Here's what I mean.
If we require that a politician's positions and behavior remain consistent over time-- that if you are for something today but actually you voted against it 8 years ago you are a hypocrite-- well, pretty much all politicians will fail that test. Circumstances change, viewpoints evolve. Whether you're talking about Obama having voted against raising the debt ceiling as senator, or about Romney's beta version of Obamacare in Massachusetts, if a politician is in public life long enough, he or she will almost certainly self-contradict over time.
Unless, of course, that politician is so zealous and fanatical in their ideals as to be inflexible. In which case, bingo, lunatic.
Given the choice between hypocrites and lunatics, I generally vote for the hypocrites.
Labels: The politics
Can someone explain to me how wanting to make sure every American gets all the health care they need is somehow evocative of the Nazis?
Labels: The politics
Labels: pop culture, The politics
Karl Rove was wrong about everything.
Perhaps the best news about this election is that it looks like we as an electorate are finally at a point where we can no longer be suckered into voting for the one guy because the other guy is (pick one) a terrorist, a socialist, the guy who freed Willie Horton, a Muslim, OK-not-a-Muslim-but-we-don’t-like-his-church, a northeastern liberal elite, a baby-killer, or whatever. Today’s young voters, God bless ‘em, look right through that as if it weren’t there.
In hindsight, it was inspiring, the extent to which Obama steadfastly refused to play the dirty game. Whereas McCain, who said there was a “special place in hell” for the Bush operative who was responsible for tarring him in South Carolina in 2000 with push polling that suggested he fathered an illegitimate black child, actually went and hired that same guy in ’08. Nice.
Obama talked issues; McCain (and Palin) said nasty things about Obama. Today’s voters, especially you youngsters, look at that and conclude that McCain must have nothing positive to say about his own candidacy. And so you take your patronage elsewhere. Good for you.
It has always gone that if you spent all your air time smearing the other guy, you could probably win. Now, I think if you spend all your air time smearing the other guy, you’re going to lose. Hallelujah.
With respect to leadership: stupidity and closed-mindedness are not, in fact, assets.
The reason so many on the left were so irate over Sarah Palin was precisely this. While the main thing said on her behalf by the red meat Republicans was, “she reminds me of me!” many of us outside that narrow band prefer the idea of a leader of the free world who is actually better than me. Someone smart, successful, curious, measured, open-minded… dare I say, someone elite.
Obama told us that his victory means that anyone can grow up to be president. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I kind of like to think it means just the opposite.
When you have the most important job in the world, and you do it very, very, VERY badly, there are going to be consequences.
The combined movement in the house and senate over the past two elections is seismic; we voters have been punishing the Republicans for George Bush quite sternly for some time now. Both parties need to hear that; the Republicans need to understand that they failed the American voter badly, and the Democrats need to realize that punishing the other guys is not the same as awarding you a mandate. In sports terms, if the other team fumbles on their own five yard line, do not conclude that you have a great running game. Instead, figure out a way to capitalize on the serendipity and get the ball into the end zone.
So for the Dems, it’s first and goal. But we’ve all seen them cough up the ball enough times in this situation to be concerned. This time, though, they do have one hell of a quarterback.
There is no right and left; there is only forward and backward.
The Democrats—and Barack Obama—are looking forward; the Republicans, and especially the Sarah Palin Republicans, look back. Specifically, they look back to the ‘50s. The “real America” that Sarah Palin speaks of, the small town America where there are no liberals, no questioning the government, no abortion, no birth control… that town is Mayberry. It is Pleasantville, if you saw that movie. In short, it is a fictitious idealization of a bygone era, shot in black and white. If it ever really existed, it doesn’t now.
But Republicans like to look backward. It is why, from Reagan to Bush I to Dole to McCain, they like to nominate old white men for president. And like the movie Pleasantville, there is no cramming the genie back in the bottle; there is no returning to the ‘50s, no wiping out the color and returning to black and white.
Republicans don’t like the future. They don’t like, for example, gay marriage, which is out there in the future. They don’t like easy access to affordable health care, also out there. Many of the things they don’t like loom large and inevitable off in the distance, and so they face backward. Using McLuhan’s metaphor, they look at the present through a rear view mirror; they march backward into the future. Invariably, when you do that, the future smacks you in the back of the head. That thud you hear about now…
A year ago I thought Obama was one election away from being ready. I’m glad I was wrong.
Bellicosity is not a foreign policy.
It is very easy to stand in front of a cheering crowd and announce, “We’re going to show those other guys what for!” And it is wholly appropriate… when the milieu is, say, college foot\ball. When it’s foreign policy, though, it remains unclear what such rhetoric accomplishes. I totally get, speak softly but carry a big stick. But “boast like an ass and don’t have the wherewithal to back it up”? Not so compelling. War should be, truly, a last resort, not the feel-good movie of the summer.
