BARACK ATTACK

BARACK ATTACK 

Now that Barack Obama has pushed ahead in his contest with Hillary Clinton and stands a reasonable chance of being the Democratic nominee for President, the fear is that he will not be able to take a punch. First, however, his opponents (all of them) have to throw one. And so far, either none are, or none are landing. 

Whether it's Hillary, John McCain or right wing pundits like Charles Krauthammer, the attack on Obama thusfar is numbingly similar, surprisingly superficial and stunningly ineffective. It's some verson of the notion that he offers promises but not solutions (Hillary), rhetoric but not reality (McCain), or the snake oil of messianic hope that "dazzles" crowds even as it arouses "skepticism and misgivings among the mainstream media" (Krauthammer). Victory after victory, eloquent speech after eloquent speech, Obama is now pilloried for a campaign that is supposedly becoming "dangerously self-referential" (Joe Klein). 

Puh-leeze! 

All of this is sheer rubbish. Not to mention disingenuous and false. Obama is winning because, for much of the past thirty years, the establishment hasn't delivered. His crowds are large and his rhetoric soars because he hasn't invested in the past and doesn't need to (and won't) apologize for it. Whether it's a war he opposed, a surge he knows is just a bandaid, or an economy that comes nowhere near delivering the kind of middle class created by FDR and his followers, Obama admits and tells the truths that the others either ignore or are partially (and sometimes wholly) responsible for. His rhetoric is compelling because it is real. The "solutions" Senator from New York cannot get traction because, in the Senate on the mother of all issues, she helped create the biggest problem we now have (in Iraq) rather than solve the one we already had (in Afghanistan). Ditto for Mr. Reality from Arizona. John McCain is consistent and has the courage of his convictions. But as George W. Bush has proved beyond any doubt, one can have consistent convictions that are consistently wrong. 

There's also nothing "dangerously self-referential" or "messianic" about Obama's appeal. For starters, it's hard to get a grip on what, precisely, this charge means. The rugged individualists, rich entrepreneurs and devotees of Ronald Reagan (messiah, anyone?) who make up the Republican Party are self-referential to a man. They just call it individual responsibility. They also think that is a good thing, one that more or less ought to be the foundation of most public policies. Barack is just stealing their thunder, the first Democratic politician since JFK to "ask not." When Obama says "We are the change that we seek," he's offering Americans hard work and responsibility for their future, not salvation. When he tells crowds that he is relying on them more than they are on him, he is repeating an old lesson in democratic self-governance -- that change comes not from those in charge but from those who are charged; that we get the government we elect, not the government we deserve; that the people are more important than the President. None of this is self-referential. It's the precise opposite. 

 No candidate has yet issued a bill of particulars against Barack. Hillary allegedly refuses to "whoop it up" Barack-like in deference to her ostensibly more honest and humble devotion to tough choices and real solutions. And McCain denounces Obama's speeches as "platitudes" masking as policies. Neither sound bite has touched the Illinois Senator. Today, however, Charles Krauthammer tried a different (albeit related) tack. He wrote: Obama is "going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can't possibly redeem. Promises to heal the world with negotiations with the likes of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Promises to transcend the conundrums of entitlement reform that require real and painful trade-offs that have eluded solution for a generation. Promises to fund his other promises by a rapid withdrawal from an unpopular war". Krauthammer thinks this "spell" can last just past an Obama inauguration. Following that, he foresees a "rude awakening." 

Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. Obama hasn't promised to heal the world with negotiation. He has simply made the unremarkable observation that the world has never moved down that road without it. As for entitlement reform, the solution has eluded Krauthammer's generation, not Obama's. The kids at his rallies don't think they're getting Social Security or Medicare, they do not much like that, and they know that, with two reforms (increasing the earnings subject to payroll tax and moving the retirement age up slightly) Social Security could be sound. The solutions do not elude them. Nor do the costs. They are willing to pay higher taxes once they become millionaires. And they know a war that is off budget and cost billions each week is a source of funds if only it can be stopped. 

