Campaign Trail Follies of 08 (part 2)

The S.S. McCain: One Rapidly Sinking Ship!: You know things aren't going well for John McCain's presidential campaign when the candidate attacks the media for being too biased in favor of the "other guy." In a combination mass email and YouTube video, the McCain campaign declared, "It's pretty obvious that the media has a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama. Some may even say it's a love affair. The media is in love with Barack Obama. If it wasn't so serious, it would be funny." To the tune of the 1960s' hit "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," the video shows images of influential media figures swooning over Senator Barack Obama. Sad. Very sad. These are the tactics of a desperate, go-nowhere campaign. And this isn't the only troubling sign -- not by a long shot. Campaign deserters tell tales of entire communities without any real McCain campaign presence. The refusal by the New York Times to print an op-ed piece by McCain added to his woes. The extensive media coverage of Obama's recent trip overseas also heightened frustrations in the McCain camp. As conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh noted, "My prediction is that the coverage of Obama on this trip will be oriented toward countering the notion he has no idea what he is talking about on foreign policy and defence issues and instead will prop him up as a qualified statesman. McCain, on the other hand, is a known quantity on these issues and his position does not excite nor fit the mainstream media's narrative on Iraq and Afghanistan, so they simply ignore it and him." Then McCain was stung by the news that one of his big donors, Craig Berkman, is being sued in a fraud case and has been ordered to pay $28 million in damages. Arr, me maties! From where I'm standin', the S.S. McCain don't look none too seaworthy!

The Gutter Gazette Strike Again: The National Enquirer is reporting that former North Carolina senator John Edwards "met with his mistress, blonde divorcée Rielle Hunter, at the Beverly Hilton on Monday night, July 21"and left the Hilton (in Beverly Hills, California) in the wee hours of the morning. The Enquirer is insisting that Edwards and Hunter had a "love child" together (what a nasty term). Luckily, the story has failed to get much play in the mainstream media. Edwards, easily the most progressive and humane political leader out there, is now in the midst of trying to launch his own one-man War on Poverty. He is busily touring the country, speaking out for a higher minimum wage, improved medical insurance for the poor and other measures to protect the jobs and livelihoods of ordinary, working-class families. A Rocky Mountain News headline said it all: "John Edwards passion to war against poverty." No other politician is out there fighting the good fight on behalf of the poor as aggressively as Edwards. Unfortunately, the sleazy Enquirer has never given a damn about the plight of the poor in America. All they want to do is destroy good people and good reputations -- as long as it translates into selling copies. Let's hope this story stays in the gutter where it belongs. Edwards, more than anyone else I know, deserves a prominent spot in the new Obama White House.

A Watershed Year for Democrats?: A recent article in the British Guardian quoted New York senator Charles Schumer is predicting several Democratic victories in Red States this fall. So far, poll after poll seems to support this prediction. Local state polls show Obama way out ahead in most races. Nationwide, the numbers tell the same story. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll says Senator Obama leads Senator McCain by 47 per cent to 41 per cent for the November 4 election. Senator Schumer predicted a watershed for the Democratic Party this fall that may rival that of 1932. He said, "Every generation, generation and a half, there are these dramatic changes, and if they're permanent they are governed by people's relationship to government." In a letter to the Republican leadership earlier this year, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) expressed his concerns: "The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worse since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006." But the battle is far from over. The Chicago Tribune's political reporter Matthew Hay Brown's latest Blog entry is appropriately headlined, "Dems: Beware 'Irrational Exuberance.'" Or, as Han Solo told Luke Skywalker, "Don't get cocky kid!"

Give Those Girls a Raise!: Finally, from People magazine comes the news that Obama gives his daughters, Malia (10) and Sasha (7) a $1 a week allowance. $1??? Come on, Senator, you can do better than that. If you win the race for the presidency -- no, no, no... make that, when you win -- in November, you have got to give those girls a raise. According to People, they do a lot of work around the house (and on the campaign trail, too!).

Hello! Reality check! These days, $1 a week just doesn't cut it. In fact, it hasn't cut it since, oh, 1971. Get with the times!

The Tragic Decline of the Midwest

Republican presidential candidate John McCain (right) was in Michigan today meeting with General Motors CEOs and auto workers. Things are rough in that part of the country. For the past 30, 35 years, we've been hearing tales of the declining "rust belt." By the time Michael Moore made Roger & Me in 1989 -- by far Moore's best film, about the irreverent filmmaker tracking down GM CEO Roger Smith -- it didn't seem like things could get much worse in America's Industrial Heartland. But in 2008 -- not quite 20 years after Roger & Me played in movie theaters across the country -- things are worse. McCain realizes that the "rust belt" region of the Midwest -- especially Michigan and Ohio -- are feeling the pain of America's economic downturn most acutely. That's why he is spending time there and listening to the stories of troubled auto workers.

