Recent poll numbers suggest a real stalemate among Obama and Clinton supporters, if their respective candidate does not win the Democratic nomination. A recent Gallup poll says 28 percent of Clinton supports will vote for McCain if Madame Inevitable does not get the nomination, compared to 19 percent of Obama supporters who would do the same if the Hope Peddler is not at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Sigh.
Worried that bitterness between the two camps may endanger hopes of capturing the White House in the fall, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, an Obama supporter, has urged Hillary Clinton to drop out.
Leahy implied that the sheer unlikelihood of catching Obama in the popular vote and number of pledged delegates along with the impossibility of actual states won makes it all real long shot for Senator Clinton. Discouraged by the tone of the campaign Leahy added, ““I think [Clinton’s] criticism is hurting him more than anything John McCain has said.” Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, another Obama supporter, also recommended that Hillary step aside too.
The Clinton campaign then retorted that she and her supporters will not be bullied by “the big boys” in the party to drop out. Hillary Clinton herself told the Associated Press, “Nobody’s talking about wrecking the party. Everywhere I go, all these working people say: ‘Don’t you dare let her drop out. Don’t listen to those people in Washington, they don’t represent us.”
Fair enough.
On Saturday, Obama himself was asked about whether or not Hillary Clinton should stay in or drop out and he said:
“You know, there’s no doubt that among some of my supporters or some of her supporters, there’s probably been some irritation created,” he said. “You can’t tell me that some of my supporters are going to say, well, we’d rather have the guy who may want to stay in Iraq for a hundred years because we’re mad that Senator Clinton ran a negative ad against Senator Obama. And I think the converse is true as well.”
This might just be the smartest response to the question so far. After all, if he says she should drop out, her supporters will see him as another male bully trying to illegitimately secure the nomination. But if she says she should stay in for as long as she wants it gives people the impression that he is not intimated by a protracted bitterly fought campaign. It also gives Clinton an excuse to bow out gracefully if she choose to do so after say an unexpected loss in Pennslyvania.
In this regard, Obama is emulating Bruce Lee’s technique of Fighting without Fighting. What is the art of Fighting without Fighting?
Well, check out the following clip from Enter the Dragon, and you’ll find out.
Eager to look presidential amidst the Democratic squabbling, Republican presidential nominee John McCain in a speech in Los Angles on Wednesday, provided the country a glimpse of how sell his Commander and Chief persona to the American people during the next few months.
Clearly, McCain sought to reassure those who were perhaps disturbed by the “Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran” talk and the causally suggesting that U.S. could be in Iraq for 50 to 100 years, by informing us that he “detested war.” On nuclear nonproliferation, McCain said, “We should work to reduce nuclear arsenals all around the world, starting with our own.”
He also rhetorically distanced himself from the reckless unilateralism of the Bush administration in saying, “Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed.”
McCain reaffirmed his somewhat comprised stance on banning torture too. “We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control,” he urged the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.
On global warming, he tried to impress Americans as a reasonable sober thinking conservative. He admitted that modern advances can “produce a global industrialization that can in time threaten our planet.”
At first glance, all of this makes John McCain sound like a centrist Democrat. But a closer examination of his previous statements and of the speech itself reveals an unwillingness to shed some of the vestiges of the Bush doctrine.
For instance, in September of 2006, President Bush invoked the then 5-year anniversary of the 9/11 calamity to justify a misbegotten war in Iraq and another poorly executed one in Afghanistan.
We’re determined to deny terrorists the support of outlaw regimes. After September the 11th, I laid out a clear doctrine: America makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror, and those that harbor and support them, because they’re equally guilty of murder….Afghanistan and Iraq have been transformed from terrorist states into allies in the war on terror.
Witnessing its effects, few people were persuaded by the logic of the Bush doctrine then and even more are skeptical about it now. But John McCain has been an unwavering adherent. After emphasizing how radical Islamic terrorism is the transcendent challenge of our time in his speech, McCain warns:
We learned through the tragic experience of September 11 that passive defense alone cannot protect us. We must protect our borders. But we must also have an aggressive strategy of confronting and rooting out the terrorists wherever they seek to operate, and deny them bases in failed or failing states. Today al Qaeda and other terrorist networks operate across the globe, seeking out opportunities in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and in the Middle East.
