Regarding our national IQ test

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Political Waves

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Aug 4, 2008, 12:45:57 PM8/4/08
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First off -- HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BARACK! And many, many more ... hopefully front and center in the Oval.
 
McIdiot is throwing everything but the kitchen sink [and policy items] at Obama to try to get something to stick -- and the biggest lie of all, reported as common wisdom, is that he's uncomfortable doing it. Nonsense! If he was ... he wouldn't. He's trying to create doubt ... which is exactly what we need to be doing! Obama continues to stay pretty much above the fray, although he pushes back, like this ad on McCain's deep oil pockets -- he needs to get a VP announcement out there and allow his pick to roll over the McSame people like a tsunami.

Meanwhile, the only people amused by McRib's recent bevy of ad's [uncontrollable white chicks in the company of a ... predatory? ... black dude, thinking he's as Omnipotent as Moses [putting the Christocrats in panic mode, due to their Antichrist rhetoric; here's that ad on Youtube] -- are those that already believed it to be true. Hitting every button on the 'uppity' board, for sure. The Straight Talk Express is now the Snake Oil Express and everybody and their dog has noticed. 
 
And, illogically, the dumbed-down among us are being joined by an unsettling number of Dems [??] responding in the blogosphere that seem to think the 'empty suit' rhetoric true. WTF? I look at Obama's cool-under-fire and leak-proof political campaign as bordering on miraculous! This man can't lead? He can't organize? He can't produce? In what universe??

Next will come a lot of bushwah on 'elitism.' Obama's already been hit for being too picky [about food] and too thin [WTF #2!] That's the 'he's not like us' meme -- which means 'us' is the porky, Twinkie-stuffed and fat-loaded average you and me, I expect. Thanks, PR guys. I'm thrilled at the message -- even twitchy, vacant white girls must be protected from racial mingling ... and we're a nation of shallow Hal's, STILL wanting to have a beer with the Beloved Leader and defiant about rushing toward stroke with a big plate of biscuits and gravy. The American Way, doncha know!! Wave that flag in yer greasy paws!

"We were having some fun with our supporters who we sent it out to," McCain explains later in the day. "We are going to display a sense of humor in this campaign."

There it is there -- this is a reflection of Republican humor: belittling and mean-spirited.

Piffle! HERE's arrogance, from an early John McCain ad:

"[I am] the American president America has been waiting for."

OTHER candidates, one in particular, aren't American enough??  Add his continual mantra that Obama "doesn't understand," child that he is. That can ONLY be arrogance -- the kind singularly Republican in style and content. Makes yer brain hurt, don't it?

Another thing that I'm noting, with frustration, is the response of Lefty bloggers that refuse to back Obama due to his move center; on a personal level, I don't like how moderate he has gone -- on a pragmatic level, I'm getting a feel for it. And I think it's important to move ourselves back a step, and another and another ... to get a real look at this political landscape we're moving toward.

What is the difference ... keep calm, now ... between radical Righty's who want theocracy and militarism and complete corporate dominance and those Lefty's who want pure progressivism in every place and policy?  Has it occurred to you that if the Left sweeps the nation, we will have a Dem Congress to compliment a Dem president, an uncluttered playing field to turn the nation back toward itself ... AND a half-a-trillion bucks in national debt, an economy in the tank, military commitments over half the world ... and the buck stopping on US? More, have you thought about the partisanship that brought us to this place -- and have you factored in how intemperate the Left can be, as witnessed by the Clinton/Obama wars?

Here's the deal -- balance is not what the Left is looking for. But balance is what I dream of, and you should too; without it, we will continue to war within and without ... with one another and everyone outside of our nation. When one or the other of us indicates, "I know what's best for you and you'll like it or lump it," then we are not a nation united; we are in the same space we've been stuck these last years, just different whiners on board gathering steam for another pendulum swing.

An Obama town meeting was interrupted by a handful of brothers, recently, going after him for ignoring the black community and not speaking out against incidents of violence against them. This is what he said: "I may not have spoken out the way you want me to speak out," he said. "But I am suggesting that I have spoken out, and spoken out forcefully."

And that is exactly who Obama is, who he will be and what he's about. He is deeply progressive but dedicated to the long haul and a bipartisan movement, given to thoughtful response and pragmatic action. This is not going to look like the Leftward Ho we all wanted ... but it may be the actual Left turn of the behemoth that is this gigantic and diverse nation toward both restoration of competency and political détente.

The knee-jerk response from the Left over Obama's mulling the off-shore question is typical of what I'm seeing; he just gave a hard-hitting speech, creaming Johnny Mac on his record, and discussing how useless but perhaps required such a vote might be -- so here's my pitch, today: if this man, who IS the most Liberal voter on the Hill, can look at the situation we're in and re-think a short-term issue for a long-run effort ... why can't we?

