Am I the only one frightened by this image? From the New York Times Book Review of Susan Faludi’s The Terror Dream. The key thought:
“There are consequences to living in a dream.” We’ve sleepwalked into hallucination, regression and psychosis.
Somehow, this image is supposed to display hyper-masculinity. I am not sure the appropriate comment to make.
The man who invented “yadda, yadda, yadda”, the inspiration for the cross-dressing Klinger in M*A*S*H, and the only guy to be granted a posthumous parden in New York history (in 2003 by George Pataki). And he also was a American stand-up comedian, writer, social critic and satirist. San Francisco columnist Herb Caen had this summary of Lenny Bruce in 1959:
They call Lenny Bruce a sick comic, and sick he is. Sick of all the pretentious phoniness of a generation that makes his vicious humor meaningful. He is a rebel, but not without a cause, for there are shirts that need un-stuffing, egos that need deflating. Sometimes you feel guilty laughing at some of Lenny’s mordant jabs, but that disappears a second later when your inner voice tells you with pleased surprise ‘but that’s true’.
Some Lenny Bruce quotations:
The liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
A lot of people say to me, ‘Why did you kill Christ?’ I dunno, it was one of those parties, got out of hand, you know.
And of course, like every other subversive in America, Lenny Bruce had an FBI file, helpfully now public here. An account of his infamous trial is here.
A note on why this was written: I was challenged by a redditor about Senator Obama’s vote for the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The text of Obama’s speech on the floor of the Senate is here. Thanks to my challenger for the link. The actual back and forth is here. I’ve edited it a bit for posting.
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Obama’s vote in favor of the Military Commissions Act does disturb me greatly. More so than anything else about Obama as a candidate and future president.
However, I believe (and at this point it can only be a belief) that Barack Obama as president would restore habeas corpus and put an end to torture as a means of interrogation. He 
says so in his stump speech, but I do not blindly trust the words of those campaigning for public office.
After a cursory search of the web, I have not found a defense of Senator Obama’s vote. And given the two foundational principles – habeas corpus and the the responsibility of a government to treat those within it’s power humanely – that this bill in one way or another attacks (by suspending habeas rights for non-citizens with controversy over whether it applies to citizens, and by allowing testimony gained by means of torture)–it is difficult to see what a good man of principle may have been thinking. Even more, the MCA put into law the staggeringly flawed policy that is the Bush administration’s response to detaining possible terrorists.
But I do not merely admire Senator Obama because he is principled; just as important: he is both ambitious and pragmatic. Many principled men and women have broken their selves upon the system. I firmly believe it is possible to be both highly principled, and willing to compromise those principles at the right time, in order to preserve them.
As Lincoln did – suspending habeas corpus without calling on Congress; declaring slavery an evil, if anything is evil, yet not calling for its extermination.
I do not know what Obama was thinking when he cast that vote.
But my point is this: as disturbing as it may be, it is conceivable that a good and principled man or woman could vote for such a flawed law as this.
Centrism is not a dirty word. It is not our salvation either. I do not believe however Obama is trying to be a centrist. Rather, it seems to me he is trying to find the best solutions, words, and actions in a flawed world. Unlike Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, he is willing to be pragmatic in order to achieve what he wants. As the Clintons are; as Lincoln, JFK, and MLK were.
For me, the difference is that I trust that Obama has principles. Every position seems to contain both pragmatic and principled stands.
When I see Clinton, I only see pragmatism. She seems to believe that elections are games to get power; and with her power, she will do certain good things. Her focus is on the ends almost exclusively.
Obama seems to believe that elections are about convincing the country that his principles are right where possible, and compromising otherwise. Power is about making the changes he has brought the country around to with his election and using his position in office.
Kucinich seems to believe that elections are only won by the corrupt, and power is guaranteed to corrupt. It does not seem to me that Kucinich wants to win.
Oscar Wilde once said: “It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory and still to love it.” We are in a fallen world. I believe the institutions of our democracy are in grave danger. And I cannot countenance a leader who is unwilling to compromise in order to win.
Lincoln won his election on a platform of keeping slavery. And he meant it, it seems. Yet given the perspective of history, I would not have chosen another man to lead our country in that time – no matter how pure or how principled. Slavery was evil. Yet Lincoln’s decision, flawed as it may be, compromising his basic principles and the principles of our nation, still stands the test of time. It stands because he was able to bring the country to where he felt it should be.
And that is my hope for Obama.
