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Not Bad. Not Half-Bad
American politics sucks, doesn't it?
C'mon, face it. You know it does. You know 'cause you've experienced it your whole life. You (and I) have made a career out of sitting there watching in helpless astonishment as dweebs like Mike Dukakis and John Kerry stood by hopelessly looking on in election after election, while crypto-fascist punks like Dick Nixon and Little Bush handed them their lunch. Only then to go on and rack up nearly as much damage in the world as imaginable, while using hate and divisiveness to maintain support at home. Right?
Your whole life teaches you that to be a progressive in America is to make Sisyphus look like a slacker. Hey, at least he got to the top of the mountain once in awhile! Even if it was all for naught, that's still a lot more than we've been getting across the better part of a lifetime. Right?
And yet...
Maybe, just maybe, the long, regressive winter of American politics is coming to a close. And maybe, just maybe, it is doing so with the extra kicker of a righteous wrath bringing its fury down on those most deserving of a generation's worth of rage and contempt.
If you think I've gone off my rocker into a naive Wonderland so absurd that it would make Neville Chamberlain squeamish, try on this little thought experiment to see what I mean. Cast yourself back to the dark days of 2003 or 2004. The country has gone off on some 9/11-induced mass hysteria making Salem look like a picnic. The dumbest and the meanest amongst us are in charge. They are telling palpable, demonstrable lies about imaginary enemies, and the public is rallying behind their insane plans for Armageddon (in some cases quite literally), even (s)electing them for a second term. Their job approval ratings have skyrocketed to 90 percent. They are demonizing as traitors anyone who even feebly disagrees with them, even as they shred every major provision of the Constitution all claim to revere. And very few do dare to disagree with them - certainly not leaders of the completely misnamed opposition party. They are on a roll, fueled by a religious-like (and religious) fervor, and it looks like there is no end in sight. Remember?
Cast yourself back to that time, and ask what you could have reasonably imagined - back then - for February of 2008. What could you have reasonably dreamed of for this moment, back in those dark days? What would have been fair to expect with all that as predicate?
Could you have imagined that George W. Bush would become a hated and reviled president, widely despised by the same public that once gave him 90 percent approval? Could you imagine that the Republican Party would be in tatters and that - with an irony more delicious than any gourmet meal - Bush himself would be the architect of his own party's undoing? Could you imagine the principles of Bushism completely rejected by an angry and sobered (pun fully intended) American public?
Could you have imagined anything as perfect as the tale of Mitt Romney? A guy who told every lie imaginable to shamelessly and embarrassingly slobber all over the freaks who still control his party, only to lose anyhow? Could you have hoped to see this weenie would drop $40 million of his own hard-stolen cash in order to get stomped by what passes for a 'liberal' in the Republican Party? Could you have hoped for an irony as rich as watching the party of religious intolerance dump this smarmy turd because his Mormonism was too scary to even this lot of nutty zealots? Could anything be better than to see the door smack this guy in the ass on his way out, after saying in his surrender speech, "We need to teach our children that before they have babies, they get married," and, "I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror" by staying in and helping the Democrats to win? Do desserts come more just than that?
Could you have imagined a guy running for president of 9/11 actually getting unceremoniously dumped by his party, despite talking about that day incessantly? True, it would have been slightly better if Giuliani had hung around longer in order to more fully expose his serial divorces, his public extramarital sexual affairs, his marriage to his cousin, his children's hatred for their dad, his record of arrogance and ugliness as mayor of New York and his legion of Bernie Kerik connections. But hey, most of that is fully out now, and Giuliani's price on the lecture circuit has literally plummeted while he stands naked and utterly rejected, even by the scary monsters of the GOP. I can work with that.
Could you have imagined the once fearsome Republican Party machine being blasted to bits, with all the junior high kids running it, turning in on each other and viciously attacking their brethren? Could you have hoped that they would nominate someone for president that they basically hate and don't trust? Could you have dreamed that certifiables like Ann Coulter and James Dobson would say that they'd campaign for Hillary before they'd support John McCain, the very nominee they're stuck with? And wouldn't it really have been too much to ask for to have a guy named Huckabee stick around in the race, embarrassing the supposed heir apparent?
