Top Ten Ways Hillary Can Pander Her Way to the Presidency

10). Promise to give each and every American $1,500 gift card to use at the mall of their choice. Hey, if every American could afford to purchase a second or third giant screen TV it sure would help stimulate the economy. And who better than Hillary to get tough with the Arab oil sheiks in order to get them to lend us the money to finance this scheme.

9). Hey, if Hillary would promise to obliterate Crawford, Texas it sure would make up for her vote to give the warmonger George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

8). Offer raffle tickets to ordinary citizens where the prize is an overnight sleepover in the Lincoln bedroom. The prize should include quality time with Bill and other VIPs. Winners, of course, must be over 21.

7). Subsidize massive federal boondoggle to turn marijuana into cannabis-based ethanol. Hey, weed is already America’s #2 cash crop. Let’s see if we can get higher mileage with hybrid cars that run on fumes. This should solve global warming too. And it’s doubtful it will lead to more traffic accidents, assuming drivers don’t inhale.

6). Forget the gasoline tax holiday. Like a lot of Americans I consume a lot more alcohol than I do petrol. How about a tax holiday on Hillary’s favorite beverage, the boilermaker? I’ll drink to that.

5). Hey, if Bill can pardon billionaire fugitive Marc Rich, then why couldn’t Hillary pardon me for the $28,432 I owe in unpaid parking and traffic fees? A traffic infraction amnesty for all Americans is just what Hillary needs to propose to pick up some Red states.

4). Draft dodging chicken hawk Republicans have succeeded in Swift boating liberal war heroes for too long. Hillary should retroactively reinstate the draft for top government officials who used multiple deferments and the National Guard to avoid one senseless war when they were young only to start another when they were old. Let’s see how Dick Cheney and George Bush look in Kevlar helmets and body armor as they dodge IEDs, mortar rounds, and sniper fire in “Free Iraq.”

3). I’d vote for Hillary if the Clinton campaign would make “She’s so Cold” by the Rolling Stones her theme song. Hey, but if Obama should happen to get the nomination after all I’d love to hear “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” following Barack’s acceptance speech.

2). Hillary should pledge to appoint Al Gore as Chief Justice of the World Court responsible for investigating and prosecuting Crimes Against Humanity (including any and all high government officials who may have authorized torture, preemptive war, and election fraud). Let’s face it, I want to see the rightful winner of the 2000 election order Bush confined to a straightjacket while the disgraced ex-president undergoes a thorough psychiatric evaluation.

1). Hillary should promise to pick her vice-presidential running mate from a pool of contestants that face off on a popular reality-based TV show like “Survivor.” Contestants will have to compete in a series of silly tasks designed to reveal their capacity for ruthlessness, duplicity, and backstabbing. The contestant that would make the Clinton’s want to hire a food taster the most wins the second spot on the ticket.

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Reverend Wright vs. the Right

A debate between Jeremiah Wright and Sean Hannity would probably be about as subtle and intellectually rewarding as a scene from of Hamlet played by Vince McMahon and Donald Trump. Rightwing bloviaters are in perpetual need of bogeymen to rail against, and what better foil to make stupid white men seem smart than an African-American Archie Bunker. If Reverend Wright weren’t the product of the far left the far right would have had to invent him.

Projection is a psychological mechanism whereby unacknowledged emotions of one’s own – fear, aggression, and bigotry – are attributed to another, thus alleviating oneself of the responsibility for toxic feelings. One can imagine, for instance, the temporary psychological relief a KKK member gets from watching loops of Reverend Wright venting his spleen; the white supremacist feels justified by locating the source of his anger in the uppity black minister spouting “God Damn America.”

Reverend Wright and his most vociferous critics are in many ways mirror images of one another. This can be seen, for example, in the mindset of figures from the religious right, such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, who insisted that the 9/11 attacks were God’s retribution upon America for promoting abortion, gay marriage, and secularism. This is arguably an even cruder and more irrational explananda than Wright’s “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” commentary on 9/11.

Ironically, Wright and his detractors share the same dubious premise: namely, that we live in a just universe where human events are governed by a benevolent deity who nevertheless dispenses rewards and punishments for our moral good. The notion that the perpetrators and victims of terrorism are part of a divine scheme to dispense justice is so patently anti-scientific, juvenile, and irrational that it is beyond embarrassing.

Reverend Wright’s view, however, at least has the virtue of being more theological sophisticated and tenable than that of his counterparts on the right. For instance, Wright makes the perfectly valid point when he draws the connection between America’s foreign policy and a terrorist backlash. Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noregia, and Osama bin Laden were all recipients of U.S. military aid. In a very real sense, as Benazir Bhutto noted decades ago, al-Qaeda was the Frankenstein monster the Reagan/Bush administration helped create.

Wright is an astonishing mixture of erudition and ignorance. He weaves uncomfortable truths and conspiracies into a narrative that can be odious and illuminating at the same time. I don’t doubt that he and his church have done good work ministering to the poor and championing the cause of the disenfranchised and disaffected. Wright’s legacy will be even more mixed, however, if he succeeds in derailing a candidate who transcends the divisiveness that religious demagogues feed on. Here Wright shares another trait with the far right cable crowd: if he spent as much time solving problems as he did whipping up anger and resentment he’d be out of business.

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Bush vs. Justice

Justice is to society what health is to the body. That is, justice is a kind of harmonious interplay between the various components of the social order that engenders optimum functioning. Philosophers, of course, have long inquired about the nature of justice. For a character named Thrasymachus justice is synonymous with the interests and advantage of the stronger, and attitude summed up by the notion that “might makes right.” When the tiny island of Melos resisted the unilateralism of the Greek Empire a forerunner of George W. Bush simply informed the inhabitants that you are either with us or against us. After all, as the official put it, fairness and justice only pertains to equals. And in disputes between non-equals, the sophistic official went on, “the strong do what they can and weak suffer what they must.”

This is a cynical and corrosive understanding of justice, needless to say, since it reflects the notion that justice is little or nothing more than one side imposing its will on the other, through force of arms, rhetorical sleight-of-hand, or whatever means happen to be at one’s disposal. On this account there are no objective standards, save one: winning is proof that one is right, as evidenced by the fact that the victors will get to write history.

In examining this notion, which extols power as the end all and be all, it is worth quoting the words of John F. Kennedy. He wrote on the pitfalls of power not tempered by a poetic dimension:

“When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses”

Eight years of Bush’s unilateralism, zero-sum politics, and legal sophistry have convinced most Americans that the country could use a moral disinfectant to purge the taint associated with an administration that completely squandered the public trust. This was a president, after all, who insisted the United States did not engage in torture, illegal eavesdropping, or manipulate intelligence even though the administration’s own internal memos explicitly contradict his public assurances.

It is now abundantly clear that administration lawyers – particularly David Addington and John Yoo – contrived Alice in Wonderland type rationalizations to legitimize interrogation methods that were outside the U.S. military code of justice, international law, and the Geneva Conventions. Moreover, these logic-chopping legal sophists attempted to promulgate a perverse doctrine whereby the President supposedly had the inherent authority to ignore, interpret, or fashion the law in any way he chose to in his role as Commander-in-Chief. This so-called theory of the Unitary Chief Executive might just as well be called the Humpty Dumpty Doctrine, after the cracked character who tells Alice after she’s fallen through the looking glass that a word means just what he says it means – neither more nor less. After all, thanks to Bush’s signing statements a law means just what he says it means – neither more nor less.

A law that depends on the whim of a single individual, however, is a contradiction in terms. That is, just as the philosopher Wittgenstein showed that the idea of a private language is incoherent, so the idea of a single individual serving as the fount of what is permissible and not is the very antithesis of the law. Bush’s pursuit of executive omnipotence has in fact led to a form of schizoid irrationality – i.e., torture is not illegal if the president orders it or defines it in ways that makes even the most inhumane and degrading interrogation methods acceptable.

Wittgenstein, incidentally, is famous for saying that “ethics could be shown, but not spoken.” By the same token, it might be said that justice cannot be defined, but still we might find examples that exemplify it. I believe Mozart’s great opera, The Marriage of Figaro, contains a sublime illustration of justice. Here the story concerns a decadent aristocrat presiding over a disordered household. To distract himself from the decaying and dysfunctional state of affairs he governs, the Count in question pursues a series of amorous affairs with the household help. His wife, distraught by her husband’s unfaithful intentions, makes plans to exact her revenge: she will impersonate one of the servant girls that is the object of her husband’s lust. In other words, the Count thinks he is seducing a maid, but he is really pursuing the wife he has spurned.

