2008 Election

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.

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.

Today marks the 7th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on US soil. The names of 2,974 people were read from the victims list, and relatives of the dead observed a moment of silence. During this hotly contested presidential campaign year, America took a few quiet minutes to remember the past, and pray for a better future.

Someday another memorial will be built, perhaps in Washington DC, to commemorate the American lives that were lost in the Iraq war. During the dedication of that memorial, over 4,000 names will be read. But the brave American men and women who lost their lives in Iraq were not the victims of religious zealots with a grudge against the United States; instead, they sacrificed their lives fighting an unnecessary war.

In the five years since the Bush White House sent the first troops and planes to fight in Iraq, a mountain of evidence has been presented to congress and to the American people. Read the rest of this entry »