On Excerpts of The Battle for America 2008

I have never been much of consumer of campaign books. I tend to think they more or less rehash everything that has already been dissected in contemporaneous reporting even if they do offer juicy tidbits about campaign infighting, portraits of a frustrated candidate, and a loads of humorous anecdotes. Couldn’t I get much of that on YouTube spoofs anytime I want? Aside from a peculiar variety of political junkies, I often wonder to myself who actually purchases such books.

But after reading the an excerpt of “The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election” by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson in the Washington Post today, I think I’m beginning to understand the appeal of that genre of books. Of course, the 2008 presidential contest from primary to the end of the general election is an unusual serious of events featuring an unlikely stew of characters giving life to grand themes. Somehow the white guy from the South, former Senator John Edwards, became the underdog and a white woman from a northern blue state and black guy with a Muslim name became the main competitors on the Democratic side. And even in that struggle contained hues of David versus Goliath storyline that the media found easy to sell to a eager public.

Meanwhile, the Republican corp had a number of cartoon characters from the adamantly anti-immigrant then-Congressman Tom Tancredo to the jolly aw shucks evangelism of former Arkansas Mike Huckabee. A more disciplined Senator John McCain had to emerge from the ashes before taking the lead. And that only happened after his big win in New Hampshire.

The media’s appetite for sideshow personalities like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Joe the Plumber, and Bill Ayers made the long campaign easy fodder for water cooler talk for those who wanted a little gossip go with wonky debates on the minutiae of preconditions, the importance of a employer mandates in a health care plan, and the intricacies of the delegate and Superdelegate count.

Historians will have fun with that moment in American politics for generations to decades to come – maybe even longer than that.

But everything revolved around the eventual victor Barack Obama. Compared to his competitors, his campaign was heralded a marvel of near pitch perfect management with few dips in morale matching the posture of its intrepid leader. And the public, particularly his supporters, were very impressed with his cool demeanor, keen intellect and soaring rhetoric.

Balz and Johnson, however, seized on the moments in which those notions did not hold up.

Aides worried that Obama’s low morale might infect others in the campaign and spoke to him about it. They tried to buck him up, but at points in the spring and early summer of 2007, he was deeply frustrated — with his own performance and with that of much of his campaign. On July 15, he met with his senior staff at the home of Valerie Jarrett, a close friend and confidante to both Obama and his wife, Michelle. One adviser recalled it as the moment Obama began to take a more direct role in the operations of his campaign. He was blunt in his critique, and the exchanges among some of his advisers became testy. Beyond fundraising and the operation overseeing the Internet and new media, the campaign was not performing well, Obama said. The message still wasn’t where it should be. The political operation wasn’t up to speed. The campaign lacked crispness and good execution. He believed it was becoming too insular and wanted new people added to the inner circle. He told his team members they were all doing B work. If they continued on that course, they would come in a respectable second.

“Second is not good enough,” he said.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the excerpt so far, however, was then-chief campaign strategist and now White House senior adviser David Axelrod’s candid and prescient assessment of the big O’s potential weaknesses in a 2006 memo.

“It goes to your willingness and ability to put up with something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism. At the risk of triggering the very reaction that concerns me, I don’t know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch. You care far too much what is written and said about you. You don’t relish combat when it becomes personal and nasty. When the largely irrelevant Alan Keyes attacked you, you flinched,” he said of Obama’s 2004 Senate opponent.

Many in the blogosphere and beyond often wondered if Obama was in fact the happy warrior beneath all that cool even if he could seduced legions of voters with great speechifying. The sheer force of the machinery of the campaign helped quell, thought not silence, many of those lingering doubts. And Obama knew it telling Balz and Haynes:

As he reviewed the campaign from his transition headquarters in mid-December, Obama offered a frank assessment of his two main competitors: Clinton and John McCain. “I was sure that my toughest race was Hillary,” he said. “Hillary was just a terrific candidate, and she really found her voice in the last part of the campaign. After Texas and Ohio she just became less cautious and was out there and was working hard and I think connecting with voters really well. She was just a terrific candidate. And [the Clinton campaign] operation was not as good as ours and not as tight as ours, but they were still plenty tough. Their rapid response, how they messaged in the media was really good. So we just always thought they were our most formidable challenge. That isn’t to say that we underestimated John McCain; it’s just that we didn’t think that their campaign operation was as good.

I cannot help but note the irony here that the campaign that was often dubbed as personality driven and almost free of doubt was in fact the very same tightly organized campaign that achieved success in no small part due to a healthy fear of losing. Its not news, but still a tidbit worth chewing. And maybe with enough of these kinds of insights it might even form a book worth reading.

Lindsey Graham’s Majoritarianism

On day 2 of the Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination, Senator Lindsey Graham asked a fairly peculiar question. “What’s the best way for society to change, generally speaking? What’s the most legitimate way for a society to change?” At first, Judge Sotomayor was stumped by that question because it seemed academic at best.

He then asks “Do you think judges — do you think judges have changed society by some of the landmark decisions in the last 40 years?” Now it is plainly true that the high court’s decisions on everything from campaign finance reform to the death penalty to gay rights to bilingual education to voting rights to employment discrimination and much more has undoubtedly changed society.  But Judge Sotomayor wisely demured from responding until he revealed his real reason for engaging in that line of questioning.