Though McCain does note that such an effort will require more than just military instruments, most of his pro-war advocacy has focused on achieving ill defined notion of “victory” in Iraq.
And while it is true that security threats exist in a variety of places, it is not clear that the U.S. was passive in confronting them either before or after September 11th. President Bill Clinton did bomb Afghanistan and Sudan to root out Osama bin Laden in 1998. President Bush did initiate two poorly prosecuted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11.
So we are left wondering to what extent are we to expect these efforts to root out terrorists will lead to open ended war in various parts of the globe. That unanswered question leads to the same dead end that making “no distinction between those who harbor” them does which either, is or comes close dangerously to, perpetual war.
And when a war is predicated on a number of confusing premises, as is the case with Iraq, claiming victory is difficult to define in concrete terms. McCain asserted:
Many people ask, how should we define success? Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the establishment of peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states that pose no threat to neighbors and contribute to the defeat of terrorists. It is the triumph of religious tolerance over violent radicalism.
Somehow that does not clear things up for me. And I suspect many other people will have the same problem. Of course, not President Bush who said in the 2007 State of the Union address, “Our goal is a democratic Iraq that upholds the rule of law, respects the rights of its people, provides them security, and is an ally in the war on terror.”
Could that take 50 to 100 years?
But an equally baffling point made by both Bush and McCain is the framing for why the U.S. should not withdraw in the near future. McCain said in his speech this week that “Iran will also view our premature withdrawal as a victory, and the biggest state supporter of terrorists, a country with nuclear ambitions and a stated desire to destroy the State of Israel, will see its influence in the Middle East grow significantly.”
And on March 19, Bush said, “Iran would be emboldened as well — with a renewed determination to develop nuclear weapons and impose its brand of hegemony across the Middle East. Our enemies would see an America — an American failure in Iraq as evidence of weakness and a lack of resolve.” Thus, not only are Bush and McCain of the same mind on Iran, but the unmeasured hawkishness toward the Shiite dominated country has contributed to conflating the Sunni dominated global terrorist network of radical Islamists.
Its the “but if we leave now then Iran will talk about us and call us punks” argument.
It should also be noted that the most definitive U.S. intelligence document, the NIE, concluded that Iran halted it’s program in 2003 and decided to do so because “decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs,” as opposed to being a rouge nation acting irrationally. That means diplomacy works when give a chance and explored exhaustively. Interestingly enough, McCain 6 page speech mentions the word “diplomacy” only twice.
All of which puts McCain’s so-called gaffe regarding which country is training what terrorists where and for what reason in context.
News of foreclosures so far have focused largely on the affects of financial markets and individual families, and deservedly so. But there is another dimension to the mortgage crisis that thus far is getting scant attention – vandalism and crime. Low to middle-income areas, particularly in new developments, with high foreclosure rates create pockets of unoccupied homes vulnerable to vandalism, theft, and other types of petty and even violent crime.
Consider North Carolina. A Charlotte Observer investigation found the following:
“While the crime rate citywide held steady, the rate in the heart of Charlotte’s 10 highest-foreclosure areas rose 33 percent between 2003 and 2006, an Observer analysis found. All of them are suburban areas filled with starter-home subdivisions. They were built since 1997 with homes valued at $150,000 or less.” The Charlotee Observer, Dec. 09, 2007
“In Peachtree Hills, police are summoned nearly 300 times a year, mostly for property crimes in the 147 homes. But the 4-year-old neighborhood, near Sunset Road, has also seen robberies, shootings and gang displays more commonly associated with violent urban areas — not new subdivisions.” -The Charlotee Observer, Dec 09, 2007
“In 13 neighborhoods at the heart of Charlotte’s most concentrated foreclosure areas, police recorded 52 violent crimes and 395 property crimes last year. That’s not as high as troubled inner-city areas, but it’s up 33 percent in three years and it’s surprising in new suburbs.” -The Charlotee Observer, Dec. 09, 2007
As a result, another little known industry is thriving. Property maintainers are being called upon by banks to keep up appearances, as it were. Lost Pond Construction Inc in Ohio is a typical example:
The most common job is simple: An exterior inspection to make sure someone is still living in the house after the owner starts missing mortgage payments. If the owner is still there, the contractor does nothing more. Safeguard commissioned 4.8 million of those inspections last year – about 12,000 in Northeast Ohio just during September and October, the latest months for which local numbers are available.
