The Alligator

Ambition and lack of intellect- it seems like we are ending eight years of a leader who combined those two problems. Can we afford another President that is loaded with ambition but lacks the intellectual acumen to lead the nation? Let’s call a spade a spade- John McCain is not the brightest knife in the drawer. McCain graduated 894th out of 899 in his Naval Academy class. This of course is made more disturbing since in essence he was a “legacy” student. His family has been in the military since the French and Indian War and both his father and grandfather were both four star admirals. So- it seems that getting into the Academy was a no brainer and he scraped through by the skin of his teeth.

I know the man is a military hero and was a brave prisoner of war, but in all due respect to Mr. McCain’s clear sacrifice for his country- he is not the first man to sacrifice for his country, he isn’t the last and many more have given the ultimate sacrifice – their lives. It seems disconcerting that Mr. McCain’s resume centers around his sacrifice to his nation.

Other than McCain’s horrible ordeal as a prisoner of war his military career was lack luster. John McCain relied on family connections for every job he has held. His career before marrying Cindy Hensley was solely through family ties. When he married Cindy McCain he went to work for his father in law. Cozy huh? He became Vice President for Public Relations for Hensley and Company. There he gained political support among the local business community, meeting powerful figures such as banker Charles Keating, Jr., real estate developer Fife Symington III, andopen seat in Arizona’s 1st congressional newspaper publisher Darrow “Duke” Tully. In 1982, McCain ran as a Republican for an district. As a newcomer to the state, McCain was hit with repeated charges of being a carpetbagger. McCain responded to a voter making the charge with what a Phoenix Gazette columnist would later label as “the most devastating response to a potentially troublesome political issue I’ve ever heard”:

“Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in the Navy. My father was in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the First District of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.”

There has been some sort of myth that McCain would never capitalize on his time as a POW- that it somehow is demeaning. It is and it is in bad taste- but Mr. McCain has been playing that experience since his entry on to the political stage. Quite frankly it is insulting to every man and woman who has come home from war injured or in a body bag that Mr. McCain uses this experience as his trump card. Who would dare challenge his sacrifice so he uses it to its highest political advantage. McCain didn’t have a real resume to tout so he resorted, and continues to do so, to shamelessly using his POW expereince to shut up opposition.

And there was “Mr. Straight Talk’s” envolvement with the Keating Six. Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in legal political contributions from Charles Keating Jr. and his associates at Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, along with trips on Keating’s jets that McCain failed to repay until two years later. In 1987, McCain was one of the five senators whom Keating contacted in order to prevent the government’s seizure of Lincoln, which was by then insolvent and being investigated for making questionable efforts to regain solvency. McCain met twice with federal regulators to discuss the government’s investigation of Lincoln. Poor judgement from a not so bright guy. McCain was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee- so much for the straight shooting guy!

McCain developed the reuptation of a “maverick”, but only because it suited him in his 2000 presidential bid. He walked in lockstep with the Republicans for years. The Pew Research Center recently found, the word Americans now most frequently use to describe John McCain is not “maverick,” but “old.” But he has always been an opportunist and it is more blatant than ever.

I will grant that all politicians back pedal on issues, including Senator Obama whom I admire and ardently support. But Mr. McCain’s recent reversals give new meaning to the term “flip flop” (a term I use reluctantly because it is so over used by the punditry it makes me gag). The clearly opportunist approach of having absolutely no moral compass at all shows a man of limited intellect and wild ambition. But I’ll get to that record in a moment.

First let’s address the man’s horrible attempts at humor. There was his “rhymes with rich” item regarding Hillary Clinton and the wildly offensive joke about Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Janet Reno should make any woman cringe and it is sheer stupidity that any politician would make such remarks. Then of course there is his “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran” remark. Tacky and stupid again.

He can’t seem to keep straight the difference between Sunni and Sh’ia, he seems not to have a clue as to the number of troops in Iran, he seems to be clueless about the growing threat in Afghanistan and instead concentrates every fiber of his foreign policy on Iran.

But the most current changes in his stances on virtually everything is what is most disturbing. This isn’t just political expedience – it is pandering and it is the vestige of a man who just isn’t too bright.
In his eternal quest for the Republican presidential nomination John McCain has repeatedly reversed long-held positions and compromised purportedly core principles. From the Bush tax cuts, the religious right and immigration reform to overturning Roe v. Wade, proclaiming Samuel Alito a model Supreme Court Justice and bashing France (just to name a few), McCain changed sides as changing political conditions dictated.

McCain’s recent rapid fire, acrobatic flip-flops have produced whiplash, at least for voters. Ten times since the beginning of June, McCain has retreated from, upended or just forgotten positions he once claimed as his own. On Social Security, balancing the budget, defense spending, domestic surveillance and a host of other issues so far this month, McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” did a U-turn on the road to the White House.

1. Social Security Privatization. John McCain has apparently learned the lesson that the more President Bush spoke about his Social Security privatization scheme, the less popular it became. On Friday, Mr. Straight Talk proclaimed at a recentl New Hampshire event, “I’m not for, quote, privatizing Social Security. I never have been. I never will be.” Sadly, McCain and his advisers like ousted Hewlett Packer CEO Carly Fiorina are on record declaring fidelity to the idea of diverting Social Security dollars into private accounts. On November 18, 2004, for example, McCain announced, “Without privatization, I don’t see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits.” And in March 2003, McCain backed his President, declaring, “As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it - along the lines that President Bush proposed

2. Raising - and Slashing - Defense Spending. John McCain was also for boosting American defense spending before he was against it. In the November 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, McCain argued “we can also afford to spend more on national defense, which currently consumes less than four cents of every dollar that our economy generates - far less than what we spent during the Cold War.” But facing the $2 trillion budgetary hole the McCain tax plan is forecast to produce (a sea of red ink even the Wall Street Journal noticed), Team McCain changed its tune. As Forbes scoffed in amazement:
“McCain’s top economic adviser, Doug Holtz-Eakin, blithely supposes that cuts in defense spending could make up for reducing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% and the subsequent shrinkage in federal revenues. Get that? The national security candidate wants to cut spending on our national security. Wait until the generals and the admirals hear that.”

3. First Term Balanced Budget Pledge. With its on-again/off-again/on-again promise to balance the budget by January 2013, the McCain campaign executed that rarest of political maneuvers, the 360. During a February 15th rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin, “McCain promised he’d offer a balanced budget by the end of his first term.” But just days later, McCain’s senior economic adviser Douglas Holtz_Eakin announced a deficit-ending target of 2017. In mid-April, Holtz-Eakin proclaimed, “I would like the next president not to talk about deficit reduction.” McCain, too, signaled the retreat from his first-term balance budget commitment, explaining to Chris Matthews on April 15th that “economic conditions are reversed.”

Apparently economic conditions have improved dramatically since then. On June 6, Holtz-Eakin squared the circle, announcing, “That plan, when appropriately phased in, as it has always been intended to be, will bring the budget to balance by the end of his first term.”

4. The Media’s Treatment of Hillary Clinton. No doubt, John McCain suffers from recurring bouts of selective amnesia. And some episodes take only days to manifest themselves. During his disastrous “green screen” speech on June 3, McCain reached out to Hillary Clinton’s supporters by proclaiming, “The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans, and she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes received.” But by June 7, McCain denied to Newsweek that his media critique never passed his lips, “I did not–that was in prepared remarks, and I did not–I’m not in the business of commenting on the press and their coverage or not coverage.”

5. The Estate Tax. Just days before his contortionist act on Social Security, John McCain reversed course on the estate tax as well. On June 8, 2006, McCain on the Senate floor expressed his agreement with Teddy Roosevelt that “most great civilized countries have an income tax and an inheritance tax” and “in my judgment both should be part of our system of federal taxation.” But after years of battling Republican colleagues dead-set on dismantling the so-called “death tax” and instead promoting a $5 million trigger, on Tuesday John McCain sounded the retreat. Now, he insists, “the estate tax is one of the most unfair tax laws on the books.”

