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Over at his Semi-Daily Journal today, the always insightful Brad De Long examines the sniping and backbiting that appears to be going on behind the scenes within the Clinton camp, and makes this observation:
I've seen this before. There are two kinds of people who get involved in politics--those who care about the substance of policy, and those who want to get White House Mess privileges, or as a consolation prize become media celebrities. The first kind--the policy people--will be loyal to a politician as long as he or she is trying his or her best to achieve the shared policy goals. The second kind---the spinmasters---will be loyal to a politician as long as he or she is a winner who favors them. If a politician stops looking like a winner, or if a politician starts favoring others for what they hoped would be their west wing job, they will jump ship as fast as they can---and you will start seeing the "infighting" stories.The moral? A politician with an ideological policy compass is best off not hiring spinmasters as his or her senior aides. Hire people who care about the substance of policy instead.
Spot on. But this begs the obvious: what if the candidate in question doesn't have an ideological policy compass? That would explain the presence of the spin-jockeys on senior staff, no? Just asking.
---Vitelius
Somebody fax a copy of this article to the Obama camp, pronto!
While some Americans are congratulating themselves on switching to fuel-sipping cars, their old gas guzzlers just won't die. U.S. trade policy is giving them new life south of the border . . .More than 3 million late-model vehicles have rumbled legally south of the border in the past 2 1/2 years. Millions more are on the way, thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
You know, there was a time---actually, it happens all the time, come to think of it---when someone in government, or industry, or thinktankery is fulminating about the Chinese or the Indonesians or the Malaysians or whoever else flooding our markets with cheap imports that threaten vulnerable American industries. But heck, I guess when we're doing it, esta no problema. I mean, Mexicans should have freedom of choice too, right? Just leave it to the inerrant workings of the free market, and everything will be fine, right?
The explosion of heavy metal in the past 2 1/2 years has stunned even veteran industry observers. Imported used cars already account for 13 percent of Mexico's fleet, and that share is growing quickly. Some fear Mexico could end up like Peru, which has been swamped by low-priced hand-me-downs from the United States and Japan since it opened its market in 1992."It's a grave threat" to new-vehicle sales, said Alfredo Llorente, director general of the Mexican Automotive Distributors Association.
That could be bad news for the U.S. Big Three automakers, for which Mexico has been an important consumer of new vehicles.
Air-quality experts are fuming as well. The used imports are supposed to meet smog and safety standards, but Mexico has yet to put a comprehensive testing system in place.
Hmmm, so it's bad news for American industry, bad news for Mexican industry, and not so great for the environment either. If I were amongst the Obama brain trust, I'd have my candidate quoting from this piece at every rally in Ohio until March the 4th.
--Vitelius
Gee, this is surprising: the AP's reporting that the GOP might actually try to portray Obama as unpatriotic in the general election:
"The reason it hasn't been an issue so far is that we're still in the microcosm of the Democratic primary," said Republican consultant Roger Stone. "Many Americans will find the three things offensive. Barack Obama is out of the McGovern wing of the party, and he is part of the blame America first crowd."
This is a typical reaction you'd expect from a Republican political operative who came of age during the Vietnam Era. The only problem is, we are now three and half decades removed from the McGovern campaign, which is to say, the name "McGovern" grows increasingly irrelevant with each passing year, and most likely means next to nothing at all to most voters age 40 and under. You might as well tell me, a dude born in the '50s, that GOP candidate so-and-so hails from the "Henry Cabot Lodge" wing of the party. Like, so fucking what?
And say, isn't this Roger Stone the same guy as this wife-swapping studmuffin here?
Conservative Republican consultant Keith Appell, who worked with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, said Obama's opposition to the war will create a "striking contrast between McCain the war hero and Obama the poster child for the anti-war movement.""If you are McCain, you want to play up the decorated war hero, loves his country, served his country," Appell said. "You want to play those themes up as much as possible, especially in comparison to Obama and his role in the anti-war movement."
