A Failure of Leadership

I am disappointed that American politicians, pundits and economists, on both the left and right, are condemning Standard & Poor's for lowering the US debt rating. It's like being arrested for a crime that you committed and then calling a press conference to say you're disappointed in the police for arresting you.

There are all kinds of valid criticisms of S&P, but they're moot. Last week, the US government came within hours of defaulting on its debt. That's enough to downgrade its credit rating. Worse, the agreement that broke the impasse in Congress is highly dubious and doesn't bode well for future economic or political well-being of the United States.

There was never any question about the US being unable to pay its debt. This crisis was wholly political and wholly manufactured, and yet very real. Hyperpartisanism and a weak president have made the US a riskier place to invest.

Obama is facing an incredibly difficult situation - an inherited economic crisis, an inherited war, a long-term slide in US fortunes, and an invigorated extremist opposition - so I'm not saying his job is easy, but he just doesn't seem up to it.

So what could the US president have done? Here are a few thoughts...

The 14th amendment, which prescribes the debt ceiling and which was passed in 1868 for very different reasons than exist today, creates a situation that is almost unique in the world: after agreeing to and implementing a budget, the US government has a separate process to agree on the amount of money it can borrow to pay for the budget. The debt ceiling doesn't prevent the government from contracting financial obligations; it prevents it from paying what it owes. It's bad government, and some constitutional scholars believe that the supreme court would overturn it if asked.

After the last midterms Obama should have seen this debt ceiling crisis coming, and taken action in advance. He could have taken steps to get it overturned. He could have taken a page from Dick Cheney's playbook and unilaterally adopted more executive power. He could have paved the way with a PR campaign. He could have bluffed, telling the Republicans that if they didn't agree to a compromise then he'd raise the debt ceiling himself. You might say that the Democrats are hoist on their petard since they voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2006, but that's all the more reason to get out in front of the issue early.

It boggles the mind why the Democrats are continuing to try to be even-handed, compromising negotiators when dealing with the tea party. Obama was reactive throughout the negotiation, and in the end he even praised the agreement that broke the impasse (which gives extraordinary budget-cutting power to 12 members of congress).

US debt could be easily curtailed by (1) rolling back the Bush tax cuts on the rich, which were supposed to expire in 2012, anyway; and (2) reducing the military budget.

Republicans have been able to paint Democrats as reckless spenders, turn the military budget into a sacred cow, and make it nearly impossible to increase taxes. The Democrats could have countered all that. They could have played hard ball. They could have provided better leadership.

It's a good thing that Standard & Poor's downgraded the US credit rating because when a country is that irresponsible and dysfunctional, there should be repercussions. Both parties need a wake-up call. And Americans should be mad as hell. If they had missed the debt ceiling deadline on August 2, it wouldn't just have been bond holders who might have suffered. Medicare, Social Security and unemployment insurance were all on the line, along with the salaries of the military, federal workers, and the rest of the US government's obligations.



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Travel Alert

The comments this weekend on Globe & Mail articles about the US State Department's latest travel alert are unanimous in claiming that it is a fraud. They opine that the government is warning Americans away from European capitals as a way to scare the public into voting for incumbents in the upcoming election and as a way to deflect public attention from more important matters, like the economy. Many express amusement that there will be less Americans in Europe creating queues at art galleries and so on.

Canada, the US, and other countries regularly issue travel alerts, and anyone who travels should get in the habit of checking them before buying tickets. They aren't a joke, they aren't political, and they carry repercussions in terms of whether you'll be bailed out if things go wrong. See travel advisories from the US, Canada and the UK.

The current travel alert for Europe does not warn people against going to Europe; it merely describes an ongoing threat and current concerns by European governments, and suggests that US citizens register with a US travel service. I wouldn't cancel a trip because of it, but it would cause me to keep my ears open for possible developments.

There are times when you can take advantage of non-existent but perceived threats. When Reagan bombed Libya in 1986, I immediately made plans for a European holiday. American tourists were terrified of terrorism in Europe that summer and stayed away in droves. I rented a car for three weeks and did a driving tour to French 3-star restaurants. I could walk in to establishments that normally required at least a year's advance booking, and they were grateful to see me. It was quite a trip - mired only by being doused with radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. But that's another story.

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1984

The scariest thing I ever read is an account (I read decades ago) of a torture training session in a Latin American country. Prisoners were used to demonstrate and practice methods of torture, which took the inhumanity of torture to an even higher level than the torture itself.

That level of inhumanity is almost matched in recent revelations about the Bush government's policies on torturing Muslims suspected of anti-American activities. Every act was scrupulously proscribed, monitored and reported. There was little random abuse. Every detail, down to the number of calories a day they were kept alive on, the temperature of the water used to torture them, and the number of hours they could be kept in various sized boxes, was detailed.

As details of the practices leaked, the public rose in angry protest, to no avail. The Bush administration even ignored a 2006 demand by the the US Supreme Court to stop torturing prisoners and follow the Geneva Convention.

It's a tricky political road for one president to preside over the prosecution of his predecessor (as we have found with our inability to prosecute Brian Mulroney), but Obama must bring justice to this case. As a New York Times editorial says today, "Only by making public officials accountable under the law can Americans be confident that future presidents will not feel free to break it the way Mr. Bush did."

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We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us

A recent poll found that Canadians are feeling more positive about the US: 68% of Canadians view the US favorably, compared to 55% two years ago.

This surprises me, because our little country is taking a mighty drubbing in American political circles and media these days. They have decided that our approach to health care is shite. It's not just the health care lobby and Republicans who are describing Canadian health care as a failed system: even many pro-reform Democrats are saying ignorant, negative things about Canadian health care.

Americans aren't just critical of our health care system. They're not just disdainful. To hear some pundits, our health care system is the boogie man: the health care equivalent to the Axis of Evil. We're the North Korea of the health care debate - the Iran, the Sadaam Hussein, the Hitler. We're the Red Menace. Our health care mistakes must be avoided At All Cost.

