Last Kaul

March Madness? Not Hardly

2009-03-27T16:50:00.005-04:00

The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is in full swing. The original 65-team field has been pared to twelve as I write this, and we'll have our Elite Eight set by tomorrow. Used to be, the entire country would be swept up in the Madness. Offices would be virtually closed for business on the tournament's opening day. CEO's and secretaries alike would agonize over their brackets, struggling to divine which teams might advance through their brackets to reach the mythical Final Four. Vegas would shift into overdrive: only football (Super Bowl, NFL playoffs and college bowl games) generates more action than the Big Dance. Husbands and boyfriends would go missing for the three weekends around which the games were played.

This year? Not so much. Oh sure, hardcore basketball fans are still tuning in. And no one is suggesting that Caesar's should close their book anytime soon. Cool girlfriends can still be found perched on the barstool next to their man as Bill Raftery and Gus Johnson wax hyperbolic when a Dukie cuts back door and lays it in against a renegade, street program like Memphis.

The problem is, that back door cut happen less and less often these days. Top-level high school ballers are pretty much guaranteed to have moved on to the the fame and fortune of the National Basketball Association by the end of their sophomore years. And the creamiest of the crop is more likely to bolt after a single season of collegiate seasoning; they're one and done.

It's hard to blame the "student athletes." Most come from difficult financial circumstances and professional basketball - the League - offers riches beyond their wildest dreams with which they can address their families' dire straits. The victim is the college game. The quality of play in college is almost entirely dependent upon a group of kids banding together under the guidance of a coach and gradually learning the nuances of basketball at its highest amateur level as they grow from boys to young men. It can't happen in a year, or even two.

A generation ago, the best teams in the NCAA Tournament were heavily laden with upperclassmen - juniors and seniors who had played scores of games together and spent thousands of hours in the gym practicing as a unit. In 1982, the Final Four was comprised of North Carolina, Georgetown, Houston and Louisville. The players on the court that weekend included Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. Their supporting casts numbered Sam Perkins, Sleepy Floyd and the McCray brothers, Rodney and Scooter. The first five players listed above are all in the NBA Hall of Fame. The others all had long and productive pro careers.

The brand of basketball on display in New Orleans in March of 1982 was so far above today's college game it's a joke. There is one sure bet, future pro all-star in this year's tournament - Oklahoma's Blake Griffin. There are several others that could develop into something special at the next level - Louisville's Terrance Williams and Connecticut's Hasheem Thabeet come immediately to mind - but no one you would bet even the memory of your no-longer-existent pension on. Greg Oden should be playing. So should Kevin Durant. And Russell Westbrook and OJ Mayo and Derrick Rose. But they're not. They're all in the pros, earning millions before they can legally order a drink. They show up at the arena, drop twenty on their older opponents, then head back to the hotel to play video games in their rooms until they fall asleep.

And the NCAA Tournament stumbles along, with second-tier stars competing against our memories of Bird, Alcindor and Walton. Of the Big O. Of Christion Laettner and Bobby Hurley. The players today blur together, as do the games. Kids rush upcourt in today's game and pass the ball around the perimeter for thirty seconds until someone jacks up an ill-advised, contested three point shot. Entry passes are a lost art. Hell, I'd settle for a well-executed pick and roll.

The only species as endangered as an intricate play in today's tournament is the stunning upset. Cinderella is making fewer and fewer appearances at The Dance these days. Fourteen of the top sixteen seeds have advanced to the Sweet Sixteen this year. For the most part, the surviving schools have the highest-paid, highest-profile coaches who are best able to attract the nation's top talent, if only for a few semesters. The George Washingtons and Miami of Ohios, yesterday's pint-sized heroes, don't stand a chance.

Not to sound like an old coot, but March Madness ain't what it used to be. Growing up a rabid basketball fan and attending both the University of Maryland and University of Michigan, I never thought I'd say it. But I miss Phil Ford and Magic Johnson, hated arch rivals from my formative years. As much grief as they caused my Terrapins and Wolverines, I give them their due. They were great college basketball players. Those were the days.

Don't Let The Door Hit You. . .

2008-11-18T11:33:00.004-05:00

Just to review, the Democratic caucus is voting today to decide what to do with Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. You remember Joe:

Last seen in Minneapolis, palling around with a bunch of fat-ass, conservative white guys wearing funny hats. That one.

Lieberman caucuses with the Democrats (but does most of his traveling with the Republicans:

Lieberman is also the chair of the Homeland Security and Government Reform committee, a rather minor committee as these things go, filled mostly with junior senators. Some Dems are drawing a hard line, insisting that Lieberman's acts of disloyalty should cause him to be removed from his chairmanship, if not kicked out of the Democratic caucus entirely. The other side, which includes President-elect Obama, wants to let him off with a good scolding.

Lieberman wants to retain his chair and claims, if it is stripped from him, he will take his ball and go play with the other team.

Here's the thing. Lieberman has always said that, "Political party is important, but it's not more important than what's good for the country. . ." I'll take him at his word. He backed McCain because he honestly believed that McCain had the best shot at breaking the partisan gridlock in Washington. No fan of gridlock, Lieberman votes his conscience on each issue, regardless of party, I'll assume.

If that's the case, what difference does it make which side of the aisle he sits on? Other than national security, Lieberman is a pretty reliable Democratic vote. Pro choice, pro stem cell research, no on flag burning amendment, yes on driver's licenses for immigrants, yes to expand hate crimes to include women, gays and disabled, yes on death penalty moratorium and more DNA testing, no on school prayer, yes on condom distribution, etc, etc.

Basically, take the middle east off the table, the guy's a Progressive. And, if he's such a principled guy, he'll continue to vote as one. Doesn't matter where his chair is in the room.

Lieberman supported the Republican candidate for president, he campaigned for him and, most importantly, he campaigned against Barack Obama, questioning his judgement and his idealogy. He needs to be punished. Even he knows it:

Let the Republicans have him.

Obama's Quagmire?

2008-11-18T01:00:00.008-05:00

Rick Perlstein, in Nixonland:

It was not as if American leaders hadn't been warned. It was "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy," the World War II hero Omar Bradley had first observed in 1951. Such sage warnings tended to be ignored. When Undersecretary of State George Ball began criticizing the commitment to South Vietnam in the early 1960's, he was shut out of meetings. He managed to buttonhole the president nonetheless. "Within five years," he said, "we'll have three hundred thousand men in the paddies and jungles and never will find them again. That was the French experience." JFK came back, "George, you're just crazier than hell." Ball indeed misjudged: the actual number of troops at the end of 1966 was 385,300.

The parallels between Vietnam in the early 60's and Afghanistan today are striking. We have a young, idealistic president just taking office, in the face of some doubts over his toughness in matters military. We are propping up a puppet regime that is unpopular with the native population. We are facing an insurgency which has the freedom to cross the border of a neighboring nation for safe harbor. The terrain is ideally suited for our enemy's strengths while neutralizing our technological advantages. And another imperial power has only recently tasted defeat at the hands of the same insurgents.

The American people are, at best, ambivalent towards our presence there. Most of the attention in this country has been focused on Iraq, until just recently. President-elect Obama ran on a pledge to draw down troops in Iraq while escalating the force count in Afghanistan. We've just spent the past five years paying the price in blood and treasure for having a war jammed down our throats through the use of fear-mongering, exaggeration and outright lies.

We, as a nation, deserve a fair and open debate on the proper course for the Afghan conflict going forward. Obama has won the election. He did so partly because the American people preferred his judgement and temperament to John McCain's. It always struck me as discordant when he spoke hawkishly about Afghanistan and Pakistan, coming down somewhere to the right of McCain. Perhaps it was campaign rhetoric designed to offset the stereotype of Democrats being soft on defense. I hope so.

Obama has promised he will listen to his generals when they advise him on a final Iraq withdrawal timetable. If sixteen months works, fine. If it takes longer to get out in a responsible fashion, so be it. One of the main reasons he was elected was because the voters trusted him to bring the Iraq War to an end, rationally and decisively. The same standard must be applied to the war in Afghanistan. If a roadmap for victory can be designed (however victory is defined -- another point of debate) and it necessitates more troops, then, by all means, send more troops. If it's realistic that bin Laden can be captured or killed by our troops venturing into the mountains of northwest Pakistan, let's get it done. But let's also consider that the finest military in the world, along with our intelligence communities, have dedicated the past seven years to the task with no success. They're no closer to cornering him now than they were in 2001 the day after they lost him in Tora Bora, despite the standing offer of a $25 million dollar reward for information leading to his capture or death.

I'm not saying that bringing down bin Laden wouldn't be a huge victory, symbolic as well as tactical. I'm just asking, at what cost? How many more lives is his worth? All we should ask of Obama is that he approaches Afghanistan with the same pragmatism he seems to be applying to Iraq. In other words, he should be as careful going into Afghanistan as he is promising to be careful getting out of Iraq.

If Obama wants to use the Kennedy and Johnson administrations as his models for changing America in big ways, he would do well to remember how Johnson's presidency -- he of the Great Society -- was ultimately undermined by Vietnam.

Fewer Rivals, Please

2008-11-17T14:50:00.010-05:00

Much is being made of President-Elect Obama's admiration for Abraham Lincoln's Team of Rivals approach towards piecing together an administration. And, judging by his early actions, with good reason. He's moving deliberately, so most names are speculative at this point, but here's a look at the current playing field:

Chief of Staff -- Rep. Rahm Emanuel, from Illinois. While an extremely close friend of Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, make no mistake about it, he is a Clinton man from way back. His first taste of politics at the national level was working for Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign and he served as a senior advisor in the Clinton White House from 1993-98. An interesting choice, he challenges the bipartisan meme of Obama's White House due to his cutthroat Democratic bona fides. Conservatives are howling and the netroots are grumbling as well.

Secretary of Defense -- the consensus seems to be that he will keep Bush's current SOD, Robert Gates, on for at least a year, both as a reward for a job generally accepted as well done in Iraq and as a bipartisan aide to a transition to more of an emphasis on the mess in Afghanistan. There has been some buzz, slightly abated now, that Sam Nunn, last spotted heading back to Georgia in 1997 as he retired from his senate seat citing a "lack of zest and enthusiasm," was a dark horse possibility.

Secretary of State -- less predictable than a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey and more fun than a pinata party. Chief party rival Hillary Clinton is the nom de jour. Other than her very public differences of opinion over foreign policy with Obama, she faces the same difficulties being confirmed in the face of Bill Clinton's aversion to vetting as she did when being considered as a potential vice-president. (I wonder if she ever sits up at night, over a Crown Royal nightcap, while Bill is jetting to some Arab Emirate on Ron Burkle's Boeing 757 known as "Air F*#k One," for staggeringly obvious reasons, and considers just how much being married to the Big Dog complicates her life.) Republicans Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar's names are bandied about also as candidates (for both State and Defense) to trip across the Obama Footbridge of Peace being constructed over the center aisle of the U.S. Senate.

Secretary of Treasury -- former SOT Lawrence Summers is on the shortest of lists, as is former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. While Summers has practically made a career out of insulting various core Democratic constituencies since leaving public office, it's hard to deny that he is a brilliant economist and comfortable thinking outside the box, a talent obviously in demand these days. As for Volcker, gimme a break. Jimmy Carter appointed him Fed Chair. He's eighty-one years old! He actually remembers the last time the economy was this bad. All due respect (and he has certainly earned it), but I'm not sure the focus and energy that the current crisis will demand is the ideal fit for an octogenarian.

Vice President Biden's Chief of Staff -- Ron Klain, Al Gore's chief of staff when he held the office.

White House Counsel -- Greg Craig, best known for helping Bill Clinton beat the rap at his 1998 impeachment hearings. He has continued as close advisor to both of the Clintons.

I don't know about you, but as one who supported Obama based upon the campaign he ran and the promises he made, I'm about ready for some names that A)aren't joined at the hip to one or both of the Clintons, B)don't sit with conservative Republicans at Senate picnics or, C)are not hard-wired into the Washington power establishment. I mean, the only group whose performance over the past few years rivals the incompetence and lack of integrity exhibited by Bush and the Republicans is the Democratic Congress.

Obama promised, among other things, an approach in Washington that would be as fresh as it was bold. No more re-treads. Well, to channel a Clinton greatest hit, I suppose it depends upon what the definition of "retread" is, but most of the names listed above are awfully familiar.

I'd like to see Samantha Power get some attention for State. She's a realist -- she stated all the way back in March, while working for the Obama campaign, that sixteen months for an Iraq withdrawal was a "best case scenario" that he would revisit if elected. She was forced to resign after speaking the truth about Hillary Clinton's campaign (that her level of deceit was unattractive) because she described her as a "monster," even though she told the interviewer that was off the record. She won the Pulitzer Prize writing about genocide and was responsible for directing Obama's attention towards the atrocities in Darfur. She would be a bold and fascinating choice.

Obama met with vanquished presidential rival John McCain today. The argument has been made that McCain won't relish continuing to serve in a diminished state with an increasingly minority party in the senate. But it's hard to figure where he might fit in the Team of Rivals, were Obama so inclined. Where do you put a flip-flopping Republican hawk who has declared a complete lack of respect for your experience and judgement along with a deep suspicion of your past associations, no matter how casual? Come to think of it, I guess you sit him right next to Hillary.

I can see only one realpolitik argument for finding a spot for McCain in the administration. Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is reportedly being considered for Attorney General. She would bring a fresh voice to Washington, and increase the cabinet's diversity at the same time. However, she is in line to run against McCain for his Arizona senate seat in 2010 and there is some doubt that the Democrats could find anyone else to mount a substantive challenge against him. It must be tempting to finish transitioning Arizona from red to blue (McCain only won 53.8% of the vote against Obama) with Napolitano snatching McCain's seat out from under him. So maybe you leave her where she's at and offer the AG spot to someone like Eric Holder, who led Obama's V.P. search committee.

While attempting to predict the incoming administration is a bit of an old Washington chestnut, it makes for a more enjoyable parlor game than gathering around the television and watching the market fall on CNBC. Besides, it's the only game in town for the next couple of months. Unless you're putting together an over/under pool on how many more days until GM goes under.

Hang on. How many cars does McCain own? That's right, thirteen.

Obama is said to be considering naming "a point person to lead efforts to help the distressed auto industry return to health." It should obviously be someone who believes in the product. Someone experienced in deal-making. Preferably someone with a bit of a jingoist streak to keep him going through the dog days when he looks at the numbers and sees Japan is still kicking Detroit's ass. Someone who puts country first and would be willing to spend most of this winter in Michigan rather than by a babbling brook in Sedona, Arizona.

The perfect choice to round out President Obama's Team of Rivals.

Car Czar -- John McCain.

Every Little Thing Gonna Be All Right

2008-11-14T14:31:00.007-05:00

After some forty-eight years of deliberation, I am a married man. I have cliff-dived into the Caribbean Sea. Allen Iverson is a Detroit Piston. And Barack Obama is President of the United States.

These are ways my life has changed since I last posted here.

Let me get Iverson out of the way first -- we're talking about Basketball. Not life. Basketball. Basketball. (This should obviously be read aloud in the style of Iverson's infamous 2002 rant about practice.) Basketball is a frivolous thing and it should not consume one's spirit. Whether a group of twenty-five year old, mercenary millionaires who can dunk behind their heads from one city can outscore a similar group from some other city over any particular forty-eight minute period of time should really not hold sway over my emotional health. But it does. God help me, it really, really does.

There is a very short list of future-hall-of-fame players whom I would not welcome to my beloved Pistons. AI sits atop that list. Not because of the tattoos. Or the doo-rags. Not because of the posse, or the brushes with the law or the above-mentioned aversion to practice. This isn't Hoosiers. I realize that. This is the National Basketball Association and its players are young, rich celebrities and I'm not their target market anymore. I get it.

It's how he plays. My Pistons have had a unique personality over the past twenty years. They play tough, hard-nosed defense and rely on the concept of team rather than worshiping at the altar of David Stern and his insistence on turning the NBA into a high-priced, pay-per-view, indoor schoolyard league of role players standing around watching one or two superstars per team take turns utterly dominating the action. Stern and the NBA have managed this by eliminating defense entirely from professional basketball. Touch LeBron, it's a foul. Lay a hand on D-Wade, he's shooting free throws. It's absurd. The Pistons of the late eighties, the Bad Boys, as they were known, or the Chicago Bulls of Jordan and Pippen -- two teams that accounted for eight championships between 1989 and 1998, largely due to their suffocating defensive pressure -- wouldn't stand a chance in today's kinder, gentler NBA.

The Pistons won the championship again in 2004, against all odds. They were a team, in the very best sense of the word. No one scored thirty points a game. No one graced multiple covers of Sports Illustrated or made Gatorade commercials. The closest thing they had to a superstar was Ben Wallace, an undersized center who, through hustle, hard work and force of will, made himself into one of the great defensive presences in league history. They surrounded him with intelligent, efficient, ego-free cast-offs from other teams and they proved, perhaps for the last time, that sometimes the sum really is greater than the parts.

Well, Iverson is not a sum kind of guy. He's the ultimate part. He's a wondrous blur of motion, nearly impossible to defend one-on-one. He makes his defenders look like they're standing still. Trouble is, his teammates are standing still as well. Everyone stands around and watches Allen do whatever the hell he's going to do. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Either way, it's usually pretty amazing. But it's not basketball. Not the way I define basketball. And, until this past week, not the way the Pistons defined it, either.

Whew, I feel better. Good to get that out and move on to real life.

Did I mention I got married? Yes, my fiance, Karen, and I tied the knot on October 25th, after just over a year's engagement. Nothing substantive changed, other than the fact that I can stop using the word "fiance," which pleases me to no end. It always sounds to me like a South Hampton debutante introducing her boyfriend at her coming-out party. We've been living together for two years, dated for a year and a half before that. I mean, it's not like we were saving anything for our wedding night, if you know what I mean.

We went to Jamaica for our honeymoon. We stayed in Negril, at the Rockhouse Hotel (pictured above). Now, I'm not a Caribbean vacation kind of guy. When someone comes back from St. Bart's and tells me they laid on a beach for a week and did nothing, my head wants to explode. Lying around and doing nothing is what you do when you're acutely depressed, not celebrating a 'til-death-do-us-part union, I don't care how nice the view. But a croissant and latte costs about twenty bucks, American, on the Boulevard St. Germain these days, so I agreed to spend a few days in the Islands. Truth be told, a little down time sounded pretty good, what with the wedding and the election and all.

Jamaica was wonderful. The hotel was spectacular -- each room is a separate hut, very well-appointed, sitting on the edge of a thirty-foot cliff above the Caribbean. You get up every morning, walk out to your patio, take a sip of the Blue Mountain coffee waiting for you on the table, and jump off the cliff into the warm, placid waters below. I'm just saying, it beats morning drive-time radio. The food is great, especially if you like hot, which I do. They'll put jerk on anything. I'll bet you could get jerk jalapeno peppers if you asked.

And the people are awesome -- warm, laid-back, cheerful. We spent a fair amount of time with Clive Gordon, who owns Clive's Transport Service. Negril is about ninety minutes from the nearest airport at Montego Bay and Clive was our driver, so we had plenty of time to chat. I asked him if Jamaicans were truly this friendly all of the time, or if it was just an act for the tourists. He said, "Well, we're pretty much high on weed most of the time, so, no, it's not an act. Everybody's happy, mon."

Maybe, maybe not. Once you get away from the hotels and the beach, it's a desperately poor country. Most of the houses we passed were shacks with no glass in the windows, no electricity, no running water and tin sheets for roofs. Their slums make our urban projects look like gated communities.

Everyone we met was fascinated with the U.S. election. More specifically, they were enamored of Obama. It was an odd feeling, to be in a foreign country and not feel shame, on some level, for what America has become. The past eight years have run roughshod over our image abroad. I've been in Spain, France, Italy, Ireland -- there's a palpable distance between where we were and how we were viewed before Bush took office and where we have moved since. I'm not saying Western Europeans hate us -- they don't. I think they look at us more with a disappointed bewilderment. How could we have let this happen? Twice.

