TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

I have been thinking about Christmas this week. 

Actually, I have been thinking about Christmas Eve, which is today. And which, it seems to me, captures more of the essence of Christmas than even the day itself. 

Christmas is about anticipation. About what will happen, not what has occurred. It's about the future, whether that future is mere hours in the offing or a millenia away. And it unites, in perhaps a way that no other holiday can or does, the pedestrian with the profound. In fact, it makes the pedestrian profound. 

Kids will go crazy tonight. Most won't be able to sleep. Those not afraid of some cosmic retribution will sneak a peak out the window or down the stairs in search of Santa Claus. Others will become inveterate Holmes-es (Sherlock, that is), carefully processing every errant sound from a squeaky baseboard to determine if he has come down the chimney, with care or otherwise, along with a satchel of goodies. A few years ago, a friend told me his son had come into his bedroom in the middle of the night, swearing to his father that "Rudolph was in the driveway." 

Two thousand years ago, it was all about anticipation too. We have encrusted that day with layers of theological speculation, so much so that we are now almost in need of theo-archaeologists to carefully remove the layers without destroying the initial insight. It was, after all, about the future, about hope -- cosmic and otherwise. Lots of us call it salvation, and tonight or tomorrow, when many of us cross the church threshold (some for our biennial visit, others for the second time this week), we will hear the ancient story of the incarnate One and be told it was the day we were saved. 

Which has, of late, got me to wondering. 

What for? 

And the best answer I can come up with is . . . 

Tomorrow. 

And so that's what Christmas is about for me. Tomorrow. All the endless tomorrows. With their hopes and dreams and disappointments. Their risings and fallings. And tears and laughter. Even on the day I die, when tomorrow will be unpredictably exciting. In fact, especially then. 

A friend recommended a book earlier this year by a theologian named John Haught. In it, Haught talked about the need to square Christian theology with the fact of evolution. One point he made is that theology should never compete with science, that the truths of the latter are not to be denied by the former, and vice versa. So the earth and all its inhabitants weren't created in six days, the universe (or multi-verse, we really do not know) is billions of years old, the human story represents hardly a nanosecond in this evolutionary time line, and the possibility of intelligent life in spheres beyond our third rock from the sun is hardly remote. The one thing certain is that, whoever and whatever we and our world are, it will not be the same tomorrow. 

In fact, in the deep time of our evolutionary tomorrow, it's gonna be very different. 

Which brings me back to Christmas. Or more precisely Christmas Eve. The one day when we think about nothing but tomorrow. And really look forward to it. 

I am ready this year. All the presents are wrapped. The house is clean (I vacuum). Charles Darwin and Jesus Christ have become bosom buddies in my mind, the former telling me that nothing is forever as the world and its inhabitants constantly morph into newer forms, the latter teaching me that this in itself is a good thing and that somewhere over this evolutionary rainbow there is still a tomorrow that embraces us all. 

And I have a shovel ready. 

In case Rudolph leaves something in the driveway besides a missing sleigh bell. 

Merry Christmas.

BLAGO AND ME

BLAGO AND ME

So now we have spent the better part of two weeks with the news that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevitch was trying to trade Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat for political contributions and some up front money. 

All the usual suspects showed up. The earnest prosecutor professing shock at the sight of a sitting public servant arranging an apparent bribe. The editorialists bemoaning the state of a state where corruption appears endemic. The other politicians running for cover, with those caught on "the tapes" arranging hastily called press conferences to explain that they too were duped by Blago into thinking those "interviews" for the Senate seat were on the up and up. And the defense lawyer telling an incredulous world that his guy is innocent. 

Hello! 

Is any of this really news? We live in a country where it costs, at a minimum, $500,000 to run for a seat in the House of Representatives. If the district is anywhere near a major media market, the cost rises into the multi-millions of dollars. If one wants to run for statewide office in a place like Illinois (or a dozen other big states like New York or California), the cost is in the tens of millions of dollars. If you win, more than half your time while in office must be spent raising money for the reelection. 

Over time, this lunacy has produced three sorts of candidates and public servants. 

The really rich. 

The really famous. 

And the really stretched. 

The chances of any ordinary upstanding Joe -- even a very talented ordinary upstanding Joe who becomes, say, a Rhodes Scholar -- climbing this greasy pole have become exceedingly slim. For every Obama who works a miracle, there are dozens stymied in a lost Congressional district or a City Council seat from which they will never rise. And even the City Councilmen (and women) are spending all their time raising money in the hopes that lightning may strike.

In 2000, before Hillary Clinton came to New York and told us she wanted to be our Senator, the odds on favorite to run in a Democratic primary for Sen. Moynihan's soon to be vacant post was Westchester County Congresswoman Nita Lowey. That, of course, never happened. What did happen, however, is that, upon news of Lowey's interest in the Senate, three multi-zillionaires sought out the then chair of the Westchester County Democratic Party and told him they were each willing to put up $1 million of their own money to contest Lowey's seat. That could not have been music to the ears of the two dozen County Legislators, town Mayors, Assembly people and State Senators who might have credibly entertained the notion of running for the office, all of whom came from backgrounds that were decidedly modest relative to today's entry fee for a vacant Congressional contest in the New York City suburbs. 

It also shouldn't be music to our ears. Because the present system costs us a lot more than money. 

It costs us talent. 

 Harry Truman was a County Judge (the equivalent of a County Executive) in Independence, Missouri before he became a US Senator during the New Deal. The Prendergast political machine made him a Senator because they thought he was not smart enough to be the state tax assessor. In 1944, FDR made him Vice President and in 1945 be assumed the Presidency upon Roosevelt's death. In the '30s, a guy named Thomas P. O'Neill was elected to the Massachusetts General Court, where he served for almost two decades. In 1952, he ran for a Congressional seat in Cambridge, Massachusetts because the sitting Congressman (a guy named John F. Kennedy) had just been elected to the Senate. After serving for more than two decades there, O'Neill became Speaker of the House. 

In their time, Truman and O'Neill were instrumental in creating and preserving the modern day middle class, not to mention saving the entire free world. 

And neither of them could become President or Speaker of the House in the current political environment. 

Today, New York City is being run by a billionaire. He's a nice guy and a very competent Mayor. But he isn't Fiorella La Guardia. Or Ed Koch. Neither of whom could win today either. Across the river in New Jersey, another billionaire is running that state. He is also a nice guy and appears to be a competent Governor. But he isn't Robert Meyner, New Jersey's Governor in the '50s and the guy who actually beat that era's millionaire candidate, Malcom Forbes. He isn't even Bob Torrecelli, who came up the hard way to become New Jersey's US Senator in the late 1990s. And resigned amidst a scandal involving illegal campaign contributions. 

Which brings us back to Blago. 

There are two basic problems with Rod. One is that he is broke. The other is that he can be corrupt. It is unclear which problem came first, though one suspects there are and have been many politicians over the years who have had their hands in the cookie jar in part because the bill collectors were knocking at the door. This is no excuse, and for every Bagojevich without scruples there is a Chuck Schumer (who is very middle class, rooms with two other Senators in DC, and has never attracted the hint of scandal even as he became a prodigious fundraiser)who proves that morality in the midst of temptation (and an unpaid mortgage) is still possible. As Warren Rudman famously remarked in another context to Oliver North, "Not all of us do it." 

