More Thoughts

Continued from below (read that first):

1. More people who deserve rewards: Howard Dean, Tim Kaine, Bob Casey. I assume Dean will want to leave the DNC (leave on top, ya know), but will he want a cabinet post? Ambassadorship? I don't know how these guys think, so I don't know what's considered a 'reward.' Kaine (Gov. VA) helped carry Virgina, and he's young and needs to get a new job because of term limits (and since VA now has 2 Democratic senators, he won't get those slots for a long while). I've heard he wants Sec of Education, so OK. Casey (D-Sen. PA) was an early and solid supporter. PA is now reliably blue, with a Democratic governor (the irritating Rendell) so it's safe to move on up. Then again, I've long felt that being Senator is the best, cushiest sinecure in America, so maybe he wants to stay put.
   
   
2. Will John Lewis want to leave Congress to join the cabinet? Like I said above, I have no idea what a politician likes as their reward. Maybe the election of Obama is the biggest most amazing dreamlike award he cold have wanted.
   
   
3. There's debate as to who will be Obama's chief of staff. I always looked at that role - while it's cabinet "like" and stature - to be a real job and not something to be filled as a reward for a deserving politician. So while people have mentioned Rahm Emmanuel or Tom Daschle, I don't understand why either would take it. Emmanuel is great in the House and I want to see him as Majority Leader soon. He's way better than Pelosi - whose been door-matted too often these past 2 years - and better than Hoyer. And Daschle deserves to be rewarded, not overworked. My assumption is that if David Axelrod wants the job, he needs to get it.
   
   
4. Other big posts: CIA chief? FBI chief? Do politicians want to be rewarded by being appointed as Federal judges?
   
   
5. Will Obama need to 'tokenize' the cabinet or his other appointments?
   
   
6. What about the proper respect and repayment for Al Gore? I'd love to see him get the next open slot on the Supreme Court. He deserves some kind of restoration for the scandal of 2000.
   
   
7. Oh, and while others may, I still don't forgive Bill and Hillary for the crap they did during the primaries. I don't think Obama owes them anything.

Backpost: Obama's "Luck"

From September 1, 2008; I sent this email to Mark Kleiman of Samefacts.com.. Background: many people have asked why Obama seems to have luck that all his opponents, from the Senate on down to the primary and now general, seem to self-destruct. It sounds like luck! As Kleiman wrote:

Apropos the many developing Palin scandals, an observer of the Chicago political scene reminds me of Obama's "noted eerie knack for finding self-destructing opponents."

There was Alice Palmer, the incumbent State Senator who didn't submit enough valid signatures. There was Blair Hull, the apparent frontrunner in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, accused of wife-beating. There was Jack Ryan, the Republican Senate nominee, whose kinkily erotic side spilled out into the newspapers through his divorce proceedings. And then there was the comic carpetbagger Alan Keyes.

I try to keep theology separate from politics, but it's hard to escape the thought: If Obama didn't make a pact with Satan he must be on a special mission from God.

So my response:

re: Obama's Luck

Dear Prof. Kleiman,

While I agree with you that supernatural forces should never be discounted in any scientific inquiry, I think the reason Obama's opponents self-destruct is a combination of (a) the old adage that "fortune benefits the well-prepared", and (b) his ability to maintain his cool, which drives his opponents batty, to the point they self destruct.

Hillary self-destructed (Bill started first, though), then even Edwards (and he had already dropped out!), and now McCain.

all the best,
JC

And, true to his gentlemanly nature, Kleiman quotes me in an update: "Update: Or perhaps, a reader suggests, this may merely be a case where 'Fortune favors the prepared mind.'"

Now this analysis of mine has become conventional reason. But I was an early advocate of the theory that Obama's opponents self destruct because they can't handle his skill. Basically, because Obama is unflappable, his increasingly desperate opponents up the volume of their attacks, trying to rattle him, and all they succeed in doing is self-destruction.

Am I Worried About November?

Well, in a large abstract way, I am worried about the election in the same way I'm worried about death or Nazis. Two national elections have been awarded to a profoundly unqualified man (Bush) and a party that decided to commit themselves to strange and evil policies.

2000 was terrible but until 9/11 most of us thought that the damage would be temporary, given that we were living through peace and prosperity. 2004 was heart-rending because it was clear how bad Bush was and things were getting worse and worse. The past 4 years have been horrifying and I know my kids will ask me about them with the same hushed awe I asked my parents about 1963-1968 (assassinations, Vietnam, Nixon). And if things were teetering on the bad in 2004, the re-election of Bush in 2008 would be a full-gonzo catastrophe.

It bears repeating: all of us who warned about the horrors of a second Bush term, and were ridiculed by Goopers who claimed we were being paranoid hysterics, were proven to be correct. And I was not correct by accident - i.e. many people are correct only by chance. For example, the smartasses who said that John Edwards was *of course* cheating on his wife... basing their assertions on the sole facts that (a) Edwards was good-looking, and (b) they disagreed with Edwards' policies/profession/accent.

Not liking somebody, and thus attributing to the disliked person all sorts of crimes, does not make your criticisms prophetic. You just got lucky.

However, if you said that Edwards was a wife-cheater because of certain provable factors (e.g. you knew of some shady behaviors, you read in his book that 'cheating on your cancer-stricken wife ain't the worst thing a person can do', or if you personally slept with him), then - fine - you can be considered a perceptive prognosticator.

For the record, I didn't believe the rumors that Edwards was cheating on his wife because I didn't think that someone as successful as him (self-made multi-millionaire, young Democratic senator in a red-state) would do something so destructive and stupid. I mean, it was Spitzer-esque! And even then, I had some glimmering that Spitzer was a sexual-schkutz because he intermarried. Ya see, that's a provable indicator. Sex crime here leads to sex crime there. But Edwards? Why would someone running for president - someone who constantly references his wife's terminal cancer - have an affair on the campaign trail.

Anyway, I went on this tangent to talk about the stakes of the election: just as the loss in 2004 was bad, and I knew it would be bad beforehand, I can say with confidence that McCain winning in November would mean total freakin' disaster for the U.S. of A. McCain is unfit to lead and will most likely die soon in office (based on simple actuarial prediction) leaving the country in the hands of a serial-fabricator hillbilly Evangelical.

And, as some dude pointed out, Bush managed to destroy our country from the starting point of Clinton's peace and prosperity. McCain - an uck-fup of Bushian magnitude - would be elected in the midst of two draining wars and an economy teetering on the brink.

Stop, You're Scaring Me!

I hear you cry. Yes, if McCain wins in November, we are totally screwed. But I don't expect it to happen. In fact, and you can quote me, the only way for the GOP to win in November is through fraud. I say this based on three proofs: (1) the frauds of 2000 & 2004, (2) the 2006 midterms, and (3) American history.

1. The only way the GOP won in 2000 and 2004 was through fraud.

Yeah, the Goopers amongst you will deny that 2000 was fraud, even though, based on facts, it's clear that Gore *would* have won in Florida if the votes that the voters cast were actually tabulated. If you prefer winning at all costs, and see a 'win' as proving retroactively everything done as right and correct, then the fact that the Supreme Court allowed Bush to win Florida, and thus the whole election, to be enough to say that Bush actually won.

But in the world of facts, it's important to remember than no matter what the weird rules stated, Gore won in 2000. A sports analogy, if I may. If quarterback Jack Drake throws a 95 yard touchdown pass while being tackled by a blitz of linebackers, yet the play is invalidated because the second-string slotback was barely offsides, do you credit the QB with a touchdown.

In the official game scoring, Jack Drake does not get credit for a touchdown. In the world of real life and of commerce, Jack Drake will be known as an amazing athlete who can perform under pressure and whose expertise was proven in real events. The rules of sports, while important to those who follow sports, are arbitrary and do not determine actual events.

Gore *should* have won in 2000; and for this argument it means that the country was willing to have a third Clinton term, and to elect Gore-Lieberman, even though arbitrary (and ultimately skewed rules) undermined the true events.