If you believe US television, Canada is a hotbed of commie craziness where zombyized citizens sit in hospital hallways, desolate in cracked plastic chairs, waiting for death while government bureaucrats shuffle stacks of paper and discuss union action. And we have crap quality drugs, too. Even so-called balanced stories leave the impression that wait times for medical procedures are peculiar to Canada, while in reality there are wait times in both systems.

The only safe haven for sick Canadians, according to many pundits, is the free world's leader and beacon: the United States, where we flock by the million to buy the best health care in the world.

My second cousin Bubba in Memphis even called my mother to ask how we survive it.

There isn't any reasoning with the Canada-bashers...



But for the record: the World Health Organization has ranked Canada significantly higher on both the level of health care service and the overall health of citizens.

The life expectancy in Canada is 80.7 years, compared to 78.1 in the US. For every 1,000 live births in Canada, 5.0 infants die; in the US, it's 6.7. A recent study found that 92% of Canadians are happy with their primary health care.

Government-run health care is also much more cost efficient. Canada spends US$3,895 per person on health care; Americans spend US$7,290. Narrowing that down to government spending, the Canadian government spends US$2,120 and the US government spends US$2,724 per person. And no, the discrepancy is not due to malpractice, which accounts for less than half of one percent of US spending. Universal health care hasn't left us without doctors: there are roughly the same number of doctors per capita in Canada and the US (2.2 per thousand in Canada; 2.4 per thousand in the US).

Compared to Canada, "U.S. residents are one third less likely to have a regular medical doctor, one fourth more likely to have unmet health care needs, and are more than twice as likely to forgo needed medicines." The US has 45 million uninsured citizens and 16 million who are under-insured.

All indicators prove that Canada has better health care than the US. And yet Canada has nowhere near the best health care in the world: most European countries do a better job than we do.

The larger issue is the appalling level of public discourse in the United States. The odious health care debate is just one example. Another example: This deeply racist country elects its first black president, and when a distinguished black scholar who's a friend of his is roughed up by cops in his own home, Obama is pilloried for speaking up about it?!

But I'm not interested in that right now. What I'm steamed about is why Canadians aren't mad as hell about this relentless slagging of our health care system. Sure, we'll never convince them south of the border, but there should be a furious dialog in this country about being the target of ignorant and malicious defamation of our national character. We are damn lucky that most of the time Americans forget we exist; we can't let them redefine our reality. That American koolaid is something we don't want to drink.

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Too Thin to Plow, Too Thick to Drink

I spent some time in the state of Mississippi recently attending a family wedding. The happy event was in Natchez, a town full of antebellum mansions that escaped destruction during the Civil War because it was (to its current embarrassment) a hot-bed of Union sympathizers. Also, the crippling taxes of the Reconstruction era targeted agricultural production, while Natchez was primarily the second home for plantation owners. It had long been a place to party rather than to grow cotton.

I always enjoy touring historic houses and went to several. The docents tend to be local people with great enthusiasm and knowledge about the history of their part of the world (and in the South, they also tend to be great story tellers). In Natchez, as is typical in the South, history means the Civil War. During one tour someone asked a question about the American war of independence, and the docent said she didn't know anything about that, adding, "Around here we don't learn about the Revolutionary War in school. It isn't part of our history."

I have one Southern parent so I've grown up with a lot of exposure to Southern ways, and I've always noticed how steeped the South still is in the Civil War, but I never heard it put as blatantly as that before.

Growing up, it took me a while to understand how strange it is that the South is obsessed by an event that ended 144 years ago. My great-grandfather (universally known as Pappy), who died when I was 17 and who I was lucky to know very well, was born only ten years after the end of the War, so it is not surprising that he talked about it. But my entire family history is dominated by stories of the War. I know a great deal about what my ancestors did in the Civil War but virtually nothing about their activities in more recent conflicts.

I grew up hearing about Uncle Hoot's ex-slave helping Uncle Hoot walk home, injured, from a battlefield in Alabama, and their arrival two years after the end of the War when everyone thought Hoot long dead. There was also Uncle John who refused to wear blue jeans (Union colors) for twenty years after the end of the War, who then declared in 1885, "We fought that war for the wrong reasons" and finally put away his grey flannels. We still make pilgrimages to see the obelisk erected on his own gravesite by my great-great-grandfather, who had printed on its sides:

Robert Bruce Bowe
Born in
Petersburg, VA
Feb 29, 1833
Raised in
Hanover Co.
Moved to Miss.
Feb. 1, 1860
Died
Oct. 11, 1907

Co. A 7th Tenn. Cavalry CSA
July 1861 - Apr. 1865
We rode from Vicksburg to Nashville,
from Atlanta to Corinth,
to Fort Pillow and to Belmont, Mo.
Many a day and night
nothing to eat, our bed the cold sod,
the Stars and Bars and dear Mal were
the idols of my heart.

My aim through life was to do
unto others as would have them do
unto me, though some times had to fight
old Nick with fire.

I have no Flag or Country since 1865,
an Alien in the land that my fore Fathers
defended in war since 1624.
Providence taking the side with the strong and
oppressive
against the weak and just
has caused me to live in doubt
the last Forty years
and fear I will die so.

Growing up, many times I heard the story that my ancestors never acceded to the Union, with the conclusion left unsaid: that the authorities may think we're Americans, but in our hearts we still belong to Dixie.

I used to think that Civil War nostalgia was all about recalling a time when we were wealthy. People I knew in the South grew up poor, but their ancestors had lost immense wealth during and after the War. I was (and am) horrified by the slave-owning history in my own family and thought of the Civil War as primarily a way to preserve that barbaric practice.

But maybe I just wasn't Southern enough to get it. The South was and is a culture unto itself, and the Yankees really were oppressors. I used to think that Pappy's Uncle John finally came to his senses when he went back to wearing denim coveralls, but now I wonder if his original reaction wasn't the right one.