 The gig may not yet be up for Hillary. She has an almost infinite capacity for survival, and she will fight to the last. It's also hardly up for McCain. He will be the GOP nominee and in November, he will be strong. But neither one of them will beat Barack if what we've seen to date from both is the sum and substance of their argument against him. Anyone who wants 10-point plans on everything from health care to entitlement reform to Iraq can get it from any of these candidates. Just go to their websites. It's all there. All the reality, all the solutions, all the policy you could want. Obama's is no less detailed than Hillary's or McCain's. And if the websites are not sufficient, just replay the debates -- 18 of them with Barack and Hillary on the stage, covering the policy waterfront, which is why everyone now knows that he's for universal access and she's for a universal mandate. It's as real as it gets. 

But my wife -- who was the Legislative Director for a senior Congressman in the '80s and early '90s and has worked a half dozen campaigns -- says none of that will ultimately matter. And she may be right. 

Because while they keep telling us what they will do, Barack Obama keeps telling us what we can do.

CHEATER

CHEATER 

Hillary Clinton just lost my vote. 

Mrs. Clinton went to Florida last night to celebrate a victory that wasn't. More importantly, she went to Florida last night to proclaim a victory that she had no right to proclaim and should be embarrassed to assert. But that didn't stop her. 

Hillary is a cheater, pure and simple. I grew up on the streets and neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Cheating was not tolerated, not even by six year olds. We had no umpires or referees in our choose up stickball, punchball and touch football games. So if you were out on a close play at second or clearly caught a pass out of bounds (which was the sidewalk), you admitted it. Maybe, just to save a little face, you argued the call a bit or on a close play sought a second opinion from the shortstop (especially if he was your best friend, or better, a relative). But you didn't just stand on second base and assert your claim oblvious to the rules we had all agreed upon. You didn't try to move the line of scrimmage up to the place where you caught the out of bounds pass. 

But that's not Hillary. The rules for her apparently changed last Tuesday when Obama walloped her in the South Carolina primary. Desperation set in. She had to find a venue for victory to erase the sting of defeat. And she had to do it before Super Tuesday. So she chose Florida's faux primary and then imported an ersatz crowd to a ballroom off the interstate for a pseudo-victory speech. 

Although Hillary's face was straight, that was all that was straight about her performance last night. Months ago, she and the other Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in Florida after that state changed its scheduled primary election date in violation of the calendar set by the Democratic National Committee and agreed to by all the candidates. Because of this conduct, none of Florida's would be delegates will be counted in the presidential balloting at the national convention this coming summer in Denver. Thus, the voting that occurred yesterday was for naught. Not a single delegate was chosen. There also was no campaign in Florida. No direct mail, no stump speeches, no debates, no rallies. No CNN, MSNBC, Fox, media hordes or other media big feet. And no delegates, the coin of the realm in nominating presidential candidates. Hell, the best evidence that there was absolutely no campaign in Florida is that Bill Clinton -- a human GPS when it comes to injecting himself into one of his wife's political contests -- was never anywhere near the place. 

But Hillary appeared last night anyway, a sort of political Caesar crossing an ethical Rubicon. She claimed that she was not violating the rules because she showed up after the election had ended and thus had not "campaigned" in the state in violation of her agreement not to do so. So what? The point is not that she showed up at a rally in Florida. It's that she claims to have won a contest that never existed and that she promised not to undertake. It's also that she now plans to have Florida delegates seated at the Democratic National Convention, presumably to vote for her. If she thinks either of those boneheaded plays do not amount to a broken promise, maybe it's because she is being advised by the master hairsplitter himself, the conjugator-in-chief. 