And in a very patronizing Senator Graham noted “… a lot of us feel that the best way to change society is to go to the ballot box, elect someone, and if they are not doing it right, get rid of them through the electoral process. And a lot of us are concerned from the left and the right that unelected judges are very quick to change society in a way that’s disturbing. Can you understand how people may feel that way?”

Of course, this seems sensible on its face, but it Sen. Graham is ignoring how the courts as an institution differ from legislative bodies. Part of the reason judges to federal courts are unelected and have lifetime tenure is to make sure that political pressures do not override larger concerns about constitutional rights, including making unpopular rulings if necessary, to protect the rights of women and people of color.

Of course, the ballot box is important and is obviously a tranformative vehicle for change in its own right, but the courts can provide a check against the other two branches of government when both are two preocuppied with the popular will. Democracy is more than simple majority rule. It also has to consider the rights of minorities and the individual.

But Sen. Graham also noted:

I think, for a long time, a lot of talented women were asked, can you type? And were trying to get beyond that and improve as a nation. So when it comes to the idea that we should consciously try to include more people in the legal process and the judicial process, from different backgrounds, count me in.

But your speeches don’t really say that to me.

They — along the lines of what Senator Kyl was saying — they kind of represent the idea, there’s a day coming when there’ll be more of us — women and minorities — and we’re going to change the law.

And what I hope we’ll take away from this hearing is there need to be more women and minorities in the law to make a better America. And the law needs to be there for all of us, if and when we need it.
And the one thing that I’ve tried to impress upon you through jokes and being serious, is the consequences of these words in the world in which we live in. You know, we’re talking about putting you on the Supreme Court and judging your fellow citizens.

And one of the things that I need to be assured of is that you understand the world as it pretty much really is. And we’ve got a long way to go in this country…

This statement is the clearest expression of the anxiety white males feel about living in a society with more Judge Sonia Sotomayors and fewer Joe the Plumbers.

Watch the exchange here:

Not Quite Post-Racial

From the New York Times:

Few groups conducted public polls on the issue as it faded in recent years, and the results from those that did reveal a consistent ambivalence, said Michael Dimock, a pollster with the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

When asked a question about “affirmative action or preferential treatment for minorities,” the public has consistently opposed the idea by a margin of two to one. But when asked about “affirmative action programs designed to help women and minorities,” an even bigger majority has supported them.

….. the election of Mr. Obama does not appear to have changed either result.

So I guess we are not quite the post racial society that so many people thought we were after the November election.

I bet once conservatives find their voice in opposing Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court its likely that they will attempt to portray her as a quotas obsessed affirmative action baby not worthy of seat on the high court even as they admit that “at least on paper, she has professional qualifications” to serve.

The Strident Opposition

Just as liberal activist groups tried to exert pressure on Democratic Senators in 2005 and 2006 to aggressively block President Bush’s Supreme Court nominees, conservative groups this time around are applying the same kind of pressure on Republican Senators to touch up President Obama’s nominee to replace Justice David Souter. Charlie Savage reported the NYT this weekend that the paper has obtained ten memorandums revealing how conservatives are eager to exploit typical culture war issues “abortion, same-sex marriage, the separation of church” in addition to the propriety of citing foreign law in interpreting the Constitution.

Right wing activists are well aware that the deck is stacked against them, but that has not prevented them from attracting donors to support a media campaign for television, radio, and internet ad buys.  Senate Republicans, on the other hand, are trying to manage expectations for mounting stiff opposition to the nominee while still refusing to give up the filibuster option. According to the NYT, one conservative opposition memo on 9th Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw also noted her rulings on the death penalty, and separation between church and state and free speech issues.

The Judicial Confirmation Network is leading the effort to try to define  such contenders as  newly confirmed U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and Seventh Circuit Court Judge Diane Wood, as “way left and outside the American mainstream.” For Sonia Sotomayor, the Judicial Confirmation Network asserts falsely that she has been reversed 100 percent of the time and refers to her ruling in the New Haven firefighter affirmative action case as evidence that she’s for racial quotas. Bloggers at the National Review picked up on a set of controversial remarks by Sotomayor where in a 2002 speech she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

JCN is currently running web ads against Kagan by attacking her for “attempting to keep the military off campus” as Dean of Harvard Law School to support a ban against military recruiters on the because of its enforcement of the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy.”  Other JCN web ads portray Diane Wood as a foe of religious freedom and a looney prochoice advocate with federal judgeship.

No Indictment of Her Intelligence

One of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s former clerks, Robin Kar, who is now a Professor of Law and Philosophy, penned a vigorous and eloquent defense of his mentor’s record, work ethic and intelligence at PrawfsBlawg. Sotomayor has come under harsh or better yet hatch job like criticism since media reports began suggesting she is on President Obama’s short list to replace Justice David H. Souter on the Supreme Court.

Money quote:

I suspect that some people on the left may be concerned about Judge Sotomayor because she may not be the “liberal antidote to Justice Scalia” that some have desired. But this is no indictment of her intelligence, but rather of their imagination.