I didn't feel that in Jamaica this time. Even though we were there the week before the election, there was a sense that a page has been turned. Although the Bush years illustrated just how dangerous America going rogue can be, the nomination and probable election of Barack Obama reminded us all of why so much of the rest of the world looks to America as a symbol of the possibilities of dreams. Every Jamaican I met wanted to talk about Obama and how we got to this point. There was a sort of a feel of kinship, that we could once again start to work together, as a global community, to try and solve the truly terrifying challenges that lie ahead.

One story that drove that home for me. Clive was telling us that, before he opened his taxi service, he was a teacher. For twenty years he taught high school in the town of Lucea. Teachers aren't well-paid in Jamaica. He was driving a cab at night to supplement his income. One evening he dropped off some guests at the Rockhouse Hotel, the same place he was taking us. The registration desk sits separate from the hotel, in a small hut at the end of the entrance driveway. As he unloaded his guests' bags, he recognized the young woman working at the registration desk. She was one of his students from several years before. They got to talking and she told him life was good -- she'd been at the Rockhouse for a couple of years now. She mentioned how much she was getting paid. It was considerably more than Clive was making as a teacher after twenty years.

The story reminded me of my past. I moved to New York after graduating college with my English degree and paucity of job offers and took up bartending. The tips were great, the drinks were free and the girls were pretty. I remained in the bar business for over a decade. I might still be pouring drinks for a living if I could put down a bottle of Absolut before it was empty. I promise you I was making more when I quit than any high school teacher in the city. But working for tips is a hard way to earn a living. It ages you. I looked in the mirror sometime after I turned thirty and was sure of only one thing -- I didn't want to be doing the same thing when I hit forty. So I headed to DC in search of honest work. Which I found, more or less. But that's another story.

My point is, in terms of the way we value our teachers, America is no different than a third world nation like Jamaica. Where's the incentive to mold the minds and spirits of our children when you can make five times the money waiting tables? Or one hundred times the money as a junior broker?

Obama talks about changing that. He reminds us of JFK and the Peace Corps. Of paying back the opportunities we've been given just by the virtue of being American. National service is back in fashion, at least talking about it is.

I think that's part of what I was sensing in Jamaica. For better or worse, less fortunate nations look to America for help, for inspiration, for hope. Those qualities have been in pretty short supply these past eight years. The Obama candidacy is, above all else, a symbol of the promise of what we can be, at home and around the world.

I hope so, anyway. I've lost about half my net worth this fall. If things don't turn around quick, I might call up Clive down in Negril and ask him to FedEx me up about a half-pound of Monkey Skunk. I'll lock the door, fire up a big fat one and put on some Bob Marley:

Don't worry about a thing,

cause every little thing gonna be all right.

I actually believe that, sort of. A good thing, too, because I don't smoke. Maybe it's the impending Obama presidency. He seems a remarkably charismatic and inspirational leader. Good for him -- he'll need all of his powers to lead us out of this mess.

But my guess is, it's not Bob Marley, or the fact that the Pistons have started out 6-2, or the trip to Jamaica, or even Obama's victory. All those are reasons for good cheer but they're not the main thing.

Then main reason I'm in a good mood is Karen.

Everyone was right. Married really is better.

Poor America

2008-09-30T15:25:00.005-04:00

One debate down, two to go. (I don't count Biden-Palin. That's not a debate, that's vaudeville.) Last week's first Obama-McCain debate was scheduled to cover foreign policy yet was dropped surreally into the middle of the nation's most pressing economic crisis since 1929. I don't mean to suggest they should have switched topics but let's just say that Waziristan has never seemed farther away than it did last week while watching the Dow do its impression of a lead balloon.

McCain accused Obama of going through the entire debate without uttering the word, "victory." Obama rebutted that McCain never used the phrase, "middle-class." Both accurate points that, I suppose, say something about both campaigns and to whom they're speaking.

Here's a word I haven't heard either of them say in quite some time:

Poverty.

According to McClatchy Newspapers and the lastest census figures (2005), there are now thirty-seven million Americans living below the poverty line of $20,000 per year for a family of four, which is a thirty-two year high. Forty-three percent of those, or sixteen million, Americans live in extreme, or deep, poverty. Deep poverty is defined as a family of four making less than $9,903 per year, or half the amount of those living in your basic, run-of-the-mill, common everyday poverty. The total of Americans living in deep poverty grew twenty-six percent from 2000-2005.

Think about supporting a family of four on ten grand a year. That's $200 a week. $50 a head.

$50 a week to cover the cost of a life in the world's richest country. Where a Venti Latte at Starbucks costs $4. You do the math.

Now, I'm no expert on monetary policy -- I buy a lottery ticket twice a week -- but I don't think $50 a week can get it done.

We're facing economic Armageddon, or something approximating it. From what I understand, they're going to start making me pay cash in restaurants pretty quick here. Businesses, small and large, will be forced to close if they are unable to obtain the credit necessary to operate in today's economy. Which means a whole lot more people making under, not only $20,000 a year, but under $9,903 as well.

Deep poverty.

I'd like to hear the candidates talk to the impoverished. I know the reason they don't. Poor folks don't like to think of themselves as poor. They prefer to be called "working-class" or "lower-middle-class." Just as upper-middle-class people are quick to answer to "rich." It's a big downer for everyone to consider the deprivations and hardships of being really, really poor. It's difficult to sell the American Dream in Paragraph One and pivot to $50 a week in Paragraph Five. Nobody wants to think about being poor. It was Reagan's genius that he sold the fantasy that anyone could be rich to a bunch of poor bastards that had no chance, nada, of every sniffing the inside of a Mercedes. Twice.

But there's at least a reasonable chance that a whole bunch more of us are going to join the thirty-seven million Americans currently living in poverty. The McClatchy analysis determined that fifty-eight percent of Americans will spend at least one year of their life in poverty. One in three will succumb to deep poverty. To quote Mark Rank, a professor of social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis:

"It would appear that for most Americans the question is no longer if, but rather when, they will experience poverty. In short, poverty has become a routine and unfortunate part of the American life course."

I'd like the candidates to address this catastrophic statistic in their next debate. Not on their websites. Not in a stump speech. On national television, in front of tens of millions of Americans, many of whom, I'm sorry to say, are not middle-class. They're poor. They're not worried about their kids going to college, or retiring with dignity. They're fighting to stay alive.

And that number is growing.

Now, if you'll excuse me, the MegaMillions jackpot is $32 million tonite. I gotta run.

Down and Dirty

2008-09-16T16:39:00.003-04:00

The Dow dropped some five hundred points on Monday, losing 4.4% of its value between breakfast and high tea. Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch was snatched up by Bank of America and American International Group teetered on the brink of collapse. Contrary to John McCain's initial reaction, the very fundamentals of our economy (the mortgage market, access to credit, pension holdings) were being buffeted by the winds of deregulation.

Thank God.

Yeah, my net worth fell from inconsequential to piddling yesterday but, as I often tell myself, it's only money. I lost a pretty penny but, on the flip side of that coin, many people went all day without mentioning the name of Sarah Palin.

That has to be worth something.

The Wall Street story allowed the Obama campaign to focus on what this election needs to be about if he is to emerge victorious -- how failed Republican policies have created a nation that is considerably worse off than it was when the Clintons left office in 2000. McCain applied the shovel to his own grave by first declaring our economy "fundamentally sound," before his handlers pushed him back out in front of cameras several hours later to muddle through a stack of cue cards explaining that, by "fundamentals," he meant the American workers, their work ethic and their values. Which was, of course, nonsense. Ridiculous. A blatant lie.

I've been of the opinion since McCain reacted so rashly to the spectacle of the Democratic Convention by plucking Palin from out of her tanning bed in the Great White North that the choice's bounce would have a short shelf-life. He's too old, too Republican and too disinterested in domestic policy (especially economics) to get away with choosing a running mate who addresses none of his weaknesses and speaks to few Independents. Throw in the near daily dose of Palin Drama -- pregnant daughter, Trooper Gate, the Bridge to Nowhere fiasco, her predictably erratic performance in her first major interview, her husband's history as an Alaskan secessionist, book banning, librarian firing, classmate hiring, etcetera, etcetera -- and the shine is coming off the Republican ticket before our very eyes. I'm guessing November 4th looks a long way off to Team McCain right about now.

Speaking of the Bridge to Nowhere, her version of the story is as close to the truth as their campaign has come on an issue since their hook-up. She claims she said, "Thanks but no thanks." Well . . . almost. What she really said was, "Thanks" and then, much later, "No thanks." By Team McCain standards, that makes her George Washington.

As for Obama, his brand has been losing its luster as well. What started out as a pledge for a different kind of campaign has been inexorably dragged backwards towards the swamp of politics-as-usual. He campaigned on the promise to accept public funding, thereby leading the charge to cleanse our electoral process of the influence of special interests, but he was ultimately unable to resist the lure of the huge financial advantage his fund-raising machine represented over the Republicans. He initially agreed, in general terms, to a series of town-hall meetings with McCain only to flip-flop when he took a healthy lead in the early polls and was reminded of the old political rule that the leader debates as seldom as he can possibly get away with.

For most politicians, these would be minor infractions. After all, the game has been played this way forever. Money is speech, we have a constitutional right to Free Speech, so collect as much money as possible, from whatever sources are available. And never play to an opponent's strengths if it can be avoided. McCain has always been a one trick campaign pony -- town hall meetings. So, the conventional wisdom was, don't debate him using the town hall forum.

But Obama hasn't been selling himself as a conventional politician. What made him special was his ability to inspire a belief in a new kind of politics. Every time he resorts to politics-as-usual he cheapens his brand. And every opportunity McCain has to accuse him of being afraid to go in front of the people with him is an opportunity lost for Obama to convince undecided voters that he is someone they can feel comfortable voting for.

It's a tricky problem. While he might very well be able to govern with a new style of politics, it's proving very difficult to get elected with them. When McCain manages to force Obama to waste time and money defending himself against scurrilous attacks and outright lies, McCain doubles his winnings. He wins not only because Obama is thrown off his message that McCain is out of touch and is offering no real solutions, but also because Obama seems a little less special each time he engages in gutbucket politics. And, on the other hand, if Obama chooses not to rise to the bait, he comes across as weak, unwilling to fight for himself. And if he's unwilling to defend himself, how can we expect him to defend the American people. Like I said, it's a tricky problem.

McCain faces some of the same challenges. McCain has spent years railing against Beltway politics and nasty campaigning. Yet, when presented with the opportunity to carry his party's banner, he dropped those vaunted principles of his faster than he dropped his first wife. When he realized he was going to have to go negative to stand any chance whatsoever, he replaced Terry Nelson with Steve Schmidt and saved a seat in the back of the Straight Talk Express for Schmidt's mentor, Karl Rove. He agonized over throwing his lifelong ideal of honor off the back of the bus for about a second and a half.

The difference is, Republicans can win with lies. They're comfortable getting down and dirty. They've been doing it since Lee Atwater. Hell, since Pat Buchanan. Republicans talk about the high road and idealism and leaving the world a better place for our kids. But they don't mean it. You aren't serious about improving the next generation's lot in life if you are borrowing money hand over fist against their future. You're not serious if you are unwilling to admit that the country's infrastructure is crumbling and that it's going to take hugh sums to repair it. Sums that will require more than cutting earmarks and eliminating wasteful government programs. Goods and services cost money. The only way to raise that money is to raise taxes. Which the Republicans are unwilling to admit. (Note I didn't say they're unwilling to do. They'll do it. They just won't admit it.) You're not serious about leaving the world a better place if you deny the causes and effects of global warming and refuse to consider environmental, energy and transportation policies that are necessary to combat climate change.

Obama started out this campaign almost two years ago and has been trying to stick to the high road ever since. He was mostly successful in the Democratic primaries because he was running against, well, Democrats. There is a bar below which, for the most part, Democrats will not crawl. Let's call it common decency.

But now we're in the general election and it's Obama against the Republicans. He's been slogging along the high road, dodging McCain mudballs and slowly losing his lead. Last week he came to a bend in the road. He rounded the turn and pulled up short. He was met with Lipstick on a Pig and Comprehensive Sex Education for Kindergarteners. Behind which, the high road had vanished. It had crumbled and collapsed as surely as the bridges and roadways across America under the strain of Republican economic policy. It had become the Road to Nowhere.

So, Obama no longer has a choice. McCain has forced him to finish the journey on the low road. It was a noble experiment, this New Politics, but it's not for winning elections. Time to take the gloves off. Hopefully, Obama can put them back on when it comes time to govern.

I Tried

2008-09-05T01:53:00.005-04:00

Every four years I promise myself I'm going to make it through an entire Republican Convention. Four nights, five-six hours each night . . . no big deal, right? I do it happily for the Democrats. From gavel to gavel, from invocation to acceptance, I am always interested and often thrilled by the spectacle of my party making sausage. If for no other reason than civic duty, I feel I should be able to do the same on the Republican side.

But I can't. Every four years I fail miserably. I generally make it through all of Monday night, albeit with a splitting headache. By 9:00 pm Tuesday, however, the country music and chants of USA! and Drill Now! (or that year's convention's equivalent rants) are beginning to chip away at my resolve. I call it quits a couple of hours early, but I'm able to convince myself I captured the gist of the night's message. Besides, I'm TiVo-ing. I'll catch up tomorrow. Remember back in college when you had a three hour lecture class and you would cut out at the break to meet your buddies down at the pub, figuring you'd copy the notes of the girl who sat behind you next week? It's like that. On Wednesday, I watch the Veep nominee's speech, turn off the TV and have a fight with my girlfriend. Because, by this point, I feel like someone has been striking me in the middle of my forehead with a ballpeen hammer for 72 hours. Thursday night I manage to last through about ten minutes of the Republican nominee's speech playing in the background as I stare blankly at the ceiling before I throw a bottle through the television screen.

Every four years.

This week was the same, only worse. I've been watching these things since 1972 and the Republican Convention that ended last night was the most disingenuous, hypocritical, mean-spirited, race-baiting, classist (I'd add sexist but the Republicans have nominated an ex-beauty contest winner and Miss Congeniality for their runner-up spot, so they have necessarily had to soft peddle their usual little-woman condescension) celebration of the dark side of America's ruling class that I have as yet had the pleasure of violently pre-empting before the balloons fell.

They sneered at the concept of community organizing. They clamored for change with a straight face, as though by not mentioning Bush's name we will forget who has been carrying this hellbound hand basket for the past eight years. They accused their opponents of being elitist and out-of-touch while their nominee's wife had the gall to show up on stage wearing $300,000 worth of runway clothes and jewels.

I am, for the most part, happy to debate the relative merits of the progressive agenda against the conservative platform. Point of fact, I spend a fair amount of each day engaged just so. But I need a short break here. If you can picture yourself walking into the voting booth and pulling the lever for McCain-Palin after having watched both parties present their cases these past two weeks, well . . . I've got nothing. Go to TPM or Kos or Huffington Post and browse the literally thousands of posts which delineate the Republican's mendacity and absolute dearth of fresh ideas or innovative policies.

If that sounds like a cop out on my part, so be it. But it's hard duty, trying to put yourself in the shoes of an enthusiastic Republican conventioneer. Walk a mile? Hell, I can't get the things laced up. I'm beat. I'm tired and, worse than that, I feel dirty. I feel like I need a long, hot shower. No, come to think of it, a shower won't get it done. I need to take a few days and travel to a spring-fed mountain lake. I will bathe naked in its cold, clear waters and commune with nature. I will meditate on the question of good versus evil. I shall observe a vow of silence.

And then I'll drive back Sunday night ready to re-enter the fray. By which time, I might add, I fully expect this silly Palin fervor to have broken. If Obama loses, it won't be because the Republicans picked a right-wing, creationist, abortion-abolishing nut who hasn't yet formulated an opinion on the Iraq War as their vice presidential candidate. The race is about Obama and McCain and, after the past two weeks, it still looks like a mismatch to me.

McCain should lose, if for no other reason than he is the worst speaker I have ever heard at this level of politics. I thought W was bad? Shoot, Bush is John Barrymore next to McCain. It seems to me that the bare minimum qualification for being handed the world's tallest soapbox should be the ability to use a teleprompter. The thought of watching McCain address the nation for the next four years, his gaze locked on the cue cards like a rat eyeballing a piece of cheese in a trap, ignoring pauses and stepping on applause lines, declaring wars and cutting taxes while the deficit continues to skyrocket and ice shelves the size of Manhattan tumble into the Arctic seas is either too depressing or too terrifying for me to contemplate right now. Maybe both.

I'll be at the lake if you need me.

"It's Sarah, Senator."

2008-09-02T13:32:00.003-04:00

Rrrrrring!

"Hello."

"Governor, Senator McCain is on the line."

"Awesome. Put him through."

"Sandra, it's John McCain. I hope I didn't wake you."

"Um, no, I was just putting up some walrus meat. Where does the day go, right? Well, you know what they say, there's only twenty-two hours of light in a day. And it's Sarah, actually."

"Beg pardon?"

"My name is Sarah, not Sandra."

"Oh, right. My bad. Look, I'll get right to the point. I just finished watching Obama in Denver and, I don't mind telling you, I'm a little worried. For whatever reason, people don't seem to be seeing through his messiah act. First reactions are coming in on the convention and I expect he'll see a pretty good bounce. We need to shake things up here."

"Er, well, I didn't really watch . . . the baby keeps me pretty busy these days."

"Sure, sure. Well, trust me, our country is in grave danger. And I believe that I'm the one to save us. But I'll need your help. What would you say to running with me?"

"Running with you? Why, sure, that sounds fun. I'm quite the runner, actually. I finished Humpy's Marathon back in 2005 in under four hours! How far do you usually go?"

"I don't run, my friend. I don't run. When most people were taking up jogging, I was locked in a room, without a table, for five and a half years."

"I'm sorry, Senator. That was insensitive of me."

"Don't worry about it, kid. I like your spunk. I'm not talking about jogging, I'm talking about running as my vice-presidential candidate. Would you do that?"

"Jeez, I'm shocked. You could knock me over with a penguin feather, Senator. Do you really think I'm qualified?"

"Huh? Qualified? Listen, Sandy, if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, the vice president has two jobs: to attend state funerals and to inquire after the health of the president. Can you do that?"

"Absolutely. I've got the cutest fox stole I pull out on formal occasions."

"I'm afraid you're going to have to leave the furs in Alaska, Governor. They don't play down here in DC with the liberal media. Let me ask you, what's your position on the Iraq War?"

"To tell you the truth, Senator, I don't really have one. We're pretty independent up here, sir. We don't pay much attention to the outside world. To us, you're all pretty much snowbirds."

"Independent. I like that. Anything else I should know?"

"Well, I should mention, we're having a spot of trouble with Bristol. . . "

"Pistols? Don't you worry about the gun issue, Governor. I used to tussle with the NRA, but I've come around to their side these past few months. Gun owners have no stronger friend than Senator John McCain and I think your position as a sportswoman can only help the ticket. You know, pacify the base, shut their yaps for just one goddamn minute. No, this is feeling right to me. You know, Sandy, I've always been a shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy. My gut told me 'Joe,' but my base told me, 'no.'" OK, then, we move on. But it's got to be outside the box. If I play it safe, this race will be The Death of a Thousand Cuts. Which I know a little about, after spending five and a half years in a real box. So we'll change the game. This is the first maverick move I've made since I won the nomination. I'm back, baby!"

"Not 'pistols,' Senator, Bristol. My seventeen year old daughter just told us she's five months pregnant. Now we have to plan a wedding, and quick. Good thing I own a shotgun, right, sir? No telling what that boy of hers would have done."

"Listen, family is sacred. I learned that back in '98 when I told that little joke about Chelsea Clinton at a fund-raiser. Have you heard it?"

"No, how does it go?"

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"Because her father is Janet Reno. Get it? 'Course, it was much funnier back then. She was a mighty plain eighteen year-old, don't you think? Anyway, I took eight kinds of hell for that one. Obambi won't dare use your daughter against us."

"Uh, OK, Senator, if you say so. Just one last thing -- I wanted to mention that I'm being investigated . . ."

"That's fine, Governor, just fine. It's been good talking to you. I had a strong feeling about you the other time we talked. What was it, six months ago? Now I'm even more sure this is the way to go. My people will be in touch. Good night, Sandra."