Could you have wished that to win the GOP nomination the successful candidate would have to tack way to the right of an American public that is moving rapidly the other way? And that - because having done so still fails miserably to placate his own base - he'll be unable to tack toward the center after securing that nomination? And that McCain will very likely have to pick someone far more conservative than himself, and therefore less attractive to most voters, as a running mate in order just to get his own voters to drag themselves out to the polls in November?
Could you have dreamed that the petulant pissants of the religious right who have previously forced so many to bow and scrape before them and their agenda of sexual obsession would be left fulminating in irrelevance, vowing not to support the Republican candidate for president, leading legions of voters away from the party, and committing mutual political suicide in the process?
Could you have hoped that the Clinton Collaborators who expected to be shoe-ins for the corona... er, nomination, would not only be rejected by Democratic voters, but would additionally be humiliated in the process? Would you have not paid serious money to watch the Anointed One's composure disintegrate before your very eyes as the ground receded from beneath her feet? Can you imagine her sheer fury at having sold out everything and everyone to be president, only to be left holding the bag, her butt good and well kicked by a funny-named nobody from nowhere? Firing her campaign manager (which has only succeeded in alienating Hispanic voters), the rest of her staff going off the payroll (they're just being thoughtful and dedicated!), spending $5 million of her own money, getting out-fundraised three-to-one, bringing out the big hubby gun for a crude shotgun blast of smear venom - all this and still getting absolutely obliterated by a guy who doesn't even pander? Could you have hoped even in your wildest dreams that Bad Bill's true colors would finally be exposed to his idiotic supporters who never saw him for the Republican he always was? Would you have dared write a script in which deploying Bubba to play hardball on the campaign trail instead had the effect of alienating his most supportive bloc of voters and actually driving votes away from Hillary?
Most delicious of all, would you have ever believed that the bloody-handed enablers of the Iraq war - Clinton, Edwards, Kerry - all of whom knew exactly what they were voting for, and all of whom did it to advance their personal ambitions over the dead bodies of Iraqis and Americans alike, that these disgusting opportunists would have been handed their walking papers, in no small part because of this vote? And that the guy who had the courage to oppose the war from the beginning would perhaps be rewarded with the presidency - over their dead political bodies - in part because of that stance? My goodness, it's enough to make you believe there is a god, after all. And that she's taking very careful notes.
And could you have hoped that those other bloody-handed enablers of Bush, Bushism and Iraq at the New York Times would be dumb enough to embarrass themselves by endorsing Clinton on the eve of her destruction, utterly missing what is possibly the most significant political wave of our time? (By the way, Memo to Paul Krugman: You are a great voice of sanity now massively tarnishing your reputation by using nasty smear tactics to try saving a ship that has already sunk anyhow. If you don't know what I mean, go to an encyclopedia and see: "Clinton, Bill - New Hampshire and South Carolina". Then knock it off.)
Could you have dreamed, in 2003 or 2004, that poll data would show the public having turned further to the left than anytime since 1968? Could you have imagined record voter turnout among Democrats in primaries this year, while demoralized Republicans can barely get up off the couch from watching "Lost" to go vote? Would you have let yourself hope, back then, that young people are especially energized, and that they want nothing to do with the disaster that is the Republican Party? Especially knowing that these are party affiliations probably set for life, could you have let yourself even dream of these developments? To think of the day when to be labeled a conservative would once again be considered an embarrassment, especially for anyone under 30?
Would you have dared to imagine a tsunami of factors - ranging from sheer anger, to incumbent retirements, to economic meltdown, to the accident of twice as many GOP Senate seats up for election in 2008, to an epic 180 degree reversal in traditional fundraising fortunes, to complete despondency of the Republican base and historically high mobilization of the rest of us - that all of these will likely combine to produce the biggest congressional landslide since 1932?