These foolish men really are still fighting the Vietnam war, aren't they? Because, in case they haven't noticed, the "anti-war movement" is now the, uhhh . . . silent majority:
A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 61% of Americans would like to see U.S. troops brought home from Iraq within a year.
The Swift Boaters can rage on all they want about the angry militant wife, and hands over hearts, and Manchurian Muslims and whatever fictive shreds of disloyalty their promiscuous little lizard brains can conjure. For Obama, the fall campaign need be nothing more complicated than a referendum on Mr. 19% in the Oval Office, his failed war, his failed economy, and his failed and dysfunctional government. If the Swift Boat geniuses really believe they can run a winning national campaign based on four more years of war, all I can say is: Bring. It. On.
---Vitelius
It's not often the Baron is rendered speechless (as his long-suffering friends can attest), but I gotta admit it isn't easy to wax profound today on this fella's life, though I guess it suffices to say that it's hard to imagine one guy being able to produce so many records in so many vast and varied genres, invariably to the highest degree of polish and refinement---and those are just the Miles Davis LPs I'm talkin' about! The man's taste and technique speaks for itself, ever so eloquently with each passing decade. Listen to any number of the Davis box sets that've been released over the past ten years
---The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions probably being the best example---and you quickly come to the realization that a lot of what passes for "form" on these classic Electric Miles albums is one that's largely imposed by the producer, not the artist, whose compositional technique was growing looser and less rigid over time. And listening to the many lengthy, meandering, and often-pointless passages that never made it to LP, you also quickly realize that Teo knew what was working and what wasn't in any given recording session because there's almost never any moment in time while listening to these multi-CD works that you find yourself asking, "Why didn't he include that in the album too?" Simply, because he knew second-rate work when he heard it, and his connection to Miles's aesthetic was so firm by this point that he could take what was left over---bits and pieces of melodic prima materia---and turn them into musical gold. To Miles's credit, he knew well enough to get out of the way and let Teo turn his unfinished fragments into fully realized, razor-cut compositions.
But for now, I'll slide open the mouth of the ol' CD deck and reflect on what is probably my favorite of Macero's work with Miles---the 32-minute "He Loved Him Madly," from Get Up With It, arguably Davis's final benchmark album---most likely because it had to be one of the most daunting of Miles's works to bring to life. The music is slow, turgid, funereal funk, with no small amount of unfocused rustling and bustling, simple signatures and hesitant stabs at melody, lots of empty space, and at times an air of uncertainty permeates the piece as the musicians try to figure out what Miles wants them to do and who should play what and when---emblematic of the Davis band at this point, which was an unholy amalgam of bop-trained jazz players and studio funk musicians whose intuitions, simply put, were often not only on different pages but in different area codes. As usual, the many edits and cuts are virtually invisible, and what could have ended up as a maddening series of starts and stops, and dead-end jamming punctuated by flashes of brilliance ends up as a deeply moving musical elegy, utterly coherent and lyrical. It's as much a product of Macero's vision as it is of Miles's (as was Jack Johnson, and Bitches Brew, to be honest), and it proves how valuable a producer can be to the growth and development---and, sometimes, discipline---of a gifted and mercurial artist.
---Vitelius
The latest Stop Obama meme: I'd say we are getting just a little bit desperate, now, aren't we?
"I want you to think, 'Who do you want to have in the White House answering the phone at 3 o'clock in the morning when some crisis breaks out around the world?'" Clinton asked a heavily Hispanic crowd at a rally in downtown Laredo.
Wow. Who needs Dick Cheney for fearmongering when you've got crap like this emanating from a fellow Democrat? The Republican National Committee should be sending Clinton baskets of flowers and chocolates if for no other reason than she's helping them figure out which trial balloons of their own to launch next fall, and which ones to leave in the hangar.
---Vitelius
Much obliged, Steve Benen:
We've all heard jokes about McCain being in bed with lobbyists, but few ever suggested the mockery was literal.
