Wednesday, November 28, 2007

BACK TO THE FUTURE

BACK TO THE FUTURE

The French have a saying, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose -- the more things change, the more they remain the same. Presidential politics has that character these days, with a vengeance.

Bill Clinton said yesterday that he opposed the Iraq war "from the beginning." I guess that depends on what the meaning of the word "beginning" is. The New York Times said the statement "was more absolute than his comments before the invasion in March 2003," and President Clinton's aides characterized his Delphic utterances from that period -- namely, that he would have given the weapons inspectors more time -- as the sort of modified limited hang out an ex-President owes a sitting President. It turns out, of course, that his opposition was very modified and very limited, because at the same time, the former President also spoke approvingly of the Senate's 2002 resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq. This is the resolution Senator Clinton voted for, which the Republicans will wrap her in come the Fall of 2008 if she is the Democratic nominee.

The scary part of Bill Clinton is that he can offer these kind of John Kerry-ish "I was for it before I was against it" encomiums without sounding nuts, which unfortunately (for the country) is how Kerry sounded when he tried it. Some people hate this about Bill Clinton (Sen. Bob Kerrey once said that Clinton was "very good" at lying, which wasn't a compliment). Others think it is a sign of genius (F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that "The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function"). Bill Clinton is, shall we say, very functional.

Functionality aside, however, this sort of stuff stokes the fires of Clinton fatigue that are, at this point, only a few Santa Ana winds from blowing out of control. The problem is that, by January 2001, the country was tired of Clinton, his great economy, general state of peace and hands on governing style to the contrary notwithstanding. We have now totally forgotten that sense of ennui because, today, we are really tired of Bush, the only guy capable of reminding us how much we miss Clinton. But we miss the economy and our place in the world during Clinton's eight years. We miss his competence. We do not miss his tortured efforts to conjugate the verb "is". And unfortunately, this "from the beginning" remark on Iraq reminds us more of the latter than the former.

I am writing this post before the Republican You Tube debate tonight and will venture a hardly bold prediction. They will give Hillary Clinton a lot of "face" time in their debate. They have been doing this in all their debates so this hardly counts as an insight. But the point is that they are doing this not merely because they oppose her, which is not news, but rather (and mostly) because they all really want to run against her, which is news. Politicians stuck in the volatile world that is the GOP Presidential primary campaign do not typically hype the opposition's potential standard bearer to the degree Hillary has been and will be mentioned. Usually, they are trying to increase their own numbers and nail down their own nomination before taking on the other side. Not this time, however. Despite the fact that none of them can really be called the front runner at this point (pace the national polls which boost, slightly, the former Mayor), Rudy and Mitt and Huckabee and McCain and Thompson collectively can't get enough of Senator Clinton. The question is: Why?

The answer is: Clinton fatigue. They want her back. They want them back. The disquisitions on present tense, the health care debacle, the '94 rout, Monica, the pardons, the whole thing, which for them carries with it the potential for (1) reminding Americans how tired we were by the time we got to January 20, 2001, and (2) forgetting how angry we are today. By any reasonable standard, the period 1992 - 2000 was a reasonably good one for the average American (who, after twenty years of stasis, finally saw his wages rise at least a bit) and a great one for the better off. But not the way the GOP tells it now (in fact, Rudy recently gave a speech warning of a return to the 1990s, a proposition he treated -- without explanation -- as the Q.E.D. on why Hillary should not be President), and not the way they positioned it then either (Monica, the pardons, and on and on). Similarly, by any reasonable standard, we are collectively in much worse shape today (the Bush administration long ago abandoned trickle down -- in favor of gush up --as an economic policy, and on the war, the Bushies have given the super majority which opposes it nothing but a three fingered salute). But that's not the way they tell that part of the story either.

Now, here, they have a big problem. Because, on the current state of the union, they really have no story to tell, at least not one that can put lipstick on the pig they have created. So they have decided not to bother. Instead, here's their answer to today's sad state of affairs -- the Clintons. You got it. They can't defend the economy, or the war, or the Court, at least not to the 70% who are not part of their base. So they do not plan to. Instead, they plan to remind us of -- and win based on -- . . . Clinton fatigue.

