Wallwritings

by James M. Wall

I have a good friend, well educated and well informed, who says she gets her news from Jon Stewart.  No Way!  But guess what, I found a You Tube clip from Stewart which turns out to be best analysis yet about the AIPAC conference at which all three presidential candidates appeared and tried their best to outdo one another in pandering to hardline supporters of Israel. 

Trouble is, as Stewart points out, AIPAC is so yesterday. He even described their members as the “Elders of Zion”, a reference to their age and loss of power, not to those ancient documents that inspire anti-semitism. Obama, Clinton and McCain spent precious campaign time with a bunch of old guys–and ladies–believing they were speaking to the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the country. They were not, and when they wake up to that fact they are really going to feel foolish. 

Lets face reality here, the Mearsheimer-Walt book on the Israel Lobby exposed AIPAC as, well, a lobby, not another branch of the US government. Washington is full of lobbyists; the list is long:  The NRA, teachers, labor unions, farmers, corporations that do business in Latin America, oil companies, environmentalists that frighten us about global warming.

Good folks, for the most part; they throw nice parties. But since they are so clearly biased for their causes, members of Congress have learned to take them–and their money, thank you very much– with gratitude and a grain of salt, depending on how much influence they still have in specific districts and states.

Now Stewart tells us that AIPAC, which has recently had two of its top staffers hauled into federal court with allegations they took secrets belonging to the US government and gave them to Israel, is fast losing its grip on the American government. Once Mearsheimer and Walt brought the Israel Lobby into public view, they lost much of their once-vaunted power.

Power words best when its flaws are not exposed to light.  AIPAC now has competition, the J Street lobby, which has set up shop in DC. J Street brings new money from Jewish and Progressive sources who are tired of having AIPAC claim they are the only players in town who understand Israel. Candidates for Congress now have two places to go to obtain money for their campaigns, the old guys with money and the new guys with money. 

Obama, Clinton and McCain must not have gotten the memo. They spoke to AIPAC as though it is still the 1980s.  Obama, especially, lost some of his glow as the new kid in town when he tried to outdo Clinton and McCain in bragging about his Jewish influences and his trips to Israel. Between them they have maybe a half dozen trips.  Not really very impressive, as travel to the region goes. 

Obama is the smartest guy in the race and he should not be making mistakes when he speaks on foreign policy. With his best informed Middle East experts removed from his campaign team, at least until he had wrapped up the nomination, Obama went to the AIPAC conference with only a few hardline Zionists in the speech writing room, Someone gave him false information which led him to include a big No No in his speech,

Obama promised AIPAC he would give Israel full control over an undivided Jerusalem. Which Jerusalem, east, west, Old City, suburbs, settlements?  He did not bother to say. Obama qualified his gaffe within a few hours, saying, oops, not really. It will be the involved “parties” who will have to reach a final decision on Jerusalem, among themselves. 

It is time for Obama to call up those Middle East experts he dispatched  to his farm club, valuable players he sent down until he could win the Democratic pennant.  Now is the time to bring them back up for the Show. The World Series looms. Until then, his supporters can be grateful he has Jon Stewart to remind him that just because AIPAC used to be the only Jewish game in town, nothing lasts for ever.

Daniel Levy, writing on the the Century Foundation and the New American Foundation blog, reminded us, and hopefully Obama, that he is not alone  Obama is our first cyber space candidate. A handy laptop on his travels will keep him in touch with progressive blogs and web sites that will reassure him that with AIPAC’s power fading, change is possible, even in the Middle East. There are younger Jewish generations in town, many of whom remember their Jewish ethical training. And many of them turn to Jon Stewart for the news. 

As many of you know, the title of this posting is drawn from a title of a book by the late, great, Molly Ivins. What a terrible shame she is not around to cover this campaign.  It is going to be a doozy.

by James M. Wall

You have to love those British newspapers.  The London Sun led its story on Barack Obama’s  “giant leap towards becoming the first black President in the history of the United States” with the headline: US Goes Barack to the Future, creatively linking American pop culture with politics.  The Sun continued with these Obama words:

“Tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Tonight I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.”

For two decades, the US has had either a Bush or Clinton in the White House. They are the past; Barack is the future.  The effort to give Hillary the second spot on Obama’s ticket will go nowhere. Clinton, who made history by coming closer to the nomination than any woman in US history, will not run as vice president. This will not damage the Democratic ticket in November.

