presidential election – Page 40

Joe loves Rudy

I meant to post this video yesterday — just happened to catch it while running on the treadmill — but had some early computer problems and then forgot.

It’s an interview with Rudy Giuliani by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that essentially is a love letter to the former New York mayor. Pay particular attention to the rapt attention Brzezinski pays to Lord Mayor of 9/11 and the way Scarborough puts his adulatory statements into the form of a question. Yuck.

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Huckabee asks: What wall?

Mike Huckabee is one seriously dangerous man. Hidden behind the smile is a stereotype of the unthinking, backwoods preacher, the Frederick March character from “Inherit the Wind,” updated and slicked up for public consumption.

I don’t mean to imply that the former Arkansas governor is ignorant. On the contrary, I think he knows what he’s doing, playing to his conservative base, to a group he obviously connects with, while also offering a second face — the smiling populist (faux populist is more accurate — though the mainstream Washington press has yet to realize that his economic program is the polar opposite of John Edwards’) who can tell a joke, an unthreatening version of a Moral Majority preacher. But he is no different than those preachers, as some of his recent comments demonstrate.

In an interview with Belief.net he offered this:

One of the comments you’ve made that’s getting a lot of discussion in the press is the point you made in the last day or so that we might need to amend the Constitution to have it apply more to God’s standards. Do you want to elaborate on that? In particular the question of people who might hear that and think, “Well, that’s a conversation stopper,” people who might agree with you on policy but feel that the constitution is secular document and should be driven by secular concerns rather than aligning it with God’s word.

Well, I probably said it awkwardly, but the point I was trying to make–and I’ve said it better in the past – is that people sometimes say we shouldn’t have a human life amendment or a marriage amendment because the Constitution is far too sacred to change, and my point is, the Constitution was created as a document that could be changed. That’s the genius of it. The Bible, however, was not created to be amended and altered with each passing culture. If we have a definition of marriage, that we don’t change that definition, that we affirm that definition. And that the sanctity of human life is not just a religious issue. It’s an issue that goes to the very heart of our civilization of all people being equal, endowed by their creator with alienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That was the point. The Bible was not
written to be amended. The Constitution was. Without amendments to the Constitution, women couldn’t vote, African-Americans wouldn’t be considered people. We have had to historically go back and to clarify, because there’ve been injustices made because the Constitution wasn’t as clear as it needed to be, and that’s the point.

Just to follow up on that question, according to that standard, if the Constitution and its amendments are subject to biblical interpretations, doesn’t that mean it would be subject to biblical argument over what the proper interpretation is? And where does that leave, say, nonbelievers or members of other faiths in a proudly pluralistic like our own when amendments to the Constitution are subject to a biblical interpretation?

I think that whether someone is a Christian or not, the idea that a human life has dignity and intrinsic worth should be clear enough. I don’t think a person has to be a person of faith to say that once you redefine a human life and say there is a life not worth living, and that we have a right to terminate a human life because of its inconvenience to others in the society. That’s the real issue. That’s the heart of it. It’s not just about being against abortion. It’s really about, Is there is a point at which a human life, because it’s become a burden or inconvenience to others, is an expendable life. And once we’ve made a decision that there is such a time – whether it’s the termination of an unborn child in the womb or whether it’s the termination of an 80-year-old comatose patient — we’ve already crossed that line. And then the question is, How far and how quickly do we move past that line? And the same thing would be true of marriage. Marriage has historically, as long as there’s been human
history, meant a man and a woman in a relationship for life. Once we change that definition, then where does it go from there? Is it your goal to bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible? Some people would consider that a kind of dangerous undertaking, particularly given the variety of biblical interpretations.Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.

So, Huckabee equates a woman’s right to vote and the end of slavery with same-sex marriage and abortion? So, Huckabee believes the Constitution should be amended to line up with his religious beliefs? Where does that leave me, as a nonpracticing Jew, or the millions of Muslims and Hindus in the United States? Or even Mitt Romney?

During the same interview, Huckabee outlined his vision of economic populism:

I’ve said that, that I’ve felt like as Christians and particularly even as Republicans, we needed to address issues that touched the broader perspective, and that included disease, hunger, poverty, homelessness, the environment. And it’s not a matter that we’re going to become left-wingers. I don’t think that at all. I think taking care of the earth is a matter of stewardship. It’s not about global warming, it’s about stewardship and responsibility. Things like hunger and homelessness. And it’s not about having a government program, it’s about simply reminding each of us as individual citizens that this is an area of our own responsibility.

Not about having a government program, but about individual responsibility — this is a refrain that the right has offered for years, but that has gotten us nowhere. Other social institutions should take care of these issues, he says, like that is some novel idea, some new concept that has not failed us over and over again, like the private institutions already in existence aren’t already over stressed.

This is the language of the pulpit, the language of someone more interested in saving our souls than in making our lives better now. The problem is that Mike Huckabee is not running for preacher, he’s not seeking the pulpit at a national church. He’s running for president.

And one other thing — courtesy of my friend Bill, who sent me this e-mail earlier today:

I know the Huckster is going off the deep-end, but I just got this quote off of CNN, with no examination whatsoever – in sucking up to the S. Carolinians, about their Confederate flag:

Later, in Florence, he repeated the remarks. “I know what would happen if somebody comes to my state in Arkansas and tells us what to do, it doesn’t matter what it is, tell us how to run our schools, tell us how to raise our kids, tell us what to do with our flag ? you want to come tell us what to do with the flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole.”

Now that comment about schools could be read about knocking segregation. Not that I think he meant it, as he doesn’t seem the type, but maybe some code phrase? Or just stupidity?

Huckabee is not someone who can see beyond his own set of beliefs — a danger in a diverse, pluralistic society like ours. That he has been competitive in the Republican primary says quite a bit about the party that currently occupies the White House.