When the ruse is revealed the Count realizes how much he loves his wife and he begs her forgiveness. The tables have been turned and the wife can now extract her pound of flesh, but in one of opera’s most sublime arias she orgives him. We in the audience immediately recognize the poetic justice in the way the conflict has been resolved. As the opera concludes order has been restored, love triumphs, and justice reigns. Life, alas, does not often imitate art, but perhaps it should. In any event, I believe Mozart’s opera provides an archetypal example of justice.

In contrast, the Bush administration’s conception of justice is nothing but a prosaic counterfeit. Everywhere one turns – Bush vs. Gore, Guantanamo, the trumped up case for invading Iraq – one finds only rhetorical sleights-of hand, ad hoc and post hoc rationalizations, and endless excuses and evasions. Deep dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, the decline of America’s moral authority, and the tanking of the economy are symptomatic of a country that is seriously out of order. There is a lesson here: the arrogance that equated brute force with justice is being undone by a far great power: poetic justice.

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George W. Bush: The Most Unpopular President Ever?

George W. Bush is about as popular with the American people as an undertaker visiting a nursing home would be. Seventy-one percent of the public disapproves of Bush’s job performance, the highest negative rating ever. Not even Richard Nixon was so reviled.

By some estimates a million Iraqis have been killed since the war began, two-and-a-half million Iraqis have fled the country or been displaced, and virtually every expert agrees the invasion has enhanced the influence of America’s chief nemesis in the region, Iran.

The dollar is near an all-time low, gas prices are soaring, and the country is teetering on the brink of what some are predicting will be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Bush, however, is so clueless that he didn’t even seem to know – or care – when someone told him that gas would likely top $4 a gallon by this summer.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has described Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina as “disgraceful.” When you factor in the mortgage meltdown; the failure to find WMD in Iraq; the collapse of Bush’s efforts to privatize Social Security; the explosion of the deficit, the discrediting of the administration’s democratization agenda for Iraq; the setbacks in Afghanistan; the failure to catch bin Laden; and the precipitous decline in America’s power and prestige during Bush’s tenure . . . well it’s a no-brainer that George W. Bush has been a monumental failure. You might say that Dubya is kind of like Nero, but without the musical talent.

George Bush has decimated virtually everything he’s come in contact with: FEMA, the U.S. military, Iraq, the economy, and the Republican Party. But you can bet your retirement account and/or your economic future that Forty-Three earnestly believes he’s been doing a “heck of a job.”

Bush likes to claim that he’ll be vindicated by history. Many decades from now, Bush claims, historians will recognize he made the right choices, particularly in regards to his decision to invade Iraq. This is a facile, self-serving, and irresponsible way of looking at things. As chief weapons inspector Hans Blix noted, had Bush delayed his decision by as little as two weeks the world would have know with certainty that Saddam did not posses the dreaded WMD that were the casus belli of the invasion.

Certainly, from a military standpoint, it would be important to know that U.S. troops would not be facing chemical and biological weapons. Needless to say, this would have simplified the invasion, or perhaps made it unnecessary. But the Bush administration has invariably been hostile to evidence that contradicts its ideological convictions, as its foot-dragging approach to global warming demonstrates.

Bush could (and should) have fired the incompetent Donald Rumsfeld earlier. He should have set up a unified chain of command so that Paul Bremer wasn’t disbanding the Iraqi Army on his own. And he never should have allowed political loyalty to trump competence when it came to sending personnel to reconstruct Iraq. Put simply, it’s not just that the choices that Bush has made that have been disastrous, but rather that his entire ideological, managerial, and political style has engendered catastrophe at every step. George Bush, in short, has about as much chance as going down as a successful president as Britney Spears has of winning an Oscar.

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The Case Against Scalia.

In the film The English Patient a Nazi interrogator muses over a question he thinks has great moral and metaphysical import. In the scene he and his henchmen are threatening to strip a detainees’ fingernails when the Nazi commander has a brainstorm: are thumbs fingers?

Such obsessively abstract logic chopping can engender a mind-numbing moral obtuseness. That’s the feeling I had as I watched “Justice” Scalia being interviewed on 60 Minutes Lesley Stahl. The subject of torture came up -- as did Bush vs. Gore -- but by Scalia’s reasoning torture didn’t fit in the punishment category. Presumably, torture is used on detainees to get information. Therefore, the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” doesn’t apply since no one is using waterboarding, thumbscrews, or the wrack to punish the aforementioned detainees. I’m glad “Justice” Scalia cleared that little moral conundrum up for me!

Scalia was equally disingenuous on the subject of Bush vs. Gore. He makes no apology for that ignominious decision, a verdict that is in the process of tainting his legacy and discrediting his judicial philosophy. He argues, implausibly, that the outcome would have been the same whether the Court intervened or not. Indeed, he has the temerity to blame Al Gore for getting the courts involved in the first place. Needless to say, Scalia blithely ignores inconvenient facts: namely, that tens of thousands of machine unreadable ballots were never tabulated, that Bush ally Katherine Harris misused her office as Secretary of State to thwart a recount, or that the chief legal rationale trumpeted by the Bush campaign (that examining the uncounted ballots would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause) was right out of Alice in Wonderland.

The Bush administration is universally recognized as a catastrophe. But all the hallmarks of their opportunistic mendacity were on display during the election fiasco that led to current debacle. The sophistic legal reasoning, the fear mongering, and the pandering to the lowest common denominator all had a trial run as the Bush’s campaign took their case to what proved to be a kangaroo court.

“Justice” Scalia’s anxiety was palpable as Stahl queried him. He clearly wanted to change the subject. Bush vs. Gore, it should be clear, will not stand as a paradigmatic case that illustrates the values and principles that exemplify the highest ideals of the United States. Rather, it will mark a crucial moment where the ideal of a fair and impartial judiciary resorted to brazen political expediency. It is only poetic justice that those who lent their seal of approval to Bush’s dubious political ascension should be discredited the most by his disastrously incompetent reign. Justice Stevens was on the right side of Bush vs. Gore when he wrote in dissent that the biggest loser in all this would be the American people and the rule of law. “Justice” Scalia is an oxymoron.

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The Case for Gore/Obama

Hillary Clinton has risen from the dead more times that Count Dracula. She’s sending shudders down the Democratic establishment, however, since the more primaries she wins the less popular she becomes. Indeed, with Hillary’s likeablity rating hovering around 35% -- a virtual untenable number for a candidate who hopes to win the presidency – her only shot at winning the Democratic nomination lies in tarnishing Obama. Hence the paradox, the better she does against Obama the more despised she becomes among the younger and better-educated voters that represent the future of the Democratic Party.

Hillary is drawing kudos from conservative commentators for her tenacity. Her single-minded willingness to fracture her party in order to win the nomination is reminiscent of George W. Bush’s obsessive quest to “win” in Iraq even if it means destroying the U.S. military, the dollar, and America’s strategic position. The scorched-earth self-righteous obliviousness of the two “leaders” is more than a little eerie. No wonder right-wing pundits are singing Hillary’s praises; they recognize in her a kindred spirit.

Hillary’s penchant for distorting the truth, her top-down management style, her us vs. them outlook, and her proclivity to pander to the lowest common denominator make her seem like a liberal mirror-image of that discredited “compassionate conservative,” George W. Bush. I don’t believe the United States can withstand another four to eight years with a polarizing politician who has trouble acknowledging the truth and can never admit they’re wrong.

Hillary, however, has exposed significant weaknesses in Obama’s candidacy. The first African American candidate with a chance at winning the presidency has trouble connecting with the so-called Reagan Democrats. I’d like to think this has more to do with the fact that many of the blue-collar workers that have trouble with Obama are anti-intellectual rather than racially bigoted. To be fair, Hillary also has to contend with stereotypes and misogynistic attitudes that unfairly hamper her ability to be judged on the basis of her message, record, and character.

Hillary probably cannot catch Obama in terms of the pledged delegates or the popular vote count. But her efforts to pin the “elitist” label on her rival could well cost Democrats the election in November. It would be a catastrophe for the Democratic Party the country, and progressive values if the Clinton’s perpetual selfishness helps hand the White House to George Bush designated successor, John McCain. The best way to avoid political suicide -- particularly if Obama cannot convincingly close the deal in the remaining contests – would be for Democrats to turn to Al Gore to head the ticket with Obama as his running mate.