(The title of this post is an old joke about the Mississippi River.)

Miss Pronownciation

I just heard an anchor on CNN International pronounce Azberbaijan in a way so bizarre, so incorrect, that she must have read the word off her teleprompter wihtout ever having heard it before. Eyes squinting a bit, in a questioning tone, she laboriously said something like, Eh-zber-gee-an?

Now in Canada we obsess over pronunciation. A couple of decades ago there was virtually a national debate over Lithuania: Lith-YOO-ania or Lith-OO-ania. I believe it was Joe Clark who fell afoul of public opinion with a dodgy YOO version. I remember championing the OO side with some gusto, although I may have simply been unable to accept the articulation of a Conservative. After a great deal of taxpayer-subsidized research, the CBC made a ruling and, well, I seem to have forgotten what it was.

CBC announcers are given pronunciation guidelines. CNN announcers - not so much. They seem to wing it. For example, Qatar, usually pronounced something like kuh-TAR, is regulary called cutter on CNN. For that matter, American government officials often say cutter as well. Given the dominance of US TV, after a while the poor Qataris (kuh-TAR-ees) will probably give up and become KUT-ter-ees. That's certainly what happened to poor old al Qaeda - no AYE-EE left in that name.

Just guessing here, but the widespread disregard that American media has for the correct pronunciation of foreign words, isn't that based on a sense that Americans don't follow no furrin ways? This attitude has had some admirable effects - I am a great fan of American spelling and think it superior in all respects to British forms. But language is more than 99% about following and less than 1% about leading, and American visual media could show a little more respect for accepted pronunciation.

Ahmadinejad, anyone?

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Kicking Us When We're Down

The second most disturbing thing about this video, to me, is not the mentally deranged Roman Catholic priest who seems to be hyperventilating as he spews his venom, but the gleeful reaction of the parishioners in Barack Obama's church, Chicago's Holy Trinity. And there's nothing new about their reaction. These vile lies have been repeated with glee all over MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, the New York Times Op-Ed page, the Huffington Post and a host of other news/opinion outlets. It has, in fact, become "conventional wisdom" that Hillary Clinton is a hypocritical white bitch whose political aspirations are rooted in a sense of entitlement. (And how DARE a bitch feel entitled to run for president.)

The most disturbing thing about this video is the lackluster response from Obama.

John McCain responded promptly and unequivocally, saying, "I think that kind of language and that kind of treatment of Senator Clinton is unwarranted, uncalled for and disgraceful."

Obama waited four days to respond, and then issued a statement saying he was "deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause."

On the same day as Obama, Plefger issued a sort of backhanded non-apology: "I regret the words I chose on Sunday. These words are inconsistent with Senator Obama's life and message, and I am deeply sorry if they offended Senator Clinton or anyone else who saw them." (That phrasing, "I apologise IF you were offended" is a classic non-apology, implying that perhaps there's something wrong with you for taking offence; and "I regret the words" implies that he doesn't regret the message, just the way he conveyed it.)

The next day, Friday, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said, "We remain disappointed that Sen. Obama didn't specifically reject Father Pfleger's despicable comments about Sen. Clinton. We assume that he will... We think that he should because when Sen. Clinton's supporters see those comments, they are understandably angered by them. And it's important, I think, for the spirit of unity that we are all trying to create for Sen. Obama and his campaign to condemn them specifically."

We're still waiting.

This ongoing Hillary hating is all the more personal and nasty because she's lost. Obama supporters are just kicking us when we're down. I understand why a lot of women are starting to feel that they can't support Obama in the general election. I'm starting to wonder if I can.

And to those who say that Obama is not responsible for any old thing that gets said in his church, remember this: Pfleger was a member of the Obama campaign, actively stumping for him in Iowa; he was a member of an advisory committee to the Obama campaign called the Catholics for Obama Committee; he is a donor to the campaign; and he is a long-time friend and political supporter.

Obama's wishywashy half-hearted response, that he was "disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric", doesn't mention any of the hurtful issues: the sexism, racism or personal demonization of Hillary Clinton that was Plefger's main message and has been persistent throughout this campaign.

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The Iraq War in Historical Context

There's a must-read new article by Robert Kagan, Neocon Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776, that puts the Iraq war in historical context. If you disagree with what I excerpt here, please - read the whole article.

The gist is that there is nothing new or maliciously neo-con about the Iraq war. The Iraq war is perfectly consistent with 200 years of American history, up to and including the Clinton administration and virtually all US legislators and the American public. And "there has not been a single criticism leveled at neoconservatism in recent years that was not leveled at American foreign policy hundreds of times over the past two centuries." Later, he says, "The expansive, moralistic, militaristic tradition in American foreign policy is the hearty offspring of this marriage between Americans’ driving ambitions and their overpowering sense of righteousness."

Here's a little of what he has to say about the various players:

On critics of the war: "there was something more fundamental, and perhaps also more honest, about the debate over Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. When David Halberstam and others of his generation turned against the war, their objection went beyond personalities, tricks, and lies. The problem was not McNamara or Rusk or the misguided American military or the dishonest politicians. The “real problem,” Halberstam wrote, was more basic. It was “the failure to examine the assumptions of the era”—the widely shared assumptions about the nature of the Communist threat, about American interests in a place as far off as Vietnam, and above all, about the role of America in the world. It was the whole idea, which lay behind containment and the Truman Doctrine, of a “manifest U.S. destiny in the world,” the whole notion that the United States was the possessor of transcendent truth and was its best and only defender."

On public opinion: "The war was, as American wars go, immensely popular, both before and immediately following its launch—more popular than the wars in Kosovo and Bosnia, or the invasions of Panama and Grenada, and about as popular as the Persian Gulf War of 1991. It remained popular even after weapons investigators discovered none of the suspected caches of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons materials or the programs that the intelligence services of two American administrations and several European countries believed were there. A Washington Post/ABC News poll in April 2003 found that, nevertheless, more than 70 percent of Americans supported the war, and a CBS poll revealed that 60 percent of Americans believed it had been worth the sacrifice even if no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. A month later, a Gallup poll found that 79 percent of Americans considered the war justified with or without conclusive evidence that Saddam Hussein had possessed weapons of mass destruction, and only 19 percent believed the discovery of such weapons was necessary to justify the war. The war lost popular support only as it began to look as if the U.S. military was bogged down in a seemingly endless and possibly losing effort."

