Wallwritings

by James M. Wall

President-elect Barack Obama wants the next eight years to be an era of audacious, not cosmetic changes. Do his early appointments reflect audacity or is he giving away too much to the cosmeticians?

And what about Afghanistan?  Is war still the answer?

Do Obama’s appointments and his Afghanistan policy serve his vision? First Emanuel and then Hillary. All those former Clintonites on the transition team?  And shifting from Iraq to Afghanistan is still playing the war card. What is going on in Obamaland? Let’s look at the record to date. First, the appointments. 

President Bill Clinton’s White House counsel, Gregory B. Craig, is expected to assume the same position for Obama.  This was the same Craig who held the president’s hand during those dark nights of Monicagate.

Do we want that era brought back to light with Craig on board? Well, maybe we do. 

An attorney is best remembered for his most successful case, and as memory serves, Craig bested the US Senate in a case designed to remove a president for lying about private matters.

Besides, a newcomer like Obama could probably use a seasoned hand at rummaging through the White House tea leaves for creative solutions. So, score one for a smart move by Obama. It is, after all, his lawyer. Lawyers are supposed to advise on the law, not push an ideology.

Look at the appointment chess board and looming large is the choice of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. Any downside?  Columnists like David Broder and Tom Friedman both suggest it would be a bad appointment. They think she is better off staying in the Senate.

As time for her acceptance drags on, reports are surfacing that she may be entertaining those same thoughts. One reason? 

The wife of Bill Clinton has spent enough time in the White House to know that a strong president runs his own foreign policy. A Secretary of State does not take initiatives contrary to the wishes of a strong president. 

Clinton would bring a strong personal idealism to the position. But she may conclude she could exercise that idealism better as an independent member of Congress rather than as a member of Obama’s cabinet.

David Alexrod’s move from political consulting to Senior Advisor to the President is probably Obama’s smartest move thus far. Alexrod is in the White House as a political wise man able to tell the president how his actions will, or are, playing in power centers and to the public. He will be a Karl Rove with conscience.
 
In addition, Alexrod brings with him decades of experience in dealing with, and mentoring, Rahm Emanuel. He knows the new COS well enough to tell him when he is being a smart-alex and when he needs to take a deep breath.

Emanuel’s quick and decisive apology for his father’s negative remarks about Arabs to a Jerusalem newspaper had Alexrod’s fingerprints all over it.

Three significant cabinet appointments were made this week. Are are qualified and experienced choices; none are designed to satisfy the cosmeticians:

Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) as Secretary of Health and Human Services  Eric Holder, as Attorney General and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.  

Daschle was the Senate Democratic majority leader until 2004 when voters ousted him from office. He has remained in Washington as a “public policy adviser and member of the legislative and public policy group at the law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird.”

His firm does not list him as a lobbyist, which means he meets Obama’s criteria that no lobbyists will join his cabinet. Daschle’s wife might want to make a career change while her husband serves in the cabinet. Linda Hall Daschle is currently a lobbyist, working “mostly on behalf of airline-related companies”. 

What makes Daschle attractive for Health and Human Services is his knowledge of the Senate, and of the politics of medical care.  He has written a book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis  on “his proposals to improve health care, and he is working with former Senate leaders on recommendations to improve the system.”

Blogger Glenn Greenwald, a reliable progressive voice, sees Holder’s selection “as a very positive step”. He cites another blogger, Digby, who quoted at length 

. . . from an impassioned speech Holder gave in June of this year in which he condemned Guantanamo as an “international embarrassment”; charged that “for the last 6 years the position of leader of the Free World has been largely vacant”; complained that “we authorized torture and we let fear take precedence over the rule of law”; and called for an absolute end both to rendition and warrantless eavesdropping. 

He proclaimed that “the next president must move immediately to reclaim America’s standing in the world as a nation that cherishes and protects individual freedom and basic human rights. (Emphasis added).

Sounds like an answer to prayer for those who have been disgusted for so long over the behavior of the Bush Justice Department.  Assuming these steps are taken quickly, the new president will be able to send his newly appointed Secretary of State on a global tour to assure foreign governments that torture and rendition are out and human rights are in again as the basis of US policy.

Mike Allen, reporting for Politico.com, notes that Governor Napolitano will assume command over a “vast and troubled” agency. Napolitano is governor of a border state where she is familiar with immigration policy and border security issues, both of  which are part of Homeland Security’s responsibilities.

Allen also notes that Napolitano is Arizona’s first female attorney general. She was re-elected to a second four-year term as governor in 2006. 

These three cabinet appointments are creative and promising choices.

President-Elect Obama’s plans for shifting military forces from Iraq to Afghanistan are not only less promising; they are extremely disappointing. If Obama does follow through on his plans to focus US military power on Afghanistan, he will be continuing the failed policies of George Bush.

This policy is not change. It is sword rattling.  We had expected to see those swords battered into ploughshares.  As Chris Hedges has reminded the president-elect, war is not the answer:

War is a poison. It is a poison that nations and groups must at times ingest to ensure their survival. But, like any poison, it can kill you just as surely as the disease it is meant to eradicate. The poison of war courses unchecked through the body politic of the United States. We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war.

Hedges warns that “Obama and those around him embrace the folly of the “war on terror.” Shifting war from Iraq to Afghanistan “is a difference in strategy, not policy”. And it is, Hedges argues, a strategy that has dire consequences at home as well as abroad.

These wars of occupation are doomed to failure. We cannot afford them. The rash of home foreclosures, the mounting job losses, the collapse of banks and the financial services industry, the poverty that is ripping apart the working class, our crumbling infrastructure and the killing of hapless Afghans in wedding parties and Iraqis by our iron fragmentation bombs are neatly interwoven. These events form a perfect circle. The costly forms of death we dispense on one side of the globe are hollowing us out from the inside at home. 

Hedge’s essay links our current economic collapse to the failure of our empirical project which seduced this nation into a false faith in military solutions for every problem:

America’s most dangerous enemies are not Islamic radicals, but those who promote the perverted ideology of national security that, as Andrew Bacevich writes, is “our surrogate religion.” If we continue to believe that we can expand our wars and go deeper into debt to maintain an unsustainable level of consumption, we will dynamite the foundations of our society. 

“The Big Lies are not the pledge of tax cuts, universal health care, family values restored, or a world rendered peaceful through forceful demonstrations of American leadership,” Bacevich writes in “The Limits of Power.” “The Big Lies are the truths that remain unspoken: that freedom has an underside; that nations, like households, must ultimately live within their means; that history’s purpose, the subject of so many confident pronouncements, remains inscrutable. Above all, there is this: Power is finite.

President-elect Obama keeps books on his bedside table.  I believe he actually reads them.Thus far, he has made some good appointments. But I am concerned that the books he is reported to be reading focus too much on political tactics and not enough on change–Jonathan Alter’s The Defining Moment: Franklin Roosevelt and the First Hundred Days (2006), and Doris Kearnes Goodwin’s  Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005).

With all due respect, Mr. President-Elect, may I suggest some new authors for you to consider: Chris Hedges, and Andrew Bacevich. They both know that the era of building an empire on the backs of developing nations is over.