We are assuming that any capitulation toward the center will look exactly as it's looked these last years ... but that doesn't seem reasonable, given the way Obama takes charge of these issues. Off-shore drilling running rampant over the coasts and filling the pockets of corporate scoundrels? Don't think so. I'd rather see oil production nationalized, but I'd settle for oil production sharply scrutinized and pragmatically assessed.

Obama is not moving fast enough for us ... but there is method in his style. Have you ever done a 180 at high speed, kids? Do you realize what mayhem occurs in that split second? I'm no less progressive at this writing than I've ever been, but I'm resonating deeply to the movement of new energies that are informing us -- and there is Purpose moving us along in this presidential race that is larger than Obama's vision, my vision ... and yours.

Never forget that we are still up against a threat of viral stupidity that runs deep, in this nation -- we need to stay focused and loyal to Blue, until that time when we can pull back from the mainstream and separate back into our various interests and movements.

Again and again, bears repeating -- a GREAT IDEA will always impose itself over a flawed one, allowing what is unworkable to melt away like sugar in the rain. Let's get some great ideas out there, put into place and working; then even the Pubs will get in line.

As illustration of what we're up against, look at the first article here -- the ledeline makes your stomach lurch, as do the first few paragraphs. Read it through, however, and you'll be encouraged and pleased. That's MSM for you -- not working for anything but titillated readership; in a sound-bite nation with a dumbed down electorate, that's as dangerous as a coiled rattler. Getting past the Pub swift boating and the greedy media is our first hurdle; let's leave the particulars until 2009, shall we?

And, in the second article, the last line should provide us a shimmering mirror -- who is it that a president serves? What do we think that will look like? Dem's are traditionally for the little guy -- but the little guy isn't the only one getting a wake-up call; ultimately, we're all in this together. How can we grow big enough to claim that as our national truth.

Here's a collection of reads -- some on Bama, some on Mac [wanna talk 'empty suit??' Yikes!]

The IQ of this nation will be tested again, this election -- we've smartened up quite a bit in these last years; I trust it was enough to turn the tide. But remain proactive, dearhearts -- in terms of dealing with those who think McCain is "it" ... and people seem willing to talk about it, this season ... practice your talking points; this is highly effective with so many clinging to party without substance. Make them short, potent and telling -- you may be surprised how many people DON'T KNOW anything about McCain's record.
 
And here's your question to start the conversation: are you better off now than you were eight years ago?

Traditional methods for traditional minds.


Jude


Obama Central: Peace, Harmony and Deep Secrecy
Anne E. Kornblut, WaPo
Sunday, August 3, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/02/AR2008080201687_pf.html

CHICAGO -- The bustling Obama headquarters on North Michigan Avenue invites comparisons to a start-up, teeming with young people in jeans clutching BlackBerrys as they walk through the halls. Yet in Democratic circles, another, potentially less welcome, parallel is being made: to the tight-knit and tight-lipped organization eight years ago of George W. Bush.

Decisions are guarded with extreme secrecy, none more so than the upcoming vice presidential selection, and that has occasionally irked members of Congress. In recent days, as Republicans publicly accused Sen. Barack Obama of appearing presumptuous during his presidential-style trip to Europe, Democrats privately expressed concerns that Obama has become too Chicago-centric, relying on his inner circle rather than a broader group that encourages input from Washington and elsewhere.

"One of the great strengths of this campaign from the very beginning has been the cohesion, the sense of camaraderie, and the lack of drama," said David Axelrod, a leader of the no-drama movement with his casual wardrobe and low-key demeanor.

"That is highly unusual in national campaigns," Axelrod added. "And one of the challenges moving forward is to expand and bring in more talent, people from other campaigns and other places, and still maintain that culture we began with. I think it's happening. But it's a process, and it fights the normal physics of national politics."

The current challenge is how to retain that cohesion while expanding to include former Clinton advisers and how to accommodate a chattier group of Washington insiders. It was certainly not the norm inside the Ballston offices of Obama's main rival during the primaries. When Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign was collapsing under the weight of outsize egos and infighting, the Obama team watched from afar and patted itself on the back for being different.

Now, the two teams are attempting a partial merger, while adding players from across the Democratic spectrum -- and, soon, a vice presidential nominee -- just as Obama's focus is shifting toward winning a wider range of voters.

Already, a new seating arrangement in the high-rise building tells part the story, as it now includes political combat veterans more accustomed to warring internal factions than the peace-and-harmony Obama vibe.

Until recently, there were almost no women in senior leadership inside the campaign. That changed with the end of the primaries: Anita Dunn came on as a senior adviser in the spring; and Stephanie Cutter, a former operative for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), arrived as chief of staff to Michelle Obama as the race entered general-election mode.