But, c'mon, do we have to make it so hard? Millions to win. Millions more to continue to serve. Multiple residences (which is not something your average middle class guy or gal can afford). A fundraising system that requires you to beg at the feet of the rich. And the de riguer perfect family, with of course the two kids, both of whom will have to go to college. 

In New York today, we are being treated to the daily spectacle of Caroline Kennedy running to be the (appointive) US Senator once Hillary resigns. Some are huffing and puffing that she isn't "qualified." Others are claiming (correctly) that she would have no chance but for her last name and genealogy. Still others are rebutting the huffers and puffers, noting her philanthropic work, her authorship of multiple books on Constitutional law,and her expertise in education policy in the wake of service as a dollar a year employee of the new NYC educational system (where she has received high marks). But the real question is . . . 

Who can raise $70 million for the 2010 election and the 2012 reelection effort, lest the Senate seat be lost to the Democrats? 

And with that, Caroline is suddenly looking very "qualified." 

In a strange way, Blago and Sweet Caroline are opposite sides of the absurd political coin we are constantly flipping. We want to avoid the rich and famous in favor of the modest but qualified. We make it impossible for anyone but the rich and famous to get the jobs and then keep them. And then when that rare modest man or woman of little means comes along, we expect him or her to turn political somersaults in the form of expert governance by day, fundraising shakedowns by night. 

And, oh, by the way, don't neglect the wife (or husband) and the kids. Or the mortgage. 

That there are Blago's out there should not be surprising. 

That there aren't more of them should be. 

In the '90s, I twice ran for Congress and lost. According to the reviews, I gave some great speeches and was very good on the retail side. The press loved me and I even have my "impressively knowledgeable attorney" accolade from the New York Times editorial that I will frame and someday give my kids. I am, however, not a Congressman principally because I couldn't come close to raising the money needed to be competitive, let alone win. 

I'd like to think I am not Rod Blagojevich for reasons that have to do with character. But there is at least one other reason I am not Blago. 

It's that . . . 

I am not a Congressman.

SENATOR "ANYONE"

SENATOR "ANYONE" 

New York needs a Senator. 

Actually, if you listen to the politicians, it needs an Hispanic woman from somewhere north of the Bronx and east of Buffalo who can appeal to independents in the Adirondacks while still winning the boroughs. This ubermensch (or preferably womensch) must have what New Yorkers call "star" power, an asserted requirement in light of who she succeeds both immediately (Hillary Clinton) and historically (Bobby Kennedy). And she (or he, if we are still kidding ourselves) must also be able to raise gajillions of dollars, this the result of the specific need to run for election in both 2010 (to fill out the remainder of the Clinton term) and reelection in 2012 (because, unlike in Delaware, New Yorkers do not believe in caretakers). 

This is a big decision for David Paterson, the state's current Democratic Governor. 

For those of you who do not remember, and all you others who have chosen to forget, Paterson is the guy who replaced the state's prior Democratic Governor, Eliot Spitzer, who had to resign when his dating habits became public. Since then, running the show has been no can of beans. The state has no money, and it's biggest taxpayer is Wall Street, so right now it has no prospect of coming into money anytime soon. Consequently, Paterson has been running around the state explaining to anyone who will listen that cuts are coming. These audiences have praised him for his candor and marvelled at his performances (which are laced with funny asides and mind boggling budgetary detail, all committed to and delivered from memory because the Governor is more or less blind as a consequence of an early childhood disease). He is also asking Hank Paulson and Barack Obama for money, both of whom have promised to get back to him and are themselves working through a rather long list. Now, David Paterson must find a Senator to replace Hillary Clinton. 

In most places, this would be viewed as the rough political equivalent of being forced to play the fiddle while Rome burns. In other words, not such a big deal relative to what else is going on. Delaware has already picked Joe Biden's replacement, and Illinois is so overjoyed by Barack's ascension (and Chicago's place as the new western White House) that picking his Senate replacement appears to be a back pager at best. 

But not here. In New York, finding a Senator is front page news. And so far, the mentionees include two Kennedys, one Cuomo, a County Executive, three Congresswomen . . . 

And me. 

I am not kidding. 

A friend of mine on the Democratic National Committee (or "DNC" to the initiated) called me late one night a few weeks ago to ask whether I had seen the news that Hillary was slated to become Secretary of State. I had and said so. He had too. And was sitting in a bar in Washington talking to other political operatives, all of whom were out of work following the general election and desperately looking for something to do. So they decided to speculate on who David Paterson would appoint and -- being political consultants -- decided it would have to be someone who would otherwise primary Paterson for Governor. This narrowed the field appreciably, the consultants concluding that Andrew Cuomo would get the nod. Andrew, however, being Andrew, was not deemed particularly popular, and in any case, more drinks were being consumed. So the consultants decided that "anyone" who ran against Cuomo in a primary might beat him. 

My friend then said he happened to know an "anyone." 

In New York. 

And that's how I made the list. 

 So I have been thinking seriously about this idea. 

There are, of course, a number of negatives. I am not a woman, or Hispanic, or from upsate New York. I do not even speak Spanish. I do speak French but Quebec unfortunately is still part of Canada. I am an Irish Catholic male who lives in Westchester County, making me on the surface sound more or less like a Republican, which is a type that generally does not win a Democratic primary. Then, of course, my putative (and, I am instructed, desired) opponent, Andrew Cuomo, may not get the Paterson appointment. The women's groups in New York have been touting three Congresswomen. The Nassau County Executive was on the list because he too is interested in being Governor (but apparently not as interested as Andrew Cuomo, who the operatives say is "really" interested). 

Caroline Kennedy is now a mentionee and Bobby Kennedy Jr. was until he took himself out of the running. For the record, I endorsed Barack months before Caroline. But no one came to my press conference. In fact, I didn't even hold one. This undoubtedly was bad planning on my part. But I wasn't a mentionee then. The Kennedys, of course, worry me, as they would any interested candidate. They are very good at producing two things. 

Politicians . . . 

And babies. 

 RFK, Jr. is saying that if Caroline is appointed and runs, the state will see more Kennedys than it ever knew existed. And I believe him. At a book signing party for one of his sisters last year, his mother told me that she had "thirty two grandchildren, and one on the way." All those Kennedy kids have been producing their own . . . Kennedy kids. 

Lots of surrogates. 

But I have two advantages that could put me over the top. One is that, contrary to popular belief, this is not the first time I have been a US Senate mentionee. Back in 1994, fresh from having lost a Congressional primary by 27 points (which followed the loss of an earlier general election by 20 points), a supporter of one of my opponents said I "should run for the Senate." We were in a bar having a drink (I am seeing a pattern here). I thought she meant the state Senate and noted that there already was a Democrat running for that seat. She said, "No. You should run against D'Amato for the US Senate." I asked if I should do this with the "$40,000 I had been able to raise in the last primary, or the $150,000 I had raised in that losing general election." 