6. FISA, Domestic Surveillance and Telecom Immunity. When it comes to the Bush administration’s program of domestic spying on Americans, McCain has performed similar logical gymnastics. On December 20, 2007, McCain suggested to the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Charles Savage that President Bush had clearly crossed the line. As Wired’s Ryan Singel noted:

“I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is,” McCain said. The Globe’s Charlie Savage pushed further, asking , “So is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?” To which McCain answered, “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law.”

But on June 2, McCain adviser Holtz-Eakin put that notion to rest, telling the National Review:
“[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001.”

Pressed to explain the glaring inconsistencies, John McCain on June 6 played dumb, deciding that cowardice is the better part of valor. As the New York Times reported, McCain now believes the legality of Bush’s regime of NSA domestic surveillance is unclear and, in any event, is old news:

“It’s ambiguous as to whether the president acted within his authority or not,” he said, saying courts had ruled different ways on the matter. “I’m not interested in going back. I’m interested in addressing the challenge we face to day of trying to do everything we can to counter organizations and individuals that want to destroy this country. So there’s ambiguity about it. Let’s move forward.”
As for immunity for the telecommunications firms cooperating with the White House in what before August 2007 was doubtless illegal surveillance, there too McCain’s position has evolved. On May 23, campaign surrogate Chuck Fish announced that McCain would not back retroactive immunity “unless there were revealing Congressional hearings and heartfelt repentance from those telephone and internet companies.” Subsequently, the McCain campaign swiftly backtracked, claiming its man supports immunity unconditionally.

7. Restoring the Everglades. On June 5, John McCain traveled to the Everglades to win over Floridians and environmentally-minded voters. There he proclaimed, “I am in favor of doing whatever’s necessary to save the Everglades.” Sadly, as ThinkProgress documented, McCain not only opposed $2 billion in funding for the restoration of the Everglades national park, he backed President Bush’s veto of the legislation in 2007. “I believe,” he said, “that we should be passing a bill that will authorize legitimate, needed projects without sacrificing fiscal responsibility.”

8. Divestment from South Africa. During his June 2 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), John McCain called for the international community to target Iran for the kind of worldwide sanctions regime applied to apartheid-era South Africa. Unfortunately, McCain’s lobbyist-advisers Charlie Black and Rick Davis each represented firms doing business with Tehran. Even more unfortunate, John McCain was frequently not among those offering “moral clarity and conviction” in backing “a divestment campaign against South Africa, helping to rid that nation of the evil of apartheid.” As ThinkProgress detailed:

Despite voting to override President Reagan’s veto of a bill imposing economic sanctions against South Africa in 1986, McCain voted against sanctions on at least six other occasions.

9. Fighting Job Losses in Michigan. During the run-up to the Michigan primary, John McCain cautioned workers there in January that he didn’t want to raise “false hopes that somehow we can bring back lost jobs,” adding that it” wasn’t government’s job to protect buggy factories and haberdashers when cars replaced carriages and men stopped wearing hats.” But after getting trounced in Michigan by Mitt Romney and watching the economy deteriorate further, McCain has had a change of heart. As Bloomberg noted on June 5:

“Nowadays, the party’s presumptive nominee is singing a different tune, striking a populist pose and saying “new jobs are coming”… …Over the past few months, however, McCain has taken a lesson from Romney, acknowledging recently that “Americans are hurting.” Returning to Michigan last month, the Arizona senator told a local television station that he would fight for new jobs and the state wouldn’t “be left behind.”

Perhaps the good people of Michigan, as John McCain suggested to a Kentucky audience in April, can make a living on eBay.

10. Opposing Hurricane Katrina Investigations. During a June 4th town hall meeting in Baton Rouge, John McCain answered a reporter’s question regarding Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the New Orleans levees by announcing:

“I’ve supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy. I’ve been here to New Orleans. I’ve met with people on the ground.”

As it turns out, not so much. McCain’s revisionist history neglects to mention that in 2005 and 2006 he twice voted against a commission to study the government’s response to Katrina. He also opposed three separate emergency funding measures providing relief to Katrina victims, including the extension of five months of Medicaid benefits. And as Think Progress pointed out, “until traveling there one month ago, McCain had made just one public tour of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina touched down in August 2005.”

And so it goes. As surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west each day, so too will John McCain change positions. (Like that other law of nature, McCain’s flip-flops are literally becoming a daily occurrence. Since this piece was originally drafted on Saturday, McCain added two new policy turnabouts - on phasing out rather than repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax and on requiring a litmus test for his judicial appointees - to his litany of reversals.)

Of course there is also the issue of torture on which McCain has so heinously showed himself as an opportunist of the lowest order. As Andrew Sullivan of “The Atlantic” wrote:

“McCain reveals himself as a positioner even on the subject on which he has gained a reputation for unimpeachable integrity. McCain has indeed been a leader in preventing the military from torturing terror suspects, and in banning waterboarding. But by leaving this lacuna in the law, he gives this president the space he wants. As president himself, of course, McCain would surely instruct the CIA to uphold the American way of interrogation, and not to adopt techniques once used by the Gestapo and prosecuted by the US as war crimes. But we now know that there will be one difference between Obama and McCain in November. One will never tolerate torture; the other just did.”

And last but not least is the issue of off shore oil drilling. McCain recently decided that along with a “gas tax” holiday he would again pander to the stupidest among us, because that is what he knows best, by reversing himself on the issue of off shore oil drilling as a remedy to the high price of gas. SAY WHAT?

Opening America’s coastal waters to oil drilling, as John McCain urged in an address Tuesday, is unlikely to provide Americans with more oil for at least seven to 10 years. That’s the estimate from the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry trade group. The Interior Department offered a wide range of estimates of how much oil might be within reach of U.S. offshore drilling in a 2006 report. It estimated that the Outer Continental Shelf could hold 115.4 billion barrels. However, it also estimated that recoverable reserves off U.S. coasts in areas now banned from production probably hold only about 19 billion barrels. One thousand million barrels equals 1 billion, so if there are 19 billion barrels in the areas McCain would open to drilling, that’s enough to provide about 920 days, or about 2.5 years, of current U.S. consumption.

Mr. McCain is an unabashed opportunist who has played his undeniably horrendous experience in Viet Nam with an unashamed gall that diminishes his own sacrifice and is insulting to every man and woman who has sacrificed for our nation, he has used every family connection he could use including connections that were morally corrupt (Keating), he doesn’t seem to hold an opinion very long if it is politically uncomfortable and he seems to take bad advice. He is not to bright but dangerously ambitious. Haven’t we had enough of that?

As is obvious from the articles on this blog I am an ardent supporter of Barack Obama not only through my posts in the blogosphere but with my wallet as well. Senator Clinton’s ill phrased remarks about historical reasons to stay in the Presidential primary through June were just that- ill phrased. I can attribute many negative machinations to the Clinton machine, but to make the leap that she is dark enough and sinister enough to be waiting around for Senator Obama to be taken down by an assassin’s bullet is just absurd.

It is true that her words could have been chosen better. There are two words that are third rails in political discourse- assassination and Hitler. It is quite unfortunate that both have been used within the course of a couple of weeks in this campaign but President Bush’s evocation of Hitler in front of a Israel’s Knesset was deliberate and sinister and beyond the pale- but it is perfectly in keeping with the tawdry, disgusting politics of fear and low maneuvering that is part and parcel of the President’s politics and now the presumptive Republican nominee John McBush.

The Clintons are pushy politicans who want to win and will do just about anything to win, but to attribute anything as heinous as wishing for an assassin’s bullet is just not part of the Clinton make up.

Pundits and bloggers jumped all over Senator Obama’s “bitter” remarks and what was an intelligent and nuanced statement by the Senator was parsed down into something it wasn’t. Obama was referring to how Republicans manipulate people to vote against their economic interest by inserting wedge issues like gay marriage and gun control laws into the rhetoric of the campaign to change the focus on issues that truly impact someone’s life. If gay marriage was such a threat- we would have seen social collapse in Massachusetts, Canada, Spain, and the Netherlands; but alas the family remains in tact and these societies have not fallen into disarray. Mr. Obama used language that was not intended to offend but the pundits crucified him for weeks.