---Vitelius
Mighty Hammer,
Well, it looks as though Team Barack has delivered another of your patented elbow smashes to the Clinton camp since he won again last night and he picked up the Teamsters’ endorsement today, which should come in mighty handy in Ohio and Pennsylvania in two weeks. All he really needs to do now is run even with her in the remaining primary states, and that doesn’t look like it should be a big problem for him. At least as long as the money’s rolling in.
I think the only complication that arises from this point onward is if Obama is still ahead in delegates and popular votes, but slightly shy of the Magic Number, at the start of the convention, and the Clinton people pull some fast ones with their friends amongst the super-delegates to wrestle away the nomination from him. Given the “Chicago ‘68” nightmare scenario this could trigger within the party, I honestly can’t imagine they would be so foolish and short-sighted as to attempt this . . . Well, yes I can, come to think of it, so I guess I’ll keep my counsel for now.
And y’know, it is very easy to lose the Big Picture perspective amid all this infighting, i.e., that this will be an election of truly historic portent, with either a woman or an African-American at the top of a major-party ticket for the first time. And the fact that upwards of 50 million voters will not hesitate to pull the lever for either Hillary or Obama next fall speaks very well, I think, to the gradual maturation of the national psyche, considering that the idea of electing a female or black president would not have been taken seriously by very many people at all 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago.
About your point re: Bill Clinton and Al ’Qaida, you’ll not get an argument from me. I do recall one attempt that was made to take out Bin Laden with an air strike in the Sudan, which turned out to be a day late and a dollar shy, but I think the real problem was, after Oklahoma City in ‘95, the Clinton brain trust spent an inordinate amount of time and resources tracking down domestic terrorists, either real (cf., Kaczynski, Ted) or imagined (Jewell, Richard) and not enough time trying to brainstorm a coherent plan of action against the developing threat overseas, which was too probably easy to view in the abstract. Understandable, perhaps, given human nature, but also myopic for a chief executive. Suffice to say, I think we can agree in the spirit of bipartisanship that security policy was not the Clinton administration’s strong suit.
And you’re certainly right about the Saudi connection---and for what it’s worth, if Senator McCain genuinely wants to start another war in the Middle East, he’ll hear no griping from me if he decides to commence bombing those bastards. The House of Saud has been holding a petroleum gun to our heads for far too long. I’d rather we bought our oil from the Russians, or Hugo Chavez, or even from the Iranians, frankly.
Speaking of McCain, I’d be curious to hear your take on him from the Republican perspective. He’s always struck me as a bit of a grandstander who enjoys playing to the media as much as actually legislating anything. I still vividly remember all the hot air that was expended over his many attempts to reform the sweet science of boxing via some National Boxing Commission or some such nonsense that mercifully went nowhere. And if his solution to the war, the economy and/or health care is some variant of “stay the course,” well, he just might be the only GOP candidate who actually could lose to Hillary Clinton next fall.
Anyway, all for now. Time for some quality time with the little Brainiacs watching 20-year-old reruns of exciting UWF action on ESPN Classic. Barack v. Hillary ain't got nothin' on a bunch of fat dudes with mullets layin' down hammerlocks and Suplexes for the masses.
Y'r Ob'd't. S'rv't.,
---Vitelius
From today's Post, a heartwarming tale of survival and pluck starring Man's Best Enemy of My Enemy. Or, er, something like that:
Charlie the border collie mix actually seemed to be smiling for the crowd.Five months after the SPCA International received a plea from American soldiers hoping to transfer their beloved Iraqi stray to U.S. terrain, the 9-month-old mutt became the first beneficiary of the animal advocacy organization's effort to rescue pets from the war zones where they provide solace to service members. Charlie eventually will live in Phoenix with one of his caretaker soldiers.
Give us your poor, your four-legged, yearning to sniff other critters' butts . . . Oh, nevermind. Okay, so how did this lucky mutt manage to achieve what so many others refugees have failed to accomplish?
