Freaks and Geeks

The Party of "losers" is set to gain.

Charles Pierce on Cynicism, Obama, and America

A compelling vision of caution.

Via Atrios.

The other night, though, I heard Obama say words to the effect of "we can change America".

That's a little different than claiming he or we can change the government of American and its policies.

In fact, beyond providing yet another item on the list of politically incorrect things to say or do if you really, really, truly, super duper, double triple true dat luv America more than anybody else, I'm not sure anyone can really change America. It's a rather diverse country, after all, and becoming more diverse all the time. Even Reagan in the age of Reagan didn't change America all that much.

Invasion-Occupation of Iraq and the Price of Gas

I'm not trying to say there's any kind of connection at all, cuz, nobody would have thought that an invasion, destruction and five+ year occupation of a Middle Eastern country that didn't pose an immediate threat to anyone in the region or beyond would have led to an exponential increase in the price of oil/gas.

It wasn't too long ago--2002 in fact--when oil was $25/barrel:

In the wake of the attack crude oil prices plummeted. Spot prices for the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate were down 35 percent by the middle of November. Under normal circumstances a drop in price of this magnitude would have resulted an another round of quota reductions but given the political climate OPEC delayed additional cuts until January 2002. It then reduced its quota by 1.5 million barrels per day and was joined by several non-OPEC producers including Russia who promised combined production cuts of an additional 462,500 barrels. This had the desired effect with oil prices moving into the $25 range by March, 2002. By mid-year the non-OPEC members were restoring their production cuts but prices continued to rise and U.S. inventories reached a 20-year low later in the year.

But no one could have been expected to have foreseen this.

Nothing to lose

Tuesday night I referenced a post from John Cole that compared HRC's continued campaign, scorched earth or otherwise, to that of a bank-robber holding it's employees and customers (the Democratic Party) as hostages, hoping against hope that, at a minimum, by threats and stalling she might at least make a getaway.

But I'm not sure that's quite right. The bank-robber still has something to lose.

I don't think that's the case with HRC. I know there has been some talk of her moving into the Senate majority leader role. And the Supreme Court would also be a possibility. But I gather neither she nor Bill care much for these lesser offerings. In any event, the longer she stays in the longer she risks burning her bridges to the goodwill necessary for achieving these posts, not to mention ruining any sort of "legacy" she or Bill might still hope to lay claim to.

VP's

It's getting to be that time.

There are probably at least three candidate typologies for the number 2 floating around out there.

One, is the "reinforcement" candidate. In contrast to the "balancing" theory of VP selections, where #1 looks for a #2 from a different region, age, gender, ethnic group, division of government, or ideological end of the party, the reinforcement idea holds that the #1 is best served by someone who mirrors or reinforces the top of the ticket. Bill Clinton's selection of Al Gore probably typifies this idea.

Two is the aforementioned balance pick. The balance pick could embrace some balancing characteristics while including a number of reinforcing aspects.

Three is a "unify the party" pick, which in this case, would most likely bear strong resemblance to the idea of balance.

While I've given the second and third typologies some thought, the reinforcement idea makes the most sense to me. But below I've included some examples of candidates that might fit into each type. Undoubtedly, these typologies are not necessarily mutually exclusive. As they say, everything's relative.

Reinforcement
Amy Klobuchar -- freshman U.S. Senator from Minnesota. She's young and attractive. And female. Would be a gutsy choice.

Kathleen Sebelius -- governor from Kansas in her second and last term. Has seemingly rebuilt the Democratic Party in a very conservative state. Modest speaking skills. Female.

Russ Feingold -- third term U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. Relatively young. Reliably progressive. Not terribly dynamic and has is divorced.

Bill Bradley -- former U.S. Senator from NJ, and former basketball star. Older, so would provide balance there. Has endorsed Obama and would embody Obama's different kind of politics. Despite his star credentials, Bradley is also charismatically challenged, and is also known for being wonkish and distant.

Balance
Bill Richardson -- former everything, congressman, diplomat, energy secretary, current governor of small but swing state of the SW, NM. Hispanic. Foreign policy cred. Also seen as somewhat eccentric.

Tom Daschle -- former U.S. Senator and Democratic leader from SD. Serious, older and experienced. Presided over the Democratic loss of the Senate in 2002 and managed to lose his own seat two years later--and deepen the Democratic Senate deficit in the process. Not particularly riveting as a speaker.

