“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, if he wins, knows the thrills of high achievement, and, if he fails, at least fails daringly greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”--John F. Kennedy speaking about Theodore Roosevelt
Although it appears that Hillary Rodham Clinton will fail to gain the Democratic nomination for President, she has done more to advance the cause of women in national politics than any other female politician. Her campaign destroys forever the sexist notion as to whether women can endure the rigors of presidential campaigning. What has been forgotten amongst the endless prattling on prime-time political talk-shows is that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign managed to endure this long and this far despite the disadvantages she had to cope with along the way. She was forced to handle the excess baggage of her husband’s past personal misconduct; her own Senatorial vote approving the second Persian Gulf War resolution; Barack Obama’s oratorical skills and charismatic personality and the key fact that as an African-American he siphoned off millions of votes that would have gone to her otherwise (Clinton backer Geraldine Ferraro was not being racially insensitive when she told reporters that Obama’s race was a key factor in his successful campaign. She was speaking a well-based truth but in this hyper-sensitive politically correct atmosphere it brought her into disfavor. If Obama were white he would not be in the lead with regards to the delegates) and last, but no means least, the antiquated hostility towards her candidacy based on her gender.
Three times in the 2008 campaign her candidacy was written off and the post-mortems were being read and three times she came back and won key states which sustained her effort. What the pundits keep forgetting is that her persistence reveals the enormity of character and strength that Hillary Rodham Clinton has embodied all her life. Her persistence and refusal to surrender (when others were preaching surrender) or shrink in the face of adversity shows that she does indeed to possess the desperately needed qualities that America must always need for its next President.
Again, she will not gain the 2008 Democratic nomination for President but she should not be deemed unworthy of a future try for the Presidency. People forget that Ronald Reagan failed to win the G.O.P. nominations in 1968 and 1976 (being a very close defeat) and yet Reagan came back, defying the questions regarding his age and his hip-shooting rhetoric and won two terms as President while forever altering the American political landscape. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political journey is not finished.
We will see more of her…and we will.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
The Generalship of George W. Bush while contemplating Hitler's birthday
Ever since the war in Iraq began I’ve been dying to write the blog entry you’re about to read. When contemplating the generalship of President Bush and the decisions he has made as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military I’ve been striving to find comparisons between Bush and other historical figures who combined politics with war and after a relatively brief period of consideration I have stumbled upon the historical figure who reminds me the most of President Bush, military strategist: Adolf Hitler.
Today is Hitler’s birthday and how better to mark this ignominious anniversary than to explore the similarities in command style of Hitler and Bush.
Both leaders used false pretexts to invade foreign countries (Hitler manufactured a bogus border incident to justify his invasion of Poland in 1939). Both leaders had self-proclaimed messianic views of themselves and considered themselves Chosen Leaders. (Hitler although not spiritual by any means had a view that he was an instrument of Providence. After he survived the July 20 bomb plot he took his survival as “a sign of Providence that I must continue my work…”)
Both leaders used their military forces carelessly and thoughtlessly while imposing unreasonable expectations upon their armies. In the mid 1970s there was a twenty-six part prime-time documentary called The World at War. One of the best episodes in that Emmy award-winning documentary was about the battle of Stalingrad which took place between September 1942 and February 1943. That episode (more than any other) illustrated how Hitler’s lack of military sense and also reveals eerie parallels with President Bush’s tactics in Iraq. In the episode when the German armies were sweeping through the Caucasus region towards the Volga River and Stalingrad, a German general remembers how Hitler would stare at the map and give orders which moved divisions like they were chess pieces on a board, saying, “the Fuhrer’s hands would sweep over the map, saying ‘press here’ or ‘move there’ all without considering practical military difficulties.”
President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq so soon after committing significant portions of the American army in occupying Afghanistan has the same odor. If the War in Iraq has demonstrated anything it is that the all volunteer U.S. Army simply does not possess the enough personnel and equipment to effectively wage a sustained war on two fronts. Despite the “success” of the surge, it was obvious that the forces committed to the surge were stretched beyond the range of their endurance. The fact that weeks ago General Petraeus has urged a postponement of the scheduled scale-down of the forces committed undermines any assertion of “success”. Personally it is my earnest belief that inside the Pentagon there are probably innumerable files and memos composed by mid-level Pentagon officials which warned the Bush Administration of the potential problems and strains that an Iraqi invasion would pose on U.S. forces. Sadly those potential problems and strains became all too real and the U.S. military has been placed in the most ragged and over-worked condition in its long heroic history. Never in the annals of American history has a President run the military into the ground like President Bush has in Iraq. No President has done a greater disservice to the soldiers he has commanded.