2004 was not as close as 2000 and for months after the election I was devastated not only because Bush was still in office, but with enough of a margin to suggest that people approved of his idiocies.

However, as the numerous scandals that were uncovered from 2006 on have shown, the Bush administration was involved in systematic voter fraud in every election since they took over the Justice department. I don't have time or space to get into great details - yet, they are easily found all over the internet - but event after event has shown that Bush administration politicized every aspect of the executive branch, skewing policy and actions to help Republicans get elected. The very core of the attorney scandal was that Bush/Gonzales were forcing the U.S. Attorneys to (a) suppress the vote of probable democratic voters (e.g. minorities), and (b) indict Democratic politicians or their staff-members close to the election date. The 8 attorneys who were fired all refused to engage in malfeasance.

Read the data, get scared, and conclude - as you should - that 2004 was won via fraud.

Now, this does not deny that the Democratic candidates of 2000 and 2004 were poor candidates. They were pusillanimous, uncharismatic, and not great leaders. But also recognize that conditions were such in 2000 and 2004 that would have made the country vote for an accept a mediocre Democrat.

Barack Obama is not a mediocre politician. He has many detriments, tis' true - he's young, black, and smart. But he also is a galvanizing speaker and a sober thinker who has raised the most money in history and did so with small donations. Which means he excites millions of people. These facts militate against the not-unfounded anxieties that Americans won't vote for a black man with a funny name. I'd have said that - and in fact did - back in 2007. Today, it's an unfounded fear.

2. The 2006 Midterms showed that the country wants change.

Even with the Justice Dept. vote-fraud, even with the Senate lineup stacked against the Democrats, we still managed to win Congress in 2006. Things were so terrible, in just 2 years, that the country threw their bums out. And, it needs to be said, it's hard to throw out congressional incumbents, and a switch-over in the Senate is not a great way to gauge public mood since only 32-33 people are up for election and not always in states that express the public mood. Even with all that, the Democrats won in 2006.

In 2008, the country is in even WORSE shape. The economy is teetering on the brink of collapse, the Iraq war is still hated (and our soldiers are still dying), etc. Add onto that the fact that congressional oversight of the Executive has led to mass firings in the Justice Dept. and elsewhere, making it very hard to repeat the fraud of 2002, 2004 and 2006.

Without the fraud, it's very hard for the GOP to win... even in a good year. And this year is one of the worst.

3. The past 100 years have shown that it's very hard for the incumbent party to win a third term in the presidency.

Since 1900, there have been a few third terms:

1. 1896-1912: McKinley was re-elected, but his assassination makes things difficult to gauge, so we start with Teddy Roosevelt. He had two terms, and he was succeeded by Taft who only had 1. Note, Taft would have been re-elected if Roosevelt hadn't run against him in '12, so following my Gore-2000 rules above, I think the GOP should get real-world credit for winning in 1912.
   
2. 1920-1932: Harding's death led to Coolidge's ascension and his two terms was followed by Hoover's 1.
   
3. 1932-1952: FDR had four terms - the only true 'third term' proof we have - and he was succeeded by Truman who won 1 term on his own right. He would have lost in '52 if he had run.
   
4. 1952-1960: Eisenhower almost won a third term; Nixon barely lost in 1960 (and, following Gore-2000 rules, it could be that this is a third term).
   
5. 1960-1968: LBJ, despite being elected via a grief-fueled nostalgia landslide in 1964, was quite unpopular in 1968. His successor didn't get a third term (even though I could hear an argument that he would have won if Wallace wasn't a third-party spoiler, but it was a complicated year).
   
6. 1968-1976: Nixon led to Ford who lost to Jimmy Freakin' Carter.
   
7. 1980-1992: Reagan was able to secure a third term for his bland VP.
   
8. 1992-2000: Clinton won a third term, but just just barely.

What does the chart prove? That a party can win a third party only when things are going very well, and the incumbent is popular. Coolidge, FDR and Reagan are the successes that prove this rule. Even when the incumbent is pretty popular, and the country is in good shape, the party still has a hard time staying in power: Nixon in '60 and Gore in '00 show this. Even if you want to say that Nixon and Gore actually were cheated out of their deserved victory, it's also demonstrable that the elections were very very close.

The bottom line is that a party gets a third term when (1) people like the outgoing president and (2) the country is in good shape.

In 2008, Americans hate George W Bush and 80% think the country is on the wrong track. The Iraq War is killing our soldiers, breaking our military and draining our coffers. The economy is going through shocks unseen since Herbert Hoover. Just on history alone, it's nearly inconceivable that the voters will reward the incumbent party with a third term.

This is why, ultimately, I'm not so worried about 2008. Barring fraud, which will be hard to do this year, the GOP will lose.

P.S. If my enormously long-winded description above doesn't comfort you, doesn't quiet the 2004-embedded fears that the GOP is so scummy and/or the American people so stupid, that they will defy the rules of logic and history and elect Growly McSame and Jesus S. Palin, I will just say that there are three presidential debates coming up. If the polls are still depressing after the debates, then it will be time to panic.

Backpost: Retort to "The Rove Non-Event"

Backpost: from 8/13/07.

A letter I wrote to the TPM, Re: The Rove Non-Event: "Like a whisper"

Dear Dr. Marshall,

I believe the only election that brought fear into the hearts of every true-blue Democrat was 2004. The 2000 election was a mugging - we didn't know the nature of our assailant yet but the 1994-2000 onslaught of Gingrich and his juniors made the whole country sick of fighting. People just wanted the election to end and we allowed it to because we thought the stakes were so low (proof: why so many people felt confident to vote for Nader, because it felt like it didn't matter).

2002 was a direct result of the post-9/11 wartime 'dont switch horses in midstream' mentality. I don't give Rove credit for that. Even a doofus like Carter would have gained seats after 9/11.

It was 2004 that shocked us and made us think that Rove was a magician. And now we see that much of his skill lay not in 'getting out the vote' and 'galvanizing the base' but in 'getting the US attorneys to suppress the vote and indict Democratic opponents.' Bush-Rove won in 2004 through outright theft and we're just getting into those details now. But the Attorney Scandal is the story of the theft of 2004.

I don't know how Rove's resignation protects him from Congressional inquiry into the Attorney Scandal. Maybe it was part of a deal - if he resigns and stays out of politics (or at least 2008) then Congress will let him stay out of jail. It's a dirty deal, if it happened, but I can see that kind of deal being made. The crime is too huge, a NBA Referee scandal magnified by billions, and this could be the elegant way out.

In any case, as Green's recent Atlantic piece shows, Rove angered so many members of the GOP (the comments by DeLay are awesome) that this resignation may be their way of running him out on a rail in time to salvage whatever they can in 2008. The 'whisper'-ness may be how the GOP needs it to play out.

All the best,
JC

What Hillary Wants

John Heilemann in NYMag should get credit for a great title: What Hillary Wants, and Why She’s Jesse Jackson ’88. Yet, I think he's dead wrong. Heilemann, in his predicition of Hillary behavior is based on these three ideas: (1) that Hillary is, and has been throughout the primaries, a rational actor, (2) that Hillary wants to set the stage to run in 2012, and (3) that Hillary believes that Obama is doomed in November.

The refutation of these points is simple: (1) and (3) are contradictory, and (2) follows from (3). The "rational behavior" assumption is thorny because logic is ultimately concomitant on perception. Hence there's an argument in epistomology (at least the one I employ) over whether an illogical person has a problem with logic or with perception and evaluating evidence. A person who weighs evidence in a kooky way (e.g. a person who denies there's a fire burning because a rabbi told them there wasn't, even though it's right in front of their eyes), may still come to 'logical' conclusions, despite the data being bad. Which is why I posit that (non-psychotic) insanity isn't about whether someone thinks logically, but whether they are able to perceive reality. If someone acts "insane" we often come to that conclusion because the person has acted "illogically" yet it's more likely because that person cannot perceive reality with confidence and reproducibility.

