2008 Campaign

When McCain jumped on Biden’s recent comment that Obama will be tested soon after he becomes president, he reminded us of JFK’s first few months in office when he was faced with the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was in high school during that time, (I’m not as old as McCain), and I have an abominable memory, so I looked it up online.

I’m glad I did, because I was reminded that the missile crisis was not the first test faced by the president - his first test, which he failed rather badly, was the Bay of Pigs. And it wasn’t a foreign power that tested him - it was the CIA.

Just a few months after his inauguration, Kennedy learned of a CIA plot that had been hatched during the Eisenhower years. The intent was to remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuba, just as previous US covert actions had helped remove the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954.

Kennedy’s “test” was to choose between (1) accepting the plan as presented to him, or (2) changing the plan so that it would give him better political cover in case things went wrong, or (3) scrapping the plan completely and deciding to negotiate with Castro instead of attempting to assassinate him. Kennedy chose (2), to our regret.

And this reminded me that a new president inherits many things from previous administrations, including a shadow government filled with spooks and operatives, policies and plans, all created to fit the politics and world view held by his predecessor. Kennedy inherited the plan to invade Cuba, just as Johnson inherited Vietnam, and either Obama or McCain will inherit Iraq and Afghanistan - along with perhaps hundreds of covert operations that normal citizens will never hear about. How the new president faces those challenges can affect us all for many years to come.

If the invasion of Cuba had worked out the way it was supposed to, perhaps Cuba would now be ruled by someone friendlier to US power - but history has shown us that people tend to hold grudges when their leaders are assassinated by foreign governments. If Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh had not been removed from power by a US-backed coup d’état in 1953, would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now be president?

When Obama taught law at the University of Chicago Law School, he sometimes noted that even the best-reasoned ideas have unintended consequences. That helps me believe that when the CIA director comes to his office next January with a plan that was created during the Bush years, he’ll be able to see beyond the ideology and wishful thinking, and rationally consider the possibility that things may not go exactly as planned. I’m also hoping that he knows his history well enough to know that the most important tests in foreign policy come often from within, rather than without.

These reports are important. See The Washington Post:

“Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the “failing march of his predecessor,” President Bush.

The Washington Independent:

Al Qaeda prefers an indefinite U.S. occupation of Iraq and a bellicose U.S. all across the Muslim world to radicalize Muslims to its terrorist cause and drain the U.S. of its financial wealth — what Osama bin Laden calls his “bleed to bankruptcy” strategy. Hence, the reason why, as the CIA eventually concluded, Bin Laden tried to help George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004 by releasing a late-October tape.

And TPM Election Central:

[Richard] Clarke, for his part, recently surmised that Al Qaeda might try to swing the election to McCain, perhaps with a terror attack.

And don’t miss the article on the National Security Network website.

I want to chime in about the Republican campaign’s purchase of a very expensive wardrobe for Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. After all, everyone else is talking about it, so why shouldn’t I?

Politico.com reported that the RNC spent almost $150,000 to make Palin look good on camera, including over $75,000 at Neiman Marcus, almost $48,000 for more clothes purchased in St. Louis, and almost $5,000 for makeup and hair styles.

There’s a temporary uproar on the 24-hour news channels about all that money being spent on high fashion for a “hockey mom.” The pundits are suggesting that it’s hypocritical for someone to call themselves a friend of Walmart shoppers to wear expensive clothes, but these newscasters wouldn’t be caught dead on camera in the kind of outfits you can find at Walmart. And it’s also somewhat ridiculous to suggest that you can’t empathise with the working class while wearing a nice suit.

I think the pundits are simply missing the point. The problem isn’t the clothes, per se. It’s about the money.

I live in a house that cost $75,000 two years ago. In less than two months the RNC managed to spend twice as much money as my house cost on clothes for a vice presidential candidate. Remember, these are the folks who support McCain - and he’s the guy who claims to be so worked up over unnecessary government spending. McCain objects to federal dollars going towards environmental research projects, like the bear DNA project that would help scientists study bear populations, and the famous “overhead projector” for a Chicago planetarium that is known for getting kids excited about the stars, but he has no problem spending a big chunk of the campaign’s limited money on clothes for his running mate.

Back in 2007, McCain’s primary campaign was so close to broke that they dismissed dozens of staffers. Now, as election day is just a few days away, the McCain campaign is hollering about all the money that Obama is spending for ads. It’s not fair, they say, that Obama didn’t accept public financing.