 Photos of Gregory B. Craig, Tom Daschle and Governor Janet Napolitano are from the Associated Press

                             Abbas and Livni at the 2006 World Economic Forum.  

by James M. Wall    

According to a report posted on TimesOnLine, President Elect Barack Obama has set in motion a plan that could dramatically affect the Israel-Palestinian peace track.

Obama’s election gives him a mandate to move swiftly to find a solution for the unrest in the Middle East. The Israel-Palestinian track is central to dealing with that unrest. 

The London report, posted Sunday, reveals that Obama’s “ambitious peace plan in the Middle East” involves “the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders”. Presumably, this would entail borders with “adjustments” around Jerusalem. 

The Obama plan utilizes the “2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party.” 

The Arab peace plan received a boost last week when President Shimon Peres, a Nobel peace laureate and leading Israeli dove, commended the initiative at a Saudi-sponsored United Nations conference in New York.

Peres was loudly applauded for telling King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was behind the original initiative: “I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people.”

A bipartisan group of US senior foreign policy leaders has called on President-elect Obama to revive the Saudi plan, which languished after its introduction in 2002, thanks to Israeli right wing opposition and President Bush’s unwillingness to oppose Israel on any position.

The leaders included Lee Hamilton, the former co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Democrat former national security adviser. 

Brent Scowcroft, a Republican former national security adviser, joined Hamilton and Brzezinski in asking the President-elect to get behind the Saudi proposal. He said last week that “the Middle East was the most troublesome area in the world and that an early start to the Palestinian peace process was ‘a way to psychologically change the mood of the region'”.

During the campaign, Obama was cautious in discussing Israel-Palestine. But now, the election is over. He has a mandate that gives him a mantle of power with which to deal with the Israel Lobby and its neocon media supporters. 

The true feelings of the Israeli public and its centrist leaders, are not reflected in either the US media or by its neocon sources. Obama knows this, as does anyone who paid attention to the relief demonstrated by outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who reversed many of his own earlier positions in an interview:

. . . Israel must withdraw from nearly all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to attain peace with the Palestinians and that any occupied land it held onto would have to be exchanged for the same quantity of Israeli territory.

Whether Obama will find support for his peace plan in the next Israeli government will depend on the outcome of Israel’s election for a new prime minister, now set for either February 10 or 17. 

Foreign Minister Livni was chosen by the Kadima party as its new leader after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced he would step down to face corruption allegations. Livni’s failure to put together her own governing coalition forced a new election.

She will face hard-line Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu. As foreign minister, Livni has acted for the past year as Israel’s chief peace negotiator with the Palestinians. She has spoken repeatedly of the need to make territorial concessions.          

Netanyahu, a former Prime Minister, represents the right wing bloc in Israel that opposes any end to the occupation of Palestinian territory. He also opposes any partitioning of Jerusalem, a key Palestinian demand. Obama’s plan will have a better chance of success with a Livni government. 

Most of the progressives’ discussion of the Obama team has involved anxiety over the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff and the possible appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State (which still seems a long shot). 

A Secretary of State and a Chief of Staff who are both Israeli supporters”?  What could that mean to those concerned for peace and justice that benefits both Israel and the Palestinians?

The answer could lie in Obama’s desire to have experience and competence on his team, as well as a desire to bring to the peace talks table trusted faces that would comfort Israeli officials who will not go easily into that dark night of giving up most of Judea and Samaria.  

Phillip Weiss, who writes the Mondoweiss blog, learned about the TimesOnLine report from another of my internet colleagues, Chicago-based Rupa Shah, who provides daily links to pertinent Middle East postings. Rupa also alerted me to the posting.

Weiss is a Jewish journalist based in New York City. He passionately believes Israel, for its own good, must reverse its long standing occupation policy. Weiss interviewed Stephen M. Walt, co-author of the immensely valuable book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, 

Weiss asked Walt about recent shifts in Israeli and US public opinion since the book’s publication in 2007. An earlier article on the Israel lobby by the co-authors of the book appeared in the New York Review of Books in 2006.

Amy Goodman discussed the original NY Review article in a Democracy Now television interview in 2006. A You Tube copy of that interview offers a good summary of the article that became a book.

Two years later, following Obama’s election,  Walt is optimistic.  Weiss asked Walt where he thinks we’re headed. He offered these comments by email:

I’m trying to keep an open mind on where we are headed.  My views have been somewhat similar to Juan Cole’s [re Rahm Emanuel]:  what matters is not  what somebody did or said in the past, I just want to see what they do now.  My concern is that I don’t think we get to a two-state solutionwithout a lot of US pressure on both sides–and I mean pressure more emphatic and direct than even Bush and Baker employed–and I don’t see anyone on the horizon who will do that. . .  

. . .I am by nature something of an optimist, although I like to think it has been tempered by experience by now. 

It comes down to a simple question: do Obama, Emanuel, and whoever else they appoint realize that being “pro-Israel” today means openly opposing the occupation and using American influence (and leverage) to reverse (not just halt) the settlement project and bring about a viable Palestinian state? Until recently, being”pro-Israel” or a “friend of Israel ” was interpreted to mean giving unconditional support and never voicing the slightest criticism.

Whatever the intention, however, this policy is in fact “anti-Israel”; it has enabled a set of policies that have done great harm to the Jewish state. As a Jewish friend of mine puts it, our policy has encouraged “reckless driving.” One might call U.S. policy “anti-Israeli in effect, if not in intention.”

When Obama traveled to Ramallah in July he met with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. The two men discussed prospects for the Arab plan. According to a Washington source Obama told Abbas: “The Israelis would be crazy not to accept this initiative. It would give them peace with the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco.”

Stephen Walt’s co-author of The Jewish Lobby, John J. Mearsheimer, is also optimistic after Obama’s election. In an interview with Weiss he gives a great deal of credit for changing public opinion to the internet:

I used to think the bad guys would win for as far into the future as I could see. But I am not so sure any more. The internet changes things so much, because it makes it possible for the Phil Weiss’s of the world to reach a huge number of people. The lobby simply cannot dominate the discourse the way it used.

by James M. Wall                                      

The Hippocratic Oath is usually attributed to Hippocrates, a Greek physician born in 460 BC on the island of Cos, Greece, While other oaths of medical ethics for physicians have evolved, the Hippocratic Oath remains the standard for guiding medical ethical behavior.

The phrase, “First, do no harm”, does not appear in the Oath, but it does belong to Hippocrates and suggests the central theme of the Oath.

“First, do no harm” is good counsel for doctors. It is also good counsel for a newly elected president who campaigned on change and wants to heal a nation and a world. Which is why progressive left supporters of Barack Obama are deeply troubled over Obama’s choice of Rahm Emanuel as his White House Chief of Staff.

Will Rahm be harmful or helpful to the new president’s vision? The record is not reassuring. Emmanuel was a staunch supporter of Bush’s Iraq war. When recruiting 2006 congressional candidates, he pushed aside peace-oriented candidates and brought in moderate conservatives, preferably military veterans.