Given the obvious backdrop of dishonesty, Hillary's "victory" rally was itself a flop. The crowd was bussed in. The speech was flat. Even her thank you didn't cut it, probably because, as one voter remarked after the fact, the "vote" might well have come out differently had there been a real election campaign. She touts her four victories to date as evidence of strength going into next week's "national" primary. But two of them, Michigan and now Florida, were in contests that didn't count against either no-shows (in Florida) or uncommitted (in Michigan). Her answer to the politics of hope is the politics of hype. 

Unfortunately, however, the fact that Hillary struck out last night is only part of her problem, and the far less important part. On the streets of my youth, cheaters suffered a fate worse than death. 

They never got another game.

BENAZIR AND BEYOND

BENAZIR AND BEYOND

Less than a week later, it is difficult to determine the full impact of the tragic assassination of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto.

The list of those potentially responsible seems to grow by the day, from the Taliban and Al Qaeda to her political opponents in the Pakistani military and the Musharraf administration. Initial reports that she was killed by an assassin's bullet now compete with a supposed medical finding that she died from a fractured skull as she fell back into her SUV from the force of either shrapnel or the suicide bomber's blast. We will probably never know. The motives of those who investigate political assassinations in Pakistan are, to a man, suspect; much of the forensic evidence has been destroyed as a consequence of the immediate clean up by local fire officials; and the Pakistani government has in the past refused foreign forensic help from qualified scientists. That Benazir Bhutto is the latest victim of terrorism cannot be questioned. But who or what groups or individuals are actually responsible will probably never be answered.

The tragedy of her untimely demise is matched only by the complexity of her courage. She was a conscious (and quite willful) paradox in action. Her western education (at Harvard and Oxford) was a counterpoint to her cultural moorings in a South Asian and thoroughly Islamic world. Her feminist commitment was as fervent as her commitment to an arranged marriage to a man she barley knew. Her inherited land based wealth stood in stark contrast to the poverty of her countrymen and women.

She preached on behalf of the rule of law in Pakistan but was held by a Swiss court to have violated the law on her own behalf. Though twice removed from office under questionable circumstances, the charge of corruption was not entirely without basis. She was imprisoned with her mother and father and in jail while authorities hanged her father. Her two brothers were themselves killed under questionable circumstances. And the day she returned from an eight year exile, she herself was nearly assassinated by a suicide bomber that killed over 100 of her supporters. That terrorist missed. Last week's, unfortunately, did not.

She did not plan a political career and did not want her children ever to have one at all. She wanted for them a safety she never demanded or expected for herself. She became a politician by accident and thus acquired that ineffable quality all non-accidental politicians covet -- what we, on this side of the world, in our media driven culture, call authenticity.

She would not have used that word. Her politics was complicated and complex. She truly respected the cultural and religious traditions of her land, which were her own as well, even as she led Pakistan through its own modernist emergence. On the occasion of her arranged marriage, she told reporters that she did not expect westerners to understand. I do not think she expected us to understand her politics either. It bridged the contradictions she lived and witnessed.

At the time of her death, the Bush administration was still trying to fashion an unlikely coalition, marrying her democratic bona fides to Musharraf's militaristic stability. The likelihood that such a marriage would ever work was probably always remote. It is now remoter still.

At some level, the US is still MIA in that part of the world. Our Iraqi mis-adventure poisons many wells, but none more than the well of democracy, such as it is, in a place called Pakistan. We had legitimacy, buckets of it, in the wake of 9/11. No one, not even the Pakistanis, questioned our right to go into Afghanistan and clean it out of AL Qaeda and Taliban, and had we remained focused there, we might have succeeded. We certainly might have captured bin Laden, and we would have been able to stop the Taliban from re-emerging and taking refuge in the remote tribal areas of both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But we didn't. Instead, we fought a war that needed no fighting, against an enemy that did not exist, in a country that was neither attacking us nor funding those who would. We fought a war planned at the desks of a handful of neo-cons long ago, and long before 9/11. And we fought a war that those same neo-cons did an abysmal job of planning. It's usually a bad sign when you declare victory before it has been won, but that happened in Iraq too.