As an example, take Heilemann's idea that Hillary thinks Obama is doomed:

As I’ve written many times, Hillary believes with every fiber of her being that Obama is going to lose this year. (And so does her husband.) So her aim is to put herself in the best position possible to stand up on November 5 and say, if perhaps a tad more subtly than this, "I told you so."

Now, I've also read (can't remember where) that - contrapositive - Hillary believes that the situation in '08 is so favoriable for Democrats that whomever becomes the Democratic nominee will automatically win in November.

Since we have no quotes from her on the matter (and who'd trust 'em if we had 'em?), we need to use behavior as our guide to thought. If she believes that Obama is doomed to fail in Novemeber, what is she basing that on? As I said a few moments ago, the overwhelming evidence is that the Democrats will win no matter who the nominee is. And while ordinary educated Americans may not see this yet, political junkies (like me) and more importantly actual politicians know this to be true. All indicaters point to a slaughter. That's why it's much more plausible to say that Hillary believes that she needed to win the primary at all costs because that was the actual contest (like primaries in New Haven, where I live, the Republican candidate is a foregone loss and as such the real election is the Democratic primary).

If Heilemann wants to say Hillary is logical, then she can't belive that Obama will lose in Novemeber. So, he contradicts his premises.

Her behavior, logical or not, comports much more to a deep belief that the primary was the whole game.

However, in Heilemann's partial defense, I don't think she has been acting 'logically' but mainly because of her known personality flaws, her past behavior, and from sociological analysis of campaigns.

Anna Marie Cox, the Wonkette, put it best a few months ago (can't find the link yet, sorry) that a campaign (and especially a losing one) is so tumultuous, huge, complicating and personally-draining that what most people from the outside think are conspiracies are actually just blind chance. Sure, there are certain things that can be determined (like speeches, announcements) but these are boxing-jabs not billiard bank-shots.

I take Wonkette's point further about Obama and Hillary; both of them have been through a hell of scrutiny and stamina that has not been seen in the modern era outside of warfare. Both of them, I believe, have been reduced to their basest elements through the monthslong stress and exposure. Hillary has been revealed to be a petty and small-minded narcissit. Obama has been seen as a resiliant and cool-headed gamesman. I don't think her behavior has been rational primarily because it's unlikely than anyone who has been taking the pounding in public that she has will ever remain rational.

Her constant attacks on Obama, her tone-deaf race-baiting, her unthinking strategizing, shows a person on the brink. So no matter what she may want out of the process, I think her rationality has been burned away over the past few months and she's just operating out of her limbic system.

Anyway, Heilemann gives a Q&A for how the next few days/months play out. His answers and mine, based on the analysis:

1. Is she going to quit sometime soon or fight on to the convention? Heilemann: "my guess is that she might very well be out of the race by the end of next week. For Hillary to be the Democratic nominee in 2012, she must limit the extent to which she’s seen as having caused Obama’s (in her mind, inevitable) loss this fall. And setting off on a scorched-earth march to Denver runs in diametric opposition to that goal."

News to Heilemann, it's too late not to run a scortched earth campaign. That bridge has been burnt already. I believe she will at best 'suspend' her campaign - but keep open the fundraising to help relax the astronomical debt. Her behavior, according to my limbic - fight or flight - theory above, will be to take the next few days to let the adrenaline drain from her body. Since she believes that Obama will win, she's going to try to extort from him as much as possible to get as powerful a position she can in the next Democratic administration.

If it looks like he will fail - against the odds - then she will do to Obama what she did in Kerry in '04; just walk away. But if she thinks Obama will win, she'll use the weapons at her disposal to be a kingmaker, or at least an idispensible power broker.

That's why she's still ginning up feminist resentment; why she's claiming her people are the only true Democats, why she's stoking their desire to see her raze Denver to the ground, why she's claiming she'll march on. All of this is to keep the pressure on Obama to accede to her demands.

2. Does she want to be offered the VP slot?
Heilemann: "No, she does not. If it’s offered, she has to take it, because turning it down would be a signal to her supporters that she doesn’t support Obama (see above). And if she’s on the ticket and Obama goes down (again, as she’s convinced he will), she is then complicit in the loss, and her prospects in 2012 are damaged. Does Hillary want be the next John Edwards? The question answers itself."

Dumb. She will take the VP in a shot! It's power, baby, power. And she and her husband can engineer scandals in 2010 that could force Obama to resign. See my food-taster comment below. I don't think she'll get offered it, because Obama is a smart guy and why would he want all of Hillary's negatives and none of the positives?

3. So what’s with all the leaks that Bill wants her on the ticket? Heilemann: "He probably does. The idea of Hillary as veep must sound like a sweet deal to him: It would be history-making, it would cement the Clintons’ status as one of America’s great political dynasties, and in the second-fiddle job his wife would pose no danger of overshadowing him." On this we agree.

4. Will she work hard for Obama or undermine him in the fall?
Heilemann: "Implicit in all this analysis is that Hillary Clinton is a cold-eyed rationalist, and despite the occasional shard of evidence to the contrary, this is true. She’s aware that even as she’s become a much larger figure in the course of this race in one segment of the party, her reputation has taken a beating in another. She thinks it’s unfair, but she knows it’s the reality, and also that whether Obama wins or loses, it’s difficult to imagine a promising future for herself without repairing her standing among those who regard her poorly. I suspect there won’t be many louder Obama cheerleaders this autumn — or more insincere ones."

You see how crazy that is? If she was *rational* about a 2012 run, she would have dropped out earlier (citing the real money problems) and did what Heilemann is suggesting. However, he could be correct, that she will be a cheerleader etc, but only according to my analysis - that she'll do so only if Obama is seen to be winning and she will do so with a maximum focus on how she will deliver the women, white-males, whatever. Which means to me that Obama needs to neutralize her quick by announcing Sebelius as his VP (or whomever it is) BEFORE the convention.

5. If Obama wins, what will she do next?
Heilemann: "One rumor going around New York is that she’ll run for governor — an eventuality only marginally more likely than my pursuing that office. HRC cares not a whit about state government. She loves Washington, thinks of it as home, and of Albany as hell... No, in all likelihood, Clinton will head back to the Senate and take her place as arguably the most powerful member of that body. There are those who say the hard feelings of this race will cripple her with her colleagues. What a crock. Having campaigned in all 50 states and won millions of votes in the process, Clinton will surely be the most sought-after fund-raiser in all of Democratic politics besides the putative President Obama."

Right wrong wrong. He's right about governor; because the Senate is the sweetest job around and governor is only meant to be a stepping stone to the White House (which she doesn't need now). And like she cares about NY. Please.

He's wrong about Hillary being powerful and that there won't be hard feelings. She has burned WAY too many bridges. The polls show that she would have lost California and New Jersey had the vote taken place in April or later. And if Obama plays things right, he will construct a Democratic coalition based on pre-and-post-Clintonians (but anyone can join). Note, that's been his support so far from the Senate/House: Democrats who came onto the scene before 1992 and after 2000. The post-2000 don't owe the Clintons anything and the pre-92s have that and also resent the fact that while the Clintons built power for themselves, they didn't help the party at all (not only did we lose in the midterms under him, but we lost 2000 and they were nonexistent during the Bush administration, when we needed them the most!)

Hillary will be marginalized by the gamesman, Obama, and if she plays nice, she will be given the chance to spearhead the health-care through the Senate. If she doesn't play nice, then Obama may have enough power to silence her on purpose, echoing her silence from 2000-2006.

h/t Fallows.

Wes Clark for VP?

There was much blog-praise for this article by Matt Stoller on Open Left entitled and arguing for The Unifying Choice: Wes Clark for VP.