It is clear that, unless Mrs. Clinton has lost her faculties that she wasn’t suggesting that she is some ghoulish figure waiting in the wings for something horrible to happen to Mr. Obama.

It is true that the word assassination has a heightened level of emotion than usual in this historic campaign. Mr. Obama was required to have secret service protection earlier in the campaign than is the norm because as an African American presidential candidate he had received credible death threats. Everyone is aware of this specter but no one talks about it for fear that even mentioning it would bring the nuts out of the wood work.

Mrs. Clinton chose her words clumsily. What folks should be concentrating on is the misrepresentation about President Clinton’s 1992 campaign. She always talks about how Bill’s nomination wasn’t tied up until June with the California primary. Technically Mr. Clinton did not have the delegates to put him over the top until that primary, but for all intents and purposes the race was over in March when all serious contenders had left the race. Mrs. Clinton’s remarks about the 1992 election are disingenuous at best. There are better examples to give than 1992 and the ill fated California campaign of Robert Kennedy in 1968. There was the 1980 Kennedy / Carter campaign and the 1976 Ford / Reagan campaigns- both bitter and both resulting in fights up to the convention.

Mrs. Clinton’s apology was odd- it was an apology to the Kennedy family and there was no mention of the impact such a statement may have on Mr. Obama- his sense of security or that of his wife and children. That was indeed odd- but it was clear Mrs. Clinton was both shaken and tired.

There are heightened feelings in the Democratic party- there is the first African American and the first woman who have been battling each other for the nomination. The election is already historic and it is fraught with tension exacerbated by race and gender politics.

I have written here before that Mrs. Clinton should gracefully exit for the good of her party. I’ll amend that statement. We can all hang in there for another couple of weeks after Montana, South Dakota and Puerto Rico have a chance to vote and the Rules Committee makes a determination on Florida. If it makes Mrs. Clinton feel better to go out after that process is complete- that’s fine. She will be able to leave knowing she saw the race all the way through and be the model of tenacity she wants to be for women.

However if she makes more gaffes like this one as she winds down she risks loosing the very thing that she is looking for- leaving with her dignity and honor in tact. When she was “apologizing” for her remarks in a South Dakota grocery store she looked beaten down and just sad. Sad and pathetic is not the legacy Mrs. Clinton wants nor is it one that she deserves. The next few weeks will be a test to he own and her husband’s legacy. The Clintons don’t have much experience loosing. They lost a few early on and they vowed they never would lose again and they haven’t until now. Seeing how the Clintons – successful for decades- handle a loss will be as important to their legacy as what they accomplished in their years of power and in the years to come.

It seems that there have been too many milestones recently related to the war in Iraq. There was the fifth anniversary of the war on 19 March; the 4,000 death on Easter Sunday just 4 days later; and yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the most shameless spectacle ever seen in the history of the United States- President Bush declaring that the war in Iraq was essentially won and reconstruction was beginning on the deck of an aircraft carrier and under a banner that declared “Mission Accomplished”. He did this after he had his boyhood dream of being a fighter pilot fulfilled by flying onto the carrier in a fighter jet dressed in full fighter-pilot regalia. The president had his “Top Gun” moment. I have written extensively about this war and my piece written on the fifth anniversary summarizes those articles- Five Years in Iraq- A somber reflection

But as was true in the run up to the war, the President had an extremely effective accomplice- the press.

On May 1, 2003, Richard Perle advised, in a USA Today Op-Ed, “Relax, Celebrate Victory.” The same day, exactly five years ago, President Bush, dressed in a flight suit, landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq — with the now-infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner arrayed behind him in the war’s greatest photo op.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a “hero” and boomed, “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” He added: “Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple.” Mr. Matthews was shameless on his program yesterday where he was outraged by this “anniversary”.

PBS’ Gwen Ifill said Bush was “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.” On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, “The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a — on a carrier landing.”

When Bush’s jet landed on an aircraft carrier, American casualties stood at 139 killed and 542 wounded.

Five years after President George W. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier off San Diego, Iraq is in chaos, U.S. troops are mired in a sectarian war, and the entrenched conflict is dragging the nation into a recession.

Indeed, the only people for whom “the mission” has been accomplished are the many companies with lucrative military contracts. They have raked in over $100 billion so far from the Iraq War, enabling them to earn record profits. With Bush intent on staying the course until he leaves the White House, Sen. John McCain voicing his approval for the United States to stay in Iraq for another 100 years, the Democratic candidates unwilling to call for a complete withdrawal of all troops and contractors, and Congress ready to approve another $100-200 billion for the war, it is up to the American people to demand an end to the war.

• Mission Accomplished? 4,056 U.S. Soldiers, Over a Million Iraqis Dead: The Iraq War has cost the lives of over 4,000 U.S. soldiers, over a million Iraqi civilians, and over a thousand contractors. Nearly 30,000 U.S. soldiers have been injured. A recent report estimates that over 320,000 soldiers have suffered traumatic brain injuries and estimated 300,000 soldiers will sustain post-traumatic stress disorder. These afflictions will haunt these men and women for the rest of their lives.

• Mission Accomplished? $520 Billion Squandered Over the past five years, Congress has provided over $520 billion dollars for the Iraq War. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University’s Linda Bilmes estimate the long-term cost of the war will top $3 trillion, once you include the interest and debt service payments from this borrowed money, and the costs of rebuilding the military after the war and providing for veterans’ long-term health care.

• Mission Accomplished? $100 Billion Spent on Contractors: The mission has indeed been accomplished for corporations with military contracts. Since the war began, they have reaped large profits, while producing substandard work, putting our nation’s soldiers at risk on the battlefield time and time again. Military contractors have opened fire on Iraqi civilians and reconstruction contractors’ work has been fraught with waste, fraud, and abuse. While Congress has tried to mandate better oversight of companies such as Halliburton, CACI, Titan, and Bechtel, Bush has exempted contractors from any real accountability.

• Mission Accomplished? Fueling a Sectarian War: As the war has dragged on, the United States has tried many different approaches to bolstering security on the ground. Over the past five years, the United States has spent over $20 billion training the largely Shi’a Iraqi army and police, and also arming and training the Kurdish Peshmerga troops in Northern Iraq. But since the “surge” began, the U.S. has also been arming, training, and financing the largely Sunni “Awakening” councils. Further complicating the situation, the U.S. has backed the sectarian Iraqi government in their attacks on the forces loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, fueling the Shi’a-Shi’a conflict in Iraq’s South.

• Mission Accomplished? Majorities of Iraqis Want the U.S. to Withdraw: Since the war began, Iraqis have supported a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. This still holds true five years later, latest polling indicates nearly 40% of Iraqis want the U.S. to leave immediately and less than 30% believe the United States is making Iraq safer.

• Mission Accomplished? No End in Sight: Over a year ago, Congress demanded that Bush produce a plan for withdrawal from Iraq. Instead, Bush decided to send more troops into the battlefield. In recent hearings, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker indicated that no plans were being made for withdrawing additional U.S. troops. More importantly, they didn’t offer any new plans for how they could stabilize Iraq, promote reconciliation, reduce costs, and protect Iraqi and U.S. lives on the ground in Iraq. Over the past five years it has become crystal clear, continuing the war and occupation of Iraq only leads to greater death and destruction.
Standing on the deck of a ship and declaring “Mission Accomplished” doesn’t make it so. Since Bush’s ill-timed and now easily lampooned speech, Iraqis are no better off, U.S. soldiers continue to be put in harm’s way for an ill-defined and poorly executed mission, and our presence is only fueling the violence on all sides.

As we mark this fifth anniversary and Congress begins to deliberate spending an additional $100-200 billion to continue the war, we need to ask our nation what mission can be accomplished? By “staying the course” we only prolong the inevitable, doing more harm to both Iraqis and ourselves as we plunge deeper into economic crisis.

With 70% of Americans opposed to the war, and large majorities supporting a timeline for withdrawal, it’s time to demand the same from Bush and Congress. The most important mission to accomplish now is political — it’s time for our leaders to stop the funding, bring the troops home, and pledge our long-term support to Iraq.