How many more ads (or robo-calls) could the Republicans buy in the next two weeks with that $150,000 Palin is wearing on her back? McCain seems to have a problem when it comes to setting rational spending priorities. (Maybe that’s because his own personal fortune is so large that he’s never really had to stick to a budget before, and doesn’t know how it’s done.)

Full story here:

Obama’s response:

For many weeks now (it feels like years) I’ve been wondering why McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. Why would someone who has served the nation with such honor for so long pick a running mate who has difficulty forming a sentence, who has never shown any interest in national or international affairs, who has serious ethical problems, and whose husband once belonged to a secessionist party? (By the way, check out this article in The New Yorker about Palin’s campaign to be chosen, starting right after she was elected governor.)

I think I finally figured it out. I initially assumed it was a purely political move to gain women voters - that McCain must have a deep disdain for women, which led him to the faulty belief that Hillary Clinton followers would automatically switch their devotion to anyone with breasts.

However, I don’t think that’s the reason, or not the only reason, why he picked Palin. I have now come to believe that McCain picked Palin because he has an even deeper disdain for the Religious Right.

From his choice of Palin we can either assume that (1) McCain believes all women are nitwits who will automatically vote for another woman, regardless of her policies or ideas, or we can assume that (2) McCain believes that people with deep, fundamentalist faith will vote for anyone who attends a church that is similar to their own, even if, as Colin Powell suggested today, she has no intellectual curiosity and is clearly not ready to be commander in chief. Or both.

Remember back when McCain spoke out against the “agents of intolerance”? It was only 8 years ago:

I recognize and celebrate that our country is founded upon Judeo- Christian values, and I have pledged my life to defend America and all her values, the values that have made us the noblest experiment in history. But public — but political intolerance by any political party is neither a Judeo-Christian nor an American value. The political… (APPLAUSE)

The political tactics of division and slander are not our values, they are…

(APPLAUSE)

They are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country.

(APPLAUSE)

Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.

Nice speech, John.

Today, thousands of people picked up their phone and heard ugly robo-calls from John McCain that can only be described as “political tactics of division and slander.”

The Palin pick was the first major sign that McCain was moving towards the dark side - he needs the social conservatives if he has any chance at all of winning, so he chose a running mate who attends a fundamentalist church back home in Wasilla, Alaska - she has the right religious credentials, so to hell with the any other consideration. (Ever notice how McCain says he’s “proud” of Palin whenever he’s asked about her qualifications, but never really tells us why?)

The choice of Palin will probably not fool nearly as many Christians as McCain expects - the social conservatives may love Palin for her beliefs and her spunky personality, but they are no more likely than anyone else to think she’s ready to be president. Many Republicans from the fiscal conservative wing of the party are already jumping ship. I suspect that many social conservatives out in the heartland are also beginning to suspect that Palin was a deeply disrespectful choice (there are, after all, intelligent, well educated and experienced people of faith that could have been chosen instead).

Colin Powell has officially endorsed Obama for president. Here’s why his endorsement matters:

If you watch the entire video of Powell’s endorsement, you’ll see that his decision was not made lightly. He has known John McCain for many years, and has a great respect for him. Both Powell and McCain have military experience, although McCain left the military to serve the US in congress, while Powell went on to become a General in the US Army, National Security Advisor (1987–1989), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993), and the nation’s first African-American Secretary of State (2001–2005). He may be the Republican that both Republican and Democratic Americans respect the most, although it may take a bit longer for some folks to completely forgive him for his UN speech on Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’, a speech that Powell himself calls a “blot” on his record.

(Update, 10/20/08 - Another general comes out for Obama. “Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency.”)

While listening to Powell’s endorsement interview, notice that he shows a deep concern for the actions and character of the two candidates, and specifically calls McCain out for his negative campaign tactics and the poor judgment he displayed in his selection of an unqualified candidate for Vice President. Although Powell doesn’t specifically use the words “Commander in Chief” in the interview, he clearly believes Obama has the intelligence and character to lead the United States in a time of crisis. McCain, on the other hand, has shown himself willing to divide the country along class and cultural lines, a ‘leadership’ style that cannot be condoned by someone who truly puts America first, as Powell has always done.

History has shown us that people are easiest to control when they’re scared. McCain and the Republican party are doing a fairly good job of transforming our current fear over our financial future into fear of the ’socialist’ and ‘anti-American’ policies of his opponent. I haven’t seen this kind of fear-mongering in American politics since the Goldwater candidacy. Honorable Republican leaders disowned Goldwater then, just as many are doing now, but the class warfare that Goldwater ignited did not go away when that election was over. There are some genies that you just can’t put back in the bottle.