The Republican party as we know it is dead.
The social conservatives and evangelical Christians, around whom the Republicans have built their winning coalition since Reagan, are increasingly a fringe element of their party, and of society. All the conservative pundits on CNN last night (such as the insufferable William Bennett) insist that this is a center-right country. But it isn’t. It is a center-left country. Just watch daytime TV if you want to understand the “real” America. For every fundamentalist Christian, there are 5 baby daddies. Rank and file Americans are not intolerant of abortion rights, gay rights, non-traditional families and so on—rank-and-file America embraces these things. Rank-and-file Americans live these things each day.
Here in the real America, we live in or near cities, we are multi-racial, multi-cultural. Some of us are gay, some of us are divorced and share child custody. Some of us are single moms. We are black, white, Asian, Hispanic, and more. We are Indian, Korean, Japanese, Jewish, Latino… and that’s just my daughter’s pre-school class.
Not all of us are Christians, not all of us are religious, some of us have gone to graduate school, some of us question the government when it does something stupid. That is the America that I live in, and it is the America that you live in. That other America, the Sarah Palin “real America,” the one the Republicans keep trying to sell us and appeal to—for the overwhelming majority of us, it doesn’t exist. Maybe 20% of Americans live in the kind of place where Sarah Palin thinks real American values can be found.
Like many of my friends and loved ones, I was offended and mortified by the Republican convention, and especially by Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, and Sarah Palin. Sport was made at the expense of us liberal citified northeasterners; for Palin, “northeast” is a laugh line.
The northeast is not America? Well, you know, there are 63 million of us here (New England; New York and New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Delaware, Maryland and DC.) Can you imagine the outrage if Democrat party leaders mocked and disparaged “the conservative south” from the stage of their convention? (Southern states comprise some 60 million people; I exclude Florida, which is not the south but is actually past the south.) Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity could go two weeks riffing off the faux outrage they’d muster off that. And yet it is OK for Republican Party leaders—for their Vice Presidential nominee—to disparage the liberal northeast? Here’s a hint: no. It is not, in fact, OK.
Living in New York City in the ‘90s I watched Giuliani’s government by us-versus-them in action. His first move as mayor was to get rid of the squeegee guys—the vagrants who hovered by the entrances to the city off the bridges and tunnels, and began to wipe your windshield in order to intimidate you into giving a gratuity. Everyone (except the vagrants) loved it; we were all “us,” and the squeegee guy were so clearly “them.”
But the problem with “us-versus-them” governance is that inevitably the circle of citizens who qualify as “us” gets smaller and smaller. And indeed this characterized Giuliani’s tenure as mayor: eventually almost all of us had become “them.” Did you want to fly a kite in the park with your kid? In Rudy’s New York, that made you one of “them.”
The electorate has passed the Republican Party by. Their base is dwindling—really, literally, dying out. According to a study Sam Donaldson quoted on ABC”s This Week a couple weeks ago, and which no one disputed, Obama was running ahead of McCain by about 3 points… but among first-time voters, Obama was ahead by seventy(!) points. How does all this bode for Republicans? They fare worst among the fastest-growing population segments: Blacks, Hispanics, urban dwellers, and people born after 1980 (and 1990.) They do quite well, it has been noted, among white men. But white men are a minority who represent a smaller and smaller portion of the electorate.
This is not a thing that can swing back with time. I’ll say it again: Obama was up seventy points among first time voters. The Republican Party has to reevaluate everything it stands for, keep the good, lose the bad, and undergo a profound reinvention. Otherwise we will end up with only one major party. For all the haplessness of the Democratic party—really, save for Bill Clinton, unabated since JFK—they have managed to undergo just such a reinvention.
Now it is time for the blame game. There will be a fascinating struggle for the soul or the Republican Party. Already the extreme right is floating the debrief that the problem is, the party just isn’t conservative enough. That would be scary if it wasn’t so funny. Or maybe the other way around.
Labels: hope, obama, The politics
Of course we all knew the bar was going to be pretty low. After all the scary-insipid ramnblings from her "through the filter of the mainstream media" recently, all she had to do was not say anything outrageously heinous, and she'd have pulled herself back up.
She smiled. She winked. She offered a lot of third-grade-teacher happy talk, said "America" (she pronounces it "Am-YIER-ica") and "job creation" and "energy" a bunch, and generally-- and this was what her supporters said afterward-- came off like a regular person. As if a regular person should be running the country.