It’s true that the nation’s focus has moved from the war to the economy because Americans are more concerned with their wallets than a war; a war where they were told to go shopping as a way to support the troops. But it is clear that this entire fiasco was the biggest disaster in American foreign policy and one of the presidential candidates fully supports the war- John McCain. It is also clear that Hillary Clinton was one of the Senators that gave Mr. Bush the green light for this farce. Only Barack Obama, of the three candidates, decried the war from the beginning.

While Indiana and North Carolina squabble over a bogus gas tax holiday, let’s also remember what Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton hath wrought in Iraq.

Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton have an ally in the press as Bush did in the run up to the war and on May 1, 2003. For the past week we have heard everything about Reverend Wright and nothing about the 52 troops who died in April.

This hasn’t been Mission Accomplished- it has become mission impossible and it will take someone who will change the landscape of our foreign policy and who has the willingness to engage in real diplomacy to extricate us from this quagmire.

Back in January when I decided to endorse Barack Obama on this site and, more importantly, vote for him in the California primary- I was thrilled about Obama’s message but I also had some pride and some of my natural cynicism was lessened by the thought that this country had matured enough that it might have been able to bridge the racial divide and actually elect an African American for President. Beyond the policy issues and Obama’s positions with which I agree and the innate desire that Obama has to bring people together which I find compelling; there was the possibility that the United States had made great progress towards healing our great national birth defect- racism. Now I wonder if that is possible.

Between “Bitter-gate” and “Wright-gate”, Obama’s campaign is reeling. In my pieces: Pandering v. Nuance aka Clinton v. Obama and  Obama Elitist? Not! McCain and Clinton are the essence of the Power Elite  I have made it clear that my belief about the genesis of both of these campaign issues.

Obama clearly does not come from an elite background and while his words might have been better chosen I think it is true that the Republicans get lower middle class folks with no college education to vote against their economic interest by focusing on wedge issues such as abortion, gun control, gay marriage and immigration. I’ll state it starkly- the Republican party favors the über-wealthy and multinational corporations taking jobs out of the US and doesn’t give a damn about the average American. In order to get elected the Republicans trot out the golden oldies- God, guns and fear. Obama wasn’t being an elitist- he was being honest about a truth most folks don’t want to admit because they would have to admit that they had been duped. Why else would there still be a high percentage of Americans believing that Sadaam Hussein had something to do with 9/11?  Simple- Americans get duped but don’t like to admit it. 

It also seems obvious to me that many folks are judging the relationship between Reverend Wright and Senator Obama. I wouldn’t dare to judge the complications between a man and his pastor- the man who brought him to Jesus Christ. Like family- these relationships are complex. In today’s New York Times there was an article that outlined the difficulty that Obama had in severing his ties with Reverend Wright. I won’t reiterate what I wrote in my piece yesterday on this subject. Suffice it to say here that I fervently believe that when Reverend Wright is pointed to as an example of bad judgment that would portend how Obama would make decisions in the White House it is the wrong analogy and it doesn’t consider the complicated and personal nature of faith, pastor, congregant and church.

But why are these two stories sticking to Mr. Obama like glue? I think my cynical nature about the American people has returned- the reason these stories are sticking is race.

Obama’s background is not elite- but he has had the temerity to be an uppity Negro and hasn’t waited his turn.

And the racism inherent in the criticism about Obama and Wright is so obvious it would be humorous if it weren’t so profoundly sad.

First- there are Falwell and Robertson:

In an interview that took place on September 13, 2001 Jerry Falwell said God may have allowed what the nation deserved because of moral decay and said Americans should have an attitude of repentance before God and asking for God’s protection. He specifically listed the ACLU, abortionists, feminists, gays, and the People for the American way as sharing in the blame. Pat Robertson responded with agreement.

Here is the exact transcript of that interview:

Falwell said, “What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”

Robertson replied,”Well, Jerry, that’s my feeling. I think we’ve just seen the antechamber to terror, we haven’t begun to see what they can do to the major population.”

Falwell said, “The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I’ll hear from them for this, but throwing God…successfully with the help of the federal court system…throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad…I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America…I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.”

Robertson said, “I totally concur, and the problem is we’ve adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government, and so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system.”

So I guess that it is okay to say that the United States brought 9/11 on because of perceived immorality (as defined by Falwell and Robertson) but it is not okay to blame it on our foreign policies? Falwell and Robertson have been given a pass recently on the 9/11 remarks.

Second- there is Billy Graham

Rev. Billy Graham openly voiced a belief that Jews control the American media, calling it a “stranglehold” during a 1972 conversation with President Richard Nixon, according to a tape of the Oval Office meeting released in 2002 by the National Archives.

“This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain,” the nation’s best-known preacher declared as he agreed with a stream of bigoted Nixon comments about Jews and their perceived influence in American life. “You believe that?” Nixon says after the “stranglehold” comment. “Yes, sir,” Graham says.

“Oh, boy,” replies Nixon. “So do I. I can’t ever say that but I believe it.”

“No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something,” Graham replies.

Later, Graham mentions that he has friends in the media who are Jewish, saying they “swarm around me and are friendly to me.” But, he confides to Nixon, “They don’t know how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country.”

Where is the outrage about the “Pastor to the Presidents” blatant anti-Semitism?

And finally- there is Pastor John Hagee

Reverend Hagee -a man whose support John McCain sought and received- has called the Roman Catholic Church the “Great Whore” and who said New Orleans brought Katrina upon itself because it was going to have a gay pride event.

All of these men of the cloth have made horrendous and offensive remarks, but the only one getting play is Reverend Wright. Where is the outrage about the remarks of Falwell, Robertson, Graham and Hagee?

I’ve scratched my head and the only answer I can come up with is race. Those men are white. Reverend Wright preaches a brand of religion that is a black liberation theology. This is a tradition that has long existed. True- Wright’s comments were out of line and bombastic, but so were Hagee’s Robertson’s and Falwell’s. Graham’s anti-Semitic sentiments were are all the more odious because they were not public comments or meant ever to be heard by the public.  Wright was speaking in a style that was already alien and therefore easier to ellicit outrage.

So Elitist-gate can be translated into the stark terms of a black man getting to big for his britches. And Wright-gate can capitalize on the most segregated hour in the country 11 AM on Sunday.

Race is a constant in our society. I certainly am not naïve enough to believe that an Obama presidency would magically erase the profound impact of race in American life, but I have believed that an Obama presidency would go a long way towards healing the rift.

I have consciously questioned how race affects my thinking and emotions. Do I get a little more cautious if I see a young black man walking in my direction on a sidewalk at night? - sadly I admit I do. When I meet someone what is the first thing I see- it is the color of their skin. My automatic response as an American is to view the world and society through the lens of race. I have to consciously hold back that automatic response because I know that this view is inherently unfair and wrong- but ingrained into the American psyche.

I have a dear group of friends- mostly women who are conservative Reaganites and I love these women dearly- but I fear that many of them have been swayed by wedge issues- such as immigration and most of them have been convinced to vote these issues as opposed to their economic interest.

Among this group of friends the anti-immigrant sentiment is palpable and I hate to admit it; but the prejudice inherent in the sentiment is obvious. Often times the email strings among my dear friends, which start off about some information (often misinformation) about immigration, devolve into ugly comments about phone trees that offer Spanish, about “English only” and only believing anti-immigrant propoganda even when faced with evidence to the contrary.  I’m sure that if you put a Latino who is a citizen and a white person who is here on an expired visa next to one another and ask my friends to identify the person in the US “illegally”, these well meaning friends would identify the Latino as the “illegal” every time.

What is most concerning about my friends’ views is that they are prejudiced without the consciousness of being prejudiced. It’s about illegal immigration, not about race or ethnicity and there is no admission that the underlying sentiment is prejudiced. Actually my friends would be offended if I told them that their comments are, in my estimation, prejudiced. Americans see life through a racial lens- the key towards racial and ethinic equality is for all Americans to admit this world view is part of our history and we need to acknowledge it before we are able to change it.