Both leaders possessed overly optimistic natures—allowing themselves to be deluded that they had achieved their goals when actually the outcomes were still in doubt. The late William Manchester used in his biography of Douglas MacArthur a quotation from the Duke of Wellington on William Pitt the Younger to illustrate this weakness, “he was too sanguine….He conceives a project and then imagines it is done.”
In the World at War episode on Stalingrad there is a tape recording of a November 8 speech Hitler gave at a Party rally in Munich while the battle for Stalingrad was being waged. Narrator the late Sir Laurence Olivier did a sensation impersonation of Hitler’s remarks, “I wanted to reach the Volga…at a particular city. By chance it bore the name of Stalin himself (sounds of crowd laughter)….I wanted to capture it and, you should know…we have as good as got it! There are only a couple of small bits left. Some say: ‘why aren’t they fighting faster?’…Time is of no importance.” In reality the battle of Stalingrad remained at a fever pitch and the same night as Hitler’s speech, American and British forces were landing in North Africa and eleven days after Hitler’s speech the Russians launched a massive counteroffensive that destroyed the German armies that occupied Stalingrad and started the long bloody road of defeat and withdrawal which would culminate in Hitler’s suicide in the Bunker in Berlin.
And of course who could ever forget the May 1, 2003 ceremony where President Bush’s plane landed on an aircraft carrier and the President emerged brandishing a sign “Mission Accomplished” and that is before four thousand innocent Americans had to die in order to help the President live up to that claim.
The parallels could go on and on but I’ve had enough. Too many innocent people have had to die because of the egomania of both men. It’s a shameful record written in the blood of murdered innocents.
Give peace a chance.
Today is Hitler’s birthday and how better to mark this ignominious anniversary than to explore the similarities in command style of Hitler and Bush.
Both leaders used false pretexts to invade foreign countries (Hitler manufactured a bogus border incident to justify his invasion of Poland in 1939). Both leaders had self-proclaimed messianic views of themselves and considered themselves Chosen Leaders. (Hitler although not spiritual by any means had a view that he was an instrument of Providence. After he survived the July 20 bomb plot he took his survival as “a sign of Providence that I must continue my work…”)
Both leaders used their military forces carelessly and thoughtlessly while imposing unreasonable expectations upon their armies. In the mid 1970s there was a twenty-six part prime-time documentary called The World at War. One of the best episodes in that Emmy award-winning documentary was about the battle of Stalingrad which took place between September 1942 and February 1943. That episode (more than any other) illustrated how Hitler’s lack of military sense and also reveals eerie parallels with President Bush’s tactics in Iraq. In the episode when the German armies were sweeping through the Caucasus region towards the Volga River and Stalingrad, a German general remembers how Hitler would stare at the map and give orders which moved divisions like they were chess pieces on a board, saying, “the Fuhrer’s hands would sweep over the map, saying ‘press here’ or ‘move there’ all without considering practical military difficulties.”
President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq so soon after committing significant portions of the American army in occupying Afghanistan has the same odor. If the War in Iraq has demonstrated anything it is that the all volunteer U.S. Army simply does not possess the enough personnel and equipment to effectively wage a sustained war on two fronts. Despite the “success” of the surge, it was obvious that the forces committed to the surge were stretched beyond the range of their endurance. The fact that weeks ago General Petraeus has urged a postponement of the scheduled scale-down of the forces committed undermines any assertion of “success”. Personally it is my earnest belief that inside the Pentagon there are probably innumerable files and memos composed by mid-level Pentagon officials which warned the Bush Administration of the potential problems and strains that an Iraqi invasion would pose on U.S. forces. Sadly those potential problems and strains became all too real and the U.S. military has been placed in the most ragged and over-worked condition in its long heroic history. Never in the annals of American history has a President run the military into the ground like President Bush has in Iraq. No President has done a greater disservice to the soldiers he has commanded.
Both leaders possessed overly optimistic natures—allowing themselves to be deluded that they had achieved their goals when actually the outcomes were still in doubt. The late William Manchester used in his biography of Douglas MacArthur a quotation from the Duke of Wellington on William Pitt the Younger to illustrate this weakness, “he was too sanguine….He conceives a project and then imagines it is done.”