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Rock, rock, rock, rock,rock and roll Republicans

Politicians — at least those that capture the moment, as Barack Obama seemed to do earlier this month — are sometimes referred to as “rock stars.” Of course, John Kerry is no Bruce Springsteen, even if the Boss did stump for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, and I just don’t see anything about George W. Bush that reminds me of Ted Nugent (Dick Cheney, maybe).

In any case, the notion of “rock star” politicians got me thinking: What if the current crop of Republican candidates for president were to form bands (Mike Huckabee is an accomplished bass player) and released albums. What would their bands be called and what might they call their debut discs?

Well, here’s what I came up with:

Rudy Giuliani: Rudy G and the Autocrats, “A 9/11 State of Mind”
Mike Huckabee: Mike Huckabee’s Anti-Evolution Revolution, “Too Much Monkey Business”
Fred Thompson and Aqua Velva, “Wake Me When It’s Over”
Mitt Romney: Willard Romney and the Many Faces of Mitt, “Money to Burn”
John McCain: Mack Daddy McCain, “Straight Talk Gone Crooked”
Ron Paul: The Ron Paul Conspiracy, “Tilting at Windmills”
Duncan Hunter: Duncan Hunter and the Invisible Campaign, “Who is Duncan Hunter and Does Anyone Care?”

I think this sums up the field fairly well, if I do say so myself.

I’ll come back to the Democrats at another point.

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Race, gender and the presidential campaign

During the last week or so, the cable news channels have turned their attentions to some questionable comments both by the presidential candidates and their surrogates, comments that skirt the edges of the kind of racial and gender codes long used by the rightwing in this country.

The cocaine allusion, the reaction to the “tear,” the various veiled references to type — all of it has done little to further debate on the Democratic side, making it less likely that two key segments of the Democratic alliance will be able to work together once the primaries have concluded.

No one comes off well in this tussle. All three of the major candidates have been guilty — either directly or through a surrogate — of playing these games. And no one can benefit — at least not in a larger sense.

John Nichols attempts to put all of this in perspective in this post on The Nation:

Where both Clinton and Obama are misguided is in their shared attempt to score political points rather than to step back from the abyss of an ugly discourse and to seek the clarity that is so frequently absent from our politics.

Neither Clinton nor Obama is using history well or wisely. Neither is telling us what those of us who recognize the significance of the King-Johnson collaboration – and, for a brief shining moment it was a collaboration –need to hear. Neither is answering the fundamental questions: How, as president, would they relate to social and political movements? Would they invite the Martin Kings and the Frederick Douglasses of the twenty-first century to the White House? Would either of these two candidates, as president, sit down with those demanding transformational change, craft policies with supposed radicals, coordinate political strategies with influential outsiders – as did both Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s and Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s?

The shame is that none of the candidates of either party have shown any sense that they are even thinking of these questions, let alone offering us answers.

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Blah blah blah

Reading The Washington Post op-eds today is like wading into an alternative universe. Aside from the always conscientious E.J. Dionne Jr. and Harold Meyerson, both of whom attempt to dig beneath what have become the cliched and conventional narratives being offered by TV talking heads, the colmnists offering analysis of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary show little imagination — and even less interest in the fact that the campaign is not a horserace.

David Broder, for instance, often called the dean of Washington columnists (but who might be better referred to as the dean of conventional blathering), offers this bit of nonsense:

The lesson of New Hampshire can be summarized in two simple words: Character counts.

He then goes on to describe the New Hampshire contest as if it were the late innings of a playoff baseball game, Hillary Clinton and John McCain playing the roles of clutch hitters like Kirk Gibson and Derek Jeter.

Then there is this bit of empty bloviation from Robert Novak:
Had the turnout of women there, which constituted an unprecedented 57 percent of the Democratic vote, been plugged in to exit results, a two-percentage-point Clinton victory would have been forecast. The unexpected female support in turn can be attributed to the Clinton style, which may not be pretty but is effective. Hillary Clinton‘s tears evoked sympathy for her, and Bill Clinton‘s sneers generated contempt for Obama.

Novak can’t resist going to the standard anti-Hillary well — “only the naive can believe Clinton was not artfully playing for sympathy from her sisters” when she teared up on Monday, he writes — as he tries to use the Clinton win as an excuse to prop up McCain’s candidacy. McCain, he says, maybe best “equipped to withstand the battering he would receive from the Clintons and to respond in kind.”

Novak’s lesson?

The lesson of New Hampshire for Obama’s campaign should be that rock-star popularity is not sufficient to take on the Clintons, who for a decade have given no quarter to their political foes. When it seemed that Obama would win in New Hampshire, the Clinton camp prepared an attack strategy against him. Since Obama is favored in the next big primary test, in South Carolina on Jan. 26, he can expect more of the same ahead.

This, of course, qualifies as a “no-duh.” The Clintons will go on the attack? Brilliant observation — isn’t that the normal course of politics, for the perceived underdog to try and tear down the frontrunner? Hasn’t this been the approach used in American politics since the advent of polling?

Richard Cohen is convinced that it was the tear, and Barack Obama’s supposedly snarky response during Saturdays Democratic debate — what he calls “patronizing dismissal of Clinton” (it came during an exchange over likeability — a question that, given Bush’s likeability during 2000, should have been consigned to the scrap heap).

George Will plays Capt. Obvious in his column, reminding us that it is a marathon and that a marathon is a good thing.

A marathon would reveal almost everything relevant about the candidates. If, afterward, either party suffers buyers’ remorse, the buyers will have no one to blame.

This would be true, of course, if people like Will, Cohen, Novak and Broder wrote about the important stuff. Alas, given teh sorry state of presidential press coverage, the buyers — meaning you and I — are on their own.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
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