The list of mistakes in Mesopatamia is long and painful. Unilateralism. No WMD. A silly coalition of the willing that was always small and has grown even smaller still over time. Insufficient troops. An inept Coalition Provisional Authority. De-baathification, which destroyed Iraq's administrative apparatus, and torture, which destroyed our own integrity. Ignored or minimized sectarian conflict. Until recently, not even a reasonable counter-insurgency strategy . And even today, an unwillingness to level with the American people.

Now we can add Pakistan and Benazir Bhutto to the list. Our Iraqi mistake did not kill her. But it sure did not help either.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

HAPPY HOLIDAYS 

I am writing to wish one and all "Happy Holidays" for 2007. 

This will annoy the right wing to some immeasurable degree. Anyone who wishes "Happy Holidays" is apparently part of some grand scheme to subvert Christmas. This class of happy holiday wishers is either run by, or at the very least includes in large numbers, the following -- secularists, atheists, agnostics, the lapsed of any faith, and -- of course -- liberals. The appointed protectors of Christmas have a number of spokesmen and women, but chief among them appear to be Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. Every year at about this time, the protectors can be counted on to man the barricades and warn of the latest assault on Christmas perpetrated under the banner of "Happy Holidays. " 

I always thought people wished each other "Happy Holidays" more or less to save words. It appears to me that the season is an incredibly busy and stressful one, with all the shopping, parties (planned and attended), decorating, cooking, etc. For those with young children, there are also the lists for Santa Claus and all the assuaging that has to be done as the kids wonder whether they have been naughty or nice; this sometimes extends to adults, who have a penchant for naughtiness. Invitations create a whole other source of potential stress -- who to invite to the party or the holiday (sorry, I meant "Christmas") dinner, who to exclude, how to explain you really didn't really mean to exclude the folks you really meant to exclude, etc. While all this is happening, the days are getting progressively shorter (and used to be getting progressively colder too), so the month is especially acute for the seasonally affected. Thus, I thought, what the hell (no doubt the beginning of my problem), if you say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" every time you greet people this time of year, the savings of four words per greeting starts to add up -- more breath as you run for the train or explain to the airline that your kid was supposed to be on that flight. 

But Sean and Rush and Ann will have none of this. My effort at efficiency is nothing but a well orchestrated attack on Christmas. I have perverted a sacred day, turned it into some sort of secular celebration of the winter solstice. With all of this "Happy Holiday" gibberish, I am giving Hanukkah and Kwanzaa equal billing, equating a high holy day with supposedly low ones, turning the sacred into the profane as I swim in a sort of unholy existential soup of my own making. (For some reason, I am also accused of taking the "Christ" out of "Christmas", but I find this charge a bit strange because I am never accused at the same time of taking the "Happy" out of "New Year", and I wonder if they are missing the full extent of my otherwise pernicious conduct.) 

I am now very nervous about this whole "Happy Holidays" thing. I am already on the outs with the higher ups in my religion -- the Pope, the Cardinals and the Bishops. This is because I do not believe that embryos are people, or that girls should only be nuns, or that Sunday Mass should be mandatory (either for me or some of the priests who say it), or that Cardinal Law is necessarily entitled to diplomatic immunity. I am also already on the outs with the Seans and Rushes and Ann C's. This is because I do not believe that all Republicans have good judgment, or that girls should not get equal pay, or that the Constitution is irrelevant, or that it doesn't matter that Gore got more votes in Florida in 2000. But now, in addition to all these transgressions, I have joined the list of apparently irreligious Happy Holidayers. 

I am a lawyer and this predicament requires a plea. So here it is -- Guilty . . .

With An Explanation. 

Actually, a few of them. 