Joe Biden -- U.S. Senator from Delaware. Vetted. Decent speaker. Foreign policy cred. Outspoken, got chased from the '88 field for a verbal plagiarism gaffe that didn't get much notice in his '08 run.

Chris Dodd -- The Democratic, U.S. Senator from Connecticut. Opposed telecom immunity. Former head of the Democratic national party. OK speaker, used to debates.

Party Unity
HRC -- probably brings more negative than positive. But here's an alternative view.

Evan Bayh -- former governor and current U.S. Senator from Indiana. Former head of the DLC. Looks like a president. Not a stemwinder on the stump. Basically conservative and has supported the war.

Wild cards
Tim Kaine -- Virginia governor. Young, thought to be principled. Still in his first term from a conservative state.

James Webb -- first term U.S. Senator from Virginia. Former official in Reagan admin. Blunt and outspoken. Can dish it out.

Gary Hart -- former U.S. Senator from Colorado and two-time former Democratic presidential candidate. Got caught misbehavin' outside of marriage in '87. Has re-invented himself as an elder statesman-scholar.

Bob Casey, Jr. -- first term U.S. Senator from Pennsylania. Like his late but more famous father, is anti-abortion. Wiped out former Senator Rick Santorum in '06. Came out for Obama during primary season.

Some People Say...

John Cole:

This race now is no longer a race, but a hostage crisis. Hillary is surrounded, and she can see the super-delegates through the windows of the bank lobby and she knows they are armed to the teeth, wearing their kevlar vests, weapons sighted, aimed, and with the safeties off. In her heart of hearts she knows it is over, but still she keeps the pistol cocked at the head of the party. Maybe, just maybe, something will happen and she can make it to the fueled plane she demanded be taken to the airport and then she can go away to her big payday. She has come this far, she can’t quit now. Miracles happen. But it won’t happen. It never does. Not even in the movies, at least not the good ones. The only thing left to be resolved is how many hostages she kills.

---------

Easily the best analogy I've seen so far. I really can't add anything to this.

NYT and Washington Post Coverage of the Food Crisis

Amid an avalanche of shallow, despicable media coverage of Miley Cyrus, Rev. Wright, and Senator Obama's bowling scores and flag pin, it is also necessary to applaud the very good reporting being done in the NYT and the Washington Post regarding the mounting food crisis.

Both papers have been running their own series on the topic, and I heartedly encourage any and all to give both a careful read. The papers deserve a lot of credit for providing some very important and informative work, especially in light of the media meltdown occuring around them.

Wanker of the Day: Brian Williams

NBC Nightly "News" Anchor and blogger.

It's hard to know where to start. He disses Elizabeth Edwards and her more than valid complaint about the media, particularly its television and cable "news" wing, but without once referring to the substance of her op-ed. Instead, Williams does a little bait and switch by pivoting quickly away from Edwards' article to an ignorant, mocking critique of two puff pieces in the NYT's Styles and Travel sections. Williams, seemingly ignorant of his own profession's momentous slide in viewership, also snidely flips off the NYT for its modestly declining readership, in yet another shallow attempt to play hide the salami.

As if this wasn't bizarre enough, Williams then launches a glowing tribute to one Peggy Noonan, former speech writer and propagandist for Ronald Reagan, appraising as a "sparkling piece of journalism" another in a long list of trite, vapid whines about culture, "patriotism", flag pins, the candidates, and airports, and how Obama should shed tears of praise and adoration in response to the exploits of the infamous Nazi sympathizer Henry Ford.

Meanwhile, absent in any of this is a reference, comment, analysis, or explanation of his network's (along with CBS and ABC) use of Pentagon approved and orchestrated ex-retired-super-double-secret-probation military generals to propagandize the war effort leading up to and after the invasion of Iraq, reported on two weeks ago by the NYT, the same paper Williams was attempting to defame.

Finally, Williams deigns to return to his blog and the hundreds of blistering reader posts holding him accountable and arrogantly defends himself and the generals as not possibly having the gaul to do the very ignorant and deceitful things that bad old NYT reported they had.

But the Greenwald piece is at least a jewel.

Lord help us if there were actually issues at stake in this election

Then things would really get ugly.