Patti Solis Doyle, ousted as the Clinton campaign manager earlier this year, has an office near Cutter. Sarah Hurwitz, until recently a speechwriter for Clinton, has moved into a small office space with Obama veterans Jon Favreau, Ben Rhodes and Adam Frankel.

Other newcomers are squeezing into rows of desks in the middle of the room: Christina Reynolds, a former aide to John Edwards, sits directly across from Hari Sevugan, formerly an operative for Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.). Several feet away sits Wendy Morigi, a national security expert deployed from the office of Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) last month. Many of the fresh faces moved to Chicago within the past few weeks and are still looking for apartments and sitting at temporary desks.

All were given the "no drama" speech before they were hired. "There are a whole series of games candidates play," said Dan Pfeiffer, an Obama veteran who was recently promoted to communications director. Obama, he said, "brooks none of that" and has "specifically sought out people who are going to play by those rules."

The hiring of Solis Doyle caused a distraction of the sort the Obama office is unaccustomed to: It was interpreted as a slap by Clinton, who had cut ties with her during the campaign, and it outraged some prominent women whom Obama hoped to win over in the general election. (The feelings still run hard: Clinton supporters have nicknamed her "Solis Disloyal.")

Pfeiffer took exception to the comparison to the 2000 Bush campaign, which was located in Austin and was driven by Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and Joe Allbaugh. Those three Bush devotees devised their own game plan, kept iron discipline and largely rejected advice from Washington. Still, Pfeiffer made no apologies for his own airtight shop.

"I don't know that we'd get T-shirts made that say it, but we take pride in not leaking, we take pride in not being a typical campaign," Pfeiffer said. The difference between the Obama discipline and the kind that Bush loyalists displayed in 2000, he said, is that "when all the layers got peeled back, they were actually leaking" and did not really get along -- Rove and Hughes, most notably, ended their terms in Washington barely on speaking terms. When it came to discipline, Pfeiffer said, "they were just being tactical about it."

While that approach appears to have served Obama well, it grates on some members of the party, particularly those in Congress, who were not with him from the outset.

Some Democrats on Capitol Hill have complained that he is not inclusive enough. They gripe that he is running his own campaign in some states, rather than the traditional coordinated effort; that he is not focusing on working-class white voters as he had promised at the end of the primaries; and that he has taken sides in some House primaries.

To quell dissent, David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, went to Capitol Hill last month to give lawmakers a political briefing. Obama also met with House members last week. But several Democratic officials reported a persistent undercurrent of tension, which they attributed in part to the cloistered atmosphere of the Chicago team.

"There is a feeling now that 'we're going to win this thing,' and people are starting to talk about who is going to be what a few months from now," said one Democratic adviser, who is working closely with the Obama campaign but is not on staff. "The small-team atmosphere has changed, and that has caused some frictions on the inside."

Turmoil has been a trademark of Democratic politics over the past few election cycles. Kerry's senior management went through repeated upheavals and devolved into backbiting; four years earlier, Al Gore faced a similar melodrama. Even the Bill Clinton campaigns of 1992 and 1996 had their share of divisions, as huge personalities jockeyed for attention and the candidate's ear.

The Obama campaign has been marked by an opposite trend. Plouffe is understated to the point of sometimes being difficult to hear when he speaks. In the early days of the race, the central figures were cut from similar cloth: Robert Gibbs, a former Kerry aide who went to work for Obama in the Senate; Pfeiffer; Burton, another Kerry graduate with experience at the Democratic Congressional Committee; Pete Rouse, who was an aide to then-Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.); Paul Tewes; and Steve Hildebrand. All were low-key staffers with the focus that comes with working for losing candidates.

Some who have interacted with the campaign expressed astonishment at how smoothly it functions compared with other campaigns. "I'm amazed at the difference," said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), adding that he had never seen such a level of organization in any presidential campaign, including his own.

Instead of asking someone to appear someplace "across the country" with less than 24 hours' notice, Richardson said the Obama campaign asks as much as a week in advance, providing transportation and help.

Behind the scenes is a quiet, mostly open office that is increasingly flush with advisers from all over the Democratic map.

"Based on the way we're all sitting, you can't tell where everybody fits in the hierarchy, and that's a good thing," said Josh Earnest, an Obama veteran who said he no longer recognizes everyone he encounters in the hallways. Earnest sits in a mixed section of new and old faces, including Tommy Vietor, a former Obama aide in Iowa, and Burton, whose "wall of front pages" from each day's newspapers -- compiled by two young aides who arrive at 3 a.m. to go through the clips -- is a key design element of their area.

A youthful atmosphere persists throughout the office: jeans are de rigueur, all the way up through the top ranks. Laptops sit on most desks. Happy hour happens at Houlihan's downstairs. Athletic jerseys given to Obama are pinned to one wall.