And could you have ever dreamed in 2003 that five years later America would elect a black progressive president you'd never even heard of? A guy who is Kennedy-esque in his inspirational qualities - to the point where many Republicans are actually attracted to him - and who can use that appeal to sell his agenda? A guy who will end the war, who will take the global warming crisis seriously, who will put economic justice back on the agenda, who will restore the country's place in world opinion, who will bring fiscal sanity to the government, and who will respect democracy and the Constitution?
I must confess, the more I see Obama in action, the more I like him. I've warmed to him slowly, particularly because I'm very wary of charismatic figures, especially those with light resumes and speeches full of platitudes. But I have nevertheless warmed to him. I think he's authentic. I think he's smart intellectually and I think his campaign shows that he's smart politically too. I don't think he is running because he needs to be president to soothe his emotional deficiencies. I think he's in it for the right reasons, an unbelievably fresh concept after decades of Clinton joyriding and Bush/Cheney kleptocracy. I admire the fact that he could have written his own ticket to serious financial success after graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, but chose instead to be a community organizer.
And as for those platitudes, they have either diminished, or else I'm listening more carefully now. Check out some of what Obama said the other night, after winning the Potomac trifecta:
We can't keep playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and somehow expect a different result, because it's a game that ordinary Americans are losing. We are going to put this game to an end.
It's a game where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits, while you pay the price at the pump and our planet is put at risk. That's what happens when lobbyists set the agenda, and that's why they won't drown out your voices anymore when I am president of the United States of America.
It's a game where trade deals, like NAFTA, ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wages at the local fast-food joint or at Wal-Mart.
It's what happens when the American worker doesn't have a voice at the negotiating table, when leaders change their positions on trade with the politics of the moment, and that is why we need a president who will listen not just to Wall Street, but to Main Street, a president who will stand with workers not just when it's easy, but when it's hard, and that's the kind of president I intend to be when I'm president of the United States of America.
It's a game where Democrats and Republicans fail to come together year after year after year, while another mother goes without health care for her sick child. That's why we have to put an end to the divisions and distractions in Washington so that we can unite this nation around a common purpose, around a higher purpose.
It's a game where the only way for Democrats to look tough on national security is by talking, and acting, and voting like Bush-McCain Republicans, while our troops are sent to fight tour after tour of duty in a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged.
That's what happens when we use 9/11 to scare up votes instead of bringing together the people around a common purpose. And that's why we need to do more than end the war; we need to end the mindset that got us into war.
...
George Bush won't be on the ballot this November.
George Bush won't be on this ballot. My cousin, Dick Cheney, won't be on this ballot.
But the Bush-Cheney war and the Bush-Cheney tax cuts for the wealthy, those will be on the ballot. When I am the nominee, I will offer a clear choice. John McCain won't be able to say that I ever supported this war in Iraq, because I opposed it from the start.
You know, that's good enough for me. For now, at least. I want someone who will end the war and provide healthcare. I want someone who will call the regressive nightmare of the last decades what it is. I want someone who will not stand by watching while he gets swiftboated by the right, taking our dreams and aspirations down the toilet along with the incompetence of his campaign. Right now, I think Obama is all those things and quite possibly a lot more. I don't think it's a matter of just settling for the least worst alternative to embrace what he's offering.
And I won't hold Obama's eloquence against him. To listen to him is to truly realize, in a comparative sense, the unbelievable sheer political poverty of the regressive era - to be reminded of how low we've sunk, not only in actions and rhetoric, but in ideas and aspirations too.
It took me some time before I came to agree with the notion that Obama is a charismatic figure. I saw several of his speeches which I thought were okay, but not that impressive. Since Iowa, though, I've watched him closely and I have to say that he is indeed inspirational. And that counts. I had lunch this week with a friend and colleague who told me that fifty years later he still feeds off the exhilaration that John Kennedy implanted in him as a ten year-old, one day back in 1960. We should always approach charismatic politicians with a boatload of caution. That way be dragons. But not so much caution that we become permanently cynical, and not so much that we can no longer recognize a good and powerful thing what it presents itself to us, as it sometimes will.