For those of us who support Obama – and see in him the potential to be a great president and a champion for progressive values – a decision on his part to accept the vice-presidential nomination would be disappointment, unless that figure was Al Gore. But a decision of that kind on his part would be in keeping with the kind of character Obama has displayed; he would be putting the needs of his country and his party above his own. More importantly, a Gore/Obama ticket would almost certainly present the most formidable team the Democrat’s could field in 2008. Indeed, a Gore/Obama victory would put the final nail in the coffin of the catastrophically tragic Bush era.

Presidential campaigns need to articulate grand narratives. Hillary has failed to do this. Indeed, it seems woefully clear that she lacks the capacity to be a figure that educates the public. Gore and Obama, however, are both leaders with the kind of vision and judgement to chart a new course for the United States after the debacle of Bush’s failed presidency. They were the only two major figures in the Democratic Party, incidentally, to speak out forcefully against the Iraq War, the torture and abuse sanctioned by the Bush administration, and Bush’s other abuses of power. Hillary loses my respect when she refers to Obama’s prescience on the war as “just a speech.” Speaking out against the war was an act of political courage, a quality that is difficult to associate with the competent but dismayingly prosaic and politically expedient Clintons.

Electing Gore and Obama would signal to the world that America has atoned for the morally hideous aberration of Bush/Cheney. Neither the seventy-one year old McCain or the baggage-saddled Clinton has quite what it takes to turn the page the way Gore and Obama would.

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Sean Hannity’s America: The Politics of Hate

Sean Hannity has taken journalism to a level even Joseph Goebbels would have to admire. In Hannity’s hands, insinuation and guilt by association are art forms. Indeed, his ability to make the worse argument appear better is virtually unmatched by any rhetorician I know of. He may be the finest sophist America has. But let’s give credit where credit is due. After all, Hannity’s success depends critically on the virtually unlimited obtuseness of his audience. It takes a rare and exceptional mind to fall for the same fallacies over and over again, but Hannity’s viewers are unvaryingly consistent in their credulity.

How does Hannity manage to pull the wool over the eyes of his audience while viewers flock away from liberal commentators? I believe this has something to do with the fact that the politics of fear and resentment has proven a winning strategy for the right wing in the past. Put simply, for a lot of voters it’s easier to imagine things that make them angry than to envision ways of solving the challenges that make them fearful and angry in the first place. Hannity’s genius, and that of his compatriots, is to deftly turn public figures like Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama into emblems that stir the anxiety and ire of a significant portion of the electorate.

Hannity and his ilk do this by twisting the words, exploiting gaffes, and manipulating images in ways that make candidates they oppose seem foreign, condescending, and disloyal to America. For instance, prior to the 2000 election Al Gore said he took the initiative in creating the Internet (which was true). But this was twisted to make it seem like Gore was claiming credit for inventing the Internet, which was supposed to feed into the notion that the VP was a serial exaggerator. Conservative commentators had a field day with John Kerry’s windsurfing, which they used to pigeonhole him as a flip-flopping elitist.

The tactics Hannity and company are using to disparage Barack Obama are no less inane, but they are arguably more subtle and potentially more pernicious. It is essential to expose the sophistic ploys they use to manipulate public opinion so that the 2008 election is decided on basis of ideas and character, not character assassination.

Hannity and like-minded conservative commentators are determined to paint Obama as not one of us. They have to eschew overt forms of bigotry, of course, so rather than attack Obama directly they resort to guilt by association. For example, there are determined to link Obama to William Ayers. Ayres was once a member of an extremist group that protested the Vietnam War forty years ago by building and setting off bombs. Ayres is now an English professor who happens to live in the same neighborhood as Obama. The two also sat on the board of an anti-poverty foundation. Barack Obama was eight years old when Ayers was engaging in his subversive activities and has condemned the acts in question as “detestable.”

If standards of logic and reason were applied there few if any inferences one could deduce from Obama’s tenuous association with Ayres. However, Hannity and his crowd are experts at twisting facts in order to generate and pin a negative emotional connotation on Obama. Here’s how they do it. First, they deliberately exaggerate Ayers’ moral culpability. They do this by stating that Ayers was part of a terrorist group that set off bombs that killed people, but they fail to mention two important facts: 1) Ayers did set off bombs, but no one was killed. 2) Three members of Ayers’ group were killed when a bomb they were making exploded accidentally, but these are the only deaths caused by the group. In other words, attempts to paint Ayers as public enemy number one are overblown.

Ayers, however, had the misfortune of publishing a book on the same day as 9/11. In it he says, “I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.” Ayers claims that “I feel we didn’t do enough” refers to the efforts to end the war and that he did not mean that he wished he had set of more bombs. In fact, he has acknowledged feeling embarrassed by the arrogance, rigidity, and narcissism he and his compatriots exhibited at the time. Ayers, however, as clearly provided Hannity with the opening he needs to portray him as a terrorist in the same moral category as bin Laden, which he does by depicting Ayers as some one who unrepentantly hates America. After all, as Hannity boils over with righteous indignation, Ayers had audacity to make his “I feel we didn’t do enough” comment on 9/11.

Hannity next step is to keep referring to Ayers as a terrorist while mention the coincidental 9/11 connection over and over again. The idea is to plant in the minds of viewers that Ayers is a guy who attacked America and said these dreadful things on 9/11. Never mind that Hannity has interpreted Ayers’ views out of context -- and in the worst possible way -- while deliberately conflating Ayers and 9/11 in a disingenuous way. The final step of course, is to make the leap that because Obama sat on the same board and knew Ayers that this is the kind of person he surrounds himself.

Hannity also takes a relatively innocuous event, such as Obama’s participation in the Million Man march, and links him to radical black leader Louis Farrakhan. Snippets of Farrakhan are played repeatedly as Hannity makes insinuations about Obama’s associations: There’s a pattern here . . . he’s not who we think he is . . . he’s hiding something . . . etc.

The flap over Obama’s pastor, Reverend Wright, is a variation on this theme. Obama has repudiated the comments his pastor made. But by playing them in an endless loop, and piling one dubious insinuation upon another, Hannity makes several flimsy arguments seem more persuasive than they really are. He does through repetition and the juxtaposition of incendiary images (Rev Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and William Ayers) when discussing Obama. All of this is designed to create and imprint negative emotional feelings towards the likely Democratic nominee. Hannity’s method here is only slightly subtler than the conditioning Pavlov used to train dogs to salivate at the sound of a dinner bell.

Guilt by association, conflation, and other rhetorical slights of hand techniques are the same methods the Bush administration deployed to fallaciously link Saddam to 9/11 in the public mind. Can a well-oiled but increasingly decrepit right-wing propaganda machine hoodwink the American people once again? There’s an old saying, “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.” The American people cannot afford to be fooled again.

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Elitism Test.

Everyone knows for a fact that elitists are out to ruin the good old US of A. Elitists are tree-hugging, French-loving, latte-sipping snobs who look down their liberal noses on Chuck Norris movies, the Grand Old Opry, and cultural events like NASCAR. Yes sir, if American-hating elitists ever had their way the U.N flag would replace Old Glory, George W. Bush would be indicted as a war criminal at the World Court, and Barack Hussein Obama would carry out his secret plan to get "Sean Hannity’s America" off the air. Thankfully, there’s a sure-fire test to identify elitists so that they can be exposed before they can cause too much trouble: Answer the following questions to see if you or someone you know is a closet elitist:

1) Can you down at least 12 shots or twelve beers in less than an hour and still bowl better than Barack Obama?

2) Would your wife or girlfriend prefer to stay at home and iron your shirts while the two of you watch reruns of "The Dukes of Hazzard" than have you take her across state lines to the nearest drive-in to see a George Clooney picture?

3) Do you resent the fact that Muslim fanatics housed at Guantanamo appear to have more amenities than the trailer park where you and your in-laws reside?

4) Do you identify with the mountain men in the film "Deliverance"?

5) Would you like the Bush administration to extend waterboarding to include smart-alecky liberal bloggers, political satirists, and other deviants

If you answered "yes" to all five questions: Congratulations, you are not part of the axis-of-elites. However, if you answered "no" to one or more question, then your I.Q. may be in danger of deviating from the mean. Please watch Fox News and then take the test again until you get it right!