If Obama overcomes the Republican smear campaign and wins this election, many Americans will undoubtedly hold on to the belief, deliberately fomented by the McCain campaign, that Obama represents an insidious anti-American cadre of radicals. If McCain loses the election, there is no doubt that he will try to do the honorable thing and tell the American people that “he didn’t really mean it” when he insinuated that Obama was a baby-killing terrorist - but at that point his followers are unlikely to believe him. That’s why other highly-regarded Republicans, like Colin Powell, will be needed so much in the months following the election.

Colin Powell believes that Barack Obama is the best man to lead America in this troubling time. And one thing Powell understands best is the kind of character it takes to be a true leader.

I confess - one of the reasons I didn’t support Hillary in the primary was the thought of having Bill wandering around the White House with nothing to do. I think Bill was a good president, aside from his zipper problem, but he’s so accustomed to power that it just seemed like it would be too big a job to ‘manage’ him and keep him on the sidelines where he belonged.

Michelle, Cindy and Jill fit our image of a first or second spouse, but Todd is a different kettle of fish. From reports coming out of Anchorage, he sits in on government meetings and he is copied on government policy emails. There’s even a joke in the legislature that comes up when they’re waiting for a decision from the governor’s office - “What would Todd do?”

In the small circle of advisers close to the governor, these people say, Mr. Palin is among the closest, and he plays an unpaid but central role in many aspects of the administration of Ms. Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president. http://www.nytimes.com

So, if Todd is the sort of person who would mess around in government business without being elected to office, and if Sarah is the sort of person who would let him get away with it, we need to look at this as the national security issue that it is. Who is this guy, anyway? Do we want him to have access to classified documents? Do we want him talking to national leaders from other countries? Do we want him influencing one of the most powerful people in the world?

I think the reporters need to go back to Alaska and give this guy a real close look. And McCain needs to tell us, specifically, what measures he’ll take to protect our nation’s secrets from this meddling spouse.

On another note, here’s a take from the Anchorage Daily News, telling us why the McCain campaign is so desperate to keep a lid on the Troopergate investigation:

Why do she and her new handlers in the McCain camp believe there is something in Troopergate that could cost them the election?

The real damage to Palin from Troopergate comes with an injury claim involving trooper Wooten when he hurt his back while in the line of duty.

Independent investigator Steve Branchflower testified recently he believes someone in the governor’s office tried to block Wooten’s workers’ compensation injury benefits….

Here’s why this is all so damaging to the governor. It’s one thing to try to get a trooper fired because you believe he is a danger to the public. But using your considerable power as governor to block the benefits of a former family member you have a long-running dispute with moves this scandal into a new realm.

It becomes about one thing and one thing only, revenge. Not public good, but settling a score.

The following article is by Wick Allison, and appeared on dmagazine.com

THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me.

In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher.

Conservatism to me is less a political philosophy than a stance, a recognition of the fallibility of man and of man’s institutions. Conservatives respect the past not for its antiquity but because it represents, as G.K. Chesterton said, the democracy of the dead; it gives the benefit of the doubt to customs and laws tried and tested in the crucible of time. Conservatives are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political program against actual results.

Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good.

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

Write to wicka@dmagazine.com.

My daughter recently asked me what the Watergate scandal was all about. Unfortunately, I had a senior moment and all I could remember was a botched break in, something about a lawyer, and claims that Nixon was trying to change the course of an election. Sad…

So I bought Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, by Rick Perlstein, to refresh my memory.

I haven’t got to Watergate yet, but on page 28 I read a passage that feels peculiarly up-to-date. The author is talking about Nixon’s first congressional campaign, in which he ran against a well-loved congressman that many believe was the inspiration for the movie Mr Smith Goes to Washington:

He [Nixon] and Chotiner [Nixon's campaign manager] were chartering the Nixon method. You didn’t have to attack to attack. Better, much better, to give something to the mark: make him feel that he has one up on you . Let him pounce on your “mistake.” That makes him look unduly aggressive. Then you sprang the trap, garnering the pity by making the enemy look like a self-righteous and hyperintellectual enemy of common sense, … inspiring a strange sort of protective love among voters whose wounded resentments grow alongside your performance of being wounded.

Nixon won.