"It's Sarah, Senator. I'll be. . ."

Click.

How Good Is Obama?

2008-08-28T13:49:00.004-04:00

To call the Democratic National Convention conflicted would not do it justice -- it's positively bi-polar. Dems have spent the first three days alternating between celebration and hand-wringing. More time and energy is being spent dissecting the Clintons' role in the current state of Obama's campaign than in figuring out how to beat John McCain.

I can't think of a time when the passing of the standard bearer's torch from one generation to the next has been so fraught with drama. The media, like a pack of hyenas after a wounded wildebeest, has latched onto the story, circling ever tighter, closing in on the idea that perhaps the Clintons won't deliver her constituency, worrying it and gnawing at its twitching carcass until the bones are picked clean. Political operative after pundit after elected official is lined up and asked, "What will Hillary/Bill say?" They are asked this serially, one after the other, for hours on end. A typical MSNBC night of coverage is three hours of guessing, exactly two speeches, and three hours of analysis. The most fun speech so far -- Dennis Kucinich's six-minute, crazed-but-yet-somehow-the-most-rational-argument-against-the-current-administration-made-to-date rant that borrowed equally in delivery style from Mick Jagger and Adolf Hitler -- was ignored. Montana governor Brian Schweitzer gave a barn burner in the midst of a hoedown that has been depressingly free of pyrotechnics. MSNBC chose to talk over it while training the camera on Bill Clinton as he gazed out over the hall, mouth agape, in as unflattering an image as any Clinton-hater could dream of. John Kerry, the 2004 nominee, rated about ninety seconds of air time as he took aim at the Republicans before they hustled us back to hear what the Gene Robinsons and the Dick Durbins thought the Clintons might do.

There are a number of reasons for this. The Clintons are not really a full generation ahead of Obama. It seems like only yesterday when Bill was considered the future of the party and was drawing his own comparisons to JFK. They have not, nor, I suppose, should they have, accepted the role of elder states persons. Hillary is every bit the force Obama is -- the coin just came up tails this time. Bad luck for her. And, for whatever the reasons, many still wonder whether there is a there in Obamaland. He hasn't exactly set the world on fire since the end of the primaries. Driven home by the Republicans' quite brilliant Brittney Spears/Paris Hilton ads, the question of whether Obama has the heft to lead is hovering over the Democratic electorate like Hurricane Gustave bearing down on New Orleans.

So the Dems have spent their time worrying in between the Clinton speeches which have, predictably, both hit their marks. At which point the Dems congratulate themselves on their embarrassment of riches while struggling with their deep-seated fear that they may have backed the wrong horse. It's this anxiety that leads Obama supporters to nitpick the Clintons' speeches -- especially Hillary's -- and complain that their support was insufficiently enthusiastic.

Which is silly. The Clintons just had the rug yanked out from under them by Obama, the South Side Wunderkind. Their future was set. They had given their notices, forwarded their mail to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and begun drawing org charts. This nomination was theirs. And then came Iowa and Mark Penn's plan and Super Tuesday. And now it isn't.

To expect them to go above and beyond the level of dutiful, pro forma support for the hotshot that snatched Hillary's dream from her very grasp is, at best, unrealistic. That being said, one could argue that they did just that. Hillary's speech was gracious and partisan, if not particulary Obama-centric. Bill's was brilliant -- a reminder of what a superb politician he could be and an endorsement that he believed Obama shared the same abilities. They did enough.

It's not their job to drag Hillary's supporters, kicking and screaming, into the booth to vote for the new guy. It's Obama's. It's like the former CEO of a company calling the current boss and recommending a friend for a position. The recommendation will get him in the door but he has to sell himself once in the room. If the new boss isn't comfortable with the guy applying for the job, he's not going to hire him, regardless of the recommendation.

Plus, if I were Obama, I would find it a little demeaning to admit such a deep dependency on the Clinton's good will. Not only demeaning, but worrisome. If Team Obama is expecting the Clintons to carry their water, after what has transpired over the past year, well . . . let's just say I wouldn't expect those buckets to arrive filled to the brim, if I were them.

Barack Obama has been hailed by many, myself included, as a political talent who comes along once in a generation, if that. Thanks primarily to his charisma and message of hope and change, there are more Democrats registered to vote in the upcoming election than ever before. There are eighteen million Democrats out there who voted for Hillary Clinton. Somewhere between twenty and fifty percent of them have expressed reservations about shifting their allegiance to Obama. Guys like Chuck Todd peg the precise demographic as white, rural, female Democrats, age thirty-five to forty-nine, with an income of under $50K.

If the consummate Democrat of this generation can't convince that demographic to vote for him, what does that say?

Maybe he's not all that consummate, after all.

Are We Really This Dumb?

2008-08-25T15:40:00.009-04:00

Fred Crane died today, at the age of 90. He was the actor who played the role of Brent Tarleton in the 1939 classic, "Gone With The Wind." His character is remembered primarily for speaking the first lines of the film, "What do we care if we were expelled from college, Scarlett? The war is going to start any day now, so we'd have left college anyhow."

I've often remembered that line as I've winced over George Bush's many gaffes and policy blunders. Bush was a shining example of the "Gentleman's C" at Yale. Having gained entry thanks to his legacy status (his father and grandfather were both Elis), he obviously didn't feel pressed to exert himself in the classroom. As the family name opened doors in New Haven for W., so would they open doors in the world of business and politics to follow.

And now we're presented with John McCain as a candidate for president. McCain's father and grandfather were both admirals in the U.S. Navy and, like Bush, he cashed in on his legacy status and followed them to the Naval Academy. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he, also like Bush, didn't exactly apply himself to his studies -- he finished ranked 894th in his class of 899 cadets. Like President Bush, McCain is comfortable with his academic performance, capable of joking about it on the campaign trail.

Which is fine, I suppose. History is certainly replete with examples of men and women who have gone on to great successes after indifferent academic careers. But what's troubling is the thin, sneering veneer of condescension that the Republicans use so predictably every four years to smear their opponent as an elitist intellectual, as if being smart is a bad thing. Troubling, not so much because they do it, but rather, that it works.

I've been watching for some time now, and I'm pretty sure America is getting stupider. Presidential politics aside, the lowest common denominator grows lower and commoner by the year. In 2007, a study by the National Endowment for the Arts found that Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 averaged two hours a day watching TV and only seven minutes each day reading. In 2002, only 52 percent of Americans read a single book voluntarily, down from a whopping 59 percent in 1992.

Television is not exempt. Always the cotton candy of popular media, today's prime-time fare has regressed to where it's positively drool-inducing. "Your Show of Shows" "The Honeymooners" and "All In The Family" -- all smart, topical and popular shows of previous generations -- have been replaced by the current hits, "American Idol" "Deal Or No Deal" and "24" -- all dumb, fantastical and, yes, wildly popular.

And cinema's no better. It has now completely surrendered to an audience still dreaming of obtaining their first driver's license. Now, this is not scientific. I'd research the exact numbers but it's too painful -- like watching Larry Bird steal Isiah Thomas' inbounds pass for the seven millionth time. But, basically, a third of all tickets in this country are sold to films made by Pixar, a third are sold to variations of a romantic comedy starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey (or, if they're busy, Cameron Diaz and . . . oh, pick one), and a third are sold to Batman and other movies based on comic books.

The last type is the worst. Not because comics are inherently inferior to bubble gum romance or Disney on steroids. The problem is, somewhere along the road these superhero movies started to be taken seriously. And not just as works of art but as socio-political statements.

"The Dark Knight," the latest, and most commercially successful, installment in the Batman franchise, has sold around a half a billion dollars in tickets to date. It has been been written about ad nauseum -- reviewed and deconstructed in every magazine, newspaper and blog this side of the Wall Street Journal.

Oops, scratch that. The Wall Street Journal did, indeed weigh in. On July 25th, Andrew Klavan wrote the single most preposterous review I have ever read. It's not that he makes the comparison between Batman and George Bush, or "The Dark Knight" and the war on terror. Those are obvious metaphors that even the director, Christopher Nolan, cryptically concedes were intentional.

But Klavan goes off the deep end when he argues that the film should be a call to arms for conservative artists in their battle against the left-wing "realism." He says,

"Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "200," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight."

and,

"Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They're wrong, of course, even on their own terms."

and,

"The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them -- when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love."

and finally,

"As Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gorden says of the hated and hunted Batman, 'He has to run away -- because we have to chase him.'

"That's real moral complexity."

No, that's really dumb. It's why we've lost over 4,000 men and women in Iraq. It's why in Britain, our closest ally left in the world, 35 percent of the people now consider us a "force for evil." (That's not Iran or Iraq, folks, that's frigging ENGLAND.) It's why offshore drilling for oil is even a campaign issue.

America likes to keep it simple, stupid. At the Saddleback Forum, Pastor Rick Warren asked Barack Obama if evil exists and, if so, should we ignore it, negotiate with it, contain it or defeat it? Obama gave one of his typically nuanced answers, metaphorically conceding that he wasn't God and that evil would always exist. The best we can hope to do is act as soldiers in the battle against it and confront it with humility, as often evil has been perpetrated in the name of confronting it. That's a nice, subtle way of injecting the atrocities of the Bush administration's war -- Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Extreme Renditions, Black Site Prisons -- into the conversation without getting down on the ground and rolling around in the mud. It was classic Obama, love it or hate it.

When his turn to answer came, John McCain replied, steely-eyed, "Defeat it," and promised to pursue bin Laden to "the gates of hell." The crowd went crazy.

It was like being at the theatre, watching "The Dark Knight." The Joker would pull some strings and the entire Gotham police department would rush to his proposed target, only to discover he was playing them. At which point, they'd pivot and rush, en masse, to the next potential catastrophe. It reminded me of nothing so much as a soccer game among eight year-olds.

And it made me tired. My problem with "The Dark Knight" wasn't conservative vs. liberal. My problem was that, ultimately, it was dumb. It was often incoherent and it went on way too long. After awhile, the explosions and special effects lost their ability to shock and awe. I became unwilling, finally, to suspend my disbelief. I spent the last half-hour waiting for the credits to appear.

Come to think of it, it did resemble the Bush administration after all.

So that's where we're at. Batman's our foreign policy model and another cowboy's running for president. Are we getting dumber? Stay tuned.

Obama's Margin

2008-07-29T16:08:00.008-04:00

What's it going to take to push Obama over the 50 percent mark?

He just completed a tour of the Middle East and Europe and was welcomed throughout as a conqueror, a liberator, as a breath of fresh . . . well, he wasn't George Bush. And that was good enough. Jordan's King Abdullah personally chauffeured Obama from dinner to O-Force One. Sarkozy all but filled out an absentee ballot in making his preferences known for the upcoming election. 200,000 Germans waved American flags at Berlin's Victory Column as he assured them that this is their time as well as ours.

Back in the states, Team McCain stewed. They bemoaned the press's love affair with all things Obama. They countered video of Barack's triumphal speech in Berlin with footage of McCain taking questions at -- it might have been the Piggly Wiggly, I'm not sure -- in Bethlehem. That's Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, not the one with the manger. They ran ads claiming Obama would rather lose the war than the election and would rather work out than visit wounded troops. Patently absurd but, hey, the Straight Talk Express ain't what it used to be, is it? Basically, they ceded a two-week news cycle to their opponent and were reduced to nitpicking his performance as he tap danced across the world stage, winning friends and influencing people. It was like watching a bunch of old maids critique the swimsuit competition at the Miss America contest.

So where's the bump? How can Obama create some space in this contest?

I suppose he could choose a running mate -- beat McCain and the inevitable Romney to the punch. But it's not like his options are all that exciting, either. Here's a list of possibilities and why Obama hasn't snatched one up yet:

Hillary -- too Clinton. Her Veep negatives poll as high as her positives.

Biden -- too Beltway.

Richardson -- too brown. Barack's got enough trouble trying to win working whites already.

Edwards -- too many kids.

Bayh -- supported the war.

Bloomberg -- too rich, sort of Republican.

Sibelius -- not Hillary.

Webb -- Tailhook.

Rendell -- unwilling second banana.

There are more -- Virginia governor Tim Kaine, retired general Wesley Clark -- but no one who makes your heart skip a beat. Certainly no one who's going to push the polls.

Which is the point, finally. Nobody votes on the vice president. Kaine, Rendell, Biden -- all fine choices but they're not going to help (or hurt) Obama's chances. Clinton might be a big enough name to throw some weight around but it's going to cut both ways.

The only thing that's going to drive Obama over 50% is voter registration and turnout. Kids, African-Americans and Hispanics. He needs blacks to comprise at least 13% of the total vote, up from 11% in '04 and 10% in 'oo. Assuming at least 130 million vote ( a fair assumption, considering 120 million voted in the last election and registration is off the charts), that would mean around 17 million of them will be African Americans, up from around 13 million in '04.

According to a New York Times/CBS News poll taken on July 16, Obama is currently favored over McCain among blacks by a margin of 89-2. He leads among Hispanics 62-23. McCain holds a 46-37 advantage among whites. If Obama can hold, or improve upon, those margins, as well as continue to attract new voters to his campaign, he won't have to worry about those tricky "hard-working whites" that claim they don't know him yet.

I'm not talking about all blue collar whites. It's the voters the Obama campaign is specifically targeting with its most recent mailer that are problematic. The ones that are still asking questions like, "Does he wear a flag pin?" "Is he a Christian?" "Was he sworn in on the bible?" "Was he born in America?" That sort of nonsense. Sure, there are people out there who don't pay much attention to politics until election week, but I don't think they're the one's doing the asking. These questions are code for, "Do you really expect me to vote for a black man?" And while the answer to each question in the mailer is "Yes," the honest response to their ultimate question is "No, I guess I probably don't."

The people-just-don't-know-him-yet argument won't fly anymore. Obama's been a front-page, prime-time story since at least January. I keep hearing about how Americans are much more comfortable with John McCain, that they just have a feel for how he'll perform as president that they don't have yet for the the new kid in town. Well, I'd be willing to bet the average man on the street could actually tell you more about Barack Obama than he could John McCain. That he was born in Hawaii and brought up in Indonesia. That he was raised by a single mom and his grandparents. That he was a community organizer in Chicago after law school. That he opposed the war. McCain? Take away the Hanoi Hilton and the Surge from his narrative and what do you have? I suspect 4 out of 5 voters couldn't identify a single biographical or legislative accomplishment of note. Of the other 20%, half would identify him as a maverick, campaign finance reformer and the other half would label him a flip-flopper. How can anyone honestly say they feel comfortable with who he is? He's pivoted 180 degrees since his last presidential run. Maverick? I don't think so. He's a guy with a temper who likes to tell dirty jokes.

People are uncomfortable talking about the racial aspect of this election. There was much hope that Obama's Philadelphia speech in March would initiate a national dialogue which would begin to heal the scars of our racial divide. The enthusiasm lasted about a week before the discussion was dropped. Other than a half-hearted debate about whether Obama's Appalachian Problem was race-based as Hillary rolled him in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky, the subject has not, for the most part, been revisited.

I'm not sure Obama can transcend race in this election. 75 percent of the voters in this country are white and less than 40 percent of them say they have a favorable impression of the African American candidate. I don't know what he can do to change their minds in the upcoming months.

Fortunately for him, he might not have to. Each day the electorate seems to grow younger and more diverse as McCain appears older and less relevant. Obama may finally overcome the race obstacle, not by transcending it, but by overwhelming it.

Tough Love

2008-07-09T17:39:00.005-04:00

On Friday, we threw another birthday party for America. She turned 232. Not old, by imperial standards, but no longer a fresh-faced ingenue, either. She's a fully matured woman now, still capable of turning heads but she looks her best wearing makeup and heels with the lights down low.

New York City's celebration seemed pretty sedate, at least by Big Apple standards. Certainly there was little of the spectacle of the two great July 4th's of my lifetime -- 1976's bicentennial, with it's tall ships sailing up the Hudson as New York prepared to host its first Democratic Convention in 52 years and celebrate their economic recovery from the previous year's near-bankruptcy, and 1986, when the Statue of Liberty turned 100 and Presidents Reagan and Mitterrand partied all weekend with the help of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, 30,000 vessels in New York Harbor and the largest fireworks display in American history.

No, it rained this year, fittingly. Not that precipitation was necessary to dampen the country's patriotic fervor. It's been a tough twenty-first century so far here in WORSP (that would be the World's Only Remaining Super-Power). As George Bush's reign of error inches towards a close, we have less for which to be thankful with each passing day.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on, although little notice is taken anymore. Mention of American casualties is rare and Iraqi casualties rarer. Pictures of our fallen soldiers are non-existent. Half-hearted arguments fizzle here and there, like a sparkler discarded at a picnic, as to whether the surge is actually working, but they're more for the sake of appearances than anything else. $100 fill-ups at the pump and a 5.5% unemployment rate have slowly and methodically sapped the country of the will to protest a war seen only on HBO and paid for by borrowing against our children's futures. Even the government we installed in Iraq is sick of us. Prime Minister al-Maliki presented us this week with a gift-wrapped demand to leave, the sooner the better, and the Bush/McCain response was, "No thanks, we're good."

General Antonio Tagube, the messenger whom Bush sent to investigate the reported atrocities at Abu Ghraib and then promptly fired when Tagube informed him there was gambling taking place in the casino, made a noisy comeback as Independence Day approached. He hooked up with the Physicians for Human Rights on their report detailing the torture of prisoners by the American army and declared, "There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account." What's that you say? War crimes? It brought us halfway out of our Barcaloungers, where we were depressively trying to nap away the summer. But the concept of an entire administration being guilty to some degree of war crimes was too much for us to get our heads around so we filed it under "left-wing crazy," right next to the image of Dennis Kucinich reading articles of impeachment into the record of the House of Representatives. (The idea that Congress in its present construct would, or could, actually impeach a corrupt president is laughable. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, admits she "would probably advocate" impeachment -- if she were not in the House. But, as it is, "the question of impeachment is something that would divide the country." There's some leadership for you.) So the Bush/Cheney train continues inexorably on down the tracks, running out the clock until they return to the private sector and cash in the chips they've been amassing for these past eight years. And our fitful slumber continued.

Former Deputy Associate Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Jason Burnett, accused Vice President Cheney's staff of editing congressional testimony on the threats of global warming. Seems the veep wasn't happy with the conclusions drawn that climate change has human health consequences. "I'm not interested in pointing fingers at any individual," Burnett said, but (he might as well have added), "the guy I'm thinking of has a battery in his chest and I think he lives in a bunker." To which we yawned. That kind of penny-ante corruption barely survives a full news cycle these days.

I know it's the 4th of July. I know it's a time to profess love of country, greatest experiment mankind has ever seen, blah, blah, blah. Trouble is, it's hard to perform on demand. And I'm just not feeling it.

To borrow a time-worn analogy, if America was a woman with whom I was involved, our relationship would be on the rocks. She's like this big, beautiful, rich and powerful woman you brought home to meet the parents a couple of decades ago. She may have had a few skeletons rattling around the back of her closet -- genocide, slavery, sexism -- and your parents warned you to keep your eyes open, but you went ahead and took the plunge. She was just so damned sexy and she took care of you, besides. The toys kept rolling in and you continued trading up for better apartments. Sure, she drank a little too much and she could be a bit on the loud side. People whispered behind your backs that she was pushy. But you ignored them and concentrated on her good qualities. She could be generous to a fault when she was so inclined, she always did her best to help you get ahead and, most of all, she was never boring.

But the relationship is troubled. As the years pass, it becomes more and more difficult to excuse her acting out. Finally, you wake up one morning after dragging her out of a party she had crashed after too many cocktails where she insulted the host, got in a fight with the guest of honor and refused to leave when asked. You look at her, passed out next to you in your king-size waterbed; all puffy and bloated, her greying roots showing beneath her dye job, skin dried and wrinkled from too many borrowed cigarettes and too much Caribbean sun. And you realize, as you watch her sleep those last few moments before she opens her bloodshot eyes, hung over and mad at the world, that maybe you don't love her all that much anymore.