Look, I know that we won't be getting Eugene Debs for president in 2009. That's a shame, and it's a rightful critique of the poverty of American politics (not to mention the politics of American poverty) that that won't happen anytime soon. (Or will it? The conditions for a serious break to the left in this country have probably never been better at any time since 1932.)
And let's be honest. There's also still an awful lot that can go wrong. Clinton could rally in Texas and Ohio and pull this out, especially by engineering some skanky superdelegate coup. Or she could do a lot of damage, seeking to wreck that which she can't win, so she can run again in four years. McCain could successfully swiftboat Obama. Perhaps there is a skeleton in the latter's closet that even the much vaunted Clinton opposition research team hasn't been able to find (or fabricate). Cheney could arrange an October Surprise national security emergency to tip the election in McCain's direction and insure that Dick doesn't have to do jail time. Herr Diebold could steal another election for the fuhrer's party. Obama could win and turn out to be a nothingburger after all. Deadbeat regressives could block his agenda using the filibuster or endless allegations of faux corruption and bogus sexual peccadilloes. Etc., etc. The list goes on and on.
But let us not grow so cynical that we can't recognize a hopeful moment, even when it slaps us upside the head.
It wasn't supposed to go down like this, remember?
Karl Rove was supposed to have built a permanent majority for the Republican Party. Instead, he has brought it to ruin.
The Iraq invasion was supposed to be a cakewalk, leaving George W. Bush a literal master of the world, able to smack down Syria, Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela. Instead, it killed his presidency and contributed mightily to killing the cancerous conservative movement which he personifies.
Hillary Clinton was supposed to have the nomination sewn up, especially because of having Bill as an asset, and because of her 'correct' vote on the war and her ultra-safe (non-) position on every imaginable issue. Instead, she has turned herself into a soulless robot who is getting clobbered in part because of all those very same factors.
Nobody not completely infected with the sickness of the right was supposed to be able to win the GOP nomination. Instead, its most progressive candidate (which is a far thing from saying progressive) now has it all but sewn up.
The Republican right was supposed to be monolithic, disciplined and authoritarian. Instead, it goes into the general election furiously divided, with each faction savaging the others.
Democrats were supposed to be too cowardly and stupid to fight back effectively. Instead, Obama is already showing signs of knowing how to win a political battle, and even to do so while appearing to stay above the fray. I strongly suspect that McCain will find it equally impossible as Hillary has to throw a punch at Obama without having it instead come back around and punch himself in the face.
As shocking as it may seem to those of us who've been down so long that we've forgotten what up looks like, this is a moment of great portent, a time quite pregnant with hope (and not just the focus-group buzzword kind). Obama could very well be a transformative figure - an FDR to Little Bush's Herbert Hoover. Americans crave change badly, and - contrary to what Ann Coulter might tell you - there's really only one direction to go, unless Germany in the 1930s is your cup of tea.
Moreover, that is exactly the direction the public wants. Less war, more healthcare. Less arrogance, more diplomacy. Less destruction, more environmental protection. Less kleptocracy, more economic security. Less sexual obsession, more quality education. Less Katrina-style grand failures, more Apollo-style ambitious successes.
There's a reason that Dick Cheney isn't on the ballot this year, folks, and it ain't simply because he's got all the charisma of a sawed-off tree stump. Even Republican voters could figure this one out when they dumped the pretty-boy version of Cheney - Mitt "Say Anything" Romney - over the side of their party yacht. The rheumatic hound doesn't want to get up anymore. Ol' Regressive is showing his age. That dog don't hunt and they know it. (Though I wish they didn't. Romney getting ground under Obama's tracks would have made Goldwater's 1964 routing look like Sherman's March to the Sea by comparison.)
The public is ready for a turn to the left, and Obama wants to give it them. Young people have abandoned the GOP in droves. As importantly, conservative policies and politics have been discredited for a generation or more, especially if some Democrat could unplug their brain from life-support long enough to just say so. Obama is saying so.
