MY PRAYER FOR OBAMA:

[dulcinea]

THAT HIS HEAD MAY NOT BE TURNED BY THOSE PEOPLE--SUCH AS POLITICAL CARTOONISTS, USUALLY THE MOST CYNICAL OF POLITICAL ANIMALS--WHO ARE ALREADY COMPARING HIM TO FDR AND JFK. SUCH FLATTERY MAY BE TOTALLY SINCERE--NOT SMARMY AT ALL--, BUT IT BRINGS BACK BLEAK MEMORIES OF 1976 AND THE ABSOLUTE GARBAGE THAT PEOPLE SUCH AS THE EDITORS OF 'TIME' SAID ABOUT THE nonentity from plains.

[Corlyss_D]

Worry about Obama's advisors, not the cartoonists.

[Dennis Spath]

Tomorrow evening I'll be attending a wine and cheese party for Obama activists here in East Texas. Bill Clinton was here yesterday thumping the tub for Hillary. I look forward to an Obama Presidency. It will be a pleasant change from the dogmatic malaise of the current White House, where "regime change" has been rar too long overdue.

[Barry]

Tomorrow evening I'll be attending a wine and cheese party for Obama activists here in East Texas. Bill Clinton was here yesterday thumping the tub for Hillary. I look forward to an Obama Presidency. It will be a pleasant change from the dogmatic malaise of the current White House, where "regime change" has been rar too long overdue.

You don't think someone with 100 percent liberal voting record may be a little dogmatic himself?

[Donald Isler]

Liberal is not a dirty word to many of us, and it is not so very smart to use it thusly as a campaign tactic.

Whatever his voting record, Obama is smart to avoid using labels.

McCain, who is someone many of us would respect anyway, is making a big mistake by demagoguing to the right, and saying he's a consistent conservative, all the time.

First of all he isn't, and second, he's thereby telling us he doesn't want our vote. And he won't get it.

[Dennis Spath]

Honestly, Barry, aren't you just a bit disappointed with Dubya yourself?

[Barry]

Honestly, Barry, aren't you just a bit disappointed with Dubya yourself?

Did you see the criticism I just aimed at him on another thread earlier today? If you stick around often enough, I assure you that won't be the only time you see my critical of him, Dennis.

This isn't a you're with us or them deal to me. I respect some things about Bush (his fortitude in standing firm against the anti-war calls from the opposition probably more than anything else) and am critical of others (I'm sure you don't need me to tell you his faults). But that doesn't change that I think the anti-Bush behavior on the part of the opposition has gone over the line from healthy constructive criticism to making us weaker as a country by marginalizing our leadership in front of our enemies.

[Barry]

Liberal is not a dirty word to many of us, and it is not so very smart to use it thusly as a campaign tactic.

Whatever his voting record, Obama is smart to avoid using labels.

McCain, who is someone many of us would respect anyway, is making a big mistake by demagoguing to the right, and saying he's a consistent conservative, all the time.

First of all he isn't, and second, he's thereby telling us he doesn't want our vote. And he won't get it.

He never was going to get your vote against Obama or Hillary anyway, Donald. People whose objectivity isn't clouded by hostile partisanship are aware that McCain has no choice but to do some degree of pandering to the GOP base. It's a very difficult balancing act to do that and not alienate Independent voters for sure. But he has no choice but to make the effort. He can't afford to have too many conservatives staying home on election day. I didn't need to see Hillary and Obama pandering to the left wing lunatics at the Yearly Kos convention while refusing to appear at the more centrist Democratic Leadership Council convention to tell you that I wouldn't vote for them over McCain.

And Donald, when you have a 100 percent liberal voting record, I don't care if you avoid using the label (and I wasn't aware that he uses any words other than "hope" and "change," as if saying the words will fix all of our problems like magic). Words don't outweigh actions when the two come into conflict.

[Corlyss_D]

Liberal is not a dirty word to many of us, and it is not so very smart to use it thusly as a campaign tactic.

Of course its a dirty word. That's why liberals are busy trying to re-brand themselves as "Progressives." If you see as much political TV as I do, you immediately notice the effort. Naturally they want everyone to think that the opposite of "progressive" is "regressive." And if you don't like the term "liberal" in the context of voting records as evaluated by the ADA, you'll have to take it up with them. They are proud to be liberals.

Whatever his voting record, Obama is smart to avoid using labels.

Well, the ADA rating won't let him stray far from the label no matter what Obama says.

he's thereby telling us he doesn't want our vote. And he won't get it.

What a shock! We should alert the media. When was the last Republican you voted for for national office? Maybe I should say, "Have you ever voted for a Republican for national office??

See, the truth of the matter is that people who flatter themselves that they are independents who only vote for the man, in fact over 80% of these same folks always vote for the party they belonged to before they started calling themselves independent.

[Barry]

Great minds think alike .

[Corlyss_D]

Great minds think alike .

My baseball buddy thinks of herself as a conservative independent. She points with pride to having voted for Jacob Javits. No Republican since. I didn't have the heart to tell her he wasn't a conservative. Political discussions with her go nowhere.

[Donald Isler]

Corlyss wrote:

"If you see as much political TV as I do, you immediately notice the effort."

I'll quote a 12 year old student who once got even with me when I quoted Judge Judy about having to work hard with "Get used to it!"

My student said: "You watch too much TV!"

I'd say the same to you!

I may have made a mistake by not voting for the Republican ticket in '76, but Ford was profoundly uninspiring. Of course, we didn't yet know how bad Carter would be! I voted for the Independent candidate, Anderson, in '80. I certainly do not regret voting against the Republican ticket ever since.

Anyone who thinks that Javits was conservative is pretty ignorant. He was a Republiucan before THAT became a dirty word!