Much of the media has now pronounced Obama’s campaign all but hopeless and anointed Hillary the Democratic presidential candidate. Why? A national poll showing Hillary with a 20-point lead over all contenders and an Iowa poll showing her, for the first time, taking a slim lead in Iowa. I am not sure Obama can win, but for me, this race seems far from over. Even Michael Crowley’s piece in TNR with the hope-filled title: “Hope sinks” gave me some reasons to believe there’s more to come. Here’s why:
Crowley in his piece used the same trope that the Hillary campaign has been handing out about Obama’s “new politics” – her campaign has tried to say Obama is caught in a catch-22, unable to criticize her or play politics without losing his mantle as the candidate of change, as the candidate of the new politics. Based on Obama’s campaign team, based on what I have gleaned of Obama’s personality from the various profiles, based on the fact that Obama was a Chicago politician, it’s obvious he’s ready and willing to play hardball. I frankly don’t see the contradiction being the politics of hope and political hardball. To say that politics is more than a game where we pick our positions based on carefully polled tactical decisions does not indicate you won’t criticize your opponents. It is one thing to say that politics has to be about more than character assassination, and another to be unwilling to take on your opponent’s positions. Conflating the two is nothing more than a tactic to confuse the issues, or an indication that a reporter is confused.
Of course, Obama has fed into this by refusing to mention Hillary by name. To me this seems like a tactical decision rather than a matter of principle. The time will come, and it will come soon when he will start criticizing her by name – apparently starting with the New Hampshire editorial excerpted below. He will call on her by name in a speech soon, after he begins to gain some points in the polls, at least in Iowa. And it will be news and will help build his momentum. For the past six months, I have been hearing about the fears from the Obama campaign that they will peak too early. That’s why I give some credence to reports such as this one that indicate that they plan on coming from behind just before the Iowa caucuses.
Crowley reports that Obama has the team and the organization in Iowa to succeed, and that if he is able to get some younger voters to the caucuses, he might succeed. Of course the youth vote always seems to disappear in elections. But with the strongest Democratic organization in Iowa and a veteran political team, this seems very important.
Another reason to think all is not over: the moment Hillary was anointed the presidential candidate, she made two mistakes. First, she voted for the Lieberman-Kyl bill that seems eerily reminiscent of the 2003 bill to authorize military force with Iraq. And then she accused a questioner of being planted by an opposition campaign when he asked a legitimate questions about her support for the Liberman-Kyl bill. This prompted the TNR blog headline “HAS HILLARY LET OBAMA BACK INTO THE RACE?”. Obama took the opening with an article in a New Hampshire paper:
I strongly differ with Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was the only Democratic presidential candidate to support this reckless amendment. We do need to tighten sanctions on the Iranian regime, particularly on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which sponsors terrorism far beyond Iran’s borders. But this must be done separately from any unnecessary saber-rattling about checking Iranian influence with our “military presence in Iraq.” Above all, it must be done through tough and direct diplomacy with Iran, which I have supported, and which Sen. Clinton has called “naive and irresponsible.” Sen. Clinton says she was merely voting for more diplomacy, not war with Iran. If this has a familiar ring, it should. [my emphasis]
And now we also find that the Clintons are beginning to do what they are so good at doing: alienating their potential allies by attacking anyone who disagrees with them. The Hillary camp is apparently put out by the quality of Obama’s foreign policy team and has asked Mr. Documents-in-my-Socks Sandy Berger to be an enforcer to let anyone supporting Obama know that they will have no place in a Clinton administration. It’s called cheap; and it’s called hardball. And Obama will hit back.
Clintonian hubris, an Obama strategy to put the pressure on Clinton late, with Iowa in a statistical dead heat, and a ton of other primaries following hard-upon Iowa. It seems to me that Obama has a good chance of winning even if he doesn’t hit his stride. And if he does, I feel this may be a short race.
Meanwhile, Ted Sorenson, close Kennedy confidante, makes a good case for Obama as the heir to JFK.
I’m not sure why Britain’s Telegraph or Matt Drudge consider this news, but Ted Sorenson, President John F. Kennedy’s speech writer and one of his closest aides, has declared Obama is the true heir to JFK’s legacy and a better candidate or president than Hillary or Bill Clinton, including this Obama campaign talking point:
“Judgment is the single most important criterion for selecting a president. At the time of the [1962] Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy’s powers of judgment were tested as no president has ever been tested. Fortunately for all of us, he really came up with the right answers. He was 45. Obama’s 46 so he’s an old geezer.”
The main reason I find the newsworthiness of this surprising is that Ted Sorenson made this explicit in an editorial for The New Republic [subscription required, as the article is in archives] in July, concluding:
[digg-reddit-me]Perhaps most tellingly, both [JFK and Obama] preached (and personified) the politics of hope in contrast to the politics of fear, which characterized Republican speeches during their respective eras. In 1960 and earlier, cynics and pessimists accepted the ultimate inevitability of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, much as today they assume a fruitless and unending war against terrorism. Hope trumped fear in 1960, and I have no doubt that it will again in 2008.