The 2008 incarnation of this method is to just throw out a divisive and patently untrue remark, and let the opposition pounce. You still get the pleasure of watching the opponent being perceived as aggressive and self-righteous. You still garner the protective love of voters who hate to see anyone ‘picked on’, even though you started it. And you still profit from wounded resentments. But you don’t need Nixon’s poker-playing genius to make it work.

Many people are now encouraging Obama to get ‘tough’ and fight back harder. However, that simply plays into the game. Will Obama figure out how to neutralize this strategy? Only time will tell.

I’m a liberal, so I did what I had to do and voted for John Kerry in the last election. But all during the campaign I kept wishing I could be voting for that Obama guy instead. You know - the one who said at the convention that there aren’t any red states or blue states, just the United States?

Now that I actually get my chance to vote for Obama, I admit that this is the first election I’ve been truly excited about since Kennedy ran - and I wasn’t anywhere near old enough to vote in that one.

There were exciting, emotionally-charged changes when Kennedy won, even in the small towns of America where I was still in grade school. Our town is unlikely to have voted for Kennedy (only one family in town was Catholic, and, believe it or not, that was a real issue in 1960), but his vision was bigger than the divisions between left and right.

Our math and science classes suddenly took on more meaning, and our teachers were more enthused. I can remember being pushed out onto the soccer field to kick the ball around because our teachers said that Kennedy wanted America’s children to be fit and healthy. I can remember being taken to our teacher’s house to watch John Glenn’s return to Earth in 1962, an achievement that we associated with Kennedy’s dream to land an American on the moon.

Even school kids were energized and excited by Kennedy’s vision for America. I believed that Obama could bring those days back, when we were encouraged to dream, and serve the greater good.

Months ago I started out hopeful and enthused about the opportunity to see the country turned around - the possibility that people might actually have access to health care someday, that we might have a president who thought things through before rushing into wars over oil, and that our economy would get back on the right footing by investing public money into infrastructure and green technology.

I hoped that Obama would keep reminding us that we’re all in this together, and that our individual service to America can bring about the change our children need for the 21st century.

Yet, even with all my enthusiasm for Obama’s vision, I still felt confident that we wouldn’t be all that bad off even if he lost. McCain seemed like an honorable man, someone who really had America’s interest at heart, even though, as a liberal, I disagree with him on most of the major issues. After all, he has that grandfatherly look that seems so harmless.

But the tone of the campaign has changed so much that I no longer feel ‘excited’ so much as drained from a week-long adrenaline rush.

I’m no longer ‘enthused’ - I’m worried that things may actually get worse instead of better. The man at the top of the Republican ticket has already abdicated in favor of his running mate, and Sarah Palin has the same black and white, for us or against us Bush-like worldview that is so dangerous on the world stage.

And the Democratic campaign somehow morphed into a fight against something - against Bush, against Palin. The word “change” doesn’t mean all that much anymore, because it’s come unpinned from the larger vision. The Republican tactic of setting people against each other is working, again.

But I see an opportunity in McCain’s choice of Palin for VP. There is no longer any way that the Republican campaign can belittle Obama’s star quality. That gives Obama the opportunity to skip all the detailed policy talks and go for the big venues - and give those rousing speeches that he does so well.

Barack, forget the “McCain is Bush” strategy. There’s no emotional power in it. Ignore Palin, if possible - she was thrown into the race as a distraction, and the people who are willing to vote for her ‘because she’s just like us’ will never vote for you.

Instead, bring together as many thousands of people as possible, as often as possible, and give them the speeches you gave at the beginning of the campaign. If you can’t remember how invigorating those speeches were, for both you and us, perhaps you need a few days of silent, solitary time to regain your perspective.

The Republicans learned that division wins elections back when Nixon was running, and they’ve been using the same tactics, successfully, ever since.

The only way to win against that kind of engineered cynicism is to go back to your roots - remind us why your vision of America is better. Make it personal - not about you, personally, but about me, personally. Show me how I can help rebuild this nation into the America that we lost back in the riots of 1968. Help us regain the optimism that drained away with the assassinations of America’s finest leaders, and with the polarization of America into ‘us’ against ‘them.’

Ask me to serve - not to serve your campaign, but to serve the country. Ask for sacrifice for the common good, something that candidates have been afraid to do for the last half-century. Remind us of who we are, and that we’re better than the divisive politics that pit soccer moms against welfare moms, and corporate fat cats against the Eastern elite. Those divisions were manufactured for the benefit of powerful men seeking more power - it has never been who we truly are, as a nation.

We’re better than that. You’re very good at reminding us of that. Now it’s time to remind yourself.