In the fraction of cases where the home goes into the foreclosure process, a contractor like Lost Pond is sent by Safeguard to make sure the house is secure by doing things like changing the locks and boarding up any broken windows.
Once the foreclosure process is complete and the lender takes ownership of the house, Safeguard offers a range of services to the lender – including remodeling, repair and cleaning services. Safeguard did about 2,000 of those jobs in Northeast Ohio in September and October.
Perhaps, this is proof that markets do have a certain magic to them.
By spotting these vulnerable areas ahead of time and working jointly with local police forces, lenders, municipalities, and the federal government, we can find a way to curb the depreciation of these newly developed properties and reduce crime. That way these neighborhoods can still be attractive to future home buyers once the mortgage industry rebounds.
But, of course, the main focus should be on preventing foreclosures from spreading in the first place.
Mr. Obama has endorsed the best idea currently on the table to prevent foreclosure: amending the law so that troubled borrowers can have their mortgages modified in bankruptcy court. That would give lenders a big incentive to work with borrowers — reducing interest or lowering principal balances — before they opted for bankruptcy protection. Mrs. Clinton has not endorsed bankruptcy reform. She has called for $30 billion in federal funds to bolster state and local foreclosure-prevention efforts and has proposed a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures and a rate freeze on subprime adjustable mortgages. Those measures also could help, but as the crisis has developed, the problem has become less one of resetting interest rates and more one of borrowers owing more than their homes are worth. Bankruptcy reform is a better way to deal with that problem.
When the Obama campaign decided to fire its foreign policy guru Samantha Power for calling Hillary Clinton “a monster,” I immediately thought it was a big mistake. In my mind, it made Obama appear weak and over reactive. Hendrick Hertzberg at the New Yorker apparently felt the same way and even devoted a part of a recent post on the controversy to what the statement from the Obama campaign should have been as soon as the story broke. I wholeheartedly agree with Hertzberg’s fictious press release below.
My friend and adviser Samantha Power made a serious mistake when she shot her mouth off in such an unpleasant manner. What she said was rude and thoughtless. I know she regrets it. She has apologized to me and to Senator Clinton, whom she admires and respects. On behalf of my campaign, I apologize to Senator Clinton as well.
Samantha believed she was what journalists call “off the record” when she made that angry remark. She is a scholar who is fairly new to the political arena and apparently didn’t realize that according to the rules of the game you have to say clearly that a conversation with a journalist is “off the record” ahead of time. You can’t say something first and then put it “off the record” afterwards, even in the next breath. Samantha is an academic, but she has traveled the world as a foreign correspondent and she should have known better.
People in the Clinton campaign are demanding that I fire her. I’m not going to do that. Samantha Power is a passionate witness and advocate for some of the most miserable and persecuted people on earth. Before people judge her I suggest they take a look at her book “‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide.” It deserved the prizes it won—the Pulitzer, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Arthur Ross Prize for the best book in U.S. foreign policy. You can’t read her firsthand reports on the horrors in Darfur without realizing that this is a woman of great moral and physical courage. She may be quick to anger, but here’s a news flash: nobody’s perfect. Samantha’s skills and expertise are a potentially valuable resource not just for this campaign but for our country. I’m not about to cast her into the outer darkness because of a single naïve and stupid instance of bad judgment.
Samantha said what she said in anger and she said it in what she thought was a private conversation. That mitigates her behavior. It doesn’t excuse it. I’ve suspended her from my campaign. I’ve reprimanded her and given her a month-long time out. I’ve told her to go back to her campus, calm down, and come back after she’s thought about what she did.