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The Media and the Decline of Democracy

Plato equated democracy with mob rule. Watching the media debase the level of political discourse by constantly shifting debate and discussion to the lowest possible level it is not hard to feel the United States has entered a state of terminal senescence. The country is facing some of the steepest challenges in its history – the ongoing threat of terrorism, the disastrous war in Iraq, a housing/credit meltdown that threatens the foundations of the financial system, and an energy/climate crisis that will almost certainly destabilize the planet – but commentators are harping on flag pins, comments made by Obama’s pastor, and Hillary’s gaffe about evading sniper fire. Rome is burning, but the clowns that run the media circus can still divert the masses.

The price of oil just hit a new time high ($115 dollars a barrel). Food costs are soaring. And the record trade deficit means America is maxed out; since 2000 we’ve been borrowing against the future simply to sustain a standard of living the country can no longer afford. The plummeting dollar is a symptom the U.S. is basically insolvent, but Tweedledee (George Stephanopolis) and Tweedledumb (Charles Gibson) still think it’s appropriate to ask candidates Clinton and Obama to make a pledge not to raise taxes on working Americans.

How inane can you get! The Bush administration’s laissez-faire economic policies have led to the largest transfers of wealth in world history as U.S. consumers are now in hock to some of the most unsavory and anti-democratic regimes on the planet (China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Russia), but the media mavens are trying to extract promises from politicians not to raise taxes on the middle class. What about the dwindling value of the dollar, interest to service America’s debt, and soaring energy/food prices are a stealth tax that Americans will be forced to pay because of the Bush administration’s imprudent policies? Americans are poorer for eight years of Bush’s borrow and spend economics, but they haven’t seen anything yet. The bill for the debacle in Iraq, which by some estimates will cost every American family $50,000, is only beginning to come due.

The credit crisis is just the tip of an iceberg that has capsized the American economy. Housing prices may decline a further 30 percent before things bottom out. This process may take several years, which means the days of homeowners using their homes as ATMs is over for the foreseeable future.

Against this dire economic backdrop John McCain has called for giving Americans a “tax holiday” on gasoline during the summer months. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton promises to investigate oil company profiteering. Neither proposal addresses the inconvenient truth that surging world demand for oil, coupled with the declining dollar, and the increased nationalization of petroleum companies across the globe, have created the perfect storm whereby Americans will have to pay a greater share of their wealth to foreign oil producers. American oil companies have been steadily losing their market share -- a trend the Bush administration hoped to reverse with the invasion of Iraq – and recycled petro-profits are now filling the coffers of Sovereign Wealth Funds in Venezuela, Russia, and the Middle East. Ignominiously, failing and ailing financial firms, such as Citigroup, are now begging these SWF to rescue them.

President Bush’s mishandling of the economy may rival even his mismanagement of the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina. It is now clear that the kind of deregulation and laissez-faire economics extolled by conservatives has brought the financial system to the brink of catastrophe. Free markets work, but only when there is some minimal government oversight. When the financial system is tasked with policing itself you inevitably get insider deals, mountains of bad debt that the taxpayers are expected to assume, and carnivorous CEOs carving up companies and feeding on the spoils, but leaving shareholders and laid off employees nothing but the remains. The CEOs at Bears Stearns and Countrywide did not create value so much as reallocate value, to themselves.

The next American president is going to have to institute measures that will restore credibility and integrity to the financial system, establish a new social compact with the American people (especially a minimum healthcare package), and reinvigorate America’s manufacturing capacity. Put simply, over the last several decades finance became the country’s growth industry as wizards on Wall Street found new ways to package debt, displace risk, and skim money from Main Street. Unfortunately, their financial alchemy did not create new wealth, so much as create the illusion of spectacular riches that would later vanish into thin air once they collected their conjuring fees.

The United States is roughly in the same position as the Spanish Empire under Phillip II. Attempts to plunder gold from the New World could no more keep Spain’s debt ridden empire afloat than the Bush administration’s efforts to establish U.S. hegemony over Iraq’s black gold. As the decline of the Spanish Empire shows, a country known primarily for manufacturing debt cannot thrive economically.

The presidential candidates need to articulate their economic philosophies and explain how they plan to revive America’s economic competitiveness. Unfortunately, the mainstream media would rather focus on trivial matters, such as Hillary’s sniper gaffe or comments made by Obama associates. This is not to say that such questions should not be asked at all, but rather that the media risks turning a presidential contest into a mud wrestling festival if it focuses on trite distractions instead of substantive issues. Needless to say, an army of right-wing pundits is mobilizing to ensure that a flap over flag pins, guilt by association, and other time-tested techniques designed to portray Obama as un-American, will trump the War in Iraq, the Bush recession, and eight years of an inept Republican administration.

The country is going to be in even bigger trouble if the right’s sophistry is able to deflect attention from the moral, economic, military, and strategic carnage conservative rule has wrought. It is positively chilling the way media bloviaters like Sean Hannity are able to manipulate and twist events, situations, and statements in ways that exploit the ignorance and a prejudices of an audience looking for objects upon which they can fixate their anger. Obama’s much maligned comments about small-town voters being “bitter” are right in this regard: if conservative commentators can succeed in making the 2008 election about god and guns they’ll almost certainly prevent the kind of debate the country needs to have to solve its problems.

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The Bush Administration Announces Capture of Bin Laden

(AP) – April 1st 2008

In a stunning development, the White House announced today the capture of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. The apprehension of the world’s most wanted terrorist marks an extraordinary reversal for the Bush administration, which has drawn considerable flack over its handling of the war on terror, the economy, and the conflict in Iraq. Supporters of President Bush are hailing the capture as a “masterstroke.” And new details are emerging that are sure to change the perception Americans have of their president, who has endured historically low approval ratings while being maligned by critics as an “incompetent bungler.”

Bush’s image is certain to change as White House officials are confirming that the President personally commanded the Special Forces team that tracked bin Laden to his mountain lair, and then executed the daring daylight raid that captured the notorious evil doer. Indeed, in perhaps the most extraordinary twist of this amazing turn of events, it has been established that the “President Bush” who has governed in Washington since September 29th, 2001 – the president Americans have come to loath, despise, and revile – is actually a double. In fact, while Bush’s stand-in was donning a flight suit, bungling Katrina, and mishandling Iraq the real President Bush has been doggedly leading a crack team of Green Berets as they tracked the most notorious terrorist through some of the challenging and treacherous mountain biking terrain in the world.

Harry Smitten Jr., the versatile character actor who impersonated a seemingly hapless President Bush – “the role of a lifetime,” as he described it – bore such a close physical resemblance to the actual President Bush that not even the First Lady noticed the difference. Indeed, the ruse was so top-secret the president’s father, George H.W. Bush, wasn’t privy to the deception either. “He seemed a little clueless when it came to fly-fishing, golf, and horseshoes,” the elder Bush confessed. “Heck, I can’t tell you how many times he poked me in the eye with his fishing pole, shanked a drive, or drove into a ditch with the golf cart. “But I chalked it up to the immense pressures of being Commander-in-Chief. Gosh dang if this whole thing doesn’t put a lump in a dad’s throat. God bless my boy. And God bless America, now that we don’t have to worry about Obama anymore”

Grainy video of bin Laden’s capture quickly made it on to Youtube, providing incontrovertible proof of Bush’s success in bringing America’s most wanted fugitive to justice. The clip, which has already attracted nearly as many viewers as Brittany Spears’ latest breakdown, shows the real President Bush in combat fatigues single-handedly wrestling bin Laden to the ground in a dank cave. A spokesperson for al-Qaeda confirmed the authenticity of the video, but accused Bush of using an “illegal chokehold.” An administration official disagreed, insisting that the chokehold was legal in both the WWF and the UFC. The official later released a secret Justice Department memo, signed by former Attorney General Gonzales, which officially scrapped the Marquis of Queensbury rules that govern hand-to-hand combat involving a head of state and enemy combatants. Gonzales dismissed the Marquis of Queensbury rules as “quaint” in signing off in favor of the no-holds barred “rules” associated with ex-cons using mixed martial arts in cage fighting as seen on Pay Per View.

The dramatic circumstances surroundings bin Laden’s capture is certain to alter the political landscape. Already, Hillary is ducking for cover and Obama is taking legal steps to have his name changed to Michael Jackson. Not surprisingly, Bush’s approval ratings have soared and the Dow Jones greeted the news by rising 1,200 points minutes after Martha Stewart rang the opening bell on Wall Street. “This is the end of the Bush Recession,” quipped one market analyst, who predicted that paper gains in the stock market would soon wipe out losses in the housing market. Likewise, military experts now foresee a quick resolution to the situation Iraq as Al Sadr, the Sunni insurgents, the Shiite militias, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recognize that they are no longer up against the most incompetent military commander since George Armstrong Custer.