Read the post in its entirety here.

In Search of an Empathetic Nominee

So it seems as if President Obama will not name a replacement for Justice David Souter this week says the WaPo. But the announcement of a nominee with “real world experience ” does seem to be eminent.  In addition to Second Circuit Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the other front-runners named in this morning’s Washington Post article include:

Judge Diane P. Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit; Elena Kagan, Obama’s solicitor general and the former dean of Harvard Law School; and Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm (D), a Harvard Law graduate whose background running a large state dealing with severe hardship may qualify as the experience Obama is seeking.

None of these names are new. But most of the reports I have seen usually included the Canadian born Granholm in the extended list of potential nominees, not on the short list.

It also seems as if the attacks on Sotomayor are starting to worry some in the White House.  According to the WaPo, one official involved in the White House  seems to be concerned that the native Bronxite is being portrayed as someone who “doesn’t play well with others.”

Sigh.

There needs to be an organized effort to aggressively push back against the noise machine, though some of that has already begun.

Meanwhile, in her piece today Ruth Marcus of the WaPo attempts to put some meant on the bones regarding Obama’s seemingly vague empathy standard. To Marcus, Obama invoked the empathy standard not to be  the new age sensitive guy, but to broaden the discussion on the role of judges beyond the trite umpire analogy that Chief Justice Roberts easily popularized during his confirmation process in 2005.

If that were all judges did Marcus contends, then “we could program powerful computers to fulfill the judicial function.” Marcus also noted that empathy and the lackthereof has already revealed itself in some of the courts more recent rulings.

When Bowers was overruled in 2003, the majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy was infused with a greater understanding that anti-sodomy laws “seek to control a personal relationship.” You got the sense that Kennedy actually knew people in such relationships.

And empathy runs both ways. In 2007, when the court rejected Lilly Ledbetter’s pay discrimination lawsuit because she had waited too long to complain about her lower salary, the five-justice majority seemed moved by concern for employers unable to defend themselves against allegations of discrimination that allegedly occurred years earlier.

That’s real talk.

Some time ago, Jefferey Toobin of the New Yorker recalled his favorite Souter opinion where he dissented in a case that involved a man named Kieth Bowles, who was sentenced to 15 years to life for murder in Ohio. Bowles wanted to file an appeal in federal court, but the judge mistakenly provided the wrong date for the filing deadline.

In a callous  5 to 4 ruling with Justice Clarence Thomas writing for the majority, the court said,  “Tough luck, pal. The law’s the law. Bowles missed the deadline, which he might consider as he potentially spends the rest of his life in prison.”

For his part, Justice Souter called attention to the lack of compassion shown by his fellow justices in his dissent. “It is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way, and there is not even a technical justification for condoning this bait and switch.”

I wonder if that is empathy or just plain common sense at work.

Update: Media Matters has put together a solid document countering conservative talking points on all things judicial nominations, including Sotomayor.

False Choices in Picking a New Court Nominee

Each time a key administrative appointment is in the news suddenly the conversation operates on two polarities – diversity and qualifications, as if someone could not be eminently qualified for a job if he or she were not a white male. People need to be constantly reminded that there are talented people of color and women out there for many of the country’s top jobs, just look at the president’s cabinent or even the man who occupies the Oval Office himself.

Thats why its frustrating to read opinion pieces in the Washington Post like Benjamin Wittes entitled, “On the Supreme Court, What Price Diversity?” particularly when he says that a diverse court automatically comes at the price of nominating a quality Justice. That’s just a false dichtomy.

Syndicated columnist Ruben Navarette breaks down why on the Chris Matthews show.

Souter Round Up

I thought this was a good round up.

Rumor and speculation are the life blood of covering nominations and appointments particularly during the early days of any presidential administration. That said, here are some helpful links and other info on who is on the short and expanded list of replacements.

The WSJ wants President Obama to appoint, “Jose Cabranes, a Puerto Rican immigrant named to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals by President Clinton in 1994.”

Keith Perine at CQ’s Legal Beat asks when is a filibuster not a filibuster. Seth Stern also says that we should expect a vote to confirm Obama’s nominee whoever she is some time before the August recess.

Micheal Fletcher and Paul Kane at the WaPo report that administration officials expect the next nominee to be confirmed by October. Dan Balz also at the WaPo informs us that even if the nomination battle become a hyper partisan navigating the politics of it all may still be tough.

I got an oldie but goodie here. In July of 2007, Tom Goldstein wrote a really good post for SCOTUS blog on who Democratic Supreme Court nominees might be.

Stuart Taylor at the National Journal shares some “random thoughts” on what to expect when you are expecting a nominee.

Georgetown Law Professor Jefferey Rosen in the NYT urged the president not to follow the Souter model in picking a nominee, since he had “a hermetically sealed approach to the job” and “had had trouble communicating his ideas” to other Justices.

Mary L. Dudziak at Balkination says Obama should appoint someone like Justice Thurgood Marshall to the court.

Meteor Blades at DailyKos has a post featuring pics to go with the names of potential nominees being floated in the media.

Otis is Hungry at Daily Kos also has bios and commentary to go with the names.

Michele Malkin implores her fellow conservatives to gird their lions.