Sullivan:

Isn't it a relief, by the way, for the MSM to have a presidential campaign in which no issues are actually discussed? This Wright-stuff is amazing to me. It's all the MSM seems to care about. Even coverage of McCain is now about his attitude toward an unhinged black pastor from Chicago. Hey: it beats discussing war, debt, the economy, torture, and terrorism. Because it enables America to return to the classic boomer racial-cultural wars that are all the MSM truly knows how to cover. There's nothing to be done right now but to duck and cover. And emerge when actual questions of actual salience emerge.

I was thinking about this sort of thing when I started to thumb through Bad Money. In the book's Preface, Philips takes note of the varying economic crises and "bubbles" that have surfaced in the last few years and plaintatively calls for the 2008 candidates to at least address these things. Barring rioting in the streets, and maybe not even then, this isn't likely to happen.

For one, the freak show coverage of campaigns by the television and cable "news" stations necessitates against addressing such substance. Second, the candidates themselves are too risk averse to chance the fall-out inherent in saying anything remotely controversial that could alienate this or that key interest group, or provide campaign fodder for the opposition. Third, I seriously doubt whether any the candidates really understand the basics of the issues at stake, much less what might be reasonable policy solutions to them.

Meanwhile, as Rev. Wright returns to the center of attention today, the price of oil has reached $120/gallon.

Wankers of the Day

The Washington Post editorial page:

IN THE PAST few weeks, Cuban President Raúl Castro has introduced a handful of micro-reforms to the oppressive and bankrupt regime left behind by his brother. Cubans are now officially allowed to buy cellphones, computers and microwave ovens; state workers may get deeds to apartments they have been renting for decades; and farmers may be able to sell part of what they grow at market prices. The measures won't have much impact (though they have evidently annoyed the officially retired Fidel Castro): The vast majority of Cubans can't afford to buy electronic goods, and the agricultural reforms fall short of steps taken years ago by North Korea.

The new leader's moves have nevertheless touched off a flurry of excitement and speculation among Cuba-watchers in the United States and Europe, some of whom have taken to comparing the 76-year-old Raúl Castro to Mikhail Gorbachev. European apologists for the Castro dictatorship, led by the Spanish government, are clamoring for the European Union to restore normal diplomatic ties with Havana; Democrats such as Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) have renewed their calls for a lifting of the U.S. trade embargo, even as they campaign against free trade with democratic Colombia.

The Post opinion-shapers are trying to equate the restoration of normal diplomatic ties with Cuba with opposition to a free trade deal with a "democratic" Columbia. Obviously this is a ridiculous non-sequitur and the Post's editorialists think we're all idiots. It's another shining day in our nation's capital.

Elite Anxiety

Headlines of the day:

Democrats Registering In Record Numbers

and

Supreme Court upholds photo ID law for voters in Indiana

Anybody see a connection between these two developments?

I can't wait for the return of the Poll Tax and the Literacy Test.

But, remember, it's the Democrats, who generally oppose voting restrictions such as "Photo ID laws", and the Liberals, who universally oppose these restrictions, who are the "elitists".

Bad Campaigns, Bad Media--What Must Be Done?

One of the most discouraging aspects of this year's campaign is the more or less direct and inverse relationship between its length and the rapidly escalating depravity of its content. As the race goes on, it becomes less substantive, vapid and personality based. The last ABC debate was only one unshining example of the quick-sand dragging the campaign and American democracy into the gutter.

And seemingly like every presidential contest, the leading Democrat is being tarred with the fatal "elitist" brush; he's unmanly, unpatriotic, high-fallutin, and not someone you want to have a beer with. And even though Democrats are notorious for their supposed moral relativism, the leading Democrat is paradoxically said to be a "scold", moral or otherwise, for...well I don't know. But I guess the media Republicans know it when they see it.

The NYT, which has supported Hillary Clinton, has an op-ed today, already a subject of some notable comment, laying much of the blame for the tragic state of affairs on the NY Senator and the negative campaign she has waged.

While there is obviously some truth to this complaint, as well as to the many well documented media transgressions this particular cycle, let me suggest that much of the reason why the campaign's substance, media driven and otherwise, has plumeted to such levels, stems from the many structural inhibitions against candidate policy innovation. The barriers, real and imagined, to candidates getting traction while stating unpopular truths or challenging sacred constituencies and ideas almost inherently ensures that the leading political candidates will not be able to offer much in the way of specifics and that, consequently, campaigns will rapidly degenerate into frivolous, insipid commentary about the candidate's preacher (if the candidate is a Democrat) or flagpin or whatever. The length of the campaign, the forces designed to ensure comformity, and the media saturation of the campaign and of television's particular obsession with candidate personalities all strongly press for just such a spectacle.