"We all know in this room a job is more than a job," McCain proclaimed, right in the heart of Auto Country.

But McCain's tough populist talk is often at odds with his unwavering advocacy of free trade, corporate welfare and minimal regulation of industry and environmental laws. Still, the Arizona Republican knows he is lagging behind in the polls in the race against Obama, particularly when it comes to economic issues. That's why this visit to the GM plant at Warren, Michigan, is so important to him. He has to appear sympathetic to the average American worker or he is going to lose much-needed votes to Obama.

By going to Michigan, McCain is right in the center of the sinking "rust belt." Adding to the woes of that region's inhabitants has been the nationwide housing crisis, which has hit that part of the country particularly hard. A recent Reuters article highlighted the terrible housing slump in the Midwest, which shows no signs of recovery anytime soon.

The Reuters article quoted Katherine Porter, associate professor of law at the University of Iowa College of Law as saying, "I expect the hardest hit places to be those such as Ohio and Michigan where the foreclosure crisis was driven by serious, if not permanent, economic downturns." Porter is quite correct in her analysis. Unlike the "Sunbelt states" of the South and Southwest, the "rust belt" is not experiencing steady increases in population growth or migration. The Reuters article also included a telling quote from Andrew Jakabovics of the think tank the Center for American Progress: "The sad truth is that in economically stagnant places, the value of foreclosed properties is often the value of the land less the cost of demolishing the structure."

Hard to believe that less than a half century ago, the troubled spot that McCain is touring was once literally the engine (no pun intended) of economic growth for the nation. The tragic decline of Michigan -- and indeed, the Midwest -- reflects the shifting economic priorities of the last forty years. As the country has moved away from protectionist policies that favored American industry and toward a greater emphasis on free trade, the service sector and high-tech industry, the ailing "rust belt" has become even rustier. And it is difficult to see how McCain's modest proposals -- which include giving a $5,000 tax credit to Americans who buy no-emissions cars -- are going to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

From the "Better to Ignore It" File...

The Blogosphere is abuzz with debates about the controversial cover of an upcoming New Yorker magazine (right) depicting Senator Barack Obama as an Islamic terrorist and Michelle Obama as a 1960s-style Black Radical. While some liberals dismissed it as the work of Karl Rove, the artist responsible for the cover, Barry Blitt, is actually sympathetic to Obama and wanted the cover to poke fun at all the outrageous claims of Far Right loonies who wish to discredit the Democratic presidential candidate. As Blitt put it, "I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is." No surprise: The Obama Campaign saw the image and went ballistic. Campaign spokesman Bill Burton issued a statement: "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

One of my favorite political websites, Steve Benen's The Carpetbagger Report, had this to say about the cartoon: "There’s clever, poignant satire, and then there’s ham-fisted, garish satire that’s in poor taste. The New Yorker cover falls comfortably into the latter category." The Carpetbagger Report quotes progressive Canadian Blogger Rachel Sklar as saying:

Presumably the New Yorker readership is sophisticated enough to get the joke, but still: this is going to upset a lot of people, probably for the same reason it’s going to delight a lot of other people, namely those on the right: Because it’s got all the scare tactics and misinformation that has so far been used to derail Barack Obama’s campaign — all in one handy illustration. Anyone who’s tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who’s tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism — well, here’s your image.

I tend to agree with New Republic Blogger Isaac Chotiner, who insists that Senator Obama would be better off ignoring the cover instead of making an issue out of it. If you don't like the cover -- and most progressive Bloggers have made it abundantly clear they dislike it -- then keep quiet. The more Obama condemns it, the more his right-wing foes are going to use the cover to fuel uncertainties and misconceptions. Blasting the cover -- calling it tasteless, crude, Islamophobic, right-wing, failed satire, etc., etc. -- is only going buttress its street cred among anti-Obama yahoos.

If you don't believe me, look no further than Canada for an important cautionary tale. A while back, the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against conservative syndicated columnist Mark Steyn (left) for his column in the October 2006 issue of Maclean's magazine titled "The Future Belongs to Islam," which was an excerpt from his book America Alone. Steyn's article claimed that Western society was under the threat of being overrun and taken over by the world's rapidly growing Muslim population. At one point in the article, Steyn quoted a European imam who allegedly said that Muslims are reproducing "like mosquitoes." The CIC's complaint went all the way to the British Columbia Human Rights Commission, which launched a tribunal to investigate whether Steyn's article ought to be considered a violation of the human rights of Canadian Muslims.