She didn't answer a single question. In fact, early on she even SAID she wasn't going to answer the questions, choosing instead to "talk directly to America." (wink.) Sadly, the moderator let her slide all night.
Biden, of course, demonstrated utter command of every issue that came up, which makes sense because he's spent 36 years in the senate and has dealt with 'em all. He had opinions and positions; she had a shrug and "heck, search me, I've only been doing this for 5 weeks." It was like watching the statesman and the kindergarten teacher; he demonstrated total command of every issue, and of the intricacies of government and the lessons of history. She demonstrated that she knew some of the key phrases and bullet points associated with the issues. In fact, her attitude toward history was, "There you go again, looking back." I assume you know what they say about people who know nothing of history.
But here in the US, when you demonstrate total command of the issues, you're an elitist; when you offer up folksy happy talk and mindless platitudes, you're-- well, you're George W. Bush, aren't you? If this twit ends up a heartbeat away from the presidency, then all I can say is, we deserve it. Imagine this scenario: McCain wins, then has a stroke in December. Russia invades, say, Kazakhstan. Palin is acting president of the United States, the leader of the free world. What does she say to Vladimir Putin? Doggone it, Vlad, we hockey moms don't cotton to that kind of behavior? Hey, remember me, I used to wave to you from Alaska? Or does she just shrug, smile and wink, and say, hey, I've only been president a week, don't look at me?
If we didn't have such low expectations of Palin, if she had been any other VP candidate, her performance in this debate would have been shockingly scary for her utter lack of substance and command of the issues. That our perception now is anything else is somewhere between scary and sad.
Labels: Joe Biden, The politics, The politics; Sarah Palin
Politically, there can be no question that Sarah Palin has turned out to be a great pick for John McCain's previously moribund (look it up) campaign. Despite the intense polarization she brings-- liberals HATE her, conservatives LOVE her-- she was the perfect counter to Obama's primary asset; to wit, his rock stardom. Now she is the rock star. Not a very good rock star; kind of like Britney Spears to Obama's U2. But a rock star nonetheless (and "Oops I Did It Again" sold way more than "It's a Beautiful Day.") . Everyone is talking about Palin and Obama; Papa McCain is getting a total pass. And the Reps couldn't have asked for a better outcome.
But is she qualified?
This is the wrong question; a false premise. Whichever side of the political divide you're on, both "yes" and "no" are dangerous answers here. Is being governor of a state sufficient qualification? Well, it was the main qualification that Dubya, Clinton, Reagan and Carter brought to the table. Oh, well, Alaska is too small a state... well then, what's the line? Is Arkansas a big enough state? Well, she was only governor a short time... OK, what's the right time? Was Obama a senator long enough? If you try to peel this onion, you will find that there is no minimum set of requirements to be president (save for the ones in the constitution).
Obviously her qualifications deserve scrutiny because, well, no one ever heard of her before she got the call from McCain, and because he's 72 and a cancer survivor. But the better way to frame the question is like this: can anyone-- McCain, his supporters-- can anyone look you in the eye and say that he picked the most qualified candidate? Picked someone best suited to leave us in good hands if he, you know, dies? And I'm sorry, there's no way anyone can answer yes to that question and look you dead in the eye whilst doing so. Canny and shrewd political move, sure. But ultimately somewhat irresponsible.
But let's stop talking about her, and start talking about him. Or, if we are going to talk about her, let's talk about her record, her politics, her religious and social views, which are way outside the mainstream of American political thought.
Pick one
I'm told (repeatedly; I watch news programming) that there are two key points to remember about Palin: (1) She is qualified to be the leader of the free world; and (2) she is JUST like the lady ahead of me on line at K-Mart.
Here's the problem I'm having. Both of tose statements cannot be true. Believe me when I tell you, the lady on line at K-Mart is in no way qualified to be the leader of the free world. Not wearing those pink stretchy sweat pants she's not.
And last...
Finally... if the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick, doesn't that make Palin Dick Cheney with pretty make-up?
Labels: The politics, The politics; Sarah Palin
Dropping the dry comedic pretense of the third person for a minute, in 1980 I was for John Anderson, an independent third party candidate; he was the first candidate I actually settled in on before the election, and I picked him mainly because my then-favorite rock star (Todd Rundgren) was playing fundraisers for him (duets with Ian Hunter; wish I'd seen one.) I've been paying attention to politics since then, and this-- Biden running with Obama for Veep-- is by far the best my guy has ever done. I'm as patriotically giddy as a schoolgirl.
