 100 of its adults, male and female.  Why?

• Is it because there are 90 guns per every 100 people in America?  (Yemen is second at 61/100).   Partly.
• Is it a response to the rapidly growing inequality of income in America?  (The top-earning 1% of Americans earned 8% of the country's total income in 1980 and 16% in 2004).  A fair assumption.
• Or is it because we don't, as a society, believe in rehabilitation, preferring instead a more biblical, eye-for-an-eye system of punishment, one designed to maximize transgressors' time served while doing as little as possible to prepare them to reassimilate back into society upon their release?  Most assuredly.
  

This attitude is responsible for tough-on-crime candidates which leads to mandatory sentences, zero tolerence and three-strikes-you're-out.  Locking up criminals (not just violent offenders and drug traffickers but drunk drivers and parole violators and substance abusers as well) is the feel-good hit of the season, and it's damned near impossible to get elected to dog-catcher in this country anymore without pandering to this principle.  

Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

According to the Pew report, total spending on corrections last year was over $49 billion and will be around $75 billion by 2011.  The average annual cost nationwide of a single prisoner is $23,876.  Let's not get into the cost of prison healthcare -- it's climbing 10% annually.  Add in the fact that prison populations are getting older.  In 1989, one-quarter of all prisoners were over 50.  By 2010, that number will be one-third.  Old people have higher health costs than young people.  You do the math.

We were able to ignore these trends (or at least keep them on the back burner) when we were living fat and sassy, back in the days when W. was just a gubernatorial blip on the political scene.  But times have changed, haven't they?  Last I checked, the average price for a gallon of gas was $3.17 (up from $2.45 a year ago) and climbing, the sub-prime mortgage industry's failure is in the process of destroying the housing market and we're stuck in Iraq at the cost of $275 million a day, with some projected estimates of the final tally topping $5 trillion.  (A big number but, you'd have to admit, quite reasonable if McCain gets his way and we're there for the next hundred years).

The point is this:  solutions like diverting low-risk offenders to cheaper settings and earned time parole for prisoners who complete rehabilitation programs are not just knee jerk, liberal reactions.  They're sound fiscal policy.  Texas, traditionally one of the toughest states on corrections policy, as well as having the nation's second-largest prison population, has aggressively expanded drug treatment, increased diversion beds and reformed their parole practices.  Their prison budget has leveled off and is expected to remain flat over the next five years.  

Conservatives need to start making some choices.  Want to keep funding this war?  Insist upon permanent tax cuts for the wealthy?  Well, the money has to come from somewhere.  Prison reform could be just one small chunk of it and you wouldn't be giving up anything really important or changing the status quo.  Come on.  Put a brother back out on the streets.  Who knows, the man you give a fresh start to today could be washing your car tomorrow.