SPOILER ALERT
It's a good article but not as good as this one by Lawrence O’Donnell from NY Magazine; O’Donnell was a West Wing writer and he describes, in West Wing theatrical fashion, what could have happened in the convention were neither candidate were to have reached the necessary number of delegates. It's a great great read and thank God it won't come to pass.
/SPOILER ALERT

Stoller's point has been made by others, and I could be resisting the allure of Clark because a colleague of mine - whom I think is wrong on everything - was advocating Clark while I was advocating Daschle. I just don't want to be wrong to that guy.

Anyway, the reason why I he thinks Clark is necessary is (a) Clark is a full-bore Clintonite and it would heal the wounds of the primary, (b) Clark is a talented and successful wartime general and brings that foreign policy/military credibility to the ticket, (c) Clark has run for president and has that experience.

Ironically I reject Clark for those reasons and a few more: (a) any connection to the Clintons should be seen as poison right now. The only way the Clintons will be mollified is if Obama were killed by a scandal (or, who knows, a bullet). Even having her as VP won't calm them down (and, as someone wrote, if he does pick her as VP he also better hire a food-taster).

(b) Obama actually has all the foreign policy credibility he desires right now - he opposed the Iraq War, McCain loves that war, and the Americans hate the war. All Obama needs for credibility is to have surrogates (Webb, Nunn etc) do the military talking to rebut McCain. Moreover, as many have pointed out, to admit you need a military man on the ticket is to admit you aren't military enough. Look at Bill Clinton in '92 - he had far less foreign policy experience than Obama (he was a governor of a land-locked state and a draft-dodger) and he picked a virtual clone as his VP (who, admittedly, had been in the Senate for 8 years).

(c) Clark's presidential run was a joke. And he has never won an election! OK, he won the 2004 Oklahoma primary, whatever. Stoller argues that since '04, Clark has a highly requested speaker: "In 2006, Jon Soltz of Votevets tells me, Clark was the single most requested surrogate in the country, with the possible exceptions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton." Whatever. While I think he is an impressive person (four star general, Rhodes scholar, military Democrat) I don't think he's been nearly tested enough in politics. Make him Secretary of Defense, or NSA, let him be a politician for a while.

I still back the idea of Sebelius.

The Jacket Can Come Off

Obama has (putatively) won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in what may be the biggest upset in (modern) American political history. Now the jacket comes off. Two jackets, really. The first jacket is doffed when gentlemen prepare for fisticuffs. Or a duel. Of all Republicans, McCain is a gentleman, and we know over and over that Obama is, so this battle of two men of honor will be as bloody as a hillside duel, but it portends to be on a higher level than other contests in the past.

The other jacket is a straight-jacket that Obama has had to wear since Hillary announced her intention to run for president. Bill Clinton was enormously popular in America and even moreso in the Democratic party, where he was the Democrat to leave office as popular and powerful (contrast to Carter, LBJ, Truman; this point was first made by Marshall). And the Clinton's fought dirty.

Obama was straight-jacketed, hamstrung, shackled by having his opponents be the most popular Democrats in a generation. And Hillary compounded the trouble by invoking female-disempowerment at every slight. Her "unconcession" speech last night - a disgusting display of narcissism, hubris, and neurosis - contained an especially galling line in this vein. I was fortunate to hear the line uttered live (we get only one TV news channel, it was showing her speech, and I could only listen to her for a minute or two at a time), transcribed passage from here:

You know, I understand that a lot of people are asking, what does Hillary want? ... I want the nearly 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard and no longer to be invisible.

What's galling about the 'invisible' line is that it is red-meat to angry feminists who have cried 'sexism' at every criticism of Holy St. Hillary.

I won't refute the 'invisible' remark because it is beneath contempt; I bring it up to show the lines of the straight-jacket that has now been removed. Other bindings that have been loosed: now every single Democrat can, with full voice, support Obama. Many have been silenced because (a) they don't want to unleash the Clinton fury or worse (b) the fury of Clinton voters. So Reid, Pelosi, Webb, Emmanuel, Salazar, Gore - all big names with set constituencies who have had to remain 'neutral' can now plaster the walls of America with pro-Democratic, pro-Obama words and ideas.

As a number of smart commentators have noted, until last night McCain was at the highest point he could be and Obama the lowest. McCain enjoyed a unified GOP and comparitively little press scrutiny while Obama had a deeply divided party and attacks coming from three sides (GOP, Clinton Democrats, the Press) with only 1/4 of a defense (his part of the party). No longer.

McCain and Obama may be in a dead-heat today, but now that Obama is unrestrained? It's going to be a slaughter.

As an anonymous blogger from the Economist online (UK) wrote last night, comparing the speeches of all three candidates:

At the risk of bolstering the reporters-mooning-at-Obama stereotype, if this evening's speeches were a video game, a wrinkled wizard would be hollering "Finish Him!" to Barack Obama while a dizzied John McCain wobbled. And Hillary Clinton would be frenetically mashing the buttons on an unplugged controller.

The biggest proof that Obama will destroy McCain comes from simple structure. The same structure that elected Harding in 1920 and Carter in 1976: that when the populace has had enough of the status-quo, they will elect the other party.

The only person, truly, who could have screwed that up this year was Hillary. Because she's so divisive, so hated, and quite frankly such a bad campaigner, that it would have been possible for the Democrats to have lost. It would have been a repeat of '04, when an unpopular incumbent was ALMOST unseated by a deeply flawed, lackluster candidate. And while I'm no fan of Kerry, he didn't prompt the deep visceral hatred that Hillary can and does. We just dodged the bullet.

Ah, but I hear you cry, what about Obama's weaknesses? The ones that are skin-deep, if you catch my drift. Well, 16 months ago, I thought the strongest ticket for the fall was Edwards-Obama, and I claimed that I didn't think America would vote for an inexperienced Black man with Hussein for a middle name. But, uh, he won. He won over whites, blacks, hispanics, in all the states.

Yeah, but he lost Ohio and Pennsylvania! Yes, and no. As I said earlier, he lost *closed primaries* in those states. A closed primary has no bearing on the fall general election. All a closed-primary proves is that he's not as popular to Democrats. And while, intuitively, that may bother people (how can a guy win when his party doesn't like him as much as another), it also repudiates the biggest weakness of the primary process which is that it rewards the extremists of each party, which give a rather poor general election contender.

More open primaries may have spared us from Dukakis and Kerry. And if PA/OH were open, I would wager that Obama would have won them handily, like he did in Virginia, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Minnesota (all open).

Obama is a very strong candidate, which is how he beat the Clintons. Let that settle into your skin for a moment: he beat Bill and Hillary Clinton. Nobody beat the Clintons since 1980! And Obama is inspiring, a historic orator, a gifted thinker, a talented writer, and damn near perfect campaigner. He has also just campaigned in all 50 states - something not done in any previous primary - which means he has already run a general election campaign once. From now til November, it's just picking up the lost sheaves.

And the structural reason why Obama/Democrats will win? The Iraq War is enough. And McCain, god love him, has decided to embrace the Iraq War as his running mate. It's the one thing which may be more unpopular than Bush, and McCain's embracing it?! And he embraces Bush, too. Why else would McCain reject the improved GI Bill? In an election year, the Republican nominee rejects a veteran-friendly piece of pork, a rejection not shared by his party but only by the incumbant president who enjoys the lowest approval rating since Andrew Johnson.

And you think McCain can win? Running on a platform of "I like the Iraq War and Bush's treatment of the country!" The only way Obama can lose now is if there's a crippling scandal. Could happen, sure. But I don't play lotto, and I don't bet on long-shots when the stakes are this high.

The twin jackets are now off. It's a great day for America.

Buchenwald-Gate

Wow, this election has gone from the farcical to the obscene pretty quickly, and this time it's not from Hillary, it's from our friends, the Republicans. The GOP is going nuts over the fact that the Democrats have repudiated the polarizing Queen of Darkness and will soon nominate an uncorrupted, charismatic transcendent orator who draws crowds of thousands and has added new voters, and members, to the Democratic party. Meanwhile the GOP candidate is detested by most of the party and is about 1000 years old.