On Democrats and Republican moderates in the Senate: "In 2002, those voting to approve the war included everyone with even vague plans of running for president in either 2004 or 2008—not only John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Joseph Biden, but also Thomas Daschle, Tom Harkin, and Chris Dodd—as well as other Democrats who had no such plans such as Harry Reid, Byron Dorgan, Jay Rockefeller, and Charles Schumer, along with Republican moderates such as Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter. One can only speculate abut whether Barack Obama might have voted against the war had he been in the Senate in the fall of 2002. If Dodd and Harkin voted for it, either out of conviction or out of some distant thought of future presidential plans, would Obama alone have made a different calculation?"

On Bill Clinton: "...what has since been quietly and conveniently forgotten [is] that in 1998 the Clinton administration had changed its policy toward Iraq “from containment to regime change” and had begun “to examine options to effect such a change.” ...The Clinton administration had itself used force on several occasions, in Somalia, Sudan, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and, of course, against Iraq. It had used force without UN authorization. It had bombed and fired missiles into Iraq over the heated objections of France and other allies, and it had done so based on the same evidence of Saddam’s weapons programs that the Bush administration used to justify its war."

On Hillary Clinton: "When Clinton rose on the Senate floor to cast her vote in favor of the resolution “to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq,” the arguments she used were neither novel nor obviously disingenuous. ...Saddam Hussein, she noted, was “a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people, even his own family members, to maintain his iron grip on power.” He had used “chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians, killing over 20 thousand people.” He had “given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.” He had “invaded and occupied Kuwait,” and when the United States withdrew its forces after driving him out, he had taken his revenge against Kurds and the Shiites “who had risen against Saddam Hussein at our urging.” ...[However,] she opposed a “unilateral attack,” for if the United States went to war “alone or with a few allies,” such action would “come back to haunt us.” International support and legitimacy were “crucial” because, “while the military outcome” was “not in doubt,” “after shots are fired and bombs are dropped, not all consequences are predictable.”"

On Obama: "When Barack Obama talks about foreign policy, he evokes not Chomsky but Kennedy and insists America must be the “leader of the free world.” It must lead the way “in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.” Its “larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom.” He insists, in phrases that should appall any true realist, that the “security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people.” He wants to increase the defense budget, to expand the size of American ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 to the Marines to ensure that the United States has “the strongest, best-equipped military in the world.” He talks about “rogue nations,” “hostile dictators,” “muscular alliances,” and maintaining “a strong nuclear deterrent.” He talks about the “American moment” and how we need to “seize” it. He says we must “begin the world anew”..."

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You Don't Have to Support Hillary to Deplore the Sexism That Brought Her Down

Commenters on this blog have frequently made the claim that there was no anti-woman bias in the Democratic primary. I have provided plenty of evidence of it in the past, but here's some more material I happened upon today.

This video was put out by the Women's Media Center:



In addressing the issue of misogyny in the campaign, WMC President Carol Jenkins wrote this, in part: "Networks - in the year 2008 - still cannot seem to find women to anchor serious political programs. That every lead anchor for every network’s campaign coverage is a white male, suggests the work of inclusion is not being done. That every Sunday morning talk show—where what is news is decided—is hosted by men; that every late night show that gives us clever interpretation of the news is hosted by men; and where women behind the scenes still seldom hold veto power over blatant sexist behavior— it means that we have a media that is dysfunctional."

Here's a really good summary of one woman's reaction to the campaign: Misogyny I Won't Miss by Marie Cocco. It concludes, "There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture."

And a perspective from Andrew Stephens in the New Statesman: Hating Hillary: "History, I suspect, will look back on the past six months as an example of America going through one of its collectively deranged episodes - rather like Prohibition from 1920-33, or McCarthyism some 30 years later. This time it is gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind. It has been shamelessly peddled by the US media. ...The danger is that, in their headlong rush to stop the first major female candidate (aka "Hildebeast" and "Hitlery") from becoming president, the punditocracy may have landed the Democrats with perhaps the least qualified presidential nominee ever. But that creeping realisation has probably come too late, and many of the Democratic super-delegates now fear there would be widespread outrage and increased racial tension if they thwart the first biracial presidential hopeful in US history."

Obama supporters like to make the argument that misogyny doesn't matter because Obama has faced racism. To this I say:

(1) Obama has faced nothing like the overt female hatred that Hillary has faced. Find me one example of racism to rival the many examples of misogyny in the video above. And that video is really just the tip of the iceberg. Try reading the comments in any Huffington Post (or Washington Post) article about the campaign.
(2) It is illogical to dismiss a problem by citing the existence of another problem.

Want more proof? Try this video or this video or this one.

So when Paul Krugman says, as I quoted yesterday, that "many grass-roots Clinton supporters feel that she has received unfair, even grotesque treatment. And the lingering bitterness from the primary campaign could cost Mr. Obama the White House," Krugman is saying something serious. The campaign is over. Obama won. But we're left with a fractured and unhappy party heading into the general election. It isn't helping Obama's chances for his supporters to continue with the hate.

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Obama Supporters Attacked Hillary, but Obama Attacked Bill

In his column today Paul Krugman wrote, "many grass-roots Clinton supporters feel that she has received unfair, even grotesque treatment. And the lingering bitterness from the primary campaign could cost Mr. Obama the White House."

I am definitely in the camp that sees the treatment of Hillary as grotesque. Some of the attacks on Hillary Clinton have been nothing more than anti-woman hate crimes. Some of the anti-Clinton sentiment has been caused by fear of women gaining equality. As Robin Morgan wrote, "This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?"