She kept drinking. 

But it was a mention. 

The other advantage is more significant. Given the list of mentionees, I think I can get Senator Schumer's endorsement. Schumer, who in 1998 did beat D'Amato, has been overshadowed here in New York ever since Hillary showed up in 2000. And he doesn't like it. Having run the Senate election arm of the DNC for the last two cycles, helping measurably in the process to turn a minority into an almost supermajority, the rumor is that this time Chuck Schumer wants to make sure New York's junior Senator is someone whose star power won't dull his own forever shining bright light. Someone who finally will let him give up those Sunday morning press conferences. In other words, he wants New York's junior Senator to truly be . . . a junior Senator. 

Which more or less eliminates everyone on the list. 

Except me. 

Senator "Anyone".

THANKSGIVING 2008

THANKSGIVING 2008

It's my favorite holiday. I love the colors, the food, the parade. 

And the fact that it's always on a Thursday. 

If a holiday falls on a Monday or a Friday, you more or less feel ripped off, the victim of some sort of boss-led conspiracy to eliminate the extra day off. It can make you so mad you start flirting with the idea of moving to France . . . just to take off the whole month of August. 

If a holiday falls on a Wednesday, you pretty much need a shrink. It creates a kind of downside schizophrenia. The work week stops just as it is about to start, so nothing gets done. And then it starts up again when it is supposed to have finished, so no one wants to do anything. Can anyone think of single thing the world has accomplished during a mid-week holiday week? Maybe we've created material for the next Woody Allen movie. But that's about it. 

Tuesday, of course, creates a whole other set of problems. Tuesday is sort of a backwards Thursday. You get the four day weekend but everything goes in reverse. No one really likes eating a huge turkey with all the trimmings on the last day of a four day weekend. And no one can get to work the next day when they do so. 

So Thursday it is. And this year Christmas falls on a Thursday too. It's 2008's version of a double mitzvah, as some of my ecumenically inclined friends would say. Two long weekends. Month to month. Holiday synchronicity at its best. 

And the truth is, this year, we really need them. Let's face it. Though Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks, we just do not have time this year for the requisite thank yous. The "to do" list is way too long. Wars to win. Credit markets to unfreeze. 401k's to cry over. A stock market to revive. A few banks to take over. 

Washington DC itself is awash in job applications . . . and applicants. Apparently there are in the neighborhood of 35,000 plus jobs that can change hands now that a new Administration is coming to power. And at least 200,000 people who want them. In fact, there are now so many applicants that the Obama transition team may not even be able to take Thanksgiving off. And they can certainly forget about sleepin' in on the Friday after. That is a work day, which more or less refutes the notion that there is anything French about this crowd. 

Of course, it must be said that the folks applying for these DC jobs clearly do not have houses to sell. Because, if they did, my real estate broker friend tells me there are no mortgages to be had and thus no buyers to beguile. So, the Washington political job pool this time around is comprised of the really rich . . . and the really young. In other words, pretty much like what it was the last time we changed Presidents. 

How does a transition operation process 200,000 applicants? Not very well, it appears. The Obama team has a web site which tells anyone interested that they should send their application in on line, and that this is the best way to "insure" a response. This is not very encouraging. The President-elect is promising to get to you. But he's not giving you any deadline. Sort of like W's Iraq policy for the last five years. 

My own view is that the whole process should be outsourced . . . to the nation's colleges and universities. Year in and year out, these institutions deal with millions of kids who apply for admission to their schools. Within a period of no more than six months, and as early as one if you want, they review the submissions, interview the candidates, and make the decisions. They are also pros at saying no, which the Government generally is not. 

I will not be among the 200,000 applicants. Because I have a mortgage. And two children about to be in college at the same time. That, however, does not mean I will not be sending in an application. The way I see it, Barack may get to it mid-way through his second term. 

By which time, my kids will be out of college . . . 

And houses may again be selling. 

Happy Thanksgiving.

PARDON ME

PARDON ME 

I guess bailing out the banks was not enough. Because now he wants to bail out himself. 

No kidding. 

There are rumors flying around Washington that outgoing President Bush plans to issue "blanket pardons" to preclude the prosecution of anyone for crimes arising out of acts of torture (euphemistically, but falsely, called "enhanced interrogation techniques") authorized by his Administration. According to reports, the incoming Obama team, torn between the notion that violators should be prosecuted now to the fullest extent of the law on the one hand or that prosecutions should be deferred pending the creation of a Congressionally sanctioned non-partisan commission to investigate alleged abuses on the other, is now faced with the unpleasant prospect that any decision made by it might, as it were, be moot even before it is made. 

But here's the beauty part. In issuing these blanket pardons, President Bush will even pardon himself. 

Wow. I guess we were right to forgive the Supreme Court eight years ago. Counting on it (forgiveness, that is), they ignored two hundred plus years of precedent to give us the pardoned reality of an unelected President. And eight years later, he gets to ignore two hundred plus years of precedent to give us the unelected reality of a self-pardoned President. Move over Jerry Ford. You've just been usurped. You too Mr. Clinton (you pardon amateur). 

In his 62 years, Bush's habit of "leaving messes for others to clean up" has been raised to an art form. As a college prankster and young adult, his family routinely intervened to save W from himself. As a would-be entrepreneur running businesses into the ground with other people's money, he regularly rang up enormous losses for his investors. As Governor of Texas, Bush left his state in a financial hole. And now as President, he leaves us despised abroad, and at home . . . broke. 

This latest gambit, however, clearly takes the cake. 

From the moment he assumed office, Bush II's was an in your face Presidency. I couldn't tell if it was inherent in his personality or just the predictable consequence of feared illegitimacy in the wake of having been shoehorned into the White House by five people who got to vote twice. Whatever the source, the Bushies regularly bulldozed their way to victory, from tax cuts for the rich that sank the surplus to a war of choice sold on false pretenses. Whether it was covering up the authorization of torture in the war on terror or moving the Supreme Court hard to the right, they literally never gave an inch. 

And they are going out the same way they came in. 

If he follows through on blanket pardons -- one for himself included -- President Bush won't be leaving a mess for Obama, he'll be sweeping that mess under the most impregnable of historic rugs. We will never know the full truth about torture . . . or WMD . . . or Gitmo. There will be no accountability. And Dick Cheney's dark side will remain forever hidden. 

Can we do anything about this? 

The short answer is (pace Sarah Palin) . . . You betcha'. 

The President's power to pardon is plenary and unreviewable. There is no recourse against a chief executive who exercises that power, at least none if the goal is to reverse the pardon. But that doesn't mean there is no recourse against Bush himself. He is President for sixty seven more days. He can still be impeached. More importantly, the new Congress will be sworn in on January 1, 2009. For nineteen days, therefore, Bush will be President while the Democrats enjoy enormous majorities in the House of Representatives and numbers somewhere between six and eight votes short of a two-thirds majority in the Senate. As we know from recent history, it takes a simple majority for the House to impeach and a two thirds majority for the Senate to convict and remove a President following a bill of impeachment. 