Eleven other dogs and two cats adopted by service members in Iraq or Afghanistan are in the pipeline for rescue, said Stephanie Scroggs, a spokeswoman for SPCA International. The SPCA will pay about $4,000 per rescue, Scroggs said. She acknowledged that the sum could aid many more stateside animals but said the program also supports the troops.
And how much red tape had to be circumvented to get Charlie out of Iraq?
After a 30-day quarantine, a cloak-and-dagger turnover was arranged so Charlie would not come to the attention of the soldiers' senior officers.
Because enlisted men aren't allowed to adopt strays, you see, which technically speaking, makes Charlie contraband. And now that he's in America, doesn't that make him . . . an illegal immigrant? But I digress:
This week, a quartet of U.S. security contractors picked up Charlie at his outpost and took him to Baghdad International Airport. Crisp, meanwhile, flew United Airlines to Kuwait, then Gryphon Airlines to Baghdad. When her plane touched down, the contractors carried Charlie in his crate across the tarmac, and he was soon on his way to the United States.
Now, the Baron doesn't want to to come off as too hard-hearted here. Those of you who read these rants know what a devoted dog-lover I am . . . but honestly, can we put this piece in some kind of perspective? Like, oh, what do you suppose ever became of Charlie's original owners? Any chance they might ever be reunited with their beloved border collie?
Despite the two million Iraqis who have fled the country, the Bush Administration has let in just over 1,000 this year. Although the State Department had originally said it hoped to resettle 7,000 Iraqis in the U.S. by the end of September, it scaled down that target to 2,000 and is unlikely to meet even that goal. Just 1,135 Iraqi refugees had made it into the country as of the second to last week of September, 2007.
---Vitelius
Commenting on Mike McConnell's fess-up about the Protect Telecoms America Act (or whatever the hell they're calling it this time around), Atrios cuts to the chase:
I don't believe this is about protecting the telecoms; it's about protecting themselves. And given the fact that a supine press has been relatively unconcerned that the President has been illegally spying on Americans without warrants as required by law for years, one wonders just what it is they feel the need to hide.
My thoughts exactly. And a good place to start looking for answers would be with an examination of the last President who wiretapped without warrants on a wholesale level. What was he looking for, and what did he have to hide? Anybody wanna hazard a guess?
---Vitelius
Terrific news today about our firm and steadfast allies in the War on Terror:
Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £ 1 billion in secret payments from the arms company BAE.
He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.
The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties.
Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said the government appeared to have "rolled over" after the threats. He said one possible view was that it was "just as if a gun had been held to the head" of the government.
To paraphrase Brad DeLong, impeach George Bush. And DIck Cheney. Do. It. Now.
---Vitelius
Once again, one of these things is not like the other:
"American citizens must understand, clearly understand that there's still a threat on the homeland. There's still an enemy which would like to do us harm," Bush said. "We've got to give our professionals the tools they need, to be able to figure out what the enemy is up to so we can stop it."- - - -A new generation of "very battle-hardened" young Islamic militants is destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan, and the country's U.S.-backed military is nowhere near ready to conduct major operations against it, senior American intelligence officials said Friday.
---Vitelius
Something a bit different today. Last night the Baron received a long and detailed message from an old friend of his---who just happens to be a Bible-believing, born-again, Fox-News Republican from a blood-red Southern state---who has decided to back Obama. Like more than a few evangelicals, he has soured completely on Bushism, isn't enamored of his party's own candidates, can't bear the thought of another Clinton administration, and is more or less supporting Obama by default. He's still a bit uncertain about the man's presidential bonafides, so he asked His Favorite Liberal for his opinions on the man, perhaps to assuage his fears that Obama might be weak on security or terror issues. Along the way he referred to some relevant commentary on the subject of Obama's perceived weakness from Bill O'Reilly (like I said, the guy watches Fox), as well as voicing concerns about prospective judicial appointments: apparently, the Roberts Court is too liberal for his liking. Well, I spent about five hours working on a response, which turned out more like a manifesto. And rather than go through the motions with another discrete blog post today, here's the text of my letter---it's pretty much a summation of what this blog has stood for, and has cared about, since it was founded way back in . . . oh, last September. The first couple of paragraphs refer to personal and creative matters before diving into the Good Stuff.