It was a terrible move and it backfired. It triggered a firestorm of protest from Canadian civil libertarians across the country (including yours truly), who thought this tribunal threatened to stifle free speech. I fervently defended Mark Steyn in my regular newspaper column, despite the fact I disagreed with his claims. There was a brief show trial out in British Columbia in early June. It was a joke and it was attacked by people around the world as a sham. Luckily, the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- following an outburst of nationwide protest -- dropped the CIC's complaint. But sadly, in the course of the tribunal, Mark Steyn became a hero of "free speech," and untold numbers of readers who would have otherwise ignored his column in Maclean's were instantly drawn to it.

There is something about "taboo," "politically incorrect" topics that atrract people like magnets. While there are no Human Rights Commissions in the United States like the ones in Canada, the same general principle in the Maclean's/Steyn case applies to the case of the New Yorker Obama magazine cover. The moral of the story is: Let sleeping dogs lie. Leave it alone. Ignore it. If you ignore it, it will go away. Make a big deal out of it and your foes will know where your vulnerable spot is located and they will hit you hard there. That is the nature of politics. It was like that long before you or I came along.

Remembering the Sixties

I admit, I'm a hypocrite. Yesterday, I said that humanitarians/progressives/lefties should exercise caution when criticizing Barack Obama during the presidential race. Now I'm going to criticize him. But this is meant to be constructive. The guy still has my vote.

The ghosts of the Sixties will not leave Obama alone. In his recent speech on patriotism, the Democratic presidential candidate discussed the culture wars and the polarized climate that birthed them in the 1960s. Here's an excerpt:

What is striking about today's patriotism debate is the degree to which it remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s--in arguments that go back 40 years or more. In the early years of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, defenders of the status quo often accused anybody who questioned the wisdom of government policies of being unpatriotic. Meanwhile, some of those in the so-called counterculture of the '60s reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself--by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day.

Sadly, in his otherwise eloquent commentary on the beauty of patriotism, Obama accepted many of the most odious right-wing stereotypes about the 1960s. His purpose here is obvious: To distance himself from Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, who, along with Obama, was a member of the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago (the story, incidentally, was first brought to the attention of the world by Peter Hitchens, the conservative brother of fiery contrarian columnist Christopher Hitchens, in February).

There is no need for Obama to continue distancing himself from Ayers. Obama's spokesman, Bill Burton, issued a statement a few months back (when the story about the Ayers-Obama connection first broke) pointing out the fact that Ayers a) didn't kill anybody; b) has been a professor of education for years at the University of Illinois; c) and has worked as an aide to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. The statement concluded:

Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.

It was an eloquent statement and it should have been the last word on the Obama-Ayers link.

As for the 1960s, it is time to start shooting down some of the false myths perpetuated by the Right. The fact is, flag burners were a tiny minority of protesters in the 1960s and many of them were actually agents provocateurs on the payroll of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Sixties was a polarized time in American history and it did produce extremists who advocated violence.

However, the overwhelming majority of protesters were both nonviolent and motivated by a deep love of their country -- whether they were part of the Civil Rights Movement, the Antiwar Movement, the Gay and Lesbian Liberation Struggle, Chicano Rights, Feminism, Environmentalism, etc.

It is also important to remember what a profoundly destructive war they were protesting. The Vietnam War was laying waste to all of Southeast Asia, leaving millions dead, forests wilting under defoliation, bomb craters and unexploded munitions all across the countryside, and paving the way for the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge.

Most antiwar activists -- and a significant number of them were antiwar Vietnam Veterans, as I point out in my book The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War -- opposed the war out of a deep love of their country. The easy way out for them would have been to reject politics, stay at home and watch their nation implode. But they took the difficult approach: They loved their nation enough to protest injustice.

I salute Obama for saying that only "some of those in the so-called counterculture" resorted to such extreme tactics as flag burning and "failing to honor" Vietnam Veterans. Yet he also should have mentioned that the worst dishonor to Vietnam veterans came from the horrendous treatment they endured from their own government. And the very same conditions that so many Vietnam veterans encountered in the 1960s and 1970s are still evident in America today, this time contributing to a declining quality of life for Iraq War and Afghanistan War vets when they return to America.