Presidential scholars, too, are marveling at the stunning turnaround in Bush’s reputation. As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin put it, “Here’s a guy who looked for all the world like the biggest loser in American presidential history, but then suddenly the country realizes we’ve witnessed one of the most audacious cover-ups and successful character reversals that ever played out on the world stage. George W. Bush is certain to go down in history as one of the boldest, most creative, and beloved presidents in American history.” And what does Harry Smitten Jr., the actor who played his part to perfection as a bumbling boob of a president have to say about his role in all of this? Mr. Smitten didn’t have any immediate comment, except to wish everyone a happy April Fool’s Day

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Barack Obama vs. The Axis of Idiots

Barack Obama is almost certainly the most substantive, intellectually impressive, and emotionally integrated figure on the American political scene today. His speech on race in America was far more than the typical self-serving political exercise most of us are accustomed to. Rather, it was a revelation into the character of a man who has a profound capacity to understand himself, his country, and the world in all its moral complexity. How refreshing to find someone so edifying and illuminating running for the White House following eight years of the obtuse self-certainty and inflexible mindlessness of George W. Bush.

What made Barack’s speech so impressive was his capacity to empathetically relate to the concerns whites and blacks, conservatives and liberals, and the rich and poor have. His aim was clearly to encourage greater dialogue, empathy, and to edify. His approach stands in stark contrast to a legion of self-serving politicians and pundits who have built their careers upon feeding the fear and anger of their audiences. Indeed, there is a herd of sophistic talk show hosts and cable celebrities -- Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Rich Lowry come to mind – who stuff their audiences with intellectual garbage the way visitors at a zoo might throw morsels of junk food at a gaggle of geese.

Barack Obama is equally perceptive on the subject of Iraq. Obama’s pragmatism, the cogency of his arguments, and his exceptional capacity to raise the level of discourse must terrify the purveyors of prejudice and irrationality. Put simply, a spokesperson for a progressive outlook as articulate as Obama has the potential to transform the political landscape in a way no American leader since F.D.R has. Thus, the right-wing hate machine is being set loose once again to do the only thing its good at: character assassination.

The Bush era conservatives have demonstrated they cannot govern, but their propaganda apparatus would make even Joseph Goebbels spin in his grave with envy. Six years into a disastrous war, and with the country facing possibly the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression, the professional slime-mongers on the right are bent on hanging comments by Obama’s pastor around the candidate’s neck. Obama has denounced the comments, but for shameless sophists guilt by association is a sure-fire way to clip the Democratic front-runner’s wings.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof correctly characterized called Obama’s speech thus: “It was not a sound bite, but a symphony.” Filtered, interpreted, and distorted by right-wing rage mongers, however, Obama’s speech is being dissected into snippets that present a completely misleading picture of Obama and his message. The agents of anger, ignorance, and arrogance have succeeded before in Swift-Boating Renaissance men like Al Gore and John Kerry. As a result, the country is stuck with a pre-Enlightenment President who has succeeded only in taking America back to the Dark Ages.

Obama faces a steep challenge. George W. Bush has demonstrated that even a bad argument aimed at the lowest common denominator has a good chance of succeeding if it is repeated often enough. The instruments that make up the right-wing echo chamber understand this. The weapons they wield are not truth or reason, but repetition and cliches. Obama’s candidacy really is different; it’s based on the premise that a leader can persuade the electorate by engaging them on a higher intellectual and emotional plane. That’s the audacity of hope we so desperately need.

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The Grand Delusion

Great powers should never entangle themselves in tribal conflicts. That lessons has been lost on the Bush administration, which has managed to tie down U.S. troops in the middle of a civil war in the heart of the Middle East. The U.S. faces a diabolic choice: 1) Leave Iraq and watch the country explode or 2) stay and allow a disastrous war to sap America’s financial and military strength. The Iraq war has revealed Bush’s moral clarity to be nothing but a mushy mirage.

The conventional wisdom among conservative commentators is that the surge is working. Critics of the war, they contend, are in a state of denial about the reductions in violence and the political progress being made. Even worse, conservative commentators insist, opponents of the war calling for a withdrawal would consign the U.S. to a humiliating defeat just when victory is within reach. Once again, so the argument goes, liberals are so blinded by their hatred of President Bush that they would hand al-Qaeda a decisive military and propaganda victory.

All of this reflects a complete misunderstanding of what is happening in Iraq. Put simply, only a small fraction of the violence in Iraq is instigated by al-Qaeda affiliated groups; the vast majority involves criminal gangs, sectarian militias, and the like fighting it out for political supremacy. The U.S. military is the only force capable of preventing Iraq from descending into a full-scale civil war that the ill-advised invasion and botched occupation precipitated in the first place.

Rampant corruption is a virtually ineradicable impediment to reconstruction and political reconciliation. Criminal enterprises and politicians are siphoning off the country’s oil revenue to line their pockets and build their power bases, which insures that there are insufficient resources to rebuild a unified and pluralistic Iraq. Violence is down for several reasons that have little to do with the surge. First, much of the ethnic cleansing has already taken place as the country has been divided up into ethnic enclaves. Second, Sunni insurgents, recognizing they were on the losing end of a civil war, have made a short-term tactical alliance with the U.S. military in the hopes of bolstering their financial and military position for the day the expect to take on the Shiite led government.

Subsidizing Sunni security forces has bought a temporary lull in violence, but it carries with it long-term costs, both to the U.S taxpayer and in so far as it amounts to arming a force opposed to the government we are counting on to keep Iraq from disintegrating. It is ironic in the extreme, of course, to see the Bush administration handing out cash to Sunni security forces patrolling neighborhoods in Iraq while at the same time millions of our fellow citizens are facing foreclosures here at home. When Americans begin to realize that we are paying former Sunni insurgents not to fight us I expect the architect of this debacle, George W. Bush, will be about as popular as Heather Mills would be at a Beatles convention.

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Interview with Bill Clinton: Is Hillary a Monster?

Bill Clinton has campaigned tirelessly on behalf of his wife, Hillary. Deconstructing Demagogues sat down with the former president to get his take on the 08 race, but before doing so we slipped a little truth serum into big guy’s Diet Pepsi. After all, Bill has a habit of stretching, bending, and twisting, the truth with as much flexible gusto as a gymnast on steroids. What follows is transcript of William Jefferson Clinton at his unfiltered, unvarnished, and unguarded best.

Deconstructing Demagogues: Thank you very much, Mr. President, for taking the time to sit down with us.

Bill Clinton: Hey, good to be here with you, and thanks so much for donating $11. 19 cents to my library, every little bit helps. Say, do you have anymore of those glazed donuts with the strawberry jelly inside?

Deconstructing Demagogues: I’m afraid you ate the last dozen, Mr. President, but you are welcome to polish off the rest of my frozen slurrpy.

Bill Clinton: Thanks, man. Campaigning always seems to whet my appetite.

Deconstructing Demagogues: Speaking of campaigns. An Obama advisor, Samantha Power, recently described Hillary as a “monster,” what is your response?

Bill Clinton: Well, she’s right, but only when Hillary gets mad, which thankfully is just once or twice a week these days. You know, everyone has his or her dark side. And with Hillary you just got to accept that every once and a while she’ll get so incensed and wrathful that you expect to see her eyes pop out her head.

Deconstructing Demagogues: What’s that like?

Bill Clinton: Well, it’s a little bit like watching the character played by Linda Blair in film The Exorcist, but Hillary does it all without special effects, scary make-up, or even acting skills.

Deconstructing Demagogues: Wow! But what do you think of Samantha Power? Was it right for her to resign based on the fact that what she said was true?

Bill Clinton: Samantha Power. She’s that cute redhead isn’t she? She could brief me anytime, if you know what I mean.

Deconstructing Demagogues: There’s been a lot of speculation about a so-called “Dream Team.” If Hillary wins the nomination do you think she’ll pick Obama as her vice-president?

Bill Clinton: I’m afraid I’m going to be the vice-president, but I’m not supposed to say anything publicly.

Deconstructing Demagogues: some would say you already were the Vice-President, but that raises another interesting question: what are we going to call you if Hillary is elected? Should we call you the First Laddie?