SCOTUS blog collected the statements from sitting Justices on Souter’s retirement.

(H/T: Justice Chatter)

A Skeptical Court Hears Voting Rights Act Case

Yesterday, a skeptical U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that requires certain states and localities with a history of voting discrimination submit changes in voting procedures, or gain “pre-clearance,” by the federal government for approval.

The case involves a municipal utility district in Texas that wants to sidestep needing to comply with the provision because it claims the kind of discrimination that it once deterred no longer exists. Board member elections in the utility district require pre-clearance since the entire state of Texas falls under the jurisdiction of Section 5.

The case is called Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder.

Adam Liptak’s summary in the NYT of yesterday’s oral argument was spot on, especially his description of Justice Kennedy’s hostile line of questioning. And if his questioning is any indication, which in this case I think it is, Kennedy will likely write the majority or controlling opinion as he did in the Section 2 case earlier this year and erode much of Section 5, while of course noting that racial discrimination “is not ancient history.”

Perhaps, the real question here is how badly the Court will gut Section 5 and if it will introduce or demand that Congress create a more precise and less far reaching standard in determining which states and jurisdictions should be covered and why, even if in 2006 it reauthorized the Voting Rights Act only after it held 19 hearings and reviewed thousands of pages of testimony and documents.

Plus, a very curious exchange between Justice Scalia and Debo Aegbile from LDF during yesterday’s oral arguments.

Scalia actually suggested that simply because the VRA was cleared both chambers of Congress by wide margins, even if both houses and the Oval Office were controlled by Republicans at the time, we should be skeptical of its validity. In other words, we should be skeptical of the law, which has been reauthorized repeatedly by Congress, because it got too much support. Huh?

If we applied that same line of thinking to other laws enacted by Congress such as the American Disabilities Amendments Act that passed this fall and signed by a Republican president, then I suppose we should consider them invalid too. Or maybe we should consider the unanimous opinions like in Brown v. Board of Ed invalid because they also had too much support.

What happened to judicial modesty and due deference to legislative bodies that conservatives love to spout?

Here’s the exchange:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Adegbile, what was — I read it in the briefs, and I forget what it was. What was the vote on this 2006 extension — 98 to nothing in the Senate, and what was it in the House? Was -

MR. ADEGBILE: It was — it was 33 to 390, I believe.

JUSTICE SCALIA: 33 to 390. You know, the — the Israeli Supreme Court, the Sanhedrin, used to have a rule that if the death penalty was pronounced unanimously, it was invalid, because there must be something wrong there. Do you ever expect — do you ever seriously expect Congress to vote against a reextension of the Voting Rights Act? Do you really think that any incumbent would — would vote to do that?

MR. ADEGBILE: Well -

JUSTICE SCALIA: Twenty-five years from now? Fifty years from now? When?

MR. ADEGBILE: Justice Scalia, I think some members of Congress did of course vote against the Act.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Thirty-three members of the House and nobody in the Senate.

MR. ADEGBILE: Thirty-three members of the House, indeed. But I think the — the reason that they voted for it is what’s more important. Congress did not assume that section 5 was necessary. It took a very careful examination to see how it was operating, and the determination was that in the absence of section 5, because of the repetitive violations, because of 620 objections — there was evidence that approximately 60 percent of those show some evidence of intentional discrimination.

If you take away the prophylaxis, the discrimination will return in a way that we don’t need to revisit. The history has been that voting discrimination manifests itself through repetitive efforts and…..

Besides Texas, eight other states are covered by the provision, including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Most of Virginia and parts of California, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota are also covered.

Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to eliminate discriminatory voting practices by state and local governments. The law has been renewed and amended several times since it was passed, most recently with a 25-year renewal in 2006 where it cleared the Senate by a 98-0 and the House 390-33.

Homeland Security Sees Uptick in Hate Group Recuritment

A Department of Homeland Security report on the rise of right wing hate groups and extremism was leaked this week. The DHS report is called “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.”

Unsurprisingly, the report found that the spike in undocumented immigration, the current economic downtown, and the election of the first African American president have spurred their efforts in winning new recruits.

Not exactly news to many of us, but its different when you see this documented by the government.

Of course, much of the controversy surrounding the report has focused on how these groups recruit disgruntled military veterans that find it difficult to readjust to civilian life, but that’s far from the report’s central focus. And anyone who takes time to read it would soon discover that himself.

But even if some civil libertarians and conservatives raising concerns about whether or not the government should be monitoring political beliefs, I think this presents many civil and human rights advocates with an opportunity to to promote greater awareness about the rise of hate crimes and their clear, though often overlooked, relationship to hate speech. That’s not to say we should go out of our way to criminalize intolerant speech, but being vigilante about countering intolerant speech can be critical to reducing hate crimes.

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act, which seems like it will be introduced this session of Congress, would provide local authorities with more resources to combat hate crimes and give federal government jurisdiction over processing hate crimes in states where the current law is inadequate.

In my opinion, I think the key findings in the report include:

• Over the past five years, various rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, and recruiting tool. Debates over appropriate immigration levels and enforcement policy generally fall within the realm of protected political speech under the First Amendment, but in some cases, anti-immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent.