When you try to explain the situation to friends they ask, "Why don't you leave her?" And the truth is, maybe you should. But, when push comes to shove, you just can't bring yourself to walk out the door. Let's face it, you're no spring chicken yourself. All of your friends are her friends. They'd probably choose her and you'd be left to grow old, without the benefit of grace or company. The apartment is nice -- could you really go back to a studio in one of the boroughs after three bedrooms and a roof-top pool in Soho? Plus the sex is still good once in a while. Damned good. And she can still make your heart sing when she smiles that smile she saves for only you. So you stay, promising yourself there are better days ahead.

That's pretty much how I feel about America these days. When someone says, "Love it or leave it," I'm forced to admit that I probably should, but I probably won't. Italy's a long way away and they don't play baseball.

So, I roll over, give her a kiss and say, "Happy anniversary, dear."

The Truth About The Surge

2008-06-24T13:59:00.007-04:00

"We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders . . . to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds . . . (and) . . . we are mired in a stalemate that could only be ended by negotiation, not victory."

That's not a quotation from Barack Obama. Or even Dennis Kucinich.

Walter Cronkite said it during the CBS news broadcast of February 27, 1968 in response to the Tet Offensive launched by the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army against U.S. and South Vietnamese forces on January 30th. Although the communists sustained immense casualties over the eventual nine-month campaign (some 75-85,000 troops were killed in action), the 6,328 allied forces killed proved more than the American public was willing to stomach. Cronkite, the "most trusted man in America," was as responsible as anyone for the public's ultimate rejection of the government's Vietnam policy.

On February 28th, the day following Cronkite's proclamation, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara resigned. Back in Saigon, Generals Westmoreland and Wheeler determined that an additional 400,000 U.S. troops would be required to effectively respond to the communist surge. This would necessitate the mobilization of the military's reserve forces -- a total commitment to the conflict in Vietnam. Critics argued that it would only result in an uptick in communist forces and an increasingly bloody stalemate on the ground. Clark Clifford, the new Secretary of Defense, as well as Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy and Walt Rostow -- all former hawks on the war -- advised President Lyndon Johnson to pursue a policy of disengagement. On March 31st, Johnson announced a halt to the bombing and his decision not to run for a second term of office.

Cronkite's words could just as easily have been applied to the current war in Iraq. The American people were hoodwinked into supporting our neoconservative administration's hubristic determination to spread democracy and American influence in the region through the administration's fear-mongering, exaggerations and outright lies. The forged "uranium from Africa" document, the fabricated "senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda," Iraq's phantom possession of chemical and biological weapons -- all strategies to deceive the public into backing the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Unlike Lyndon Johnson, however, George W. Bush has never wavered in his conviction. In January of 2007, when the war was at its nadir, he proposed a surge of 20-30,000 troops to his own council of wise men, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They opposed the increase, with the outgoing head of Central Command, General Abizaid insisting that adding troops was not the answer.

So who was right?

Well, let's crunch the numbers. The current confirmed death total of U.S. forces for the Iraq War is 4,104. In 2003, there were 486 troops killed in action. In 2004, the number rose to 849. 2005 - 846. 2006 - 822. Bush announced the surge in January of 2007. The death count for the entire year was 902. So far this year, 201 American soldiers have died. 30,000 U.S. men and women have been wounded in Iraq -- 7,200 of them since the troop surge began to work its magic. On Tuesday, a bomb in a Sadr City district council building blew up two American soldiers and three civilians working for the army. Oh, and six Iraqis also died in the blast, if that does anything for you. On Monday, a security guard assigned to an Iraqi politician opened fire on a group of American soldiers, killing two of them.

If this surge is a success, I'd hate to see Bush and Senator Surge himself, John McCain's standards for failure. Come to think of it, I'm not sure any such measures exist. The New York Times details a Government Accountability Office report released Monday claiming "the American plan for a stable Iraq lacks a strategic framework that meshes with the administration's goals, is falling out of touch with the realities on the ground and contains serious flaws in its operational guidelines." It further claims that the administration "broadly overstates gains in some categories, including the readiness of the Iraqi Army, electricity production and how much money Iraq is spending on its reconstruction." Any decline in daily attacks rests not on improved Iraqi security performance and a developing political system, but on "the American troop increase, a shaky cease-fire declared by militias loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and an American-led program to pay former insurgents to help keep the peace."

In other words, when the administration tells us, "the surge is working - just look at the statistics," they're cooking the books. According to Bush, the surge had two goals: to give the new Iraqi government breathing space to promote sectarian reconciliation and to provide security throughout the country by putting an end to sectarian violence. Judging by the events of the week to date, as well as the 1,103 troops killed since Bush over-ruled his generals, can anyone really believe the surge is succeeding? Or that McCain's vision of some type of long-term presence on Iraqi soil is a good idea for our national security interests?

David Brooks does, for one. His Tuesday column in the New York Times trumpets the surge's success and its opponents resultant lesson in humility. He lists their stages of denial as the surge has played out:

"First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home."

As if any of this "skipping" could hold a candle to the world-record long jump required to clear the canyon dug by Bush, Cheney and the rest of their cabal's collection of fairy tales and prevarications they spun to justify their intentions. Brooks is apparently untroubled by the reality that we have spent 4,104 American lives in blood and over $548 billion in treasure to date in pursuit of the neocon ideal of what would be, in effect, an Iraqi protectorate from which we can keep our hand on the oil pump. He is an apologist for a morally rancid policy that makes no more sense now than it did last January. Or than it did in the spring of 1968 when, during the height of the Tet Offensive, Clark Clifford wondered:

"How do we avoid creating the feeling that we are pounding troops down a rathole?"

You do it by getting the hell out.

November seems a long way off. Especially to those kids who'll be enjoying the surge's success in the meantime.

Hillary Who?

2008-06-05T13:55:00.010-04:00

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, runner-up in the race to be the Democratic presidential nominee, may want to be vice president. Or she may not. She may prefer to consider the prospects of Supreme Court justice, cabinet member, Senate Majority Leader or the pursuit of a distinguished legislative career as the junior senator from New York. All options are on the table and the world waits breathlessly.

Oh, and on Tuesday, a black man was presumptively nominated to be President of the United States.

As a news item, I realize it pales it comparison to uncovering the answer to that timeless question, "What does Hillary want?" Judging by the media coverage, you'd think most of the eighteen million who voted for Hillary, as well as a good chunk of Obama's eighteen million supporters, were cashing in sick days and vacation time to stay home and monitor the minute-by-minute vicissitudes of Hillary's future prospects.

Who gives a rat's hindquarters?

She's no longer the story and the sooner the media acknowledges that, the better off we'll all be. There's a concept known as Q quotient. It's the attractiveness, and therefore marketability, of a celebrity. Well, just before 10 p.m. Tuesday night, when Obama surpassed the 2,118 mark in total delegates, Hillary's political Q quotient dropped by about fifty percent. She's still on the A list but, let's be honest, the gap between nominee and runner-up is the distance between Mozart and Salieri.

The Democratic Party is now Obama's Party. He unleashed a blitzkrieg when he announced his candidacy for president on February 10, 2007 in Springfield, Illinois. In less than than sixteen months, he went from being a freshman Midwestern senator to the undisputed face of his party. We had grown so accustomed to the Clinton brand since 1992 that the abrupt shift in power seems all the more seismic. Less than a year and a half ago it was unthinkable that Hillary would be on the vice-presidential short list and that Bill would have been reduced to albatross status.

But Barack Obama, the Zen Master Assassin from Chicago's South Side, by way of Jakarta, Indonesia and Honolulu, Hawaii, wrested the party from their grasp in front of our eyes. It was like watching a ninja pluck the still-beating heart from his enemy's chest. He moved quickly today to follow up on his primary victory, installing his strategist Paul Tewes at the DNC to oversee fundraising. The DNC announced it will no longer be accepting contributions from federal lobbyists or political action committees, bringing it in line with the Obama campaign's policies.

It's hard to see Obama tapping Clinton for his VP. While it's impossible to predict definitively her net value or drag on the ticket, Obama can make a strong argument that he doesn't need her.

She has substantially higher negatives than any other candidate, thereby assuring a more motivated opposition from both the Republican base as well as Clinton haters in both parties.

While roughly a quarter of Clinton's supporters claim they will vote for McCain in the general election, past evidence suggests this may be a heat-of-the-moment threat. Since 1992, less than 10% of Democrats and Republicans have crossed party lines when voting for president. How many women will actually vote to effectively overturn Roe v. Wade in November because they feel somehow cheated or disrespected by the Obama campaign is very much open for debate. (Appalachia, not so much. Obama might have to write off that vote although it wouldn't hurt him in some of the swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania to venture into a few hollers to say howdy. Although, when over twenty percent of voters in Kentucky's primary admit that race was a factor in their decision, even the Scranton Scrapper herself riding shotgun isn't going to bring in the hillbilly vote.)

In addition, the Clinton Circus travels complete with its own baggage car. Does Obama really want to deal with that drama for the entirety of his presidency? How comfortable is he going to be that the Clinton's aren't pursuing their own agendas in the backrooms of Georgetown and Foggy Bottom that they already know so well?

Speaking of Clintons, plural, Bill might be a Veep deal-breaker all by himself. Would he be able to pass the inevitable vetting process, what with his undisclosed list of donors and his murky business dealings around the world since he left office? Would he even want to risk the humiliation? And, if he did come through the process cleanly, of what value are assurances from the Clintons that he would remain in New York, concentrating on his foundation and piling up frequent flier miles on Air Burkle? Does anyone really believe that the Big Dawg could actually be kept on a short leash for the next eight years?

Most importantly, Obama needs to enter the battle with McCain from a position of strength. He's already saddled with the classic Democrat mantle of "soft on defense," exacerbated by his perceived eagerness to negotiate with anyone who owns a table and two chairs. Plus, he's Harvard-bred, he dines on salmon and broccoli, he prefers tea to beer and he bowls the way most voters play polo. The last impression he needs to give is that Hillary dangled her support as so much political capital and managed to strong-arm her way onto the ticket against his effete, elitist will.

Besides, after watching McCain's performance on Tuesday (Gail Collins of the New York Times captured it perfectly), it's difficult to imagine Obama losing -- I don't care if he picks Mike Gravel. The contrast between the two candidates could not have been starker. McCain would be the oldest candidate ever elected president. His message is incoherent. He supports the Iraq War, in direct opposition to somewhere between half and three-quarters of the American people. He's selling Iran as America's most dangerous enemy, the same Iran that has inarguably been the largest beneficiary of the very same Iraq War he defends. He supports Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy although, to be fair, he admits that he doesn't understand economics. And he's pushing lobbyists out the back of the Straight Talk Express like ballast off of the Titanic.

Hillary, besides being yesterday's news, is the least of Obama's worries. I think his biggest obstacle is going to be overconfidence.

Toga! Toga!

2008-05-30T12:45:00.008-04:00

In the 1978 classic comedy, Animal House, Dean Vernon Wormer, the tight-assed, ineffectual head of Faber college slowly loses control of the institution as the rowdy Delta House battles the elitist Omegas for campus supremacy. The chaos culminates with Delta's Bluto (played by John Belushi) popping out of a Homecoming Parade float in a pirate costume, to which Wormer can only stand impotently by, watching in horror and muttering, "Oh my God."

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean reminds me of no one so much these days as Dean Wormer. The Republicans are running a candidate with no natural base of party support, on a platform of continuing Bush's war and corporate tax cuts and the Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to snatch defeat from the mouth of victory.

Nader and Gore aren't really players this time around so the Dems have been forced to think creatively. What they've come up with isn't bad -- they've created a scenario in which Florida and Michigan, two swing states absolutely vital to regaining the White House, may not have their entire delegations seated at the Democratic Convention in Denver, basically guaranteeing a disaffected electorate when it comes time to get out the vote on November 4th. If Florida and Michigan vote red, Obama can talk about Colorado and Virginia and changing the electoral map all he wants -- there will be another rich, white guy with his hand on the bible come Inauguration Day.

In an attempt to find a way out of this game of Mousetrap they've created, the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the DNC is meeting Saturday in a Washington hotel. Members of the committee, as well as representatives of the Clinton and Obama campaigns, the Michigan and Florida delegations, the national and international press and hundreds of rabid spectators will participate in this day-long exercise in parliamentary procedure. A DNC spokesman, Luis Miranda, said he expected most of the 30 members of the RBC to attend.

Say what? "Most" of the members? What possible excuse could a panel member have for not showing up at this meeting? "I'm sorry, but this is my time-share week at the Ocean City condo?" "Geez, I'd love to but I promised a buddy I'd help him move?" Gimme a break. I don't know what the hell the Rules and Bylaws Committee actually does but I have to think they share some of the responsibility for designing this absurd nominating process the Democrats have inflicted upon us. The least they can do is show up to help clean up their mess.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Howard Dean and the DNC are screwed. By voting to strip the two states of their delegates to the convention, they backed themselves into a corner they cannot defend. The Dems need Michigan and Florida. Refusing to seat the delegations would be the most Pyrrhic of victories for the party's administrators. Realizing this, they've spent the last weeks pivoting out of their corner and backpedaling away from their tough talk. It is now apparent that the DNC will cave -- a compromise is evidently in the works. Florida may get all of their super delegates seated but only half of their pledged delegates. Obama will receive most, but not all, of the Michigan delegates assigned to "Uncommitted," Clinton's only opponent of note on the January 15 primary ballot. But make no mistake about it, her campaign is not going to be happy if the committee doesn't rule in her favor, seating the entire delegations from both states based upon the votes cast in the primaries. Meanwhile, some in the Michigan delegation claim the DNC has no authority to assign uncommitted delegates to a specific candidate, in this case, Barack Obama.

See what I mean? It's the Homecoming Parade in Animal House. Or, more accurately, a cross between the toga party and the food fight.

Best case scenario is they seat the entire delegations proportionally and pledge to blow up the current nominating process and rebuild it by 2012. Take a long, hard look at super delegates and whether they have a place in a democratic process for the Democratic Party. Revisit the caucus debate -- are they really the most fair way by which to divine the voters' will? Is there any good argument remaining for Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to kick off the primary season every four years? Is proportional allotment of delegates a better system than winner-take-all?

Worst case, no compromise is reached and the Dems remain in limbo until, perhaps, the Credentials Committee takes another shot in August. It would give the Republicans another couple of free months to come up with some kind, any kind, of cogent message for the McCain campaign.

The Democrats are probably too smart to let that happen. Right? This election should be unloseable, even more so than the Gore and Kerry fiascos. So why is it that I can't shake the image of Howard Dean furiously gaveling the meeting tomorrow to a close, the room in chaos, as he sentences both the Florida and Michigan delegations to Double Secret Probation.

Just like Dean Wormer.

McCain's Fantasy

2008-05-19T16:26:00.006-04:00

I walked around all weekend with a bounce to my step and woke this morning with a song in my heart. I attribute my good cheer to the speech John McCain gave Thursday in Columbus, Ohio. Did you see it? If not, you really should read it in its entirety. He painted a picture of where America would be at the end of his first term as president.

It's a long speech. Not long like a Bill Clinton State of the Union address -- more like a Chronicles of Narnia type of long. Or like the director's cut of The Lord of the Rings boxed set. Basically, it's the public policy version of fantasy literature, without the Christian overtones.

In McCain's vision of 2013, Iraq is a functioning democracy whose militias have been disbanded and the government has imposed its beneficent authority in all provinces. Pakistan has partnered vigorously with us to capture and/or kill Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda has been reduced to a leaderless rabble with no place to call home. Although the U.N. Security Council proved incapable of ending the genocide in Darfur, the nascent League of Democracies has stepped in and, through stiff economic measures, persuaded the Sudanese government and their janjaweed thugs to halt their ethnic cleansing of the country's tribal farmers. More concerted action by the world's democracies has convinced China and Russia to persuade Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear programs. Our Army and Marine Corps are bigger and better than ever. The world food crisis has ended. Global cooling has begun. And Congress no longer attaches earmarks to appropriations bills after a stern veto or two by President McCain.

Well. Like McCain, I am a big believer in positive thinking so I've compiled my own modest list of where I hope/expect to be by the end of his first term:

I have two books on the New York Times bestseller list (the fifth and sixth so honored during term #1). Four of those will have been made into major motion pictures with both a best picture Oscar and a best adaptation (also done by me) Oscar to show for it.

To the astonishment of the orthopedic community, the meniscus in my knee has regenerated itself and I am able to dunk a basketball at the age of 53. I run five miles a day and my spacious, walk-in closet is filled with 32-inch waist slacks of the smoothest cotton/poly blend that rarely wrinkles.

My wife and I have adopted two children, they've matured remarkably quickly and cost-effectively, and are both heading this fall for Ivy League schools on full rides, leaving us, no doubt, a bit lonely but eagerly anticipating quality time with each other once again after these last four chaotic but joyous years.

Gas is $11 a gallon even though the Lieberman-Vitter Right-to-Drive bill (which requires anyone attempting to buy gas on Tuesdays, Thursdays and every other Saturday to present the station attendant with their National I.D. card) has been in effect for almost a year now, but we don't drive much. We spend most of the year at our beach house in Southampton and I can ride my bicycle to the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club which I joined after winning the National Book Award and they relaxed their dress code to allow flip-flops in the lounge. I play to a 3-handicap and rarely visit the driving range to practice.

I've had my iPhone implanted directly into my head. And, thanks to the partnership between Apple and NIH, I can now download mp3 files directly to my brain so I no longer have to listen to music -- I can just remember it by blinking my eyes. I don't even recall what it felt like to wear earplugs.

I've attained fluency in Italian solely through listening to self-improvement Podcasts on my computer and I can play some of the easier Goldberg Variations on the keyboard I purchased last year at Sharper Image, thanks also to self-helpful pamphlets that came included with the packing materials.

Money's not much of an issue, to be honest with you. I'm really raking it in and I'm incorporated, of course. Thanks to the Bush-McCain tax cuts, I actually pay less in total taxes now than when I was scraping to get by as a freelancer in 2008. Boy, was I wrong about those tax cuts.

So, there you have it. My McCain-inspired list of positive projections for the relatively near future. Like Senator McCain, while I intend to make my dreams reality, I cannot guarantee I will achieve them all. But I like my odds of success against his. I put my list down beside his speech to compare the two. If I was the type to judge, I'd say his was the more delusional.

Hillary's Hard Working Whites

2008-05-14T17:25:00.012-04:00

I'm every bit as sensitive to racism as the next liberal who grew up in the suburbs and attended a Big-10 university. By which I mean, I've rarely seen it in person and pretty much never had it practiced upon my person. I am, however, aware that it exists in America. To argue otherwise would be the height of folly. It would be like claiming we never landed on the moon and citing as proof the fact that I wasn't there as an eyewitness. It would be analogous to insisting global warming was a Green Party scare tactic, evidenced by this past week's unusually cool temperatures in my hometown of New York City. It would be a non-starter.

That being said, I just don't buy the near-universal position across the progressive blogosphere that Hillary Clinton's recent statement concerning white voters constitutes race-baiting. The exact quotation was, "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on" and she quoted an AP story that pointed out "Senator Obama's support among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me. There's a pattern emerging here." I don't know why Rep. Charles Rangel said, "I can't believe Sen. Clinton would say anything that dumb." Or why Joe Conason over at Salon.com would argue that she "violated the rhetorical rules" and crossed a "bright white line."

This is not Ronald Reagan decrying (fictitious) welfare queens in Cadillacs and "young bucks" buying T-bone steaks. It's not Richard Nixon running on states' rights and law-and-order in 1968 following the inner-city riots in response to Martin Luther King's assassination. Both Reagan and Nixon were tacitly signaling to their white constituents that they would use the office of the presidency as a hammer against the black community.

The only thing Clinton was signaling is the truth. Blue-collar whites have overwhelmingly preferred Clinton over Obama, especially recently. Whites made up 80% of the vote in Pennsylvania and broke for Clinton roughly 60-40. In Ohio, she won whites 64-34. In West Virginia, she steamrolled him 72-23 among blue-collar whites.

If you're Obama, that's a pattern and it's a problem. If you're Hillary, it's a pattern and it's a lifeline. Her only path to the nomination consists of the super delegates looking at the big picture after all the votes have been counted, seeing a contest that is basically a dead heat, both in terms of pledged delegates and popular vote, and using their position as it was intended -- to tip the scales towards the candidate they judge to be more electable in the general election. Now, the odds of that happening are long, and the arguments against it are plentiful, but it's her story and she's sticking to it.