Good evening, professor---Good to hear from you after lo these many years. I am truly sorry to hear of your difficulties at present. I know of quite a few folks---friends and work colleagues---who are also battling with health issues or poor finances, or some awful combination of them. I seem to say prayers for more people every day these days, but I’ll not hesitate to put you and yours at the top of my list.
Sorry about your lack of band work, but I’m glad to hear about your other music projects. I didn’t know you both had orchestral gigs these days. (You’re still on French horn, no? I don’t seem to recall any electric guitar cadenzas in Rachmaninoff, though of course I could be wrong.) My last musical event hereabouts was attending a performance of Tristan by LA Opera last month. A fair-to-middling effort for a big-market company, but the orchestration alone is worth the money to watch it. It is one of those rare works like The Rite of Spring or Bitches’ Brew that makes you wonder how it could have ever been conceived, let alone written down in score, and the older I get, the more I am amazed by it. And that Wagner fella really knew how to write for brass, eh?
Now, since you asked, to get to the belly of the electoral beast---and this is going to be awfully long-winded, so settle in for a spell:
Yes, I voted for Obama in our primary two weeks ago, and I even sent him some money. I will probably send him even more money before the convention if it looks like he needs it. To me, it comes down to two things, namely (1) because of his “crossover appeal” to independent voters and his ability to turn out lots of new voters, Obama has the potential to realign the political landscape in this country in a way that no president has since Reagan, and possibly since Franklin Roosevelt; and (2) a Clinton candidacy will almost surely be a re-run of 2000 and 2004, i.e., sink all of your assets into the 17 or 18 biggest states, blow off the rest of the country, hope you can flip Ohio or Florida, and eke out a narrow majority. She may be able to pull it off, but the more likely result, I suspect, will be the same as before.
It is telling, I think, that up to now, the only states that Clinton has won decisively in competitive primaries have been states like California and Massachusetts and New York----states that the Democrats are going to win in November by big margins anyway, which sorta makes her candidacy up to now an exercise in Preaching to The Congregation. She’s simply not winning any new converts. But Obama is winning in states where Democrats never do well (80% in Utah?!?), and he’s bringing out enormous numbers of new voters everywhere he runs. Does that mean that he could win a red state like Alabama? Not likely, no, but with a huge turnout of black voters, young people, and even a respectable percentage of the white vote (15 to 20%?), it’s easy to imagine him polling upwards of 45% there, and that alone will force the GOP to spend a lot of time and money trying to hold onto states like Alabama that they haven’t had to worry about for 25 years. In other words, Obama is a walking example of Howard Dean’s “50-state strategy” that was a huge success for the Democrats two years ago. Hillary Clinton is a walking example of the “20-state strategy” that failed Al Gore and John Kerry, and will likely fail again, not only nationally but in the down-ticket races as well.
Finally, I can think of no better way to galvanize the Republican party than a Clinton candidacy. They might not be able to unite behind a candidate of their own, but they can certainly unite against one. I know it flies in the face of conventional wisdom to say that a black politician stands a better chance of winning the presidency than any white politician---but Hillary Clinton is not just any white politician. And Obama is, obviously, unlike any African-American political leader we have ever seen on the national stage, at least that I can remember.
And for what it’s worth, we have just suffered through seven wretched years of a guy who was essentially “born into” the presidency. Are the majority of Americans ready to cast their votes for someone who essentially “married into” the presidency? I suspect not.