So how does a candidate rise above this stuff?

By being policy-controversial. By being policy-risky. By not playing it safe. By challenging some bit of conventional wisdom and taking what may at first glance, and may in fact truly be, the minority view point on some rarely discussed topic that everyone in the media holds to be a matter of political concensus unworthy of contestation.

Obama made a positive step in this direction with his speech on race (and religion). But even this was laced with a good deal of abstract rhetoric that attempted to placate all participants.

But how about giving a speech on the fallacies of the nation's fifty year Cuba policy, and the irrational and disproportionate effect the influence of Cuban exiles in Florida have played in the process? Specifically, how about giving a speech calling for an absolute end to the embargo?

Or how about giving a speech calling the War on Drugs a failure and promising to reduce federal sentences for drug possession, eliminating the position of national Drug Czar, and asserting the primacy of privacy rights over those over law enforcement budgets and prison construction entrepreners?

It might be argued that both of these policies have sufficient political consensus requiring that they not be disturbed, or that not enough people care about them or consider them priorities, or that such controversies simply aren't worth the trouble and would divert a campaign from otherwise positive policy contributions should it win (which stirring up these controversies could seriously undermine).

These concerns may be valid. But given the fact that the candidate's policy positions are only marginally different from one another in many other policy domains, the failure to take greater policy risks, to challenge bad policies means that campaigns and media coverage will continue to focus on the shallow and insipid. If one is going to be subject to attacks from the opposition, why not make the attacks over issues that matter and would in fact highlight stark policy differences with opponents?

Elitist Popery

Michael Gerson has a gushing, incredulous, and elitist-enraptured op-ed today about Pope Benedict.

After noting the sex-abuse scandal of recent years, Gerson goes on to say:

But members of a church older than any nation tend to take the long view. In the 10th century, Pope Sergius III grabbed the keys to the kingdom in an armed coup and promptly had two of his imprisoned predecessors strangled. His son, by his 15-year-old mistress, Marozia, eventually became Pope John XI. Marozia's grandson, Pope John XII, stood accused of great crimes as well. According to one account, he "mutilated a priest . . . violated virgins and widows high and low, lived with his father's mistress, [and]converted the pontifical palace into a brothel." Those were the days to be a reporter covering the Vatican.

Gerson lets fly a little Freudian slip here, referring to the Roman Catholic Church as a "kingdom". When the disciples of Jesus were bickering among themselves as to "who was the greatest", the humble Carpenter from Nazareth rebuked them. The Kingdom Christ came to establish was not to be on the order of those kingdoms of the earth whose monarchs dwelled in palaces and feasted off the labor of others. I guess we can see which view of "kingdom" the popes came to exemplify.

Catholics generally regard the survival and success of such a flawed institution as evidence of divine favor. The church has managed to outlive all of its scandals -- and all of its critics.

Thinking people might reason that a history of atrocities such as these by a notoriously self-exalting and dictatorial institution are reasons to be skeptical of the whole shamefully extravagant enterprise. But maybe that's just me.

But it gets worse. Reason, it turns out, is not for us secular mortals. According to Gerson (and many, many other apologists for Papal authoritarianism), a history of Papal murder, mayhem and sexual shenanigans (the long years of the torturing and burning fires of the Inquisition of unbelievers and "heretics" go unmentioned by Gerson) is a minor blip in what is a glorious reign of church "reason":

[D]espite charges of dogmatism, the church is the main defender of reason in the modern world. [The church] teaches the possibility that moral truth can be known through reflection and argument.

No, it doesn't. The church teaches that moral truth is the special province of the Church Magisterium (i.e. the Pope and his Bishops) and that those of us among the peasantry must concede to the church all responsibility for thinking in these areas and must consent to be bullied and told what to do by an institution with a history of retarding moral development on a collosal scale.

It criticizes what Pope Benedict XVI has called the "dictatorship of relativism" -- a belief "that does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires." "Being an adult," says Benedict, "means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties."

Having faith means, instead, that we should surrender our will and thoughts to Holy Mother Church.