Some of the attacks on Hillary are not rooted in sexism. Things she said have been horribly twisted and horrible claims made about her: that she is evil, racist, power-grubbing. The character attacks are so ubiquitous that some people believe them implicitly. This demonization is just inexplicable to me, but it seems to be inherent in US politics, where there seems to be a need to hate the person you don't support.

The culprits behind the misogynistic attacks and demonization are the mainstream media, new media, Obama supporters and - doubtless - Republican operatives, working in the shadows.

But my disgust at the course of this campaign goes beyond the attacks on Hillary. I am also angry with Barack Obama for his treatment of Bill Clinton. Obama has repeatedly attacked Bill Clinton's record as president, popularizing the notion that Clinton achieved nothing worthwhile and was either a right-wing lap dog or just uncaring and incompetent. I recently saw a town hall meeting in which Obama was asked a rude question about Bill Clinton. Obama laughed derisively, sharing a little sneer and letting the audience join in with a laugh at the former president's expense before answering more diplomatically. It was ugly.

It has been a central strategy of the Obama campaign to undermine the record of Bill Clinton. I can see why he did it: to tear down Hillary he felt he had to tear down the record of her husband. It was unfair, it was nasty, and it was bad for the party, but it was good politics.

Krugman concludes that "it’s up to Mr. Obama to deliver the unity he has always promised — starting with his own party." Krugman suggests this might be done by offering Hillary the vice presidential spot. But I think Obama has to go beyond that. He has to heal the bitterness felt by supporters of Bill Clinton. That is necessary to unite the Democratic party.

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The Mutual Interests of Iran and the US

The following letter appeared in the New York Times on May 19, 2008. When a letter to the editor is written by a distinguished writer, the NYT provides a brief bio. This is what they wrote about this correspondent: "The writer is a professor of international relations at Bentley College and a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team."

To the Editor:

I disagree with the use of cold-war terminology to describe the competition between the United States and Iran in the Middle East today.

The United States and Iran share a great deal, despite their division with respect to Israel, Lebanaon and other interests. There is their common support for the Shiite-led government in Iraq and for the government of Afghanistan, as well as their common enmity toward Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

With their spheres of influence partially overlapping, the United States and Iran can potentially transition from the "new cold war" environment in the Middle East to a post-cold war based on selective cooperation and mutual respect. And they can do this with a greater ease than the previous cold war, particularly if the United States and its allies provide clear security guarantees and pledge to respect Iran's sovereignty.

Kaveh L. Afrasiabi
Waltham, Mass

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Another Way to Spin, or: The Rosy View of Things

Admittedly, my last post was kind of dumb. (Not my first, most certainly not my last.) Here's another take on the issue, or rather another way of thinking about the current media coverage of Obama's race that is a little less negative. It also changes my usual pessimism about the sexism experienced by the Clinton campaign. We could look at the primary like this:

Democrats are making breakthroughs on issues of race and gender: Democrats have overcome long-standing US racism and sexism to get behind a black candidate and female candidate in enormous numbers. They have faced some difficult issues about gender and race - questions such as: Can a woman be respected as Commander in Chief? and Is a member of a black community too much a part of an interest group to represent the entire population? and they have answered them more than adequately.

In addition, we could consider the lengthy battle not as a negative thing, but as:

The long nomination process is a PR coup for the Democratic party: Democrats are energized like never before. They are voting in record numbers. The numbers voting for Democratic candidates is much higher than for Republican candidates. This means that more Democrats are registered and are on lists. Come election day, Democrats have huge lists of people to call in their "get out the vote" push. This year's primary process has been extremely beneficial for our chances in November.

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The Question of Racism

In election years we develop all kinds of crazyass bits of conventional wisdom. Al Gore was a delusional liar. John Kerry was a craven coward. George Bush was worthy of the presidency because he's the sort of guy folks would like to have a beer with.

Now, with very little evidence, we're being deluged with the notion that Democrats who didn't vote for Barack Obama are racist.

If we don't watch out, "conventional wisdom" is going to be that the Democratic party is the party of racists.

I don't want to be a racism denier. If it's true that there's a substantial racist element in the party, then we need to all stand up against it. But I have several reasons to question the notion:

1. Small anecdotal issue, but I didn't vote for Obama and my reasons had nothing to do with his race.
2. Part of the racism story is that Hillary and Bill Clinton are racist and fuel the racists. This is totally bogus.
3. I have read a lot of articles about this supposed racist anti-Obama vote, and they don't supply first hand evidence, substantial evidence, or serious allegations. This is such an explosive issue that the media would have dug up more dirt by now if there was dirt to dig. There are always nutters in every arena screaming horrible stuff, but in this case there appear to be fewer than you might expect (fewer than the people who made insulting comments about Hillary's body, for example).
4. Media reports on anti-Obama racism often provide evidence of people complainng about his religion, patriotism, citizenship and involvement in radical groups. These are ridiculous charges for sure, but they aren't racism.
5. Media reports on anti-Obama racism imply that the racists are Democrats, but don't say whether their anecdoates come from Democrats.

Even sensationalist Democrat-bashing MSNBC couldn't come up with anything more than "Doors have been slammed in [Obama campaign worker's] faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping." Hmm... white volunteers are called racist names. They've had doors slammed in their faces. Hell, I've been chased down driveways while canvassing for the middle-of-the-road Liberal party in small town Ontario. While canvassing for the NDP in Toronto I've had more doors slammed in my face than I can count and had all kinds of abuse hurled at me, including threats and profanity. That stuff happens in political campaigns.

MSNBC cribbed their story from a Washington Post article, Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause. The WP spent a lot of time looking for racist incidents, and didn't find much more. One volunteer said, "The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive." If the guy had numerous such incidents, why didn't he say how many? It sounds like he had one and is extrapolating from it.