In the matrix of American politics, Clinton’s strong base among women has two choices for president. Clinton enthusiasts will not turn to John McCain.  Once they get over their disappointment, they will start thinking of two words: Supreme and Court. As many as four new justices will be nominated over the next eight years.  Clinton does not need to be on the ticket to make that case to her supporters on behalf of Obama.

Obama enthusiasts were disappointed by the harsh Zionist militancy of his speech to AIPAC, but few were surprised.  This was the first speech of a campaign rooted in the “audacity of hope”. There was no hope offered in that speech to the Palestinian people, nor to those Americans of conscience, Christian, Jewish and Muslim, who know and live with the Palestinian narrative that has led to a military occupation. 

The AIPAC address had none of the joy or hope of Obama’s victory speech which he gave in Minneapolis Tuesday night.  To AIPAC members Obama handed out raw meat to true believers. How much red meat did he ladle out to his enthusiastic audience?  Dana Milbank, of the Washington Post, hit Obama’s performance with scarcism, playing on the Obama change theme:

Now, here’s a change we can believe in.  A mere 12 hours after claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday — and changed himself into an Israel hard-liner.  

He declared that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps‘ Quds Force has “rightly been labeled a terrorist organization.” He used terms such as “false prophets of extremism” and “corrupt” while discussing Palestinians. And he promised that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

So much for a change candidate seeking to defeat a third Bush term. I asked several Obama supporters how they could defend the Zionist rhetoric he uttered without any of his careful nuances. And how did they react to the absence from Obama’s speech of even a few crumbs from the Palestinian narrative?

Their consensus response:  “Give him time”.  The voting public is just now discovering a candidate the London Sun describes as “the real American idol”.  “Stay calm, he knows the story and he will, in time, tell it.”  Well, maybe. But it will be a difficult task to shift from the Bush hardline to a Obama change policy, launched before an AIPAC crowd that has tasted the raw meat. 

American media has been slow to educate the voting public on Middle East policy, religion and culture. But there is help available: The British press. Denominational and congregational church web sites could perform a valuable service by introducing its members to British media outlets. Most of the better media outlets are just a mouse click away. 

For example, the London Guardian’s Ian Black reported that Obama’s AIPAC address began by stating the obvious with Obama repeating the standard pro-Israel positions that “Israel’s security is ‘sacrosanct’ and ‘non-negotiable’ and that the bond between it and the US is ‘unbreakable”. But Black also suggests that:

“Arabs may take some small comfort from [Obama’s] pledge that Palestine – where George Bush did nothing but damage – will be a priority from the first days of his presidency (not left as an afterthought until the end).”

That was the only break from present US policy that Black could find. Obama followed the Bush-Rice line when he defined Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, “simply as a terrorist organisation with no place at the negotiating table”. Black notes that this leaves no space for “pragmatic engagement that some Europeans and even Israelis want to help. . . evolve.”

Obama also “buys into the badly faltering Annapolis formula: isolate Hamas, (presumably maintaining the Gaza siege) showcase the West Bank and ask Israel to take “appropriate” steps but only if they are “consistent with its security” – that crucial (and likely crippling) qualification.” 

In his careful and sensitive Philadelphia speech on race, Obama embraced the two narratives that define black and white relationships in this country.  He clearly understands the two narratives; he has lived them both. At Philadelphia he pledged to transcend those narratives without denying their reality. In his AIPAC speech, Obama embraced only the Jewish narrative, ignoring the Palestinian narrative. He offered only one passing note of hope that his administration would seek an early, not a last minute, solution to the conflict. 

To be fair to him, Barack Obama needs time to define himself to the voting public and he feels this requires a rhetoric that builds on preexisting world views. But Obama dare not wait too long before demonstrating that he also knows and feels the Palestinian narrative as well as he knows and feels the Israeli narrative. The audacity of hope demands nothing less.

by James M. Wall

The choice of a Vice President is the first, and most important, decision that Barack Obama will make once Hillary Clinton concedes. He has already begun to consider his options, quietly, of course, to avoid offending Clinton and her supporters. In a very wise move, Obama has enlisted James A. Johnson to either chair or closely consult in the search. 

Johnson is a highly successful Washington operative with credentials in the VP search business.  He made his presence felt in Washington when he served as both Chairman and CEO from 1991 until 1998 for Fannie Mae  (Federal National Mortgage Association). Johnson was praised by Matthew Cooper in a 1997 Slate essay in which he described him as a Medici (after the Italian family of bankers and merchants which effectively ruled Florence for much of the 15th century). 