But let’s keep this in perspective. If saying something dumb and ugly in a supposedly private conversation were automatically a firing offense, the unemployment rate would quickly reach 100 per cent.
On second thought, I think I would have eliminated that last paragraph.
At any rate, check out Samantha Power provide a nuanced take on the inadequacies and even counterproductive strategy of American democracy promotion in the video clip below.
Spin is one thing. And it’s not a bad thing. But to have utility it must be tethered to some relevant facts, some kind of reality. Otherwise it just descends into ridiculousness.
With the 5th anniversary of the disastrous invasion of Iraq still hanging in the air, Christopher Hitchens in a piece entitled “Blind Faith” claims Barack Obama delivered opportunistic and politically calculating speech race to deflect attention away from Rev. Wright controversy.
In his piece, Hitchens, who usually is a probing writer, neither engaged in a substantive examination of the speech nor did he prove that Obama’s views were in any way identical to those of Rev. Wright’s. Instead the British contrarian registered his disgust with Obama’s reference to his own grandmother to illustrate the subtle interplay between public expressions of vitriol and private utterances of intolerance.
You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)
Hitchens has never been known to minced words. But he has been one known to misread events as they unfold, such as the war in Iraq, but more on that later. In this instance he is so caught up in his own self-righteousness that he fails to acknowledge the immense risk Obama took and is still bearing in his campaign by not denouncing both Rev. Wright and his controversial remarks. To say that Obama threw his grandmother under the bus for sheer opportunistic gain is to diminish the larger point regarding the very visceral nature of racial prejudice in the America experience. It also fails to acknowledge that Obama indeed took the more difficult route in in giving a nuanced speech that will almost certainly be used against him by soundbite by soundbite.
But Hitchens main beef is not with Obama per se. It’s with religious leaders and religion itself. The author of such awe inspiring works as God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and scornful attacks on Mother Teresa asked his readers yesterday, “Is it conceivable that such repellent dolts would be allowed into public life if they were not in tax-free clerical garb? How true it is that religion poisons everything.”
A cheap and unsophisticated squawk like that does not merit a response.
But, interestingly enough, while he railed against Obama for giving a speech in bad faith, Hitchens has yet to come clean for his support for a real dangerous enterprise, namely the war in Iraq, perpetuated by a far more powerful “dolt,” namely President George W. Bush. Five years later, despite the flawed war planning, the strategic blunders made along the way, and the thousands of dead Americans and Iraqis, Hitchens is still intent on pushing the notion that invading was a good idea, its just that White House screwed it all up.
As recently as last Monday, Hitchens wrote in Slate:
The past years have seen us both shamed and threatened by the implications of the Berkeleyan attitude, from Burma to Rwanda to Darfur. Had we decided to attempt the right thing in those cases (you will notice that I say “attempt” rather than “do,” which cannot be known in advance), we could as glibly have been accused of embarking on “a war of choice.” But the thing to remember about Iraq is that all or most choice had already been forfeited. We were already deeply involved in the life-and-death struggle of that country, and March 2003 happens to mark the only time that we ever decided to intervene, after a protracted and open public debate, on the right side and for the right reasons.
Spoken like a true believer. Only someone of Hitchens’ outsized sense of piety could blur the differences between a war of choice and the responsibility to protect the actual victims of a genocidal campaign. And at the same time, he conveniently ignores the fact that the sanctions were working, since they weaken Sadaam’s military and forced him to accept weapons inspectors. History did create the war in Iraq, people in the White House did.
Hitchens also astonishingly suggests with the full confidence of a confused Hegalian that the American invasion of Iraq was an inevitable outcome of its involvement with that country’s affairs. Again, that formulation nearly absolves the Bush administration of all responsibility.
More importantly, it is appalling to hear Hitchens castigate clergy men, many of whom opposed the war, while he asserts his own blind faith in asserting that the war was waged “on the right side and for the right reasons” despite so much evidence to the contrary.