The Financial Post did some investigative journalism in West Virginia. They say West Virginia's anitpathy to Obama "raises fresh doubts about whether the US is ready to elect its first black president" but they don't uncover a single racist sentiment. They uncover a lot of nutty misconceptions, but candidates tend to face that sort of thing before they make themselves known to the country - in the spring of 1991, many Americans thought that Bill Clinton came from a rich family and was the son of a previous governor of Arkansas.

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The McCain Threat

Barack Obama faces a troubling strategic threat from John McCain. Obama has made his campaign all about change, but McCain might out-change him.

1. McCain is proposing actual concrete changes while Obama is mired in rhetoric. McCain proposed that they both adopt voluntary campaign financing reform; Obama rejected him. McCain is talking about ending partisan fighting and working together to get things done. McCain is talking about an end to negativity in campaigns. It really goes on much beyond that... Some argue that McCain is insincere, but I think his record and his current talk are really convincingly very sincere.

2. McCain might very well ask Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to be his running mate - both black and a woman. Rice is only 53, so we could easily have 12 more years of Republican presidents.

Rice is pretty impressive. Check out this video. She's good. Apparently her speeches are even better. As National Security Advisor at the start of the Iraq war she argued against the Rumsfeld strategy, but the then-Secretary of State overruled her. When Rumsfeld was ousted she was made Secretary of State to clean up the mess, and by some standards she has made progress in Iraq and Afghanistan - at least enough improvement to make a case that the McCain/Rice ticket is more qualified than Obama to get the US out of there.

If the election is about change and getting out of Iraq, Obama will face a formidable challenge in McCain/Rice. The main counter-attack is that McCain-Rice represents more of the same (a new nickname for McCain is "McSame"). There's some truth to that... not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but across the board in policy. The confusing aspect is that McCain also offers real change.

McCain/Rice is a relatively moderate ticket. (Rice even describes herself as "mildly pro-choice".) If they can hold on to the right wing Republicans, they might pick up votes to the center and left. Even I, who am horrified at the thought of 12 more years of Republican presidents, am concerned that McCain might be more able than Obama to tackle the difficult challenges ahead.

It would be a terrible strategic mistake for Obama to continue to aim his campaign at the left of the party - at rich people who are not vulnerable to economic downturns. Sometime soon he's got to drop his recently-acquired fake southern accent and start talking the way he used to before he entered the presidential race - pragmatically and with insight into important issues. All his empty rhetoric may have been enough to beat Hillary Clinton, but I don't think it will work against McCain.

An aside - the more I think about it, the more I think that Obama must choose a woman as his running mate. (No, this is not about Hillary.) If McCain recruits Rice, then he has both the black and female sides covered, and Obama would need to cover the female side as well.

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The Mob

US politics is a terrible place of twisted truth and insidious character assassination.

The brouhaha about Obama not wearing a US flag lapel pin is a good case in point. While this was widely cited as evidence that Obama is not sufficiently patriotic, it turns out that very few politicians wear the US flag lapel pin, including Hillary and McCain and just about every other elected official. The entire issue was fictitious, and yet it sticks like feces thrown at a plate glass window.

The Mob forgets the original issue, but remembers the smear (the questionable patriotism). Then a few complementary issues are blown out of proportion: the pastor who dares to raise uncomfortable societal problems is used to suggest the candidate is angry and anti-white; the acquaintance who was involved in a radical group long before the candidate was born is used to suggest that the candidate has a revolutionalry agenda. The candidate refers to his grandmother as "a typical white woman" and the pundits declare it a racist statement. In the mind of The Mob, the idealist becomes a snarling Black Panther. Lock up your women and make sure you vote for the other guy.

There's plenty of reason to criticize Obama for being inexperienced and naive and without the managerial skills to take on the challenges ahead. But political spin doesn't like cool, rational criticism: it seeks to demonize. Rational criticism can be countered. The goal of the opposition is to create the image that the candidate is most horrified by, to leave them sputtering and unable to respond. Then The Mob, swivelling their attention from partisan extremes like spectators at a tennis match, is left thinking that if the candidate can't refute it, it must be true.

Seeing through the lies isn't easy. Bill Clinton said something in his autobiography that helps me keep things in perspective: most politicians are good people who have devoted their lives to public service - even those on the extreme right. A trick I use is to try to ignore the criticisms of character, most of which is spin, and look at candidates as I would look at someone I was interviewing for a job.

Now that it's effectively over for Hillary (short of Obama's head exploding, which I suppose is statistically possible), it would be a huge relief if the Clinton-haters in the Democratic party would calm down or at least direct their vitriol at the Republicans. It has been apparent for months that her candidacy was a long shot, and the main reason I carried on in countering attacks against her is that the attacks were generally untrue, unfair and disturbingly sexist. The demonization of Hillary was ridiculous and it sets back attempts at greater equality for women.

But The Mob is not a self-reflective entity, so it's not clear that any of the lies and misrepresentations of any of the candidates will ever be seriously uncovered. Obama will survive the anti-patriotism attack not by arguing that the issue is hooey, but by using American flag backdrops and adopting patriotic rhetoric.

The difference in the upcoming presidential contest and the thing that gives me hope, is, strangely, the character of the candidate I don't support. John McCain is a standup guy, and he says he wants a clean campaign without negative ads. When asked, urged, even tricked into criticizing his opponents (as he was last night on The Daily Show), he steadfastly refuses, saying only that they're formidable people, friends, and that he has a lot of respect for them. Sure, the RNC and the interest groups will do their thing, but this presidential campaign might be just a little more rational than recent ones.

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Dissing the Dismal Science

The internet is overflowing with people who are outraged at Hillary Clinton (what else is new). Hill's latest Big Sin is seen as this:

* Her gas-tax-holiday proposal hasn't been endorsed by any economists.
* When asked about that on This Week with George Stephanopoulos she said, "Well, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to put my lot in with economists" - which has been interpreted as a complete dismissal of their input.