When Obama stopped in for a meeting a few days earlier, he first stopped to talk to the interns, reinforcing an egalitarian environment. There is no "war room" -- a feature that caught on in campaigns after it was so successful for Clinton in 1992, but that evolved into something of a gimmick. Almost all employees have been required to move to Chicago. There is almost no conference space. When a reporter visited last week, media adviser Erik Smith was conducting business on his cellphone in a corner. And even campaign manager Plouffe and Axelrod were seen conferring in the middle of a hallway.

Minutes later, Plouffe deferred to Pfeiffer when a reporter sought to stop him in the hallway for a few on-the-record quotes.

"Later? Please?" Pfeiffer pleaded apologetically, successfully deterring the interview.

Plouffe grinned. "This is why we're effective," he said. ++


The partisan injustice at Justice
LEONARD PITTS JR., Miami Herald

`What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?''

I have gone forward and back for awhile now trying to figure out where today's rant should begin, but I find that I cannot get past that question. It was posed by Monica Goodling, an aide to then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to job seekers at the Department of
Justice.

``What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?''

Is it me, or doesn't she sound less like a job interviewer than like an adolescent girl splayed out on her bed, giggling with her girlfriend about some hottie actor they both adore? I mean, what, exactly, was an applicant expected to say?

``I adore his strong chin?''

``That crinkly smile really turns me on?''

'I can't resist the manly twinkle in his eyes when he mispronounces `nuclear?' ''

Presumably, Goodling is somewhere doodling the president's name and hers inside valentine hearts while she awaits her fate. You see, she faces possible professional sanctions for violations of both civil service law and the DOJ's own policy. As detailed last week in a Justice Department report, she and other aides systematically schemed to fill nonpolitical positions with Bush loyalists.

It wasn't just that she asked a question that would have been more at home on the cover of Tiger Beat. It was that she passed over a respected prosecutor with almost 20 years of experience for an important counterterrorism job because his wife was active in Democratic politics, hiring instead a Republican with three years' experience. And that she denied one applicant on the suspicion -- the suspicion, mind you -- that she was a lesbian. And that she jettisoned yet another because he was a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. And that she ran Internet searches to determine applicants' political views. And that one of her interview questions was: ``Why are you a Republican?''

It goes on. And on. Goodling's priority was not experience, talent, or competence. Rather, she was looking for, as she put it in a note, applicants who were suitably conservative on ``god, guns + gays.''

Yes, every president is entitled to fill political positions with loyalists. But these were not, I repeat, political positions. Rather they were, or were supposed to have been, career, nonpartisan jobs: immigration judges, assistant U.S. attorneys, trial attorneys.

The problem is, in this administration, there's no such thing as a nonpartisan job. For them, the campaign never ends. Just last month another report found applicants for DOJ internships and honors programs being turned away for political reasons. Then there's Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, which recounts how people interviewing to work in the Green Zone in Iraq were asked their opinion of Roe v. Wade, among other conservative litmus tests.

What does abortion politics have to do with turning on the electricity in Baghdad? Hey, you got me.

This administration prizes ideological purity above ability. As a result, it has driven the presidency off a cliff, the country following close behind. These are not people who came to government to govern. No, these are true believers who came to government to institutionalize true belief, to make it permanent as a stain.

There is something Stepford, something robotic and chilling, in the glassy-eyed, ends-justifies-the-means faith of these young Bush aides in their own righteousness. Forget credibility. Forget competence. Just give us your answer, please: ``What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?''

It is a telling question. Apparently, these people have forgotten or never even knew: It wasn't George W. Bush they were supposed to serve. ++


Defeat Your Opponents. Then Hire Them. 
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, NYT

Concord, Mass. -- ON the campaign trail, Barack Obama has applauded Abraham Lincoln's decision to bring his three main rivals for the Republican nomination into his cabinet, suggesting that he might also invite his opponents to join his administration, if it would help create "the best possible government." Lincoln understood, Mr. Obama said, that personal feelings mattered less than the issue of "How can we get this country through this time of crisis?" John McCain, too, has embraced the idea of moving beyond partisanship: "We belong to different parties," he has said, "not different countries."

Certainly, if the next president were to bring former adversaries into his inner circle, in the No. 2 slot or as members of his administration, he would display that rare combination of humility and confidence required to perform wisely at the highest level. But could a president really create a team of rivals today, and would that team actually be able to get anything done? While Lincoln's model may be more appealing and more needed than ever before, several factors in our current political climate make it considerably more difficult to bring about.

First, our interminable campaigns pit rivals against one another for so many contentious debates, personal attacks and counterattacks, that feelings harden, not only between candidates, but also their staff members, who come to regard opponents as enemies.