Biden is a great choice, the right choice. The Reps are saying, hey look, Obama had to pick someone with experience and qualifications! The implication being, well, that's because he himself really IS unqualified! But seriously, let's hold on a second. Isn't the candidate SUPPOSED to pick someone qualified and experienced? Is McCain going to underscore his own competence and experience by selecting a babbling idiot? (Rhetorical question; he's likely picking Romney, so apparently the answer is yes.)
Biden has Obama's trust; he will provide valued councel on the campaign trail, and in office. He has that most important qualification for a Veep-- he can do the top job if he has to. He can play attack dog, going toe-to-toe with McCain, a role the Veep needs to take on so the top guy can stick to message. And he may well deliver Pennsylvania into the win column for the Dems, a key swing state they pretty much have to win.
So yeah, as I say, all of us here at APW are jazzed. Well done, Barry!
"Hey, Barak! I can see your house from here!"Labels: Joe Biden, The politics
Labels: obama, obama girl, pop culture, The politics
After Barack Obama's historic speech last week-- which will be remembered as on a par with King's "I Have a Dream"-- even Hillary had to admit that, hey, dude makes a heck of a speech. But, as she's been saying all along, giving a great speech is not the same thing as being qualified to be president.
This is where I think she's wrong. In this day and age-- which I'll define as "post-Reagan"-- I'd argue that public speaking is, easily, 80% of the job of being president. Meaning that Obama's facility with the spoken word does, indeed, all by itself pretty much qualify him to be president.
When Reagan was president I used to mock him as the Ronald McDonald of the administration; the guy who made the speeches and appeared on TV but certainly not the guy who made tthe burgers. Now I realize that Reagan, "the Great Communicator" (How Orwellian was that?), was ahead of his time. We're electing a president based on how good a job he or she will do as champion, as spokesperson for an administration and set of policies. Indeed whomever we elect, one would hope they'd get an expert on economics to make economic policy; an expert on the Middle East to make Middle Eastern policy, and so on. Probably also an expert on prostitution and extramarital affairs; indeed I think we should probably make that a cabinet-level position. (Insert your own position joke here: _______________________)
Hillary supporters are wont to say something that usually begins, "Yeah, but if she was a man..."
Let me complete that thought for you.
If she was a man, she'd be Al Gore without the inconvenient truth; she'd be John Kerry; she'd be Dick Gephardt in a pastel pants suit. Sorry, but I'm totally over that guy.
Labels: bestest, hillary, obama, The politics
I guess I was kidding myself. In hindsight the Democrat caucus rules in Iowa did not lend themselves to a strong Biden showing. You need to get a minimum of 15% in the precinct in round one, or you don't get to round 2; Biden probably got 10-15% a lot of places, which ended up translating to nothing. A pragmatist, he took his 1% of the vote and dropped out. Sorry to see him go, sorry that American politics has become a process of polling-fundraising self-fulfillment. But he'd make the perfect Veep for Obama, or a Secretary of State for any Dem.
But, dear reader, know that an endorsement is not a prediction; we predicted both Obama and Huckabee to win Iowa.
Item: Huckabee Wins
Not a surprise. Nice to see Romney lose though; he has that combination of smugness and opportunism that just totally grates. And I can't see Americans voting for a guy if we're wondering, "Does his hair look like that when he wakes up?" Huckabee seems like a really nice guy, and I hope he enjoys his moment in the sun, before the more pragmatic New Hampshire voters remind us that he's a tax hiking religious nut.
Item: Obama Wins; Hillary Places Third
Saw Obama coming a mile away; his supporters, likely to be under 30, are also likely to live in cell phone-only households and are thus unavailable to the infallible political pollsters. Indeed I even predicted this outcome to a graduate class in market research.
Hillary has a real problem now. Her campaign, based on the notion of its own inevitability, is now no longer inevitable and thus hollow. I heard a pundit on CNN say that her husband campaigning in New Hampshire won't help her, because her third place showing in Iowa was "a repudiation of the Clinton presidency." I don't think so. Rather, I think that by flocking to Obama-- young, black, inexperienced, great speaker, he feels our pain-- the Iowa voters were making the statement that Obama, and not Hillary, is this year's Bill Clinton.
Labels: The politics
Labels: Joe Biden, The politics
Labels: The politics
One is a ghoulish blood sucking undead vampire... the other is Dracula.
Labels: pop culture, The politics
What happens when the primary argument for a presidential candidate's candidacy is its own inevitability, and then that candidate stumbles badly, suddenly looking slightly less inevitable? I suppose we'll see over the next few weeks.
Labels: The politics
But why?