At times moments like these, I think only satire can convey the sheer absurdity of some of the pro-war arguments. And in spirit, I present to you Dave Chappelle’s skit spoofing the variety of preposterous justifications used by the Bush White House in the run up to the war in Iraq.
In the coming months, expect John McCain to discuss a topic so dear to many conservatives: nominations to the federal bench.
Inexplicably, many Democratic leaning voters fail to understand the role judicial nominations play in the Republican politics. But make no mistake, whenever a candidate for national office says his role model for judges are Thomas and Scalia as then-governor George W. Bush did during his 2000 presidential run and Rudy Guiliani did during his ill-fated campaign, he is signaling his support for certain conservative vision of the federal bench. No other issue among conservatives brings together so-called values voters, pro-business conservatives, limited government types, federalists, national security minded and pro-executive power conservatives quite like judicial nominations. Its not an issue that’s equally important to each of these groups, but its an issue that John McCain will likely use on the stump to keep the Reagan coalition stitched together.
“I want to assure you that one of the great accomplishments of President Bush is we now have judges on the United States Supreme Court and judges who strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States of America,” he said at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. “Two of the best of those are Judges Alito and Roberts. You can be very proud of them. My friends, I want to tell you, I will try to find clones of Alito and Roberts. I will try to find people just like them.”
Progressives who may be at a lost as to why the federal courts are such an import issue to the right need to consider recent history. LA Times National Legal Corespondent David Savage captured the conservative fervor over the federal bench quite well.
“This issue unites the base,” said Curt Levey, executive director of the Committee for Justice, a group that lobbies for Bush’s judicial nominees. “It serves as a stand-in for the culture wars: religion, abortion, gay marriage and the coddling of criminals.”
Nothing irritates conservatives more, he said, than having unelected judges decide politically charged issues that some believe should be left to voters and legislators. “Conservatives tend to blame judges for the left’s success in the culture war,” Levey said.
Thus, its not hard to see how the label “activist judges” took hold so quickly and firmly in the minds of so many conservative and even moderate voters. At root, this coalition is really a bunch of anti-New Dealers that joined the backlash against the civil rights and women’s movement and who believe the U.S. Constitution’s essential meaning was frozen in time circa the late 18th Century.
While its true that there is no such thing as a biased-free judge, its still unacceptable to appoint immoderate judges push their own ideological agenda in the courts. Through their decisions such judges often set poor precedent for other courts to follow or are at odds with the spirit laws enacted by Congress. How judges interpret the law actually does matter because for most people the court system is the last resort.
Nominations to the federal bench have a real impact on people’s lives. Judges, including justices on the Supreme Court, can opt to weaken or undermine your right to sue your employer for pay discrimination, the right to a quality education, your right to not have the government listen in on your phone calls, or regulate an industries indifferent to the environmental impact of their operations.
Alliance for Justice, a progressive advocacy group, has put together a series of videos illustrating the influence the conservative right has had on federal courts during the last two decades.
The first video summarizes how certain conservative activists have used the judiciary to diminish federal authority to help ensure we have a responsibly regulated economy and that even our right to privacy is protected.
The second video is about two cases Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, a classic pay discrimination case and a school integration case not unlike Brown v. Board of Ed, respectively. The majority opinion in the Ledbetter case was written by Justice Alito and the Parents Involved majority opinion was written by Justice Roberts, the very same justices that Sen. McCain claims he wants to “clone.” Both of whom were George W. Bush appointees.
After listening to more of Reverend Wright’s sermon in which he claims “America’s chickens have come home to roost,” I think its reasonable to conclude that its much more in line with much of Christian pacifism in the black church and liberal anti-war left immediately after 9/11 than unqualified anti-Americanism. Feel free to disagree after watching the following video clip.
Of course, this does not make all of Rev. Wright’s other statements excusable. But it does provide greater context in which to understand his pacifism.
Anti-war Christian pacifism has deep roots and a robust tradition in America. Dr. Martin Luther King’s fierce anti-war criticism is one of the best exemplars of this tradition. In the video clip below Dr. King explicitly made the case that the war in Vietnam undermined key domestic initiatives, and that the U.S. will earn the wrath of God for its arrogant ways.