To be sure, negative attacks have been a part of our politics from the earliest days, but in Lincoln's day, and indeed, until the end of the 19th century, those attacks were delivered mainly through the partisan press rather than on television, where distorted words and images are replayed again and again, creating permanent grudges. Back then, it was considered unseemly for presidential candidates to take the stump, much less debate in person. And, of course, their election cycles were far shorter.

Second, our 24-hour news cycle significantly lessens the possibility of containing dissenting opinions within the president's official circle. Lincoln's cabinet meetings were fiery affairs. Members openly feuded with one another as well as with the president. Yet this information rarely appeared in the newspapers; we know about it mainly through diaries and letters. We learn from the diary of Attorney General Edward Bates that Montgomery Blair, the conservative postmaster general, castigated William Seward, the moderate secretary of state, as "an unprincipled liar," and called Edwin Stanton, the radical secretary of war, "a great scoundrel." Stanton refused for a time to sit in cabinet meetings if Blair was present.

If similar feuds were reported by the nightly news, magnified day after day by the cable shows, dissected by countless political blogs, and made fodder for late-night comedy, a team of rivals would collapse.

Third, party lines are now so rigidly drawn that if a sitting Republican or Democratic senator were to accept a top post in the opposite party's cabinet, he would be viewed with grave suspicion by members of both parties. It wasn't always this way. Once, politicians in Washington of both parties routinely gathered together on weekends for relaxing nights of poker, drinking and conversation. Today such friendships are less common given the need for constant fund-raising, the convenience of flights home and the numerous distractions of modern life. Four decades ago, when Lyndon Johnson needed to break a filibuster and bring the historic Civil Rights Bill to the Senate floor, he reached out to the Republican minority leader, Everett Dirksen, knowing he could rely on their personal relationship, built over years of companionship in the Senate.

Yet, while these factors make it more difficult to construct a 21st-century team of rivals, the scale of the challenges faced by the next president makes such a diverse inner circle all the more necessary. When Lincoln was asked why he had chosen a cabinet made up of rivals and opponents, his answer was simple. The country was in peril. "We needed the strongest men," he said. "These were the very strongest men. I had no right to deprive the country of their services."

In selecting Stanton as his secretary of war, Lincoln revealed a critical ability to put aside past grudges. He and Stanton had first met when they worked together on a trial in Cincinnati in the 1850s. At first sight of the ungainly Lincoln, with his disheveled hair and ill-fitting clothes, Stanton dubbed him a "long-armed ape" and remarked that "he does not know anything and can do you no good." For the rest of the trial, Stanton ignored Lincoln and refused even to open the brief his colleague Lincoln had painstakingly prepared. Lincoln was humiliated.
 
Yet, six years later, as president, he determined that Stanton's bluntness and single-minded intensity were precisely the qualities needed to galvanize the War Department.

Similarly, Lincoln refused to fire Salmon Chase, whose open criticisms of the president never ceased, for he believed that Chase was the best man to run the Treasury. "We have stood together in the time of trial," he later told friends who could not understand his forbearance, "and I should despise myself if I allowed personal differences to affect my judgment of his fitness for the office."

By building dissent into his inner circle, a president is also more likely to question his own assumptions and to weigh various consequences, leading ultimately to more farsighted decisions.

The story of the Emancipation Proclamation is a case in point. In the months before Lincoln issued his historic proclamation, he listened intently to the arguments within his cabinet over what to do about slavery. The more radical members wanted Lincoln to move quickly. The conservative members feared that emancipation would "intensify the struggle" with the Confederacy, that the border states would no longer support the Union, that it would cause such an outcry in the North that the Republicans would lose the midterm elections.

Lincoln bided his time, realizing that any assault on slavery would have to await a change in public attitudes. Gradually, he began to see a shift in newspaper editorials, in conversations throughout the North and, most tellingly, in the opinions of his cabinet colleagues, even those who represented the more conservative point of view.

Although he knew that opposition would still be fierce, he came to believe it was no longer "strong enough to defeat the purpose." He told his cabinet that the time for debate was over, and emancipation was declared in 1863. "It is my conviction," Lincoln later said, "that, had the proclamation been issued even six months earlier than it was, public sentiment would not have sustained it." Because of the heated discussions within his cabinet, his timing was perfect.

Nor is Lincoln alone in reaching out to his rivals. In 1940, after much of Europe had fallen to Nazi Germany, Franklin Roosevelt decided that the time had come for a coalition cabinet.

For secretary of war, he selected a Republican conservative, Henry Stimson, who had held top posts under previous Republican presidents. He chose as Navy secretary Frank Knox, who had been Alf Landon's running mate on the Republican ticket in 1936. Both men were unsparing critics of the New Deal, but their domestic views were far less important to the president than their willingness to stand against the isolationist tendencies of their party and aid the Allies against Hitler.