His position on the Middle East is unrelentingly pro-Israel, one likely reason for his strong backing of the Iraq war. 

Richard Nixon, an ardent anti-communist, went to China. Will Rahm going to the White House be good for peace in the Middle East? Or will Rahm’s return to the White House violate the “do no harm” oath for peace making?  These are the questions that trouble Obama’s progressive supporters.

Emanuel and Obama’s are friends, but Rahm was the only Illinois Democratic member of Congress who did not endorse Obama in the primaries. Citing his long service to, and friendship with the Clintons, he stayed neutral until Obama finally defeated Hillary Clinton. To some that looked like loyalty to the Clintons; others saw it as political calculation. 

There is also anxiety over Emanuel’s personal style, well documented in the media as profane and at times, downright nasty. It is an image the congressman has cultivated.  It helps to have his enemies fear him. But will that style allow Emmanuel to successfully herd the cats in a White House filled with egos as large as his?  Will his prickly style make him an effective Obama advocate with members of Congress?

Too soon to tell, but we do have a fictional view of Rahm in this You Tube West Wing clip.featuring a fictional Josh Lyman, who is based on Emanuel.

Veteran Washington Post columnist David Broder favorably compares the current Rahm to the younger Rahm:

Emanuel is a volatile personality. When he was in the White House the first time, he was a shouter. When angry about something that I’d written about Clinton, which he often was, his protest calls were so high-decibel that I often found myself holding the phone at arm’s length, just to spare my eardrums.

But Emanuel has calmed down a lot — at least in my experience. In the past four years, I have found him responsive and remarkably smart in his assessments of national and congressional politics. He is as serious about policy as he is about politics, and while he waited a long time before endorsing Obama out of loyalty to Bill and Hillary Clinton, he clearly has earned the trust of the new president.

The successful and almost flawless campaign that nominated and then elected Obama, was run by what one writer described as “the disheveled David Axelrod, his close friend and political strategist, and the meticulous David Plouffe, the campaign manager”. Personalities on the staff were subsumed under Obama’s vision. The campaign was never about the two Davids. 

Emanuel was not a part of that leadership team. His strength has always been fund raising, not campaign strategy.  He and Alexrod have been close friends since they first worked together in Illinois Senator Paul Simon’s first run for senate in 1984.

 Chicago Sun Times columnist Carol Marin, writing about that campaign in a recent column, notes that Simon and his campaign manager recruited a core group of young people who have since graduated to higher realms in politics.

The group included Emanuel, Alexrod, David Wilhelm, who served as Bill Clinton’s national campaign manager in 1992, and later directed the Democratic National Committee from 1994 to 1996.  Forrest Claypool, another member of the 1984 campaign staff, is now on the Cook County Board. He is one of several possible contenders for Emanuel’s seat in Congress. 

Emanuel arrived at that 84 campaign with the blessing of AIPAC (he was 25 at the time) and a rolodex that served to finance a large part of the Simon campaign. It is his long standing and uncompromising Zionist record that makes him such an effective fund raiser.

Now that record dismays Obama supporters on the progressive left. Since his earliest days in Israel as a sometime resident and frequent visitor, Emanuel has been an outspoken supporter of Israel, clinging to his political faith with the zealotry of a Sarah Palin on the hunt for terrorists.

During the first Gulf War, Rahn served as a civilian violunteer in an Israeli army unit. Ha’aretz reports that he was on duty on two separate occasions. Until he was 18, he held dual citizenship with both Israeli and US passports. He also has retained enough basic Hebrew to converse in two languages with Israeli leaders. 

Rahm’s father, who moved back to Israel after raising three (highly successful) sons in the US, was recently quoted using a demeaning phase about Palestinians. Rahm would never make that mistake. Should he be held accountable for his father’s remarks? Probably not, but the quote does not help Rahm with his critics.

(UPDATE: After the offensive quote from the senior Emanuel surfaced, Nick Papas, a Rahm spokesman, issued a statement which appeared in a New York Times politics blog:

“Today, Representative Emanuel called Mary Rose Oakar, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, apologized on behalf of his family and offered to meet with representatives of the Arab-American community at an appropriate time in the future.” 

Emanuel was responding to a letter from Oakar, a former member of Congress, and a prominent member of the Arab American community.)

Ha’aretz, the Jerusalem newspaper, interviewed Jewish supporters in Chicago after Obama’s Grant Park victory speech:

Alan Solow, an attorney from Chicago, a leader of the Jewish community and a veteran Obama supporter. . .used to live in Obama’s neighborhood, and says that Obama has always had “excellent relations with the Jewish community.” . . .

. . .I went with him to Israel for a week in January 2006, and when he started the race for the presidency I had no doubt I’d support him. . . “I said with a smile that he will be the first Jewish president. He also has a deep understanding of issues that confront Israel and the Jewish community. . .

Michael Bauer, a Chicago Jewish political activist, was overjoyed at Obama’s election.  Asked about Rahm’s role in the White House, Bauer told Ha’aretz:

Let me say something about Rahm. One of the things people don’t like about him is the fact he’s short with people, but it’s only because he’s such a smart person. He doesn’t need a 15-minute phone conversation, he gets to the issues in three minutes. Israel – it’s in his blood. 

These rave reviews for Emanuel’s appointment have created considerable dismay in the progressive community which had hoped that Obama would move away from the Clinton-Bush pro-Israeli stance and work to end the oppressive occupation that has long brutalized Palestinians.

They doubt that Rahm’s Zionism will be helpful.  He was, after all, part of a Clinton White House that pretended to be an “honest broker” at Camp David while its negotiators served behind the scenes as “Israel’s lawyers”.  

Ali Abunimah, a respected Palestinian American writer and advocate who lives in Chicago, is an outspoken critic of Israel’s occupation policies and of the US strong tilt toward Israel in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. 

Abunimah’s father is a retired Jordanian diplomat. The younger Abunimah is one of the leading scholar-advocates for the Palestinian cause in the US.  He is also a friend of another Palestinian American, Rashid Khalidi, the former University of Chicago scholar who now directs Columbia University’s Middle East study program.

Ali Abunimah is aware that ignorance of Palestinian-Israeli history is at the root of the strong support Israel enjoys with US media and the public. His work with his web site, The Electronic Intafada, and his occasional article in the main stream media, brings information to the discussion rarely heard or seen by the US public. 

Recently he described Rahm Emanuel’s Zionist passion as a giant shadow over his appointment as White House Chief of Staff:

. . . Emanuel – whose father fought with the Irgun, the pre-state Jewish militia that carried out terrorist attacks on Palestinians and the British in the 1940s – has a hawkishly pro-Israel record. He has never publicly distanced himself from his father’s contribution to the dispossession of more than 750,000 Palestinians, nor criticized Israel’s frequent attacks on Palestinian communities that have killed and maimed thousands of civilians.

In June 2003, Mr. Emanuel signed a letter criticizing President Bush for being insufficiently supportive of Israel. “We were deeply dismayed to hear your criticism of Israel for fighting acts of terror,” Mr. Emanuel, along with 33 other Democrats, wrote to Mr. Bush. . . the New York Observor, whose Mondoweiss blog is a testimony to the wit and fervor of the Jewish left, can be counted on to track down items that expose Israeli perfidy, like this reminder of the blockade of Gaza.

