Campaign 2008: Kickoff

(Editor’s note: if you’re wondering what became of me since late May, I was busy preparing for a major trip to Toronto in early June as part of my ongoing research on an oral history of the NHL’s Original Six era. Also I was feeling burned out and starved for inspiration with regards to my blog so I decided to take a compositional holiday until the dust settled for me intellectually, artistically, and emotionally).

For all the talk of 2008 being a Democratic year it’s amazing that as Labor Day comes before us (and with it the traditional kickoff of the Presidential race) we are faced with a dead heat in the polls between Barack Obama and John McCain. And now that both candidates have selected their running-mates the Presidential race becomes a contest of steel-on-steel with broadswords and long-knives unsheathed. It could be no other.

Two night’s ago Senator Obama eschewed his customary poetic elocutionary style for a more steely-edged feistiness reminiscent of Harry S. Truman in 1948 than Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 or John F. Kennedy in 1960 (Obama invoked both the latter two’s names in his address). And yet that feistiness is badly needed right now. If Al Gore or John Kerry had been as feisty in 2000 and 2004, respectively we would not have suffered eight bloody hard years of George W. Bush. Obama needs to swing from the heels and his selection of Senator Joe Biden from Delaware (a combative orator in his own right) reinforces that need. Interestingly in Obama’s speech, Obama (as noted before) cited FDR and JFK as paradigms of the Democratic Party but refused to cite Bill Clinton too. (I smirked when I noticed that omission and couldn’t help but wonder if that was a subtle backhand to the Clintons). Even more interestingly I wonder if Obama took a page from Hollywood in his attacks on John McCain during his acceptance speech. Early on, Obama told the crowd that “McCain doesn’t get it.” In the movie American President Actor Michael Douglas, playing the role of the President used the same line to attack his political opponent played by actor Richard Dreyfuss in his climactic speech at the end of the movie.

And yet…

And yet despite all of Obama’s oratory and cool decision-making the race is still in a dead heat because John McCain has continued to effectively wage his stealth campaign. There seems to be reluctance in the press to accept McCain’s viability as a candidate but the fact that he has closed the gap and placed himself in a position to grasp for victory cannot be discounted. Given Obama’s inspirational and oratorical skills, McCain’s comeback must be seen as one of the finest examples of skillful political campaigning in the annals of American Presidential politics. Whether you approve his message or not, the fact that he has as close as he has at this moment is a testament to John McCain the man and it’s a testament he should be proud of for the rest of his life—whether he wins the election or not.

The fact that Obama has allowed McCain to come this close bodes ill for him and the Democratic Party.

McCain’s selection of the Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin as his running-mate speaks volumes about McCain himself. McCain’s choice of Palin as running-mate allows him to go into the history as the first G.O.P. candidate to break the glass-ceiling for Republican women. Hopefully Palin will not be the last woman to grace a G.O.P. Presidential ticket.
McCain’s selection of Palin speaks of boldness, daring; a willingness not to be chained by orthodoxy in order to achieve a goal, and, most importantly, his personal ability to appeal to a broad range of voters—which is why he is in a dead heat with Obama at the present time.

Still I cannot help but wonder if Sarah Palin was McCain’s first choice from the beginning. I wonder if McCain wanted Independent Senator and nominal Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut as his running-mate. Considering how the two have worked closely together in the Senate and have campaigned together, I wonder if McCain had wanted Lieberman but was dissuaded by G.O.P. insiders because they told him there would be a conservative backlash against him if he did so; i.e. they would do to McCain what they did to George H.W. Bush in 1992, sit on their hands and allow Bush to lose to Clinton in 1992?

If McCain had chosen Lieberman it would have been an even more daring decision than choosing Palin. A McCain-Lieberman ticket would have been America’s first attempt at coalition government in the European style. Considering the crisis state America is in today such a ticket might have had appeal if properly exploited by both men.

There is another disquieting aspect to this campaign that Barack Obama needs to consider (and overcome) in the weeks to come. Obama has run an anti-war campaign against our involvement in Iraq. McCain has supported the war from the beginning and has based his whole thrust of the campaign on attaining victory in Iraq. Given the unpopularity of the war one would think that Obama is on the right side of the issue and holds the winning hand. History however tells a different tale—a tale Obama needs to keep in mind. No American Presidential candidate who campaigned on an anti-war platform has ever won a Presidential election. In 1864 the Democrats led by George McClellan sought an end to the Civil War based on a negotiated peace with the South. McClellan lost badly to Abraham Lincoln. In 1968 Hubert Humphrey belatedly sought a bombing-halt against North Vietnam as a prelude to an American withdrawal from Vietnam only to lose to Richard Nixon. In 1972 Democrat George McGovern called for an immediate pullout from Vietnam only to be annihilated by Richard Nixon. In 2004 John Kerry tried to wage an anti-war campaign only to be beaten by George W. Bush. This is a factor of American history which cannot be ignored and if Obama does ignore it he does so at his own peril. It is also a factor which can help John McCain win in November—as long as he plays his cards right.

Myanmar: The Path of Indifference

The Myanmar government’s deliberate policy of callous indifference towards the tragic plight of its citizens ravaged by cyclones during the past few weeks is nothing new. This ruthless and disgusting variation on humanity’s inhumanity to humanity has been played out repeatedly in the annals of history. Here are two examples. In 1943 (during World War Two) there was a massive famine in the Honan province of China. The late journalist Theodore White was in China as a correspondent for Time Magazine. When he heard rumors about the famine he went to Honan to investigate for himself. What he saw can be read in chapter four of his best-selling book In Search of History. What had had happened was that the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-Shek had ruthlessly collected all the grain that had been harvested in the Honan province as a means of payment of that province’s taxes, leaving nothing for its populace to eat. Theodore White filed a story in Time that exposed the horrors of the famine and the Nationalist government’s unwillingness to aid its victims. (Indeed Chiang Kai-Shek, instead of taking action to assist the victims, tried to get Theodore White fired). It was only after a massive outcry in the world press that Chiang was shamed into taking action to aid the people of Honan (it was the same callous indifference that led the Chinese people to overthrow Chiang in 1949).

The other example took place in the Ukraine in what was then the former Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War Two. The Ukraine (Russia’s breadbasket) had already suffered greatly during World War I and the Russian Revolution. It suffered even more during the purges and the Five Year Plans ordered by Josef Stalin during the 1930s. It was further bled white by the Nazis when they occupied the Ukraine from 1941 to 1944. But if that was not enough it suffered even more when Stalin, having reestablished his authority over the Ukraine after expelling the Germans, ordered a new purge and reestablished his failed agrarian policies—this resulted in a massive famine which led to the deaths of millions of Ukrainians. Nikita Khrushchev (Stalin’s commissar for the Ukraine) later wrote in his memoirs that the conditions in the Ukraine were so dire that some of the famine victims were resorting to cannibalism to survive.

When governments treat its own citizenry as enemies then death is the inevitable result. The only question being what manner of death will its people be forced to suffer and endure before it succumbing?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: In the Arena

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.