What would be the grounds for impeachment? The Constitutional standard is simple. Presidents are impeachable for "high crimes and misdemeanors." My guess is that the authorization of torture qualifies; at the very least it trumps lying about oral sex in the oval office. Between now and Inauguration Day, we obviously do not have enough time to subpoena witnesses and gather evidence sufficient to prove that Bush actually did this. But the reality is we need not do so. 

Because President Bush will have admitted his guilt. 

When President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, Ford made much of the fact that acceptance of a pardon constitutes acknowledgment of guilt. When challenged, Ford regularly pulled from his pocket excerpts he kept from a Supreme Court decision which said exactly this. Let's test that proposition. If Bush pardons himself, we can impeach and convict him on the theory that the pardon is an admission. And we could literally do all this in hours. 

As for the need for six to eight Republican Senators to get the two thirds needed to convict, 2010 is an election year as well, and of the thirty five seats up that year, a disproportionate number are again held by Republicans. Look for the votes in that group and start with Pennsylvania's Arlen Spector. Pennsylvania went hard blue last week and hates W. Spector knows torture is illegal and was rolled by the conservative right when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. When motivated by a grudge, one Senator can get a lot done; when motivated by a principled grudge, he or she can move mountains . . . or at least seven votes. 

So, go ahead Mr. President. 

Make our day.

BAD ATTITUDE

BAD ATTITUDE 

I am starting to worry about the bailout. Or bailouts. 

Not the economics of it, or them. I think I understand that as well as most Americans who don't run around with Ph.Ds in economics mounted to their walls.

Certain institutions are too big to fail in the sense that the consequences of failure for the rest of us are enormous and inequitable. Neither you nor I, for the most part, made the bad decisions at AIG or Fannie or Freddie, so it's not right that we should feel the potentially fatal pain of their incompetence. If, however, they fail, we will too. Because we shouldn't, the Government intervenes. In saving the big shots from their bad bets, we also save ourselves, which was the main idea in the first place. The big guys become what economists refer to as "free-riders," unintended (and undeserving) beneficiaries of the safety net erected to catch the rest of us. 

All of this, I get. 

What I am failing to understand is the sheer idiocy exhibited by many of those who now have become recipients of our forced largesse. And I am now worried about the fall out. 

Here' s what I mean. 

When I was a boy growing up in Brooklyn, there were really only two ways to get in trouble at home. At a minor level, my sister or I could blow off a chore or not make our bed or get a little too sassy for a ten year old. These usually resulted in, at best, a raised eyebrow (or a forced march back to the unmade bed). I call these minor infractions because they compared not a whit at the level of consequence to what was the only major infraction. 

Which was Exhibiting a Bad Attitude. 

The attitude offender was in big trouble in my Brooklyn. After notice, indictment, trial and conviction on the charge -- for which, I should add, I still received more due process than the detainees at Guantanamo -- the penalty was a sour look of despair, one that said you were still loved but for now not respected. This was a killer for me. Mostly because I really loved my mother. Who, I believe, pretty much wrote the book on Good Attitude. In truth, it wasn't all that hard to avoid the problem of bad attitude. Generally speaking, good attitude was more or less a subset of good manners and keeping one's ego in check. If you said please and thank you, shared the toys (or even better, gave one up), did the minimal chores with a smile on your face, and made sure there was desert left for someone else when you eyed your slice of the pie, you were pretty much home free. 

That, it seems to me, is what is missing from all these bailouts. 

We just gave Hank Paulson $700 billion in walkin' around money, his to dispense in an effort to unclog the artery known as credit which is threatening America and the world with an economic coronary. This followed an $85 billion infusion to AIG. We now know, however, that the banks aren't lending nearly enough of the $250 billion they already have mainlined, and that AIG is still showering its executives with overwrought compensation and other goodies, and charging us for the privilege. 

This is bad attitude run amok. And it is catching. 

Today, the newspapers announced that GM's CEO, Rich Wagoner, was demanding a federal bailout for that company. GM apparently does not have enough cash (or cash equivalents) left to meet its operating expenses through the end of the year. The right and the left have now assumed their regular positions, the former arguing it's all the unions' fault, the latter pinning the blame on a management that wasted its time lobbying Washington to kill higher fuel economy standards while Toyota and Nissan were designing and building hybrids. Ford and Chrysler can't be far behind. Neither is profitable. And both endorsed the same failed business plan (if you talk to the left) or entered into the same union contracts (if you talk to the right).

In truth, both sides have a point . . . and are missing one. 

The business plans were stupid. They relied on the notion that oil would forever flow at $60/barrel or less, that climate change was a hoax, and that investing in a Congressman was better than investing in a plug-in. The labor contracts have now become unsustainable, but this is not because they are unfair. Rather, it is because the auto companies themselves have become so unprofitable. To lay that lack of profit at the feet of labor, moreover, is false. Toyota and Nissan aren't making more money just because they locate plants in right to work states and negotiate better deals with their workers. They often do neither of these things. 

The truth is, Toyota and Nissan are making better cars. 

They also are paying less in health care costs. When she was running for President, Hillary Clinton noted that GM was really a health care provider that happened to manufacture automobiles. And she was right. The solution, however, is not to blame the UAW for negotiating health care benefits for its members (or to praise Toyota and Nissan for having the foresight to avoid union contracts which could have required the same deal). It's to provide national health insurance. Unfortunately, when Hillary tried that in the mid-'90s, GM -- to use the language of my kids -- did not have her back. 

Americans are pissed. They did not give AIG $85 billion so that it could continue to run a toga-party at the public's expense. They were not interested in sending $250 billion to the banks so their CEOs could dither on lending the money while worrying about pools for executive compensation. And they don't want to give GM whatever it says it needs so that Detroit can lobby Washington to kill health care for all while it builds another gas guzzler no one buys. 

So here's my advice. 

Before Rich Wagoner goes hat in hand to a lame duck Congress and a now-I-am-worried-about-moral-hazard lame duck President . . . 

Before AIG spends another dime on an executive cruise . . . 

And before the banks hoard (rather than lend) another penny they get from Paulson . . . 

They need to talk to my Mom. 

'Cause these guys have a bad case of bad attitude.

REDEMPTION

REDEMPTION

For a good hour this afternoon, I walked around a grey, drizzled lower Manhattan, cluttered with commerce and the tense faces of brokers and others watching another stock market swoon. The sour looks of daily witnesses to three hundred point drops have these days become ordinary, and the diminishing light of a late November afternoon overcome by a steady windswept rain was of a piece.

But I was smiling.

Because yesterday, my country redeemed itself.

By birth (and a paradoxically loose but still abiding adult practice), I am a Catholic. So if slavery is America's original sin, we have spent much of the the past 232 years on our knees in the confessional.

Jefferson told the world that we believed "all men are created equal." But we were lying. And like all liars, we were crafting creative justifications. Blacks were slaves in 1776. Conveniently, when the Founders wrote a Constitution, those same slaves were turned into "three-fifths" persons just to give the slavocracy more seats in the House of Representatives and a lock on the Electoral College and therefore the Presidency. To salve our collective conscience, we had that same Constitution outlaw the slave trade. It turns out, of course, that our conscience was not all that troubled. We did not make the slave trade ban effective until 1808. And we certainly didn't end slavery.