[Barry]

At least I have the decency to admit some embarrassment to having voted for Mondale .

[absinthe]

I must admit being bemused if not semi-surprised. On radio newscasts I heard a lot about him being "a black". I saw him on telly last night and he seems a few shades south of espresso, more latin than negro.

Well, jolly good to him anyway. I trust that his main strength (spose the same could be said of Ms Clinton) is juggling. He's gonna need that if he wins.

[dulcinea]

Which Democrats--or Republicans, besides Buchanan--support Puerto Rican independence? The Dem Party of FDR and JFK was a good friend to PR, something that cannot be said of the Dem Party of the 39th and 42nd Presidents.

[Fugu]

Corlyss wrote:

"If you see as much political TV as I do, you immediately notice the effort."

I'll quote a 12 year old student who once got even with me when I quoted Judge Judy about having to work hard with "Get used to it!"

My student said: "You watch too much TV!"

I'd say the same to you!

I may have made a mistake by not voting for the Republican ticket in '76, but Ford was profoundly uninspiring. Of course, we didn't yet know how bad Carter would be! I voted for the Independent candidate, Anderson, in '80. I certainly do not regret voting against the Republican ticket ever since.

Anyone who thinks that Javits was conservative is pretty ignorant. He was a Republiucan before THAT became a dirty word!

Donald, exactly what I did in 80. I was too young in 76 to vote, but wanted Carter and voted Anderson in 80.

[Corlyss_D]

My student said: "You watch too much TV!"

I'd say the same to you!

We all have our crosses to bear, so to speak. Mine is my political junkie-hood. I've been like this since 1992, at least, with no signs of abating. Things took a remarkable turn for the worse when I discovered what the C-SPAN channels did when Congress was not in session.

Anyone who thinks that Javits was conservative is pretty ignorant.

I haven't found a polite way to tell her that yet. Of course, that would be my definition of the Democratic rank-and-file: what Republicans would be if they were as hostile to facts. Remember the Krauthammer quip: we think you are stupid; you think we are evil.

[Corlyss_D]

Which Democrats--or Republicans, besides Buchanan--support Puerto Rican independence? The Dem Party of FDR and JFK was a good friend to PR, something that cannot be said of the Dem Party of the 39th and 42nd Presidents.

I'm afraid that Puerto Rican independence don't rank high on most Americans' list of priorities. And as we have discussed before, it's a non-starter defense-wise.

[Corlyss_D]

Maverick vs. Iceman

The cold calculations of the Straight Talker.

Jonathan Chait, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, February 27, 2008

A couple of years ago, as part of his campaign to reassure conservatives of his ideological reliability, John McCain sat for an interview with Stephen Moore, a Wall Street Journal editorial writer and fervent advocate of supply-side economics. In the course of the interview, McCain acknowledged that not all his positions were acceptable to the right, but he hinted that further rightward evolution might be possible. "His philosophy is best described as a work in progress," wrote Moore somewhat hopefully. As McCain put it, "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."

I knew I had heard McCain say something like this before. I dug out an old interview I had conducted with him back in January 2000. At the time, he was just beginning to alienate the Republican establishment by contradicting its most cherished economic orthodoxies. McCain acknowledged that he was moving to the left, and I asked why this evolution was happening so late in his career. Sure enough, I found the same confession: "In the interest of full disclosure," he told me, "I didn't pay nearly the attention to those issues in the past. I was probably a 'supply-sider' based on the fact that I really didn't jump into the issue."

At the time, this was one of the most endearing things I had ever heard a politician say. He was candidly confessing his own failure, and he left me feeling that he was bound to move closer to my viewpoint as he studied the issue more carefully. But seeing McCain offer up almost the same line to Moore-- and getting the same gratified reaction--was jolting.

The prevalent view of McCain is that he is a generally conservative figure with a few maverick stances and an unwavering authenticity. Nearly every liberal editorial board that has made a Republican endorsement has chosen McCain, and nearly all have offered variations on the same theme. "Voters may disagree with his policies, but few doubt his sincerity," editorialized The Boston Globe. "The Arizona senator's conservatism is, if not always to our liking, at least genuine," concluded the Los Angeles Times. This is the consensus: McCain's basically a right-winger, but at least you know where he stands.

Actually, this assessment gets McCain almost totally backward. He has diverged wildly and repeatedly from conservative orthodoxy, but he has also reinvented himself so completely that it has become nearly impossible to figure out what he really believes.

Political conversions are hardly new or scandalous. McCain's ideological transformation is unusual for two reasons: First, he has moved across the political spectrum not once--like Al Smith or Mitt Romney-- but twice. And, second, he refuses to acknowledge his change.

McCain ran for his Senate seat as Barry Goldwater's ideological heir, and, with the exception of a couple maverick episodes--his crusades against Big Tobacco and for campaign finance reform-- he fulfilled that pledge. But something dramatic changed during, and after, his 2000 presidential campaign.

Conservatives complain constantly of McCain's disloyalty, but the full extent of that disloyalty is not widely known. Even though it is in the public record, McCain's voting behavior during Bush's first term is almost never mentioned in the press anymore. Yet McCain's secret history is simply astonishing. It is no exaggeration to say that, during this crucial period, McCain was the most effective advocate of the Democratic agenda in Washington.

In health care, McCain co-sponsored, with John Edwards and Ted Kennedy, a patients' bill of rights. He joined Chuck Schumer to sponsor one bill allowing the reimportation of prescription drugs and another permitting wider sale of generic alternatives. All these measures were fiercely contested by the health care industry and, consequently, by Bush and the GOP leadership. On the environment, he sponsored with John Kerry a bill raising automobile fuelefficiency standards and another bill with Joe Lieberman imposing a cap-and- trade regime on carbon emissions. He was also one of six Republicans to vote against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

McCain teamed with Carl Levin on bills closing down tax shelters, forbidding accounting firms from selling products to the firms they audited, and requiring businesses that gave out stock options as compensation to reveal the cost to their stockholders. These measures were bitterly opposed by big business and faced opposition not only from virtually the whole of the GOP but even from many Democrats as well.