What would an Obama presidency be like? My hunch is, he has a pretty ambitious agenda----like I said, I think he is looking to change the direction of the country in a deep and fundamental way a’la Reagan or Roosevelt---and that he’s been keeping his cards close to his vest for a couple of reasons: First, to avoid scaring and/or alienating people with a torrent of policy specifics that will be labeled by the usual bobbleheads and bloggers as either “dangerously liberal” or “corporate sell-out”. Second, I also think he knows that much of what a president does in this day and age is a form of big-picture salesmanship---the ability to articulate a sort-of Grand Unifying Theory of what our shared national identity should be at a given point in time. In this regard, his campaign is a lot like Reagan’s campaigns were. Plenty of the Gipper’s policies weren’t terribly popular in their own time (the nuclear buildup, missile shields, proxy wars in central America), and some were openly ridiculed (Just Say No, ketchup-as-vegetable), but because he was such an impressive salesman who had already won people over with his bigger vision of a Shining City on a Hill (or “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall”), most voters were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on the particulars. And I think this is what we are seeing in Obama’s campaign style. I am convinced he is fully cognizant of this, and is intentionally modeling his campaign on Reagan’s. It also explains why he spent so much time talking about Reagan’s “transformative” political influence to a bunch of Las Vegas newspapermen a few weeks ago---which the Clinton people blasted him over, you may remember, even though he didn’t say a damn thing that wasn’t demonstrably true, even to the casual observer.
This is not to say that he is insincere---far from it. I just think he knows the way to win over the public is to give them a big-picture message that strikes an emotional chord, which makes them feel uplifted and energized, rather than try to impress the voters with his intelligence by rattling off program after program and statistic after statistic.
On the other hand, he did start rolling out a few domestic policy proposals yesterday in Wisconsin, and they probably provide an indication to what his priorities as president might be: Some federal jobs programs for infrastructure, tax incentives and subsidies for “green” industries, some tax hikes for the wealthy, and tax cuts for the blue-collars. And, of course, ending this stupid criminal war in Iraq. Personally, I suspect he’d like to launch the equivalent of a 21st-century New Deal, but I think he’s also smart enough to know that’s never going to happen without plenty of compromising, backpedaling and horse-trading with Congressional Republicans, Fortune 500 business leaders and the like.
Regarding Supreme Court judgeships, I don’t think conservatives have much cause for concern anytime soon---the judges most likely to retire in the immediate future (Stevens and Ginzburg) are both liberals, so replacing them with liberal-minded judges doesn’t alter the judicial calculus that I can see. And unless the Democrats have 60 Senate seats next year (virtually impossible until 2010 at the soonest), any Obama appointments can be filibustered at will by the Republicans. And some of them probably will be.
Foreign policy: Obviously, getting the hell out of Iraq, mending fences with the Russians and the Europeans, getting serious about mediating the Israel-Palestine mess, and solving the Pakistan Problem and nuclear proliferation are going to be front-burner issues. I cannot say with any certainty how President Obama would handle these, but I think it is safe to say his approach will be less confrontational and more thoughtful than the current clown’s.
As far as Mr. O’Reilly’s comments are concerned, I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything Bill O’Reilly says, and I can’t imagine why anyone else does at this point, either. The man is a serial fabricator and a proven liar whose word is as reliable as Erich Von Danniken’s. It is typical of the man’s dishonesty, not to mention his overall contempt for liberal democracy, for him to be interjecting Al’Qaida attack scenarios into the middle of a presidential campaign discussion because, by implication, it is telling us that we cannot---indeed, must not, for the sake of the republic---vote our consciences without running the risk of inviting disaster should we make the "wrong" decision. Which is to say more accurately, we should not freely exercise our Constitutional voting rights, period, since in the real world, terrorists can (and will) attack at any place and time, no matter who is president. Better to submit to the wisdom of our all-knowing rulers and their chattering TV spokesmodels like Bill O’Reilly.