Bill Clinton: I’m kind of partial to the First Cad, but that’s off the record. If Hillary hears me say anything like that I’d be better off spending the next eight years at Guantanamo as an Enemy Combatant!


Deconstructing Demagogues: Let’s talk about the campaign. A lot of observers say that Hillary’s ad showing her answering the phone at 3am convinced voters in Texas and Ohio that she’s more qualified to handle a crisis. But a lot of Obama supporters believe the ad was fear mongering. What did you think about the ad?

Bill Clinton: To tell the truth, I thought the 3am ad was pretty hopeful. When I was president that’s was about the time that I got calls from that woman, Ms. Lewinsky, and I was always hoping I’d reach the phone before Hillary. So in that sense, I think that ad was pretty positive.

Deconstructing Demagogues: I see. One final question. Like all former presidents you’ve been reluctant to criticize the current occupant of the oval office. Many observers feel President Bush will go down in history as easily the worst chief executive in our country’s history. What do you think about his performance as Commander-in-Chief?

Bill Clinton: I think he’s doing a heck of job.

Deconstructing Demagogues: I have the feeling the truth serum I slipped you before the interview is starting to wear off. But I want to thank you for taking the time with us Mr. President.

Bill Clinton: Truth serum. What is this . . . some vast left wing conspiracy. Shame on you Deconstructing Demagogues. You are worse than Ken Starr!

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Hillary and the Politics of Fear

Hillary Clinton is meaner and colder than Vladimir Putin’s mother-in-law as she spends her winter ice fishing in a Siberian igloo. It may just be me, but Hillary comes across like an ice-princess that could make Lady Macbeth seem warm in comparison. Her latest gambit is to remind voters of the one American public figure who is less popular than she is, namely the priggish prude Kenneth Starr. It’s a nauseating attempt to garner sympathy, distract voters, and slime Obama all at the same time.

It pure chutzpa for Hillary to compare Obama to the GOP’s Inspector Javert just because the Obama campaign focused attention on the fact that Clinton’s have yet to release their tax returns or key documents from their White House years. I guess Obama must be part of a vast left-wing conspiracy, which includes the media, caucus participants, African Americans, and educated voters under fifty that has the audacity to stand in the way of Hillary’s coronation.

The perverse irony, of course, is the fact that a vast right-wing conspiracy – an axis-of-intolerance opposed to John McCain that includes Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter – has endorsed Hillary’s candidacy for their own disingenuous motives. It is understandable, however, that conservatives would gravitate to the former First Lady as she emulates the fear and smear and scorched earth tactics of Rove and Bush.

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Hillary Hasn't a Ghost of a Chance of Being Elected President

Bill and Hillary remind me of the fleshing eating zombies you might see from a drive-in horror flick; just when you think they are politically dead and buried they return to haunt you. Hillary has always been the Republican’s worst nightmare, but now she is becoming the Democratic Party’s worst nightmare. That’s because she cannot possibly win the Democratic nomination without destroying the Party and dooming its chances in the November election against John McCain. After all, there’s no realistic way she can catch Obama in the pledged delegate count, so her only way to win is to use the so-called super delegates to overturn the will of the majority of Democratic voters. If she does that she’s sure to alienate the constituencies that support Obama (the young, African Americans, and anti-war voters).

Republicans represent close to 40% of the electorate. When you add potentially disenchanted Obama supporters to the four out of ten voters that detest Hillary no matter what she does, then you realize Hillary has little upside and little margin for error. At best, Hilary could hope to win a squeaker against McCain, but in all likelihood independents, late deciders, and disaffected Democrats would probably break for the authentic-seeming senator from Arizona.

As a candidate Hillary has displayed some rather disconcerting qualities; she tends to do well when she goes negative or gets in a whining and self-pitying mode. Her last minute attacks before the Texas and Ohio primaries consisted largely of scurrilous charges. Guilt by association, innuendo regarding Obama’s faith, hearsay regarding Obama’s stance on NAFTA amounted to mudslinging. Put, simply, the Clinton campaign showed no regard for the truth; their only concern was to sully Obama’s image in the minds of the least educated late-deciders (who broke for Clinton almost 2 to 1).

All may be fair in love, war, and politics, but I’m a progressive that’s pretty much disgusted with Hillary. I see her as a triangulating politician, one who displayed abysmal judgement on the Iraq War, but who now uses slogans (“If I knew then what I know now”) to cloak the fact that she did not exercise or display due diligence and wisdom when it came to the most important decision of her political career. Put simply, Al Gore and Barack Obama are the only major figures in the Democratic Party with the courage and sagacity to oppose the Iraq War from the beginning. Both men did not simply give speeches, they spelled out their reasons for opposing the war in detail. And their judgement has proven prescient.

Barack Obama is not merely an inspirational leader. Listening to his stump speech recently I came away with the distinct impression that he is the most substantive politician the country has seen in a long time. This is a leader with a deep understanding of how the challenges America faces are interconnected, how the threat of terrorism, our energy habits, the loss of manufacturing jobs, and global warming are all tied together. Further, he has a vision of how the United States can restore its standing in the world. America is at it best and most persuasive, Obama understands, when we lead by example rather than through force.

Obama is a great communicator because he is a great listener. This is a quality the world is hoping America rediscovers. The Europeans and our other allies are looking to America to lead on a range of issues, such as nuclear non-proliferation, but they are looking for an America that listens to their views and concerns. To lead one must persuade, not just dictate, a lesson completely lost on the Bush administration. Obama is incredibly persuasive because he connects the dots and explains how if we all work together we can accomplish particular goals. His is a bottom-up approach, whereas Hillary (and George Bush) employs a top-down style. With a bottom-up approach, however, more people are invested in your success, which makes for a durable foundation for building social change and achieving national aims.

The Bush administration’s essential irrationality – it’s congenital inability to proffer cogent arguments (its reliance on cliches, false-choices, and ad hoc rationalizations) undermined the aims it pursued. Put simply, the sophistry employed during Bush vs. Gore, the demagoguery deployed in the lead up to the Iraq War, and the rationalizations used to justify torture, illegal wiretapping, and other Constitutional abuses have so eroded the Bush administration’s credibility that it has little public support left.

If Hillary Clinton takes a scorched-earth approach to the Democratic nomination – insisting the super-delegates anoint her even if she is behind in pledged delegates, states won, and the popular vote – she will in fact be emulating the modus operandi of George W. Bush. I can’t help but feel that Hillary’s dipping into the Rove playbook -- playing the fear card -- is a bad omen. At this point I don’t believe Hillary can win the top spot without getting ugly, and if she goes that route she’ll very likely doom the Democrats in November.

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Patriotism: Love of Country or the last Refuge of Scoundrels?

In simple terms, patriotism means loving and revering one’s country. Patriotism can take many forms. During the Vietnam War, for instance, John McCain found it preferable to endure torture and captivity rather than dishonor the uniform he wore and the ideals he lived by.

The Vietnam War, of course, was controversial. Many of those who protested against America’s involvement in South East Asia were motivated by patriotism too since they believed the war was a betrayal of America’s values. Forty years later, the arrogance and folly of that ill-fated war seem apparent even to its architects (such as Robert McNamara). Criticizing one’s country, too, can be a profound act of patriotism, particularly when a mob of pundits, politicians, and the hoi palloi threaten to stampede the lonely dissenters who have only truth on their side.

One of the solitary dissenters who was trampled in the run up to the Iraq war was weapons inspector Scott Ritter. I remember vividly watching a talk Ritter gave on the eve of the invasion as he emphatically insisted there were no WMD in Iraq. Though I remained agnostic on the question of WMD I opposed the war against Iraq for three reasons: 1) I believed the Bush administration was pursuing an imperial agenda that would prove tragic for the United States. 2) Unless the international community had a stake in the outcome I believed the venture would be more likely to fail than succeed. And 3) I believed the Bush administration did not appreciate the sectarian divisions in Iraq.

The demagoguery used to sell “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was nauseating. Pundits like William Kristol impugned the patriotism of those who questioned the war. Like Cassandra, I felt I sense of foreboding as the Pollyannaish cheerleaders bashed opponents of the war as appeasers and defeatists.

An axis-of-obtuseness (Fox News, the Weekly Standard, the Bush administration) drowned out the few lonely voices of reason that attempted to warn the public. The Shakespearean scholar Harold Bloom recognized in Bush – our “boy emperor” – a figure at once tragic and farcical. Al Gore, a Renaissance (man especially compared to mediocrities that mocked him) spelled out with prescient lucidity the case against launching a preemptive war with Iraq. And Barrack Obama, an up and coming state senator from Illinois, had the wisdom to recognize a bad idea when he saw it.