To be sure, there is much work to be done. And there is incredible damage - perhaps too much damage - to be undone. There are pitfalls ahead, and even if there weren't, Barack Obama (probably) doesn't have the politics of Paul Wellstone.
All that said, there is reason to be happy and hopeful. There is reason to believe that our forty long years in the desert are now mercifully coming to an end.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.
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33 Comments so far
Show AllChanging the king won't change the kingdom. America needs fundamental change in society if it is to take back control of our government from the corporate interests that have bought off our politicians and the religious fanatics that direct it.
Hoa binh
At the back-end isn't religious fanatics (look at the cooperation of American corporations, Chinese labor/government, Saudi oil, Israeli-everything, etc.).
The chief problem is plutocrats and their autocrat lackeys. Kings and their knights. A caste society in which the poor are always poor, the rich increasingly rich, and the (largely illusory) middle-class always at risk of eroding away completely.
I see that Green is still locked into the metaphorical "left" and "right" axis. What exactly does "left" mean any more?
Bush's "right" included:
* Massive national debt.
* Massive government spending (military, private mercenaries, etc.) much of it unnacounted.
* Rollbacks in civil liberties.
etc.
Let's get beyond Obama's platitudes and poetry/metaphor in politics. Straight to brass tacks.
If Obama, Clinton and Edwards had had the decency to demand that Kucinich be allowed to debate with them in Las Vegas, I would then have had a little faith. But they didn't, thus allowing the media to choose the candidates THEY want us to choose from. THIS, to me is scarey. I really don't think we have gotten anywhere, and that is why for the first time ever, I won't be voting in a Presidential election.
Methinks Green is counting his eggs. It's still 9 months to go, and anything (shudder) can happen.
petsr4ever07,
Consider voting for Nader or McKinney anyway. I saw an excellent poster somewhere on the internet that read, "If voting mattered, they'd make it illegal."
Nonethless, you can register your protest (as opposed to apathy). The worrisome part, though, is that the degree to which the Bilderbergers (or whoever they are) detect apathy is the degree to which they "sex up" the race. The degree to which they detect genuine dislike is the degree to which they fiddle the results and other subterfuge.
This is an interesting article, and true enough, it IS sort of amazing that the philosophies and personalities of Thompson, Giuliani, and Romney, etc. are already out.
But this author is sort of acting like Democrats have already won the general elections for president and Congress. And, we most certainly have not.
Yet to come is a virtual onslaught of "issue" ads from the "Sec. 527" groups, encouraged last year by our very own Supreme Court. It is time to be hopeful. It is not yet time to celebrate, not by a long shot.
I agree with WTF that anything can happen, and I add that that 'anything' is being worked on right now. However, I LOVE this post. I love the litany of remarkably pathetic episodes of the campaign written with such humor (how I miss Mittens). I want a few more things than Green expressed wanting (I know he wants more too): of course #1 end the occupations, and #2 secure healthcare. But also: restore habeus corpus, unstack the courts, honor our law, and hold people who lie to congress accountable. Redefine terror as violence and treat it as the crime it is rather than as an ideology. I want wall street out of the white house. I want to live to see key players of the last 8 years behind bars.
pets4ever07 - Kucinich was the best choice for all that I want. I feel your pain. Please do not stay home. Please vote. There may be 1-2-3 supreme court vacancies soon. Of all of my wants, I will concentrate on the courts and vote Democratic no matter what. Then we will have to force those dems who win to lead from our left. Vote and vote and vote again to get Dennis Kucinich into a cabinet post. It can happen, but not if we stay home. Who gets punished then?
I think if Obama gets the nomination he will destroy McCain, but let's please not assume he will get the nomination yet (I knock on wood several times a day). The Hillary machine is evil and relentless.
re Paul Bramscher 12:59pm
i think the original quote goes "if voting could change anything..."
---emma goldman, early 20th century anarchist
sounds like it was written yesterday.