So the GOP has been trying to use whatever they can to slam Obama and the most recent gambit is to say that Obama is stupid and makes gaffes, like confusing Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Ya see, Obama said this on Memorial Day (from CBS):

Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz. He said the family legend is that, upon returning from war, his uncle spent six months in an attic. “Now obviously, something had really affected him deeply, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,” Obama said. “That’s why this idea of making sure that every single veteran, when they are discharged, are screened for post-traumatic stress disorder and given the mental health services that they need – that’s why it’s so important.”

Well it turns out that Mr. Barack O'Liar has lied again: it was not his uncle but his Great uncle. Liar. And it wasn't Auschwitz, it was Buchenwald! Super liar!

OK, back to reality. What does it matter? To almost everybody on earth, Auschwitz is a synecdoche for all concentration camps. And it's totally immaterial for Obama's point, which is that his relative liberated a concentration camp and was haunted by the experience. That is all true.

But, according to the links cited by my friends at Balloon-Juice, the right wing crazies have called Obama a liar and a goofball for messing up the facts. Nice try, schmoes, but it doesn't wash. And it would be just silly if the GOPers had stopped there. But they went worse.

The Right-wingers, in order to create a scandal, have to show that it DOES matter which concentration camp Obama's great-uncle liberated. And so, as I read on Balloon, they have to say that while Auschwitz was bad, Buchenwald was NOT THAT BAD:

Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was merely a slave labor camp, and not historically abnormal in a time of war. The people who died there did so under the stress of work and disease, rather than as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the planet. Which, of course, says much more about human nature and history than it does about the Nazis.

It is crazy beyond comprehension. This was my commentary on BJ:

OK, I’m going to play the “Jew card” on this play. I am named after two (great) uncles who were killed in the Holocaust. I don’t know where they were killed; it could have been in Auschwitz, it could have been in their homes by a mob, it could have been in a ghetto. It does not matter.

Seeing a pile of bodies – who for all I know contain my grandfather’s brothers – and to be told by ANYBODY that it is “merely” a slave camp is beyond obscene.

Yet, as my rational side is pulling me back, I have to say that this episode demonstrates just how much a Republican hates a Democrat: in order to attack a Democrat, a Republican will say that the Nazis weren’t so bad in Buchenwald.

Put another way, Republicans hate Democrats more than they hate Nazis.

Taking it just one step further: the GOP first attacked the story, then found out it was basically true, so now they have to say that Obama's great-uncle was a weenie for suffering PTSD from seeing what was only horrific to a billionth degree and not a trillionth degree.

VP, Cabinet Watch, part 2: Cabinet

Part 1, VPs, here.

Like with VP, the cabinet doesn't do as much work as provide famous faces of the party, helping define the political persona of the president. Bill Clinton chose many of his advisers from the campaign, and then had certain 'token' slots: Hillary insisted (so I've read) on a female in the top 4 slots (AG, State, Treasury, Defense) and got AG (and eventually State as well). Blacks and Latins were important, as well as a Republican in Defense. Bush also did this with his cabinet: his AG was a sop to the rabid conservatives, his Defense was to be a signal for realism and experience (cough cough cough), his State was a fine choice despite it being a token point (but also to be a hearkening back to his daddy's days) and treasury also went to a competent old timer (who was quickly fired after he proved too competent). A good cabinet official is a former senator or governor who wants to get back in the game, or a geezer who wants to retire with dignity (cf. Lloyd Bentsen, Clinton's first Treasury Sec.).

My analysis will be about the big names from the campaign supporters. I'll stick with the big four, plus any other notables - especially for the Democrats who are choosing largely from the same pool.

1. Obama:
   
   I've put the most thought into this of all the 3. Here's a list of Obama's top endorsers that I will generally be working with. And, note, for Obama, based on their close relationship and has experience in government, I think former Senate majority leader Daschle can ask and get whatever cabinet position he wants. So that's a wild card. Also, I am going to apply the Purple Rule (i.e. restrict the appointment of any sitting officeholder in a swing state. Another caveat, I don't think Sen. Kennedy (MA) will pull a Bentsen. He's too powerful and useful in the Senate. However, if he can arrange for a proper replacement, maybe he will so he can control both a cabinet spot and Massachusetts.
   
   1. State: Gov. Richardson (NM), if he shows that he can pull in Hispanic voters in November. His resume alone qualifies him for this job and he's perfect as the affable airhead that State has often been.
      
   2. Defense: Former Senator (GA) Sam Nunn. I hope.
      
   3. Attorney General: John Edwards' name was bounced around but he hasn't endorsed and since today's his primary in NC he's lost most of the effectiveness, so I see him (at best) getting HUD, Interior or Labor. The two best of the top people would be either Senator Feingold (WI) (sending a clear civil liberties message), or Sen Kerry (MA). I like Kerry because he was a former AG in Mass, he came out early and strongly for Obama, and it would take him out of the Senate, giving some more deserving people a shot.
      
   4. Treasury: Nobody special right now; could be Fmr Sec Robert Reich; Or even a Bloomberg would be nice. Of the other top endorsers there's Fmr NJ Sen Bradley (general gravitas), or better yet: Fmr Commerce Sec Daley (Chicago machine politician, Commerce Sec under Clinton, CEO of huge corporations).
      
   5. Others: Former Clinton cabinet members are a nice touch, to reassure voters that there's some heft after an 8 year absence from power (like, l'havdil, GWB did with GHWB people): Reich, Daley, Fmr NSA Anthony Lake, Fmr Sec Pena, and a nice group of former military leaders.
   
   
2. Hillary:
   
   Haven't given as much thought (ugh), but here's her endorsers:
   1. Defense: Wes Clark. This is off to an easy start.
      
   2. Treasury: I'm putting Paul Krugman here because he has turned into such a distgusting hack, that this must be his reward.
      
   3. State: Probably Mark Penn. He's so smooth.
      
   4. Attorney General: Webster Hubbell? Jim McDougal? Fmr Sec Cisneros? Or any of these fine fellows. Ooh, howzibout former Solicitor General Starr? He has lotsa experience.
      
   5. Others: Really, since Hillary is promising a 90s Nostalgia Administration, she'll basically choose whatever people are left over from her husband's administration. Basta.
   
   
   
3. John McCain:
   
   Here's a list of his endorsements. This a tougher list to compile because McCain needs to find people who have not been tainted by the second Bush administration or the scandals of the DeLay Congress. It's not only because both entities are electoral poison, it's because they are largely incompetent hacks who won't inspire confidence in what will be a dispirited an angry electorate [given what the landscape must look like for McCain to be victorious]. It's one of the tragedies for the GOP - that usually a decade in power will train a new generation of leaders; as it is, the GOP actively tranished and attacked leaders, training hacks and goobers instead. Bravo Karl Rove.
   1. Attorney General: I'll start here because I think that's where Lieberman will end up. I think after '08 his power in congress will have been eliminated by a massive Democratic pickup (even with a McCain win, just one more Democrat and Joe is moot).
      
   2. Others: Rather than go through the offices like I did with Obama, I'll just list some notables that may end up in power: Schwarzenegger will get something, because McCain owes him *big* for delivering California. Same goes with Crist for delivering Florida. Since those big states were winner-take-all, McCain needs to give payback. Schwarzenegger maybe for State (since he may the only Republican who speaks another language). And, if I'm right about Graham for VP, McCain may also want some prominant also-rans who can build up a real GOP leadership team: Romney could be in there, as well as Jeb Bush.
      

Well, that's all for now. Let's see what happens in Indiana and No Carolina. Go tar heels!

Backpost: Life Imitates Walken

Backpost: From 11-05-2006, in the height of the Haggard scandal.

The enclosed SNL skit was alluded to by someone as being reminiscent of the Haggard denials. In any case, I had not seen it before, and it's very funny. Here's the transcript.