In the World at War episode on Stalingrad there is a tape recording of a November 8 speech Hitler gave at a Party rally in Munich while the battle for Stalingrad was being waged. Narrator the late Sir Laurence Olivier did a sensation impersonation of Hitler’s remarks, “I wanted to reach the Volga…at a particular city. By chance it bore the name of Stalin himself (sounds of crowd laughter)….I wanted to capture it and, you should know…we have as good as got it! There are only a couple of small bits left. Some say: ‘why aren’t they fighting faster?’…Time is of no importance.” In reality the battle of Stalingrad remained at a fever pitch and the same night as Hitler’s speech, American and British forces were landing in North Africa and eleven days after Hitler’s speech the Russians launched a massive counteroffensive that destroyed the German armies that occupied Stalingrad and started the long bloody road of defeat and withdrawal which would culminate in Hitler’s suicide in the Bunker in Berlin.
And of course who could ever forget the May 1, 2003 ceremony where President Bush’s plane landed on an aircraft carrier and the President emerged brandishing a sign “Mission Accomplished” and that is before four thousand innocent Americans had to die in order to help the President live up to that claim.
The parallels could go on and on but I’ve had enough. Too many innocent people have had to die because of the egomania of both men. It’s a shameful record written in the blood of murdered innocents.
Give peace a chance.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
The Indictment of my Gender
“If all these forms of abuse are added together, the percentage of women I interviewed who have been literally or more figuratively raped by men comes alarmingly close to 100 percent. I had not expected such a thorough indictment of my gender”
--Mark Baker, Women
You read about it every day in the newspapers or watch it on the evening news or on CNN or the Nancy Grace Show. The victimization, abuse, and exploitation of women and young girls remain a relentless (like tooth decay) scourge upon human society.
The recent news about a police raid on a vast polygamist compound in Texas and the discovery of countless young teenage young ladies (many of whom just entering puberty) being forcibly married and impregnated by older men; being subjected to an emotional and spiritual milieu that reeks of subjugation, humiliation, and exploitation; stand as the latest item in the symbolic indictment of man’s inhumanity to women.
Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell once wrote a song in the mid-1980s called The Three Great Stimulants and in the song she lists them as being: artifice, brutality, and innocence.
When you contemplate the Texas polygamist case you see all three stimulants in action. You see the artifice of luring or imprisoning young, vulnerable women and girls in a so-called faith that glorifies pedophilia and rape. You see the brutality of these young women and girls being forced to become adults when they should be at school studying algebra or playing soccer or going to the shopping mall with their friends. You see the innocence that is violated and corrupted and, eventually, gets tossed aside when the victimizer grows tired and bored with his victim.
Law enforcement with varying success tries to put a stop to this but the disease remains.
You see it on Dateline with Chris Hansen when he confronts those guys who drive 300 miles to forcibly rape under-age teens. It never ends. The compulsion never ends: the dehumanization where young girls and women are converted into blank screens upon which molesters can project their inner decay and depravity.
It is madness and it seems to be getting worse or else our willingness to expose this disease has improved. But what remains are the scars and they never go away.
And that the most savage indictment of all upon my gender.
--Mark Baker, Women
You read about it every day in the newspapers or watch it on the evening news or on CNN or the Nancy Grace Show. The victimization, abuse, and exploitation of women and young girls remain a relentless (like tooth decay) scourge upon human society.
The recent news about a police raid on a vast polygamist compound in Texas and the discovery of countless young teenage young ladies (many of whom just entering puberty) being forcibly married and impregnated by older men; being subjected to an emotional and spiritual milieu that reeks of subjugation, humiliation, and exploitation; stand as the latest item in the symbolic indictment of man’s inhumanity to women.
Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell once wrote a song in the mid-1980s called The Three Great Stimulants and in the song she lists them as being: artifice, brutality, and innocence.
When you contemplate the Texas polygamist case you see all three stimulants in action. You see the artifice of luring or imprisoning young, vulnerable women and girls in a so-called faith that glorifies pedophilia and rape. You see the brutality of these young women and girls being forced to become adults when they should be at school studying algebra or playing soccer or going to the shopping mall with their friends. You see the innocence that is violated and corrupted and, eventually, gets tossed aside when the victimizer grows tired and bored with his victim.
Law enforcement with varying success tries to put a stop to this but the disease remains.
You see it on Dateline with Chris Hansen when he confronts those guys who drive 300 miles to forcibly rape under-age teens. It never ends. The compulsion never ends: the dehumanization where young girls and women are converted into blank screens upon which molesters can project their inner decay and depravity.