David Michael Greene___ If you want to improve your article, cut it in half, then cut it in half again. Then rewrite what is left and take out all of your idolizing of Obama. You have gotten your cart way out in front of the horse, as this election is not over by a long shot and as we should know , strange things can happen in elections.
None of us are smart enough to predict the future, with all of the fast changing events of our modern age, and we could end up with egg on our face, including people like you, Mr Greene.
We have nine months until election, so it is too early to start in with kingmaking or trampling candidates, and lets save the celebration for awhile.
Green is an optimist at heart living in a winter of our discontent country and era. Thus the swings in posted word between cautious optimisim and dismal, ironic calamity.
Maybe Obama has touched on a constituancy that hasn't yet been acknowledged.
Obama '08!
It is telling that Mr. Green closes with a reference to "our
forty long years in the desert". That was 1968, the year that our only 2 politically potent anti-war leaders were publicly executed (RFK & MLK), and police were cracking skulls outside the Democratic convention. The message was clear and understood by the political class: serious challenges to power will not be tolerated.
This hold true today and Mr. Obama is well aware of the lines he must toe. He will say what we want to hear, but he will sell us out like all the others who are allowed to play the game.
To polam: Will Not! (fades out to a chorus of 'Will Too! Will Not, Will Too, Will Not).
I don't remember 2003 and 2004 as pro Bush years. I participated in the Jan. 2003 Washington march against the upcoming invasion, as did millions of people around the world.
Sure, he had an upsurge after the invasion, because Americans love shedding other people's blood, but that dissipated and by 2004, there were so many people who hated Bush's guts that they were willing to stand in line for nine hours in the rain to vote for Kerry, as in Anybody but Bush.
That election was stolen. Bush lost.
But don't worry, Democrats. It's time to play, New Government! That's when the corporate Democrats get to take over from the corporate Republicans and continue attacking the American people.
There is no chance that the McCain will win. I heard the Swift Boat guy on Alex Jones yesterday, and he's going after McCain, not Obama.
We will be screwed by the Democrats instead of the Republicans for the next four years.
Hallejuah!
Hmm. I read this and my mind flashes to . . . 1992. Throngs who idolized Kennedy as Camelot and felt HORRIBLE on some very bad days in 1968 projected HOPE onto the man from Hope and his running mate. 1992-2000 turned into a pretty bad trip indeed, which only seemed good in retrospect thanks to Gingrich and Starr and 9/11 and Dubya. But then Obama reminds this "1968" cohort that the Clinton trip really was bad-- hardly a progressive affair at all. So now, OBAMA is the new "post-1968" Hope. But is he? It's really too bad, because the theme song I'm hearing is "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" (with "Macarena" as B-side).
What also occurs to me is that I could not have imagined all the things David Micheal Green writes about coming to pass, and the Republicans *still* having a respectable chance of keeping the presidency this November.
That's as mind-boggling as Nixon running *twice* on ending the war in Vietnam.
"The country has gone off on some 9/11-induced mass hysteria making Salem look like a picnic".
I LOVED this line. I will use this one as it best sums up the ignorant Islmophobia and anti-Arab bashing that has become acceptable discourse in the mainstream media since 9/11. I am tired of it. It makes me sick. Haven't we learned anything from history especially when we look back at the anti-Asian hysteria of WWII followed by the Anti-Soviet hysteria of the Cold War. Enough is enough lets stop demonizing our fellow humanbeings and stop allowing politicans to use this demonization to further their own machivellian power hungry twisted agendas.
I truly wish Mr. Obama luck with his candidacy. If he really does what he says he's going to do, that's nothing but good news for your country. However, I seriously doubt that he'll be able to pull it off. And the fact that he's made a number of appearances at AIPAC forces me to question his believability. However, if Mr. Obama does succeed in winning the presidency and does attempt to pursue a progressive agenda that challenges the status quo, I fear he will meet the same fate as JFK. Those that have an interest in maintaining the status quo rarely allow such public dissent to their agenda go unpunished.