“Bitter-gate” and “Wright-gate” have given the American people exactly what they need- a reason not to vote for the black candidate without the guilt of acknowledging that race entered into their choice. Both of the scenarios that have evolved around Obama’s candidacy have racism at their core and they allow folks to feel comfortable in their racism.  It’s all neat and tidy.

Years ago the term “The Bradley Effect” was coined by researchers who study polling data after a black candidate, the former Mayor of Los Angeles Tom Bradley, lost his bid to be California’s governor but the polling showed him ahead. In essence the Bradley effect is the skewing of polling data because people do not want to admit their vote against an African American. While racism prevails throughout our society, the worst name you can call someone is a racist (I guess there are a few that still proudly display their racism unapologetically).

The recent news coverage of the Wright episode and Senator Obama’s “elitist” remarks has given Americans cover and we can blithely go on our racist way without admitting our racist tendencies without having to look carefully at the issues or ourselves.  I still have hope that we have become a more enlightened electorate, but I am increasingly wondering if I that hope is naïve.

Senator Barack Obama’s unequivocal denouncement yesterday of Reverend Wright’s comments and performance was definitive and eloquent. But of course the question many have is “Why did he sit in the pew for 20 years?” Well folks- a lot of well respected people sat in those pews listening to Wright’s sermons for years. It isn’t like Mr. Obama was attending some voodoo ceremony where the pentagram was hanging. He saw a ministry that had a social commitment- he was part of a community of faith that offered ministries to “the least among us”. While Reverend Wright adheres to a “Black Liberation Theology” and every one knew that- it seems clear that part of that theology, the part that spoke to Obama, was outreach to the community and lifting up those with no hope. If one reads Obama’s books and listens to the man- you can see what it was about Trinity – its community work- that appealed to Obama. It was the sense of Christianity being tied to good works in the community that is what brought Obama to Christ and it was that part of Wright that appealed to Obama.

It is clear that Mr. Obama’s relationship with Reverend Wright was complicated. He saw Wright as someone important in his life- and like all of us we have friends who are flawed and we look beyond those flaws to see the good that they do. Did Obama know that his pastor was controversial- sure, did he think that he was a nut case that had views that were so “out there”, no. Even if he had occasionally heard black liberation rhetoric from Wright- it was not pronounced enough to severe his ties. This was a spiritual and emotional relationship- it was complicated.

It says a lot about Mrs. Clinton that she said she would have left the pews of Trinity a long time ago. She either didn’t see or didn’t want to address that these relations are complicated and they are nuanced. No one is totally evil and no one is totally a saint. Mr. Obama was part of a community of faith that was doing good works in the straining neighborhood of Chicago’s south side. Mr. Wright was responsible for building that community of faith regardless of his most incendiary comments- his church has done amazing work.

If Mrs. Clinton sees the world so black and white- with such starkness- I think it tells me that she is not a person of good judgment. Diplomacy, the economy, the disaster where we find ourselves at the present time need someone who can appreciate the nuances and the finer points of these complicated problems. But Mrs. Clinton is a very smart woman- she knows what sort of complexities are involved- but she choses to pander.

Not only did she flippantly remark on a very personal and complicated relationship between a man and his pastor with a quick answer- she said what was politically expedient. She should know how complicated relationships are- she could have thrown Bill under the bus after his lie to her and the country about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but she chose not to. Relationships- especially relationships that are based on either intimacy in marriage or intimacy of faith- are complicated. She was pandering.

But that is just the beginning. Sure she threw the kitchen sink at Obama in Pennsylvania and it apparently worked- but now she is offering everything to the voters including that kitchen sink. Let’s take this gas tax holiday.

Mr. Obama is correct that this is a political stunt being played by both Senators Clinton and McCain. 3 months of gas at a few cents less per gallon that may add up to $30.00 per car over the course of the “holiday”. Yes, Mrs. Clinton says that she would pay for this with windfall tax money from the oil companies. But that strategy only works if she is elected president and she has a Congress that agrees with her. Should she be promoting a policy that would occur NOW without knowing for sure how it will be paid for in the future?

In his Op/Ed piece today in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman wrote:

“This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country. When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.”

Then there are Mrs. Clinton’s hawkish comments about obliterating Iran if they would attack Israel or any of our friends in the region- creating, in her own mind, a sort of mid-East NATO. Obama said that in response to an attack against Israel (or any other US ally) by Iran, he would act “forcefully and swiftly”. Well, that’s a bit vague, but it’s certainly better than immediately saying “we will obliterate them!” We need a leader who will be forceful and swift, but we also need to know that Obama won’t immediately rush into military attacks or outright war like President Bush did.

Why on earth would Mrs. Clinton begin sabre rattling á la Cheney / Bush? It is probably the same reason she ended the Pennsylvania campaign with an add that featured Osama bin Laden- FEAR. Thanks Mrs. Clinton, I thought we were over that. Playing fear equals pandering in my estimation.

Clearly Mr. Obama is asking voters to think. The times demand hard thinking. Mr. Obama believes that voters will see through fear mongering and pandering on issues like gas taxes. Mr. Obama talk about ”us” making change- that we must work together to make change. This point of view challenges us to think and to look at the nuance in policy.

Mrs. Clinton is promising everything to everybody- like the “Forty Acres and a Mule” promise during the Civil War’s reconstruction. Her blantant stunt with the gas tax, her flippant comment about a personal relationship between Senator Obama and Reverend Wright that is as complex as her own with her philandering husband, and her fear mongering and hawk posturing with Iran point to a cynical sense of the electorate.

Senator Obama was racked over the coals for comments he made “It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

What Obama was saying is true- people use the spectre of destroying faith and guns, immigrants and jobs – gay marriage and gun control state initiatives, anti-immigration legislation, and blaming everything on NAFTA- to stoke the fears of voters. Republican have been very deft at using these wedge issues to manipulate voters from voting in their economic interest. He was exposing the cynisism of the current political system that expolits these issues and fears as a destraction and assumes the lowest common denominator among our electorate.

Clearly Mr. McCain is continuing this well tried tradition in the Republican party, but Mrs. Clinton is using the same tactics in the primary. Who is elitist? The person who is pandering or the person who exposes the pandering? I think the answer is clear.

I am not a Conservative and I am not a fan of Ronald Reagan. But I truly do not understand the deification of Ronald Reagan by the Conservative Right- his record wouldn’t be very popular by the Right today. It baffles me. I watched some of the CPAC convention and they spoke of Reagan as if he had been Christ himself.  The Conservative Republicans all worship at the alter of Ronald Reagan.  Governor Romney invoked the name of Reagan regularly to present “Conservative credibility” and Senator McCain continues to refer to himself as a “foot soldier” of the Reagan Revolution. 

Didn’t they live through the 1980’s? Sure he was transformational in the way that Senator Barack Obama has described, but there is so much about his record I would imagine would infuriate the Right Wing nuts- tax increases, immigration reform, a poor economy, increasing the size of government, arming the Taliban and Sadaam Hussein. Why is it that they deify him so? The policies and actions of his presidency do not give credence to the Reagan myth. It seems that this is nothing more than, as President Clinton said of Mr. Obama’s campaign- a fairy tale. The thing is that Mr. Obama’s campaign is not a fairy tale, but the Reagan myth is.

They claim he ended the Cold War- a fact I dispute – The fall of the Soviet Union was based on many factors that fell into place during his presidency not because of some miracle performed by Ronald Reagan.  You can read more about this in my post Who ended the Cold War? The Clash of Myth and Reality

Reagan is, to be sure, one of the most conservative presidents in U.S. history and will certainly be remembered as such. His record on the environment, defense, and economic policy is very much in line with its portrayal. But he entered office as an ideologue who promised a conservative revolution, vowing to slash the size of government, radically scale back entitlements, and deploy the powers of the presidency in pursuit of socially and culturally conservative goals. That he essentially failed in this mission hasn’t stopped partisan biographers from pretending otherwise.

