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Election 2008 McCain Politics

Contempt, high-minded, and glamorous

David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times profiled McCain’s introduction to the Senate – an introduction which seems to directly affect his politics and his policies today:

After five and a half years of listening to senators’ antiwar speeches over prison camp loudspeakers, Mr. McCain came home in 1973 contemptuous of America’s elected officials, convinced Congress had betrayed the country’s fighting men by hamstringing the war effort. But in the halls of the Senate, he discovered a new calling, at once high-minded and glamorous…

Under Mr. Tower’s ((Senator John G. Tower, a hawkish Texas Republican.)) tutelage, Mr. McCain turned his anger over the management of the Vietnam War into an all-or-nothing view of international conflict that became one of the few guiding principles in his otherwise unpredictable political career — from his opposition to sending Marine peacekeepers into Lebanon in 1983 to his current staunch support for the Iraq war. And when prominent conservative Christians later protested Mr. Tower’s nomination as defense secretary over accusations of drinking and womanizing, Mr. McCain’s furious counterattack opened the hostilities with that wing of his party that have persisted ever since.

And here we have the main elements of McCain’s politics today: an all-or-nothing policy of international conflicts; a contempt for anyone who would undermine one of these all-or-nothing bets; a taste for glamor;  ((Isn’t that tie Armani?)) and a noble sense of his self and his work.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics

Hayden on Obama: I didn’t see him coming.

Tom Hayden wrote in the Huffington Post last week about his journey from Bobby Kennedy to Barack Obama, beginning with his rage and disappointment in electoral politics and the American system after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated:

On June 4, 1968, I watched from a New York townhouse the murder of a second Kennedy in five years. Martin Luther King already was gone, Vietnam and our cities were burning. I was in the midst of chaotic planning for anti-war demonstrations at the Democratic Convention coming in August.

I drifted off with friends to St. Patrick’s Cathedral where Kennedy staffers let us through the doors late at night. After sitting a while in silence, I found myself as a member of a makeshift honor guard standing next to his simple coffin. I was wearing a green Cuban hat and weeping. The last political hope of the Sixties vision – a movement-driven progressive government – was finished, whether by chance or plot, it mattered little. The violence I had resisted under white racism in the South was seeping into my veins. Like many who took their rage even farther, I was hardening, and never dared again to recover my young idealism.

Hayden seemed to have lost faith in the democratic system after Kennedy’s assassination, though he remained involved in California state government.  Nearly forty years later, he refused to see Obama as an authentic progressive leader, despite pleas from his son to take a look at the candidate.  Hayden was skeptical.  But, after the landmark wins in Iowa and South Carolina, Hayden endorsed “the movement Barack Obama leads”:

Barack Obama is giving voice and space to an awakening beyond his wildest expectations, a social force that may lead him far beyond his modest policy agend. Such movements in the past led the Kennedys and Franklin Roosevelt to achievements they never contemplated. [As Gandhi once said of India’s liberation movement, “There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”]

We are in a precious moment where caution must yield to courage. It is better to fail at the quest for greatness than to accept our planet’s future as only a reliving of the past.

Hayden remains skeptical and demanding – as he was towards Bobby Kennedy while working with him in 1968 – but Obama’s candidacy has allowed him to hope again:

Those who denounce Obama – and the possibilities of all electoral politics – should ponder the effectiveness of sitting judgmentally on the sidelines while an Unexpected Future arrives through the sheer will of a new generation. They should consider whether politics and history can be reduced to a fixed determinism that is endlessly repeated, as if there are no surprises. We can have our differences with Obama’s specific policies, as I certainly do, but those should be measured against the prospect that a movement might transform him even as his very rise continues to transform the rest of us.

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Election 2008 Foreign Policy McCain National Security Obama Politics

America: Kind of Like Spider-man

Fred Kaplan of Slate asks and answers the question that McCain will keep posing to the American people for the next five months: “Is Barack Obama too naive to be president?”  Kaplan’s answer:

No matter who is elected this November, the next president will have to take extraordinary steps to translate this global reach into power and influence—to restore American leadership. One of the main challenges in this effort will be to prove to others that this leadership is desirable.