• In contrast to the early 90s, the advent of the Internet and other information age technologies s has given domestic extremists greater access to information related to bomb-making, weapons training, and tactics, as well as targeting of individuals, organizations, and facilities, potentially making extremist individuals and groups more dangerous and the consequences of their violence more severe.

• Lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States. Information from law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations indicates lone wolves and small terrorist cells have shown intent—and, in some cases, the capability—to commit violent acts.

• Most statements by rightwing extremists have been rhetorical, expressing concerns about the election of the first African American president, but stopping short of calls for violent action.

• Historically, domestic rightwing extremists have feared, predicted, and anticipated a cataclysmic economic collapse in the United States. Conspiracy theories involving declarations of martial law, impending civil strife or racial conflict, suspension of the U.S. Constitution, and the creation of citizen detention camps often incorporate aspects of a failed economy.

Also, see Department of Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano’s statement on the report here.

NYT: Obama to Push Immigration Reform This Year

This could be risky if it is not done right since the anti-immigrant right has been waiting for this. The last time comprehensive immigration reform came up in the Senate in June 2007 we got clobbered on cloture by the score of 46 yeas to 53 nays. Of course, you cannot discount the fact that the bill was being pushed by an deeply unpopular president on a reluctant Congress in different political environment. But still its something to think about.

At any rate, Julia Preston at the NYT says once the CIR bill drops it will feature many of the familiar elements that Obama campaign on:

In broad outlines, officials said, the Obama administration favors legislation that would bring illegal immigrants into the legal system by recognizing that they violated the law, and imposing fines and other penalties to fit the offense. The legislation would seek to prevent future illegal immigration by strengthening border enforcement and cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, while creating a national system for verifying the legal immigration status of new workers.

I really hope that does not mean reviving E-Verify or the no-match stuff. Those policies just don’t work. But I do like the fact that the administration is at least signaling they will push some version of CIR this year. It’ll be interesting to see if certain members of Congress will embrace their inner Tom Tancredo on this one or get on the right side of history.

The Durban Review Conference and its Critics

This week Secretary of State designate Hillary Clinton and US Ambassador to the UN designate Dr. Susan Rice will have their confirmation hearings this week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Tuesday and Thursday.

To be sure, their respective views on humanitarian intervention to nuclear non-proliferation, from devising an exit strategy for Iraq and how to appropriately engage Iran or addressing energy security problems and climate change, among other issues will be thoroughly probed and debated.

Another serious issue that has not received national attention thus far, but merits serious consideration,  is whether or not the United States should participate in the next World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WCAR), otherwise known as Durban II, scheduled to take place April 20-24, 2009.

The chief aim of the last WCAR conference in 2001 was to provide a global framework that national governments could build upon to enact or improve racial anti-discrimination laws and initiatives.

Yet unlike many other United Nations member states, the U.S. has not been involved in the Durban process since 2001 when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell withdrew the U.S. delegation from the conference in Durban, South Africa. Powell said the U.S. could not support the the conference’s collective statement by governments, the Durban Declaration of Programme of Action (DDPA), because it contained language that singled out Israel for criticism.  A handful of countries within the 57 member Organization of Islamic Conference – Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Pakistan – led the effort to insert language about foreign occupation and other statements designed to inject the visceral politics of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Ethnic and racial strife in Darfur, Kashmir, Tibet or elsewhere in the world were conspicuously ignored.

Things were worse in the non-governmental forum where a small yet vocal minority of organizations high-jacked the gathering by not only disseminated anti-Semitic and anti-Israel literature and cartoons, but also drafted a document that neither reflected the true the spirit of the conference nor the views of the majority of the forum’s participants.

In the end, the Israel obsession only served to diminish the legitimacy of the conference and subvert its central mission of combating racism and overshadowed some of its more enduring achievements. Instead many choose to focus on it’s failures.

“I know that you do not combat racism by conferences that produce declarations containing hateful language, some of which is a throwback to the days of ‘Zionism equals racism,” Powell said in frustration on September 4th as he stormed out of the conference before a final draft was of the document produced.

Five days later, the 9/11 attacks occurred and in the remaining years of the Bush presidency U.N.- U.S. relations soured along with American standing in Muslim majority countries.

Wrestling with the Legacy of Durban I

Fearing a repeat of the 2001 conference, Israel and Canada have already said they will boycott Durban II. The respective U.S. out-going and in-coming presidential administrations have remained silent on whether or not the America will participate in April. Most UN member states, however, are not so quick to abandon the process.

Despite the efforts of certain OIC governments seeking to undermine the process in the 2001, the document, which was endorsed by a majority of a 134 countries in the UN General Assembly, managed to have a positive impact on other UN member nations striving to achieve some measure of racial justice. For  example, the DDPA recognized the Dalits, or the 160 million “untouchables” in India as victims of caste based discrimination elsewhere and that they should be treated as  a protected class in international human rights law.

In 2003, the Brazilian government created the Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality to implement affirmative action programs for people of African and indigenous descent in entering universities and in finding government jobs. This was done in response to the DDPA’s recommendation governments used equal opportunity programs be used to deter racial discrimination and promote integration.