Phillip Weiss, an investigative reporter for the New York Observor, writes his own blog, Mondoweiss, in which he reports on Israel’s perfidy as occupier. He recently posted this report on the food and fuel blockade of Gaza.

He has weighed in frequently on the Emanuel appointment.  Recently he posted this reference intended to reassure those who feel Obama’s choice of Rahm is a capitulation to Zionism: 

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency says Obama chose Emanuel strictly for his attack-dog executive abilities:

by James M. Wall

Attracted by a Google listing the morning after the election, visitors to this blog linked to a piece I posted two weeks before the election: A Response to an Obama Victory: What an Amazing Country.  Following Barack Obama’s election as our 44h president, a section of that posting bears repeating:

What would be the international impact of an Obama victory? Nicholas D. Kristof offers one answer in a conversation he shared in a recent New York Times column:

The other day I had a conversation with a Beijing friend and I mentioned that Barack Obama was leading in the presidential race:

She: Obama? But he’s the black man, isn’t he?

Me: Yes, exactly.

She: But surely a black man couldn’t become president of the United States?

Me: It looks as if he’ll be elected.

She: But president? That’s such an important job! In America, I thought blacks were janitors and laborers.

Me: No, blacks have all kinds of jobs.

She: What do white people think about that, about getting a black president? Are they upset? Are they angry?

Me: No, of course not! If Obama is elected, it’ll be because white people voted for him.

[Long pause.]

She: Really? Unbelievable! What an amazing country!

We’re beginning to get a sense of how Barack Obama’s political success could change global perceptions of the United States, redefining the American “brand” to be less about Guantánamo and more about equality. . . . (Emphasis added).

Obama’s speech to the world, his first as president-elect, was a paradigmatic moment in world history.  The pictures from Grant Park in Chicago and from around the world, reveal the wonder and excitement of what Obama’s election means to the world.  

The text of his remarkable 17-minute address will be studied for years to come as a seminal turning point in American history. It also marks a dramatic turning point in American politics.

Greg Sargent sees Obama’s election as the potential end of a style of politics that emerged from the culture wars of the “Sixties”. Sargent is an equal opportunity critic. He finds fault with both the political left and the political right for their use of tactics that polarized our national political dialogue.  

Obama’s victory represents a potential death knell — but only a potential one — for the 1960s cultural politics that defined and dominated our political landscape for the last four decades of the 20th Century.

There’s a tidy symmetry in the fact that Obama defeated, in succession, both the Clinton machine and the Rove-Atwater brand of politics that Republicans have honed for so long.

In so doing, Obama defeated not one, but both of the leading practitioners of that 1960s-rooted cultural politics. More to the point, he did this by quite literally running against politics as both those groups practiced it.

As a proponent of the Rove-Atwater political brand,  Senator John McCain encouraged, tolerated, and participated in, a series of “guilt by association” attacks that sought to stir fear and hatred among voters, the sort of attacks used by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy to smear his opponents as “Communists”. 

The attacks used by McCain aganst Obama’s “associates”,  Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Rashid Khalidi, were all aimed at men who have earned advanced university  degrees. Each of them have a strong record of leadership in their respective fields.  

Professor Bill Ayers was one of the ‘associates” of Barack Obama who suffered repeated, and grossly unfair, attacks during the campaign.  Ayers voted Tuesday at the same polling place used by Barack and Michelle Obama. The Chicago Tribune reported Ayers’ observations after he voted:

[Professor Ayers] left about 20 minutes before Obama arrived and declined to say for whom he had voted. He did, however, later tell The Washington Post that Obama’s opponents had turned him into a “cartoon character” and disputed Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s accusation that Obama “palled around” with terrorists. 

“Pal around together? What does that mean? Share a milkshake with two straws?” Ayers told the Post. “I think my relationship with Obama was probably like thousands of others in Chicago. And, like millions and millions of others, I wish I knew him better.”

Smearing political opponents by demonizing their “associates” is a campaign tactic that has run past its expiration date. That tactic is not only demeaning to those attacked, but it demeans our democratic process.

The failure of the smear tactics employed by the McCain campaign, and its related groups, is a textbook example of what will not work with a strong opponent. 

Paul Krugman knows the “robo call” crowd was badly beaten by the Obama campaign. He does not, however, expect it to go away:

Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon. 

Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots.

Why will the G.O.P. become more, not less, extreme? For one thing, projections suggest that this election will drive many of the remaining Republican moderates out of Congress, while leaving the hard right in place.

Conservative and respected “brainy” columnists like David Brooks and George Will gave up on McCain in the final weeks of the campaign. They knew he had gone over to the dark side.

McCain became so desperate to win that he ignored the counsel of people like Brooks and Will. He also accepted the advice of campaign handlers to brand his opponent as an “elitist”. He did this to court the support of voters he assumed to be anti-intellectual.

The final vote results demonstrated that he was wrong. Every political movement needs its own educated “elite” to provide constant reformation of its guiding principles. The John McCain who lost to George Bush in the Republican primaries of 2000 knew that.  This new McCain did not.

      Bruce Meets Sasha at Columbus Ohio Rally      AP Photo from Huffington Post

By James M. Wall

(Special note: this posting was inspired by questions from readers outside the US, and by younger members of my family who are ready to get serious about the process of electing a US president.) 

Commentators and pundits are (almost) unanimous in predicting that Barack Obama will win Tuesday’s election.  If they are correct, then in the picture above you are seeing our nation’s new first family as they greet Bruce Springstein at an Obama rally Sunday in Columbus, Ohio.

In the picture, Sasha shakes Bruce’s hand, while Sasha’s father places his left hand on his daughter’s shoulder. Hidden to the right, behind Obama are Sasha’s mother Michelle, and Sasha’s older sister, Malia. 

The Huffington Post web site offers a slide show of a rare look at the family campaigning together. After the election, the children are expected to largely disappear from public view.  So this weekend was special.

If you have young children or grandchildren at home or available by phone, who fit Garrison Keillor’s “above average” category in their interest in national affairs, this is an historic election they must not miss.

Even the “average” should pay attention, less they grow up to become a part of that dreaded group of LIVs (“low information voters”).

Here is one way to get ready for Tuesday night.

Eat dinner early so you will be able to watch the returns, starting shortly after 6 p.m. EST, when Indiana results will begin trickling in. 

This will truly be an “education moment”. The entire family will discover the importance of each state’s total electoral college vote, determined by adding the total number of US Senators (two per state) and House of Representatives members (based on the state’s population.)                           

Time zones are important.  For example, the Alaska vote total won’t be available until late at night for eastern state watchers. The vote total for every state, regardless of population size, is also important.

Quick thinking parents might see a lesson to offer here, like in, all states are on the team and every member of the team has a role to play, regardless of size.  

Large population states like New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California, have the largest electoral college totals, but small states (minimum of three votes, like, for example, Alaska) could have a significant impact in a very close race. 

