How Good Is Obama?

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?

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

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

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

"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?

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!

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.