Although President Kennedy became the breakthrough president on civil rights, health care, and other liberal issues, he was not the most liberal candidate for the nomination in 1960. His emphasis on the importance of ethics, moral courage, and a multilateral foreign policy made him–like Obama–hard to pigeonhole with a single ideological label. His insistence that the United States “must do better” in every sphere of activity, including its cold war competition with the Soviet Union, caused some historians to mistakenly recall that he “ran to the right” of Richard Nixon on national security issues, forgetting his emphasis on negotiations and peaceful solutions.
JFK’s establishment opponents– probably not unlike Obama’s–did not understand Kennedy’s appeal. “Find out his secret,” LBJ instructed one of his aides sent to spy on the Kennedy camp, “his strategy, his weaknesses, his comings and goings.” Ultimately, Kennedy was both nominated and elected, not by secretly outspending or out-gimmicking his opponents but by outworking and out-thinking them, especially by attracting young volunteers and first-time voters. Most of Kennedy’s opponents, like Obama’s, were fellow senators–Johnson, Humphrey, and Symington–who initially dismissed him as neither a powerhouse on the Senate floor nor a member of their inner circle. That mattered not to the voters; nor does it today.
Above all, after eight years out of power and two bitter defeats, Democrats in 1960, like today, wanted a winner–and Kennedy, despite his supposed handicaps, was a winner. On civil rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the race to the moon, and other issues, President Kennedy succeeded by demonstrating the same courage, imagination, compassion, judgment, and ability to lead and unite a troubled country that he had shown during his presidential campaign. I believe Obama will do the same.
What seemed to me more newsworthy about the Telegraph article than the headline, and the bulk of the article which made this point:
The Kennedy legacy and the aura of Camelot have been powerful but largely unspoken themes underpinning the campaign of Mr Obama, another charismatic Harvard alumnus heralding a new era in politics.
Rather, Sorenson had some harsh words for each of the Clintons–however, nowhere near as harsh as the Republican candidate or Mike Gravel are and will be. He made all the main liberal criticisms of Hillary and Bill, saying that they had and will:
That’s new and news to me. And it follows a trend of many of those in the Establishment who do not believe another term of the Clintons is the answer. Certainly an improvement, but far from the answer.
Sorry for the extra-light blogging these past few days. I’m a bit under the weather and have no stomach for deep thoughts to intermingle my metaphors. In lieu of actual thoughts on a page, here are some thoughts by others:
As we remember the beginnings of Western civilization on this continent, we almost must look to our legacy:
“Tell the world why you’re proud of America. Tell them when the Star-Spangled Banner starts, Americans get to their feet, Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Central Europeans, East Europeans, Jews, Muslims, white, Asian, black, those who go back to the early settlers and those whose English is the same as some New York cab driver’s I’ve dealt with … but whose sons and daughters could run for this Congress.
Tell them why Americans, one and all, stand upright and respectful. Not because some state official told them to, but because whatever race, color, class or creed they are, being American means being free. That’s why they’re proud.As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but, in fact, it is transient.
The question is: What do you leave behind?”
Tony Blair to the United States Congress in 2003.
For those of you paying attention, President Pervez Musharraf, who has been ruling
Pakistan for the past eight years, won the presidential election in a landslide yesterday despite being weakened by all sides by domestic insurgencies, international opprobrium, and several constitutional and other crises. He won because of a last-minute deal he struck with the exiled leader.
The alliance is one that seems destined to fall apart, as Bhutto and Musharaff detest one another and represent two very different Pakistans. Bhutto will be entering the country in the next few days, with all charges against her dropped. She has already publicly declared that her life will be in danger by returning–whether from the Islamic militants who despise her or the current president, she did not say.
But let me spin this back to how this affects the race for president of the free world. As most people know, a few months ago, Senator Barack Obama made some comments about Pakistan in a foreign policy speech:
Let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will. [my highlighting]
Bhutto, speaking at a public session before the Council on Foreign Relations responded:
Well, I wouldn’t like the United States to violate Pakistan’s sovereignty with unauthorized military operations. But the issue that I would like to stress is that Barack Obama also said, if Pakistan won’t act. And that’s the critical issue, that the government has to act. And the government has to act to protect Pakistan’s own serenity and integrity, its own respect, and to understand that if it creates a vacuum, then others aren’t going to just twiddle their thumbs while militants freely move across the border. [my highlighting]
Now let me highlight the significance of that: the former Prime Minister of Pakistan and current power broker in that country seems to believe that Senator Obama’s position is defensible–for America to violate her own country’s sovereignty. Senator Clinton on the other hand, does not engage in hypotheticals because that would reveal her thinking, her calculations and blasted Obama for his “irresponsible” remarks.
My question is: why didn’t Obama engage with Clinton–or anyone–more heavily on this issue, which ended up being talked up as a gaffe rather than a considered position?