There is also the story of a meeting in Roosevelt's office during which the president advanced a pet proposal. Everyone nodded in approval except a junior brigadier general, George Marshall. "Don't you think so, George?" the president asked. Marshall replied: "I am sorry, Mr. President, but I don't agree with you at all." The president looked stunned, and Marshall's friends predicted that his tour in Washington would soon come to an end. A few months later, reaching down 34 names on the list of senior generals, the president asked Marshall to be chief of staff of the United States Army.
 
Inviting such in-house dissent may indeed pose greater challenges today than in earlier times, but it's hard to see that we have any other choice. Polls show that Americans wish to move beyond the combination of extreme partisanship and ideological rigidity that has for decades prevented Washington from addressing the serious problems facing our country. They have seen the damage caused by the creation of like-minded "echo chambers" in Washington. Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain would do well to keep this in mind as they choose their vice president and cabinet members.

History, after all, reveals how dangerous it can be for a president to surround himself with like-minded people. Lincoln's predecessor, James Buchanan, deliberately chose men for his cabinet who thought as he did and, with the agreement of those around him, did nothing to prevent the secession of the Confederate states. He is now considered among the worst of our presidents. ++

Doris Kearns Goodwin is the author, most recently, of "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln." 

 
Do we really want another president whose main concern is his rest and relaxation?
Russ Wellen, ScholarsAndRogues
August 2, 2008

On August 2, Gallup Polls reported, "Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are once again tied in the latest Gallup Poll Daily. . . . Obama received a brief increase in support near the conclusion of his overseas trip last week, gaining a nine percentage point advantage in July 24-26 polling. But that bounce disappeared almost quickly as it emerged."

Does this mean that the more foreigners like him, the less we do? Or, as Melissa McEwan writes at the Guardian of McCain's ad comparing Obama to Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton:

"Famous for no reason, just a pretty face, the ad implies. But loitering below. . . is something more nefarious. . . . Obama, dog whistles the ad, hitting old racists in the sweet spot, could f**k these white girls."

It's true that, more than ever, candidates demand less and less of voters and instead treat them as consumers. If a candidate isn't subjecting us to deceptive advertising, he or she is pandering to us.

In Obama's case, he recently announced that his opposition to offshore oil drilling is open to negotiation. But he's not just pandering, he's also passing conservatives the ball in their own court. It's up to them to square up and shoot — that is, vote for the candidate more likely than John McCain to benefit them and the nation.

In the May 7 Rolling Stone, Guy Lawson wrote of McCain's campaign:

"I've covered a lot of campaigns, and I've never seen anything like this," says a techie from Fox News. . . . "Presidential-election campaigns, usually you're working all the time. You get to the hotel at two in the morning, and you're back on the plane at six. But McCain does one event a day. One event. It's unbelievable."

In other words, do we really want another president who's less concerned with his job than making sure he gets enough rest? Aside from emphasizing his age, it's yet another area in which McCain resembles George Bush, who's notorious for his early bed-time and seizing any opportunity he can to retreat to his ranch.

McCain's casual approach also reassures us our problems might not be that bad after all. Meanwhile, again like Bush, his cavalcade of gaffes on the issues reflects less poorly on our own lack of knowledge, especially when compared with Obama's expertise, which is either uppity or elitist to many of us.

If this is how many of us think, what recourse is left to Obama? After a certain point, no amount of pandering to voters as if they were children will succeed. We've got to make the decision on our own to grow up.

If we don't, Washington will be only too happy to keep us infantilized. And don't expect it to pick us up when we're crying.

Meanwhile, progressives who can't come to terms with Obama's rightward lean need to stop acting all jilted at the altar. To cling to the notion that a Democratic candidate for president will refrain from such behavior is the political equivalent of a schoolgirl's fantasy.

In fact, when it comes to the rock, as they call it in basketball, Obama's not sharing it with progressives. He expects us to follow him up the court, where he may just hold the ball and dribble out the clock.

It's up to progressives, once Obama wins the election as if it were a tip-off, to browbeat him into passing the ball. Maybe then we can start calling out plays to him. ++


Running While Black
Bob Herbert, NYT

Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office - say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford - the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.
Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as "the American president Americans have been waiting for."

There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us - the "us" being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.

Since then, Senator McCain has only upped the ante, smearing Mr. Obama every which way from sundown. On Wednesday, The Washington Post ran an extraordinary front-page article that began:

"For four days, Senator John McCain and his allies have accused Senator Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true."

Evidence? John McCain needs no evidence. His campaign is about trashing the opposition, Karl Rove-style. Not satisfied with calling his opponent's patriotism into question, Mr. McCain added what amounted to a charge of treason, insisting that Senator Obama would actually prefer that the United States lose a war if that would mean that he - Senator Obama - would not have to lose an election.

Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.
 
The Republican National Committee targeted Harold Ford with a similarly disgusting ad in 2006 when Mr. Ford, then a congressman, was running a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. The ad, which the committee described as a parody, showed a scantily clad woman whispering, "Harold, call me."

Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It's driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches - a man who obviously does not know his place.

Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this - the sole reason - is that he is black.

So there he was this week speaking evenly, and with a touch of humor, to a nearly all-white audience in Missouri. His goal was to reassure his listeners, to let them know he's not some kind of unpatriotic ogre.

Mr. Obama told them: "What they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He's risky."

The audience seemed to appreciate his comments. Mr. Obama was well-received.

But John McCain didn't appreciate them. RACE CARD! RACE CARD! The McCain camp started bellowing, and it hasn't stopped since. With great glee bursting through their feigned outrage, the campaign's operatives and the candidate himself accused Senator Obama of introducing race into the campaign - playing the race card, as they put it, from the very bottom of the deck.

Whatever you think about Barack Obama, he does not want the race issue to be front and center in this campaign. Every day that the campaign is about race is a good day for John McCain. So I guess we understand Mr. McCain's motivation.

Nevertheless, it's frustrating to watch John McCain calling out Barack Obama on race. Senator Obama has spoken more honestly and thoughtfully about race than any other politician in many years. Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades.

He's obviously more than willing to continue that nauseating tradition. ++


John McCain is the 'Great White Hope'
Joseph A. Palermo, CommonDreams

John McCain and Company are shocked, SHOCKED that their now infamous Britney Spears/Paris Hilton attack ad against Barack Obama has become a topic of speculation for its "racial overtones."

Pop Quiz (Three Questions):

1). What American political party in the mid-1980s ran ads featuring a close up of a pair of alabaster white hands crumpling up a job application because affirmative action gave all the good jobs to undeserving blacks?

2). What American political party in the late-1980s ran an attack ad that featured a scary black convict who was released on a prison work furlough program and raped a woman?

3). What American political party in the last election cycle ran an ad featuring a seductive scantily-clad young white woman beckoning the African-American candidate to "call" her for a sexual rendezvous?

And John McCain says Barack Obama is "playing the race the card?"

As the nation grapples with its first African-American nominee from a major political party to come so close to winning the presidential prize it is perhaps useful to look at a bit of American history from the early 20th century. In 1910, the "Fight of the Century" took place between the defending heavyweight-boxing champion, John "Jack" Johnson, who was African American, and James Jeffries, who was white. Newspaper reporters and sports writers at the time referred to Jeffries as "the Great White Hope." One sports writer from the "Chicago Tribune" opined that Johnson's "innate conceit and vanity will cause him to strive for the theatrical, to pose for the crowd and the pictures, whereas Jeffries will go about his work in a businesslike manner."

When I read that 98-year-old newspaper clip I couldn't help but think of some of the words the McCain campaign (with a hefty assist from the corporate media) has tried to associate in the public's mind with Barack Obama: "presumptuous," "overconfident," "cocky," "out of touch," "elitist." Obama is in good company. These are the same kind of charges that white supremacists leveled at Jack Johnson, Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

McCain's TV commercial smearing Obama for his "celebrity" with images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton dissolving into images of Obama is the first montage the Republicans have deployed featuring Obama and young white women.

It will not be the last.

There is a pattern here: John McCain willfully misconstrues things Obama says and then pretends to be "astonished" that Obama would say such things. McCain stands by his campaign's attack ad that falsely accused Obama of snubbing troops in Lundstahl, Germany. He also stands by his campaign's sleazy Britney/Paris ad claiming that some useful or worthy public information service was provided.

This election should be a referendum on eight miserable years of misrule by the Republicans. But the descendents of white people who used to picnic at lynchings are coming out of the woodwork — with the active encouragement of the McCain campaign. This silent army that is connected not only to the Republican Party's Southern wing but to white supremacist groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens (C of CC) needs no marching orders from Fox News, the McCain campaign, or the Republican National Committee. They know that if they cannot muster the resolve to stop a black man from becoming the President of the United States then what is the value of white privilege? McCain is carrying the torch to keep "hope" alive that wealthy white men will continue to be the center of the world.

John McCain is the "Great White Hope." ++

Joseph A. Palermo is an Associate Professor of American History at CSU, Sacramento and the author of two books on Robert F. Kennedy

 
Where Have You Gone, John?
His zesty attacks on corporate greed and inspiring plans for national service are no more.
Jonathan Alter, NEWSWEEK
Aug 2, 2008
http://www.newsweek.com/id/150477/output/print

In the middle of John McCain's dopey Britney & Paris attack ad, the announcer gravely asks of Barack Obama: "Is He Ready to Lead?" An equally good question is whether McCain is ready to lead. For a man who will turn 72 this month, he's a surprisingly immature politician—erratic, impulsive and subject to peer pressure from the last knucklehead who offers him advice. The youthful insouciance that for many years has helped McCain charm reporters like me is now channeled into an ad that one GOP strategist labeled "juvenile," another termed "childish" and McCain's own mother called "stupid." The Obama campaign's new mantra is that McCain is "an honorable man running a dishonorable campaign." Lame is more like it. And out of sync with the real guy.