Watch it.
To be sure, to say that Rev. Wright operated within a certain tradition is not to say he himself was emblematic or represented the best of it. Nor is this post intended to equate Rev. Wright’s ministry with that of Dr. King’s. I honestly don’t know that much about it myself. But if we are to get past the mere spectacle of race, or pacifism for that matter, we have to at least consider the greater cultural context that give rise to certain controversies.
Now, its entirely possible that after due consideration we may still disagree with what gets expressed, but its better than walking away with the cartoonish notions that dominate our sound bite and image driven media world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”
Perhaps John McCain has those words plastered on the insides of his Straight Talk Express. I always thought of McCain as the minimal government loving, deficit hawk watching, military defense, pro business conservation. So, earning the undying ire of his conservative base has always struck me as more than a bit odd. But Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorkersummed up why McCain is as dizzyingly unpredictable for liberals as he is maddening to conservatives.
Over the years, McCain has performed this delicate task with some success, pairing up positions like Noah bringing animals aboard the ark. He plumped for lobbying reform but has lobbyists running his campaign. He opposed enacting Bush’s tax cuts for the rich but supports extending them indefinitely. He supported a “patients’ bill of rights” but refuses to treat health care as itself a right. He voted against banning same-sex marriage in the Constitution but favors banning it state by state. He once disdained the likes of the Reverend Jerry Falwell (who blamed AIDS on God’s alleged hatred of a “society that tolerates homosexuals”) but now embraces the likes of Pastor John Hagee (who called the Roman Catholic Church “the great whore”). He was for starting the Iraq war but against the way it was being fought; now he’s for the way it’s being fought but against discussing whether it should have been started.
Delivering one of the greatest speeches of our era does not render anyone immune from criticism. Consider Michael Gerson. WaPo columnist and former George W. Bush speech writer, Gerson objected to a certain comparison Senator Barack Obama made in his landmark speech on race in Philly on Tuesday. Gerson took issue with how Obama suggested Rev. Wright’s comments condemning America were somehow parallel in scope or in degree to his grandmother’s prejudicial views.
Reverend Wright’s controversial remarks strongly condemn America for intentionally flooding drugs into black neighborhoods, the spread of HIV/AIDS, and other destructive ideas. Obama has gone on record as denouncing these remarks as divisive and inaccurate.
In his speech, Obama described his grandmother as someone “who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
In response, Gerson wrote that perhaps “Grandma may have had some issues to work through, Wright is accusing the American government of trying to kill every member of a race. There is a difference.” Sure there is. But in my opinion those pushing this criticism are missing the real point of Obama’s speech.
Obama sought to convey the very visceral nature of how racial prejudice is experienced in America. The anger, the frustration, and the resentment that Rev. Wright and others like him feel is inextricably linked to the often causal and other times very explicit prejudice evinced by whites like Obama’s grandmother. In fact, each response and counter response feed off the other in subtle ways most of us fail to appreciate, until we are segregated into our own small corners.
This intimate knowledge of the negative effects racial bias is what was referring to when he said, “These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”
And while such an admission does not absolve people of the magnitude of their sins it does attempt to grapple with the full measure of who we are as people. In my mind, this key insight provides Obama’s speech so much of its raw power and its uncommon wisdom.
Danielle Pletka, a foreign and defense policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, an institution responsible for incubating many of the neo-conservatism ideas that we come to know and love, wrote in Sunday’s New York Times:
We point to all the United Nations Security Council resolutions, the International Atomic Energy Agency statements, the C.I.A. analyses, the Silberman-Robb report, the Senate Intelligence Committee findings — if we were wrong, we were in good and honest company.
But what about the mistaken assumptions that remain unexamined? Looking back, I felt secure in the knowledge that all who yearn for freedom, once free, would use it well. I was wrong. There is no freedom gene, no inner guide that understands the virtues of civil society, of secret ballots, of political parties. And it turns out that living under Saddam Hussein’s tyranny for decades conditioned Iraqis to accept unearned leadership, to embrace sect and tribe over ideas, and to tolerate unbridled corruption.