And, finally in 2008, I've found a clip:

Stand by Yourself

This op-ed by Dina Matos McGreevy, ex-wife of NJ Gov. McGreevy, about the recent Spitzer scandal, "Stand by Yourself" highlights a key fact about (you guessed it) Hillary Clinton.

Her claim of 'executive experience,' is subject to McGreevy's inadvertent catch-22: because if Hillary (claims) not to have known about Monica (and all the rest) so too, how can she call herself a full partner in the governance?

Pic from here. Backpost finished on 2009-11-29.

GOP: It now looks like Romney

While there may be no real GOP front-runner, it's becoming more of Romney's game now. Giuliani, while a strong candidate because of his 9-11 halo, has some insane skeletons in his closet. The most recent is Shag-Gate (TPM has done great work on this) wherein Rudy spent millions of my tax money to have the police walk his then mistress' dog. While this is run-of-the-mill New York City graft, that doesn't play well outside the cynical world of Nu-yawk. The scandals (and there are now quite a lot) plus his disastrous personal life (which echo each other) plus his liberal policies on abortion, guns, immigrants and Da Gays, may be enough to sink Giuliani for good.

And on Tuesday Romney got a crucial endorsement by National Review. That endorsement, plus his successful speech the other night defending his right to be a religious whackjob, has established him as the candidate of the GOP establishment. Combine that with his money, and with his movie-star looks and persona, and I think he's the guy. Unless he makes some spectacular gaffe, his money and acceptance by the GOP machine politics should get him the nomination.

While I don't discount Huckabee's success in Iowa is impressive, Huck doesn't have the money, the support of local GOP machine politicians, the policy-knowledge, or the staff to make it much farther. Being a media darling is great, being a populist is great, but it's hard to defeat the candidate of The Money and The Machine (note, this is why I still haven't ruled out Hillary... but, like above, her current wounds are all self-inflicted and gaffes can kill anybody).

If it is Romney, then I am worried about who his Veep pick would be. TNR has said a few times now that the rest of the candidtaes hate him and won't work with him. Will that matter if he offers them the VP slot?

I believe Romney will choose a rock-ribbed conservative as his running mate; I believe it will be Rick Santorum. By doing that, even when Romney flops over to the center-left in general election (which he is guaranteed to do), he can thus pander his true centist bona-fides while winking at the cultural conservatives with Santorum.

State of the 2008 Race - Analysis

As many of my avid reader(s) know, I am pretty bad at predicting mass human behavior. Give me an individual and I can predict their behavior pretty well... but masses of unknown dolts? I am worse than Lotto. Can't help it, it's just an ability I lack. And I also can't help myself from MAKING predictions. All I can do is warn you that my predictions stink.

You may ask "Why, then, do you feel compelled to make these (ironically) predictably bad predictions?" Good question, voice in my head. Because while my conclusions are almost always wrong, my analysis is often right. So I want broadcast points for my deductive skills even when my inductive skills blow.

Overview

All logic should state that the next president will be a Democrat. A Democrat won in 1992, 1996, and in 2000 - and came very close in 2004 and that was a very poor candidate against a wartime, post-homeland strike, opponent. In the three subsequent years the GOP have shown themselves to be corrupt incompetent hypocrites. Their support seems to come entirely from flat-earth fundamentalist xenophobes. So logic says it will be nearly impossible for the GOP to win in 2008.

The nearest example of this election would be 1976, when a very poor Democratic candidate defeated the scandal-ridden GOP. There are lessons for both parties since it was a remarkably close election. Quoth the wiki:

Carter defeated Ford by two percentage points in the popular vote. The electoral vote was the closest since 1916; Carter took 23 states with 297 electoral votes, while Ford won 27 states and 240 electoral votes...

Despite the stink of Watergate, the GOP installed an honest-ish dolt as President and he was able to run on a clean slate. And he almost won! What undid Ford? The fact that in 1976 the American electorate actually cared that their president not be a moron:

During the second presidential debate on October 6, Ford stumbled when he asserted that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration." He added that he did not "believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union", and made the same claim with regards to Yugoslavia and Romania. Ford compounded his error by refusing to retract his statement for almost a week after the debate...

Side note: burn this fact into your cerebrum - in 1976 a visibly stupid Ford wasn't (re)elected despite an impressive record of leadership and valor (WWII veteran, in the House for 24 and Minority Leader for eight, and sitting as president for 2 years); yet in 2000 an even more obviously stupid candidate, George W Bush, with a pathetic resume (drunk, drugged and unemployed until he was 40, then - after his father had served as VP and President, being elected governor in a state known for having one of the weakest executives in the Union and serving one term) came dangerously close to being elected president against an accomplished & talented, albeit irritating as hell, incumbent VP of a very popular president.

Ford lost in 1976 because he was (moron + scandal) while Bush was almost elected because he was a (moron - +scandal) i.e. minus the scandal that hung around the neck of his rival.

The GOP could win in 2008 if they extrapolate the 1976 lesson - get a competent candidate who can push the scandal of the past 8 years onto a rival and run against a weak Democrat. The Democrats need learn from Carter's shaky '76 run:

When Carter left the Democratic National Convention, he held a huge 33-point lead over Ford in the polls. However, as the campaign continued the race tightened, and by election day the polls showed the race as too close to call. Carter's decline in the polls, and Ford's surge, is usually credited to three events. First, Carter promised a "blanket pardon" to Vietnam War draft dodgers ... Second... Carter admitted to having "lusted in his heart" for women other than his wife [in Playboy Magazine]... [Third], Ford performed well in what was the first televised presidential debate since 1960.

The lessons again? (1) Don't be a crazy liberal, (b) don't be arrogant and stupid in your sanctimony, (c) Any stumble can cost dozens of points no matter how stupid your opponent is.

Primaries vs. Generals

An added problem is the decades-broken primary process. True, the primary system was developed to fix what was perceived as an even worse process (the Fat Balding Party Boss System), but in general it appears that the primaries have been worse for Democrats (see: 1972-2004) than Republicans (see: uh, 1996?). Sadly the only people who vote in the Primaries are wild-eyed freaks on the fringes of both parties, and the candidates know that. Which means Republicans bank rightward and Democrats bank left.

The candidates will need to fringe themselves up only as far as the fringe requires. In 1992, Clinton didn't have to go too far left because after having a Republican president for 20 of the past 24 years, the Left wasn't as strong and the Center was ripe. So too, now: the Democrats don't need to be so far left because the Centrists of the party are as fed-up with the past few years as the Liberals are.

The GOP is in trouble, though, thanks to Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay and Karl Christian Rove. The Rove Strategy was to take a country that is pretty centrist - as reflected in 1992, 1996 & 2000 - and pump up "wedge issues" so as to create a massive, but illusory, Red-Blue split. This grotesque polarization started with Newt's Crew who were shocked by a JFK/LBJ style Centrist Democrat in office. Their attacks on Clinton were designed not only to weaken a strong Democrat but were done so in a hyper-partisan way. And just as the Israelis, while being victims of terrorism, are blamed as aggressors for retaliation, so too Clinton was blamed for being "partisan" after he was dragged through the mud for every idiot possible thing that he maybe kinda shoulda woulda coulda did. And so in 2000 the country, which was unified in a desire for a centrist (like Clinton), was persuaded to believe that the victim of the partisan assaults (Gore) was the cause... while a mop-topped 'outside the beltway' Gucci-cowboy dunce would be a 'unfyiter not a divdinger.'

The politics of radical division was then AGGRESSIVELY pursued by Karl Christian because he knew (I think) that the "Centrist" mantle could easily be adopted by the Democrats as well as the Republicans. It was 50-50. So Karl needed an edge - the 1% or 2% that is all that will matter in a tight, close race. Karl then pumped up his rabid fringe to show up and vote (while also preventing likely Democrats from getting to the polls and forcing the Justice department to investigate talented Democratic rivals; cf. the Attorney Scandal).