There were others, of course, such as General Anthony Zinni, who believed Iraq was the “wrong war at the wrong time.” But by and large, those with the greatest zeal and least understanding pitched their case to the lowest common denominator and carried the day: Mission Accomplished.

If only morality (and patriotism) was as simple as the president determined to vanquish evil by spreading liberty to the Four Corners of the Middle East. History, Bush believes, is a Manachean contest between the forces of freedom and tyranny. Bush is a man without a tragic sense. He envisions himself as the man in the white hat in a B western, but he is blissfully unaware that he inhabits a Shakespearean universe where noble intentions can breed moral catastrophes complete with torture chambers and precipitous national declines.

To put it charitably, Bush has about as much business being president as Dan Quayle would have competing in a spelling bee. Watching the Bush administration govern is about as cringe producing as imagining the cast of Hee Haw performing Rigolletto. The discerning reader, incidentally, will note that the dramatic irony in Verdi’s great opera is that the jester kills the very thing he loves most – his daughter – just as Bush has single-handedly destroyed the country he no doubt loves. The ruinous debt, the 7.6% inflation rate, stagflation, the plummeting dollar, the ill-advised and ineptly managed war in Iraq, the botched handling of Katrina, and the numerous torture, abuse, and lawbreaking scandals that have sullied America’s reputation precipitated one of the most precipitous national declines ever witnessed.

I don’t doubt Bush’s patriotism, or Donald Rumsfeld’s, or Alberto Gonazales’ . . . But there is ample evidence to doubt their character and their competence. The philosopher Hannah Arendt observed that the first thing the Nazis did as they consolidated power was to question patriotism of their political opponents. The would-be masters of the universe at Enron pursued a similar tack; anyone who raised doubts about the company’s accounting or business practices was branded as disloyal. Not surprisingly, both Herman Goering and Ken Lay insisted they would be vindicated in the end. To be a fool and rogue at the same time, their countries and companies may crumble, but their unique wisdom allows them to discern what others cannot: thirty, nay fifty years hence History will celebrate the choices and accomplishments they alone could make. It is all about them.

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Bill and Hillary's Unexcellent Adventure

Hillary’s Clinton’s campaign has been losing altitude faster than the Hindenburg after it caught fire. Watching the Clinton’s crash and burn has become a national spectator sport fed by the media’s lust to cover the former First Couple’s fabulous flameout. Hillary is going from heir apparent to political has been faster than you can say “Bush/Clinton/Bush Clinton.”

That’s right, a Bush or a Clinton has been on the presidential ballot for the last twenty-eight years. I’m convinced that nominating Hillary is the best chance Republicans have of avoiding the comeuppance they so richly deserve. For years the Clinton’s biggest selling point was the sympathy vote they got from standing up to their political enemies. Now, however, the Clinton’s are in the perverse position of standing a good chance of handing their political enemies a victory if they resort to scorched earth tactics to defeat Obama for the Democratic nomination. Put simply, if Bill and Hillary lose at the polls but then try and snatch the nomination by relying on super delegates and other shenanigans at the convention, then they’ll fracture the party and hand the election to John McCain.

Hillary is losing to Obama for a variety of reasons. Obama is a better candidate. His campaign is better-organized and well run than hers. And voters are finding Obama more authentic than the seemingly ever-calculating Clinton. For instance, every time Hillary has to defend her decision authorizing the disastrous war in Iraq she sounds like an unprincipled politician who can’t bring herself to admit a mistake. Her answer is so formulated – “if I knew then what I know now” – that everyone recognizes it as the ultimate copout to cover a catastrophic misjudgment.

Voters are finding Obama’s clarity – he opposed the war from the very beginning – far more preferable than Clinton’s cloudy obfuscation. After all, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor might also say: “if I knew then what I know now I wouldn’t have cast the deciding ballot that installed Bush/Cheney over the will of the electorate.” But that hardly mitigates the fact that she made a horrendous decision.

There’s not much daylight between Obama and Hillary policy wise, so voters are going with the personality they prefer. Obama represents not just change, but also transcendence in the sense of America regaining and living up to the ideals that make the United States a great country. Hillary, on the other hand, has a proven track record of being a polarizing figure. In many ways, she’s a mirror image of George W. Bush, even if she on the other side of the political spectrum. For instance, both Bush and Hillary exhibit a pathological degree of self-certainty, a congenital unwillingness to concede mistakes, and an attitude that politics is always a zero-sum game.

There are a lot of Republicans and moderates that are looking to punish the Republicans this November. Their distaste for Hillary Clinton, however, may overcome their anger at the GOP, particularly given the fact that no one doubts John McCain’s emotional authenticity. Of course, revulsion at the Bush administration may be so high that even Hillary (a candidate with negative ratings approaching 50%) could squeak by in the general election. However, at this stage Hillary is faced with a daunting if not impossible challenge: how to beat Obama without alienating a coalition made up of traditional Democrats, new voters, independents, and moderate Republicans that see in Obama a breath of fresh political air. Paradoxically, Hillary is now in the unenviable position whereby she can only win the nomination by resorting to tactics that will doom the Democrats in November.

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Is the Surge Really Working?

The surge in Iraq may be succeeding (at least on a superficial tactical level) but America is sinking thanks to the strategic ineptitude of the Bush administration. John McCain, according to the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, is close to clinching the Republican nomination because he courageously embraced Bush’s troop surge, and now that unpopular decision, Gerson argues, is in the process of being vindicated.

To be sure, any reduction in violence is a welcome sign, but the notion that the United States is achieving momentum towards “victory” reflects a tragic misunderstanding on part of Republicans. The United States could eventually achieve stability in Iraq, but at this stage any victory is likely to prove phyrric. That is, any “benefits” will amount to averting and mitigating consequences and potential worst-case scenarios set in motion by the ill-considered invasion and disastrously managed occupation itself. Stabilizing Iraq may have at best a neutral impact on global terrorism, though in all-likelihood America’s presence in region will be a rallying cry for jihadists for decades to come. Put simply, Iraq became the spawning ground for a new generation of anti-Western foot soldiers who can take battlefield experience and techniques gleaned in Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Europe, and elsewhere.

Bush’s theory that a democratic Iraq would transform the Middle East has been turned on its head. Spreading liberty as a way of reducing terrorism was a tempting panacea at best, but it is proving simplistic and false. The United States can continue to pour blood and treasure into Iraq, but in the interim it is neglecting its own crumbling infrastructure and the investments it needs to secure a more prosperous economic future. Ironically, at the very moment it’s own resilience is being sorely tested the country is facing a series of virtually unprecedented environmental calamities. Responsible scientists will not attribute any one event to global warming, but taken as a whole the wildfires, tornadoes, and other natural disasters we’ve seen of late are beginning to represent a scale of devastation forecast by Al Gore and experts on global climate change. On this issue, tragically, George Bush and his conservative minions resemble nothing so much as a flock of ostriches with their collective heads in the sand.

The cultural anthropologist Jared Diamond, in his book Collapse, observes how the decline of great powers are often associated with military defeats on the periphery of empire, which in truth mask ecological collapse at home. There is no doubt – none whatsoever – that the seven years of the Bush administration have led to an unprecedented decline in America’s strategic, moral, and economic strength. In simple terms, the United States is in a vicious cycle: Borrowing money to purchase oil from Middle East, which empowers anti-American forces, while simultaneously contributing to the high level of carbon emissions that fuel global warming. Bush, for his part, seems oblivious to the fact that American taxpayers are funding both sides in the terror war. To add insult to injury, many victims of Katrina and the tornadoes in the South have family members serving in Iraq. We are stuck in a war we never should have launched while the Bush administration completely ignored the gathering threat posed by environmental calamities fueled by global warming, which our own imprudent and unsustainable energy habits helped bring about.

Great leaders have a sense for the arc of history. That is, they see where history is going and they prepare their people to face the challenges of the future. Al Gore, for instance, has been trying to educate the public on global warming for three decades. He was also prescient – in a way Bush is incapable of – in recognizing the potential the U.S. led invasion and occupation of Iraq would have to ignite sectarian conflict that could destabilize the entire Middle East.