McCain voted against the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts. He co-sponsored bills to close the gun-show loophole, expand AmeriCorps, and federalize airport security. All these things set him against nearly the entire Republican Party.

Republicans who fought the legislative battles of those days now regard the prospect that McCain could become their party's standard-bearer with incredulity. These figures are stumbling around in rage and disbelief, like Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life discovering that his beloved hometown has been taken over by Henry Potter. Former Senate Republican Conference chairman Rick Santorum bitterly noted that "almost at every turn, on domestic policy, John McCain was not only against us, but leading the charge on the other side." Former House speaker Dennis Hastert--in what, by his somnolent Midwestern standards, counts as an angry tirade--complained that McCain usually "allied with Democrats."

And, indeed, by 2002 the Arizona senator had transformed himself beyond recognition. McCain was not exactly a conventional liberal. He still opposed abortion (though he could muster little passion on the subject). And he remained a hawk (though, at the time, many Democrats were hawks as well). Yet he was also more willing to fight the business lobby than were most moderate-- and even many liberal--Democrats.

McCain was best described as a progressive--like Teddy Roosevelt, whom he cited constantly. McCain tended to see politics as a contest between the national interest and the selfishness of private agendas, and he favored a role for government in counterbalancing the excesses of organized wealth. In 2002, for instance, he was asked about the Bush administration's view, with regard to the Enron scandal, that "[t]he company had a duty to inform its shareholders and its employees about things that were going on inside the company. That's not a federal government responsibility." McCain thundered in response, "Well, Theodore Roosevelt would not agree with at least that rhetoric. ... We have had regulatory agencies always to curb the abuses or potential abuses of the capitalist system."

Even McCain's most putatively conservative stance, his opposition to porkbarrel spending, fell comfortably within the progressive tradition. Pork- barrel programs by definition are those requested by legislators rather than federal agencies. They do not have to justify their effectiveness and usually serve parochial, rather than national, interests. Opposition to pork is in keeping with the reformer's battle against the machine. It hardly signals any general animus toward government. Pork, after all, represents just a sliver of the federal budget. True movement conservatives hope to scale back the federal government to something approximating its pre-New Deal size. They approve of fighting pork, but so do liberals. This is an issue that divides politicians from non-politicians, not left from right.

Roosevelt,* as McCain knew full well, abandoned the GOP over what he regarded as its subservience to big business. McCain did not leave his party, but he came close. The Washington Post (at the time) and The Hill (again last year) reported that, in 2001, McCain met with Democratic leaders to ponder a party switch. McCain and his allies deny these accounts, which are obviously devastating to his current prospects, and reporters almost never mention it in their McCain coverage. They also rarely mention how, in 2004, John Kerry wooed him to join his ticket as vice president. The reported half-dozen conversations the two held on the topic are about a half-dozen more than would have been needed if McCain truly was a dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republican.

After the Kerry flirtation ended, McCain obviously decided that his only plausible path to the presidency lay with the Republican Party in 2008. So he set about reingratiating himself with the GOP establishment while maintaining his reputation as an unwavering man of principle.

McCain's overriding priority was to make himself acceptable to the right on taxes. Republican voters may not always care very much about taxes (in 2000, polls showed that a majority of Republicans agreed with McCain that paying down the national debt ranked as a higher priority than tax cuts), but Republican elites care about taxes more than anything else. McCain would never be able to make himself the chosen candidate of the economic right--no amount of penance could wipe away his prior heresies--yet he could at least blunt the opposition of the GOP's money wing.

McCain's first step toward redemption came in 2005, when he stopped blocking repeal of the estate tax. For years, conservatives had been seeking to secure a permanent repeal of the tax but fell just shy of securing the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic-led filibuster. In September of that year, McCain told columnist (and fervent supply-sider) Robert Novak that he would oppose future filibusters. McCain insisted he would still vote against repeal if the filibuster was defeated. ("I follow the course of a great Republican, Teddy Roosevelt," he declared, "who talked about the malefactors of great wealth and gave us the estate tax.") Of course, since Republicans already had well more than the 50 votes needed for straightforward passage, this rendered McCain's support for the estate tax utterly inconsequential.

Then, McCain assured conservatives that he would support making permanent the Bush tax cuts, which would otherwise expire during the next president's first term. This was a tricky dance for a straight-talker, given that he had voted against those very tax cuts. McCain explained that his position was perfectly consistent because, while he may have opposed the tax cuts in the first place, letting them expire would amount to a tax hike; and, he said, "I've never voted for a tax increase in twenty-four years ... and I will never vote for a tax increase, nor support a tax increase." In fact, McCain had proposed a tobacco tax increase in 1998. Nor would his position have made sense anyway. (Some economists favor higher tax rates and others prefer lower tax rates, but none would oppose a tax cut and then oppose its repeal simply because it had already been enacted.)

More recently, McCain has begun to insist that he only opposed Bush's tax cuts because they were not accompanied by spending cuts. Unfortunately, this explanation makes even less sense than the others. Bush enacted his first tax cut during a time of surplus--nobody was contemplating a spending cut. And, if the absence of corresponding spending cuts was McCain's reason to oppose the tax cuts, why would he later support those tax cuts given that the spending cuts never happened?

Anyway, at the time he opposed Bush's tax cut, McCain did not say anything about wanting spending cuts to go with it. What he said was, as he put it in one typical comment, "I won't take every last dime of the surplus and spend it on tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy." Well, the surplus is long gone, and income inequality has continued to skyrocket (helped along by Bush's tax policies), but McCain says he wants to keep those tax cuts while insisting he hasn't changed his mind.