Karl Christian was a success in 2004, but the price is being paid in 2008: the fringe now dominates the Republicans. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are the spokesmen and any deviation from their venomous blather will cost a GOP hopeful in the primaries. You need to be a jingoistic soldier for Christ or you're not a proper Republican.

Note, the fringe-voter imbalance that skews the Primaries are also reflected in any of the polls taken before the primaries - because most people don't pay attention to the race until it becomes "necessary" - which for some is right before the primary, or possibly post-Labor Day 2008.

I will continue this analysis for each party in the next few posts.

Update: Woops, I forgot the most important lesson from 1976 and that is 1980. That no matter how scandal ridden the GOP was post-Watergate, the almost complete idiocy of Carter made it possible for an even more right wing Republican to win just FOUR YEARS after the population "threw the bums out." And Reagan was so popular that he even got his nebbish Vice President to win in '88. What I would suggest, then, for Republicans is to pull a 1964 - choose an upright and outstanding candidate who can never ever win the general election but will make the GOP look good after 8 years of idiocy, and then run the A-list in 2012 so to pull of a 1980. The Democrats can help the GOP by having an idiot win in '08...

{2009 Update: moving gif from here.}

More About Columbia's Hypocrisy

From the comments section of the New Republic's Marty Peretz's Spine, about Columbia U President Bollinger and his aiding/abetting anti-Semitic nonsense:

When there was a scandal at Columbia with anti-Semitic professors in 2005, he named a committee to investigate that.

Of the five faculty omn the committee, two had signed anti-Israel boycotts (Farah Jasmine Grifin and Jean Howard - subsequently promoted university vice-president). A third (Mark Mazower) had written Israel is Nazi and should not exist. A fourth was none other than lovely Lisa Anderson.

Lisa Anderson had been the PhD advisor of Joseph Massad (and recruited him as a faculty subsequently), one of the most anti-Semitic professors and one of the accused. So much for the honorable lawyer Bollinger handles conflict of interest. Lisa Anderson, as a dean, also invited Khaddafi at a Columbia conference (he din't come but addressed them by video) and then, one year later, invited Ahmadinejad at Columbia.

The man overseeing Bollinger's committee was Nicholas Dirks,a university vice-president who was one of the initiators of the anti-Israel boycott.

Not so surprising that Aminabalajad was invited, eh?

{2009 Update: pic from here.}

The Travesty of Justice

TPM's Paul Kiel gives a rundown of who has resigned at the Dept. of Justice recently. The following is my editing of his data:

1. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, 8/27/07.
   
2. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, 5/14/07.
   
3. Acting Assoc. AG, William Mercer (the Dept. #3), withdrawing from the nomination 6/22/07
   
4. Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff, 3/13/07.
   
5. Department White House liaison, Monica Goodling, 4/6/07
   
6. Michael Elston, McNulty's chief of staff, 6/15/07
   
7. Executive Director of the Executive Office of United States Attorneys Michael Battle, mid-February.
   
8. Bradley Schlozman, an attorney in the Counsel to the Director staff at the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, formerly the U.S. attorney for Kansas City and a former acting assistant attorney for the Civil Rights Division, mid August.
   
9. Assistant AG for the Civil Rights Division Wan Kim, 8/23/07
   

To recap: The AG, his chief of staff, his 2 senior deputies, and other heads of offices. Resigned. Their families must have been lonely, eh?

While the morons of the world still think that the Attorney Scandal is just an 'overblown personnel matter' - and it's not - the scandal did reveal that the DOJ is filled to the gorge with incompetents, blind ideologues, and scoundrels.

It's hard to explain to the detached American voting public - whose brains seem stuck on an endless TiVo loop of monkeys in clown suits - that this is a bad thing. But the department of Justice is important. More important than American Idol and Paris Freakin' Hilton, if you can imagine.

NYTimes Editorial about Gonzales

I hate to admit it, but they wrote a durn fine editorial. The choice quotes:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has finally done something important to advance the cause of justice. He has resigned. But his departure alone cannot remove the dark cloud that hangs over the Justice Department. President Bush needs to choose a new attorney general of unquestioned integrity who would work to make the department worthy of its name again — and provide the mandate to do it. Congress needs to continue to investigate the many scandals Mr. Gonzales leaves behind.

When Mr. Gonzales was appointed, it seemed doubtful that he would be able to put aside his years as Mr. Bush’s personal lawyer, which stretched back to the Texas governor’s office, and represent the interests of the American people. He never did.

In many ways, Mr. Gonzales turned out to be the ultimate “loyal Bushie,” a term his Justice Department chief-of-staff used so incredibly inappropriately to describe what his department was looking for in its top prosecutors.

It was just that kind of craven politics — the desire to co-opt the power of the government to win elections — that was the driving force in Mr. Gonzales’s Justice Department. Dedicated and capable United States attorneys were fired for insisting on doing their jobs with integrity — for refusing to put people in jail, or shield them from prosecution, simply to help Republicans win elections. Lawyers were hired for nonpolitical jobs based on party enrollment and campaign contributions, and top members of Mr. Gonzales’s staff attended pre-election political briefings at the White House led by Karl Rove and his aides.

[snip]

There was a more basic problem with Mr. Gonzales’ tenure: he did not stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law, as an attorney general must. This administration has illegally spied on Americans, detained suspects indefinitely as “enemy combatants,” run roughshod over the Geneva Conventions, violated the Hatch Act prohibitions on injecting politics into government and defied Congressional subpoenas. In each case, Mr. Gonzales gave every indication of being on the side of the lawbreakers, not the law.

Mr. Gonzales signed off on the administration’s repugnant, and disastrous, torture policy when he was the White House counsel. He later helped stampede Congress into passing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which endorsed illegal C.I.A. prisons where detainees may be tortured and established kangaroo courts in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to keep detained foreigners in custody essentially for life. He helped cover up and perpetuate Mr. Bush’s illegal wiretapping programs, both in the counsel’s job and as attorney general. The F.B.I. under his stewardship abused powers it was given after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the name of enhanced national security.

Mr. Gonzales will hardly be a tough act to follow, but the standard for the next attorney general should not be set that low.

[snip]

The next attorney general will have two critical tasks. First, he or she must get to the bottom of the scandals hovering over the department. Mr. Gonzales played defense, as if it were Congress’s job to discover what laws his department may have broken, and his job to thwart it. The next attorney general should appoint a credible, independent investigator to look into the prosecutors’ firings and likely Hatch Act violations and make clear that the investigation will be permitted to follow the facts where they lead — including, as appears likely, to the White House.

[snip]

Mr. Gonzales, for all of his undeniable deficiencies, merely reflected the principles of this administration. His resignation is a necessary but hardly sufficient step in restoring the nation’s commitment to the rule of law.

Best Moment of April 19 Gonzales Hearing

This is old news now but this short clip, 71 seconds, from the first day of the Judiciary committee testimony of Attorney General Gonzales is the most telling example of why "Fredo" is the epitome of these past 6 years of fiasco.

Some of the fiascoes are Rove created (e.g. the destruction of the wall between Church and State, the insane wedge issues, the ignorance of congressional corruption, the politicization of every nook and cranny of the executive branch), some are Cheney (e.g. every stitch of our disastrous foreign policy). But the most sordid are the Bush ones - because they aren't animated by greed (Cheney), or power (Rove) but from good-ole-boy incompetence.

This clip is from the very beginning of that day's testimony. After the Democratic chair (Sen. Leahy) comes the ranking Republican, Sen. Specter. Theoretically, this should be an ally, but in this clip we see Specter's thin veneer of friendliness to his party's executive branch employee shatter.

Ya see, Specter was just uttering pale bromides to ease General Fredo into the testimony, but Fredo can't resist mouthing off a belligerent self-defense.