The majority of votes in a state gives a candidate the entire electoral college vote for that state. But note this important difference: The states of Maine and Nebraska allocate their votes according not to the state total, but to the congressional district totals.  

Mudflats, my favorite Alaska-based web site, points us to a scorecard the whole family should study. This state by state guide will direct all of us as we follow each candidate’s quest for an electoral college majority of 270.

For the advanced students, there is also a detailed look at all Congressional and Senate races, where Democrats expect to gain new members. A veto-proof 60 Democratic senators is the Senate goal. Mudflats, from Alaska, reports that Obama has closed the gap in the latest Alaskan poll.  

(Ted Stevens, one of Alaska’s two senators, has been convicted of a felony and will be replaced by either the voters tomorrow, or the Senate. Contrary to what you may assume, Governor Sarah Palin will not appoint a replacement (a practice followed in other states). Instead there will have to be a special election. If she loses the race for vice-president, she could run for the seat in the special election.)

The key to using the presidential scorecard is to begin with the assumption that Obama will win the same number of electoral votes that went to John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee.

Kerry fell short of victory by failing to win an additional 18 votes in the electoral college total. If Barack Obama holds all of the Kerry states, a highly likely outcome, he will need only 18 votes from the states Bush won in 2004.

If he holds the Kerry states, Obama could win the election by winning Bush states Ohio (20 votes) or a Bush state combination of New Mexico (5) or Nevada (5) and Virginia (13). Check the electoral votes in each state and make your own predictions of states that could win Obama his 18 votes. This map from the website Politico is another important guide.

Washington Post veteran journalists David Broder and Dan Balz, have their own take on the potential outcome, complete with map. Personal disclosure: David Broder is a friend I have known since we met when he covered the 1976 Illinois Jimmy Carter campaign.

Broder and I have had many discussions on the relationship between religion and politics. He graciously makes reference to these conversations in his 1981 book, Behind the Front Page: A Candid Look at How the News is Made (Simon & Schuster)

Polls will close Tuesday night at a time set by each state, not by federal law. (Voters must be in line by the closing time, which means they may actually end up voting well after the closing time, assuming there is a long line of potential voters waiting in line).

Closing times will vary by time zones. Indiana will be the first “swing” state (still too close to call) to begin revealing its returns. Indiana has not voted for a Democratic candidate since 1964 (Lyndon Johson).

If Indiana is a close win for McCain, we can anticipate a nation wide Obama victory, since Republican candidates usually win Indiana by a wide margin.  If Obama wins Indiana, then a landslide Obama victory may be underway.

If McCain wins by a large margin in Indiana, that would suggest a trend, which could be followed by victories in Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. If that happens he would be on his way to a huge election upset victory.

                                                  ++++++++++++++++++++

One More Thing:

If you watch to watch a remarkable film while you are waiting for the final returns, see if your local library has a copy of Wag the Dog. (Rated R for language.)

The film is based on American Hero, a novel written by Larry Beinhart. I was reminded of this 1996 novel by alteretnet.org, which posted Beinhart’s essay on Sarah Palin the day before the election.  This piece sums up the ugly division in our culture. A McCain victory would endorse the dark side of that divide.   

A McCain victory would also keep alive the success of the Atwater-Rove tradition of smear guilty by association tactics that continued in and around the McCain campaign.

The final weekend of Republican attack ads reached new lows in the Jeremiah Wright ad sponsored by a Pennsylvania Republican organization and a Republican smear Wright ad running nation-wide. McCain told his staff Wright was “off the table”. But Republican groups have restored it to the table, further besmirching a candidate once admired by both the public and the media.

Watch Wag the Dog for an insight into this style of campaigning, which is built on deceiving the public into accepting the “spin” designed to divert attention from the real issues of a campaign. This plot summary is from the Wag the Dog page on http://www.imdb.com

The movie starts with a scandal at the White House where The President is accused of fondling a young girl scout visiting the Oval Office just a few weeks before an election. Being the third party observers, we know the truth, he’s guilty. Robert DeNiro plays “Conrad Brean” the spin doctor who’s job it is to engineer a way and a means to divert the news of the scandal. He brings in Hollywood producer Stanley Motts played by Dustin Hoffman to create an artificial for television only war to distract the American public and let the President get on with the job at hand, protecting the free world.

We, like the American public, get caught up in the events of a fictional war produced in the basement of the White House with computers and blue screens, actors and scenarios. Soon they even release a mental patient who once served in the military because he has the right last name, “Shoe” to portray a war hero of the conflict. They release him because they have a show song from a nostalgic old tune that contains his name, a war tune now to drum up sympathy and national support for the war effort. It doesn’t take ten minutes of the movie before we, like the cast of characters and the public in the movie have forgotten about the young girl in the oval office.

The American public and members of Congress should have revisited Wag the Dog before accepting the Bush spin on why we had to invade Iraq.  This bit of dialogue will explain why:

Conrad ‘Connie’ Brean: (Robert DeNiro) Would you go to war to do that? 
CIA Agent Mr. Young: (William Macy) I have. 
Conrad ‘Connie’ Brean: Well, I have, too. Would you do it again…? Isn’t that why you’re here? I guess so. And if you go to war again, who is it going to be against? Your “ability to fight a Two-ocean War” against who? Sweden and Togo? Who you sitting here to Go To War Against? That time has passed. It’s passed. It’s over.

The war of the future is nuclear terrorism. It is and it will be against a small group of dissidents who, unbeknownst, perhaps, to their own governments, have blah blah blah. And to go to that war, you’ve got to be prepared. You have to be alert, and the public has to be alert. Cause that is the war of the future, and if you’re not gearing up, to fight that war, eventually the axe will fall.

And you’re gonna be out in the street. And you can call this a “drill,” or you can call it “job security,” or you can call it anything you like. But I got one for you: you said, “Go to war to protect your Way of Life,” well, Chuck, this is your way of life. Isn’t it? And if there ain’t no war, then you, my friend, can go home and prematurely take up golf. Because there ain’t no war but ours. 

 

                      Lee Atwater and President Bush        Photo from the Sacramento Bee

by James M. Wall

When Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama on Meet the Press, he spoke of the prejudice and ignorance that now degrades our political system. 

. . .  I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian.  He’s always been a Christian. 

But the really right answer is, what if he is?  Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. 

Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?  Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated [with] terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America (emphasis added). Meet the Press, with Tom Brokaw, October 19, 2008.

This is a former Secretary of State who has heard “senior members of my own party” refer to Obama as a Muslim who “might be” associated with terrorists. These are not lowly precinct captains speaking. These are people who converse with former Secretaries of State.  Ignorance is to be found among the leaders of Powell’s Republican Party, as well as among those who attend McCain and Palin rallies primed to shout words of hatred. 

George Monbiot, a columnist for the London Guardian, was disturbed enough over evidence of ignorance among American voters to evoke these comments:

Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan’s response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter – stumbling a little, using long words – carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said: “There you go again.” His own health program would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.

. . . .It wasn’t always like this. The founding fathers of the republic — men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton — were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W. Bush and Sarah Palin? 

On one level, this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves round the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD. . . 