McCain's most successful gambit has been to tell conservatives that he is submitting himself to the tutelage of Jack Kemp and Phil Gramm. The odd thing is that Kemp and Gramm, while both fervent and longstanding economic conservatives, inhabit opposite poles of right-wing fiscal thought. Kemp is a utopian supply-sider, so utterly convinced that tax cuts cause revenues to rise that he ceaselessly evangelizes to liberals, blacks, and the poor, whom he sees as the GOP's natural constituency. Gramm, on the other hand, is a pitiless spending hawk whose animus toward social programs is so strident that it often bleeds over onto the recipients themselves. (He once suggested that poor people are all fat, and another time advised an elderly widow concerned about Medicare cuts to find a new husband to support her.)

The purpose of bringing in Kemp and Gramm together was no doubt to reassure conservatives that McCain is reliable on, respectively, taxes and spending. But the incongruent combination--at times, McCain declares that tax cuts always cause revenues to rise; at others, he insists spending cuts are needed to reinvigorate the economy--has given McCain's new economic worldview an ungainly, stitched-together feel.

McCain also availed himself of more subtle techniques. The easiest trick was simply to change his emphasis. For years, McCain had kept his distance from the president; but, starting in the summer of 2004, he began to praise Bush effusively. McCain stopped teaming up with Democrats to sponsor legislation detested by Republicans and K Street. And he began to emphasize his support for the Iraq war, one of his few points of unblemished agreement with the Republican right.

The fact that the war was increasingly unpopular with the public at large, paradoxically, made it all the more effective for McCain. His hawkish stance signaled to conservatives his willingness to buck public opinion. And reporters, bizarrely, interpreted his position as more evidence of McCain's probity--here was a man, gushed a string of campaign reports, willing to lose the presidency for the sake of his beliefs. In fact, the war was an issue where McCain's beliefs aligned perfectly with his self-interest, since the constituency he needed to woo, conservative stalwarts, supported Bush.

McCain's emphasis on the war brought another benefit: Since reporters saw his campaign almost entirely through the lens of Iraq, they usually overlooked the fact that he was flip-flopping on other topics quite a bit. For instance, McCain had for years supported the Law of the Sea Treaty, an object of right- wing, anti-internationalist ire. But, on a conference call with conservative bloggers last fall, he assured his audience, "I would probably vote against it in its present form."

In 2005, McCain co-sponsored Bush's immigration bill. At the time, few voters were paying much attention to the bill, and McCain's support seemed like a cost-free way to win favor with the administration and pro-immigration business lobbyists. As conservative grassroots opposition exploded, McCain was forced to announce that he "got the message" and would not press the issue any further. At a recent debate, he said that, if his own immigration bill passed Congress, he would not sign it. This formulation offered the perfect straddle for McCain. He could signal to the press that he favored immigration while still promising conservatives he would side with them.

Determining how McCain would act as president has thus become a highly sophisticated exercise in figuring out whom he's misleading and why. Nearly everyone can find something to like in McCain. Liberals can admire his progressive instincts and hope that he is dishonestly pandering to the right in order to get through the primary. Conservatives can believe he will follow whatever course his conservative advisers set out for him and will feel bound by whatever promises he has made to them. Even the ideological tendency McCain is most strongly identified with--neoconservative foreign policy--is, as John B. Judis explained in The New Republic, a relatively recent development: McCain originally opposed intervention in Bosnia and worried about a bloody ground campaign before the first Gulf war (see "Neo-McCain," October 16, 2006). McCain's advisers include not only neoconservatives but also the likes of Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft. It would hardly be unimaginable for McCain to revert to his old realism, especially if Iraq continues to fail at political reconciliation. He could easily be the president who ends the war.

The amazing thing about McCain is that his reputation for principled consistency has remained completely intact. It is his strongest cudgel against opponents. Wall Street Journal editorial page columnist Kimberley Strassel recently gushed that McCain is "no flip-flopper." "Like or dislike Mr. McCain's views," she added, "Americans know what they are." Then, in the very next paragraph, she wrote that McCain will now be "as pure as the New Hampshire snow on the two core issues of taxes and judges" and that "[t]he key difference between Mr. McCain in 2000 and 2008 is that he ... appears intent on making amends" to conservatives.

It is a truly impressive skill McCain has--the ability to adopt new beliefs and convince his new allies that his conversion is genuine (or, at least, irreversible) while simultaneously strengthening their belief in the immutability of his principles. I suspect that, in the end, it will come to tears for McCain's new allies--just as it has for most of those, including me, who thought they had a bead on him in the past. But, really, who knows?

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html? ... 9c54510f69
#################################################

*Roosevelt is known for something else as well: single-handedly practically destroying the Republican part and actually destroying the Republican political dominance that had lasted for almost 50 years. I wonder if that is what McCain has in mind as well.

It's hard to know how much of Chaitt's reportage is trustworthy, the man is so totally compromised by BDS.

[Barry]

McCain was best described as a progressive--like Teddy Roosevelt ...

Don't you think those next three words deserve to be in bold too .

[Donald Isler]

Republicans dissing Teddy! I love it!

When will they turn on Lincoln??

[Kevin R]

Republicans dissing Teddy! I love it!

When will they turn on Lincoln??

Many libertarians already have. I'm sure some misguided conservatives will follow.

[Corlyss_D]

Republicans dissing Teddy! I love it!

You act like this is a novelty. It isn't. A lot of history-minded Republicans know a hawk from a handsaw, i.e., they know to whom they owe their minority status for 100 years.

[Donald Isler]

All I see here is yet more reason to respect McCain and Teddy!