The new reality is that to a degree we haven’t seen in our lifetimes, the United States is a normal country—a very powerful country, but normal nonetheless: not a superpower. A presidential visit, in this light, is not such a big deal. Or, to the extent that some countries might still regard it as a visitation from on high, it may be just the jolt to get things moving.

Either way, not only was Obama’s remark not naive; it reflected a more instinctive understanding of the post-Cold War world than either of his opponents seem to possess.

This does seem to be the growing consensus in the world of those who study foreign policy – as Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations suggests we are in an age of nonpolarity and Fareed Zakaria writes that we are now entering a Post-American world.  All of these figures believe that America still has the power – and the responsibility – to be the first among equals.  But we are no longer the single hyperpower dominating the globe or one of two dueling powers competing for every corner of it.  Instead, we are one of many – a nation with unique gifts and great responsibility.

Kind of like Spider-man.

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Election 2008 History Liberalism Obama Politics

Obama is our excuse

[digg-reddit-me]Last week, Charles Hawley, writing for Der Spiegel, declared that “The Social Democrats [of Germany] have no Obama.” This is the second article in Der Spiegel in the past month to reprise this theme.

Around the world, with David Cameron in the United Kingdom gaining strength and Gordon Brown losing it; with Silvio Berlusconi taking power again in Italy; with Nicolas Sarkozy, though struggling today, still the dominant figure in French politics; with Angela Merkel in Germany, Stephen Harper in Canada, Felipe Calderon in Mexico, Lee Myung-bak in South Korea, and Ma Ying-jeou in Taiwan – all center-right politicians – taking power in the past four years; and with Russia’s drift towards a 19th century autocracy and China’s successful resistance to liberalization, it seems that the world is drifting rightward. Since September 11 and especially since George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004, most of the leading world democracies and many of it’s leading autocracies have reversed progressive trends and generally adopted a center-right course.

But the worldwide left today has one figure it can look to – standing against this tide in one of the most rightward leaning democracies – and succeeding in ways that are redefining American politics: Barack Obama.

That is why when evaluating the state of Italian politics or German politics – liberals bemoan their lack of success, their lack of inspiration by saying: “We have no Obama.”

This seems to be an attitude that Obama himself would reject. In observing the crowds thronging to his speeches, the enthusiasm that has swept him to the nomination, the excitement in the air, the sense of hope and opportunity at long last, Obama observed to Michael Powell of The New York Times:

“I love when I’m shaking hands on a rope line and” – he mimes the motion, hand over hand – “I see the little old white ladies and big burly black guys and Latino girls and all their hands are entwining. They’re feeding on each other as much as on me….It’s like I’m just the excuse.” [My emphasis.]

Although Obama’s campaign has enabled his success, he understands that the success is not his own. It is of this particular moment in history – this American moment – and he understands that he is not the cause of this movement or this moment, but merely the excuse.

Obama himself is just an excuse to allow Americans to find themselves again, to find their way again, to reclaim their nation, to restore our values to our government. ((As an aside, I can’t think of a healthier way for a leader to think of him or herself – as merely the excuse other people use to do better.)) What Obama’s campaign offers and his presidency will offer is not solutions imposed from Washington, but an opportunity for us to engage with our government, to affect our politics, to make America once again a government of the people. Obama is proposing modest steps – as the tinkerer he is – to make the deliberations behind health care public; to create a website that encourages citizens to provide suggestions and feedback about government programs; to encourage transparency in law-making; to create “a web site, a search engine, and other web tools that enable citizens easily to track online federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts with government officials”; to require “his appointees who lead Executive Branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public” and online; and to make as much government data as universally available as possible.

He’s providing a good excuse, but we still need to do the work.