Paul Begala says the Democrats can't win with a constituency of "eggheads and African Americans," the old Dukakis team. Never minding the fact that Obama is also carrying the youth vote by a margin of 70-30% over Sen. Clinton, it's still hard to imagine a Democrat winning the White House without at least a somewhat competitive showing among blue-collar whites. The question is, does a poor showing by Obama against Hillary necessarily presage a similar result against McCain in the fall? I'm not sure we can draw that particular causal relationship. Obama doesn't fit neatly into any of the candidate molds we have on the shelves -- he's a new breed and his organization continues to multiply at the grass roots level.

But that's Obama's argument to make, not Clinton's. Her challenge is to construct an electoral narrative convincing enough that the super delegates overturn the slight lead Obama takes out of the campaign. The best way for her to do that is to point out that working whites make up a larger section of the Democratic Party than do African Americans and liberal intellectuals and that many of them will choose McCain over Obama in the general election. I suppose you could hear a dog whistle in her "hard working whites" comments if you were so inclined. Almost by definition, a comment is racial on some level if it refers specifically to race. But "hard working" could just as easily be read as shorthand for blue-collar as be interpreted as code implying a comparison to lazy blacks. Depends on what you're listening for.

The point is, it's a fact that Clinton is winning the white vote. One could take issue with Hillary's argument that this is a pattern -- the breakdowns have actually been fairly consistent throughout the campaign, for the most part. Obama did about as well among whites in Indiana as he has been doing all along, with the exceptions of the few most recent primaries. I would argue that what she points out as a pattern is really just a reflection of primary scheduling serendipity. It so happens that Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky fall consecutively in the campaign. She happens to do very well in the Appalachian coal mines and hollers of southeastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky, where they've been spending an awful lot of time of late. Basically, she's got the hillbilly vote locked up. And pundits are taking this hillbilly vote and extrapolating it out across the entire electorate. Which I don't think is an accurate reflection of working class, white America. I would argue that hillbilly white America has a greater antipathy to the concept of an African American president than does much of the rest of white working class America. It's just a theory of mine, and not one I'm about to go knocking on doors to confirm, but it seems plausible.

The PC police need to recognize the difference between demagoguery and fact. When Bill Clinton compared Obama's success in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson's in '84 and '88, he was pointing out the fact that African Americans make up approximately 50% of Democratic primary voters in the state. Given that Obama wins 9 in 10 black votes, it stands to reason that President Clinton would attempt to lower expectations for a race Hillary could not win. To say that a legitimate black candidate is going to win the South Carolina Democratic primary, and that it isn't necessarily a precursor for the rest of the campaign, is not race baiting, it's fact.

It's a fine line. Lee Atwater, Reagan and Bush 41's "happy hatchet man," explained the subtleties of the Southern Strategy as:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now (that) you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is (that) blacks get hurt worse than whites."

See, that's race baiting, in all its abstract brilliance. Because the Southern Strategy was so successful, Democrats have grown hyper-sensitive to all things racial. It has become impossible to bring up the subject of race without drawing politically correct fire. Which is all well and good -- sometimes the race card is indeed being played. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

And Barack Obama's problem with white, working class voters is a real cigar. I'm not sure ignoring the state of West Virginia and the subsequent 40+ point defeat was his best strategy. Maybe he should start spending some time in Hillaryland. He might end up needing every hard working white voter he can get come November.

Obama's Gamble

2008-05-07T14:04:00.018-04:00

As Tuesday turned to Wednesday, Tim Russert declared the race for the Democratic presidential nomination over. He called it firmly, but with a trace of melancholy, as if Barack Obama's defeat of Hillary Clinton represented a sort of metaphysical expiration. As if we were all of us Romans at the Colosseum, witnessing the death of some noble beast after it had fought valiantly for our pleasure. The rest of the crew -- Olbermann, Matthews, Brokaw -- were appropriately somber and respectful of the moment. (Except for Norah O'Donnell. Nothing seems to dampen her wide-eyed enthusiasm and continual amazement at the secrets uncovered by going "inside the numbers.") We hate seeing a slugfest halted. Americans, to quote David Halberstam, "liking competitions as much as the end results of them."

But, in the cold, hard light of day, there's nothing to be done about it; Obama has been pronounced the victor and the spoils must be collected. The most obtrusive piece of spoilage is Hillary's carcass that's been kicked over there into the corner. What's to be done with her (and her husband and their loyal band of minions)?

Conventional wisdom has it that Obama will have to at least offer her the vice presidency. The argument is that she would shore up his weaknesses with the pickup-driving, beer-drinking, gun-toting, church-going Middle Americans . . . I'm just going to go ahead and call them poor, white Democrats. While Obama is perceived as elitist, Clinton has become the man with the iron touch, able to connect on a visceral level with steel workers, short-order cooks and gun show aficionados. (As long as they're white, that is. Somewhere along the road, blue collar African Americans got kicked to the ditch, losing their status as "Regular Joes" and became, simply, Obama voters. I wonder if Chris Matthews could pinpoint for the rest of us exactly when it was that white union members attained their monopoly as average working Americans.) In addition, she would bring with her the Old Woman vote (as long as they're white, that is) that she has been collecting almost as decisively as Obama has been winning blacks. As nearly 40% of these two Clinton constituencies have declared themselves prepared to vote for John McCain if Obama wins the nomination, the Clinton VP argument has obvious merit. Also, her vaunted pugilistic tenacity is perfect for the role of vice presidential attack dog in the general election, allowing Obama to float above the fray which is where he does his best work. As a bonus, Andrew Sullivan points out that a vice presidential olive branch would also neutralize the Clintons as political enemies, plotting offstage her 2012 presidential run while he tries to manage his way through a first term laden with land mines courtesy of eight years of George Bush.

An Obama-Clinton ticket makes sense on many levels. I don't think he'll do it.

Obama has been running against the Clinton legacy of Washington-as-usual almost as hard as he's been beating on Bushes 41 & 43. It's difficult to maintain your brand as the Change Candidate if you show up on the south lawn of the White House with the family who just left the joint eight years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if Bill still has some keys that work in the West Wing.

Obama will most likely remain true to his agent-of-change persona. Somehow, over the past fifteen months, he has acquired the label of "soft," either unwilling or unable to do what it takes to wrest the nomination from Clinton. In fact, the opposite is the case. Obama has repeatedly chosen the more difficult political path when faced with a fork in the road towards Principle. Unlike Hillary, he spoke out against authorizing the Iraq War, taking his political future in his hands in the face of overwhelming support (the Senate vote was 77-23 in favor of the authorization) for Bush's power play. He responded to the Jeremiah Wright provocation by delivering the signature speech of his generation on race in America. When Wright continued to stoke the flames of divisiveness, he finally distanced himself from his former pastor, denouncing the words while still declining to condemn the man himself. He refuses to wear a flag pin in his lapel in the face of questions about his patriotism, believing the pin an empty symbol that has about as much to do with true patriotism as does wearing a red, white and blue name tag at a hotel convention. And, unlike Clinton and McCain, he chose to call the gas tax holiday what it is, a not-even-particularly-clever piece of political pander that ultimately illustrates his two opponents' contempt for voters' intelligence.

These are not the choices of a weak politician. In each case, he would have been better served initially, with the media as well as the electorate, to take the path of least resistance. Stand with the majority in Congress, treat Wright as a black and white issue and cut him loose immediately, wear the damned pin and back the damned holiday.

But his principles and, I suspect, his political instincts, wouldn't allow him to take the low road. When asked by a reporter to name a hidden talent, he once said that he was, "a pretty good poker player." This primary campaign has been a masterful illustration of his repeated willingness to go all in on crucial issues, while maintaining a poker face of zen-like calm.

I don't think he particularly likes the Clintons or the idea of sharing the West Wing with them for the next eight years. And I think he's betting that he doesn't particularly need them.

He's won most of the chips so far with his principles-first strategy. The pot keeps getting bigger. How will he play his next hand?

Bush: Corrupt or Inept?

2008-05-02T17:13:00.014-04:00

Distracted by the fun of watching the Obama/Clinton steel cage, death match in North Carolina this week, I almost missed the opportunity to celebrate the five-year anniversary of "Mission Accomplished." Five years ago Thursday, George Bush dressed up as a fighter pilot and had a real one set him down on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. All decked out in his costume, he paraded in front of the assembled crew and press, like a kid getting ready for Halloween, and then stood in front of the now infamous banner and told the nation, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

Anniversaries being a time to take stock, it seems like a good chance to take a break from the Democratic primaries and remember some of the Bush administration's greatest hits. All good parties need a game. Pin the Tail On the Donkey's fun, but I hardly think a donkey would be welcome at a Republican affair. Truth or Consequences is always a crowd-pleaser but it might take too long to explain the rules to the guests -- the Bush administration has taken precious little notice of either concept. Something along those lines, though . . . how about Verdict: Corrupt or Inept? The game is simple. We'll look at a few of the administration's signature disasters and choose whether each was a result of outright corruption or simple ineptitude. Ready?

We've really got to start with the Iraq War, being as it's pretty much the inspiration for the whole game. To review: After toppling the Taliban, we pivoted our focus from Afghanistan towards Iraq in order to remove Saddam, thereby allowing bin Laden to head for the hills of Pakistan and disappear down a cave. Depending upon whom you believe, Cheney or Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz or Feith ordered L. Paul Bremer to disband the Iraqi army, loosing a quarter of a million pissed-off, out-of-work young men into the countryside. We went after these insurgents with helicopters, bombs and missiles, with scant regard for "collateral damage," a euphemistic term for the innocent civilians killed in our determination to present them with the gift of democracy. That number, by the way, has just passed 90,000 for those of you keeping score. We misread the role of Iran in Iraqi Shiite politics, assuming their "interference" was negligible. To the contrary, Iran is providing arms and training multiple insurgent factions and their regional influence continues to grow, along with their nuclear potential. Rumsfeld's determination to do the job on the cheap lead the administration to ignore the advice of Army chief of staff General Shinseki, who testified that several hundred thousand troops would be required to stabilize Iraq. Shinseki was forced into retirement, years passed, thousands died and Bush eventually ordered a surge in American forces. The list is virtually endless, but I'm getting a headache and this is supposed to be a party, so let's put Iraq to bed. VERDICT--INEPT

Speaking of taking stock, the New York Times reported yesterday on the study that the Department of Education released of Bush's $6 billion Reading First initiative, which he insisted be included in the No Child Left Behind legislation in 2001. The report stated, "Reading First did not improve students' reading comprehension." Grover Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences, concluded that the program, "doesn't end up helping children read." To be fair, Reading First does still have its supporters, including Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. The relative merits of the program in its current form are debatable. What is not, however, is that it has been headed by hacks who have used their positions to feather the nests of specific publishers at the expense of the students' best interests. Chris Doherty, the Reading First director, was forced to resign in 2006 when the conflict of interests became public. He referred in emails to backers of alternative curriculums as "dirtbags" who were "trying to crash our party." Sen. Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Senate education committee, accused the administration of putting, "cronyism first and the reading skills of our children last." VERDICT-- (too close to call, really) CORRUPT and INEPT

Also this week, Lurita Doan, the head of the General Services Administration, which handles billions of dollars in federal contracts, was forced to resign. Not only did she allegedly use her position to steer government business towards friends, she is also accused of violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from taking action that could influence an election. A Karl Rove deputy gave a meeting at GSA in which he identified specific Democrats the Republican Party was targeting for defeat in 2008 as well as Republicans whom they deemed vulnerable. Doan has been quoted as asking him at the meeting how her agency could be used to "help our candidates." VERDICT--CORRUPT

When Dick Cheney became Vice President in 2000, he left his position as CEO of Halliburton, Co., one of the largest oil-service companies in the world. He cashed in over $30 million in company stock at the time. Halliburtonwatch.org details the chronology of the company's truly meteoric rise to their current monopolistic position as contractors to the Iraq War. Halliburton split its time in the 90's between making billions hand-over-fist and paying comparatively piddling fines levied against them for stock fraud and over-billing practices. In 2001, Halliburton subsidiary KBR secured a ten-year deal with the Pentagon with no cost ceiling to provide support services to the Army. Cheney claimed in 2003 he had, "no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years." Well, except for the $150,000 per year in deferred compensation the company was paying him at the time and the 433,333 shares of unexercised stock options he still owned. The longer this war goes on, the richer Halliburton gets and the more those Cheney stock options are worth. VERDICT--CORRUPT

George Bush's Department of Justice, headed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, chose Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 2006, to dismiss eight U.S. attorneys without apparent cause. They were replaced by hand-picked interim appointees. Several of the fired attorneys claimed they were being pressured to direct, or not direct, their prosecutions in a partisan manner. A U.S. attorney's job is to police politicians. When the DOJ tells them who, and how, to investigate, the public trust has been breached. On August 27, 2007, after months of stonewalling, Gonzales finally resigned amid accusations of perjury in his testimony before Congress. VERDICT--There's more than a whiff of INEPT here, but, to be fair, Gonzales brought that with him when he took over the DOJ. His qualifications were always suspect. CORRUPT

Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Monday, August, 29, 2005. President Bush was on vacation at the time and decided to go ahead with his plans to fly to Phoenix and help John McCain celebrate his birthday. By the time they got around to cutting the cake, the levees in New Orleans had been breached and the 9th ward was under 6-8 feet of water. Louisiana Governor Blanco pleaded, "Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you've got." Bush went to bed. The next day, he visited the El Mirage Country Club in Cucamonga, California, as part of a drug-benefits tour, missing that day's video conference on Katrina. Mass looting was taking place in New Orleans. Exhausted police were being used to control the looters instead of engaging in search and rescue. Bush was pictured playing guitar with country singer Mark Willis before returning to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for the final night of his vacation. On Wednesday, two full days after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, Bush flew over the region in Air Force One to assess the damage. By now, FEMA staff was reporting that people were dying at the Superdome. Ex-commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, Michael Brown headed to New Orleans in his new position as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Five of his top eight FEMA officials had also come to their current jobs with virtually no disaster experience. The top three FEMA officials all had ties to the Bush 2000 presidential campaign or the White House advance operation. This crack staff was responsible for an inadequate evacuation plan and a relief effort woefully short on planning, supplies, manpower and communication. A 2006 Republican House select committee investigated the government's response to Katrina and concluded that the response to, "Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare . . ." They judged Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff "detached" and Michael Brown "clueless." VERDICT: CORRUPT (in that FEMA staffing at the highest levels was yet another of the egregious examples of the Bush administration's proclivity for blatant cronyism) and INEPT

Well, that's all the time we have for our game today. Join us next week when we'll cover classics like Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Abu Ghraib, Pre-911 Intelligence Failures and the skewed/suppressed scientific research at NIH, HHS, FDA and the EPA.

For now, we'll just say, "Happy Anniversary, Mr. President." Loved the fighter pilot costume.

And now, back to the wrestling in North Carolina.

Is Obama Ready?

2008-05-01T12:45:00.009-04:00

A popular topic of conversation this year has been whether America is ready for Barack Obama as our next president. It began as a philosophical debate amongst political junkies but, as his campaign gained momentum, it quickly became the subject du jour at water coolers and bus stops around the country. Every amateur pundit has an opinion on whether Obama is truly a post-racial candidate, if voters tell the truth in exit polls, and if Alabama, Pennsylvania has evolved far enough to step into the booth and cast a vote for a black man. These are all fair questions and perfectly germane to the contest at hand.

But I'm not sure they are the most important question. What we really need to know is, is Barack Obama ready to be President of the United States? More specifically, is he ready to do what it takes to be elected president?

He has much of the process down pat. His campaign speeches are marvelous flights of oratory, reducing students and disaffected independents to a weak-kneed euphoria as they queue up to add their name to his mailing list, thereby making themselves available for thrice-weekly requests for online campaign donations. His website is state-of-the-art, pleasing to the eye and easily navigable; a Mac to Hillary's PC. It has grown into the biggest cash cow political fund-raising has ever seen. He moves through crowds with the easy grace of an athlete, making eye contact, reaching out, shaking hands -- connecting. His wife is now on point after a bit of a rough start. She's not a natural politician and it shows, but she has learned on the job and is now a definite asset out on the trail.

These are all crucial to a successful campaign. But they're all above-the-fray kinds of achievements. Obama brought the big brain and charisma with him when he entered the race. With Axelrod supplying the message and Plouffe the strategy, his macro-success could, on some level, be predicted. He is, after all, a singularly talented political animal.

But one begins to wonder if he is really willing to roll his sleeves up and get dirty. To do the things necessary to get people on the upper-east side of Manhattan and Jupiter, Florida and Muncie, Indiana and South-Central Los Angeles and Truth or Consequences, New Mexico to all vote for the same candidate. Being smart and principled isn't enough. Having a vision of ending the divisive politics we've become accustomed to isn't enough. Energizing an entire generation of new voters won't get it done either.

No, voters demand more. They want their backs scratched. They want their palms greased. A little pander goes a long way. Clinton understands it. So does McCain. The vacation from gasoline taxes they're promoting is a farce. When all is said and done, it will have saved the average consumer a half tank of gas over the summer, while costing the highway trust fund about $9 billion and the construction industry some 300,000 jobs.

Doesn't matter. It's about telling the people in front of you what they want to hear, then hopping on a plane and flying somewhere else to tell those people the something different that they want to hear. Workers in Texas feel differently about NAFTA than unemployed workers in Ohio. That's not a problem for Hillary. Maverick Candidate John McCain is against torture and the Bush tax cuts. Until he becomes Nominee John McCain and needs his party's right wing. Then he favors making the Bush cuts permanent and exempting the CIA from the Army's Field Manual guidelines for the questioning of detainees. Not a problem.

It's not just a question of policies. Obama seems uncomfortable acting as someone he's not. He comes across as elitist to some because he refuses to dumb down his game. He's naturally eloquent, he's dragging around an Ivy League education, he's written two best-sellers and he's a United States senator. Clinton has the same resume -- well, the eloquence might be a stretch -- but she's perfectly willing to play the part of good ol' boy across small-town America. She's out there eatin' the corn dogs, drinkin' the whiskey and promising them that good times are right around the corner. Have you seen Obama's face when he's offered yet another chocolate donut at some factory in Pennsylvania? His expression reminds me of the look on George Bush's face every time he gets stuck entertaining some indigenous African tribe and they invite him to join them in their ancient fertility dance. I'll bet Obama hasn't eaten a chocolate donut since he quit smoking dope back in college. You watch him scrimmaging with the University of North Carolina basketball team and it looks like he could run full-court for an hour. Hillary, on the other hand, appears to have added about thirty pounds to the seat of her pants. (I'm no fashion bug but somebody needs to tell her, less with the pink and orange pantsuits, more with something in a slimming black. Maybe a nice Anne Taylor jacket and skirt.)

Why Americans have come to require a president they'd feel comfortable having a beer with is beyond me. Or one that can pick up a 7-10 split down at the local bowling alley. It wasn't always this way. FDR was born into one of the richest families in New York, grew up riding, shooting and playing polo and lived in luxury while attending Harvard. JFK grew up in mansions along the Hudson River and Hyannisport, attended The Choate School and sailed on the SS Normandie to study at the London School of Economics. No one seemed to hold their upbringings against them. Me, I like a president with a sense of style. And smart. Really smart. The more books he's read and tests he's aced, the better. As Jon Stewart puts it, "the job you're applying for, if it goes well? They might carve your head into a mountain!"

Look, I don't want to sound elitist and out-of-touch and patronizing. But expecting a presidential candidate to be able to blend in at a tractor pull is f*@king stupid. No regular guy or gal is wired to run for president. Do you think Billy Bob, Jr. would be comfortable hosting a state dinner for the Sarkozy's? Then why should the next president have to fit in at the 4-H club?