What a freaking joke. Since when does an alcoholic rehabilitate himself before looking in the mirror and recognizing the disease? Unless Cheney and the whole sordid bunch of war profiteers and TRAITORS - yes, TRAITORS, on both sides of the political aisle are held to account for the mass murder and looting of the Treasury they have committed, there can be no hope for any real change. I cannot believe what a bunch of saps you bloggers are! There will be martial law before 2009. If Obama is any kind of real threat to the military industrial complex that runs this country, they will take care of him like they did JFK.
I've got a headline for you - the US is conducting a dirty nuclear war in the Middle East, along with Israel (they used DU and cluster bombs against the Hezbollah) that will probably end up killing everything on Earth. You are all living in a fantasy world. Prepare to be imprisoned or die.
Kernel got it right when he told David Michael Green: "If you want to improve your article, cut it in half, then cut it in half again."
Yes, Obama is America's best hope for a future that makes some kind of sense, no doubt about it. But we are still a long, long way from the January day when, we hope, he will put his hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution.
More to the point, it's very difficult to take seriously any analysis of the campaign that doesn't directly address the issue of U.S. Middle East foreign policy, which, after all, is the major challenge facing our nation. America is neck-deep in a profoundly flawed foreign policy paradigm which has resulted in counterproductive conflicts, bankrupted the treasury, seriously eroded U.S. military capabilities, and brought U.S. credibility in the international community to an all-time low. The special relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv has played an enormously important role in shaping U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East for more than half a century.
Former CIA National Intelligence Officer Bill Christison recently noted, "a critical element in the U.S.-Israeli relationship that one can see in Washington almost every day. This critical element is the competition that has grown stronger and stronger between the Republicans and the Democrats over which party can demonstrate the greater support for Israel. The competition, which overrides everything else in the U.S. affecting Palestine [and by extension U.S. Middle East foreign policy], will not just be important from now until the presidential election in November. It will last well beyond that and will still be important in future elections through 2012 and beyond. The Republicans are trying to replace the Democrats as the party receiving the most support from Jewish-Americans, and Democrats are trying to prevent that from happening."
The following words from our first president's Farewell Address, written in 1796, seem prescient, do they not?
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
"In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
"So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation."
I doubt we'll be hearing much about these issues from David Michael Green.
There are a number of people on here who sound more and more
like Rovians Its all about there is no hope, or hope is empty (instead of a motivator). We are repeatedly told, often by the same all day posters, that there is no difference between Hillary and Obama. This can only come out of an ignorance of voting records ... This cynical whiny chicken little sky is falling, im gonna vote for mccain crap is sounding more like rove tactics everyday. Where exactly is this kind of thinking
leading...What does it accomplish? How many more times do you
need to tell us the same stuff?
No, most of the people here who decry Obamarry/Hillorama would rather see Edwards, Kucinich, Nader, McKinney, Ron Paul, or an ordinary person in the White House. And across Congress. You're misreading a binary on/off, yes/no, black/white, choice of the corporate candidates laid out for us. For the most part, we no longer buy into that.
Obama wants to end the war and use the money to rebuild America. That sounds great to me. But I remember he wanted to leave troops in Iraq and maybe attack Pakistan. I also remember him being very pro-Israel and very blind to the Palestinian's plight. Then I hear he sympathizes with the Palestinians. So who is he finally?
However, he does seem to be at least a chance.
President Washington reveals the ambition of the US since he speaks as if the 13 colonies were important. He probably already envisioned pushing out all the indians and growing into a great nation. A benevolent and neutral nation like Switzerland. That was the product of the enlightment which touched Jefferson and Madison too, even as they continued to build a nation that excluded native Americans whom they didn't even bother to have as slaves, eventually leading to the death of 95% of them. Slaves? They imported those.
We must vote! We cannot, under any circumstances, allow a Republican to appoint 3 or more new members to life-long seats on the US Supreme Court. Remember, it's now just simple math good citizens; just simple math.
Right on, Obama probably doesn't have the politics of Wellstone. I was some what disturbed when a recent piece said something like Obama carries on Wellstone legacy after Obama appeared in MN.
cmichaelg49 takes DMG to task for writing an overly long article then posts the longest comment here. ???