First, I agree that the word saving thing is a bit of a stretch. But it is not off the charts. My children and their friends have invented a whole new form of communication where abbreviation is the norm. (R u showing 4 the pty. LOL.) At least "Happy Holidays" is intelligible, in English, and uses two words actually found in the dictionary. Rush and Sean and Ann maybe should thank me for not succumbing. I bet the abbreviators are going to start saying "Merry Xmas"; maybe they already have. How will Rush and Co. feel about that? Not good, I bet, with the abbreviators putting the "X" back in . . . well, you get the problem. I say, "Rush, Ann, Sean, maybe we are on the same side on this one." 

But we're not. 

Because I noticed that they really don't mean what they say. 

And this is the second explanation. 

I do not think the "Merry Christmas" protectors really want to protect "Merry Christmas." If they did, Jose Feliciano would be one of their patron saints. Jose is the singer and songwriter who gave us "Feliz Navidad," which is Spanish for "Merry Christmas." But I never see him on Hannity and Colmes, being grilled by Alan and fed softballs by Sean. And I bet he hasn't been mentioned in one of Ann's books or speeches (which, given the fact that he is blind, might have taken the edge off her gay bashing, or at least given MSNBC a reason to keep her on the air), or made an appearance with Rush (physically challenged in his own right, as we know, which explained all those prescription painkillers). What's up with that, I ask. Is "Merry Christmas" only sacred when it comes out in English? I guess so. Cause no one's ever accused me of taking Christ out of Feliz Navidad. 

This, unfortunately, creates enormous problems for the Merry Christmas maniacs. The Savior came to save the whole world, as we Christians believe, and English wasn't even around when he arrived. The Pope speaks German, or Italian (and sometimes Latin) when he is on the job. Jesus spoke Aramaic and St. Paul spoke Greek, so whatever they would have said to celebrate Himself's birthday, it wasn't "Merry Christmas." It wasn't even "Feliz Navidad." Oh, I know, it wasn't "Happy Holidays" either. But that just gets me to explanation # 4 or 3 (depending on how you are counting). 

Which is this -- if we are respecting original intent here, "Happy Holidays" has the better claim. Unfortunately for the protectors, historically speaking, the churches actually stole the "secular" celebration of the winter solstice; it wasn't the other way around. The First Christmas, which is afterall what we are celebrating, did not actually take place in December. The prelates put it there, and then seized the seasonal solstice festival that occurred at that time and made it their own. It was sort of a religious preemptive strike, and of course an act of marketing genius. The whole point of the winter solstice celebration is that we really need something to celebrate at exactly this time of year . . . and not just because Aunt Gertrude is off the Christmas list. Life for those pagan warriors was hard, and cold, and you couldn't sack Rome in the winter anyway. Life for us is hard too, and the Democrats apparently can't sack Bush in the winter either. So we celebrate the solstice. But call it Christmas. 

None of this, of course, really matters. The commercial interests took "Christ" out of Christmas long before the much hated secularists ever got Hallmark to craft a line of Happy Holiday cards. The protectors do not complain about this, mostly because those interests are also their sponsors. The politicians say they have not taken "Christ"out of Christmas, and they are very careful about when, where and to whom they utter "Happy Holidays" (lest they lose the talk radio base or show up in Rush's sites). But the Iowa caucuses occur on January 3, and the two day "no call to voters" rule in force on December 24 and 25 looks more like a Flanders Field cease fire in World War I than it does a celebration of those who believe God was made Man. 

What we are really forgetting about Christmas is not the greeting, it's the message. Jesus preached peace, love, generosity, and forgiveness; not war, hatred, the individual accumulation of wealth and the ability to hold a grudge. He wouldn't recognize the Christmas celebrated by Sean, Ann, Rush and the bevy of protectors screaming about sacrilege, nor the one celebrated by most of the rest of us either. He wouldn't be all that jazzed about the gifts, or the self-induced stress, or the baited breadth of prognosticators wondering whether retail will be up or down this season. He wouldn't be thinking about Presidential candidates or listening to talk shows. And He wouldn't care about whether seasonal greetings were correct or incorrect, politically or otherwise. 

We shouldn't either. 

But we do. 

So "Happy Holidays." 