Obama is struggling in the red states because, as much as anything else, he is different. Not just different from Reagan democrats, but different from most presidential politicians. He's young. He's black. He's basically liberal but seems non-partisan by nature. He's unwilling to deny who he is and where he came from. It's one of the reasons he has had such difficulty divorcing himself from Jeremiah Wright. Trinity United and Wright obviously played a major role in molding the man Obama is today and he has been loath to cast them aside. His former pastor had to take his show on the road, attacking Obama before the national press as just another hypocritical politician before Obama said, "enough." And even then, although his anger and disappointment were palpable at his press conference, his basic decency and capacity for forgiveness remained evident. He still would not say the break was irrevocable. Just that the relationship had changed. He did not denounce the man, finally, but his propositions, his statements. He left open the possibility, somewhere down the line, of reconciliation.

He's a complex man. America doesn't appreciate complexity in their presidential campaigns. We want our candidate to pull up a stool, grab a beer and say, "Hey, buddy, I'm just like you. Tell me your problems and I'll fix them."

Well, Obama's not just like us. He could pretend that he is, but it wouldn't make it so. He's different. That's why I'm voting for him.

Hillary and Barack -- Star-Cross'd Democrats

2008-04-23T11:40:00.016-04:00

Watching the Democrats these past weeks in Pennsylvania has been ugly. There has been none of the exuberance that characterized the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Little of the policy debates we were treated to in California and Nevada. John McCain has been given a free month-and-a-half to self-correct his economic message blunders and embark on a tour of America's "forgotten places" (forgotten, I suppose, if you're rich and white and have no children in Iraq -- let's just go ahead and call you Republican). He's spending the week in places like Appalachia, the Lower Ninth in New Orleans and Gee's Bend, Alabama, where white cops beat black demonstrators on the march to Montgomery in 1965. Whether his Pander Tour bears fruit is yet to be determined -- he spoke to a mostly white crowd in Gee's Bend -- but it certainly won't hurt his chances in November. Meanwhile, Clinton and Obama have moved into a clinch, trading kidney punches and low blows as they stagger towards the convention in Denver. On second thought, "ugly" doesn't do this justice. It's becoming tragic.

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

Shakespeare was setting the stage for Romeo and Juliet, but he could just as easily have been describing primary season in Philadelphia. Barack and Hillary, two sides of the same left-center coin. So similar that it takes careful parsing to differentiate most of their policy positions. It was just eleven weeks ago, at the debate in Los Angeles:

Obama: I respect Senator Clinton...I'm glad we've been walking on this road together.

Clinton: I have to agree with everything Barack just said.

At one point, Wolf Blitzer tried to instigate a confrontation between them and their response was:

Clinton: We're having such a good time. We are. We are. We're having a wonderful time.

Obama: Yes, absolutely.

Fast-forward a couple of months to Pennsylvania:

Goddamn America -- He would not be my pastor -- I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community -- I remember landing under sniper fire -- We just ran with our heads down -- They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them -- Obama's remarks are elitist and they are out of touch -- I think that they played the race card on me.

It's not iambic pentameter, but if the arc from the Iowa caususes to the Pennsylvania primary isn't tragic, I'll eat my English degree. By the way, if you want to remind yourself of what a real political debate sounds like, take a moment to review the transcript of that Los Angeles debate. Compared to the travesty ABC moderated in Philadelphia, it's Lincoln-Douglass. L.A. was a love-fest, Philly was mud wrestling.

This is what it's come down to: the Democrats are eating their young. Black against white, blue collar versus college degree, women against men. The vision of an Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama dream ticket is shrinking rapidly in our rear-view mirror. Those who argue the party will come together in November against McCain haven't been paying attention. Pennsylvania exit polls detailed by the New York Times found that 16% of white voters said race matters and only 54% of those said they would support Obama in the general election. 27% said they would vote for McCain if Obama was the nominee and 16% said they would not vote at all. 20% of gun owners and church-goers said they would vote for McCain. Only 60% of Democratic Catholics said they would vote for Obama in the general, 21% are prepared to vote for McCain.

How did the Democrats arrive at this point? Obama is practically the presumptive nominee and Democrats are jumping ship like it's the Caine Mutiny. Clinton's strategy, stolen from the Atwater/Rove playbook, has been to depress the idealistic optimism of Obama's campaign while sowing seeds of doubt as to his character and electability. It has worked -- appealing to man's baser instincts generally does. Obama's overall positives have dropped considerably over the past few weeks. The thing is, negative campaigning cuts both ways. Clinton's negatives have risen along with Obama's. And for what? The warfare in the Pennsylvania trenches looks to have netted her a 9.2% win in the popular vote and fourteen delegates. She still has no viable path to victory and refuses to consider an exit strategy. It's the Iraq surge with cheese steaks.

Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!

See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.

And I for winking at your discords too

Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.

This is beginning to feel ominous. McCain is running on the Iraq War, tax cuts and bailing out the investment bankers at the expense of those losing their homes. And he's gaining ground! Democrats can continue reassuring themselves that the party will reunite in time, pointing to Kennedy/Johnson and Kerry/Edwards, but this is different. This time the opposing candidates are, for all their similarities, a black man and a white woman. And it's becoming apparent that all the policy matches in the world can't smooth over that difference for much of the Democratic base. Especially as they continue firing on each other, accentuating the animosities between the two campaigns and their respective followers.

Let's hope, given the stakes facing the country, the 2008 election doesn't play as tragedy, to be summed up sometime in the future with a couplet:

For never was a story of more bitter drama

Than this of Hillary and her Obama.

The Hardball College Tour Charade

2008-04-16T14:05:00.006-04:00

Watching the Hardball College Tour with Chris Matthews and John McCain last night from Villanova University confirmed what I had suspected after the Obama version a couple of weeks ago. This isn't hardball. It isn't softball. It isn't even beanbag toss.

It's Midnight Madness.

For those who aren't college basketball fans, Midnight Madness takes place in October and kicks off the upcoming season. Schools around the country fill their gyms at 12:01 a.m. of opening day with students to introduce the team and coaches and then run through their first practice. The band is in full swing, cheerleaders whip the crowd into a frenzy and boosters sit courtside, inspecting their stable of athletes. Lefty Driesell, the coach at the University of Maryland, started it in 1970 as a way of attracting attention to his program. It was an instant success and has become a national tradition. ESPN covers it with nearly the same enthusiasm they show towards the Final Four at season's end.

The only manner in which it differs from the regular season is that there is no real competition. Everyone is on the same team. Oh, the shirts might scrimmage against the skins, but they'll all be showering together when the festivities end.

That's the Hardball College Tour. They pick a college venue guaranteed to be sympathetic to the candidate -- West Chester University for Obama, University at Albany for Hillary in '02 and Villanova, especially Villanova, for McCain -- fill up an auditorium with the March Madness crowd and Matthews proceeds to set balls on a tee for the candidate to knock out of the park.

There are no "hardball" questions. Matthews warning McCain that a question is going to be tough doesn't make it so. He led off with, "How will you be different than President Bush?" A real body blow. When McCain could only refer specifically to his approach towards climate change, Matthews gently prompted, "You also disagree with him on torture."

Well played, sir.

As for Villanova, McCain hasn't entertained a group of that many enthusiastic WASPs since his last press corps barbecue at his Sedona ranch. I'm not saying it's a white school, but their own alumnae refer to it as "Vanillanova." Suffice it to say that none of the student questioners were lining up to challenge him on his 1983 vote against the MLK holiday.

They did, however, display their true colors proudly. The first student to pose a question was Matthew Brady, editor emeritus of the Villanova Times. He chose to spend his fifteen seconds of fame asking McCain if, "you would characterize yourself, as Barack Obama would phrase, as a typical white person." The next boy, a hint of mischief twinkling in his eye, wanted to know if McCain thought Hillary has, "finally resorted to hitting the sauce," and, "if you would care to join me for a shot after this?" Ah, the precociousness of youth. The little dears. The second kid happened to be Peter Doocy, son of Fox & Friends' anchor, Steve Doocy. The resemblance is striking.

Even Matthews was struck by the lack of intellectual heft in the room. He

good-naturedly complained, "We came here hoping for the best and we got two of the most wise-ass questions. It's such a tribute to the academic rigors of this school." It had more the feel of a fraternity kegger than a meeting of academia and politics. Brady and Doocy came off as Eddie Haskells with money, real-life versions of Omega House's Doug Neidermyer and Greg Marmalard of "Animal House" fame. To so gracefully employ race-baiting and political condescension at such a tender age was really quite impressive. The Villanova Times heralded their performances today, labeling Brady "hilarious," and declaring the "show was off to a solid start quickly with student interaction."

At least they have an excuse for their attitudes -- they're Republican rich kids. Matthews, on the other hand, is supposed to know better. Rather than vamping shamelessly to the audience, it's his job to ask tough questions and demand direct answers. When he scores a one-on-one, 60-minute interview with a presidential nominee, it would behoove him to cover as many relevant issues as possible: foreign and domestic policy, traditional values as well as future visions. Roughly speaking, I'd say they spent 15 minutes yukking it up and pandering to the crowd, 5 minutes on abortion and elitism, and the remaining 40 minutes on Iraq and national security.

Not one question on the economy. We're on the front edge of a recession, 28 million Americans will soon be on food stamps, and millions are losing their homes while the rest of the country watches their home values plummet. It's costing about $17 million per hour to keep the war without end chugging along. As of March, 4.2 million Americans have lost their jobs and the unemployment rate is 5.1%.

McCain finally gave an economic speech this week. He has seen the light at the end of the tunnel leading to the presidency and now strongly favors the Bush tax cuts. He seems to have misplaced his pledge to balance the budget by the end of his first term. He wants to suspend the federal gasoline tax for the summer, thereby saving consumers a couple of bucks each time they fill up. McCain has famously admitted that the economy is not his strong point. The speech did nothing to refute his position.

Mightn't there be something here worth talking about, face-to-face, in front of a national television audience? Certainly, if the college tour was a serious political event. But it's not -- it's Midnight Madness.

There is talk that Matthews will be leaving MSNBC soon. Maybe to take over "Face the Nation" at CBS or possibly even to run for office. It wouldn't have to mean the end of the College Tour, though. I think ESPN's Dick Vitale is free all summer long.

Can We Handle The Truth?

2008-04-15T14:49:00.014-04:00

Here's how bad a week it was for the Democrats:

Hillary had to distance herself from her top strategic advisor when it became apparent he was playing both ends of a trade deal for his own profit. She was faced with a similar dilemma when the news broke that her husband earned a suitcase full of money for pimping the very same deal. A deal, by the way, that Hillary opposes. She would probably further distance herself from Bill too, if she could, but to do so more than she already has would require moving to Europe. However, if history has taught us anything, it's that she is willing to put up with a certain amount of Bill-induced headaches. Nevertheless, it raised the question of where her loyalty may actually lie on the Colombian deal if she became president. As she stumps in Pennsylvania, amongst its shuttered factories and unemployed workers, the last thing she needs to deal with is a perception that she might waffle on the free trade issue. Throughout the week, most polls showed her lead over Obama narrowing, albeit slowly.

And she had a good week compared to Obama.

He took another major hit, this time when he was covertly taped speaking to wealthy backers at a San Francisco fundraiser and he suggested that Pennsylvanians were bitter over their economic plight and were clinging to guns, religion and antipathy towards others as a result. This hit the beach just as the Rev. Wright wave of controversy seemed to be rolling back out to sea, its destructive power finally exhausted.

Needless to say, Clinton and McCain were on it like K-9 dogs at a protest rally. Obama was, "elitist," "condescending," and "out-of-touch." The attacks were as unimaginative as they were predictable. The uproar on Hardball and Fox News rose from deafening to hysterical. Everyone had an opinion and extra chairs were found so that they were all able to share theirs with an anxious nation. Either the controversy would fail to move the needle much or it would prove a serious problem with legs. Or somewhere in between.

The only certainties that the campaign has revealed over the past month is that the media doesn't do nuance and that much of America would just as soon not hear the truth.

The media, for the most part, regardless of which bias they're selling, has chosen to present Wright's sermons and Obama's San Francisco comments as discrete soundbytes. Taken as such, in 30-second increments, it's a simple matter to conclude that Wright despises the white man and that Obama looks down his nose at rural America.

"God Damn America" is a powerful, blanket denunciation of an entire nation, unless one chooses to take the time to listen to the complete sermon. Doing so reveals that Wright is damning America for specific actions -- past mistreatments of blacks, current inequities in the way the American pie is divided between the races, and the killing of thousands of innocent civilians around the world, always in the name of freedom and democracy. These are all facts -- you could look them up. But, rather than admit that a black preacher has every right, even a responsibility, to frame these transgressions for his congregants in a socially and politically active church on the south side of Chicago, it's so much easier to reduce a lifetime of sermons to, "God Damn America" and label him a crazy racist. And cast a suspicious eye Obama's way for not immediately marching up the aisle and out onto West 95th Street in a huff upon hearing such blasphemy.

Just as it's easy to listen to snippets of what Obama said in San Francisco and conclude that he holds himself above the working-class citizens of middle-America. Easy, but intellectually dishonest. Taken in context, Obama is explaining to the wealthy Californian donors why he has had a more difficult time connecting with Pennsylvanians than he has experienced throughout the majority of his campaign. In point of fact, he's actually defending their tendency to vote on "values" issues like guns and religion and gay rights in lieu of their complete lack of any economic stake in America.

No candidate speaks in one voice only. A message tailored to wealthy Democrats in California will necessarily differ from a speech given in a Pennsylvania church basement. The tone and content of a keynote address at a national convention is inappropriate for a town hall meeting in Scranton. All politicians try to connect with the audience in front of them. Take a listen to Hillary's infamous, "Ah don't feel no-ways tahrd" speech in Selma, Alabama. Or the cowboy accent adopted by Phillips, Yale and Harvard-educated George W. Bush.

Clinton and Bush aren't disrespecting Alabamans or Texans. They're trying to make a connection. The same connection Obama was attempting when he described Pennsylvanians and their guns, religion and mistrust of non-whites to a bunch of Californians, most of whom probably have no use for God, wouldn't think of owning a shotgun and live in a Pacific Heights mansion with a black family next door and a gay couple across the street.

Was it unfortunate that he used the word, "cling?" Sure. Rural Pennsylvania embraced God and guns long before the economy tanked. But what's really unfortunate is that much of what Obama, as well as Rev. Wright, said is true. There is a great deal of bitterness towards the federal government amongst unemployed, blue-collar workers. To deny that they don't feel a sense of abandonment, thanks to free trade policies and the government's failure to retrain them for new jobs the same government has promised them but failed to produce, is ridiculous. How could they not, on some level, be bitter? Do blacks have reason to feel victimized by the history of their treatment at the hands of white America? And do they have the right to voice their anger and frustration, whether or not white America is comfortable with, and ready for, the conversation? Painfully, and obviously, yes.

America may not be ready for the truths lying dormant within that debate. Probably isn't, truth be told. But that's what this election is going to decide. The Wright controversy might very well prove Obama's Achilles heel in a general election. The Republicans will surely revive the issue and he will have to explain his association with Trinity United all over again. But, ironically, there's a chance that the firestorm could end up becoming his greatest advantage. If the country is mature enough, the conversation Obama has kick-started, and will necessarily revisit, has the potential to lift him head and shoulders above McCain and partisan bickering and electoral games of gotcha. As an example of the kind of constructive dialogue Obama's race speech can inspire, watch this conversation between Ross Douthat of the Atlantic Monthly and Debra Dickerson of Mother Jones. It's as constructive a seventy-two minutes as you're likely to spend anytime soon.

As I said, this is what could happen on a national scale as a by-product of Obama's candidacy. Could, but I wouldn't bet on it. Not in a country where "elite" is considered an insult.

America's Hypocrisy

2008-04-10T12:19:00.005-04:00

When it comes to the War on Terror, the Bush administration is cynical almost beyond measure, but it would be difficult to accuse them of hypocrisy, at this point. They obfuscate, exaggerate, and flat-out lie to further their agenda, whether they be justifying the prosecution of the Iraq War, illegally surveilling American citizens or torturing "enemy combatants" that may or may not be guilty (I hesitate to say, "as charged" -- many prisoners are still waiting, years after they were detained, to learn of their supposed offenses).

But, if you accept the definition of hypocrisy as, "feigning to be what one is not," then it would be unfair to so insult Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hadley et al. They're absolutely up front about who they are and what they're doing. Bush has his worldview and he's not about to let facts cloud the lenses of his blood red-colored glasses. As the civil war in Iraq boiled over this past week, he stood in front of an uneasy nation and did his best Richard Pryor imitation, asking, "Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes? The surge is working." Well, he didn't actually face the nation -- he delegated the job to General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. In their hearings in front of the Senate and House committees, they came across as honorable and competent men tasked with an impossible mission. Make that two impossible missions. One, to secure Iraq. And two, to explain and defend current policy to the pack of mangy jackals that is a congressional hearing committee. How many times can you say, "It will be over when it's over?" I thought I was listening to "Revolution #9" off the Beatles "White Album."

When the facts or the laws don't fit, the Bushies change them:

1. Al-Quaida in Iraq, an organization born of our invasion and occupation of the country, is shortened to Al-Quaida, thereby advancing the fiction that it's Bin Laden's group we're battling in Iraq. (Interestingly, John McCain may be giving a preview of things to come with his repeated "mis-statements" that Al-Quaida is being trained in Iran. I wouldn't put it past him to be intentionally repeating this lie in an effort to get the country fired up for the War on Terror II. I don't buy the confusion line. McCain is old but he's not stupid.)

2. Bush was supposedly unaware until recently that Iran had discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003, thereby clearing him to sound the drums for, wait for it, a second war based on false intelligence. The prospect is so outrageous that he's even losing the conservatives over it, but if you're expecting a change of W's heart before he leaves office to await history's judgment, I wouldn't hold my breath.

3. The administration picks and chooses which sections of the Geneva Convention to honor. Prisoners of war become unlawful enemy combatants and, just like that, the Convention no longer applies. Torture becomes "enhanced interrogation." CIA operatives are excepted from the spirit and the rule of the Geneva Convention. Guantanamo Bay has been ruled to not be US territory and, therefore, not bound by US law. When, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court found that the Bush military commissions were illegal as they didn't meet the standards of "civilized peoples," Bush sent legislation legalizing his prerogatives to a spineless Congress, who passed it as the Military Commissions Law 2006. In his article, "The U.S. Has a History of Using Torture," Alfred McCoy details how Bush then transferred top Al-Quaida captives from various CIA prisons to Gitmo where the law "strips detainees of their habeas corpus rights, sanctions endless detention without trial, and allows use of tortured testimony before Guantanamo Military Commissions." This is in blatant disregard of our own 5th Amendment to the Constitution which reads, in part, "No person...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law..." As if tortured testimony could ever be admissible in a legitimate court of law.

The Bush administration does not even pretend to submit to the same principles and laws expected of the rest of the world. And, in truth, it's hard to blame them. They are so rarely held to account for their transgressions by either the media or the American people themselves. Glenn Greenwald put it succinctly last October when he wrote:

"As a country, we've known undeniably for almost two years now that we have a lawless government and a President who routinely orders our laws to be violated. His top officials have repeatedly been caught lying outright to Congress on the most critical questions we face. They have argued out in the open that the "constitutional duty" to defend the country means that nothing -- including our "laws" -- can limit what the President does.

It has long been known that we are torturing, holding detainees in secret prisons beyond the reach of law and civilization, sending detainees to the worst human rights abusers to be tortured, and subjecting them ourselves to all sorts of treatment which both our own laws and the treaties to which we are party plainly prohibit. None of this is new.

And we have decided, collectively as a country, to do nothing about that."

Nothing, indeed. And yet, as the Olympic torch arrives upon our shores, we rush to line the streets of San Francisco, along the Embarcadero, in protest of the human rights abuses by the host country of China. To voice our outrage that we are extending a hand of friendship to the imperial fist that is slowly crushing peace-loving Tibet. To follow up Paris and London's protests with a little Yankee smackdown of our own.

All fine and good -- the Chinese should be held accountable. They seem like pretty bad guys, given half a chance. But where's the public uproar against our own government? Where is the outcry against the way we present ourselves to the world? I've written about this before and received many comments to the effect that we're not even in the same league as China and it's ridiculous to compare the two countries.