Secularism has traditionally taught that human beings will eventually outgrow religious conviction and moral absolutism -- that skepticism is evidence of maturity. Benedict contends that modern men and women, unguided by reasoned moral beliefs, turn toward adolescent self-involvement. Their intellectual growth is stunted. In a world where all moral claims are seen as equally true and equally false -- the world, for example, of the modern university -- human conscience is reduced to biology or prejudice. Moral behavior may continue to ride in grooves of socialization or genetics, but moral assertions are fundamentally arbitrary -- always trumped by a two-word response: "Says you."

By asserting that the human mind can grasp moral truth, Catholicism also defends the reliability of reason against the superstitions of our time.

The "superstitions of our time" is a very interesting phrase. I wonder if Gerson is referring to the rather silly belief by secularists that the earth revolves around the sun. Or the church belief that a priest-officiated ceremony transforms mere bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ. But I digress.

And this is important for a very practical reason: because a belief in human rights is also a moral conviction. Catholicism teaches that relativism and a purely material view of man have disturbing social consequences. "The criterion of personal dignity," wrote Pope John Paul II, "which demands respect, generosity and service -- is replaced by the criterion of efficiency, functionality and usefulness: others are considered not for what they 'are,' but for what they 'have, do and produce.' This is the supremacy of the strong over the weak."

The point here is simple and radical: As the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton argued, men and women are either created in "the image of God" or they are "a disease of the dust." If human beings are merely the sum of their physical attributes -- the meat and bones of materiality -- they are easier to treat as objects of exploitation.

And the belief in the fires of Purgatory and eternal Hell fire are reasonable and humane?

So Catholicism offers a second contribution: It is the main defender of human dignity against a utilitarian view of human worth. And the church has applied this high view of man with remarkable consistency -- to the unborn and the elderly, the immigrant and the disabled.

Is the church a defender of the right to not believe in the church?

Individual views on issues of life and death vary widely, even within the Catholic Church. But it is a good thing to have at least one global institution firmly dedicated to the proposition that every growing child, every person living in squalor or in prison, every man or woman approaching death or contemplating suicide or trapped in profound mental disability, every apparently worthless life is not really worthless at all.

Again, does anyone besides me think's its awfully presumptious for an institution with hundreds of years of religious wars and murderous inquisitions under its belt to be lecturing anyone on morality and human worth?

An institution accused of superstition is now the world's most steadfast defender of rationality and human rights. It has not always lived up to its own standards, but where would those standards come from without it?

The world's most steadfast defender of rationality and human rights? Me thinketh the man doeth protest too much.

Put simply, the Papacy is the most glaring example of irrational elitism in the history of the world. The Pope and his loyal followers believe that the church has the right to tell us what is right and what to do. How much more elitist can you get?

Consider, in addition to the horrors of the inquisition, which among other things bequeathed to the interrogator the idea of water-boarding, the declarations and demands of another, infallible predecessor to Pope Joe. I give you the infamous Papal "syllabus of errors", which condemned, among other things, democracy, religious freedom, and the separation of church and state.

Some rationality, reason and human rights, there. Thanks, but we'll reserve the right to govern ourselves, thank you very much.

"That's More Like It"

Andrew Sullivan hits the nail on the head:

"I will tell you it does not get more fun than these debates. They are inspiring debates. I think last night we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people.

It took us 45 minutes — 45 minutes before we heard about health care, 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard about jobs, 45 minutes before we heard about gas prices.

Now, I don’t blame Washington for this because that’s just how Washington is. They like stirring up controversies and getting us to play gotcha games and getting us to attack each other. And I’ve got to say Sen. Clinton looked in her element," - Barack Obama, in Raleigh, today.

That's more like it. Lemons to Lemonade. In some ways, Obama now has a chance to make one of the most important points about his candidacy.

Obama and Democrats Are Elitist

Meanwhile, CNN's infamous Man of the People says to give the tax breaks to those who need and deserve it--the corporations.

But, it really is John Edwards with his hair cut and Obama with his orange juice preference that are the true threats to the aspirations of Real Americans.

The Prison Industrial Complex

A much-needed op-ed in today's Post.

Also impressed Webb held a hearing on this. If our teevee media could get off of haircuts, orange juice, and stirring the ignorant flames of the culture war, maybe we could get around to having a national "conversation" about this.

What About The Green Zone?