[Werner]

Another justification for Republican minority status: the past miserable seven years.

[Darryl]

Tomorrow evening I'll be attending a wine and cheese party for Obama activists here in East Texas. Bill Clinton was here yesterday thumping the tub for Hillary. I look forward to an Obama Presidency. It will be a pleasant change from the dogmatic malaise of the current White House, where "regime change" has been rar too long overdue.

I was rather amused by a "talking point" Bill O'Reilly made the other evening (I don't frequent that show, only attributing source). He wanted Obama to promise a health plan that would guarantee he would not be blown up by a terrorist ... "call it preventive medicine."

[Corlyss_D]

Tomorrow evening I'll be attending a wine and cheese party for Obama activists here in East Texas.

I think that's a "Whine and Cheese" party.

I look forward to an Obama Presidency. It will be a pleasant change from the dogmatic malaise of the current White House.

With that expectation, you are bound to be disappointed, Dennis. It will be trading one blighted dogma for what you perceive as another. It's no less dogma just because your favorite is spouting it.

(I don't frequent that show, only attributing source).

No, of course not. The only people who watch O'Reilly here are those who can't stand him, like Dennis and Rob. They only watch him to have their low opinion of him confirmed.

[Dennis Spath]

Do you really think it's in good taste to hold the "leader of the free world" up to ridicule Werner?

[Werner]

Dennis, I've gone through this thread, and I see only one post by myself. That post states that the past seven years justify minority status for the Republicans - on the record of those years, as I'm sure is obvious to you. And I note that you have been attending Obama meetings, and feel that "regime change" is called for.

So I suppose you asked that question with tongue in cheek.

But of course you can consider the question seriously if you're so inclined. And there is an answer, however America's leadership position in the world has suffered under the present incumbent.

There are certainly more answers than can be managed extemporaneously here. And we desperately look for things our President has done that make us feel proud to be Americans. Mr. Bush's visit to Africa highlights one case in which he has worked constructively - to provide medications and help for patients suffering malaria and AIDS
there. Would that there would be more to praise him for!

This is a relief from the bleak picture we see in other respects. There is no way one can overlook the disastrous course taken in Iraq. Yes, there seems to be some improvement there recently, but whether that will hold is still an open question. In the meanwhile, the original fight in Afghanistan is unresolved. And Osama is still at large.

In the meanwhile, incompetence reigns in the Bush Administration - and the deficit soars. Tax cuts must be made permanent - payment for the deficits resulting from the Bush Administration's failures to be borne by future generations. Our military is strteched to - or beyond - its limits - the deficit in personnel covered - in commercial as well as military areas by mercenary "contractors" at multiple cost of what their functions would cost with sworn personnel under Government authority.

But our inviolable Free Market triumphs in all areas - for example in prohibiting Medicare to bargain lower prices with pharmaceutical companies, in Mr. Bush's contribution to Big Pharma's benefit in health insurance.

None of this is a matter of ridicule. But then you know that.

[Barry]

Well some people of distinction see it differently, Werner. From an interview in Der Spiegel that's linked to on RCP today:

SPIEGEL: What do you see as the biggest mistakes (early on in the Iraq War)?

Kissinger: To go into Iraq with insufficient troops, to disband the Iraqi army, the handling of the relations with allies at the beginning even though not every ally distinguished himself by loyalty. But I do believe that George W. Bush has correctly understood the global challenge we are facing, the threat of radical Islam, and that he has fought that battle with great fortitude. He will be appreciated for that later.

SPIEGEL: In 50 years, historians will treat his legacy more kindly?

Kissinger: That will happen much earlier.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 64,00.html

Naturally I expect you to take a shot at Kissinger now, Werner, but if you do, I think you may want to think about which foreign policy experts from the Democratic party have better credentials. The geniuses who scampered around during the Iranian hostage crises perhaps?

[Werner]

A cheap shot, Barry - but legitimate, as far as it goes.

Of course, for all his brilliance, Kissinger has his own demons to contend with, as you must be aware.

Of course, fifty years on or less, neither he nor I will be around to argue about Bush's legacy. You, perhaps, might be. I wish you could let me know your thoughts then.

[Barry]

A cheap shot, Barry - but legitimate, as far as it goes.

Of course, for all his brilliance, Kissinger has his own demons to contend with, as you must be aware.

Of course, fifty years on or less, neither he nor I will be around to argue about Bush's legacy. You, perhaps, might be. I wish you could let me know your thoughts then.

Not sure I'll be here in 50, Werner, but I can assure you if I'm alive to see Bush's legacy seen by many historians and people in a more positive light (as has happened with Truman), I'll be thinking of you and some of the others on here .

[Werner]

Let's not get carried away to the extent of comparing Dubya with Harry.

Truman was the last President we had who didn't go to college. He was widely read - by his own initative and thirst for knowledge. He took his responsibilities seriously - even to the extent of firing an uppity national hero whose brilliance and glamor easily outshone his Commander in Chief.

Now we have a dauphin Harvard MBA who has had a privileged life and has, with the help (to his father) of Billy Graham made his way to the top as a platitudinous, incurious ideologue, who kept Rumsfeld on for six years.

No comparison at all.

[Barry]

Let's not get carried away to the extent of comparing Dubya with Harry.

Truman was the last President we had who didn't go to college. He was widely read - by his own initative and thirst for knowledge. He took his responsibilities seriously - even to the extent of firing an uppity national hero whose brilliance and glamor easily outshone his Commander in Chief.

Now we have a dauphin Harvard MBA who has had a privileged life and has, with the help (to his father) of Billy Graham made his way to the top as a platitudinous, incurious ideologue, who kept Rumsfeld on for six years.

No comparison at all.