The 2001 document also recognized slavery, including the transatlantic slave trade, as a crime against humanity. Nearly seven years later, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelming passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Thus, while its difficult to draw a cause and effect relationship here, its clear that some of the recommendations coming out of the Durban process helped set standards or even nudge governments in the right direction on racial justice issues.

But many UN observers also see a revival of the same campaign OIC countries to not only derail the process by making Israel a central focus, but also introducing anti-blasphemy measures to limit free expression. This has as much to do with the neglect of the so-called Middle-East process as it does with the controversy spawned by the Danish cartoons.

This has lead some critics of Durban II to believe the U.S. should boycott the conference. “Durban II, planned for April in Geneva, promises to be an encore of the same old Israel-bashing” argues a Wall Street Journal Editorial. “If the Durban II drafters have their way, any challenge of Islamic teachings, including teachings used to justify violence, would be taboo.”

Of course, the document is called a draft for a reason, and an active effort by the U.S. in negotiating the final text of the Durban II document could change things significantly.

Changing the Face of U.S. and U.N. Relations

Not everyone thinks the U.S. should be content to it on the sidelines. In 2008, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution sponsored (H.R.1361) by Rep. Howard Berman, urging the Secretary of State to “lead a high-level diplomatic effort” in order “to defeat any effort by states to use the forum to promote anti-Semitism or hatred against members of any group or to call into question the legitimacy of any state.”

Other UN observers have been more direct. “Unfortunately, plugging our ears to this kind of dreck neither makes it any less likely to occur, nor deprives it of a forum. The only way to counter speech we don’t like, as the constitutional adage goes, is with more speech” argued John Boonstra at UN Dispatch, a blog that covers UN issues.

Even the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, a staunchly pro-Israel group, urged the United States “to use the preparatory process to halt the further demonization of Israel, ” as opposed to prematurely abandoning the process entirely.

But even if Israel was not central obsession of a few yet influential countries at the U.N., the U.S.  should at least strongly consider participating in the process if it wants to improve its image in the world, which is something Obama aims to do. Choosing to boycott Durban II, the first UN human rights gathering the in-coming Obama administration would have a chance to attend, may after all send the wrong message to the world -  something that the first black president could ill afford to do given the nature of the conference.

The question of race in 21st will only get more complicated with increased immigration from the global south to the global north, and as various countries including the U.S. try to grapple with rapidly changing demographics. Also, Barack Obama needs to demonstrate that he wants to move beyond the excesses of the Bush’s war on terror policies, which has been seen by many as an excuse to target Arabs and Muslims. In other words, the civil strife associated with racism could present diplomatic obstacles and create more instability in the world.

At the same time, however, he should impress on certain countries that terrorism is as real threat to U.S. as it is to countries anywhere else in the world and satirical depictions of religious figures, while offensive, should not be used as an excuse to place limits on freedom of expression, as some OIC countries want to do.

Additionally, Durban II could serve as a stepping stone for an Obama administration looking to reedefine the U.N.-U.S. relations in the post-Bush era. Making sure the conference maintains its central focus on the combating racial discrimination, instead of a proxy battle over Arab-Israeli relations will be a difficult task. But it is still achievable with an energetic and committed team of diplomats. UN Ambassador Dr. Susan Rice is certain capable of leading such an effort on her own and is familiar with the sort of entanglements awaiting her in Geneva.

In a November 2002 speech before a an audience at the University of Delaware, she made the following remarks:

Against this dismal back-drop, we also encounter an international community increasingly skeptical of U.S. intentions and resentful of our power. How did we get here? In large part, we did so by almost reflexively spurning collective instruments – from international treaties such as the ABM treaty, the Bioweapons Convention and the International Criminal Court to multilateral gatherings such as the UN Conference on Racism.

Of course, that was more than six years ago. Dr. Rice may have a different opinion today. But note Dr. Rice’s insistence on the connection between the exercise of American power and blacklash toward retreating from organizations within the U.N. system.

But Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton’s is less likely to support U.S. participation, assuming her statements on the campaign trail are any indication.  “I will never forget how the world’s first conference against racism became a mockery of itself when it descended into anti-Semitism and hatred,” she said in a June 2008 speech at an AIPAC conference.  “The debacle at Durban must never be repeated. We should take very strong action to ensure anti-Semitism is kept off the agenda at Durban II and if those efforts fail, I believe that the United States should boycott that conference.

With Obama’s decision to elevate the U.S. Ambassadorship to the UN to a cabinet level post, Dr. Rice will report directly to the president without the filter of the State Department, though the Secretary of State will likely to be consulted as well. But even in that scenario its difficult to say whose opinion will be given more weight. After all, Dr. Susan Rice is more of the UN expert than Clinton is even if the Secretary of State is regarded as the nation’s top diplomat.

Their statements on Durban II will surely be scrutinized during their respective confirmation hearings, particularly by Senators seeking to pin the in-coming administration down on a definitive ye or nay position on the issue.

Further complicating this issue is Israel’s war in Gaza and the U.S. kneejerk response to support it. Now while Israel’s current bombardment campaign is a separate matter, it will undoubtedly influence what Obama decides.  In his letter, to the outgoing Ambassador to the UN, Obama affirmed his support for Israel in its war in Gaza even as its unpopularity grows exponentially with each passing day and the Palestianian death toll rises.