Based on a Charlie Rose interview with John Burns and Dexter Filkins, reporters with the New York Times, Josh has good words to say about the reduction of violence from the "surge". Some readers disagree with him, on how credibly Burns and Filkins should be regarded.

I didn't watch the Rose interview. But here's what I want to know. Is there still a Green Zone behind which most Americans and the Iraqi government congregate behind, and from which most of the American and Iraqi elite can't venture beyond without a parade of humvees and military convoys? And can the U.S. President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and Members of Congress, make ANNOUNCED visits to Iraq and to Baghdad?

Until then, anything said about violence in Iraq, or political reconciliation, or elections, is rather beside the point.

Running Away From The L Word

Here we go again.

This Post article today is about as discouraging as it could be.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign has also started slapping the L-word on Obama, warning that his appeal among moderate voters will diminish as they become more aware of liberal positions he took in the past, such as calling for single-payer health care and an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba...

...the criticism from the McCain and Clinton operations draws a quick rebuttal from Obama's campaign. His strategists recognize that Democratic voters and the superdelegates who may end up deciding the hotly contested nomination are concerned about the electability of a candidate tagged with the "liberal" label that has fatally wounded nominees such as John F. Kerry, Michael S. Dukakis and Walter F. Mondale...

..."He's really not an old-fashioned liberal at all," Sunstein said. "He's a market-oriented Democrat from the University of Chicago with strong religious convictions."

...Supporters also argue that the liberal tag will not stick to Obama partly because the public climate has shifted toward him amid widespread disillusionment with Republican policies, scrambling traditional notions of right and left. "There's growing dismay about the war in Iraq as it enters year six, and a sense that we've neglected some real basic necessities in this country," said Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), one of Obama's key red-state backers. "He's not out of step with what I hear people being worried about..."

...[Obama] mocked the emerging GOP criticism in a speech last month in Austin. "Oh, he's liberal. He's liberal," he said. "Let me tell you something. There's nothing liberal about wanting to reduce money in politics. It's common sense. . . . There's nothing liberal about wanting to make sure that everybody has health care. We are spending more on health care in this country than any other advanced country. We got more uninsured. There's nothing liberal about saying that doesn't make sense, and we should do something smarter with our health-care system. Don't let them run that okey-doke on you..."

This kind of talk is very frustrating. It's defensive and evokes a fearful, loser mentality.

If it's true, as the article states, that--

In most major areas, Obama has taken positions that would seem to conform to the Republican stereotype of a liberal. Like Clinton, he favors expanding the government's role in delivering health care, and would pay for that by ending President Bush's tax cuts for the rich. He would go a step further than Clinton by lifting the limit on income taxed for Social Security, now $100,000, to set that program on firm footing.

He strongly supports abortion rights and spoke out against a Supreme Court ruling last year that upheld a ban on the procedure that some call "partial-birth" abortion. He favors allowing illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses (after some hesitation, Clinton came out against that). He is outspoken on civil rights, and he has opposed Bush's judicial picks, staying out of a bipartisan effort to approve some nominees. While he supports the death penalty for the most "heinous" crimes, as a Senate candidate in 2004 he expressed support for strict gun control, de-criminalizing marijuana and ending federal mandatory minimum prison sentences, issues he now rarely raises on the trail.

And that--

...liberal positions [Obama] took in the past, such as calling for single-payer health care and an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba...

And on top of all that, that--

Supporters also argue that the liberal tag will not stick to Obama partly because the public climate has shifted toward him amid widespread disillusionment with Republican policies, scrambling traditional notions of right and left. "There's growing dismay about the war in Iraq as it enters year six, and a sense that we've neglected some real basic necessities in this country," said Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), one of Obama's key red-state backers. "He's not out of step with what I hear people being worried about."

This would seem an opportune time, perhaps a better time has never existed in American history, to point out that the fact that (and while we're on the subject, what about the government's response, under conservative Republicans in the Executive branch and in Congress, to Katrina?) conservatism theology and conservative results warrants criticism, and maybe, just maybe, liberal and liberalism is worth turning to?

The Bear-Sterns Bail-Out is (Bill) Clinton's Fault

So says Robert D. Novak in his op-ed in today's Washington Post:

The Federal Reserve's unprecedented bailout of Bear Stearns was crafted not at the White House or the Treasury but in secret by a New York central banker whose name is unknown to Washington power brokers and who was a Clinton administration presidential appointee.