Let's stick with Hillary, who as we apparently all know, will be the next president of the United States. Why exactly are her poll numbers so high? Well, because she has the most money, and she gets the most press. That's reflected in the polling. And why does she get the most press? Well, because her poll numbers are so high, and she's raised so much money. And how has she managed to raise so much money? That's right-- because she gets the press and has the polling numbers. People want to support the winner; no one wants to throw good money after bad.
Notice anything missing in this upward spiral? Yup. The voters. Hillary Clinton has been anointed the Democratic nominee for president, and not one vote has been cast in a single primary.
Is this really how democracy is supposed to work?
This isn't a knock on Hillary; she knows how to play the game. From the beginning, her campaign was based on creating and sustaining an air of inevitability, not on merit or policy (she's neither the most experienced or the best at policy; why she refuses to admit her Iraq vote was wrong is beyond me.) It has been all about the juggernaut, about the polling and the money and the press coverage, because sadly, that seems to be how elections are won in America these days. She has the best team in place, and they know how to win.
With states tripping backward over one another as they move up their primaries and caucuses in order to be "first" and to "matter," a case has been made that the disproportionate importance traditionally held by votes in Iowa and New Hampshire somehow perverts democracy. The argument goes that bigger, more populous states ought to go first and carry the disproportionate weight. I could not agree less. If New York and California were the first two primary states, then yeah, the Democratic race would be over. Because the kind of money you'd have to spend to compete in these media markets would essentially eliminate the sleeper candidate; if you didn't have tens of millions of dollars to spend on spot TV (in New York and LA yet, where that gets expensive fast) you'd already be wasting your time.
In Iowa and New Hampshire, though, you campaign the old fashioned way. You kiss babies. Drink coffee at the diner. Speak in peoples' homes. Shake tens of thousands of hands. It is precisely because these states are small that they need to go first-- so that we can at least cling to some vestige of hope that voters still matter, matter as much as polls and coffers and CNN. The voters in Iowa and New Hampshire take their politics seriously; they endeavor to make informed, committed decisions. Maybe, just maybe, it is still possible for someone to come out on top in these two states without having the most money or the highest national name recognition.
Take a look at Joe Biden on This Week With George Stephanopoulos today. Around here, we think he's far and away the best candidate in either party. But be honest. Does it make any sense at all that Hillary stands, depending on the poll, at forty-some-odd percent, and this guy is floundering in the single digits? Watch that video, and then tell me he isn't the best candidate in the Democratic field. He doesn't waffle, he isn't calculated, he has command of every issue, the right position on every issue, he's the only guy with a plan for Iraq. He smiles when he's amused, not when his handlers think a smile would soften his image. But he isn't inevitable, so you probably think I'm crazy.
Which brings us back to Iowa and New Hampshire... because maybe, just maybe, Joe can finish, let's say, second in both Iowa and New Hampshire, behind Hillary in one state and O'Bama in the other. Suddenly he's a player. Suddenly all bets are off, and he becomes the juggernaut, gets his face on Time and Newsweek at the same time, like he's Springsteen or something.
I like to think we live in a country where something like that can still happen. Watch the video, and tell me you disagree.
Labels: Joe Biden, The politics
So long Gonzy. Its been real.
Labels: The politics
Labels: Joe Biden, The politics
Labels: Joe Biden, The politics
He spoke for 29 minutes. He used the term “Al Qaeda” 93 times. That’s more than 3 times a minute. More than once every 20 seconds. OK George, we get the point.
The idea is, if we (the American public) think we are fighting the bad guys in Iraq, maybe we’ll have more stomach for the President's war. Of course, when we invaded Iraq four years ago, presumably THAT was to fight the bad guys who attacked us on 9/11. Wasn’t it?
So we can forgive the president his smug sense of self-satisfaction. It took four years, but by God, Al Qaeda has finally showed up in Iraq! He wasn’t wrong in 2003. He wasn’t misinformed. He wasn’t a victim of faulty intelligence. No- he was prescient!
What makes us civilians out here pull our hair out is the fact that Al Qaeda is in Iraq BECAUSE we invaded. I may have said this before, but if, international military presence-wise, we are a bucket of manure, Al Qaeda are a bunch of flies. And you know how that works.
So President Bush justifies our continued military presence in Iraq thusly: “We must stay in Iraq until we defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq!” Whereas Al Qaeda will be in Iraq fighting us, not because they have some grand design on Iraq, not because it is a “safe haven for terrorists” (that would be our good friends Pakistan). No, it is because if you are in Al Qaeda, or if you have any aspiration or inclination to join Al Qaeda, there is nothing you’d rather do than shoot at American soldiers occupying Arab land.
Bush’s war is the root cause of the thing he is waging war to eradicate. So of course, it is easy to understand the wisdom of digging in and staying the course.
Labels: The politics