For the first half of the nineteenth century, the great statesmen of our American republic -- Clay and Calhoun and Webster -- spent much of their time fashioning compromises with our original sin. In 1820, they drew a line across the country, outlawing slavery in territories to the north while enshrining it in those to the south. Fortunately for the cartographers, Massachusetts had enough left over land to create Maine (which became a newly admitted free state), permitting the admission of Missouri as a slave state. This, of course, didn't last, essentially because, when it comes to sin, line drawing is always a non-starter. Thirty eight years later, Kansas bled as slaveholders and free soilers battled for the soul of the nation in the territories of the west. And two years after that, we were at war with ourselves, often pretending the war was about everything -- states rights, property, traditions -- other than what it was really about.

That too is one of sin's solitary markers. We call it denial today. It makes smart folks dumb and dumb folks . . . dumber.

Lincoln became our great confessor. His journey from those great debates with Stephen Douglas to the tragic end of Booth's gun was preternaturally Biblical. In the first, he still played the racist we all were, laboring to assure Illinois that he did not want to marry a black or even hang with one. By April 1865, however, he had confessed that every drop of blood from the slave man's lash might have to be answered by one from the soldier's sword. Because, as he put it in his Second Inaugural, "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

As it turned out, Lincoln was right. The Civil War didn't really end in 1865, it just morphed from an illusory Reconstruction of promised equality, where blacks for a time voted and were even elected as representatives in the newly readmitted Confederate states, to the savage reality of Jim Crow, the Klan, lynchings, disenfranchisement and the new slavery of sharecropper poverty. No lie was too egregious in the service of this continuing sin, from the Confederacy's decision to throw the Presidential election to the loser in 1876 in exchange for the removal of federal troops from the formerly rebellious states, to the Supreme Court's bastardization twenty years later of the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection, legalizing institutionalized racism under the banner of segregation and the legal myth of "separate but equal".

If God works in strange ways, He seemed to be putting in overtime in the United States. We went through agrarian populism, the Progressive Era, World War I, the New Deal and World War II, each in its own way a triumph of the American ideals of freedom, equality and representative democracy. In the famous words of Mary Elizabeth Lease, our farmers raised "less corn and more hell." We rescued our children from robber barons, our productive capital from the trusts, our European ancestors from the killing fields of trench warfare, our economy from depression, and the world from Nazi tyranny. But we could not rescue ourselves from our past. The sons and daughters of former slaves couldn't vote in our elections, go to our schools, live in our neighborhoods, join our unions, eat at our lunch counters, stay in our hotels, or swim in our pools. When Al Gore's father was awakened one night in Washington by drunken revellers telling him we don't want to eat with them, or drink with them, or marry them or go to school with them, the senior Gore asked if they "wanted to go to heaven with them." To that rare Southerner who spurned the Southern Manifesto, they replied, "No, we'd just as soon go to hell with you and Kefauver."

Before Tuesday, the three most important black Americans in my lifetime were Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King.

Robinson made America look in the mirror, exposing the hypocrisy of our fight against Nazism with black soldiers who could not drink from the same water fountain, or compete in the same league, as their white brothers once they returned home. He only asked for a chance. Not four strikes. Or three balls. And no one shortened the base paths when he ran them. After a ten year career with the Brooklyn Dodgers (begun later than most because of his war service and professional baseball's color line), he was a first ballot Hall of Famer. In retirement, he tirelessly worked to advance the economic fortunes of victims of prejudice and never let up in his demand that his own profession open its managerial and executive jobs to qualified people of color.

Today he remains America's most important athlete.

Thurgood Marshall made America look at its Constitution. At great risk to his own safety, he travelled far and wide representing (often without pay and always without much) the victims of America's original sin. He painstakingly shepherded more than a dozen cases through the courts, challenging segregation in a methodical attack that ultimately led to Brown v. Board of Education and the desegregation of public schools. As the first black Justice on the Supreme Court, he never wavered in his commitment to equal protection and equal rights.

Today he remains America's most important lawyer.

Martin Luther King, Jr. made America look at its soul. If racism was fundamentally wrong, Christ had taught him that people could be fundamentally good, and that redemption was possible. The dream inspired by his faith was not one from which sinners -- of which he was one -- were excluded. Rather, it was possible because, as sinners, we still could change. He took his promise of redemption to the bus depots, bridges, slums and churches of America. And then to the White House and Lincoln Memorial. All these venues were his altar. Goaded by Dr. King's efforts, President Johnson lived out his own extraordinary profile in courage -- demanding that Congress pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which LBJ knew would (and has) cost his party the South for more than a generation.

Today Martin Luther King, Jr. remains America's most important preacher.

Yesterday, America finally got off its knees. Its confession ended. Its sin was forgiven.

And today, somewhere in Islamabad . . . or Kabul . . . or Tel Aviv, there is a kid who will not strap a bomb to his body and blow up a bus full of innocents in part because we just elected as President a black guy whose middle name is Hussein, and have now practiced what for more than two centuries we have preached. All men are created equal.

We should thank Barack Obama for offering to serve.

And ourselves for having accepted.

And God, for Her infinite forgiveness.

VOTE

VOTE

If you want to complain 

'Bout Barack or McCain, 

Then please take note. 

You first must vote. 

Fore the future is cast 

And we throw off the past, 

That day arrives. 

We get to decide. 

Whether Palin or Joe 

Has the big mo, 

They say no more. 

We set the score. 

From the east 

To the west, 

We grade the test. 

Deciding who's best. 

Churchill as PM 

In what was his last gem, 

Said our system's not best. 

It just beats the rest. 

So now we are there 

And buyer beware, 

You can't rock Wednesday's boat. 

Unless you first go and vote.

REDS

REDS 

In the last week of this interminable Presidential campaign, the candidates are focusing entirely on seven erstwhile red states (Florida, Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia), all of which went for George W. Bush in 2004, and the red portions of one blue state (Pennsylvania). Ordinarily, this would be very good news for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. With the battle joined on territory the enemy must win to prevail, the odds are way too long that the GOP can come all the way back and steal victory from the jaws of defeat. 

But there are dissenters. 

The theory of the McCain campaign is that, at the eleventh hour and fifty ninth minute, the natural order will reassert itself; that most of these states will come home to the GOP; and that John McCain will be the nation's 44th president, albeit by a narrow margin and probably without a popular vote victory. The legion of pundits who thought otherwise will have serious egg on their face; the Democrats will psychologically implode given the enormity of their collapse; and a new corps of political consultants will take a bow, having demonstrated that the politics of fear and smear really works. You just have to believe. 

This is John McCain's dream. 

It would also be America's nightmare. 

To avoid it, I end this missive to all in favor of a simple message for the REDS. 

Don't do it. 

You are much better than the party you have been voting for, and you deserve much better than they have given. 

In 1980, Ronald Reagan famously asked: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Ask yourself the same question today. 