My point, Werner, is that it's impossible to have any kind of proper historical perspective about things that are happening in the present. You can say those things about Truman now, but if polling is to be believed, a higher percentage of Americans thought he was a disaster than any other president since polling started. I have a feeling Bush's political opponents aren't going to be looked upon too fondly a generation or two from now because of their behavior in putting politics ahead of the longterm security of the country during the early stages of what will likely be a generational conflict, but I admit I may be wrong too.

Remember, if you had said Truman would be widely viewed as one of our 10 greatest presidents a couple generations down the road when he left office, most Americans would have told you to have your head examined.

[Darryl]

And we desperately look for things our President has done that make us feel proud to be Americans.

I can't speak for others with respect to national pride, but one thing about which I am certain: we have not been attacked since 9/11/2001. In this election year, I'm reminded of the events of 1979, and the pusillanimous incumbent of that day. Those of faith can only pray history does not repeat itself should we suffer the misfortune of another weak sister in the White House.

[Agnes Selby]

Tomorrow evening I'll be attending a wine and cheese party for Obama activists here in East Texas. Bill Clinton was here yesterday thumping the tub for Hillary. I look forward to an Obama Presidency. It will be a pleasant change from the dogmatic malaise of the current White House, where "regime change" has been rar too long overdue.

Mr. Spath,

As a complete outsider living in Australia, may I ask you,
a declared Obama supporter, the following questions:

1) What is it exactly that you expect from "regime change"?

2) What changes do you expect an Obama administration would
bring, as I am not aware of any major changes being specified by Mr. Obama except for the termination of troop deployment in Iraq.
As this would bring about chaos in the Middle East, is there a specific policy Mr. Obama has in mind to deal with such chaos.

3) What is the "new beginning" Mr. Obama keeps talking about.
What constitutes a "new begining" and what is the new beggining's ultimate end?

Thank you for responding to these questions.

Agnes Selby.

[RebLem]

Dear Agnes,

I know you asked Dennis, but I'd like to submit my answer to your question.

Its not so much that Obama's policy proposals are radically different from that of most other liberal politicians. Its that he has an entirely different, non-confrontational, cooperative, consensus building approach to policy making than most politicians, and offers to change the entire nature of political dialogue. Its also that he is much more keenly aware of the intellectual foibles, blind spots, and little lies that people on all sides of every issue, including his own, exercise to justify their positions. Let me give an example from his book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, about his analysis of the pickle we are in.

My wife will tell you that by nature I'm not somebody who gets real worked up about things. When I see Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity baying across the television screen, I find it hard to take them seriously; I assume that they must be saying what they do primarily to boost book sales or ratings, although I do wonder who would spend their precious evenings with such sourpusses. When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath. When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment , with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptioan prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal.

Still, I am not immune to distress. And like most Americans, I find it hard to shake the feeling these days that our democracy has gone seriously awry.

Its not simply that a gap exists between our professed ideals as a nation and the reality we witness every day. In one form or another, that gap has existed since America's birth. Wars have been fought, laws passed, systems reformed, unions organized, and protests staged to bring promise and practice into closer alignment.

No, what's troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics--the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem.

We know that global competition--not to mention any genuine commitment to the values of equal opportunity and upward mobility--requires us to revamp our educational system from top to bottom, replenish our teaching corps, buckle down on math and science instruction, and rescue inner-city kids from illiteracy. And yet our debate on education seems stuck between those who want to dismantle the public school system and those who would defend an indefensible status quo, between those who say money makes no difference in education and those who want more money without any demonstration that it will be put to good use.

We know that our health-care system is broken: wildly expensive, terribly inefficient, and poorly adapted to an economy no longer built on lifetime employment, a system that exposes hardworking Americans to chronic insecurity and possible destitution. But year after year, ideology and political gamesmanship result in inaction, except for 2003, when we got a prescription drug bill that somehow managed to combine the worst aspects of the public and private sectors--price gouging and bereaucratic confusion, gaps in coverage and an eye-popping bill for taxpayers.

We know that the battle against international terrorism is at once an armed struggle and a contest of ideas, that our long-term security depends on both a judicious projection of miltary power and increased cooperation with other nations, and that addressing the problems of global poverty and failed states is vital to our nation's interests rather than just a matter of charity. But follow most of our foreign policy debates, and you might believe that we have only two choices--belligerence or isolationism.

We think of faith as a source of comfort and understanding but find our expressions of faith sowing divisions; we believe ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial, religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving these tensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them, and drives us further apart.

Privately, those of us in government will acknowledge this gap between the politics we have and the politics we need. Certainly Democrats aren't happy with the current situation, since for the moment at least they are on the losing side, dominated by Republicans who, thanks to winner-take-all elections, control every branch of government and feel no need to compromise. [Note: the book was published in 2006 before the November elections changed this situation somewhat.] Thoughtful Republicans shouldn't be too sanguine, though, for if the Democrats have had trouble winning, it appears that the Republicans--having won elections on the basis of pledges that often defy reality (tax cuts without service cuts, privatization of Social Security with no change in benefits, war without sacrifice)--cannot govern.

And yet publicly its difficult to find much soul-searching or introspection on either side of the divide, or even the slightest admission of responsibility for the gridlock. What we hear instead, not only in campaigns but on editorial pages, on bookstands, or in the ever-expanding blog universe, are deflections of criticism and assignments of blame. Depending on your tastes, our condition is the natural result of radical conservatism or perverse liberalism, Tom DeLay or Nancy Pelosi, big oil or greedy trial lawyers, religious zealots or gay activists, Fox News or the New York Times. How well these stories are told, the subtlety of the arguments and the quality of the evidence, will vary by author, and I don't deny my preference for the story the Democrats tell, nor my belief that the arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact. In distilled form, though, the explanations of both the right and the left have become mirror images of one anohter. They are stories of conspiracy, of America being hijacked by an evil cabal. Like all good conspiracy theories, both tales contain just enough truth to satisfy those predisposed to believe in them, without admitting any contradictions that might shake up those assumptions. Their purpose is not to persuade the other side but to keep their bases agitated and assured of the rightness of their respective causes--and lure just enough new adherents to beat the other side into submission.