Not long ago, I posted a moving video on the Tiki Lounge from Ron Kovic, the heroic Vietnam veteran who came home and opposed the Vietnam War. It is worth quoting his words again:

How can you send young men like myself and those of this generation to Vietnam and to Iraq? How can you send them and spend billions of dollars on a war that is lost, a war that cannot be won? A senseless war. A wasteful war. How can you do that? How can you put their lives at risk? How can you put them through that emotional trauma and not care for them when they come home? This is- this is unacceptable. I love this country. I was willing to risk my life. I gave three-quarters of my body to this country in Vietnam. And I'm watching this same thing happen all over again. What is it gonna take? How many more have to die? How many more have to come home wounded and maimed like myself?

Barack Obama should be sure to remember that truly great Americans -- real patriots -- such as Kovic, Martin Luther King, Jr., César Chávez, Gloria Steinem, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Mario Savio, Joan Baez, the Berrigan Brothers and William Sloane Coffin had a much bigger impact on the movement against the Vietnam War than misguided young militants whose acts of resistance included flag burning and extreme, over-the-top, anti-authoritarian rhetoric.

Today's right-wing myths about the Sixties present a distorted view of the period. Yes, it was a painful time in American history. But the United States emerged from that decade a freer, nobler and more open place than it had been ten years earlier.

Did Obama Gravitate to the Center?

Less controversial than Retired Army General Wesley Clark's comments about Senator John McCain's military service -- but every bit as important -- is the current debate about whether Senator Barack Obama has moved to the political "center" in the aftermath of the highly contentious primaries. And you guessed it, Blog Pals. Yours truly is prepared to weigh in.

"I've been struck by the speed and decisiveness of his move to the center," observed Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute. In his June 30 New York Times column titled "The Obama Agenda," liberal economist Paul Krugman wrote, "It’s feeling a lot like 1992 right now. It’s also feeling a lot like 1980. But which parallel is closer? Is Barack Obama going to be a Ronald Reagan of the left, a president who fundamentally changes the country’s direction? Or will he be just another Bill Clinton?" Meantime, Michael Gerson's Washington Post column on Obama's move to the center featured the headline, "The Audacity of Cynicism." "Obama Turns Centrist," said the headline of Ruth Conniff's column in the Progressive magazine. In her commentary titled "Memo to Obama: The Center is for Losers," Arianna Huffington wrote:

As part of this process, I looked at the Obama campaign not through the prism of my own progressive views and beliefs but through the prism of a cold-eyed campaign strategist who has no principles except winning. From that point of view, and taking nothing else into consideration, I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy. And don’t let the latest head-to-head poll numbers lull you the way they lulled Hillary Clinton in December. Running to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters didn’t work for Al Gore in 2000. It didn’t work for John Kerry in 2004. And it didn’t work when Mark Penn (obsessed with his “microtrends” and missing the megatrend) convinced Hillary Clinton to do it in 2008.

I could go on with countless other examples of commentaries about Obama moving to the comfy middle of the road. Many -- but not all -- of them come from progressives and lefties who worry that Obama is jettisoning his progressive views to win support from centrists. The strategy, they say, backfired for Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. By contrast, Obama triumphed in the primaries, they insist, because he was decidedly progressive in his positions.

Movement is all relative, I suppose. For the longest time, I was a John Edwards (right) supporter. Now there is a genuine progressive -- in the fighting, populist Robert La Follette/Paul Wellstone tradition. I admit, I was a Johnny-come-lately to the Obama cause. In fact, after Edwards dropped out of the race, I was depressed for two weeks. My loved ones and friends were starting to wonder what the hell was wrong with me.

It took me a while to throw my support behind Obama. You may recall that during the primaries, an awful lot of folks -- including many who are now lamenting Obama's post-primaries drift to the center -- expressed concerns about his vague positions. They agreed that Obama could deliver a hell of a speech, but he was short on specifics. Author, film professor and screenwriter Trey Ellis commented about his reluctance to support Obama during the primaries: "I didn't find his positions, especially on universal health care, as progressive as I would have wished. Both he and Hillary seemed very much of the DLC centrist mold despite calling themselves progressives." Ellis suggests that Obama was always a centrist candidate on a host of issues, but the candidate also took some bold and humane stands, especially on the Iraq War. Ellis concludes with this parting shot: "Obama's strength isn't his slavish adherence to party line but his ability, issue by issue, to decide the right medicine at the right moment. If that makes you call him a centrist then so be it. Get over it already. He's nobody's man but his own."