Hopefully, President-elect Obama will not allow accusations that he is not a “friend” to Israel affect how he determines how to recast U.S.-U.N. relations. Whatever course he decides on this issue should be consistent with his promise to “to renew the trust and faith of our people — and all people — in an America that battles immediate evils, promotes an ultimate good, and leads the world once more” as he said in his Foreign Affairs essay.

That kind of bold leadership requires a break from the past and the political will to create your own opportunities even if they initially present themselves as crises.

Note:  I have changed the title of this post from “The World Conference on Racism and its Critics”  to the “Durban Review Conference and its Critics.” since the former refers to the gathering in that took place in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, and the latter actually refers to the upcoming meeting in April 2009, which is a follow up to the first one.

First of Many Disagreements to Come

In picking Reverend Rick Warren deliver the invocation at the inaugural, President-elect Barack Obama earned the ire of the liberal left. It’s a reaction that surely team Obama must have foreseen, but one that may be difficult to quell, at least in the short term.

Joe Solmonese, President of Human Rights Campaign, a pro-gay rights group, called the  invitation “a genuine blow to LGBT Americans.”

At The Nation magazine Sarah Posner writes, “… the choice of Warren is not only a slap in the face to progressive ministers toiling on the front lines of advocacy and service but a bow to the continuing influence of the religious right in American politics.”

Greg Levine of Firedog Lake worries that the President-elect is being too accomodationist to a figure who deserves no olive branch, “… if Barack Obama wants to invite different voices to a discussion, fine, but that is very different from having a known homophobe give a speech at what is likely to be one of the highest profile events in recent US history. That’s not a dialogue—that’s a signal.”

Rev. Warren has been an outspoken and vigorous supporter of banning gay marriage, compared abortion to the Holocaust, thinks evolution is a fiction, and is an ardent foe of anti-stem cell research. To many on the left, he is a culture warrior in the mold of James Dobson or Pat Robertson despite the best-selling author’s support for such causes as global poverty reduction, containing the spread of AIDS and HIV, and combating climate change. All of which are areas where Obama will more than likely want to enlist Warren’s support.

But liberals, many of whom are willing to work with evangelicals on those same issues, do not want any progress of those nobel causes  to come at the expense of the right to marry, sexually reproductive rights, or scientific freedom. While inviting Rev. Warren to deliver the invocation will not automatically usher in the dark ages, it does suggest something that Obama is a little too conciliatory toward the very same people who will try to tear him apart in a few months. Some even worry that its an indication of the very conservative instincts that many fear Obama has thus far managed to conceal.

Other political observers see a stroke of opportunistic genius involved. MSNBC First Read said, “As for the pure politics of this, when you look at the exit polls and see the large numbers of white evangelicals in swing states like North Carolina, Florida and Missouri, as well as emerging battlegrounds like Georgia and Texas, you’ll understand what Obama’s up to. ” As plausible as that may sound to some, I think that’s a tad too cynical.

For his part, Obama said on Thursday at his press conference:

Nevertheless, I had an opportunity to speak, and that dialogue, I think, is a part of what my campaign’s been all about, that we’re never going to agree on every single issue. What we have to do is create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable, and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans. So Rick Warren has been invited to speak, Dr. Joseph Lowery — who has deeply contrasting views to Rick Warren about a whole host of issues — is also speaking.

During the course of the entire inaugural festivities, there are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented. And that’s how it should be, because that’s what America’s about. That’s part of the magic of this country, is that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated. And so, you know, that’s the spirit in which, you know, we have put together what I think will be a terrific inauguration. And that’s, hopefully, going to be a spirit that carries over into my administration.

Disagreeing without being disagreeable might not cut it with after the fallout over Prop 8, a measure banning same-sex marriagea, in California. Too many feelings are still raw about that lost, and not enough has been done to mend divisions between communities. Plus, given how there are thousands of activists about to descend on DC on January 20th, we could see spontaneous protests take place just as we saw in around the country in the aftermath of the passage of Prop 8. Thus, creating an undesirable subplot to what would otherwise be a much more grander narrative about the dawn of an era.

Most people who voted for Obama assumed that they would not agree with him on every single issue, but they do hope to be on the same wavelength on certain big issues that have a certain visceral dimension to them. And when that is not the case, the President-elect should expect a barrage of intense and persistent criticism, which I am sure he will be able to handle. He’s a big boy.

So simply attributing criticism as mere difference of opinion, especially when its describe as noisy and such, probably will strike many his supporters as dismissive. As David Corn noted on CQ, “…Warren’s opposition to gay rights is more than a mere policy dispute. It is an act of bigotry. Sure, Warren does not believe he is being discriminatory. But that’s what it is.”

By the same token, liberals have to understand that the culture wars don’t mean as much to Obama as they do to his Democratic predecessors. He thinks those issues frames are designed to keep Democrats in the losing column, electorally speaking. So, he will not hesitate to aggressively court evangelicals on issues where they and liberals share common ground.  Doing so, will probably involve at least some symbolic gestures before effectively prying lose the white knuckled grip Republican’s have had on that segment of the voting population as he fulfills his quest to redraw the political map and maintain widespread support for his agenda.