Of course, it might work. Maybe depicting Obama as a presumptuous and vaguely foreign presence will resonate. (Why else would one of McCain's slogans be "An American president for America"?) Maybe voters will agree with McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, who played the fussy card last week by arguing the central importance to the future of the republic of Obama's taste for "MET-Rx chocolate roasted peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew called Black Forest Berry Honest Tea." (Davis somehow forgot to mention McCain's own preference for $520 Ferragamo shoes.) Maybe convincing nervous white voters that Obama is another Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson in his use of racial grievance politics will carry McCain to the White House.

But this is not 1988, when Vice President George Bush turned Michael Dukakis into an unpatriotic coddler of criminals. (Bush that year had a popular president and a strong economy behind him.) And it's not 2004, when his son Swift-Boated John Kerry. (The president would have likely won anyway by playing on post-9/11 fear.) This year, McCain is running under a tattered Republican banner, with more than 80 percent of the public thinking the country is on the wrong track. Without some compelling vision beyond support for offshore drilling, the negativity may well boomerang. "It's hard to imagine America responding to 'small ball' when we have all these problems," says John Weaver, McCain's chief strategist in 2000 who was pushed out of the campaign last year.

With the exception of Mark Salter, who is still friendly with Weaver, the rest of McCain's high command says Weaver is just bitter and disloyal. "Actually, it's being loyal," Weaver says. "I want him to win." He's despondent over the destruction of a priceless maverick brand. McCain's zesty Theodore Roosevelt-style attacks on corporate greed and inspiring plans for expanding national service are gone, replaced by Karl Rove's playbook. "When was the last time you heard the word 'reform' or 'service' come out of his mouth?" Weaver asks. "We need to return to the John McCain who speaks his mind. Instead, it's Dick Butkus running a West Coast Offense or Wilt Chamberlain playing point guard. It's not going to work."
 
That's because McCain is patently insincere when his heart's not in it, like a little boy who eats his peas when his parents tell him to but remains transparently unhappy about the experience. It's not clear how committed McCain himself is to this latest assault on Obama. Does he genuinely believe that Obama is an out-of-control egomaniac who thinks he's Moses? McCain no doubt comforts himself that the ad making that argument—an argument that is beneath a major-party candidate for president—was not part of a big media buy but just chum thrown to the media piranhas via the Drudge Report.

McCain's erratic campaign has GOP strategists scratching their heads. The obvious play for him was to tack right during the primaries, then navigate back to the center, where American general elections are always won. Conservative base voters can rarely be turned into McCain enthusiasts. But most will reluctantly vote for him. So why jeopardize his standing with independents by being grouchy and partisan? Makes no sense.

I misread McCain. On the night of the 2000 South Carolina primary, I was in his hotel suite and watched Cindy weeping over what Rove and his goons did. Her husband was plenty mad, too. Now he's got Rove's protégé, Steve Schmidt, running his campaign. Eight years ago, McCain profusely apologized for playing racial politics in South Carolina by backing efforts to fly the Confederate flag at the state capital. Now he's content to see race crowd out the economy in the battle for precious media oxygen. McCain argues that Obama opened himself up to attack by saying, "They're gonna say he doesn't look like those other presidents on the dollar bills." But if his campaign hadn't leaped on that Obama comment, it would have been another. Accusing the other guy of playing the race card is a not terribly subtle form of, well, playing the race card—and the victim.

The real question is what all of this might mean for a McCain presidency. The list of troubling portents is growing long: repeated campaign staff upheavals reflecting poor management skills; abrupt reversals on big issues like tax cuts and relations with Russia (where he was superhawk one day and superdove the next); shameless pandering on a gas-tax holiday that even his own economic advisers think is a joke; confused handling of Social Security that annoys all sides of the debate; bogus charges (e.g., Obama is causing high gas prices, Obama didn't visit wounded soldiers because he couldn't take the press) that undermine his integrity; and an angry, bunker mentality among aides that one GOP operative, fearing excommunication from Team McCain if identified, describes as "lacking only a Luger and a cyanide pill."

Victory for McCain would hardly prove redemptive. "You can't govern winning this way," Weaver says. "We've seen that after the last two elections." And defeat would leave John McCain feeling more than the usual depression, wondering why he mortgaged his precious personal honor just to trade up to the White House. ++

"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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