Of course, there is another story to be told, by the millions of Americans who are going about their business every day. They are on the job or looking for work, starting businesses, helping their kids with their homework, and struggling with high gas bills, insufficient health insurance, and a pension that some bankruptcy court somewhere has rendered unenforceable. They are by turns hopeful and frightened about the future. Their lives are full of contradictions and ambiguities. And because politics seems to speak so little to what they are going through--because they understand that politics today is a business and not a mission, and what passes for debate is little more than spectacle--they turn inward, away from the noise and rage and endless chatter.

A government that truly represents these Americans--that truly serves these Americans--will require a differnt kind of politics. That politics will need to reflect our lives as they are actually lived. It won't be prepackaged, ready to pull off the shelf. It will have to be constructed from the best of our traditions and will have to account for the darker aspects of our past. We will need to understand just how we got to this place, this land of warring factions and tribal hatreds. And we will need to remind ourselves, despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, a bond that will not break.

I am ready to follow a man like this. What has happened, Agnes, is that people are now concentrating of the three remaining candidates. You are either for Clinton or against her. She was almost no one's second choice. Obama was the second choice of many, and now most of the Edwards, Biden, Dodd, Richardson, and Kucinich voters have come over to him. And when they "convert," a certain percentage of them take it seriously and try to learn something about their candidate. They go out and buy his second book, and read it, and become very enthused. Many of them come away from the reading thinking, "I don't know why he wasn't my first choice in the first place. Well, I do know. I just didn't know much of anything about him, that was the only problem."

It has been said that Obama does better in the caucus states, at least the caucus states where there is a conversation between people at the caucus sites, than he does in primary states. Some have said its because people don't want to admit that they might be against a candidate because of his race. In my view, that is only a very small part of it.

If you go to a caucus, and there are Clinton people on one side of the room, and Obama people on the other, and smatterings of people for other candidates, or for uncommitted delegates around the room, people are sent out from each camp to talk to the others.

You ask Clinton supporters why they support Clinton and they have a number of responses. Some say they just want a woman president, the world would stand up and take notice if that happened. Of course, I know of six countries right now with female heads of state--Liberia, Argentina, Chile, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Germany. And Cristina Kirchner in Argentina is the only one whose husband preceded her in office; the others did it on their own, with the arguable exception of Gloria Arroyo in the Philippines, whose father was president in the 1960's; but he died in 1997 before she got elected president. And there have been many women running countries in the past--Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Israel, the Philippines, which now has its second female president, the UK, Ireland, Norway.

On the other hand, there has never been a black president of a majority white country anywhere in the world. Obama can't say that because he would be accused of playing the race card; no matter that HillBill plays the sex card. The closest thing we have had to it is actually one that didn't work out very well--the Fujimori government in Peru.

You ask other Clinton supporters why they support Clinton, and they may answer that their union endorsed her, and they are loyal to their union. Well, that's fine for that person, but why should it persuade someone who is not a member of that union? And others will cite membership in some other affinity group of which Clinton has been a friend, but if you're not members of those groups, what difference does it make?

You ask Obama supporters why they support Obama, and they will have answers--answers that appeal to a broad range of concerns, not just particular interest groups. That is a much more generally persuasive approach.

I have more to say. Specifically, I want to give an example of a specific piece of legislation in the Illinois legislature which Obama introduced and how he got it passed, which is instructive about how he operates. But this post is already perhaps, too long. I have been working on it for 4 hours, and it is now 4:15 AM, so I'll let it go for now.

Posted on February 20, 2008, the 335th day before the end of the Cheney Administration. RebLem

[Agnes Selby]

Thank you, Rob for the explanation and for spending all that time
into the wee hours of the morning in order to enlighten me. It is most kind of you and I do appreciate it very much.

Kind regards,
Agnes.

[Darryl]

"It won't be prepackaged, ready to pull off the shelf. It will have to be constructed from the best of our traditions and will have to account for the darker aspects of our past. We will need to understand just how we got to this place, this land of warring factions and tribal hatreds. And we will need to remind ourselves, despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, a bond that will not break."

Agnes, I guess this was the answer to your questions.

[Dennis Spath]

Let's not get carried away to the extent of comparing Dubya with Harry.

Truman was the last President we had who didn't go to college. He was widely read - by his own initative and thirst for knowledge. He took his responsibilities seriously - even to the extent of firing an uppity national hero whose brilliance and glamor easily outshone his Commander in Chief.

Now we have a dauphin Harvard MBA who has had a privileged life and has, with the help (to his father) of Billy Graham made his way to the top as a platitudinous, incurious ideologue, who kept Rumsfeld on for six years.

No comparison at all.

My sentiments exactly Werner. I know Barry to be a good man but he is not of sufficient age to have an historic memory of the time adequate to appreciate what it was like during Truman's Presidency.....The reality of the emerging Cold War and the geo-political challenges of Stalin's Russia, Western Europe economically devestated and in political turmoil, the fight for a Jewish State in Palestine along with the proliferation of Nuclear weapons, vs the exaggerated threat of Radical Islam, is akin to comparing Gang Warfare to Beanbag. Chances are Barry never even had the pleasure of experiencing "Duck and Cover" in Primary School!!