Politics in the United States, as Mr. Dooley insisted, is not “bean bag”. But in recent decades, smear campaigns have reached a new low in their sophisticated exploitation of willful ignorance among the voting public. 

The American political system can thank Lee Atwater, to a large degree, for this disturbing development. Atwater was the young political operative who perfected the use of television ads to “drive up the negatives” on opposition candidates. a tactic which stretched the truth well past the breaking point to paint an incorrect portrait of his candidate’s opponent. 

Atwater started his career in politics as a young staffer with South Carolina segregationist Strom Thurmond. He is the subject  of a  new documentary film which movie merchants sent into the nation’s theaters in the final weekend of the 2008 campaign.  The film is Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, directed by Stefan Forbes. Atwater is gone, but his influence lives on.

Before his death, Atwater worked for three presidents, including George H. W. Bush, for whose 1988 campaign he created the Willie Horton ad used against Michael Dukakis.

The ad attacked a prison furlough program that Dukakis had supported while governor of Massachusetts. Horton, a convicted killer who is black, escaped while in the program and raped a woman. The ad said Dukakis was soft on crime, and made prominent use of Horton’s glowering mug shot. Atwater said he was going to make Horton Dukakis’s “running mate.” 

The ad pretty much became the touchstone for demonizing black men in political campaigning. In archival footage, we see Atwater denying that he or the Bush campaign had anything to do with the ad, insisting he’d never even seen it.

This denial is exposed as a lie in the documentary, when a friend is shown recalling the moment Atwater showed him the ad before it ran. “Atwater called him into his office, showed him the ad, said he was going to set it up as the work of an independent committee (and thus, with no fingerprints) and asked what he thought.

The friend says that he told Atwater it was appalling, racist and that it was going to ‘follow you to your grave.’ “

When he was diagnosed with a brain tumor at age 40, Atwater appeared to repent of his nefarious history. He apologized to Dukakis. But as predicted, the ad did follow him to his grave.  Karl Rove continued the Atwater tradition, attacking John McCain in 2000 with false charges about an “illegitimate child”.  This lie was not in an ad, but was pushed by robo calls.  

After suffering at the hands of Rove eight years earlier,  McCain has embraced Rovian tactics in his campaign against Obama. He turned to Karl Rove protege Steve Schmidt. who is beind the negative ads McCain used in this campaign’s closing weeks. 

The pattern continues: First, Atwater, then Rove, and now, Schmidt.  Ads exploting ignorance worked for Republican presidential candidates in 1988, 2000, and 2004.  If McCain wins on November 4, it will have worked in 2008.  Atwater’s actions have followed him beyond his grave.

Schmidt is also the Machevellian operative who exploited the public’s ignorance of the history of the Palestinan struggle for nationhood with his campaign attacks on Professor Rashid Khalidi (at right).

The ads, and the campaign rhetoric from McCain and Palin, pointed to Khalidi as someone with a “terrorist” background, a total falsehood.  Khalidi, now at Columbia University, in New York City, was previously at the University of Chicago, where he knew and “associated” with a faculty colleague, Barack Obama.

The truth about Professor Khalidi’s highly regarded academic writings is that he has been critical of the Palestinan leadership’s failure to embrace non-violence, while pointing with great accuracy to the suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people by Israeli occupation.

Major publications, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, rushed to Khalidi’s defense. Support was also forthcoming from Higher Ed.com, and from Juan Cole, an academic colleague of Khalidi’s. They were not in time, however, to prevent McCain from using the term “neo-Nazi” in speaking of Khalidi in his rallies.

If Obama wins on Tuesday, this 2008 election could mark the beginning of the end of willful ignorance in American politics, thanks to folks like Glenn Greenwald who wrote in Salon.com:

Numerous commentators have condemned the McCain campaign’s despicable — and patently false — attack on Professor Rashid Khalidi as an “anti-Semite,” deployed in order, yet again, to insinuate that Barack Obama is an American-hating, Muslim/Arab radical.  Even Fred Hiatt’sWashington Post Editorial Page this morning called McCain’s comments about Khalidi “a vile smear,” “simply ludicrous,” and “itself condemnable,” and favorably cited Khalidi’s response when asked by The Post if he wanted to address the controversy:  “I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over.” It’s true, as those commentators point out, that this episode is just the latest in the McCain campaign’s increasingly desperate (and laughably inept) attempt to win by sinking lower and lower into McCarthyite muck.

So there is no need to despair. Good days lie ahead. Maybe, at long last, even Lee Atwater will finally rest in peace.

by James M. Wall

In his New York Times magazine profile of Barack Obama, political writer Matt Bai explains the Obama “50-state” campaign strategy.

It was a highly succesful strategy that led the candidate to spend “considerable time and money in more culturally conservative parts of the country where Democrats rarely, if ever, venture, from Elko [Nevada} and Appalachia to Billings, Mont., and Las Cruces, N.M.”  

Explaining his 50-state strategy, Obama told Bia that the first thing he had to do was “show up”.

“First,” Obama said, “you have to show up. I’ve been to Elko, Nev., now three times.”

“Elko?” I asked twice, straining to hear him over the engine noise.

“E-L-K-O.” He sounded vaguely annoyed, as if I had just confirmed something about the media he had long suspected. “That, by the way, is the reason we got more delegates out of Nevada, even though we lost the popular vote there during the primary. We lost Las Vegas and Clark County, but we won handily in rural Nevada.

And a lot of it just had to do with the fact that folks thought: Man, the guy is showing up. He’s set up an office. He’s doing real organizing. He’s talking to people.

A large amount of campaign funds was required to implement the “50-state” strategy, funds that have managed to inform the entire nation that the Republican brand has been denigrated and is need of repair.

Obama’s ability to generate a steady income stream from the internet gave him both cash and volunteers, especially from younger voters, the kind that wrote checks for $50 and then signed up for the duration, agreeing to travel from state to state to promote a candidate who had inspired them with his promise of change. 

For example, volunteers who had swept Obama to victory in his home state of Illinois quickly signed up as door-to-door workers for primaries in nearby Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. They bolstered local volunteers in the primaries and gained experience for the general election.

After the nomination, these volunteers emerged as hardened veterans, sleeping on the floors of local Obama activists in nearby states, registering voters, and then organizing “get out the vote” teams to push early voting and then bring the rest of Obama voters out on November 4.

Obama’s volunteers are not all young, One African American volunteer in Boulder, Colorado, Charles, an 86 year old man who speaks with the accent of the Deep South, gave his testimony as to why he is working for his candidate. Watch it here on You Tube. 

Obama will not win every state’s electoral votes, but House and Senate Democrats in Red states will benefit from Obama’s coattails, And they will benefit from volunteers like Charles the Volunteer from Boulder.  

Democrats have never won Alaska’s electoral votes, but thanks to an aggressive Obama effort in the Red state furtherest north, the voters there are primed to replace a convicted felon from the US Senate with the Democratic mayor of Anchorage. 

Alaska voters got considerable encourage from a jury verdict against long-time Republican Senator Ted Stevens in a Washington, DC US district court. It must also be noted, the voters got an assist from the decline in the Republican brand nationwide, thanks in part to the Alaska governor’s less-than-successful campaign.