I agree that Hillary's response to George Stephanopoulos was a poor sound bite, but when you hear it in context you can see that what she's saying is essentially what we all should have learned in Econ 101: Economists provide input to policy-makers, but the discipline of Economics is not about policy making. In other words: we thank economists for their input, but economic considerations are only part of what policy-makers use to make decisions.

Furthermore, if you take the time to listen to her talking about her proposal, her focus is all about market manipulation by the oil companies that is responsible for nearly half of the current price of a barrel of oil, and the need to do something about that.

I am not a supporter of lowering gas taxes. I argue all the time that we need greatly higher gas taxes. Insofar as there is any justification for reducing the gas tax for the summer, I'd say that it would be a way to counter the recession by reducing consumer pessimism. For example, Americans might decide not to cancel their summer holiday when they see that the government has reduced the price of gas. (And Hillary has said over and over that her proposal is a temporary measure aimed at current market conditions.) It is not a disadvantage of the proposal, but an advantage, that it might bolster the economy while not greatly changing the price of gas.

CNN and other media outlets are going on about the gas tax holiday as if it were the only thing she's proposed. Media - both traditional and new - is failing us.

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Democrats Will Lose by Playing Dirty

Democrats have been pummelling McCain recently - pummelling him like a little kitten batting at a wall. Pounding on him like a nightmare fight where your fists move sloooowly through the air and never quite connect. Wailing on him like... well, you get the idea.

There have been two recent points of attack:

The US will stay in Iraq for 100 years
Democrats have been flooding the airways with ads claiming that McCain wants to keep fighting in Iraq for a hundred years. They're calling him a warmonger and a continuation of Bush.

In reality, what McCain said was, "As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that’s fine with me. I hope that would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world." He specifically said he was not talking about a fighting force, but a presence such as the US has in Japan or South Korea.

The Democrats are slamming McCain for talking about how to manage post-occupation Iraq. Maybe the Democrats should get off their truth-spinning butts and start talking about this important issue themselves.

McCain didn't vote for Bush in 2000
Arianna Huffington is making a huge hullabaloo over a conversation she says she had with McCain in 2001, in which McCain said he didn't vote for Bush. She claims that McCain's current refusal to criticize Bush shows "just how far he has fallen since then in his hunger for the presidency."

McCain denies the whole thing and Huffington has very little credibilty, but let's assume it's true that he didn't vote for Bush in 2000. So what? Bush had just beat McCain in a bitterly contested primary; McCain was probably still licking his wounds.

The fact that McCain is refusing to criticize a deeply unpopular president (currently 28% in the approval ratings) is an honorable move. Unlike Obama, who regularly belittles Bill Clinton's presidency, McCain is standing by his party and his president.

I'm not saying I want McCain to score points. I don't want him to be the next president. But when attacks are stupid and unfounded, as these two are, they might make the rabid partisans happy but they put off thoughtful people. They could even backfire and make some voters more likely to support McCain.

And they certainly don't bolster the Democrat line about change and rising above the fray. They just seem like more dirty politics: lying to the voters, twisting the truth, character assassination, same old same old.

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The Double Standard Around the Call to Quit

The other day my local daily paper (yes, a Canadian paper) published an editorial calling on Hillary to quit the race for presidential nominee, opining that her terrible ambition would keep her in the race even though it was destroying her party's chances in the election later this year.

What's new about that, I hear you asking. Practically everyone is saying that! From new media like HuffPost to old media like the New York Times, there are dozens of articles every day demanding that Hillary quit the race... and they've been going on since the beginning of March.

No matter that the primaries haven't finished, that she hasn't lost, that Obama hasn't won. The same people who decry superdelegates as undemocratic seem to think that they should be able to circumvent the democratic process by hounding the candidate they don't support out of the race.

This is what Eric Boehlert had to say in Media Matters (So now the press tells candidates when to quit?):

In the past there was always an assumption among journalists that candidates had earned the right to decide when they should quit. Journalists also respected the fact that candidates represented a sizable portion of the primary voting public and that the candidates owed it to their supporters to fight on, that there was a symbolic significance for the candidates -- and their supporters -- to persevere.

With Clinton, though, the press seems to have almost complete disregard for the 14 million voters who have backed her candidacy, as well as the idea that she is their representative in this race. Instead, they treat her entire campaign as some sort of vanity exercise in which voters do not exist.
...
Looking back at history, it's hard to find evidence of the same media response to Ronald Reagan's failed 1976 presidential campaign. Taking on President Gerald Ford, Reagan lost more primaries than he won, and Ford won a plurality of the popular vote, but neither man had enough delegates to secure the nomination. So the campaign went to the GOP convention, where Ford prevailed. The bitter battle did nothing to damage Reagan's reputation (in fact, it did quite the opposite), in part because the media did not collectively suggest the candidate was acting selfishly or irrationally. Instead, Reagan walked away with a reputation as a resilient fighter who stood up for his conservative values.

And what about Sen. Ted Kennedy's doomed run in 1980? He trailed President Jimmy Carter by more than 750 delegates at the end of the primary season and insisted on fighting all the way to the convention, where he tried to get committed Carter delegates to switch their allegiance. The press did not spend months during the primary season ridiculing Kennedy, in a deeply personal tone, for remaining in the race.

And what about Gary Hart in 1984? He and Walter Mondale split the season's primaries and caucuses evenly, and neither had the 2,023 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Superdelegates eventually determined the winner. (Sound familiar?) Mondale had many of them locked up even before the campaign season began, so after the final primary between Mondale and Hart was complete, it was obvious that Mondale was going to be the nominee because Hart could not persuade enough superdelegates to change their mind and support him.

When Hart took his crusade all the way to the convention, the media did not form a posse and decide it was their job to get Hart to quit for the good of the party. (And the press certainly didn't form a posse in March to start pushing Hart out of the race.) Nor did the press collectively suggest that Hart had an oversized ego that had turned him into a political monster.

That new media standard has been created exclusively for Hillary Clinton.

