In Defense of Sour Grapes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obama Can't Afford To Be Wright

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three years earlier he sallied forth with,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Run, Ralph, Run

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.