 Is your job more secure? Is your country? Is your retirement assured? Is your 401(k) worth more now than it was then? Can you afford to get sick? Are you even insured? Can you afford to send your kids to college? Are they in a school good enough to get them into the best college to which they can gain admittance? 

If your city or town is wracked or destroyed by a hurricane, will your government be there to help you? As your environment warms, is the government doing anything about it now? If you own a small business, or work for one, can the business get credit? If you declare bankruptcy, will it provide real relief, or will you still be saddled with that credit card debt, or those medical bills? Can you still afford the mortgage?

If you can't answer yes to way more than half these questions, there is no reason for you to elect John McCain and Sarah Palin. They call themselves mavericks. In fact, they are ventriloquists. And they think you are their dummies. 

After you have answered all those economic questions (and the single national security one), don't stop. 

Ask yourself if you know anyone who is pro-choice, or gay, or who lives in a "blue" state, or went to a good college? Do they go around praising the destruction of fetuses? Are they really anti-family? Just because they want their own? With someone they love? Are they all elitists? Have you ever seen a New Yorker get up and give his subway seat to a stranger who needed it? Did you know that all those elitists mobbed the hospitals on 9/11, donating so much blood that the hospitals had to stop accepting donations? 

If your kid got into Yale, would you tell her not to go because you were worried she'd become one of them? If she got straight A's there, would you tell her not to come home? Not to run for office in her home town because she had lost touch with her roots while studying in New Haven? 

Did you ever get a traffic ticket you knew was wrong? Did you fight it? In fighting it, did you think it wrong that the police had to actually prove you violated the law? Did you insist they do that? Were you a radical for doing so? Anti-American? Anti-cop? 

I know you are not a "socialist" and that McCain and Palin have tried to make this election something of a referendum on your aversion to that ideology. 

So here are a few more questions. 

Do you believe in socialism for banks? Or hedge funds? Or investors who purchased mortgage backed securities written on sub-prime loans that now have no value? McCain and Palin believe in all of this. Oh, I know, they don't call it socialism. But it is. They are willing to use your dollars to bail out the banks. They want to redistribute your wealth to the hedge fund operators or stock issuers who made the lousy bets. They think this will make it better for all of us over the long haul, and it probably will. If you agree, then you too may be a socialist. 

Just like McCain and Palin. 

When all is said and done, ask yourself if you think America is on the right track. I know 90% of you think she is not. (I know this because it is what you tell the pollsters when they ask. You don't walk away. Or refuse to answer their question. Or hide your views. Which, by the way, is what the McCain campaign says lots of you do when you are asked who you intend to vote for.) 

So . . . please . . . all of you out there in red America. All of you who know things are not going well. Who know we can do a lot better. Who know the whole promise of America is that tomorrow can be better than yesterday. 

Vote for Barack Obama. 

I promise you. 

He doesn't bite.

THE POPULIST MIRAGE

THE POPULIST MIRAGE 

She praises the "pro-America" parts of America. He turns an unlicensed tax delinquent into "Joe the Plumber." She touts a "you betcha" "doggone it" anti-intellectualism decrying the putative snob who "pals around with terrorists." He recasts his opponent as a socialist who wants to "redistribute wealth." She disdains the "gotcha" media who never actually "get it" in the real America beyond the beltway. He claims she is "absolutely" qualified to be Commander in Chief on day one by lambasting those who disagree as liberals who can't abide a pro-life woman from the tough tundra. 

Welcome to the Republican Presidential campaign, circa 2008. 

All populism all the time. 

If you are wondering what this has to do with the economy or Iraq, don't waste a lot of time working the question over. The answer is simple. 

Nothing. 

Back in law school, I read a book called "The Populist Moment". It was largely about the agrarian movement of the 1870s and 1880s. That movement was grass roots and creatively practical. With its democratic (small "d") participatory ethos and willingness to experiment with cooperatives and the inflationary bromide of free silver, it connected to people's lives. While it did not win a national following, and was fatally tainted in the old Confederacy by Jim Crow, it was in many respects a precursor to the first wave Progressivism of the early 20th century. In other words, it had some heft. 

The McCain version is not even a pale imitation. Exhibiting a weird lack of verisimilitude, it pretends we are still fighting Communists (hence the "socialism" charge)or the Weathermen (hence the Ayers brouhaha) or some citadel of left wing anti-American thought alive and well in the Ivy League (hence the anti-intellectualism). It rails against the media in the age of Fox, the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch, and right wing radio. It pretends to be under siege when its captains have been running the show for the last eight years and its ideology has been ascendant for the last thirty. 

And now, even some of the old GOP warhorses are calling them on it. 

Last week, Christopher Buckley endorsed Barack Obama and yesterday General Colin Powell did the same. Each endorsement was earth shattering for the GOP, albeit in different ways. 

The Buckley flight from the right was largely a cri de coeur from the grave of his father. Whatever William F. Buckley was, anti-intellectual was not one of them. He was very smart, and really liked very smart people. He would never drop a g or lapse into some uncharacteristic slang, and there was never a multi-syllabic word he would not use when a simpler alternative was available. Generations of would-be students have improved their SAT scores merely by listening to Buckley's diatribes on "Firing Line". He founded "National Review" as a rigorous intellectual alternative to the then available liberal offerings in "The New Republic" or "Nation". He thought conservatives were smarter, not just snarkier, and he was willing to try to prove it. He did not avoid debates. He loved them. 

Powell's endorsement was sadder. It had the feel of an apology. For the absence of WMD (without which, Powell candidly admitted, there would have been no Iraq war). For having given his Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to a man who turned out to be a dangerous bumbler. Perhaps for not having spoken up sooner. But finally, and unmistakably, for what the Republican Party has become -- a citadel of extremist pablum. He wondered why McCain kept telling us the election should not be about a "washed up terrorist" even as his party made millions of robo-calls linking Obama to Ayers. He questioned McCain's "erratic" approach to policy and stated point blank that Palin was not qualified to be Commander in Chief. He also said later in the day that he was still a Republican, more or less serving notice on the right-wing that it does not get to determine membership . 

Each in their own ways, the Buckley and Powell endorsements define the huge gulf between the GOP of today and . . . its past. Between the party of Palin and the party of not just Lincoln but also Reagan. In fact, perhaps the oddest feature of this years GOP spectacle is how much it does not have in common with the career of its putative hero. Like Bill Buckley, Reagan invariably thought it better to be governed by the first two hundred names in the Boston phone book rather than the Harvard faculty. But also like Bill Buckley, Reagan read voraciously, wrote large parts of his own speeches, and always debated (Bobby Kennedy called Reagan his toughest debate opponent ever). He was no dummy and did not pretend to be one or to appeal to one. In his America of individual responsibility and Horatio Alger possibility, the picture of progress was Lincoln under a tree reading a book. 

But that's all gone from this year's candidates. They have largely substituted insult for analysis, sass for smarts, and Rove's base for Reagan's coalition. Despite unbridled appeals to average folks, their words ring hollow. Everyone knows Communism died in 1989 and the Weatherman a decade and a half earlier; that neither a son of William Buckley nor an ex-General named Powell would endorse a share the wealth socialist or a "pal" of terrorists; and that labelling opponents as effete won't create economic recovery, fix the health care system, or send the kids to college. 