(snip)

The plan pressed by Timothy F. Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, effectively substitutes the central bank for the market in determining financial outcomes.

(snip)

Quick action last week when Bear Stearns was going under contrasted sharply with the normally glacial pace of the U.S. government. Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan's scholarly successor as Federal Reserve chairman, of course approved the bailout (as did Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson). But the initiator was the 46-year-old Geithner, who as head of the New York Fed maintains a traditionally intimate relationship with Wall Street. Neither a banker nor an economist, Geithner left Kissinger Associates in 1988 at age 27 to go to work at the Treasury and began an uninterrupted career in government service; he was promoted in 1999 by Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to undersecretary for international affairs.

Geithner's plan to open the Fed's discount window for the first time to non-banks stunned the financial community but received little attention from a Congress in recess, including presidential candidates preoccupied with Iraq. John McCain was traveling there, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama exchanged barbs over who was more antiwar. An influential statement of support for the bailout came from Sen. Charles Schumer, who heads both the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Although Schumer is not known for nonpartisanship, he is a New Yorker who is close to the securities industry.

The reaction in the hinterland was far less favorable. The Washington office of the Independent Community Bankers of America was flooded by members from across the country complaining of discriminatory favoritism toward their big-city brethren. If they had blundered into financial failure, the community banks said, they would not be bailed out but would be investigated and prosecuted. "Too big to fail," therefore, becomes "too big to be punished."

The expense of such an intervention is not a problem because the Fed, unlike the president and Congress, can print money. The Bear Stearns bailout, approved in private by unelected officials, contributes to paranoid grievances on the left and right that built support for Ron Paul's presidential candidacy. A Fed official conceded privately this week that "we may have crossed a line" in jumping into Bear Stearns -- and that is an understatement. There is no doubt that the U.S. economy is in uncharted territory, with reverberations that cannot be forecast.

-----

So, despite the Republicans' eight year hold on executive power, despite Bush's appointment of the new Fed chief Bernanke and his approval by a Republican Congress, and despite the presence of a Republican appointee at the head of the Treasury Department, the bail out of Bear-Stearns is really Bill Clinton's fault, for having appointed the head of the NY Fed Reserve Bank. That's some pretty serious flim-flam.

I also got a kick out of Novak's sudden alarm at what foreigners think of American public policy decisions:

"It's a new day," commented one investor and longtime Fed watcher. Around the world, that day's dawning is viewed with apprehension because of election-year rhetoric from America.

Apparently, if the issue is human rights abuses in American prisons in foreign countries, or the establishment of an extra-legal prison Gitmo, or the invasion of a sovereign country that isn't a threat to us or anyone else, it doesn't matter what people in other countries think. But when the issue is Money (That's What I Want), than foreign opinion does matter, after all.

Head and Shoulders Above

I should probably wait for the talking heads, pundits and Internetters to tell me what to think of Obama's speech, as written, but having just read it, I'll go ahead and give my impressions.

In short, I think it's his best moment of the campaign, a thrilling--yes thrilling--example of his appeal. It is a Lincolnesque speech by a Lincolnesque candidate from the Land of Lincoln. It is explanatory without being unnecessarily defensive.

It is transcentory and transformative in its outlook and hopes. It is broad-minded, and like Lincoln, equanimous in its acknowledgment of the challenges and prejudices of the working people. It is subtly critical of the media culture and of right-wing media in particular.

It reminds me a bit of the fictional former Governor Picker, who in Primary Colors, steps in to fill the role of a candidate struck down during the primaries by a heart attack. Candidate Picker calls for calm among his new-found enthusiasts, and laments the way news and politics is packaged so that candidates spend more time attacking each other than in confronting the nation's problems. Picker immediately brings a certain dignity to an increasingly undignified campaign and country.

There are items of the speech I could quible with. But they are minor. It is overall lofty yet wisely practical and connected to the wider country, and not just about him.

It is a home-run, a speech head and shoulders above that which could be given by either of the other remaining candidates.

There's also a chance that the furor over Wright's comments could have a positive effect, as the speech provides an opportunity for Obama to illustrate the nature of the problems facing the country, whether racial, economic, or (as poorly exemplified by its media) the popular culture. And it makes Obama more real, his rhetoric less dreamy and more rooted to everyday concerns, than would have otherwise been the case.