Gore (and most Democrats) understand that confronting the challenge of Islamic extremism will take a lot more that marshalling America’s military power; it will take diplomatic suasion and bi-partisan cooperation to rally the world behind a comprehensive strategy to increase the ideological appeal of America and its Western values (especially women’s rights and the separation of church and state) while reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism. It will also entail taking the United States beyond the carbon era.

Gore’s rational approach to problem solving contrasts sharply with Bush’s disastrous faith-based approach to governing. Conservative ideologues like Bush see terrorism as a manifestation of ontological Evil, a superstitious outlook that engenders a historical form of madness akin to the Salem witch trials or the Inquisition. It is no accident, for instance, that Bush’s response to the challenge of terrorism includes waterboarding and other forms of torture generally associated with the Middle Ages. Indeed, his style of leadership hearkens back to the Divine Right of Kings, the long discredited notion that a political leader functions as God’s regent here on earth.

The historian Arnold Toynbee observed that the rise of religious fundamentalism is invariably a sign of civil decline. He also observed that civilizations that attempt meet existential challenges by remaking the rest of the world (especially far-flung outposts on the periphery of empire) are invariably less successful that than civilizations that remake and renew themselves from within. This insight goes along way in explaining the Bush tragedy; the Bush administration has effectively outsourced America’s national security to Iraq’s security forces.

The surge has produced some tactical advantages, but there are compelling reasons to doubt they can be sustained. For one thing, widespread corruption governing the dispersion of oil revenues does not bode well for a political reconciliation. Further, Iraq’s various militias recognize the surge is by its nature of limited duration. Thus, they have every incentive to lay low and/or play-up their al-Qaeda fighting bona fides in the hopes of procuring as much American aid and equipment before Iraq enters the next phase when American troops begin to draw down in the Spring/Summer of 2008.

America’s predicament in Iraq resembles a Zugswang, which is a situation in chess where every possible move you make will leave you worse off. The United States may prevail in Iraq, yet maintaining the present commitment is likely to further hasten America’s decline. Those among Bush’s dwindling number of apologist who still believe that some decades from now the United States will be able to declare “Mission Accomplished” should remember the words of King Pyrrhus: “one more victory such as this and we are ruined.”

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Top Ten Reasons the Declining Dollar is a Good Thing

10). Greedy oil sheiks will get what they deserve when they discover just how worthless all those greenbacks they’ve been accumulating from their petrol profits.

9). “When you multiply 4% inflation times a 50% decline in the dollar, then a 199% increase in the deficit doesn’t seem too bad. Heck, we may actually be making a profit.” – Alan Greenspan (author of “Irrational Exuberance” and “Fuzzy Math).

8). “I feel a lot better knowing the IRS is getting currency that is losing value as we speak.” – Wesley Snipes (Black belt bad-ass & spokesperson for H&R Block).

7). “If the value of the dollar declines to zero, then it will prove my point: deficits don’t matter.” -- Dick Cheney (from a secure location).

6). “Declining dollar will raise the costs of food, which will force Americans to eat less, thereby solving our obesity problem. Every day the dollar drops I suggest American drop and do some pushups too.” – Jack la Lalanne (Fitness Guru).

5). If dollar declines enough Bill Gates will be as poor as everyone else.

4). The Iraq war will be priceless if the dollar continues to slide.

3). “If the dollar continues to plummet we’ll need more tax cuts and rebate checks to stimulate investment in things America really needs, like even bigger plasma TVs and cooler I-Pods.” – (James Cramer who won recently the Nobel Prize in Economics for his financial treatise, Mad Money).

2). When the dollar is replaced by the euro as the world’s reserve currency (sometime in 2009) we should replace George Washington’s likeness with George W. Bush’s mug. By that time, it may more economic sense to use our worthless currency as a substitute for Charmin toilet paper.

1). Replacing “In God we Trust” on our currency with “It’s you money, you paid for it” will be a fitting testament to the legacy of George W. Bush.

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The Bush Tragedy by Jacob Weisberg (Review).

George W. Bush is a Churchill wannabe with the soul of Inspector Clouseau. That, in a nutshell, is the disheartening conclusion I draw from Jacob Weisberg’s illuminating character study of our forty-third president, The Bush Tragedy.

The goal of tragic drama, Aristotle, believed, is to elicit pity and dread as a means of achieving catharsis. After seven years of Bush’s catastrophic misjudgments and squandered opportunities, which certainly invite pity and dread given the stakes for the United States, our country is looking for catharsis. But has America learned anything from watching the tragic spectacle of the Bush administration? The answer to that question may depend on the outcome of the next election. However, as Weisberg’s book makes clear, the lack of introspection, particularly an inability to comprehend one’s hidden motives and correct mistakes, is a fatal flaw, both in a leader and a country.

Weisberg approaches his subject matter from a Shakespearean point of view. That is, he recognizes (in a way that George W. Bush cannot) that life, individuals, and current events are inexhaustibly complex, suffused with contradictions, and utterly resistant to simplistic synopses. Indeed, even George W. Bush eludes any easy categorization, such as historical buffoon.

It is precisely because Weisberg can approach Bush sympathetically that his critical conclusions are so devastating. Bush, is fond of asserting that historians will be unable to get a grip on his presidency for decades. But Bush’s preemptive dismissal of all early-draft evaluations of tenure seems both shallow and self-serving when considered next to Weisberg’s meticulous, studious, and historically informed examination of the administration’s record.

The Bushes are notoriously averse to psychoanalysis. However, Weisberg convincingly demonstrates the Oedipal dimension that is at the heart of the unraveling of forty-three’s presidency and ultimately the Bush dynasty. Put simply, the younger Bush has defined himself in opposition to his father, the forty-first president, to a virtually pathological degree. Whereas the elder Bush was patient, prudent, and civil to a fault the younger Bush cultivated the opposite qualities; he would be brash, impetuous, and confrontational.

Bush Jr. has been haunted by the specter of his successful father for most of his adult life. However, Bush the younger was convinced that his father was a failed president because he failed to capitalize on his success in the Gulf War, failed to finish off Saddam, and failed to be reelected to a second term. Finishing the job his father started but didn’t complete – ousting Saddam for good – would paradoxically allow George Jr. to slay his father’s enemy and thereby exceed his father as well. Bush may not have been cognizant of such dynamics, but advisors like Dick Cheney certainly exploited them.

Weisberg also explores Bush’s extraordinary overconfidence, which he contends masks a deep insecurity. Bush, Weisberg argues, nurtures a deep resentment against intellectuals and liberal elites because of his experience of being ridiculed as a mediocre student at Andover, Yale, and Harvard. Indeed, that same resentment was palpable with both Karl Rove (a self-described “ultimate nerd”) and the taciturn Dick Cheney.

All of this goes a long way to explaining why this administration was so determined to brush aside the advice and input of experts of every stripe. Put simply, an axis-of-ignoramuses despised the bureaucratic know-it-alls, be they experts on global warming, analysts at the CIA, or foreign policy gurus associated with first Bush or Clinton administrations. Who needs experts, after all, when the president has his famous gut instinct?

As a result, the normal decision making procedures were subverted. Political hacks that parroted the president’s ideological outlook were brought into replace competent bureaucrats. And Constitutional principles were eviscerated on the dubious (and certainly undemocratic) theory that only an unchecked, unfettered, and essentially monarchical chief executive could protect the United States against it enemies. The results speak for themselves: the WMD fiasco, Katrina, and Abu Ghraib to name just a few of the administration’s spectacular self-inflicted failures.

Weisberg effectively lays to rest any notion that Bush will someday be vindicated by posterity. Perhaps his successors will manage to mitigate the still grim situation in Iraq, but the magnitude of Bush’s mismanagement and misjudgments virtually insure that future historians will compare him to the arrogant and incompetent Andrew Johnson, rather than Harry Truman. Ironically, Bush himself probably believes that he will join the ranks of great wartime leaders such as Lincoln, F.D.R. and his hero Winston Churchill. Tragically, Bush believes stirring rhetoric, eternal optimism, and unbending will are alone sufficient to insure success. Bush has many shortcomings, but his inability to match means and ends is arguably his greatest fault.

Churchill instinctively knew this in a way that Bush does not. The Old Lion once said that a democratic people could face any adversity, provided they believed their leaders were leveling with them and not living in a fool’s paradise. Reading Weisberg it’s easy to come a way with the feeling that Bush has too many tragic flaws to enumerate. But I think one can argue that Bush’s greatest failing is that he lost the confidence of the American people because he lacked the wherewithal not only to tell the truth, but to even recognize it.

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