[Barry]

My sentiments exactly Werner. I know Barry to be a good man but he is not of sufficient age to have an historic memory of the time adequate to appreciate what it was like during Truman's Presidency.....The reality of the emerging Cold War and the geo-political challenges of Stalin's Russia, Western Europe economically devestated and in political turmoil, the fight for a Jewish State in Palestine along with the proliferation of Nuclear weapons, vs the exaggerated threat of Radical Islam, is akin to comparing Gang Warfare to Beanbag. Chances are Barry never even had the pleasure of experiencing "Duck and Cover" in Primary School!!

None of which changes the fact that something like three-quarters of Americans felt that Truman was a lousy president for long chunks of his presidency if polling from the time was accurate; and none of which is relevant to my point. You're both very good at attempting to change the focus of a discussion though when someone hits you with a point that you really can't refute. I'll give you high marks for that. I haven't criticized Truman or belittled the circumstances he faced during his presidency in the least. I'm merely stating that people who think they can place current events in a proper historical perspective are either naive or have too much confidence in their powers of perception. And the view most Americans had during Truman's presidency is probably the strongest evidence of that in terms of relatively modern history. The very fact that you're ticking off reasons why Truman is to be respected based on historical context is actually more evidence for my point that people just aren't capable of putting their own times in historical context. Neither of you have any idea how Iraq and the Middle East is going to look a generation from now. Therefore, neither of you know what Bush's legacy will be.

You're also both very good at denying the gravity of the situations we face now. It's no big deal if Iran goes nuke and just because the likely tens of millions of Muslim maniacs bent on taking over a good chunk of the energy supplies that keep many national economies going and killing as many people in the process don't have Stalin's arsinal, they shouldn't be taken too seriously.

They don't need Stalin's arsinal, Dennis. They only need a well-placed WMD to do more damage to us than Stalin ever did. But you probably don't think they're really trying to acquire those either.

There was a column I posted on here last year, I think by Tony Blankley, that put forth the notion, which I agree with, that the real split in this country is between those who accept that we're in a serious generational clash of civilizations (or civilization against a lack thereof as the case may be) and those who think the whole thing is blown out of proportion by neocons so they can hold onto power.

Oh, and one more thing. I may not have been around during Truman's presidency, but the most qualified candidate for President at the moment was, and he knows a little about what constitutes a serious threat and what isn't, too.

[Werner]

I'll pass over the notion of my supposed naiveté with respect to our current situation, although I can't resist the temptation of some comment. But first, Barry, you must factor into your consideration the fact that, whatever his merits eventually proved to be, Truman faced an insurmountable obstacle to being fully recognized on his own merits by having to succeed a giant.

While our current occupant's predecessor was certainly a larger presence, a man of wider interest and intellectual capacity, and capable of working intensely, the difference is not as dranmatic as FDR to HST.

You glibly accuse myself (and Dennis, I suppose) of denying the gravity of our current situation. You are utterly wrong in that suposition. My point is and has been for a long time - check my posts - (Dennis can certainly speak for himself) that we are facing an extended and vital fight, in which we MUST come out victorious. Our ideals as a society are at stake. And I do insist that our position, for all the loudmouth and fearmongering stuff that passes for discussion on the right wing, has been, if anything, undermined in the long run by the failures and incompetence for which you continue to find excuses. It's not enough to "back your president when you're at war," what we need is inteligent and responsible leadership fron the man who is responsible to us - not we to him.

I keep hearing about the success of the surge. We can only hope that this will prove to be the case eventually, but the violence still continues, and there is more and more realization that going into Iraq in the first place was a blunder. And who pays the cost? Who makes it right?

We need answers, not more chewed-over propaganda lines.

[BWV 1080]

THAT HIS HEAD MAY NOT BE TURNED BY THOSE PEOPLE--SUCH AS POLITICAL CARTOONISTS, USUALLY THE MOST CYNICAL OF POLITICAL ANIMALS--WHO ARE ALREADY COMPARING HIM TO FDR AND JFK. SUCH FLATTERY MAY BE TOTALLY SINCERE--NOT SMARMY AT ALL--, BUT IT BRINGS BACK BLEAK MEMORIES OF 1976 AND THE ABSOLUTE GARBAGE THAT PEOPLE SUCH AS THE EDITORS OF 'TIME' SAID ABOUT THE nonentity from plains.

There is a typo in your OP, I am sure you mean to say My Prayer To Obama







http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/

[Barry]

Werner,
I apologize if I lumped you in with Dennis to some degree. It was actually he who has made light of both the threat of Islamic radicals and a nuclear armed Iran over the past couple days.

However, I still stand by my statement that anyone who thinks they have a firm grasp of how the major political figures of his day will be viewed a couple generations down the road is either naive or too confident of his powers of perception. Following FDR may explain some of it, but it's not nearly enough to explain approval ratings in the 20s in and of itself.

As to you wanting answers, I'm sorry, but I find that hard to believe. What you want is a Democrat, no matter what answers they give. Every time we try to discuss where to go from here, you do nothing but raise mistakes that were made five years ago by an administration that isn't up for reelection, as if that advances a discussion of how to go forward.

[Werner]

You have a point, Barry, but at this point you're still spouting the, pardon the expression, - same old line. When I said we need answers, it does mean fresh thinking that goes well beyond the preseni Administration's term, or their terms of reference.

I don't know whether you read Reblem's lengthy reply to Agnes in this thread. He quotes from Obama's writings, and I suspect that some of that will be a part of where we should go.

Sure, I've heard the reference to "empny words" from Hillary and McCain. The words of the present regime may bot have been empty, but I'd hate to discuss n this board what they turned out to be full of.

Yes, you've got to have faith when embarking on a new course. Perhaps we do need an FDR at this point, and there is no way to know that's what is waiting in the wings. We do know that he faith placed in the regime now slinking toward the exit has been sadly misplaced.