It is madness and it seems to be getting worse or else our willingness to expose this disease has improved. But what remains are the scars and they never go away.
And that the most savage indictment of all upon my gender.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Tibetan Protests: Beijing, Blood, and Money
The protests both in Tibet and abroad against China’s repression of Tibetan culture and the demands for greater autonomy for the region will probably not succeed but on another level the protests have served a useful and educational purpose: they have effectively re-exposed the brutal (indeed savage) policies against dissent that the Chinese government has enforced since June 1989.
The protests also have exposed what, in my opinion, has been one of the most shameful episodes in the history of American foreign policy: the policy of appeasement that the Bush-Clinton-Bush administrations have maintained with the Chinese government since the massacre in Tianamen Square in Beijing in 1989.
There is no better word to describe our tepid and ineffectual policies in reigning in the growing assertiveness of the Chinese in world affairs. That assertiveness has gone a long way in undermining our influence in the world and will pose an even greater threat to American security than Al-Qaeda or Iran poses at the present time.
Indeed if anything affirms our nation’s appeasement policies it has been the relative silence of the Bush Administration in the wake of China’s crackdown of the Tibetan protesters and the willingness of the Bush Administration to participate in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The Beijing Olympiad will, I feel, be seen as the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and the 1980 Olympics in Moscow were in the history of the Olympic games: a deliberate attempt by a brutal, sadistic regime to use the Olympic games as a means of gaining legitimacy while cloaking its repression of its citizenry amidst the pageantry and pomp of the Olympic games.
The protests in Tibet will not stop the Beijing Olympiad nor will it dissuade the U.S. from attending. The only time the U.S. boycotted an Olympiad was in 1980 in protest of the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Since then, the takeover of the U.S. Olympic program by the corporations makes the possibility of a boycott remote if not impossible. (The only way America would boycott another Olympiad would be if World War Three broke out). There is too much profit potential to be gained from participating in the Olympics. The lust for money has outweighed whatever moral integrity our government may have possessed before 1989. Since then China’s increasing role in the American economy has reduced us to a form of fiscal vassalage.
The Beijing Olympics will take place despite the Tibetan protests and the corporations will rake in their billions but remember this, ladies and gentlemen, the billions they make will be tainted with the blood of countless innocent people slain since 1989.
And that’s the real bottom line of the Beijing Olympics.
The protests also have exposed what, in my opinion, has been one of the most shameful episodes in the history of American foreign policy: the policy of appeasement that the Bush-Clinton-Bush administrations have maintained with the Chinese government since the massacre in Tianamen Square in Beijing in 1989.
There is no better word to describe our tepid and ineffectual policies in reigning in the growing assertiveness of the Chinese in world affairs. That assertiveness has gone a long way in undermining our influence in the world and will pose an even greater threat to American security than Al-Qaeda or Iran poses at the present time.
Indeed if anything affirms our nation’s appeasement policies it has been the relative silence of the Bush Administration in the wake of China’s crackdown of the Tibetan protesters and the willingness of the Bush Administration to participate in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The Beijing Olympiad will, I feel, be seen as the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and the 1980 Olympics in Moscow were in the history of the Olympic games: a deliberate attempt by a brutal, sadistic regime to use the Olympic games as a means of gaining legitimacy while cloaking its repression of its citizenry amidst the pageantry and pomp of the Olympic games.
The protests in Tibet will not stop the Beijing Olympiad nor will it dissuade the U.S. from attending. The only time the U.S. boycotted an Olympiad was in 1980 in protest of the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Since then, the takeover of the U.S. Olympic program by the corporations makes the possibility of a boycott remote if not impossible. (The only way America would boycott another Olympiad would be if World War Three broke out). There is too much profit potential to be gained from participating in the Olympics. The lust for money has outweighed whatever moral integrity our government may have possessed before 1989. Since then China’s increasing role in the American economy has reduced us to a form of fiscal vassalage.
The Beijing Olympics will take place despite the Tibetan protests and the corporations will rake in their billions but remember this, ladies and gentlemen, the billions they make will be tainted with the blood of countless innocent people slain since 1989.
And that’s the real bottom line of the Beijing Olympics.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Consent of the Governed III: Bull from the Pulpit
Author Ted Morgan in his magnificent biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt writes, “In presidential politics, As FDR well knew, it isn’t what you’ve done but what you can be attacked for.”
