presidential election – Page 29

Refighting the ’60s again

There is an eery quality to the presidential campaign, as if we’d heard this all before. I missed the debate tonight, but watching The Countdown I am struck by the focus on issues of another era, issues from the 1960s. In particular, we have watched Barack Obama have to answer for his associations with people connected to the 1960s, to a preacher who frames his arguments in black nationalist rhetoric and has an association to the leader of the Nation of Islam; to a member of Weather Underground, a ’60s group that resorted to bombings to move the revolution forward; his resemblance to Democratic losers like George McGovern, Al Gore and John Kerry. We’ve had flag pins and cocaine use and all manner of cultural touchstones of the past dragged back into the present — a line of argument that harkens back to the attacks made against Kerry and Bill Clinton.

I find it a bit ironic — wrong word, I know — that Obama, someone who came of political age during the Carter and Reagan presidencies, is now being made to carry water for the generation that came before him. Personally, I’m tired of this debate, tired of rehashing the 1960s each time we have a national issue to resolve. I’m tired of fighting over who is responsible for losing Vietnam (Vietnam was unwinnable, like Iraq is unwinnable, and the American foreign policy elite are ultimately responsible for that war). I’m tired of cultural conservatives blaming hippies for all they see as wrong. Get over it.

It has been 40 years since the Summer of Love gave way to the turmoil of 1968, 1869 and 1970. Can’t we just agree to focus on the issues of the 21st Century?

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Bruce hearts Obama

Springsteen is going to get some flack for this — he is endorsing Barack Obama for president. This is unfair, of course. First, endorsements like this have little real impact and, second, Springsteen fans shouldn’t hold the Boss to a different standard than almost any other performer. (I wrote an essay on this a while back that I’ll get up on my home

Consider: Springsteen endorses Kerry in 2004 and a mini-hailstorm breaks out over it. Brooks and Dunn appear in support of President Bush at the Republican National Convention the same year — not a word. And what of Chuck Norris and his eery presence standing behind Mike Huckabee?

In any case, Bruce offers his endorsement in a letter on his Web site:

LIke most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where “…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.”

At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man’s life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams From My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.

After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we’re proud to support Obama for President.

In the end, no one should be surprised by this.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

When a nonstory becomes the story

It’s the inflation of these kinds of minor gaffs getting blown into massive controversies that makes me crazy and demonstrates just how badly the major media outlets are failing us in their coverage of elections.

Even Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which I watch almost religiously, tagged this out-of-context comment and subsequent responses as breaking news — mindboggling when you consider that there was no news involved. (Though CNN — above — hit the story hard and accurately, dismissing it for what it is.)

I think this posting on Daily Kos — made without comment — sums up what’s wrong here (the above video of Obama’s response comes from Kos and is a powerful rebuke to both Clinton and McCain’s criticism and should put this nonsense to rest).

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

McCain’s spacy ad

I think someone needs to explain this ad to me. I just don’t get what Sen. John McCain is trying to say.

This NY Times blog item offers some speculation from other blogs, but the only thing I can come up with is this, from someone identified only as Peter, who offered this comment:

It seems that you can read it a few ways, but the most obvious to me seems blisteringly negative, and offensively so.

It may be my personal politics at play, but the only reason I can see for the insertion of that first, clumsy “American” is as a subtle dig at the most likely Democratic candidate’s American-ness.

It’s another tack on the bizarrely childish “Hussein” strategy.

I hope he’s wrong for no other reason than the “more American than the other guy” strategy is demeaning not only to Barack Obama, but to McCain and every potential voter in the country.

Another way of looking at this ad is to come straight out and say it lacks focus — sort of like the McCain campaign since he sewed up the nomination.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Debating by proxy

The candidates for president used yesterday’s appearance by Army Gen. David Petreaus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to reopen the debate over Iraq and the fate of America’s soldiers.

The testimony offered by the two highest ranking Americans in Iraq was, to put it mildly, a bit optimistic — overly optimistic would still be fair — and oddly contradictory. Violence is rising again, the political situation in Iraq is a mess and the Iraqi government — the government we are allied with — is tilting toward Iran.

And yet, the administration’s front men still offer comments like this:

“Withdrawing too many forces too quickly could jeopardize the progress of the past year,” Petraeus testified. In the face of skeptical questioning, he added later: “We have the forces that we need right now, I believe. We’ve got to continue. We have our teeth into the jugular, and we need to keep it there.”

And also this, in response to Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), who told Crocker that “the American people have had it up to here”:

“I appreciate the sense of frustration that you articulate,” Crocker said. “I share it. I kind of live it every day. I mean, the reality is, it is hard in Iraq. And there are no light switches to throw that are going to go dark to light.”

OK. So which is it? Are we making progress? Should we view what is happening in Iraq as positive? But then, what of the violence and borderline anarchy?

The interesting thing about the hearings — there were two — is that they gave the three major party candidates for president a chance to make points on an issue that will only grow importance as we get closer to November.

My sense, given my own position on this disaster, is that Hillary Clinton’s comments were the strongest, and should have been made much earlier in her campaign. Clinton voted for the war, after all, and has not done much to alleviate concern among antiwar Democrats about the vote.

Here is what she said:

“I think it could be fair to say that it might well be irresponsible to continue the policy that has not produced the results that have been promised time and time again at such tremendous cost.”

Barack Obama also was critical, but he hedged some, buying into the notion of a goal-oriented policy when what is needed is a full withdrawal with the mess being turned over the United Nations (on our dime, unfortunately). Obama

asked what constitutes victory. “I’m trying to get to an endpoint,” Obama said. If the goal for Iraq is set too high, U.S. forces could be there for decades, he said. “If on the other hand,” he said, “our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo but there’s not, you know, huge outbreaks of violence — there’s still corruption, but the country is struggling along, but it’s not a threat to its neighbors and it’s not an al-Qaeda base — that seems to me an achievable goal within a measurable time frame.”

John McCain continues to drink the Kool-Aid, however:

“Should the United States instead choose to withdraw from Iraq before adequate security is established, we will exchange for this victory a defeat that is terrible and long-lasting.”

The New York Times used this quote, which taken with the above comment, sums up what I can only call a lack of judgment by McCain:

“We’re no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success,” Mr. McCain said.

There definitely is a hierarchy here — Clinton’s comment being the most forceful, McCain’s being the most divorced from reality — but none of the candidates addressed the real issue and none are likely to address what should be the primary issue leading into the election.

Essentially, all three candidates accept the notion of American exceptionalism. While all three candidates make some noise about re-establishing our relationships around the world, they also reserve the right to use U.S. military might to impose our belief system on the rest of the world.

Obama has been talking about what he is calling “traditional bipartisan realistic policy” that — as I wrote last week — is really nothing more than code for what Glenn Greenwald has consistently criticized as the conventional wisdom on foreign policy. And Clinton is no better — as her votes on the original Iraq war resolution in 2002 and Iran last year show.

The entire thing is depressing because it demonstrates that, despite the rhetorical sleight-of-hand being used by all the candidates, they remain wed to the status quo. We may not get four more years of George W. Bush, but we are not likely to get the kind of substantive change we need, regardless of who wins.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.