Maybe some day we'll be worthy enough to say "Merry Christmas." 

But we're not there yet.

DRUGGED

DRUGGED 

Just when you thought it was safe to assume that the Democrats would not self destruct, the Democrats prove they are more than capable of doing so. 

The latest in their long list of invitations to implosion comes in the form of comments from Billy Shaheen. Unknown nationally, Billy is very much known in the state of New Hampshire, home to the first primary. He is the husband of former New Hampshire Governor (and current Senatorial candidate) Jeanne Shaheen, and also is the co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in that state. Today, under the guise of discussing the issue of electability, Billy told the press (and us) that Barack Obama's admissions of past drug use will haunt him in a general election campaign. Shaheen stated that Obama had "opened the door" to further questions from the GOP hit squad. According to Billy, "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" This apparently worries Shaheen in spite of the GOP having assiduously guarded the past drug use of its own standard bearer from any disclosure whatsoever, full or otherwise. In 1999 and 2000, W effectively declared all talk of his rumored drug use out of bounds, inventing a political statute of limitations that precluded discussion of anything he did before he was 40 and sober. The GOP will now apparently ignore that precedent as it unloads on Barack. 

Maybe I am missing something here, but at this point, I am worried less about the GOP hit squad than I am about the Hillary Hit Squad. No one will believe, nor should they, that Billy Shaheen went to the podium today with anything other than a green light from Hillary and her campaign. Nor will anyone believe, and again they should not, that Billy's ostensible concern reflects anything other than the fact that Obama is now neck and neck with Clinton in the polls not just in Iowa but also in New Hampshire. This has desperation written all over it. 

It also has hypocrisy written all over it. In 1992, when Bill talked about not inhaling, no one in the Clinton camp thought admitted use invited questions about dealing that threatened his electability. Nor do they now. This is true for many reason. W's "I take the Fifth" on this is one reason. But there are others. Obama did not do anything millions of us have not done, and there's a good chance that among those millions are a number of current GOP candidates for President, Congress, and a whole host of other offices . Whatever the GOP asks about Barack will be asked about them. The Justice Department hires prosecutors who have to answer the "drug question". I was one of them, and I am betting that, if an honest "I tried it" answer to that question doesn't eliminate you from being an Assistant US Attorney, it won't derail Barack's presidential campaign. 

But it may derail Hillary's. Her selling point is experience, but her campaign of late is looking like the gang that can't shoot straight. First there was the whole "he wrote that he wanted to be President in kindergarten" brouhaha, a comical attempt to claim that Obama was somehow inappropriately ambitious whereas Hillary was not. Wholly apart from the notion that Hillary attacking someone for having more ambition is about as credible as Bush announcing he has seen the light on global warming, the claim was silly and more than a little bit crazy. It used to be a good thing to want to be President, and it still is a great thing when you can write out any sentence at the age of five, especially if you could do that 40 years ago when most of us couldn't. Now, however, an overly ambitious five year old (who could write) is being turned into a twenty something Harvard educated potential drug dealer (just asking, mind you) because he didn't equivocate on the de riguer "did you inhale" question. 

Sounds to me like the Clinton campaign better exhale . . . 

Fast!

MITT'S MUDDLE

MITT'S MUDDLE

Mitt Romney went to Texas yesterday to allay voters' concerns about his religion. John F. Kennedy went to Texas forty-seven years ago to do the same thing. Kennedy succeeded. Romney failed. 

Here's why. 

JFK's speech was a clarion call for separation between church and state. He did not equivocate or temporize, and he annoyed many in the Catholic hierarchy by not doing so. He said that he believed "in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute." This absolute separation meant that "no church or church school" would be "granted any public funds or political preference." It meant that "no prelate" or "minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote." It provided a standard against which the consistency of his own votes "against an ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools" could be measured, a standard which -- in his public life -- Kennedy clearly met. 