Here's my counter to their strategy. Let's borrow from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Let's get a little "functional." We were tired of Bill and Hil on January 20, 2001. We were also a lot better off with him (or them) in charge. I recently wrote a politically despondent friend in Atlanta that any Democrat with a chance at the nomination will be better than any Republican similarly situated. I love Obama. He'd be a good President, much better than anything the other side now has on offer. So would Edwards, or Biden or Dodd or Richardson or Kucinich (who my son loves).

And so would Hillary. Even if what's his name is still conjugating verbs.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

The Dow is down. . .a lot. We are still in Iraq notwithstanding an election a year ago that made it pretty clear 70% of us do not want to be. Lawyers are being arrested in Pakistan while Taliban are being set free. The home run king has been indicted. Global warming proceeds apace as the US bides its (and the world's) time, which we now know is rapidly running out. Broadway is black, as effectively are Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, SNL and a whole host of other shows (OK, this very last reality -- namely, the other shows -- may not be so bad). And the only Republican making any sense is the libertarian, Ron Paul.

So what precisely are we thankful for this Thanksgiving?

Those of spiritual bent, myself included, thank God for the bounty, fortune, and sheer good luck which many of us enjoy. To that should be added thanks for our friends, family and good health. But let's be honest here. After the usual suspects, the candidate list for thanks this year is a little thin. Absent the annual turkey whose life he just saved, very few outside his family and the GOP base are thanking W for his performance this year; I bet Cheney has even lost some members of his family. And Rudy never had a lot of his family to begin with, so he doesn't make the cut. The Dems are not getting thanks because they have not done what we elected them to do. Their only excuse -- the GOP minority threat of filibuster -- shows you cannot even be thankful for our system of government. After all, 60 votes are needed in the Senate to do anything, making majority rule somewhat beside the point (and therefore perhaps not worthy of the thanks we give it. . . or the Founding Fathers). As a lawyer, I would always like to be able to at least thank the Supreme Court. But they entered a semi-permanent realm of no thank you after Bush v. Gore. Perhaps one day they will be entitled to forgiveness. . .but never thanks.

I thank my wife. . .for marrying me and for being a great stepmother. But that's not unique in any way to 2007, and I thanked her last year as well. There's of course no harm in repeating the thanks. But the holiday is an annual one, so I think good form at least requires some additions to the list that constitute a basis for thanks au courant as it were. For the same reason, thanking my parents and sister is fine but doesn't really save 2007. Ditto, my children, although my soon not to be teenage son is back among the living (after a very short, but typical, adolescence). So I thank him (and Colorado College, which seems to have been more responsible for this certainly than me) for that. And I thank his friend Max, who is one of the inspirations for my blogging (though others may not thank Max, for the same reason).

I thank my dog, who is cute and always friendly (albeit blind). But not my cat, who is often mean and wakes me up at 6 am every day in ways that I do not find amusing. I thank my mother-in-law (obviously for my wife, but also for refusing to allow me to do the cleaning and for the cookies she sneaks into the house). I even thank my erstwhile right wing (he says he is now an "Independent") radio talk show host cousin, who has me on his show from time to time, to the consternation of the right wing.

OK, I admit it. I do have reasons to celebrate this holiday. And can now eat turkey, mashed potatoes and apple pie in abundance, having given due thanks.

But c'mon people. Let's improve the list for 2008. My cat is not going to get any better.

Friday, November 2, 2007

PSYCH-OPS

PSYCH-OPS

The Repubican Party in my lifetime has routinely touted itself as tougher and more competent than its Democratic competitor in matters of foreign policy. From the (false) claim that President Reagan won the Cold War via his military build-up and unwillingness to compromise on Star Wars (false because the build-up began in his predecessor's administration and was only marginally increased in his own, because Star Wars was ignored by the Soviets once Gorbachev was convinced that it was chimerical, and because the Cold War ended only after Reagan reversed his years of neo-con rhetoric to sign back on to the bipartisan policy of arms reduction that untimately allowed Gorbachev to sell internal reform to his own generals), to the beating Dukakis took over that goofy Alfred E Newman picture of him in the tank, the drumbeat of criticism that Clinton was weak on terrorism (when in fact he did more and came closer to beating our adversaries than the current administration), and the manic refrain of the current set of GOP candidates that they can be counted on to stay in Iraq and/or bomb the Persians into a no-nuke Iran, the party of Lincoln in its decidedly post-Lincoln phase has never ceased to remind voters of its claimed toughness.  