And where were the catcalls in 1988 for Jesse Jackson to ditch his quixotic run before all the primary votes had been tallied? He finished with 1,200 delegates, nearly 1,400 behind Michael Dukakis, yet soldiered on all the way to the convention without having a prayer of winning the nomination. There were few if any media drum sections trying to pound him out of the race.

Or Jerry Brown in 1992? He continued his campaign against Bill Clinton through June despite the fact he tallied fewer than 600 delegates. (By contrast, Hillary Clinton has won approximately 1,600 delegates so far.) Brown's attacks at the time were far more personal and bruising than anything we've seen this cycle. As The New York Times reported on June 2, 1992, Brown "put his party on notice that he intends to carry his politics-is-corrupt, Clinton-is-unelectable message to the Democratic National Convention in New York in July, and beyond." Brown also told the Times that voting for Clinton was like buying a ticket on the Titanic.

At the time, Clinton was actually polling in third place nationally, behind President George H.W. Bush and independent candidate Ross Perot, so why wasn't the press in a frenzy demanding that Brown drop out of the race because he was hurting his party's chances in November?

If you look at Reagan and Kennedy and Hart and Jackson and Brown, those men all ran competitive races. But toward the end of the primary season it was clear most of them had no mathematical chance of winning the nomination. (Reagan was the exception.) Yet none of them was told collectively by the press to go home. Nor were they routinely depicted in the media as being self-absorbed.

Today, Clinton does have a chance to win. Yet she has been told by the press to go home and to get over herself.

It's unprecedented.

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Jeremiah Wright

I like Jeremiah Wright. I watched his speech on Sunday to the NAACP and then I watched his press conference the next day. He has a lot of fascinating things to say. He is an extremely engaging speaker. And he is off the charts charming.

When I listened to Wright on Sunday and Monday, I thought that he was speaking out because he wanted to use the opportunity he had been given to say some important things that Americans should hear. That's why his speech to the NAACP was about the differences between black and European American culture. It was an important message and in an ideal world we would be debating the issues he raised. At the press conference on Monday he was kicking off a conference on the African-American religious experience. Pundits on CNN are making it sound like Wright has been speaking out as part of a grudge match with Obama, but I don't see any evidence of that.

I totally missed the part where Wright "dissed" Obama, and from what I've heard it was a pretty subtle diss. Apparently he said that Obama may have distanced himself from Wright's views because he had to in the election campaign. I doubt this was an intended slur at all. One thing you can immediately tell about Wright is that he's a straight shooter: he says what he thinks. And he has pretty good reason to think that Obama agrees with him. After all, Wright has been saying these things for the 20 years that Wright has been his pastor, and Obama has drawn Wright increasingly closer, even involving him in the launch of his campaign. Obama only started to disagree with Wright when it looked like those views would hurt his campaign.

I don't want to say that I agree with everything with Wright says. He said that the US Center for Disease Control developed AIDS and the US government spread it, which sounds like a dangerous conspiracy theory. He said things I disagree with about Israel.

But Obama went too far in criticizing Wright. He described him as a hate-filled lunatic. (Listen to the speeches I link to above: Wright's mission seems to be to join people together, not create dissension and hate.) Now Obama supporters are ripping the man to shreds. Over at HuffPost they're describing him as an attention-seeking troll, mad, a two-bit celebrity. We have, it seems, lost a valuable new voice just days after we got to hear him.

On the topic of AIDS, by the way, Wright seems to really believe that the US government developed the virus. He cites two books on the subject. My guess is that he is just one of many people who believe this, and it's probably worth a rational debate.

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"Entitlement" Another Sexist Code Word

I cannot recall ever hearing the charge that a politician running for office had a "sense of entitlement" about winning - until Hillary Clinton. In criticisms of Hillary, you hear it all the time - never substantiated, just presented as an unformed character indictment.

Early on in the campaign when she was way ahead of other candidates, "sense of entitlement" was used to criticize her for being the establishment candidate; it was used to imply that she was supported by the backroom boys and was propelled into the lead by her connections and position. As the campaign unfolded, this characterization was shown to be utter fiction - not just because she does not have the backroom boys sewed up, but also because everyone has had to admit that she's an enormously hard working, scrappy politician who keeps trying her hardest day in and day out, even in the face of terrible setbacks.

Now that she's losing, Hillary's critics are twisting the sense of entitlement barb to characterize her as some sort of latter-day Marie Antoinette - a vain aristocratic bitch who feels the party owes her the nomination and so will not back down from the race, even if it means destroying the party's chances in November. But the reality is that it's a tight race and it isn't over. Democratic primaries are won when one candidate gets a majority of delegates, and neither candidate has enough support for that. Hillary's popularity took a nose dive during a key part of the primary season, but her recent 10-point margin of victory in Pennsylvania indicates that Hillary has her momentum back. Hillary has a strong case to take to the superdelegates, given her uncounted victories in Florida and Michigan, her margin of victory in electoral college votes, her success in strategic states, and her wins in every big state except Illinois. It's not a slam dunk for Hillary by any means, but it's not over.

Hillary's public record shows a person who has never had a sense of entitlement. As first lady she didn't bask in the glow of her husband's success; she was the most active presidential spouse in history. She took on major policy initiatives, took risks, got pummelled sometimes. When she became a US senator Hillary was widely praised for her hard work, for listening to all sides, and for sticking to her junior status when she could have used her fame to grab the limelight.

Serious contenders for US president are, by definition, supremely ambitious, political and confident. They have to appear ready to take on the most powerful job in the world. In campaign speeches they always say "when I am president" not "if I am president." In this sense they all have a "sense of entitlement".

But in its use as a condemnation of Hillary, "sense of entitlement" has other connotations: that she is haughty, arrogant, the sort of person who makes other people do her dirty work. It's a code word for "rich bitch." It's also a way of saying that she has stepped out of her place - that as a woman she does not deserve to feel entitled to run for president. It's just another in a long long list of sexist criticisms that have undermined Hillary as a serious candidate for president.

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