Now listen to Romney yesterday at Texas A&M. No absolutism there. He said "I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us . . . from God." On his conduct in public office, he proclaimed that he "tried to do the right as best" he knew it, and while offering that he had never "confuse[d] the particular teachings of [his]church with the obligations of [his] office," he also asserted that "in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America -- the religion of secularism. They are wrong." He proudly proclaimed his belief that "Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind." Finally, invoking our constitutional beginnings, he claimed, "The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square." 

It is a speech JFK never would have given. In fact, it is a speech neither Lincoln nor the founders would have given either. It is also a bad speech. Not because it will not do what it was designed to do for his Presidential campaign, which is to allay the irrational fears evangelicals have of Mormons. And not because it also will not allay the fears of the dreaded "secularists," about whose fears Romney cares not a whit. Instead, it is a bad speech because it is false as a matter of history and dangerous as a matter of policy, matters of which Kennedy was clearly cognizant and Romney is not. 

The history of church - state separation has been bastardized of late, and that is no accident. The evangelicals are intent on re-writing it to agree with their own views. On this re-writing, the founders become religious devotees when in fact they were nearly all deists who rejected trinitarian doctrine, came of age (as Garry Wills points out in his recent book, Head and Heart) during a fairly secular period in American history when religion was descendant rather than ascendant (a reality which changed shortly after their passing and which had emerged only shortly after their births), and actually succeeded is implementing disestablishment, a by no means certain outcome in a world where, at the founding, the states had established churches which received tax funds. It also took awhile. Massachusetts, for example, home to Mitt and JFK, did not disestablish the Congregational Church until the 1830s. 

In truth, the founders were what Romney and today's religious right would call "secularists." So was Lincoln. They were all perfectly comfortable referring to God, and even contemplating the mystery of God (which Lincoln's Second Inaugural does in spades), but they never substituted an appeal to God's judgment (which is more or less unknowable, as a practical matter) for their own. In that, they followed the advice of the Jesuits who taught me in high school: "Pray as if everything depends on God, but act as if everything depends on you." So, as a practical matter, for Jefferson and Lincoln, God was "eliminated from" the "public square," or at least from that part of the public square which created laws and politics. 

Romney and the religious right will truck with none of this. It is apostasy. JFK expressly said that religion -- "what kind of church he believed in" -- should be important "only to [him]," and refused to discuss the subject. Romney -- perhaps intending to out-paster Paster Huckabee -- proclaimed (and remember, this was a campaign speech by a guy running for President) Jesus as the Son of God and Savior of Mankind. JFK's point was that no one should care about this. Romney's is that everyone must. Romney also repeated the shopworn bromides the religious right now trots out every time it discusses the subject. So, the former Governor of Massachuseets claims that we are a nation "Under God", even though the anti-communists of the '50s -- not the founders -- were the authors of these words. 

The "public square" is also a funny place in Mitt's world. A large chunk of the public appears not to be part of it (God must need a lot of room). Romney asserted that "Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs." And who, precisely, would that be? The dreaded secularists? Certainly. Pro-choice divorced Catholics like me? Who vote for Democrats? Gone. Perhaps not "removed" from the public square like the God we ostensibly refuse to invite to the party, but decidedly on the sidelines, like the boring kids in high school, just so . . . tiresome. Something of a blown dry hipster himself, Romney is a perfect incarnation of the populist religio-media age in which we now live. God is cool, with it, a ratings buster (for God's sake). Check out those Sunday morning televangelist broadcasts from "churches" larger than concert halls and louder than the Super Bowl at halftime, and then go ahead and try to talk yourself into the notion that more people are watching "Meet the Press." If you really think Tim is getting more action than the preachers, you must be among those belief-jettisoners with whom the hipsters have just grown tired. 

Kennedy attacked the then sacred cows of 1960 Catholic politics. Aid to parochial schools? He was against it. (This was not a popular position in middle and working class Boston, Chicago or New York, where thousands of kids like me were going to Catholic schools. ) An ambassador to and diplomatic status for the Vatican? He was against that too, to the consternation of many of my co-religionists. 