Really? The reason for our collective silence is that we're not as bad as China? Talk about lowering the bar. Americans, unlike the current administration, are born with the gene of hypocrisy. Born with it and then our culture nourishes it on a daily basis throughout our lives. We preach freedom of choice and justice for all, as long as we're designing the menu and manning the scales. As nearly as I can figure it, because we ended World War Two, landed on the moon and invented cable TV, we believe we really are superior to . . . well, everybody else. That we should be showered with deference, gratitude and love by the rest of the world. Like a citizen of the Roman Empire, free to walk the face of the earth without fear of molestation.

The truth is, that hasn't been the case for some time. Bush has spent whatever goodwill capital we had remaining over the past few years, running roughshod over international appeals for reason. Meanwhile, Europe is using America as their own personal Filene's Basement, China continues to collect our IOU's and we send a billion dollars a day to the middle-east for oil to run our country. The chickens may not be roosting yet, but they're on their way home.

All of which is why Barack Obama is the only candidate who makes sense as our next president. It's going to take an extraordinary effort by an exceptional leader to rejoin the international community and repair our reputation, savaged by Team Bush. It will require withdrawing our troops from Iraq, engaging in the fight to save the planet from global warming, strengthening the dollar so we regain our worldwide shopping privileges, righting the trade imbalances that are threatening our domestic productivity and, perhaps most importantly, earning back our position as one of the legitimate voices for human rights around the world.

We can no longer afford to pick and choose who we will or won't talk with. Iraq must be stabilized. Iran must be brought into the international community of nations. North Korea must be persuaded not to share its nuclear technology with anyone who comes knocking with a blank check in hand. Cuba is back in play. Chavez has threatened to stop shipping Venezualian oil to the U.S.

This is no time to be demanding preconditions before we will negotiate with troublesome nations. For much of the rest of the world, we're a troublesome nation. We need to sit down at as many tables as we can find a chair to and start convincing the international community that we are back. We went a little crazy there for awhile but we feel better now and we're ready to get to work. McCain can't do that. You know what they say. You can take the pilot out of the navy but you can't take the navy out of the pilot. He'll always be a cold-war cowboy. I could see him staring down Krushchev but I can't picture him at a table with Ahmadinejad and Al-Assad negotiating America's role in Iraq's future. And Clinton is adamant in her refusal to lend the prestige of the office to dicey negotiations, too (never mind that the prestige level is at an all-time low). Desperate times call for a new approach.

Obama has, from day one, promised to take JFK's advice, "never fear to negotiate," to heart. He preaches his willingness to sit down with any and all of our adversaries in an attempt to find some common ground. It's a harbinger of how he views America's role in the future. We can again lead by example, not solely through coercion and might. It's no longer possible to walk around with a big stick as the world's policeman. Bush had nothing but contempt for the United Nations (hence his nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador the the UN). As the world's sole remaining super-power he believed we should answer to no one.

Well, we've tried it his way. How'd that work out?

Maybe answering to the international community is exactly what is called for right about now. Thanks, W. You may go now. History is waiting.

Just Say No To A Boycott

2008-04-08T16:27:00.008-04:00

I'm thinking about visiting Lake George, in upstate New York, this summer. To do so, I will have to pass through the state capitol of Albany. Home of the New York State Assembly which just rejected Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan for New York City. It was a lousy, cowardly move on the legislature's part and they need to be held accountable.

For my part, I intend to boycott the lunch counter of the Miss Albany Diner on my way through the city. I'll pack a sandwich instead. I was inspired to act by the growing clamor against participation in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, highlighted by Hillary Clinton's call yesterday for President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies in protest of China's miserable record on human rights.

The theory goes that, if China wants to be treated like a big-time, international power, they need to clean up their act and start respecting the rights of their own citizens, as well as Tibetans and Sudanese and anyone else they've dissed over the past six months. In other words, they need to meet our human rights standards before we will legitimize their government with our presence at the party they're planning.

You've got to be kidding. That deafening silence you hear coming out of the White House is Bush and his lackeys trying to come up with a response that won't bring down the house over at the United Nations. Laugh? It would be greeted like the stateroom scene from "Night At The Opera."

America demanding respect for civil rights and calling for a government to take responsibility for it's actions? America, with her history of supporting Somoza in Nicaragua, Mobutu in Zaire, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, who killed 1.5 million in Cambodia, Amin in Uganda, Batista in Cuba, Botha in South Africa, the Duvaliers, who slaughtered 40,000 in Haiti, Doe in Liberia, Franco in Spain, Diehm in South Vietnam, and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, our best friend in the region despite his regime which hangs onto power through the use of torture, amputation and public hangings. Who punishes female adultry with death by stoning. That America?

America who financed Marcos in the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile, Trujillo, Suharto and the Shah of Iran? Who greased the wheels for Ford, GM and Studebaker to sell trucks to Franco's Spain and ITT to provide the phone and radio systems for Nazi Germany? That America?

The America that brought the world the images of Abu Ghraib, the stories of wrongful detention and torture in Guantanamo Bay and the secret prisons we've set up in Thailand, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe to deal with the really tough nuts to crack? Well, not to deal with them so much as to disappear them.

The America that stands with Iran and the Congo as countries who execute juveniles and the mentally ill? That openly mocked the ideals set forth in her own Constitution by passing the Patriot Act, thereby giving the government the right to spy on its own citizens without demonstrating probable cause? That responded ( with positively glacial alacrity) to Hurricane Katrina's ravaging of the citizens of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with police brutality, racial profiling and discrimination?

The America who showed her respect for the international community and her sense of responsibility for producing 36% of the world's greenhouse emissions while only representing 4.6% of the global population by opting out of the Kyoto Protocol immediately upon George Bush taking office? Thereby proudly joining Kazakhstan as the only two nations not to ratify the treaty. That America?

And finally, the America that invaded Iraq to exterminate a tinhorn dictator and settle a family debt and is still there, thousands of lives and millions of refugees and trillions in treasure later?

Is that really the resume we're supposed to bring with us to the table when we sit down with the Chinese and lecture them on human rights?

George Bush probably doesn't think so. Tough to sell, globally, that is. We need to think smaller. The Opening Ceremonies might be a little awkward. There was a story in the Times Online a few weeks ago that just might fit the bill. It seems the US athletes are planning to bring their own food to Beijing, rather than risk trusting the local cuisine. The Chinese aren't pleased but they're finding it hard to defend their home-cooking, given all the recent public health scares they've endured.

Yeah, that's right. It's an Olympic food boycott, similar in many ways to the protest I've planned for my Albany visit. I think Dana Perino needs to clip that article and trot it right into the Oval Office for the president to see. Give him something to hang his cowboy hat on here.

Because, for once, I'm with the administration. We're in no position to make a big deal out of this human rights thing.

Superdelegates? I Don't Think So.

2008-04-07T15:31:00.012-04:00

Where are we, exactly, in the race for the democratic nomination?

Obviously, it's a closely contested fight. Obama has a lead of roughly 700,000 in the popular vote, discounting Michigan and Florida. For those who have no problem with ignoring the agreed-upon rules and insist upon counting the two states votes as they currently stand, Obama leads by around 75,000 votes. Or course, they have to get their minds around the pesky fact that Obama didn't campaign in Florida. (I know, neither did Clinton, but she started this race with a huge lead in Florida, thanks to it's NY snowbirds and other seniors-laden demographics. Obama would inarguably have closed the gap, as he does in all states, by putting his superior organization on the ground and talking to people face-to-face.) And his name wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan. Along with Biden, Edwards and Richardson, he agreed to forego the state as a result of Michigan's unsanctioned advancement of their primary's date. Absent her three main competitors, Clinton "won" the primary, defeating "Uncommitted" by 15%.

Delegate counters are as finicky as Maseratis but Obama seems to have a lead of somewhere between 110 and 160 pledged delegates. That includes 254 pledged superdelegates for Clinton and 216 for Obama. Since February 5th, Obama has picked up 69 Supers and Clinton has shown a net loss of 2. Out of 795 total superdelegates, roughly 330 remain publicly up for grabs.

What do these numbers mean? Basically, if this were a foot race, Obama has already made up the stagger as they enter the homestretch, Hillary's calf just cramped up and she has begun limping noticeably. The Mark Penn departure is huge, and may continue to haunt her campaign. The initial refusal to cut ties with him completely could very well just be postponing the inevitable. It's hard to see what she gains by having his firm continue to advise the campaign at this point.

This is not yet another call for her to drop out. I've argued her right to stay in until she feels she's done for months now. Hell, forget Clinton -- I've supported Nader's right to run throughout the past three elections. But my question is this:

What's up with the Superdelegates? And what master of irony so named them?

There was a piece a couple of weeks ago by Jonathan Allen of The Congressional Quarterly on Truthout.org. He says there are 104 superdelegates that are elected officials who have not committed either way yet. Seventy-nine of them are from districts or states that have already voted, so their constituents' preferences are known, if that is an issue for them.

What the hell are they waiting for? Susan Davis, representing a San Diego district that went for Obama, is still unwilling to choose:

"I hope we don't (have to influence the election's outcome). No clear mandate at all in this district, so that makes my job probably tougher, not easier."

What do you mean, you hope you don't? Then why are you wearing that Superdelegate costume? Is it just so you can sit on the floor in Denver and rubber-stamp the will of the people? Maybe land a cameo on The Daily Show? Any old mortal delegate can do that.

A Superdelegate is presumably wiser than the hoi polloi and blessed with a deeper insight into the party's future best interests. Is she telling me that after 80% of the primaries and, what, thirty debates that she hasn't decided who she believes is the Democrats' best hope? Either she's not coming clean or she's unqualified to call herself a Superdelegate. She sounds like a wimp to me. So do the rest of them.

Look, superdelegates were a crappy idea twenty-five years ago and they still are. Either they vote in tandem with their constituents (in which case they're irrelevant) or they vote their conscience and risk overturning the will of the people. It's a choice between two bad options. Susan Davis and Robert Wexler and Corrine Brown and the rest of the undeclareds should go ahead and choose a side. Clinton can run until August if she so desires. But the professionals should have made up their minds by now which is the stronger horse. If they didn't want that responsibility, they shouldn't have accepted the Superdelegate blessing.

Democrats need to stop blaming Hillary. Criticizing her for not quitting is like castigating the scorpion for stinging the toad. It's her nature to fight unreasonably. She will obstinately continue to cling to the fleeting hope that the superdelegates will come to her rescue (and their senses) in the nick of time. It's who she is.

If you want to blame someone, blame the Superdelegates. They could end this tomorrow if they had the guts.

It's Not Only Rock and Roll

2008-04-04T17:50:00.019-04:00

I grew up in a house filled with music. My parents were young, even by those day's standards, when they had my older sister and me so they were still kids themselves while we were children. Their tastes were eclectic and fairly sophisticated, especially for our sleepy, Midwestern city of Des Moines, Iowa. There was often classical music (which I liked) or opera (which I didn't) playing. But just as often there was rock and roll. I grew up listening to the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and the Rolling Stones. Especially the Stones. The first album I remember falling in love with was "Beatles '65." But the second was the Stones' "Beggar's Banquet." The Beatles infatuation ran its course and faded by junior high school. The Stones never did.

Leslie was born fifteen months before me and our tastes influenced each other throughout adolescence. She introduced me to David Bowie, Roxy Music and the Sex Pistols. I gave her Rod Stewart (with the Faces), the Who and Prince. We agreed to disagree on Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. (She leaned towards Robert Plant and I favored Steven Tyler.)

But the one constant, the one thing we accepted as Truth, was that the Rolling Stones were, indeed, the Greatest Rock and Roll Band In the World. I wanted to be Mick Jagger and she wanted to be with Keith Richards. We saw our first Stones concert together at the Capital Center outside of Washington, DC in 1972. We were front row, center when they passed through Hampden, Virginia the summer of '75. We drank and drugged our way through our teens and twenties, often with "You Can't Always Get What You Want" or "Brown Sugar" playing loud in the background.

Leslie moved to New York City in the late seventies and I followed her, as I so often did, in 1985. She stayed, got married and became a wonderful chef. I left in '89 and chased life until I returned to this city last year. I came, as much as anything else, because New York was Leslie's home and she had passed away in August of 2006 after fighting cancer for years. Moving back seemed the only way to keep her close. Sometimes it seems to be working, often it doesn't. If you've ever lost a sibling or a child you know how it is.

"Shine a Light," the Rolling Stones concert film by Martin Scorsese opened today in Manhattan. It documents their 2006 show at the Beacon Theatre in New York and it is being shown on IMAX screens where available. I haven't seen a Stones show in nearly ten years, since I scalped a ticket and sat in the top tier of FedEx Field, more for curiosity's sake than anything else. I still listen to their music but they haven't made a great album since the early seventies, in my opinion. The FedEx show was pleasant, in a removed kind of way, and they still sounded better than almost anyone out there, but I had seen enough. The magic was gone. Either they had grown too old or I had. Maybe both.

So I entered the Lincoln Square Theatre this afternoon with no great expectations. I'm a Stones fan who is comfortable with the fact that their best work is behind them. I feel the same about Scorcese. But he had done a masterful job years ago with "The Last Waltz," his concert film of The Band's last concert, and I was eager to see his work after stepping up in class. After all, The Band, while a clever enough name, was just another pretty good group; the Rolling Stones were truly The Band.

I sat high up, centered in front of the 60-foot IMAX screen. The film opens, as these things often do, with footage of the chaos leading up to the show, the black and white image filling perhaps half the screen. Then, as Keith strikes the first chord of "Jumpin' Jack Flash," Scorcese cranks the volume and the image explodes into brilliant color across the screen, filling your entire field of vision and then some, given that the IMAX screen is concave and creates a three-dimensional effect of being surrounded.

I was simultaneously struck by an impression and a sensation, that both only intensified as the film progressed. First, that the Stones sounded awesome and looked terrific. Not young, mind you -- they're in their mid-to-late sixties and their faces show every year. But they are engaged and entertaining and exuberant and . . . happy, I guess is the word. They are arguably the best in history at doing what they do and, even having lost a step or two, they know how to put on a rock and roll show like nobody's business.

The competing sensation was that of a literally throat-closing grief, of missing my sister. I watched Mick and Keith play songs that we had listened to over and over and over again as we grew up together. Memories came back that were so sharp as to seem like almost yesterday, some thirty years later. Of whispered conversations upstairs in her room about our first crushes. Of driving around DC in my convertible with the top down when she'd come to visit in the summer, singing along with Mick and the Boys at the top of our lungs. Of sitting at Jack's Bar in Brooklyn, after she had found me an apartment as part of the price of getting me to follow her to New York, listening to the old-timers reminisce about the good old days and bitch about the present. Of quitting drinking and holding on tight through the bad patches.

And of being with her through the last few years, after it became tough for her to get out and about as much. It brought us together as a family, my parents, my younger sister, Leslie and her husband. The only one of us who faced that fucking poison growing inside of her without ever taking a step back, without ever giving in to the pain and sorrow of what was coming to an end in front of our eyes, was Leslie. She fought it as long as she could and then, somehow, she knew when it was time to give up the battle gracefully, which she did, holding the family together until she left us. It was the most painful, as well as the most inspirational, time of my life.

The memories and feelings came over me in waves as I watched the Stones perform our favorite songs -- hers was "Sympathy For the Devil" and mine was "Tumblin' Dice." I sat there in my seat with a lump in my throat and a silly grin on my face. Experiencing, larger than life, our past. The Rolling Stones were our youth.

In one of the interview snippets throughout the film, Keith attributes their longevity to the simple fact that they love what they're doing. And it shines throughout this film, their love affair with being on stage, basking in the adulation of their fans and reciprocating by kicking out rock and roll like nobody else has ever done. The Stones are unique and completely comfortable in their skins. For years, throughout the eighties and nineties, they flirted with caricature. They were the rhythm and blues version of Dorian Gray's portrait. Having sold their souls (and whatever else they could get their hands on) to the devil, they were destined to live forever as the "world's greatest band," playing "Satisfaction" over and over until there was no one left to listen. But they passed through that and they are, in a weird way, almost metamorphosed into the best there ever was. Again.

You can see the joy on their faces as they connect with the audience, as they've been doing for 45 years now. It's as if they realize they have hit the lottery, again and again and again. They know they've worked for it and that they deserve it but, damn, life is good. Imagine getting to be Mick Jagger and getting paid hundreds of millions to do it as a bonus.

Well, I was inspired. And inspiration is something that's been pretty hit or miss since my sister died. Her passing, and the grace with which she handled it -- and allowed everyone else to handle it -- showed me what it means to live with courage. It's easy to lose track of that as time passes and real life comes at you. But I was reminded again today of the inspiration that I had promised myself I'd take away from her abbreviated life. I was nearly overcome with a resurgence of the pain as well as that strength as I watched the film. But what shone through brightest of all was the inspiration to find a way to love what you do and to make that your life. Anything less is just killing time.

Anyway, it seems to me that that's what the Rolling Stones have accomplished and Scorcese has been able to capture. They've been living their dream since the day they were able to articulate it. We should all be so fortunate.

I'm not sure how to rate "Shine a Light." I'm far from an objective observer. For the right person, at the right time, it's an excellent film, maybe a great film. If you're a Stones fan, you need to see it. Likewise if you're a Scorcese fan. If you've reached an age where college students look like children, you need to see it. And, if you're still trying to figure out how to age gracefully without casting aside the dreams of your youth entirely, most definitely go see this film.

I loved it.

Leslie, you should have been there. They were singing to you.

Obama Is Wrong

2008-04-03T19:23:00.007-04:00

Obama pissed me off last night. I'm curled up on the couch, eating popcorn and pizza, watching Chris Matthew's Hardball College Tour, starring Barack Obama. The West Chester University band is playing, the cheerleaders are hopping around, doing all the silly things cheerleaders do, Matthews is dropping Pennsylvania pols names like a kid from Jersey trying to get into the Limelight. Plus he's serving up softballs for his guy, Senator Obama, for the full 60 minutes. I'm a happy guy.

A few students were allowed to step to the microphone and ask questions. Which, by the way, were generally more informed and certainly more nuanced than the pros have come up with at the couple of hundred debates they've held so far. A young man asked him where he stood on gay marriage. And he said, "I'm not in favor of gay marriage but I'm in favor of a very strong civil union." Say what?

It just felt wrong. As the National Journal's most liberal senator of 2007, with a score of 95.5, it wasn't the answer I expected. I expected him to endorse a policy more along the lines of, "Ask me to the wedding, tell me where it's at." What's the point of being the most liberal if your position on equal treatment for gays is basically indistinguishable from John McCain's?

I must confess, I'm a little embarrassed that this blind-sided me like it did. I like to think I keep pretty up-to-date on where the candidates stand. I guess I had just assumed Obama was as forward-thinking and inclusive on gay marriage as he seems to be on most everything else.

I checked his website. No mention whatsoever of gay marriage. Not a peep.

In answer to the kid's question, Obama went on to say that "it's very important that the state make sure that they are not denying the same kinds of rights that have historically been denied..." Hey, Barack, if I wanted to vote for state's rights, I would have voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980. The irony of the moment hit me like a ball peen hammer: Obama was arguing for state's rights as he ran for president outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, twenty-eight years after Reagan kicked off his presidential bid with a speech endorsing state's rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Reagan was giving a not-so-subtle nod to the conservative wing of the party at the time, Philadelphia, Mississippi being the town where three young civil rights workers were slain in 1964 while registering blacks to vote.

I thought, surely Obama should be toeing the party line on this one. So I checked the Democratic National Committee's official stance. To my further surprise, I discovered that they also think marriage is an issue that should be left to the states, taking no position on whether states should marry same-sex couples.

Oh, everybody's against a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Obama, Clinton, even McCain. They're lining up to vote against that one. But support gay marriage? Not so much.

I expected more from Obama. He writes that, "marriage is between a man and a woman" but he remains "open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support marriage is misguided . . . I may have been infected with society's prejudices and predilections and attributed them to God."

Well, I am not impressed, Senator. You trumpet your keen judgement and how it differentiates you from your opponents. We are continuously assured that you will be right from Day One. Yet, on one of the diciest of social issues -- one that separates young from old, liberal from conservative, right from wrong -- you want to have it both ways. You believe one thing but you admit to the possibility of the other. That society and the Church may have swayed your opinion. Good thing you didn't grow up in Kansas -- I'd hate to think where you would come down on creation/evolution.