The Obama “50 state” campaign, according to Matt Bia,  “reflects Obama’s personal conviction about modern politics”.  This was a conviction the candidate first laid out in his 2004 convention speech when he talked about worshiping “an awesome God in the blue states” and having “gay friends in the red states.” 

He told me, when we talked, that Washington’s us-versus-them divisions had made it impossible for any president to find solutions to a series of generational challenges, from Iraq to global climate change. “If voters are similarly polarized and if they’re seeing two different realities, a Sean Hannity reality and a Keith Olbermann reality, then we’re not going to be able to get done the work we need to get done,” Obama said.

Obama’s call for “change” is a call to move beyond the “us-versus-them” divisions.  Polls suggest that it is a division that no longer resonates with the majority of voters.  But like survivors of a shipwreck, McCain’s campaign and his bigoted support teams, are shooting holes in the bottom of their life boats. 

With less than a week to go, the McCain effort has fallen back on “us-versus-them” tactics by trying to link Obama with people in his past that Obama detractors identify as denizens from the Dark Side. 

The Jeremiah Wright videos have surfaced once again in some swing states. Bill Ayers continues as a tool to generate fear. 

Most recently, respected Middle East scholar Rashid Khalidi, formerly of the University of Chicago and now based at Columbia Univerity in New York City, has been condemned as an “anti-Israel” figure (not true) who is friend and who is an “associate” of Obama (true).  

The failed “us-versus-them” motif used against Khalidi has been hauled out by the McCain camp through a wild, screeching cry of “show us the tape” directed at the Los Angeles Times, which has acknowledged the existence of a tape of a talk Obama gave at a “going away” 2003 dinner for Rashid Khalidi in Chicago.

The “us-versus-them” crowd has an anti-intellectual bias that exposes them as a neanderthal crowd that sees enemies on campuses where free expression is cherished and complex issues are explored.

I refuse to believe that they represents anything other than a small minority of haters who are desperate to hold on to their simplistic “us-versus-them” mantras.    

I give them this, however.  In their zeal to cling to their worldviews, they do their homework.  Somehow, someway,  this crowd got a list of attendees at the Khalidi dinner in 2003.

They must have decided that since I was there to hear Obama speak, I must be in possession of their much desired video, which the Los Angeles Times says does actually exist. And since I write this blog, they have been writing me Comments that demand that I cough up my copy of the video.

Sorry people, no such luck.  I have no video and, if I did, none of you would be provided with a copy. File it under the old intelligence category, “need to know”.  I have never served in the CIA but I am a faithful reader of John LeCarre, including his latest venture into Middle East politics, A Most Wanted Man, Scribner, 2008.  So I understand the meaning of “need to know”. 

LeCarre sums up intelligence activities with a charming panache, as when he describes how EU and US intelligence camps compete from two camps as they chase after Issa, a suspected “terrorist” in Germany. They are clearly divided into two different world views on how exactly to deal with the ambiguity of politics: 

In the leftist corner, if such antiquated distinctions still counted for anything, presided the urbane Michael Alexrod of Foreign Intellegence.  Alexrod was a keen European, an Arabist . . .; and in the rightest corner, the arch conservative Dieter Burgdorf from the Ministry of he Interior, Alexrod’s rival to fill the post of intelligence czar once the foundations of the new structure had been laid: Burgdorf, the unashamed friend of Washington’s neoconservatives, and the German intelligence community’s most vocal evangelist for greater integration with its American counterpart. page 99, emphasis added.

But I digress. That 2003 Khalidi dinner, by the way, was a festive occasion.  My recollection, after five years have passed, is that if anything was mentioned regarding Israel, it did not register with me.  And I tend to notice things like that. 

Of course, it was not what Obama said that night that has the McCain crowd demanding the release of the video. This is merely another “guilt by association” tactic which this crowd of “us-versus-them” believers want to use against Obama in these final days because he has “associated” with a noted Middle Eastern scholar. 

Well, the number of people who have “associated” with Rashid Khalidi is large.  I am proud to be counted among them.  A great many of us depend on Dr. Khalidi’s scholarship and his extensive study of Middle East politics to make sense of the complex history of Israel and its occupation of the  Palestinian people.

I am also proud to add that I have taught short courses on “Religion and the Middle East” in which I have recommended my students read Khalidi’s book, Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East (Beacon Press, Boston, 2004). 

Sorry, all those of you who think I have an Obama video hidden in the vault, I am not only not going to help you find a copy of the video, but I am also not going to give you the list of students who have “associated” with Khalidi by reading his book at my suggestion.  I do not think the Patriot Act requires that I release this information. 

Of course, I can suggest that if you want to learn more about the Middle East, one way to do this is to  associate with Rashid Khalidi by reading his books, starting with Resurrecting Empire.

                                                   +++++++++++++++++++

The picture above, of Barack Obama,  was taken by Joe Raymond, of he Associated Press, during a rally at South Bend Washington High School, Wednesday April 9, 2008 in South Bend, Ind. It was published in the Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2008. 

By James M. Wall    

I found this picture on Mudflats, an Anchorage, Alaska web site. It was taken during a Barack Obama rally in Anchorage.

This handsome dog bears a striking resemblance to Darby, who was, until her recent passing,  a much beloved member of my extended family in Alaska,

It was Mudflats, which I check daily, that first alerted me to the news that the Anchorage Daily News has endorsed Barack Obama for president in its Sunday (October 26) edition.

The Wall Street Journal also took note of the endorsement.

This is major.  It is so major that I think it is now safe to say that it’s over, folks.  Barack Obama will be our 44th president. 

Sure, a large majority of the Lower 48 newspapers has also fallen in behind the Obama candidacy.  But the Anchorage Daily News?  This is Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s home state newspaper. No favoritism here. This is pure Niebuhrian realism.

The paper’s endorsement is respectful of Palin. It is also proud of her arrival on the national political stage. 

Gov. Palin has shown the country why she has been so successful in her young political career. Passionate, charismatic and indefatigable, she draws huge crowds and sows excitement in her wake. She has made it clear she’s a force to be reckoned with, and you can be sure politicians and political professionals across the country have taken note. Her future, in Alaska and on the national stage, seems certain to be played out in the limelight.

But respect and pride for Palin are not enough for the governor’s home state paper to support John McCain:

Alaska enters its 50th-anniversary year in the glow of an improbable and highly memorable event: the nomination of Gov. Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate. For the first time ever, an Alaskan is making a serious bid for national office, and in doing so she brings broad attention and recognition not only to herself, but also to the state she leads.

Gov. Palin’s nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency — but it does not overwhelm all other judgment. The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand. The same cannot be said of Sen. McCain. . . .

. . . Of the two candidates, Sen. Obama better understands the mortgage meltdown’s root causes and has the judgment and intelligence to shape a solution, as well as the leadership to rally the country behind it. It is easy to look at Sen. Obama and see a return to the smart, bipartisan economic policies of the last Democratic administration in Washington, which left the country with the momentum of growth and a budget surplus that President George Bush has squandered. 