Mitt said he'd never take orders from the Mormon bishops, but he didn't name one policy favored by the religious right that he would oppose. How about President Bush's faith based inititatives, which funnel taxpayer money to religious groups engaged in ostensibly non-religious projects (like drug counseling), which are nothing but subsidies for religious organizations (the money they would have spent on counseling, now provided by the fed, can be re-directed to proselytizing)? Kennedy would never have been for this, or for the open electioneering which now goes on as religious leaders tell their followers how to vote. Romney was silent on both counts. And he has already flip-flopped on the mother of all quasi-religious issues, abortion. Formerly pro-choice, Romney is now avowedly pro-life. Kennedy's policies were opposed in many instances to his religious interests. Romney seems intent on demonstrating that his are compelled by those interests. 

In Texas forty seven years ago, on the subject of religion, Kennedy was principled, unyielding, and right. In Texas yesterday, on the same subject, Romney showed a lot of profile but not much courage. And he was wrong.

PERSIAN PASSION

PERSIAN PASSION

So, they do not have a nuclear weapons program after all.

What to make of the just released National Intelligence Estimate ("NIE" for the acronym-meisters) -- which states, with "high confidence", that Iran four years ago abandoned its plans to build a nuclear bomb and, with "moderate confidence," that the Iranian program remains "suspended" -- is the buzz in Washington (and elsewhere) today.

Here's my take.

I have "no confidence" that the Bush administration cares much about the new NIE. Upon its release, the Bushies engaged in their usual double talk and denial. The National Security Adviser said the NIE proves that the pressure of economic sanctions worked, which is odd, since the Iranian program ended in 2003, or before the sanctions were really ratcheted up. The Secretary of Defense said, in effect, so what, they (Iran) had one (a nuke weapons program) before and can start one again, especially given the program they now have in place for the development of nuclear energy. He neglected to note that the administration approves of the Iranian nuclear energy program -- bombs bother them but nuclear waste is just fine.

Not to be outdone, however, the President eclipsed his aides with the type of assessment of which only he is capable. He said "the NIE provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community . . . to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program"; he followed that up with the statement that the NIE means "nothing's changed."

Sometimes I think this guy is not living on the same planet as the rest of us. Unfortunately, however, he is the President and we already have a bomb (which he can launch), so we have to take him seriously, despite the ever present need this creates to engage in hand to hand combat with logic, the English language and empirical reality.

But enough about us. Really . . . what's up with this guy? And how dangerous is he? To begin, assuming the NIE is right, whatever it means we have to do, it cannot mean that we have to pressure Iran to suspend its nuclear weapons program. Because this, apparently, is what they already have done. If I were the Iranians, however, I'd be worried. Bush has a lot of trouble accepting "Yes " for an answer. No nukes! You'd think we won and Bush would graciously accept the victory. But "nothing's changed," according to W. This is crazy talk -- illogical, un-empirical, ill advised, and just plain stupid.

But it's also Bush's m.o. In the run up to the war in Iraq, as the weapons inspectors found no wmd and as the Iraquis issued their required report to the UN stating (quite accurately) that they then had no wmd, the President did not care. He said, in effect, that the Iraquis were lying (they weren't) and that he did not care what Hans Blix found (or did not find).

And he's doing it again. The NIE means "nothing's changed" because for him, it hasn't. We still must do today what we were doing yesterday, or pressure the Iranians to suspend their nuclear weapons program, even though there is no such program to suspend. Question: how precisely could Iran demonstrate future compliance with this latest demand? Answer: it can't, any more than Iraq could demonstrate compliance with the UN wmd mandates in late 2002 and early 2003. At least not to this guy.

Joe Biden recently said that if Bush bombs or goes to war against Iran, he (Biden) would move for impeachment. If I were Biden, I'd get the resolution ready. Because, "nothing's changed."