Of course, it is all of a piece with this guy, as with Hannity, and Hume, and Rove and Bush and Cheney and the entire GOP political apparatus. In six years, through a 24/7 media campaign of hyperbole and outright lies, they have managed to magically transform 19 guys with box cutters, and a small Sunni splinter group run by an erratic millionaire who spends most of his time living in a cave with a dialysis machine, into a global threat greater than the Soviet Empire or Nazi Germany. In so doing they have helped to make Al’Qaida a global brand as recognizable as Nike or McDonald’s, and provided a road map and a rallying cry for every mental misfit and malcontent who has a bone to pick with America. Osama Bin Laden couldn’t have asked for a better marketing team than the Bush administration and its propaganda ministry at Fox. We will have to deal with some lethal gang of thugs that calls itself Al’Qaida for decades now, in chapters all over the world, thanks to every one of these idiots who thought it wiser to use the AQ brand as a political cudgel to wield against Democrats every election cycle than as a policy problem in need of an immediate solution. Heckuva job, guys.
On the other hand, we probably have a lot of this cynical crap to thank for the very existence of the Obama campaign. After six years of Manichean fear-mongering, and of surrendering our civil liberties---and our good name abroad---in the service of Dick Cheney’s “dark side,” I think it’s safe to say that a majority of Americans have had enough. They want someone at the helm who can make them feel optimistic for their future again. They want leadership that dares to insinuate that there are greater callings for this country than exploiting Perpetual Fear in the pursuit of Perpetual War. They’re tired of state secrets, and of chronic and unapologetic lawlessness. They’re tired of legalese arguments to justify torture, and they’re tired---as I am—of having their patriotism questioned, night after night, by dimestore fascists like Bill O’Reilly for daring to think for themselves. And now, along comes a most unlikely candidate---a young black dude with an African name---whose entire campaign message can realistically be boiled down to a single word: Hope. And the message, and the man, have caught fire across the country. I, for one, hope the fire keeps burning for years to come, and I’ll do my part to help fan the flames.
As for the Republicans . . . well, six months ago I have would bet you that the Mighty Midget---er, Mitt---would have sewn this thing up already since he had the money, the looks, the polish, the organization, a respected name, the whole package. Too bad he approached the voters like a crooked hedge-fund manager trying to pawn off his shares in a failing company instead of a real-life human possessed of some guiding political principles. I’m also a bit surprised that Mike Huckabee hasn’t gained more traction outside the southern states---I would have thought that his populist “social-gospel” domestic program would have resonated among a lot more voters than it has. He’s still going to go to the convention with a fair chunk of delegates, and he’d be a decent fit as a running mate for McCain---that is, if more moderate types were running the show. But as I see that Mitt has endorsed McCain today, I am guessing we will see some fences mended behind closed doors, and a McCain-Romney ticket this summer.
Personally, I have to admit that I rather like Huckabee---dude, he’s a bass player, how can I not like him?---though I realize he’s been a walking disaster whenever he opens up his mouth on foreign policy, and he carries a certain amount of ethical baggage from his days as governor of Arkansas. To be honest, I also rather like Ron Paul, even though his views on economics are pretty much straight out of the Lyndon LaRouche playbook. At least he has articulated his positions honestly and coherently, and he is the only candidate from either party who has had the temerity to ask whether we want to continue spending a trillion dollars a year to maintain an American Empire overseas that we simply can’t afford anymore. For that alone, he deserves our gratitude.
The problem I have with McCain is simple, and it is All About The War. Obama wants us out of Iraq, and McCain doesn’t. Even worse, he may want to start another war with Iran. That makes the choice an easy one for me. I also wonder, frankly, if McCain would even survive four years in the White House. He does not strike me as being in the most robust health. By contrast, if you have seen Ron Paul in the debates, would you ever guess that he is actually a year older than McCain?
Okay, enough for now. Sorry that this letter has turned into a manifesto. Hope no hackles were raised in the reading of this screed, and if so, my sincerest apologies. Drop me a line when time permits and let me know how things are going. Political ruminations, as always, are welcome and encouraged. God speed to all.
Yr Ob'd't Sr'vt,,
---Vitelius
Feed the Baron