He told the West Chester University student that, "young people are way ahead of the curve on this issue and I think it's important for the rest of the country to catch up."

Just not him, evidently.

The Streets of New York

2008-04-01T14:07:00.023-04:00

I've often thought that "Roman Holiday" could use an update and that I was just the man for the job. You remember the 1953 film: newspaperman Gregory Peck buzzes around Rome on a Vespa scooter with princess Audrey Hepburn on the back, giving her a glimpse of the real world before she returns to her rarified and sterile life of privilege and duty. I'd move it to New York City, make the newspaperman a blogger, the princess an heiress to a New York real estate fortune and eliminate the thirteen-year gap in the two characters' ages (mostly because my girlfriend and I are the same age). I'd grunge it up some and add an edgy soundtrack. What I'd like to keep is the Vespa. They're so cool.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't work. I wouldn't last the weekend on a scooter in Manhattan -- I'd get killed.

Traffic in midtown and downtown is out of control. There are two conditions: total gridlock, in which traffic grinds to a standstill and it can take an hour to travel a mile and a half crosstown, or total frenzy, where, given any room to maneuver at all, cars take off from red lights like corks escaping from champagne bottles, reaching speeds of 60 mph within the block. They are then obliged to slam on the brakes for the next red light two blocks ahead, as the signals aren't sychronized for drag racing. There is no in between -- these are the two states of NYC traffic.

And so, Manhattan drivers are insane. The stress level is such that road rage is the normative psychological state. You either operate your vehicle in a hyper-aggressive manner (cabbies, delivery drivers and owners of cars built before 1998) or you drive super-cautiously (seniors, diplomats, tourists and doctors in Porsches and Beemers). A day trip into the city is like setting off on the Crusades -- you can't be sure when you'll be back or what shape you'll be in.

And that's just driving. Don't get me started on biking or walking. Between the traffic, the noise pollution and air the quality of Charles Dickens' London, strolling through the streets of New York has become an exercise in masochism. You'd think, someday, the people would rise up collectively and take back New York, the most exciting city in the world without an Eiffel Tower.

Well, the future just may be now. The New York City Council voted Monday, 30-20, to approve Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing measure. As described in the New York Times:

"The congestion pricing plan...would charge drivers with an E-ZPass $8 a day to enter Manhattan below 60th Street on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Those drivers would also receive a credit for bridge or tunnel tolls they paid on the same day. Drivers without an E-ZPass would pay $9 and would not receive credit for tolls."

The plan would generate some $500 million per year to be applied to mass transit improvements, that is, buses, subways and trains. The U.S. Department of Transportation has pledged $354 million in federal grants to help fund the program. Now the plan just needs to get past the New York State Legislature, a very long way from a done deal.

This is not a new idea -- it's just new to Americans. Singapore has had congestion pricing since 1975. It has reduced traffic by 45%, traffic accidents by 25% and increased public transportation usage by 20%, all while Singapore's population and economy have continued to grow. Stockholm, Sweden initiated congestion pricing in its central city in 2006. It has already resulted in a 15% reduction in traffic and a 10-14% drop in carbon dioxide emissions. London began a congestion pricing program in 2003. They've seen a 30% drop in congestion, 20% decrease in fossil fuel consumption and a 37% increase in traffic speed in the city. And, it generated $241 million for the city. Although Londoners were skeptical initially, now 78% of those who pay the fees are satisfied with the system. Germany, Italy and Norway are all experimenting with variations.

But it just hasn't passed the smell test in America, for the most part. We have this perverse love affair with our cars. We like them big and we like them fast. We'd prefer a four-door to a coupe, and an SUV to a sedan. An inline-six is nice but what would really make us happy would be eight, or even twelve, cylinders. Gas is at $3.50 a gallon and we're ready to storm the palace. (Never mind that it's over eight bucks a gallon in the U.K. and more than $8.50 in Germany.) It is our Manifest Destiny to live atop a two-car garage in the suburbs and ignore the HOV lanes on our commute into work each morning.

Critics of the plan argue that it will function as a regressive tax because poor and working class folks are less able to afford the daily fee. Well, all things being equal, aren't all taxes basically regressive? The wealthy are always affected less than the poor -- it's the whole point of being wealthy. But, to the critics' point, the poor and working classes already use public transportation in disproportionate numbers in large cities. This plan will affect a smaller percentage of them than any other demographic. If anything, the additional mass transit funding will improve their quality of life.

Critics also worry that small businesses will be hurt by the higher costs of transporting goods into and out of the city under the plan. Fair enough. However, the Partnership for New York City recently estimated that the current congestion is costing New Yorkers over $13 billion a year in late deliveries, wasted fuel and extra transport time. It all depends which side of the coin you want to look at.

Which is the point, really. We, as a country, insist upon measuring everything in dollars and cents. We constantly confuse quality of life with standard of living. We take our two weeks of vacation each year in Mexico or Italy and delight in the relaxed pace of life, complete with siesta and passeggiata. We promise ourselves we will reprioritize our own lives. But invariably, within a few weeks of returning home, we are back to working 10-12 hours, 6-7 days each week.

The thing is, it's not all about the money. It's not even all about quality of life. It's about saving the planet. Not for the next generation, if that doesn't move you. For this generation.

An ice shelf seven times the size of the island of Manhattan -- about 160 square miles in area -- collapsed into the sea off Antarctica this month as a direct result of global warming. Which, unless you're a liar or an idiot or both, you'd have to admit is inarguably a result, in part, of the greenhouse gases created by sitting in a 5:00 traffic jam in New York City. So is the fact that lobsters are dying out as their waters warm. And Pacific salmon. As is the increase in hurricanes, floods and fires. The list is long and you can read it here.

This is not a catastrophe waiting to happen. It's happening. Politicians used to argue that we had an obligation to turn over a healthy planet to our children. The hell with them -- the water's rising now. Money has to be spent now. Sacrifices need to be made now.

It's not what we're used to doing, sacrifice. No one is going to confuse the baby boomers with the Greatest Generation. Nor Bush with FDR. The only sacrifice we've been urged to make to help support the war in Iraq, for instance, is to get out there and shop.

Al Gore is kicking off a $300 million, three-year ad campaign to sell us on the concept that we're destroying the earth and we need to stop now. Coincidentally, an amount similar to the $300 million and change that the DOT is planning to give New York City to start clearing the streets. People make a big deal out of those numbers. Such an investment, such a sacrifice.

$300 million is what we spend every eighteen hours on the Iraq War. So don't tell me that a few hundred million is too much to spend on a cleaner, healthier, safer, saner New York City.

It won't be "Roman Holiday," however. My girlfriend will never get on a scooter.

40 Days and Nights

2008-03-28T13:36:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-26T14:47:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-24T17:24:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-19T13:34:00.000-04:00

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 troo ps 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

2008-03-18T13:59:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-14T13:39:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-12T15:21:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-03-11T17:14:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-07T03:01:00.000-05:00

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)?

2008-03-05T14:03:00.000-05:00

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

2008-03-03T14:59:00.000-05:00

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

2008-03-02T19:12:00.000-05:00

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.

Do The Right Thing

2008-02-28T14:33:00.000-05:00

As it becomes ever more evident that Barack Obama will be able to continue raising almost unlimited cash so long as there's a world wide web, John McCain has a bone to pick with the presumptive Democratic nominee. Inconvenient as it may be to Obama's big picture plans, McCain is reminding him of the agreement the two of them made last year (detailed here by Kenneth P. Vogel at Politico.com) to accept public financing, thereby limiting each candidate to $85 million in funding for the general election campaign. At the time, I'm sure it seemed like a good idea to the Illinois upstart. He was just another face in a crowded room (albeit a room filled with old, white faces so it's not like he didn't stand out). Who could have predicted his embarrassment of riches? Now, to limit his funding to a paltry $85 million seems absurd, given his remarkable abilities to persuade folks to pony up for his cause on a monthly basis, $25 at a time.

Trouble is, McCain has a point.

These guys are both running as reformers: McCain cruises around the country in the Straight Talk Express, pissing off evangelicals, right-wing talk radio hosts and fat-cat lobbyists while Obama promises to ride into Washington and change the mindset of the city itself by getting Democrats, Republicans and Independents to sit together and compromise like reasonable men, thereby further promoting the image of Camelot and its mythical Round Table that was first invoked by the Bobby Kennedy comparisons.

And, as a reformer, one of Obama's hole cards has always been campaign finance. He lists it front and center on the Ethics page of his website:

"Obama introduced public financing legislation in the Illinois State Senate, and is the only 2008 candidate to have sponsored Senator Russ Feingold's (D-WI) tough bill to reform the presidential public financing system."

The whole point of the Feingold legislation is to reduce the influence of private money and provide candidates with enough public funding to run an effective campaign without having to become full-time telemarketers. The Washington Post quoted Obama last February:

"Congress concluded some thirty years ago that the public funding alternative . . . would serve core purposes in the public interest: limiting the escalation of campaign spending and the associated pressures on candidates to raise, at the expense of time devoted to public dialogue, ever vaster sums of money."

He has promoted campaign reform, he has voted for campaign reform and he has written campaign reform. Most importantly, he has campaigned on campaign reform. Now, if he wants to maintain his integrity as an agent of change from George Bush's blatant mendacity and Bill Clinton's parsing of the truth, he must stand by his pledge.

Besides, money, while obviously important, may not be the magic bullet this time around. McCain's most effective marketing is the continuous barrage of shameless character assassination and innuendo that the GOP and party faithful heap upon Obama. They're like mental patients in the asylum slinging fecal matter against the walls to see what sticks: from declaring Barack Hussein Obama a closet Muslim who took his oath of office on the Koran, to accusing him of refusing to pledge allegiance in a patriotic enough fashion, to claiming he was educated in an Indonesian madrassah. McCain doesn't pay a dime for this crap. It's out there, all the time, and he can pick and choose which of the most outrageous of the charges to disassociate himself from on those rare occasions when he is asked about them. He has pledged to run a positive, issues-based campaign, so we can only assume that his legitimate, paid advertising will steer clear of these insults to the electorate's intelligence. Unfortunately, hobbled by the truth, he would be reduced to trying to defeat Obama on a platform of Bush tax cuts and the Hundred Years Surge. I don't think even he believes that will work. So I'm guessing the slander will continue.

And as for Obama, the mainstream press may as well be a branch of his campaign. Have you watched Hardball lately? It's like a 60-minute Barack infomercial. I don't know what Hillary did to piss off Chris Matthews but, whatever it was, it wasn't worth it. Ditto for Countdown with Keith Olbermann. If they're this biased for Obama against a Democrat, I can hardly wait to see what they have in store for McCain in the general election.

The point is, both of them are getting much of what they need for free, anyway. There's so much media coverage now that political advertising doesn't carry anywhere near the weight it did when the financing laws were written. Seriously, when's the last time you actually paid attention to a campaign commercial on television?

My question is, why not fight McCain even up, Barack? You've got the momentum, the message, a tanking economy, an endless war. Your organization on a state-by-state basis is the envy of all of your opponents. You're younger, more eloquent and you're not a Republican following George Bush. Plus, you're capable of beginning a sentence without the words, "My friends." These are huge advantages.

And most crucially, it's the right thing to do. It's what got you to this point. As you're fond of pointing out, "No one said this would be easy." The high road can be a lonely place but it's where you need to be.

Enough Already

2008-02-27T15:24:00.000-05:00

God, I'm tired. I just finished watching the Clinton/Obama slogfest from Cleveland and I'm not sure I can climb out of this chair and make it to bed.

I don't remember the last time I endured such an enervating performance from both parties involved. Have you ever watched an NBA game in the doldrums of January between two lousy teams, the visiting team playing their fourth game in five nights and the home team just back that morning from a nine-game, west coast swing? It was like that. Fumbled exchanges, wild shots missing their marks, no ability to freelance or improvise.

Everything that was said had been said before, but better. Both candidates looked like they'd rather be just about anywhere but Cleveland State University in a snow storm. Neither one appeared to give much of a damn about how they came off. If this debate was a movie, it was The Godfather: Part III.

Hillary was a mess. The expression on her face whenever the camera showed her listening to Obama or the moderators was one of glum resignation. It's the way I looked when my dentist told me I needed an emergency root canal. Her shrill complaint against Williams and Russert (and, I can only assume, Campbell Brown, Natalie Morales, Wolf Blitzer and anyone else who's directed a question her way throughout these debates) for calling on her first would have struck the most politically tone deaf note of the night if not for her pre-packaged jab at Obama and whether he should be offered a pillow. You would think she would have learned her lesson in Texas when her embarrassing Xerox "zinger" clunked resoundingly onto the stage floor. She even managed to negate her only substantive advantage -- the fact that her health care plan is marginally less delusional than Obama's -- by refusing to let the subject go when it was time to move on, continually interrupting to inject one last mewling scrap of minutia. By debate's end I was reminded of Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, hanging on to Sugar Ray Robinson after absorbing a punishing beating, mumbling, "You never knocked me down, Ray. You never knocked me down."

Obama's performance was only marginally better. He seemed lethargic, content to sit back and parry the futile thrusts of his exhausted opponent. Obama is at his best when he is in oratorical full flight. When his words are meant to inspire the better instincts in all of us. When he is setting the agenda. These debates don't play to his strengths. Sometimes, when his reaction to a Clinton attack is meant to be measured and deliberative, he comes across as smug, even condescending. He once again missed opportunities to tie in the cost of the Iraq war with the free-falling economy here at home. Perhaps he's saving that ammo for McCain. He wasn't able to put to rest questions about his pledge last year to take public financing in the general election. It's an interesting box he's constructed for himself on this one -- we'll have to wait and see how he extricates himself. Hard to picture him voluntarily ceding the advantage his spectacular fundraising machine gives him. He is, however, running a campaign based on ideals and accountability, right?

Basically, not much changed as a result of this debate. If I had to guess what the biggest blow of the night was, I'd say it was Russert's steamrolling of HRC on her NAFTA flip-flop. He hit her with a flurry that underlined in no uncertain terms how she championed the trade agreement until it became a political albatross around her neck. I'll bet that's what Ohio voters took away from what has otherwise become an exercise in picking over the barren carcass of this campaign in search of fresh ideas or stimulating arguments.

This thing is over. Actually, it's been over for awhile now. The exact moment it ended was immediately after the Wisconsin primary, when Hillary was giving her non-concession speech to a modest gathering of disappointed supporters in Youngstown, Ohio and all of the networks cut away from that lead balloon to show Obama raising the roof in front of 20,000 raucous fans down in Houston, Texas. You can fool most of the people practically all of the time but when the guys sitting in the corner offices at the networks decide you're no longer relevant, well, that pain in your neck is from the big fork that's sticking out of it.

Clinton won't drop out this week. If she was capable of that, she wouldn't be Hillary Clinton. She's still polling okay in Ohio, she likes her chances in Pennsylvania, she and Bill are holding the chits of a bunch of undeclared super delegates and the Florida/Michigan fiasco is yet to be settled. That all adds up to continuing the fight at least through Ohio.

But make no mistake about it: Hillary's campaign is well into its endgame now. She'll be fine, by the way. It's even money her next job title will be Senate Majority Leader. Assuming she doesn't burn too many bridges between now and the Democratic National Convention.

Run, Ralph, Run

2008-02-25T18:49:00.000-05:00

Ralph Nader made his quadrennial visit to NBC's Meet The Press on Sunday to deliver the news flash that he's . . . running . . . for . . . president . . . as . . . a . . . third . . . party . . . candidate. Again.

The responses of HRC and Obama were predictable and can be reviewed in the New York Times article here. In a nutshell, Obama made the always popular "he's not putting food on the voters' tables" argument while Clinton found the decision "really unfortunate." Back in 2004, then-DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe termed that year's Nader announcement, "very unfortunate," so it's good to see that Hillary is still taking her cues from the democratic party's (and Clinton machine's) biggest rainmaker.

If I'm Senator Clinton, Nader's announcement isn't, "really unfortunate." Maybe it's "interesting." At worst, "curious." What's "really unfortunate" is that her campaign, helmed by the evidently distracted Patty Solis Doyle, squandered a twenty-plus point lead and burned through more than $105 million by Super Tuesday with little to show for it beyond access to the VIP lounge at the local Dunkin' Donuts. She's never going to see her name across from Nader's on a ballot. Obama's getting ready to drop the hammer in Texas and I wouldn't bet against him in Ohio. At which point it's, as they say on The West Wing, "Game over."

But the national teeth-gnashing that the Dems engage in each time Ralph Nader sits down with Tim Russert has grown tiresome. Yes, his previous campaigns hurt the Democratic nominee more than the Republican candidate. Obviously, he attracted potential Democratic votes in Florida and Ohio, votes that would no doubt have gone to Gore and Kerry and perhaps have wrested the final decisions away from Jeb Bush and Rehnquist and Diebold and Triad Systems. If the complaint is voiced as a statement, I respond, "So what?" If it is framed as a question, I answer, "Too bad."

If you truly believe that the system in its present construct is broken, and that we need new, outside-Washington blood to effect real change from top to bottom, then there is no rational argument you can make that Ralph shouldn't be allowed to run.

Both Obama and HRC stump passionately against the influence of corporate lobbyists and the need for campaign finance reform. But you could add together their respective years spent actually combating big money interests and then cube that number and you wouldn't equal the years Nader has spent fighting and winning against corporate fat cats.

The mainstream candidates are happy to talk about environmental problems and solutions but neither has the nature-friendly bona fides of Nader, who ran in 2000 and 2004 as the candidate of the Green Party. His career has been built upon the fight for clean air, clean water, safe food and environmental standards.

Ralph Nader is not going to play spoiler in the general election. The 2.7% he won in '04 was down from the 3.0% he garnered in '00. He will do worse in '08. But his is a voice that it does us good to hear every four years. Because deep down, buried under the cynicism and hypocrisy of our two party system, we know he's right. And if all we have to do is listen to him make a couple of speeches, maybe read an op-ed or two in the Times, well, that's a small price to pay for acknowledging what we're doing to our consciences when we step into the voting booth.

Worst case scenario, Nader's candidacy drops Obama's margin of victory over McCain in November back down to single digits.

Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself...

2008-02-24T20:14:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I realized that the world needs another blog. I decided to give it twenty-four hours to see if the problem mightn't rectify itself. But when I checked back in today after lunch the situation was unchanged -- still one short. I sat in front of my laptop, running the numbers backwards and forwards, hoping against hope it was merely an oversight on my part. You see, my plate is rather full at the moment and I'd just as soon not take on the responsibilities of town crier, if at all possible.

But the numbers don't lie. Any which way I add them up, we're still light one web log. So, for the time being, on a strictly temporary basis until the real guy shows up, I am offering my services to fill the gaping hole in the blogosphere that has become so apparent to me and, I can only suppose, you as well.

My humble mission is to stand by the side of the road and pass judgement as the parade slouches by. While I am primarily a political junkie, I am often distracted by films, books, sports and the prospect of a good meal. I believe in big government, affirmative (or, as I like to call it, restitutive) action, the abolition of the death penalty, campaign finance reform and the restorative powers of golf. I prefer walking to driving and cafes to diners. In fact, I would move to Rome in a New York minute if they had access to NBA League Pass.

I write on a Mac and talk on an iPhone yet I buy my coffee at Starbucks. There should be a philosophical contradiction inherent somewhere in that statement but, judging by the number of PowerBooks hogging, for hours at a time, the limited table space available in every Starbucks I've ever slapped down a $5 bill for a venti latte in, it appears my fellow Apple afficionados and I are only selectively bothered by the inevitable crushing of the individual spirit at the hands of giant monopolies. But I digress...

I live in Manhattan, drive a Honda and don't consider illegal immigration a national security problem. I believe words not only matter as much as actions, I believe they are actions. Yes, I am a big-city, blue state, liberal elitist. We're back, baby.

Over the course of the coming months, I hope to enter into a debate with you about where we've been, where we are, and where we might be heading. This is my first shot at a blog so, while the mechanics and design of this site may start out in a pedestrian manner, hopefully the content will not. Because I can improve the design.

By all means, please write me back. Often and loudly.