I agree with Ellis. I think Obama is walking a tightrope, carefully juggling progressive ideas and centrist pragmatism. It's a difficult balancing act, but so far, he has pulled it off and maintained his freshness and credibility. In fact, he's so good at it, he makes it look downright easy. I'm not saying for a minute that progressives/liberals/lefties/dissenters/nonconformists (or whatever your chosen label might be) should refrain from criticizing Obama. Throughout the campaign, he has taken serious missteps and embraced dubious positions. And from time to time, he needs to feel pressure from principled people to put him back on the right track.

But I also think commentators on the left side of the spectrum have a responsibility to circle the wagons around Obama and keep their criticisms constructive. Too many folks on the Left have, for too long, viewed even reasonable compromise as a sin and they've aimed for a level of moral purity that simply does not exist in the charged and brutal world of American politics. As a third party supporter in my youth, I used to be one of those purists -- always attacking the notion that voters should support Democrats simply because they were the "lesser of two evils." Back in those days, I agreed with Michael Moore that American politics was a contest between the "evil of two lessers."

I have left my dogmatic moral purity behind with my youth, though, especially after I've seen what two terms of George W. Bush has done to America. Whatever you may think of Bill Clinton (and a quick perusal of my earlier Blog entires will show that I can be a pretty hard on Old Bubba), he was light years better than Dubya. Light years. My bottom line is: Goal No. 1: Get Obama in the White House. Goal No. 2: At that point, turn up the heat and keep the pressure on from the progressive side of the fence.

McCain, Obama, War and Patriotism

It has been a hectic last week on the campaign trail. The nationwide buzz from the highly publicized "United Front" demonstrated by Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama proved short-lived, knocked off the perch by Retired Army General Wesley Clark's (above) comments about Senator John McCain's military service over the weekend on CBS' Face the Nation. When host Bob Schieffer raised the issue of Obama's lack of military service, Clark said, "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."

Clark clarified his remarks the following day on Good Morning America: "As a retired serviceman, someone who came home from Vietnam on a stretcher, someone who spent 38 years in uniform, someone who’s worked his way up through the ranks of the United States Armed Forces, I would never discredit anyone who chose to wear the uniform. I fully respect John McCain and his service, and I’ve said so repeatedly. My point is that there’s a difference in preparing yourself for the highest office in the land. … John McCain as a young officer demonstrated courage and character. But the service as president is about judgment. And the experience that he had as a fighter pilot isn’t the same as having been at the highest levels of the military."

On Monday, the day after Clark's comments caused so much commotion from coast to coast, Obama apparently thought the time was right to deliver a speech on patriotism, in which he emphasized his deep love of America. "Throughout my life, I have always taken my deep and abiding love for this country as a given. It was how I was raised. It was what propelled me into public service. It is why I am running for president. And yet at times over the last 16 months, my patriotism has been challenged -- at times as a result of my own carelessness, more often as a result of the desire by some to score political points and raise fears about who I am and what I stand for."

The McCain campaign, meantime, has been denouncing Clark and insisting that if Obama really respected McCain's service to his nation and the five and a half years he spent as a POW in North Vietnam, then Obama would cut all ties to Clark.

It would be a foolish move for Obama to cut ties to Clark. Instead, Obama did the wise thing by re-stating his commitment to patriotism. The man has his finger on the pulse of the nation. He understands that there are a number of people across the nation who question his love of America, especially white, working-class voters. And Obama's speech recast patriotism as more than just a connection to a particular country or people, but also a love of ideals. As Obama put it: "That is why for me, patriotism is always more than just loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people. Instead, it's also loyalty to America's ideals, ideals for which anyone can sacrifice, or defend, or give their last full measure of devotion."

The controversy caused by Clark's remarks will soon pass. Liberal Bloggers have been rejoicing that a high-level Democrat finally had the courage to question McCain's insistence that his military service helps qualify him for the presidency. But -- as well-intentioned liberals often do -- they're missing the bigger picture. The Vietnam War was a catastrophe that laid waste to much of Southeast Asia, leaving millions dead and the landscape scarred by defoliants and bomb craters. But we don't need another debate on Vietnam in this campaign, because -- as was the case with the Swift Boat Smears in 2004 -- such debates are counterproductive and always focus on the wrong issues. Obama needs to keep discussing the economy, the Iraq War (which is slowly bleeding to death another nation in a different part of the world) and the declining quality of life for ordinary Americans after eight years of George W. Bush. For too long, Republicans have been dictating the terms of political debates. It is time for Obama to set the rules, to call the shots, and to determine which issues are of utmost importance. Let historians debate the 1960s and the Vietnam War. Obama needs to get into the White House. He needs Wesley Clark to get there. And he needs to keep hammering today's -- not yesterday's -- issues home.