A sober review of Reagan’s presidency doesn’t yield the seamlessly conservative record being peddled today. Federal government expanded on his watch. The conservative desire to outlaw abortion was never seriously pursued. Reagan broke with the hardliners in his administration and compromised with the Soviets on arms control. His assault on entitlements never materialized; instead he saved Social Security in 1983 (which was probably the best thing he did). And he repeatedly ignored the fundamental conservative dogma that taxes should never be raised

At the outset of his first term, Reagan’s revolution appeared to have unstoppable momentum. His administration passed an historic tax cut based on dramatic cuts in marginal tax rates and began a massive defense buildup. To help compensate for the tax cut, his first budget called for slashing $41.4 billion from 83 federal programs, only the first round in a planned series of cuts. And Reagan himself made known his desire to eliminate the departments of Energy and Education, and to scale back what his first budget director David Stockman called the “closet socialism” of Social Security and Medicaid.

But after his initial victories on tax cuts and defense, the revolution effectively stalled. Deficits started to balloon, the recession soon deepened (due to tax cuts and increase in defense spending), his party lost ground in the 1982 midterms, and thereafter Reagan never seriously tried to enact the radical domestic agenda he’d campaigned on. Rather than abolish the departments of Energy and Education, as he had promised to do if elected president, Reagan added a new cabinet-level department–one of the largest federal agencies–the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Though his budgets requested some cuts in some areas of discretionary spending, Reagan rapidly retreated and never seriously pushed them. As Lou Cannon, the Washington Post reporter who covered Reagan’s political career for 25 years, put it in his masterful biography, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, “For all the fervor they created, the first-term Reagan budgets were mild manifestos devoid of revolutionary purpose. They did not seek to ‘rebuild the foundation of our society’ (the task Reagan set for himself and Congress in a nationally televised speech of February 5, 1981) or even to accomplish the ’sharp reduction in the spending growth trend’ called for in [his] Economic Recovery Plan.” By Reagan’s second term, the idea of seriously diminishing the budget was, to quote Stockman, “an institutionalized fantasy.” Though in speeches Reagan continued to repeat his bold pledge to “get government out of the way of the people,” government stayed pretty much where it was.

This hasn’t stopped recent contemporary conservative biographers from claiming otherwise. “He said he would cut the budget, and he did,” declares Peggy Noonan in When Character Was King. In fact, the budget grew significantly under Reagan. All he managed to do was moderately slow its rate of growth. What’s more, the number of workers on the federal payroll rose by 61,000 under Reagan. (By comparison, under Clinton, the number fell by 373,000.)

One year after his massive tax cut, Reagan agreed to a tax increase to reduce the deficit that restored fully one-third of the previous year’s reduction. (In a bizarre bit of self-deception, Reagan, who never came to terms with this episode of ideological apostasy, persuaded himself that the three-year, $100 billion tax hike–the largest since World War II–was actually “tax reform” that closed loopholes in his earlier cut and therefore didn’t count as raising taxes.)

Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives–and probably cost Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection–Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84.

Reagan deserves some credit for a foreign policy of confronting and challenging the Soviet Union that helped bring on its collapse–a central theme of any account of his life- even though his challenge to the Soviet Union was done so by shoring up the Taliban in Afghanistan.  But the vexing problem for conservatives, then and now, was that Reagan’s bellicosity, which they liked, obscured an equally strong belief that nuclear weapons could and should be abolished, a conviction found mainly on the liberal left. Long before he became president, Reagan had argued for a massive military buildup not just to confront the Soviets, which hardliners approved, but also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control–a goal to which conservative pragmatists subscribed. But no one shared, or even understood until late in the game, Reagan’s desire for total disarmament. “My dream,” he later wrote in his memoirs, “became a world free of nuclear weapons.” This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war–and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons.

The great success of Reagan’s 1980 campaign was that it united the disparate strands of the conservative movement: supply-siders, libertarians, religious conservatives, foreign policy hawks, and big business. The fact that Reagan’s presidency didn’t accomplish anything approaching its seismic promise–the size of government grew, abortion remained legal, and entitlements still abounded–is one that his partisan biographers elide by focusing on what Reagan believed and said rather than on what he actually did. The imaginary Reagan who inhabits these books embodies the ideas on which all these groups can agree. His shining example helps maintain the coalition while putting pressure on current GOP politicians to hew to the hard-right ideal.

During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We take a look at America’s role in Afghanistan that led to the rise of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda.

In 1985, while Iran and Iraq were at war, Iran made a secret request to buy weapons from the United States. McFarlane sought Reagan’s approval, in spite of the embargo against selling arms to Iran. McFarlane explained that the sale of arms would not only improve U.S. relations with Iran, but might in turn lead to improved relations with Lebanon, increasing U.S. influence in the troubled Middle East. Reagan was driven by a different obsession. He had become frustrated at his inability to secure the release of the seven American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. As president, Reagan felt that “he had the duty to bring those Americans home,” and he convinced himself that he was not negotiating with terrorists. While shipping arms to Iran violated the embargo, dealing with terrorists violated Reagan’s campaign promise never to do so. Reagan had always been admired for his honesty.

A clear analysis of Mr. Reagan’s policies supporting the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and Sadaam Hussein in Iraq lead me to the conclusion that the iconic Mr. Reagan actually added and abetted the causes of terrorists in Afghanistan and Sadaam- a man who Ronald Reagan armed, by illegal means, and then by George W. Bush attacked to disarm.

And then there was The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 which included that dirtiest of all Conservative words – AMNESTY!

The real Reagan, on the other hand, would bring discord to the current conservative agenda. If you believe, as conservatives now do, that raising taxes is always wrong, then it’s hard to admit that Reagan himself did so repeatedly. If you argue that the relative tax burden on low-income workers is too light, as the Bush administration does, then it does not pay to dwell on the fact that Reagan himself helped lighten that burden. If you insist, as many hardliners now do, that America is dangerously soft on communist China, then it is best to ignore Reagan’s own softening toward the Soviet Union. As with other conservative media efforts–Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel, The Washington Times–the purpose of the Reagan legacy project is not to deliver accuracy, but enhance political leverage.

I guess the 1980’s were a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. History is re-written quickly. I thought rewriting history that occurred in my life time wouldn’t happen at least until I was dead.

Senator John McCain says we might be in Iraq for 100 years. In his swan song- well at least until 2012- Governor Mitt Romney said he was leaving the race because the party needed to unite in order to defeat the Democrats and he felt that staying in and allowing the Democrats to have an opportunity to “win” would be complicit in aiding a surrender to terror. The surge is working they say. Sure it is! The reason for the surge was to give the Iraqi government some breathing room to get its act together. It hasn’t. So, DUH, there is less violence because we have more troops there. You don’t need a PhD to figure out that math, but I guess it takes someone other than a Conservative to understand that less violence does not equal success. Unless political progress is made- the surge hasn’t worked.

But that “surge myth” is only part of the story that makes the idea of continuing our folly in Iraq more than absurd- but an INCREDIBLY dangerous enterprise.

A classified Pentagon assessment concludes that long battlefield tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with persistent terrorist activity and other threats, have prevented the U.S. military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis according to a report from the Associated Press on February 8, 2008. Despite security gains in Iraq, there is still a “significant” risk that the strained U.S. military cannot quickly and fully respond to another outbreak elsewhere in the world, according to the report.

According to Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell at a House hearing on Thursday, a new influx of Western recruits – including American citizens – are being trained in Al Qaeda camps in Pakistan. These recruits would be able to more easily enter and move about the US than foreign operatives.

“Al Qaeda is improving the last key aspect of its ability to attack the US: the identification, training, and positioning of operatives for an attack on the homeland,” wrote Mr. McConnell in prepared Congressional testimony.

Over the years, Mr. McConnell reported that al-Qaeda has lost its Afghanistan training camps, and much of its senior leadership, including key operational planners. But Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants have been able to retreat to the sanctuary of Pakistan’s wild border areas, while drawing on a bench of skilled operatives to replace members that have been killed or captured.