Barack Obama is learning that lesson as this is being written. Actually, Obama is rather lucky in a way. The controversy is being aired while there is an intermission between primaries. The next primary content won’t be until April 22 which gives Obama lots of time of repair the damage the airings of his pastor’s past invective-filled sermons have caused to Obama’s presidential campaign thus far. This is his sternest test thus far and how he handles it will do much to decide whether he will win the nomination or not. His speech in Philadelphia addressing the race issue was well received by the mainstream press but whether it heals the wounds inflicted on his candidacy remains to be seen.
Obama’s pastor is not the first clergyman to inject invective into a presidential campaign. In 1840, a clergyman gave a speech that put President Martin Van Buren in a bad light in the wake of the economic crisis brought on by the Panic of 1837. There was Father Coughlin who regularly abused President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the pulpit. I have vivid memories of the late Reverend Bob Jones, Sr. who, in the early 1980s, supported Ronald Reagan while issuing “Christian” fatwas praying for the death of those who opposed Reagan’s (and Jones’) conservative values.
The crisis also reaffirms that the biggest headache for any presidential candidate is in making sure all your supporters are on the same message. This campaign has seen a lot of aides being let go from their respective candidate’s staffs for saying the wrong things to the press. Today G.O.P. nominee John McCain had to let go an aide for untimely remarks made about Obama. Actor Chuck Norris lost prominence in the Huckabee campaign for making statements that McCain was “too old” to be a good President. (If Ronald Reagan’s win in 1980 did anything for America it was to make the age issue in presidential campaigns a non-issue—and rightly so).
The main issue is how the controversy and Obama’s response to it affects the Democratic Super delegates who will be the true arbiters of who will get the Democratic nomination. It will be their reaction which will decide the fate of Barack Obama. (Personally, I think the Democratic Party should scrap the super delegate concept altogether and if there is a controversy arising as to how the super delegates choose the nominee then the super delegates will be eliminated in the future.
Obama won’t hear the end of this and there will be more to come—if he’s nominated.
Barack Obama is learning that lesson as this is being written. Actually, Obama is rather lucky in a way. The controversy is being aired while there is an intermission between primaries. The next primary content won’t be until April 22 which gives Obama lots of time of repair the damage the airings of his pastor’s past invective-filled sermons have caused to Obama’s presidential campaign thus far. This is his sternest test thus far and how he handles it will do much to decide whether he will win the nomination or not. His speech in Philadelphia addressing the race issue was well received by the mainstream press but whether it heals the wounds inflicted on his candidacy remains to be seen.
Obama’s pastor is not the first clergyman to inject invective into a presidential campaign. In 1840, a clergyman gave a speech that put President Martin Van Buren in a bad light in the wake of the economic crisis brought on by the Panic of 1837. There was Father Coughlin who regularly abused President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the pulpit. I have vivid memories of the late Reverend Bob Jones, Sr. who, in the early 1980s, supported Ronald Reagan while issuing “Christian” fatwas praying for the death of those who opposed Reagan’s (and Jones’) conservative values.
The crisis also reaffirms that the biggest headache for any presidential candidate is in making sure all your supporters are on the same message. This campaign has seen a lot of aides being let go from their respective candidate’s staffs for saying the wrong things to the press. Today G.O.P. nominee John McCain had to let go an aide for untimely remarks made about Obama. Actor Chuck Norris lost prominence in the Huckabee campaign for making statements that McCain was “too old” to be a good President. (If Ronald Reagan’s win in 1980 did anything for America it was to make the age issue in presidential campaigns a non-issue—and rightly so).
The main issue is how the controversy and Obama’s response to it affects the Democratic Super delegates who will be the true arbiters of who will get the Democratic nomination. It will be their reaction which will decide the fate of Barack Obama. (Personally, I think the Democratic Party should scrap the super delegate concept altogether and if there is a controversy arising as to how the super delegates choose the nominee then the super delegates will be eliminated in the future.
Obama won’t hear the end of this and there will be more to come—if he’s nominated.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Consent of the Governed II: The Republicans
The fun part about watching John McCain win the Republican nomination for President is to see the anguished outcries expressed by conservative TV pundits like Glenn Beck and Hannity & Combs on the Fox News Channel. Before 2008, I never gave the Fox News Channel a first glance let alone a second glance but now I watch it every night there is a primary just to see the collective gnashing of teeth and the hypocritical moaning from these paradigms of conservative values.