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Domestic issues Election 2008 Libertarianism Obama Politics The Web and Technology

The Drudge Primary

Matt Drudge is far and away the most influential force in journalism and political coverage today. He has dominated the political press coverage ever since he broke story after story in the summer of 1997 almost singlehandedly keeping Monica-gate alive. In 2000 and 2004, he was a major force in the conservative message machine as it attacked Al Gore and John Kerry. But in the past year, as Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith of the Politico observed:

[Matt Drudge has] emerged as an unreliable ally for the GOP, while trumpeting Obama’s victories and shrugging at his scandals.

“It’s clear to us that Barack Obama has won the Drudge Primary, and it’s one of the most important primaries in this process,” conceded a senior aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also acknowledged that Drudge’s treatment of Obama could make the Illinois senator more electable in November.

The article offers several explanations for Drudge’s apparent preference for Obama. Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, suggests that Drudge has a good sense of the “zeitgeist” and can see it shifting. Although I think that must be a factor, the more convincing explanation seems to be Drudge’s reputed libertarian streak. McCain is probably the most anti-libertarian candidate the Republican party has – from his positions on civil liberties in the War on Terrorism, to the use of government as a tool against big business, to limiting free speech for campaign finance reform. Obama, though in favor of more economic intervention than McCain, does seem to be more sympathetic to libertarianism as a whole – especially with regards to civil liberties.

Whatever the reason, Drudge, so far, has seemed to tilt towards Obama. And that could be a major factor in the lead-up to November.

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Election 2008 Humor Obama Politics Videos

Bloggers Track Down “Michelle Obama ‘Whitey’ Tape”

[digg-reddit-me]The rumor of a tape with Michelle Obama using a slur against white people has finally been substantiated and Barack Obama has been caught in a lie! I am disillusioned.

On to the videotape:

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan and John Cole for finally getting the word out there.

This is almost as serious as Dunkin Donuts’ promulgation of terrorism. Almost.

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Humor Videos

Some of the best scenes from The Office

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

The Spectacular Failure of Hillary Clinton

No – I’m not talking about her campaign – although the tag could just as easily apply to her mismanaged attempted coronation.  From Daniel Koffler of Jewcy:

On Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton gathered her supporters in a literal concrete bunker several stories beneath the surface of the earth, with walls thick enough to block out all cellular reception and no TV monitors or any other medium of communication with the outside world. There, amid cheers of “Denver! Denver!” she congratulated her friend Senator Obama for having run a sporting race, proclaimed herself the rightful victor, and appealed to Americans young and old to pawn their video games and withdraw from their pension accounts (respectively) in order to keep her historic campaign squarely on track to the White House. Yet by the following evening, her aides announced the suspension of her campaign and her endorsement of Barack Obama.

What transpired in those fewer-than-24 hours? Only the most audacious squeeze play of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s political careers, and – because of its spectacular failure – the last.

The rest here.  I think the Clintons may have a few more power plays left in them.  But their latest failure is yet another sign that we are entering a new post-Clinton era.

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Life

The Saddest Picture…

Ever.

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Criticism Humor Law

Kinky details enclosed…

Sexual harassment attorney accused of sexual harassment!!  With kinky details enclosed – it’s a perfect tabloid story. Both New York papers took a similar angle for the lede…

Jose Martinez’s lede from the New York Daily News:

The founder of a Manhattan law firm dedicated to empowering women is a chauvinist pig with pierced genitals who wore a bondage collar at work…an explosive new suit charges. [Ellipses added for dramatic effect.]

Under the headline “ANTI-BIAS CRUSADER HAS ‘KINK’ IN ARMOR“, Dan Mangan’s New York Post lede is virtually identical:

A leading lower Manhattan women’s-rights lawyer watched porn at his desk, discussed his “pierced genitalia” and wears a “slave” collar at work as part of a sadomasochistic relationship with his girlfriend…a shocking sex- harassment suit alleges. [Ellipses added for dramatic effect.]

I personally have seen how the Daily News and Post have made up bogus facts to bolster their stories, so I don’t know what to make of this.  Most important, their ledes are dishonest – while factually accurate.  From a distance – where I am, it’s kind of funny to see the detailed allegations laid out with the disclaimer briefly hanging onto the sentence at the end – but for those involved it must be infuriating.

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