Johnson was a top aide to Walter Mondale, serving as a top staff aide when Mondale was a senator and vice president.  Johnson chaired the Mondale vice presidential search that chose Geraldine Ferrarro in 1984, a task he also performed for John Kerry In 2004. Johnson came to Chicago to provide oversight to the Carter-Mondale reelection campaign after the 1980 primary. I was the volunteer state chair of that campaign and saw Johnson at work up close. 

Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne had led Ted Kennedy’s Illinois effort to defeat Carter, first, unsuccessfully in the primary race for delegates and then in Harold Ickes’ unsuccessful attempt to “change the convention rules” to allow Carter delegates to vote for Kennedy. We won the floor fight, but it left state campaigns, like ours, scrambling to unify our delegations for the campaign ahead.

Before we went to New York to face the Ickes “rules changing” fight, the Carter delegates had to choose a delegate chair for the convention. Mayor Richard J. Daley was our chair in 1976, but he had died a few weeks after Carter’s election. Mayor Byrne was not an option; she was leading the Kennedy effort. Two male Carter delegates, state elected officials, one white, one African American, each felt they deserved the position. Women in the delegation wanted a chairwoman. 

As the Carter campaign chair, I had to negotiate with these factions at the tense party convention that elected the chair. Jim Johnson sat quietly in the back of the room, telling me what he (the campaign) wanted to happen.  He came up with a Solomonic solution: The two male elected state officials would be co-chairs, and two women, a Chicago state senator and a downstate County chair, would also be co-chairs.

I took a lot of heat and ridicule from the Chicago media for the four-headed “monster” we took with us to the New York convention. We literally had to draw straws to see who would chair the convention each night. All four wanted to be in charge the third night, when vote totals were cast on national television. (“The great state of Illinois, the land of Lincoln, proudly casts its votes for the man who. . .”)  Jim Johnson was satisfied; he was behind the scenes, where the heat does not shine.

Johnson is again behind the scenes, searching for a vice president. One of the most helpful suggestions I have heard comes from an unsuspecting source, New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks who suggests now is not the time for Obama to worry about geographical balance, nor should he placate a single voting bloc from his base (no four-way monster for Johnson this time).

Brooks points to the Bush-Cheney team as an example of a selection which brought to the White House an experienced and reliable partner able to handle tough assignments. (You don’t have to approve of the Cheney choice, nor the way he handled his job, to see that, in the right hands, the advice is sound.)

Jimmy Carter was a one-term governor from Georgia when he picked Mondale as his vice president. Carter knew he needed an experienced Washington veteran at his side. He broke precedence and brought Mondale into the White House with an office a few doors from the Oval Office. Private Carter-Mondale weekly luncheons became strategy sessions that shaped administration policies.

In his New York Times column, Brooks offers this advice:

A vice president can . . . have a gigantic impact on an administration once in office (see: Cheney, Richard). Therefore, a sensible presidential candidate shouldn’t be selecting a mate on the basis of who can help him get elected. He should be thinking about who can help him govern successfully so he can get re-elected. That means asking: What circumstances will I face when I take office? What tasks will I need my chief subordinate to perform to help me face those circumstances? 

Brooks offers (log in needed to access) two experienced former senators as examples: Tom Daschle, of South Dakota, and Sam Nunn, of Georgia, both former senators with extensive experience in the ways of Washington, and in Nunn’s case, a special expertise in military affairs. Daschle has been an informal advisor to the Obama campaign and may participate in the VP search.

The vetting process must dig deeply into the background of each prospective candidate. George McGovern’s experience with Tom Eagleton demonstrated that any harmful information that would feed the 24 hour a day news cycle “beast” (now including cable television, talk radio and bloggers) must be known in advance. The often irrational segments of that “beast” are interested in neither nuance nor fairness, as Obama learned from his Jeremiah Wright experience.

 So, Jim Johnson, make sure your VP suggestions guarantee the nation a group of potential candidates with reliable loyalty, the ability to handle tough major assignments, proven government experience which compliments that of the president, a demonstrated maturity under fire, a comfort level with the president, and like the top of the ticket, a sense of humor.  Also, make sure Michelle Obama likes the final choice; Barack Obama listens to her.