In their eyes it isn’t right that John McCain has freely and fairly gained the Republican nomination by the consent of the governed; it isn’t right that McCain has attained the nomination by appealing (unlike the other G.O.P. candidates) to moderates and even disillusioned Democrats to cross over and join his campaign; it isn’t right that McCain, if elected President—something not inconceivable—is the only Republican who has the potential to achieve a bi-partisan coalition that could get the necessary legislation passed to get the country moving again.
In many ways John McCain’s successful campaign is one of the most remarkable political comebacks in the annals of Presidential politics. To see a parallel one must go back to 1968 when Richard Nixon defied the odds and his own self-destructiveness to win the Republican nomination and the Presidency. Interestingly, Mitt Romney invoked the ghost of Richard Nixon when he was still campaigning against McCain in the race, saying that McCain was using Nixonian tactics (i.e. Watergate tactics) against him. Romney erred only slightly. Yes, McCain did use Nixonian tactics but not the Nixon from the Watergate era but the Richard Nixon who won the Presidential race in 1968. McCain, like Nixon, had lost a Presidential campaign eight years before and had been written off politically. McCain, like Nixon, had to go to great lengths to shake off a loser’s image. McCain, like Nixon, had to appeal to conservative voters by blatantly pandering to their core issues (Richard Nixon in 1968 packaged himself far more conservatively than when he ran in 1960. McCain’s rightward turn made pundits and supporters wince but, so far, it has worked to get him the nomination. Now whether this will get him the Presidency remains to be seen but McCain still has that ability to grab voters from the center and the left than his opponents). McCain, like Nixon, ran a vigorous grassroots campaign which resulted in key wins in the right states which in turn allowed him to receive those key endorsements that guaranteed future victories—each victory opening up new possibilities and new avenues of support for a campaign that had been declared dead one year ago. McCain, like Nixon, campaigned on a platform that supported an unpopular war and demanded a more vigorous and more effective application of American military forces in that war.
And what if John McCain loses in November? Then it’s a brand new ballgame for the Republican Party and that means there is a vacancy which either Mike Huckabee or Jeb Bush will fill in 2012. Huckabee’s campaign continued to amaze after Super Tuesday, winning Southern states and gaining conservative supporters (voting in protest against John McCain) despite low funding. It begs the question: if Huckabee had the money that a Jeb Bush or a Mitt Romney possessed, it would have been more likely that Huckabee would be the presumptive G.O.P. nominee and not McCain—a possibility which would have made Fox News Channel delirious with ecstasy. Huckabee’s failure to win the South Carolina and Florida primaries ensured his defeat. Even though he lost by narrow margins in both states, the winner-take-all rules gave McCain plenty of breathing space in terms of delegates. Had Huckabee won those contests then the tables would have turned. Although he cannot win the nomination, Huckabee remains in the race to make the case for himself as McCain’s running mate and, even more likely, to get a running start in 2012 campaign. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mike Huckabee is asked to be the keynote speaker of the 2008 Republican convention. He would certainly do a great job in delivering the keynote address. Huckabee’s ability to articulate conservative values is excellent and he must not be underestimated. You will be seeing more of him in the near and far distant political future.
In their eyes it isn’t right that John McCain has freely and fairly gained the Republican nomination by the consent of the governed; it isn’t right that McCain has attained the nomination by appealing (unlike the other G.O.P. candidates) to moderates and even disillusioned Democrats to cross over and join his campaign; it isn’t right that McCain, if elected President—something not inconceivable—is the only Republican who has the potential to achieve a bi-partisan coalition that could get the necessary legislation passed to get the country moving again.
In many ways John McCain’s successful campaign is one of the most remarkable political comebacks in the annals of Presidential politics. To see a parallel one must go back to 1968 when Richard Nixon defied the odds and his own self-destructiveness to win the Republican nomination and the Presidency. Interestingly, Mitt Romney invoked the ghost of Richard Nixon when he was still campaigning against McCain in the race, saying that McCain was using Nixonian tactics (i.e. Watergate tactics) against him. Romney erred only slightly. Yes, McCain did use Nixonian tactics but not the Nixon from the Watergate era but the Richard Nixon who won the Presidential race in 1968. McCain, like Nixon, had lost a Presidential campaign eight years before and had been written off politically. McCain, like Nixon, had to go to great lengths to shake off a loser’s image. McCain, like Nixon, had to appeal to conservative voters by blatantly pandering to their core issues (Richard Nixon in 1968 packaged himself far more conservatively than when he ran in 1960. McCain’s rightward turn made pundits and supporters wince but, so far, it has worked to get him the nomination. Now whether this will get him the Presidency remains to be seen but McCain still has that ability to grab voters from the center and the left than his opponents). McCain, like Nixon, ran a vigorous grassroots campaign which resulted in key wins in the right states which in turn allowed him to receive those key endorsements that guaranteed future victories—each victory opening up new possibilities and new avenues of support for a campaign that had been declared dead one year ago. McCain, like Nixon, campaigned on a platform that supported an unpopular war and demanded a more vigorous and more effective application of American military forces in that war.