Here's another thing they know. 

Joe the Plumber isn't making 250k. 

This is not a moment. 

It's a mirage.

McCAIN FINDS HIS INNER JOE . . . McCARTHY, THAT IS

McCAIN FINDS HIS INNER JOE . . . McCARTHY, THAT IS 

He can't talk about the economy. It is tanking. He can't talk about "victory" in Iraq. Even the Generals on the ground won't use the word. He can't talk about his running mate. On that subject, everyone is talking about Tina Fey . . . or Katie Couric . . . or the backyard theory of foreign policy experience (if you can see a foreign country from your backyard, you have foreign policy experience). 

So now John McCain and his Veep to be have dusted off a leaf from Joe McCarthy's old playbook. They are smearing Obama as someone who "pals around with terrorists," in this case the aged but erstwhile Weatherman from the days of rage, Bill Ayers. 

The Weathermen were bad people and Bill Ayers, circa 1968, was a very bad guy. Bombs blew up. People died. Some, like Kathy Boudin, went to jail. And belonged there. Since then, Ayers has apparently reformed and become a professor of education, consulted by, of all people, the first Mayor Daley's (no friend of '60s radical's) son, the current Chicago Mayor. In that guise, Ayers happens to have been on a board on which Obama, for a time, also sat. The board helped distribute money donated by the Annenbergs, Reagan lovers to a man (and woman) who apparently had no trouble with the fact that this particular ex-Weatherman was on the board. 

But all that is not good enough for John McCain and Sarah Palin. Apparently, Barack has consorted with a domestic terrorist and should therefore lose the election, now less than thirty days away. 

The philosopher George Santayana once said that "Those who refuse to study history are condemned to repeat it." Would that were true. John McCain has studied enough history to now know very well that he is repeating it. And the history he is repeating has an ugly name. 

It is Joe McCarthy. 

In the '50s, McCarthy terrorized America's political discourse and politicians with his wild charges that everyone from the Chief of Staff of the Army to unnamed State Department employees to General Marshall was either a closet Communist or was coddling those who were. He eventually blew himself up on television (both with Edward R. Murrow's assistance, and all on his own in the famous Army/McCarthy hearings, where a nebishy Boston lawyer appropriately asked whether he had any sense of decency; as it turned out, he didn't). Not, however, before he had ruined more than a few lives, on his way to ruining his inebriated own. 

It is therefore more than a little sad that John McCain is now channeling his inner Joe McCarthy. And that his friends are not calling him on it. 

McCain's charge is as ludicrous as were McCarthy's, in fact even more so. Barack Obama was eight years old when the Weathermen were active. He has condemned their actions (as have we all). He did not put Ayers on any board. He doesn't "pal around" with Ayers. Whether Ayers is entitled to rehabilitate himself is a separate question, but it generally is the American way. Whether Ayers is still an extremist is also a separate question. But the answer is irrelevant to Obama's qualifications to be President, just as S & L swindler Charles Keating's subsequent rehabilitation is irrelevant to McCain's. In fact, the Keating case is more problematic for McCain than the Ayers case is for Obama. Unlike the eight year old Obama at school in Indonesia, McCain actually tried to help Keating by going to authorities and asking about their on-going investigation. The Arizona Senator was later reprimanded by the Senate for doing so and has said this was the low point of his career. 

But here's the bad news. 

McCain just went lower. 

And so have his supporters. 

I haven't heard anything from Joe Lieberman on this issue. One would think a "conscience of the Senate" quick to point out the moral failings of Bill Clinton in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal would have taken to the podium to upbraid his man on the illegitimacy of trotting out McCarthyesque smears. Maybe Lieberman will get around to saying something. But he should know that, when it comes to McCarthyism and the evil it creates, sooner is always better than later. 

The silence of Bush and Cheney also has been deafening. Ditto, that of the right wing radio echo chamber. I do not expect any of them to criticize McCain. Bush himself was silent as his seconds smeared McCain during the 2000 South Carolina primary with charges of fathering an illegitimate child. And Limbaugh et al. have been chomping at the bit for some time to smear Obama, and will gleefully do so from now until election day. 

The old John McCain would never truck with this sort of despicable gutter politics. In fact, he viscerally and aggressively deplored it. 

But that was then. 

And this is now. 

Johnny, we hardly knew ye.

THE DAY AFTER

THE DAY AFTER 

Here's the scary part.

Long after her "blame the media" campaign has ended . . . Long after everyone has forgotten her inarticulateness with Katie Couric and her "deer caught in the headlights" look with Charlie Gibson . . . Long after Russia's proximity to Alaska has ceased to be Exhibit A on the list of foreign policy credentials we seek in a chief executive . . . And long after Tiny Fey has stopped making us laugh with her spot on impersonations (some of which involve nothing more than repeating verbatim what was actually said) . . . 

Sarah Palin may have to do the job. 

In fact, in thirty-four days, she may have been voted into the job and two and a half months later, she may actually have it. 

And right now, from everything we know, she can't do it. 

Here's why. 

Ethics 

Governor Palin and Senator McCain have made wild charges that the questions posed to Palin and the manner of press inquiries have violated "journalistic ethics." In the last segment of her interview with Couric, Palin herself noted that she had a college degree in journalism and was surprised by the "ethics" of the profession's current members. McCain has reprised a version of this critique, accusing the media of lobbing "gotcha" questions at her, including Gibson's question on whether she agreed with the Bush doctrine and one oddly enough from a voter inquiring (the second time she was asked this) about her views on whether the US should cross the Pakistani border to attack terrorists without first clearing it with the government of Pakistan. Palin said we should, as has Obama. Because her answer is at odds with McCain's stated position, which appears to be that we shouldn't announce this as a policy beforehand, and McCain's criticism of Obama, who apparently has announced (along with Palin) that this will or should be the policy, Palin's answer means that either McCain and Palin are not on the same page or that Palin is unaware of the McCain position or disagrees with it (the latter of which she denies). 

None of this is "gotcha" journalism nor does any of it cross any ethical line. The Bush Doctrine has been the central organizing principal of this Administration's foreign policy post- 9/11. It holds that the risks are now too great not to act preemptively and that the US reserves the absolute right to do so. Ron Suskind has even written a book about this -- The One Percent Doctrine -- in which he documents its consequences, from the reserved right to a preemptive response in which the imminent threat is defined radically downward relative to current international law and tradition, to Guantanamo and torture. To not know what the doctrine is, to not be able to articulate it, and to not discuss it in a Presidential campaign in 2008 is not just a sign of ignorance. It's a sign of negligence. And it is coming from the second spot on a ticket whose principal stated rational for believing it is better suited to be in the Oval Office is its supposed superior command of the threats we face and the muscular response we must embrace. Someone who wants to be a heartbeat away from being Commander in Chief should be more than conversant on this subject. She (or he) should be eating and breathing it. Not wondering what it means when it is brought up. 