McConnell reported that Al-Qaeda’s ability to reconstitute and retain a base of operations in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) has been a major setback to counterterror efforts, admit intelligence officials. The FATA has given the group many of the advantages it once took from its bases in Afghanistan. The region has served as a staging area for Al Qaeda attacks in Afghanistan, as well as a base for training operations.
Pakistan remains in political turmoil following the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Its security forces are thought to number many Al Qaeda and Taliban supporters.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been in the past a formidable enemy in that country bu this has been a year of major setbacks, with hundreds of its members killed and facilities destroyed. But unlike Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization in Pakistan, U.S. intelligence officials and outside experts believe, the Iraqi branch poses, or has ever posed, little danger to the security of the U.S. homeland.

Attacking the United States clearly remains on bin Laden’s agenda. But the likelihood that such an attack would be launched from Iraq, many experts contend, has sharply diminished over the past year as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has undergone dramatic changes. Once believed to include thousands of “foreign fighters,” it is now an overwhelmingly Iraqi organization whose aims are likely to remain focused on the struggle against the Shiite majority in Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials said.

And of course there was that moment of eloquence and clarity from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she described the NATO-led military mission in Afghanistan as “bumpy”.

It is beyond my comprehension how any person with a brain could think that continuing this folly is Iraq is making us safer. On the contrary even some of those “experts” that the administration looks to in order to sell its Iraq policy are stating that we are not in safer, our military is stretched, al-Qaeda has reconstituted and is more of a threat, and the situation is- to quote Ms. Rice- “bumpy”.

It is astonishing to me that Senator McCain- a bone fide war hero- would be so clueless about the effect that this policy is having on the safety of the nation and the strength and responsiveness of our military. He drank the Neo-Conservative Kool-Aid.

And if Senator McCain wants to support the troops, maybe he should listen to the troops. According to The Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign cash, looks at the 2007 money-raising In the 4th quarter of 2007, individuals in the Army, Navy and Air Force made those branches of the armed services the No. 13, No. 18 and No. 21, contributing industries, respectively. War opponent Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, received the most from donors in the military, collecting at least $212,000 from them. Another war opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, was second with about $94,000.

Is anyone listening to the troops? Obviously “supporting our troops” doesn’t include listening to them. And clearly waging an absurd war in Iraq is clearly more important to the Republican party- and Senator McCain- than actually making our nation safe and actually defending the nation against terrorism.

I have a message to Governor Romney and Senator McCain- if you really want to do what’s best for our nation- vote for either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton, doing otherwise will surely put our nation in peril- and that would be shameful.

Let’s face it – the Democratic debate in Myrtle Beach SC had all the hallmarks of a school yard fight. No matter you spin it- Mr. Obama is up against one slick machine and is boxed into a difficult situation.

During the campaign, Senator Obama attempted to rise above the political shenanigans that have been part and parcel of politics since the early 1990’s and in which both the Democratic and Republican parties have engaged. But President and Mrs. Clinton are determined to bring him into politics as usual. It is imperative for Mr. Obama to set the record straight and to call attention to the inaccuracies in statements about him by the President and Mrs. Clinton but in doing so he ends up looking like “just another politician”; an absolutely brilliant political strategy- pure Clinton.

President Clinton is brilliant about using words that give one impression while not technically “saying” it. Remember the famous “It depends on what your definition of is, is”? He admitted as much today when he boasted that he knows how to parse his words and that he has said nothing that is technically inaccurate. That’s true, but everyone with half a brain knows that perception is everything and truth tends to often be an afterthought in politics.

I voted for President Clinton twice and campaigned vigorously for him in the 1992 campaign and overall I was happy with his presidency. He seems to have amnesia about his role in welfare reform and the fact that he was dismally unsuccessful in his attempt at healthcare reform and allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, but he did preside over a good economy and brought down the deficit. I guess folks might say that he was the very model of a model major “Reaganite”- dismantling welfare and focusing on the economy.   But that’s a subject for another time.

One can politically dissect everything said and make a case on either Mr. Obama’s or Mrs. Clinton’s side. But Mr. Obama made a big mistake when he attacked Mrs. Clinton about her membership on the Wal-Mart board. He played right into the Clintons hands and opened himself up for a one two punch. He should not have gone there. Remember the Clintons are rather adept politicians and he gave Mrs. Clinton the perfect opening to drudge up Mr. Obama’s relationship with Resco which he had addressed years ago and admitted regret. Mr. Obama’s record working on behalf of inner city poor as a community organizer in Chicago is indisputable and although Mr. Obama gave Mrs. Clinton an opening that would make any astute politician salivate, it was patently unfair to portray Mr. Obama as more attuned to a Chicago “slum” lord than to the inner city poor he worked with every day as a community organizer even if her statement was technically not untrue.

Mr. Obama did make a point that sometimes he doesn’t know if he is running against Bill or Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton responded that both of them have spouses who are zealous advocates for their respective campaigns. Technically again- Mrs. Clinton is correct. However, Michelle Obama has not engaged in the sort of politics in which President Clinton has engaged and even if she had, there is a huge difference; she is not a former President. President Clinton has uses his bully pulpit as a former President to be Senator Clinton’s pit bull. His status as a former President gives him a unique platform. A number of Democratic bigwigs have asked the former President to dial it down, but it doesn’t look like he has any plans on doing so anytime soon.

I hate to say something favorable about the Bushes, but former President George H.W. Bush stayed out of the attacks during his son’s presidential campaign against Senator John McCain in 2000. It is rather frustrating when the media give President Clinton a free ride about his role in his wife’s campaign when they say it is a unique campaign because we are charting new territory when a former President is the spouse of a presidential candidate. Well maybe technically, but wouldn’t the relationship between a former President who is the father of a presidential candidate be pretty similar and therefore not completely uncharted territory.

Mr. Clinton is not acting like a senior statesman and as someone who has defended Clinton zealously to anti-Clinton friends and relatives I am embarrassed by his actions. Not only is this not an appropriate role for a former president and senior statesman but it might make some – especially in the “I hate the Clinton” crowd make a fair case that Hillary’s candidacy is actually a 3rd term for Bill. His actions have made him look like he wants to get back to the White House too much and it gives easy fodder for the Republicans in the general election should Mrs. Clinton be the Democratic nominee.

In it’s endorsement of Senator Obama, Columbia South Carolina’s prestigious newspaper “The State” said:

“The one most significant difference between them can be found in how they would approach the presidency - and how the nation might respond.

Hillary Clinton has been a policy wonk most of her life, a trait she has carried into the U.S. Senate. As her debate performances have shown, she has intelligence and a deep understanding of many issues. Her efforts in New York focused first on learning her adopted state’s issues in detail, and pursuing legislation that would not necessarily grab headlines.

But we also have a good idea what a Clinton presidency would look like. The restoration of the Clintons to the White House would trigger a new wave of all-out political warfare. That is not all Bill and Hillary’s fault - but it exists, whomever you blame, and cannot be ignored. Hillary Clinton doesn’t pretend that it won’t happen; she simply vows to persevere, in the hope that her side can win. Indeed, the Clintons’ joint career in public life seems oriented toward securing victory and personal vindication.

Senator Obama’s campaign is an argument for a more unifying style of leadership. In a time of great partisanship, he is careful to talk about winning over independents and even Republicans. He is harsh on the failures of the current administration - and most of that critique well-deserved. But he doesn’t use his considerable rhetorical gifts to demonize Republicans. He’s not neglecting his core values; he defends his progressive vision with vigorous integrity. But for him, American unity - transcending party - is a core value in itself.”

The only person who came out of the Democratic debate in South Carolina unsullied was Senator Edwards- the candidate I originally supported. I changed my support from Senator Edwards to Senator Obama precisely because I felt Senator Obama could move us out of politics as usual- the same reason he won the endorsement of “The State”.  I still believe that he can take us there and that he can be the transformational leader that the nation needs. I believe that Mr. Obama can create a coalition of Democrats, Independents and “Obama” Republicans the way President Reagan did for the Republicans with his “Reagan Democrats” and appeal to Independents.