And what if John McCain loses in November? Then it’s a brand new ballgame for the Republican Party and that means there is a vacancy which either Mike Huckabee or Jeb Bush will fill in 2012. Huckabee’s campaign continued to amaze after Super Tuesday, winning Southern states and gaining conservative supporters (voting in protest against John McCain) despite low funding. It begs the question: if Huckabee had the money that a Jeb Bush or a Mitt Romney possessed, it would have been more likely that Huckabee would be the presumptive G.O.P. nominee and not McCain—a possibility which would have made Fox News Channel delirious with ecstasy. Huckabee’s failure to win the South Carolina and Florida primaries ensured his defeat. Even though he lost by narrow margins in both states, the winner-take-all rules gave McCain plenty of breathing space in terms of delegates. Had Huckabee won those contests then the tables would have turned. Although he cannot win the nomination, Huckabee remains in the race to make the case for himself as McCain’s running mate and, even more likely, to get a running start in 2012 campaign. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mike Huckabee is asked to be the keynote speaker of the 2008 Republican convention. He would certainly do a great job in delivering the keynote address. Huckabee’s ability to articulate conservative values is excellent and he must not be underestimated. You will be seeing more of him in the near and far distant political future.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Consent of the Governed I: Democrats
At last! An interesting Presidential race! On both sides! Not since 1976 has there been a prolonged duel for both political parties in the Presidential primaries. Despite the predictions by the pundits that the massive front-loading of the primaries would result in a premature end to the campaign, the opposite has occurred with splendid results for the quest of enhancing political debate and voter participation.
I played my role in the political process by voting in the New Jersey Primary last February 5th. It was the first time in my memory that my vote actually counted for something. In the past the New Jersey Presidential primary was held in June and the nominations for both parties were usually resolved by that time which made my vote moot.
Not this time. To paraphrase a Maureen McGovern song, I was torn between two candidates. Don’t laugh. It wasn’t funny. For the first time ever I really had to think about who I wanted to run for the Presidency. In the weeks preceding the primary I had to do some serious soul-searching. Although I am anti-war I didn’t consider Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vote to approve President Bush’s use of force a significant reason to reject her. (Don’t forget Democrat George McGovern campaigned for President against the Vietnam War in 1972 even though in 1964 he had voted to approve the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which got America into the war in the first place).
Even though Barack Obama is the far better orator than Hillary is and I had the opportunity to listen to Obama speak on C-Span I wasn’t going to let Obama’s elocutionary talents to be the sole criterion for selecting him. I need more than eloquence to make a decision. (Although Obama is very good on the stump I don’t consider him in the same league as John F. Kennedy, FDR, or Abraham Lincoln: the greatest Presidential speakers of all time…or even the late Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X for that matter!)
And yet….
And yet my local newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Obama and the brother and daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy—Senator Ted and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, respectively--endorsed Obama for the Presidency. But part of me wonders about that endorsement? Do the Kennedys really consider Obama more worthy of the Oval Office or are they afraid that Hillary Rodham Clinton (as did her husband before her) will go a long way in eclipsing the rather thin Presidential legacy that the late John F. Kennedy left behind? A very distinct possibility if Hillary wins the nomination and the Presidency.
In the end my decision came down to who could best withstand the hellfire—and that’s the best word to describe it—of a Presidential election and being President itself. For all his attainments—Barack Obama hasn’t really been tested yet. It’s all well and good to run neck and neck for the race so far but what happens if he gets the nomination and has to face the Republican nominee in the fall? Even if he wins in November, does Obama have the inner fortitude to withstand the verbal putrefaction of conservatives and the political obstructionism that is soon to come? If you think the conservative attacks against Bill Clinton in the 1990’s were bad the attacks on Obama will be even worse—much worse. I don’t think Obama really knows what political opposition in the 21st century is really about. He thinks he knows but he really doesn’t—not yet.