The Palin response on Pakistan highlights another (and greater) deficiency. Granted she was plucked from obscurity with neither the time nor apparently the inclination to learn all the nuances of her boss's views. But she has answered the same question the same way twice, and the second answer came well after McCain had clearly clarified his reason for opposing Obama on this issue, both earlier in the campaign and in their first debate. Was it too much to expect that Palin would be aware of this when the question was again posed to her? McCain excuses her answer because a voter asked the question in a pizza parlor, but if the press can't ask in a sit down interview and a voter can't ask whenever and wherever he gets the chance, and she can't get it right whoever asks, maybe the problem here is that McCain doesn't want questions asked of his Vice Presidential nominee. 

The ethical lapse here is not the media's, or the voters'. It belongs entirely to John McCain and Sarah Palin. Both have decided that attacking the press helps them and will fashion artificial charges of media excess or error whenever they can and regardless of the truth of the charge. There are many problems with this approach, not the least of which is that there is nothing new about it. Bush and Cheney have spent eight years doing the same thing. And the results for America have been universally bad -- no WMD, no "greeted as liberators," no "Mission Accomplished," no permanent success in Afghanistan (in fact a return to status quo ante), and now, not even an economic rescue plan as voters and the Congress treat W and Cheney as the two boys always crying wolf. Put simply, the McCain/Palin/Rove/Bush/Cheney playbook is exceedingly dangerous. 

 One would have hoped that the "Country First" types recognized this. 

 Extremism 

Lost in all the media bashing and SNL humor is the central fact that Palin is entirely out of touch with the vast majority of the country on a host of issues. She has been silent on all this but her record speaks volumes. She is anti-science and anti-choice. She is more pro-gun than Charlton Heston. She believes creationism and intelligent design deserve equal billing along with evolution in our country's classrooms. She thinks the "jury is still out" on global warming. And she thinks either that we can drill our way to energy self sufficiency or that an oil uber alles policy (with perhaps the trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline ten years hence) is the way to go when we think about alternatives. 

If part of what America has to do in facing the serious challenges that lie ahead is bring down the partisan temperature of the last eight years, a woman in the Executive Branch might have been just the ticket. But not this woman (and as an aside, not Hillary either; through no fault of her own, she is to partisanship what gasoline is to fire). Almost on its own, Palin's well documented extremism kills what was perhaps McCain's best claim to the Presidency, his every so often attempts at bipartisanship. It is wrong to vote against McCain merely because of his age. It is not at all wrong to vote against him on the assumption that he may not last and has in the meantime bequeathed a successor whose positions are to the other side of a Cracker Jacks box. 

Incompetence 

Then there is the basic question -- is Sarah Palin qualified to be President? Even a lot of conservatives are now saying the answer is "No." 

True Palin believers salivate at this claim, not knowing whether they should first trot out the rejoinder that those who hold it are inveterate sexists or table that for something more pedestrian, like "Bill Clinton was the Governor of a small state and that seems to have been fine for him." Neither works but that never stops them. 

The charge of incompetence, coming from those who utter it, is entirely gender neutral. I think she seriously lacks command of national issues, substitutes decisiveness and bravado for knowledge, and will therefore not be a competent chief executive of the United States. I thought the same thing about George W. Bush. Sex has nothing to do with it. Had Hillary won the Democratic nomination, the last thing anyone would have questioned is her issue command or knowledge. Had Obama wound his ways through the Democratic primaries exhibiting a Palinesque insouciance on things like the Bush Doctrine, the last thing he'd be doing now is running for President. And by the way, Bill Clinton knew the issues, all of them. He wasn't trumpeting his executive experience in Arkansas as a substitute for knowledge of the federal budget. 

Like I said above, Sarah Palin may get the job for which she is now campaigning. 

Then there is the day after. 

And none of us will be laughing.

COUNTRY LAST

COUNTRY LAST

John McCain went to the podium early yesterday to claim credit for having convinced House Republicans to vote for the rescue (aka bailout) bill. 

Oops! 

Which about sums up the McCain candidacy, and why we must at all costs avoid a McCain Presidency. 

He is the "Oops" candidate. Sarah Palin was supposed to rescue McCain from certain defeat but now seems to be doing everything she can to bring it about. McCain himself is supposed to be the adult voice of experience and command but instead turns out to be a car wreck in progress haphazardly moving from one side of the road to the other. 

The reality is there are so many holes in the dyke we call John McCain's presidential campaign that they long ago ran out of fingers to plug them with. Two of McCain's top aides are this week holed up in Sedona, Arizona with Gov. Palin cramming her with information to prepare for Thursday's Vice-Presidential debate with Joe Biden. The bad news is she has so much to learn, there is no way she can do it by Thursday. The good news is expectations for her performance are so low that more or less standing at the podium for 90 minutes will be counted as a success. Meanwhile, back on the trail, the presidential candidate himself careens from one stated position to another (generally opposite) one, more or less in the space of a news cycle. He ludicrously blames Obama for the failure of the bailout and then says we must stop the partisanship. One day the economic fundamentals are good; the next we are in a crisis. In the morning he has saved the rescue plan by convincing House Republicans to vote for it; in the afternoon, Speaker Pelosi has convinced them otherwise apparently because she wasn't nice enough. 

His campaign motto is "Country First" and everywhere he goes, his rallies are festooned with signs saying that and speeches lauding his patriotic bona fides. It seems that only John McCain sacrifices political ambition for patriotic duty. But in fact it's a lie. Every move this past week has been about politics. The faux campaign suspension that never occurred. The hands on leadership pose which was no more than some phone calls and a speech to the GOP caucus, neither of which pushed the ball over the goal line. The "I won't debate until this is solved", which then became the "enough progress has been made for me to debate". The debate itself, where the only thing repeated more than "Senator Obama does not understand" was McCain's visceral condescension. Finally, yesterday's premature claim of bail out success (gotta win the news cycle and beat the other guy to the punch). 

 Here's the worst part. 

 He is bad at this. 

Nothing promised in the last week was even remotely delivered. Not the votes. Certainly not the economic rescue plan. Not the civil campaign he promised when this began (but has consistently abandoned as his numbers have tanked) or the bipartisanship he continues to demand of others while studiously avoiding himself. Not the judgment to pick lieutenants actually up to the jobs they might hold. 

 If McCain runs the country even half as badly as he is running his campaign, we are in big trouble. His first "Hail Mary" was Sarah Palin. The bloom was off that rose in about two weeks. His second one was the no debate pledge. That was punctured in about two days. What's the McCain plan here? A full Novena? 

 John McCain is a war hero who, from time to time, but far less than he or his supporters claim, reaches across the aisle. But he is tempermentally unsuited for the the job of President. He shoots from the hip. He is erratic. For all his courage, he lacks judgment, whether it's the judgment to know when a war should not be started or the judgment to know when a particular Governor should not be promoted or the judgment to know when all the votes have not been counted. And while he may not suffer from what we Catholics call the sin of pride, he suffers from its close cousin -- condescension. That's why he often loses it. It's not defensible passion. It's indefensible arrogance. 

And it is not the arrogance of a George W. Bush or a Sarah Palin. They think they are always getting one over on you.

John McCain thinks he's better than you.