I like DMG but have limited time so didn't read it. Likewise I did not read cmichaelg49's post.
I sometimes post long commentaries myself, but am not hypoocritical about it.
My well earned thick skin does not allow me to fee the Obama glow yet. Green however, does get to me.
To repeat a comment from another article:
As an inveterate iconoclast and cynic, I have a natural aversion to messianic politicians– and don't get me started on simplistic slogans and full-bore happy horseshit. I believe that a demoralized and despairing electorate is eager for a chance to jump on any bandwagon that looks like a sweet chariot to salvation.
I remain bothered by Obama's exceptionalism, militarism, Zioncentric view of the Middle East, and pretense of being so transcendental that He will invite the corporate lions (and Republicant/neocon snakes and scorpions) to lie down with the lambs to form a post-partisan consensus.
On the latter point, I'm frequently reminded lately of a fragment from a "Good Times" episode, in the midst of a conversation on some forgotten plot point. Florida (Esther Rolle) says to her husband, "But, James! Doesn't it say in Scripture that the lion shall lie down with the lamb?"
And James (John Amos) promptly retorts, "Yeah, baby– but what Scripture don't tell you is that the lion is the only one who got back up!"
My brother and I are usually in complete agreement on political issues, but he's become cautiously pro-Obama with reservations– we both look forward to the Clinton machine finally rolling into the ditch, barring internecine chicanery. My brother, to his credit, isn't starstruck by Obama, but is more hopeful than I that if Obama prevails, he may indirectly empower the abandoned progressive constituency, and may feel ready and willing to dance with the progressives that brung him to the Oval Office.
I remain skeptical, since this belief, or hope, is a lot like the thoroughly bogus wishful-thinking canard of purporting that a candidate is shrewdly "running to the right" in order to gain political power and "govern to the left". But I respect my brother, and I grudgingly admit that this might come about. I'm not feeling it yet, though.
dunno. the guy seems acceptable to the ruling class, given that the ruling class allowed the guy in the media, while the ruling class used its guns to keep Kucinich out.
i have a theory that people are moving towards Obama as they become convinced that he will do something different, i.e., either make vast improvements to the system or wreck it entirely, either of which are acceptable to a people totally fed up with the status quo.
Which Obama are we to believe?
Here are my favorite two Obama-the-Corporate-Conservative quotations:
"The Founders recognized that there were seeds of anarchy in the idea of individual freedom, an intoxicating danger in the idea of equality, for if everybody is truly free, without the constraints of birth or rank and an inherited social order…how can we ever hope to form a society that coheres?" (Obama, The Audacity of Hope [New York, 2006, pp. 86-87)Â
"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

www.barackobama.com/2007/08/ 01/remarks_of_senator_obama_the_w_1.php
I have NO idea who Obama is nor what he stands for.
For more of his corporate, conservative militarist statements, see:
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/paulstreet
Hi Vince,
Formal education isn't everything, and, Lord knows, many misuse and abuse the knowledge and skills they have been fortunate enough to acquire in the groves of academe. Even so, there is something to be said for learning the rules of any craft before you break them.
The comment I posted above is comprised mostly of guotes from recognized authorities, living and dead. I used the words of those experts, if you will, to craft a rational argument supported by evidence. By your own admission, you didn't bother reading any of the material on which you passed judgment. Such judgments are by definition ill-informed and highly suspect at best. What you offered is called an ad hominem attack.
I seldom find myself in agreement with Big Media ad campaigns, but, hey, "A mind is [still] a terrible thing to waste."
Peace,
Michael
P.S. I don't know about you, but I'm fired up and ready to go!
Yeah, I know, it's not over yet. But it is starting to look like things just might be looking up. And there's nothing wrong with that.
And maybe Obama might get something good done, for two reasons, reasons which are not directly connected to him as a person: the movement that he's created is bigger than he is, and the conservative slime that have been running the country for nearly a decade know damn well that what they've been doing just isn't working, so they have little choice in the matter.