In the final analysis, however, I am not sure if having Rev. Warren at the inauguration is worth the political headache of angering the liberal base. I realize that the favorability ratings are high and that Obama feels as if he could take at hit now, but I would be reluctant to spend hard won political capital among supporters on something that would pose the most activist and partisan segment of my base against me on the last day of the honeymoon.

Prioritizing Human Rights

I know Human Rights Day was on Wednesday, but I thought I would cross-post an interesting piece on how to incorporate human rights law and principles into U.S. domestic policy making  that I saw on the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights website, entitled Making Human Rights a Domestic Priority.

In an effort to institutionalize the nation’s bipartisan commitment to human rights at home, the American Constitutional Society for Law and Policy (ACS) has released a report by human rights scholar and Fordham law professor Catherine Powell offering guidance to the next presidential administration on how to integrate human rights principles into U.S. domestic policy making.

In response to a widening gap between what the U.S. promotes abroad and what it practices at home, Powell laments how “human rights has come to be seen as a purely international concern, even though it is fundamentally the responsibility of each nation to guarantee basic rights for its own people, as a matter of domestic policy.”

“Human Rights at Home: A Domestic Blueprint for the New Administration” recommends either transforming or replacing the current U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) with a U.S. Commission on Civil and Human Rights to bridge the divide.  Armed with a broader mandate, this new commission would monitor both civil and human rights progress in the U.S., report on U.S. compliance with international human rights treaties, and investigate and hear complaints of human rights violations in the U.S.

A group of experts and senior officials from various federal agencies would implement the findings.

To avoid the politicization plaguing the present USCCR, the report recommends that every commissioner be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate to ensure “highly qualified leadership, broad bipartisan consensus, accountability, and professionalization of the Commission’s work.”

Currently, the president and the Congress are each allowed to appoint four out of the eight commissioners to the USCCR without either branch consulting the other. Single party dominance has also worried some critics after two commissioners reregistered as independents shortly after being appointed as Republicans, bringing the total of Republican commissioners to six.

Powell said that independence and credibility are critical in investigating allegations of human rights violations, such as those during the responses to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.

A recent survey by The Opportunity Agenda reveals substantial support for advancing a strong human rights agenda in the U.S. For example, 80 percent of Americans believe each person has certain basic rights even if governments don’t recognize them and that the U.S. should “strive to uphold human rights in the U.S. because there are people being denied their human rights in our country.”

Plus, the public also overwhelmingly agrees that equal access to public education (82 percent), equal opportunity regardless of race or gender (85 and 86 percent), a right to health care (72 percent), and freedom from torture and fair treatment by the criminal justice system (83 percent) are in fact human rights.

Such social justice issues of fairness and equality speak to the heart of the Blueprint’s aims.  As Powell notes, “We should make the transition from a society of structural inequality to one in which not only the very highest glass ceilings are broken, but also in which sticky floors and broken ladders to opportunity are repaired.”

More of that Transracial Talk

If he loses, he’s black. If he wins, he’s a post-racial figure.  Before then-Senator Barack Obama became President-elect Obama, that how I imagined the narrative would play out. So far, I have to say I have been more wrong than right, but its still too early. We have at least four and potentially eight to find out.

Of course, the first signs of it are starting to emerge. Case in point Marie Arana. The Washington Post’s Book World editor has made the latest attempt to alert the rest of us to the fact that “Obama is not black, but transracial or even postracial.”

The phrase was repeated in much the same form by one media organization after another. It’s as if we have one foot in the future and another still mired in the Old South. We are racially sophisticated enough to elect a non-white president, and we are so racially backward that we insist on calling him black. Progress has outpaced vocabulary.

To me, as to increasing numbers of mixed-race people, Barack Obama is not our first black president. He is our first biracial, bicultural president. He is more than the personification of African American achievement. He is a bridge between races, a living symbol of tolerance, a signal that strict racial categories must go.

Perhaps, it was repeated because that is how Barack Obama frequently described himself even as he reminded people of the white side of his family. After all, its still possible for someone to recognize himself as a biracial black man or even for someone biracial to describe himself as simply black, which is what he often did. Case in point here is what Obama told the New York Times as a 28 year old in 1990 what it meant to be elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review:

But it’s important that stories like mine aren’t used to say that everything is O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me, there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal talent who don’t get a chance.

Maybe this is too vague for some, but it seems to be abundantly clear how Obama sees himself here.

Of course, some pundits are still confused, and will continue to push the whole “Obama as transracial figure” media narrative for whatever reason. Fine. Knock yourself out.

But for those who insist on it I only make one recommendation. Please read Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates piece on Barack Obama in Time Magazine in 2004.

Here’s the money quote:

Back in the real world, Obama is married to a black woman. He goes to a black church. He’s worked with poor people on the South Side of Chicago, and still lives there. That someone given the escape valve of biraciality would choose to be black, would see some beauty in his darker self and still care more about health care and public education than reparations and Confederate flags is just too much for many small-minded racists, both black and white, to comprehend.

Barack Obama’s real problem isn’t that he’s too white — it’s that he’s too black.