Hillary Rodham Clinton does know; has known since 1993. People talk about the Bill Clinton administration. Actually it was the two of them together running the country. Bill Clinton could never have won in 1992 and 1996 without Hillary. There is no debating that question. He could never have survived the impeachment and trial in the Senate as a result of the Lewinsky scandal without Hillary at his side. The hellfire Bill Clinton faced Hillary faced as well.
The real root of conservative hatred for Hillary Rodham Clinton is based on this: both Bill and Hillary Clinton succeeded politically where others before them failed. They succeeded because they had the wisdom and audacity to beat the conservative movement by using their own weapons against them. There is a substantive legacy of achievement which came as a result of their success. We can only speculate whether Obama can move the country again. We know Hillary can because she and Bill Clinton did so in the 1990’s.
In the end, I chose for the person who has been tested by the hellfire and emerged strengthened, shriven, and sharper than before. When I entered the voting booth on February 5, I pulled the lever for Hillary. Even if she falls short of the nomination—a distinct possibility, I won’t regret it. If Obama gets the nomination over Hillary I will vote for Obama but my heart went with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
I played my role in the political process by voting in the New Jersey Primary last February 5th. It was the first time in my memory that my vote actually counted for something. In the past the New Jersey Presidential primary was held in June and the nominations for both parties were usually resolved by that time which made my vote moot.
Not this time. To paraphrase a Maureen McGovern song, I was torn between two candidates. Don’t laugh. It wasn’t funny. For the first time ever I really had to think about who I wanted to run for the Presidency. In the weeks preceding the primary I had to do some serious soul-searching. Although I am anti-war I didn’t consider Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vote to approve President Bush’s use of force a significant reason to reject her. (Don’t forget Democrat George McGovern campaigned for President against the Vietnam War in 1972 even though in 1964 he had voted to approve the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which got America into the war in the first place).
Even though Barack Obama is the far better orator than Hillary is and I had the opportunity to listen to Obama speak on C-Span I wasn’t going to let Obama’s elocutionary talents to be the sole criterion for selecting him. I need more than eloquence to make a decision. (Although Obama is very good on the stump I don’t consider him in the same league as John F. Kennedy, FDR, or Abraham Lincoln: the greatest Presidential speakers of all time…or even the late Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X for that matter!)
And yet….
And yet my local newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Obama and the brother and daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy—Senator Ted and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, respectively--endorsed Obama for the Presidency. But part of me wonders about that endorsement? Do the Kennedys really consider Obama more worthy of the Oval Office or are they afraid that Hillary Rodham Clinton (as did her husband before her) will go a long way in eclipsing the rather thin Presidential legacy that the late John F. Kennedy left behind? A very distinct possibility if Hillary wins the nomination and the Presidency.
In the end my decision came down to who could best withstand the hellfire—and that’s the best word to describe it—of a Presidential election and being President itself. For all his attainments—Barack Obama hasn’t really been tested yet. It’s all well and good to run neck and neck for the race so far but what happens if he gets the nomination and has to face the Republican nominee in the fall? Even if he wins in November, does Obama have the inner fortitude to withstand the verbal putrefaction of conservatives and the political obstructionism that is soon to come? If you think the conservative attacks against Bill Clinton in the 1990’s were bad the attacks on Obama will be even worse—much worse. I don’t think Obama really knows what political opposition in the 21st century is really about. He thinks he knows but he really doesn’t—not yet.
Hillary Rodham Clinton does know; has known since 1993. People talk about the Bill Clinton administration. Actually it was the two of them together running the country. Bill Clinton could never have won in 1992 and 1996 without Hillary. There is no debating that question. He could never have survived the impeachment and trial in the Senate as a result of the Lewinsky scandal without Hillary at his side. The hellfire Bill Clinton faced Hillary faced as well.
The real root of conservative hatred for Hillary Rodham Clinton is based on this: both Bill and Hillary Clinton succeeded politically where others before them failed. They succeeded because they had the wisdom and audacity to beat the conservative movement by using their own weapons against them. There is a substantive legacy of achievement which came as a result of their success. We can only speculate whether Obama can move the country again. We know Hillary can because she and Bill Clinton did so in the 1990’s.
In the end, I chose for the person who has been tested by the hellfire and emerged strengthened, shriven, and sharper than before. When I entered the voting booth on February 5, I pulled the lever for Hillary. Even if she falls short of the nomination—a distinct possibility, I won’t regret it. If Obama gets the nomination over Hillary I will vote for Obama but my heart went with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