Mr. Obama has been pulled into a school yard spat by the Clintons but he must return to his message of hope, unity and transformation and stop being pulled into politics as usual no matter how adept his opponent and her former-President husband are at enticing him into it. Mr. Obama must find a way to return to the audacity of hope and not engage the mendacity of politics that have been too much the norm over the past decades.

One year from today at Noon Eastern Standard Time the 44th President of the United States will be sworn in. Is the nation hungering for more than just “easy change” but for transformation?

Senator Barack Obama got himself into a heap of problems with the Democratic Party machine when he talked about Ronald Reagan being one of the transformational presidents in our history.

His exact words were, “I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times…I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

There is no doubt that I loathe Ronald Reagan. But I have to agree that his Presidency has had a profound effect on this country since 1980.

You can see articles on my blog- Who ended the Cold War? The Clash of Myth and Reality   about how I find the credit given to him for ending the Cold War absolutely ridiculous. The stage had been being set by US Presidents for a long time- just look at some of the comments made by President Gerald R. Ford about this issue that were released after President Ford’s death when he contended that his negotiations of the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights had much to do with the movement towards the demise of the Soviet Union. Of course- there is also the fact that without President Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, and Pope John Paul II had a hand in “tearing down that wall”.

You can also read how much I feel that his inattention to the AIDS epidemic in the United States was beyond reprehensible and that he has the blood of thousands of people on his hands by not addressing the issue for years which led to not funding prevention, care and research appropriately in my piece A Half Century on the Planet: A Reflection on my 50th birthday

So I am no fan of Ronald Reagan but there is no doubt that he was a transformational figure in our political landscape. He is still affecting our nation today nearly 20 years after he first left office. His legacy is one that while I believe was ultimately not for the better but for the worse- and led us towards a nation willing to elect George W. Bush not once but twice- he had a profound effect on the nation. To ignore that is simply putting one’s fingers in one’s ears and going “LA LA LA LA LA”.

Face it, President Clinton never would have dismantled Welfare if it had not been for his desire to pander to the politics of Reagan. President Clinton was not forced into Welfare Reform, he promoted it. Have the Clintons forgotten that little piece of information when warmly remembering the wonderful days of the 1990’s. I liked President Clinton as a President, but he did not change the direction of this nation. He was not a transformational leader like Presidents Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt or President Lincoln. One does not have to agree with the transformation that the transformational leader inspired to acknowledge that that leader did in fact created change.

Walter Dean Burnham had a theory of transformational presidents and non-transformational president. Franklin Roosevelt was a transformational president, somebody who didn’t just occupy the office but fundamentally changed the country according to Burnham. In my opinion he created transformation that I applaud as opposed to the transformation that Reagan created which I deplore.

Senator Obama was correct though. Through the 1970’s we liberals did not tend to the New Deal and Great Society programs that were brilliantly developed to lift up our poor and our lower classes. We were smug and lazy and these programs became bloated bureaucracies that did not move smartly in order to be as effective as possible. They became ripe for discontent for many of the “Reagan Democrats”. Add to that the jingoist American arrogance that came from our declaration that we ended the cold war that allowed us to develop more arrogant foreign policies and swagger in our step on the world stage and you can see the writing on the wall towards our march to the first prëmptive war in our nation’s history- the war where we are currently mired in Iraq.

There is nothing wrong with saying that we need another transformational leader to move us in a new direction. If neither Senators Clinton nor Edwards are willing to acknowledge the realities of our history that is somewhat troubling to me. My sense is that they do indeed understand history but knowing how much many of us liberals loathe Reagan and his legacy it was awfully good political fodder.

“If I understand what he was saying I can’t entirely disagree with it. They both came along at times when society was on the cusp of change and they are both agents of change,” President Reagan’s youngest son Ron Reagan Jr, told the Huffington Post. “As far as Barack Obama being a similar agent of change, that remains to be seen. But what I do see him saying is that we are in a historical moment right now like the 60s and 80s. And I think he’s right. We are overdue for a cultural shift right now.”

I have often thought that Ron Reagan Jr., was not a fan of his father’s politics but a zealous protector of his father’s legacy. I think his comment that we are overdue for a cultural shift is dead on.

In an interview with “American Prospect” magazine, Pulitzer Prize winning Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said:

“History suggests that unless a progressive president is able to mobilize widespread support for significant change in the country at large, it’s not enough to have a congressional majority. For example, Bill Clinton had a Democratic majority when he failed to get health reform.

When you look at the periods of social change, in each instance the president used leadership not only to get the public involved in understanding what the problems were but to create a fervent desire to address those problems in a meaningful way.”

Mr. Clinton is a political animal and politics trumped everything. He could have chosen to battle for letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the military as he promised during his campaign – he could have made good on that promise- but political expedience won out.

It is eerie that Doris Kearns Godwin’s analysis of President Clinton is not unlike that of Mr. Obama’s.

In discussing Teddy Roosevelt, Goodwin said “Roosevelt faced a conservative Congress. But the muckrakers created, in the middle class especially, an understanding of what had to be done in conservation, in food and drug legislation, in the regulation of the railroads. They revealed in long, factual, investigative pieces the way in which Standard Oil and the trusts were constricting opportunity for smaller, independent businesses. Then, with an aroused public, TR was able to pressure the Congress to do something. Similarly, in the early days of the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt used the power of the bully pulpit in his famous fireside chats to drive home to the country at large the need for significant federal legislation in a wide range of areas to ease the problems of the Great Depression.”

And when  Robert Kuttner in this December 2007 interview with Goodwin for “American Prospect”, “The public has been trained for 30 years to think that there’s really nothing great the government can do, except perhaps to prevent attacks. Where do you start? How do you change public opinion so that you can then change legislative direction? Goodwin answered.

“The next president has to be able to express a sense of what America can be, what America has been in the past, and what it is not now. It has to be overarching; it cannot be just “we need this program and this program and this program.” He or she has to remind us what made people come to this country in the first place — the belief that here, as Lincoln famously said, we had formed a government “whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men — to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.” The first and the most difficult task for the new president will be to remind people what made America so special in the first place, to create an emotional desire on their part to bring our performance closer to that ideal, to make clear the wide array of artificial weights that still prevent far too many people from having a fair chance in the race of life, and then and only then to propose the legislative programs or executive actions that will address these shortcomings.”

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss when asked in an interview with Bill Steigerwald of “The Pittsburgh Tribune Review” what makes a great president he answered, “A number of things, but I think the most important ones are the vision to understand where to take the country and the skills to move the American people to that vision. All of this as blessed by historians and the American people of a later generation.”

So transformational presidencies are fundamentally the most important and have been milestones in our nation’s history. Senator Obama seems to understand this truth at a gut level.

In my essay about why I voted for Barack Obama I pointed to an article written by Michael Kinsley in the New York Times where he said “We as a society have shown no tolerance for unpleasant changes, and politicians have shown no enthusiasm for trying to persuade us that they might be necessary. If all you want is happy changes, you really don’t want change at all.”

It is clear that Senator Obama understands more clearly than most that we are at one of those junctures in our history where our nation is craving a transformational president. Every presidential historian point to the fact that a leader cannot create sea change without being able to move the American people. Mr. Kinsley astutely acknowledges that people don’t want unpleasant change and most change that is needed is indeed somewhat unpleasant. It is imperative that someone who sees beyond tinkering with one government program or another and actually inspirses the American people to move and create that change at a societal level. Society isn’t informed by policy as much as policy is informed by society. Finding how to move society forward to a vision that is positive makes creating the necessaary policy for the framework of that vision an easier task. Leadership and policy wonkiness while not necessarily mutually exclusive, are different skills.

There are none among the Republican presidential hopefuls that have a hope of developing a transformational presidency. There is nothing inspiring about this group of men. There is nothing in their words that makes one ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. These men are really not interested in change at all. They hearken back to Reagan’s revolution but have no idea how to create their own and it seems unlikely that they would even want a revolution.

Senators Clinton and Edwards are not as aware of the importance of the transformational leader as is Mr. Obama. They may indeed be able to transform things, but will they inspire? Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Clinton might be able to create some change especially if they were elected in with a Democratic sweep of Congress. But they are focusing on programs to fix things not on inspiring the pe