Unfortunately, however, in the war on terror, this testosterone politics is not only shallow, it is positively dangerous. At the outset, certain facts cannot be disputed. They are these. Neither Iran (with an economy roughly the size of Connecticut), Al Qaeda (a remnant in Afghanistan and a marketing arm with some IEDs in Iraq), Syria (with an economy smaller than Iran's), Hamas and Hezbollah (political operations with guns) or the leftover Afghani Taliban (now holed up in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan) can beat the United States militarily, economically, culturally or politically. In fact, the war on terror against these various "enemies" is not really lose-able, at least not in the sense that our enemies have any realistic chance of winning as a consequence of their own initiative. They simply do not have the military or financial wherewithal to mount an effective campaign, nor can they obtain effective power (i.e., durable control) in any particular region of the world. The ease with which the Afghani Taliban was routed demonstrated as much, as does the inability of groups like Hamas or Hezbollah to actually govern the areas where their writ (legal or de facto) runs. Thus, wherever they rule or even pretend to effective power, the hold exercised by these groups is unsteady at best and often transitory, roughly the equivalent of a gang's ability to "control" an extended urban neighborhood in America. So, in fact, they can't beat us. (Repeat that to yourself every time you hear someone mention the war on terror as the consuming generational struggle of our time; it'll make going to work, taking out the garbage, and sundry other mundanae tasks seem much less dangerous than they might otherwise appear.) 

The Administration accepts this "they can't beat us" reality, but responds by claiming "we can beat ourselves". And the Administration is right. But not for the reasons it thinks. And therein hangs the tale. 

The terrorists know they cannot beat us militarily, but they do believe they can win a psychiological war. And in that effort, they have a not so secret weapon. That weapon is fear, and at this point its best delivery system is Rudy Guiliani. In his campaign for the Presidency, as Joe Biden has aptly noted, Guiliani's sentences contain three things -- a noun, a verb, and the word "9/11". Under his watch, we will (1) be in Iraq until whenever, (2) go to war with and/or inititate a non-stop bombing campaign against Iran, (3) forever troll the domestic and international communications networks without warrants, (4) continue to illegally hold detainees at Guantanamo, and (5) torture those we think have information while denying we do so with double-talk. Indeed, though a lawyer by training and well publicized professional experience, Guiliani (along with his cohorts, with the notable, courageous, and useful exception of Sen. McCain, who happens to be the only Presidential candidate in either party who actually has been tortured) has baldly pretended that he cannot categorically preclude waterboarding because he does not know the specific circumstances in which it has been or will be used or the precise details of the actual technique. As the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, prosecutor Guiliani routinely laughed at defendants who made similar claims about the nature of racketeering in an effort to avoid prosecution. As a candidate, it is now the height of mendacity that he recurs to such falsehoods in his non-stop effort to sound tough. (Memo to Rudy: waterboarding has been illegal for decades, much like loansharking, murder, theft and a host of other crimes that you regularly prosecuted during your stints at the Justice Department and in New York.) 

Only the terrorists are cheering (and the 30% who still think W is a good President, but for a different reason). The terrorists know that a President Guiliani will replace FDR's famous nostrum -- "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" -- with the reality that "our only policy is fear itself". And they also know that the consequences will be precisely those Franklin Roosevelt warned against -- an irrational hatred that saps our energy for any productive enterprise, a series of mindless but expensive and largely ineffective escalations against third rate nuisances, the alienation of our friends, and a pyschological xenophobia that walls off the larger world as it locates recurrent threats of 9/11 in anyone who disagrees. 

FDR and Harry Truman taught us that it is entirely possbile to fight an enemy without becoming the enemy or sacrificing the freedoms that make America what it is. FDR did it in World War II and Truman gave us the game plan of containment that led to the successful conclusion of the Cold War (and the demise of Communism) decades later. All this, moreoever, was done without repealing the bill of rights; in fact, it was done while the nation began to redeem its promise of equal rights to minorities and women, and while it educated a new class of ex-GIs who themselves gave a fuller meaning to Jefferson's "pursuit of happiness" as they created a large, vital and vibrant middle class. Guiliani is a child of that progress. Shame on him for not respecting the values that made it possible, even (indeed especially) in the face of the the then global threats that made it by no means certain. 

The terrorists do not have to launch a nuke or deploy a chemical or biological weapon to win their war. They just have to root for Guiliani. And my bet is that this is what they are doing.