On the most important issue of the day, Sen. Obama is a clear choice. . . .

Mudflats, now my reliable source for Alaska news and comment, has been telling us all along that Sarah Palin would be a tough competitor, but Mudflats, along with many other Alaskans, has also warned us, “she is not ready”. 

After the election I probably won’t be checking Mudflats every day.  But I will make frequent visits there. As someone who spent a year with the Air Force in Alaska, and who still has family there, I will continue to look to Mudflats for constant updates on the doings of Brian, the moose, and Mudflat’s many other friends. 

Brian is a smart moose, by the way.  He knows when moose season arrives in the fall, and a week or so later, he knows when it is safe to come out again. His picture, at left, was taken during the off season 

Mudflats’ friends include readers as far away as Australia, where “watchers” are sometimes enlisted to monitor a web cam of Brian’s activities. 

I also will rely on Mudflats to let me know how Sarah Palin adjusts to her defeat as she continues in her job as Alaska’s governor.

Meanwhile, you must be wondering, Who is Mudflats?  The blog explains in a way that should speak to all of us who are participating in this election:

. . . I am just a citizen who is paying attention. I’ve had the good fortune to have had people in my life who were engaged, and aware, and dragged me along until I became engaged and aware too. I am also fortunate to count as my friends some of those who hold elected office in this state, and remind me by example that there are good people out there in our state and city government who are intelligent, diligent, ethical, and working hard for the best interest of Alaska. . . .

. . . I grew up on the East Coast and attended a New England liberal arts college. After graduating, and diving in to the business world, I decided to flee the NYC area and take a two year adventure to Alaska.

When I arrived in Anchorage in February of 1991 without knowing a soul, only one month rent paid and $300 to my name, I looked out the window at the snow falling in the dark and wondered what I had done. By the time my two years were up, I was hooked.

I’ve put down deep roots here, and consider Alaska my home in every sense.  I see it as a place of tremendous potential for business, for energy, for innovative thinking, and for citizen activists to be able to make a tangible difference in their local and state government. . . .

The picture above, by the way, was taken during an Anchorage Obama Rally which received front page coverage in the Anchorage Daily News. 

ONE MORE THING: To be fair to both sides, the McCain camp has not given up.  November 4 is still more than a week away.  Anything could happen. Karl Rove told Fox News Sunday that McCain “has a steep road to climb”.  Earlier, one McCain official had this hopeful analysis: 

“We have a real chance in Pennsylvania. We are in trouble in Colorado, Nevada and Virginia. We have lost Iowa and New Mexico. We are OK in Missouri, Ohio and Florida. Our voter intensity is good, and we can match their buy dollar for dollar. . . till the election. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth fighting for.”       

                      A FINAL PERSONAL NOTE

I have just received word that my dear friend and a guest columnist for this blog, Dr. Andrew Weaver, died Wednesday, October 22.  Final services will be held in New York City, November 1, at the Chinese United Methodist Church (69 Madison Street) where his wife, the Rev. Dr. Carolyn L. Stapleton is pastor.

Frederick Clarkson writes in his blog, Talk to Action:

Andrew Weaver, a friend of and occasional contributor to Talk to Action has died after a long illness. Andrew was, very much as I think he would like to be remembered, a man who lived his Methodist faith. And I think that many will come to know him if they have not already, as having lead a heroic life.

He worked tirelessly for peace and social justice and sought to make a difference in the world. I know that he did – from his support for Cindy Sheehan during her vigil in Crawford, Texas where she hoped President Bush would explain her son’s death in Iraq; to his efforts to thwart the placement of the Bush Presidential library and the related Bush “think tank” at Southern Methodist University — and much, much more. . . .

Andrew wrote a guest column for this blog, Torture is Not a Methodist Family Value, that drew the highest number of immediate hits this blog has ever received. His posting was written as a part of his campaign to alert United Methodists to what he felt deeply was a mistake: Construction of the George W. Bush “think tank” at SMU, referred to in the excerpt above from Frederick Clarkson’s tribute.

Andrew will be missed by his family and by his large circle of friends.

by James M. Wall

Maybe you have to be a Boomer to really appreciate this clip.  But anyone is welcome to watch.

Ron Howard started as a kid fishing with the sheriff.  Now he is a famous movie director.  The other day he took time off to make a short movie. 

Listen for the theme music. Ron’s little film should bring back memories to those who remember Opie, Andy and the Fonz.  

After you view Ron’s video, take a moment to reflect on the impact of an Obama victory on November 4. Will it be a victory that rejects the toxicity the New York Times’ Gail Collins identifies along the campaign trail?  Or. will negative campaigning prevail again, as it did in 2000 and 2004? Here is Collins:

. . . Opening for a McCain rally in North Carolina last weekend, Representative Robin Hayes said he wanted “to keep the crowd as respectful as possible.”

In order to pursue that goal as efficiently as possible, Hayes then announced that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.” This was an especially unfortunate turn of phrase given the fact that he had begun his remarks by saying he wanted to “make sure we don’t say something stupid.”

All this was a direct outgrowth of Sarah Palin’s own comments in North Carolina, in which she praised the “pro-America” areas of the country. But Hayes had clearly been absent for the day in scurrilous campaign school when they explain that you aren’t supposed to specifically name the anti-American parts. . . .

Collins calls our attention to even more toxicity which emmated from an interview on the Chris Matthews Hardball program where Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota launched into what Collins calls her “Obama/terrorist spin when she suggested that the news media should investigate ‘the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America.’

Matthews later ran a clip from Bachmann’s Democratic opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, who had been lagging far behind Bachmann in the polls and in money raised.  

After Bachmann divided the nation into people who are pro-America and anti-America, Tinklenberg received close to $1 million in contribution. His poll numbers improved immediately.  Bachmann also lost support from the Republican National Committee, which withdrew its support from her campaign.

Tinklenberg and Bachmann are running in the Minnesota Sixth District, a race to follow on November 4. And a word for you religiously-inclined readers, Tinklenberg is a United Methodist clergyman.

Now back to the top of the ticket: What would be the international impact of an Obama victory? Nicholas D. Kristof offers one answer in a conversation he shared in a recent New York Times column:

The other day I had a conversation with a Beijing friend and I mentioned that Barack Obama was leading in the presidential race:

She: Obama? But he’s the black man, isn’t he?

Me: Yes, exactly.

She: But surely a black man couldn’t become president of the United States?

Me: It looks as if he’ll be elected.

She: But president? That’s such an important job! In America, I thought blacks were janitors and laborers.

Me: No, blacks have all kinds of jobs.

She: What do white people think about that, about getting a black president? Are they upset? Are they angry?

Me: No, of course not! If Obama is elected, it’ll be because white people voted for him.

[Long pause.]

She: Really? Unbelievable! What an amazing country!

We’re beginning to get a sense of how Barack Obama’s political success could change global perceptions of the United States, redefining the American “brand” to be less about Guantánamo and more about equality. . . . 

Think about it. Less than two weeks before election day and many states offer early voting.  Is every member of your family voting early?  If not, what sort of parent are you?