Now compare that statement with President Bush’s former presidential envoy to Iraq L. Paul Bremer recently said in the New York Times that same day:
Our soldiers were magnificent in liberating Iraq. But after arriving in the country, I saw that the American government was not adequately prepared to deal with the growing security threats. Looting raged unchecked in major cities. By late 2003, as the insurgency and terrorism grew, it became clear that the coalition also lacked an effective counterinsurgency strategy.
Our troops on the ground were valiant and selfless, but prewar planning provided for fewer than half the number of troops that independent studies suggested would be needed in Iraq. And we did not have a plan to provide the most basic function of any government — security for the population. Terrorists, insurgents, criminals and the Iraqi people got the impression that the coalition would not, or could not, protect civilians.
On Tuesday, Barack Obama delivered a masterful high-toned and frank speech in Philadelphia about race and the American condition.
His detractors will contend that Obama did not successfully distance himself from Rev. Wright since he only condemned his remarks rather than aggressively denounce the man. In truth, selling out Rev. Wright would have been what most pols would have done and the public, even significant swaths of black America, would have understood the abandonment to be a casualty due to the fog of campaigning. Obama would then simply absorb criticism for flip flopping on his support for his pastor and move to reassure voters that he is still the political equivalent of Tiger Woods.
But instead Obama choose a more difficult route. He opted to explain in plain English why he was attracted to his Rev. Wright’s ministry, what led a black folk of Wright’s generation to have to be gripped by such rage, and why he could not completely disassociate himself from his pastor.
Obama informed us “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.” Its no secret that Rev. Wright was a spiritual mentor of sorts to Obama, but the Illinois Senator bravely sought to explain to the general public lived experience of the black situation.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
Growing up in such an conditions tend to engender a corrosive and embittered understanding of race among and between different racial groups. But, like his grandmother who loved him dearly yet would often make racially stereotypical remarks, Obama admitted that even though he disagreed with the indictments of America born out of such an experience “these people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”
Not content to simply explain away Rev. Wright’s anger, Obama offered reasons for why he thought his pastor failed to measure what was wrong with America against what was good about it. Obama essentially made the case that Rev. Wright’s perspective on America was hamstrung by an experience in another era and has yet to come to terms with today’s environment.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
Obama chided his own pastor for not living up to his own teachings about the audacity of hope, and for not recognizing how the campaign offers a strong rebuke to Rev. Wright’s stark understanding of America. It was a clear admonishment of his pastor’s views. Who would have thought in the most important speech of his political career thus far Obama would be preaching to his preacher?
This is a subtle and sophisticated point that probably won’t be conveyed by the media in its reporting, though anyone watching the full 45 minutes of the video could quickly grasp it. This now brings me to my greater concern. The speech itself was as rich with wisdom and it was moving. But anything with this kind of gravity and complexity is bound to be given short shrift in a media landscape populated more by chattering shoot from the hip types than sober thinkers and the fair mind observers.
It will be easy to take lines out of context and make it seemed as if Obama provided unqualified support of Rev. Wrights most controversial statements.
But to have the courage of your convictions means that some risks are unavoidable.
In a few my previous posts I suggested that Senator Barack Obama deliver a speech on his views on race and religion and how they fit – or don’t – in personal and private life. Maybe he reads my blog.
Ben Smith at Politico is now reporting that Senator Barack Obama will deliver a major speech in “the larger issue of race in this campaign.”
According to Smith, Obama told reporters in Pennsylvania today that, “I am going to be talking about not just Reverend Wright, but the larger issue of race in this campaign.”
Perhaps some suspect that even if he is honest and forthcoming in his speech tomorrow about race and religion that he risks being pigeon holed as the black candidate. But in the long run he still runs the greater risk of being branded as such if he runs away from confronting this issue.
In the long run, this speech will help inoculate him against the kind of personal attacks he will undoubtedly face in the future primary contests or in the general election.
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