Lessons to be Learned

Lesson #1: As far as I'd seen this was the first and last time that Fredo mouthed off. The rest of that day, and all subsequent appearances to the Judiciary, he has been eerily pliant. He's taking a savage ego beating. Over and over he needs to behave as a brain-dead buffoon. Yet commentators have been assuming that he is either (a) said pliant buffoon or (b) a superbly calm professional liar.

Thus, this clip shows that he does truly want to fight back and say, to quote his namesake: "It ain't the way I wanted it! I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says... like dumb... I'm smart and I want respect! "

Yet the demand for respect was ridiculous and shot down immediately by someone who was supposed to be an ally. I believe that Fredo is a clone-surrogate of Bush - note that they even sound alike, in accent & in whiny idiocy - and that after a token protest of their value they bend over and take their humiliation. I think that in every idiotic act of this administration, Bush puts up a Fredo-like protest, is shot down and shown to be a dolt, and then he swallows his meager bully pride and allows Uncle Dick or Aunt Karl to run the show.

Lesson #2: is that no other news agency pointed out this exchange! I reiterate that I believe it's the most important moment in this whole massive scandal. Oh well.

Backpost started April 19, 2007 finished 8/9/07. All I had was the Youtube link.

Email-Gate Anyone?

Hey, remember Filegate? That was fun. Back in 1996, the rabid Republicans controlled congress and the press was playing along with their every single manufactured scandal against Bill Clinton.

Why? I have my theories. It's likely a mixture of commerce and contempt. Commerce = Bill Clinton was transformed - because of his innate charismatic celebrity, because he was poor white trash and because he was an inveterate horndog - into tabloid fodder. Just as Angelina Jolie can't cross the street without front-page tabloid coverage, so too everything Bill did became celebritous and shocking. He was interesting in all the tabloidy ways and the media stopped caring about journalism and all about selling themselves. Contempt = because Bill was a hillbilly cracker from a broken home and the press corps, even by the 90s, was filled with wannabe cultural elitists. They hated him for the same reason Rush hates blacks.

Anyway, filegate was a hoot. Naturally, there was absolutely no wrongdoing, but that didn't stop the media from flogging this dead horse for a big long while.

My question, though, about that "gate" is: how long did it take for the allegations to surface before the 'gate' was appended it? And, related to that, how many newspapers/cable news shows used the term thereafter?

I ask that especially now because the Bush administration has so many real honest-to-goodness unbelievable-in-this-modern-enlightened-age scandals yet I don't know of a single 'gate.'

True, they tried doing that to the Plame/Libby case (plamegate, libbygate) but not only didn't those names stick, they weren't really widely used. And, if that's all we can dredge up, then that just proves my point. Check out this index page . None of the scandals that should be going on have been bandied about enough to get 'gated.' Torture? WMDs? Katrina? Cheney shooting a guy?!

Well, we have a chance now. If you've been following the news recently, it appears that the White House has misplaced millions of emails that relate to, uh, everything. And it happens to be a big ol' law that the emails be kept. Forever. Not ever to be deleted.

Will this scandal take off? Will the fact that the government has been eliminating evidence of its behavior cause a 'gate' to be appended? Let's see how long it takes, if it even does.

Oh, and just in case you're one of those Rush Limbaugh type listeners who won't believe that Bush would do anything wrong because he's a by-golly tough talkin' Texan born-again Christer, then see this list of all the times Bush's pardners have lost evidence:

Greenwald: The Bush administration's terrible luck with finding documents

Wolfowitz in Trouble

OK, let me get this straight. Paul Wolfowitz, the neo-con know-nothing who was an architect of the debacle in Iraq was rewarded for his incompetence in the standard Bushie way: instead of a prison term and lifelong revulsion for his criminal bungling he was made president of the World Bank.

And because Paul is a brilliant political mastermind, instead of laying low - with a gasping realization that he has avoided the fate he richly deserves - he keeps doing dirty stupid things.

Yeah? Like what? Well, like this:

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged Thursday that he erred in helping a close female friend get transferred to a high-paying job, and said he was sorry. […] At issue are the generous compensation and pay raises of a bank employee, Shaha Riza, who has dated Wolfowitz.

This shkutz-bag divorced his wife in 2001 and started dating Shaha Ali Riza - an employee at the world bank - and then when he needed to escape the Bush Administration he got a job in the (wait for it) World Bank! As president! And then he got his shiksa girlfriend a massive raise in a sinecure at the State Department ($193,590 per year, tax-exempt) while still being paid at the World Bank!

Oh, and Shaha's new boss? Liz Cheney. Cough cough cough,

To review: very bad, very dumb man who created our Iraq policy miraculously escapes punishment, lands cushy job, and screws that up in a sex/money scandal.

This would be funny if so many people weren't dying because of this man and his pals in power.

Kurt Vonnegut & Don Imus

Well Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at 84. This happened the same day that Don Imus was fired by MSNBC (and suspended by CBS) for saying nasty stuff.

The contrast between these two is instructive. Vonnegut was (until yesterday) the most important living American writer - because he was imaginative, knew how to write true satire, and generally he knew right from wrong. He was often compared to Mark Twain - and that's a fine comparison because the two were fine-thinking humorists. As such, even though I often disagreed with Vonnegut's politics, he was a hero to those of us who try to see the world realistically and communicate that realia to others. He was successful while most of us aren't. Hence, a hero.

Seeing Vonnegut a few months ago on The Daily Show was a defining nexus of this moment in time's highest culture. It was like witnessing Einstein meeting Freud (which never happened) or Twain meeting Churchill (which did). True, Jon Stewart and Kurt Vonnegut aren't at the stature of the above four, but we take what we can get.

Then there's Don Imus. I have not listened to the show for any decent length. I first heard of him from a relative, back in the late 80s, who liked the show because Imus told sick, racist jokes. Since that description, I have steered away from anything to do with him. Which was why I was so surprised a couple of years ago when I heard that he was a powerful interviewer of the powerful political elite. Huh? The racist-joke slimeball interviews presidential candidates and NYTimes reporters?!

Naturally, I am happy that Imus has finally been hoisted by his own petard. But the more important question is why he had been able to continue for so very long? Related to that question is: why did this obviously noxious and racist bonehead get caught LAST WEEK for what he has been doing for years?

The same holds true for Ann Coulter. She has been saying unconscionable things for years. Yet she gets smacked down for calling Jon Edwards a bad word. Huh? Especially since, if you've seen the footage, she actually did not call Edwards the fg-word. It was actually a botched joke. [Which, when it's as obvious as it has been in the case of Kerry and Coulter is a valid defense; it also applies to a recent flap over Garrison Keillor and can even apply to Imus's last straw.]

Why does it take so long to catch on to the vile nature of people like Imus and Coulter and why does the tide turn, often, on a small action and not on a grand error?

The same is holding true for the current government, by the way. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc were obviously criminal incompetents from day one. Yet America only figured this out around September 2006. Not after Katrina, not after no WMD, not after the economic policies written by Daddy Warbucks. It was before the Foley scandal, too. It just kinda happened. And the big revulsion - the one that should be in place now - has yet to happen. What I mean is that just as Imus and Coulter are now exposed for being the kind of people I knew they were years ago, so too Bush & Cheney will be exposed... it's this freakish new law of perception... but I don't know how or when it happens.

It does fall under the Tipping Point kind of dynamics, for sure. It's frustrating to me because until the point tips, the slimeball in question is given honor and access. Imus and Coulter were given respect, Bush and Cheney still are, yet when the point tips people will see them and revile them just as I see them and revile them now. Yet my revulsion, before the point tips, is heretical and unacceptable.

This is why it's an irony that Vonnegut dies the day a slimeball is unfrocked. Because Vonnegut saw the truth and was able to tell people about it. Yet his books were often and still are banned and reviled. While people like Imus walked free, Vonnegut's books were even burned. But I, like Twain and Vonnegut, can look at these ironies, inconsistencies and infuriations and find solace in the attempt to tell the truth of it all.