The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: politics

  • Health of the Republic: Down 7% to 5%

    I’ve been meaning to write this post for a little while but net issues have been keeping me away. In any event, the recent passage of the so-called “FISA reform” (now with telecom immunity!) has sent the Health of the Republic tumbling downward. I had begun to be cautiously optimistic that American liberty might begin to recover now that we are approaching the end of the Worst Administration Ever.

    But Senator Obama and the Senate Democrats blew this call. Somehow they believe there is a huge constituency for enhanced domestic spying, for rewarding lawbreakers, and for undermining the Constitution. I understand the political calculus, I think, but I’m pretty sure it’s flat-out wrong and it’s disturbing to see the “change” candidate get stuck in worn-out thinking. Usually, Sen. Obama treats Americans as smart and engaged. He is never better than when an issues is nuanced and charged. This time, he just surrendered to the “We must sacrifice liberty to survive the Evil Terrorists” meme.

    I’m still going to vote for him and I’ll probably even continue to donate money. After all, the only hope of addressing the ills of this bill lie with a Democratic President and Congress — you can be sure McCain won’t do anything to rein it in. But something has gone out of my enthusiasm. The public finance thing and the slow withdrawal thing didn’t really faze me. But this was important.

    It was a chance to lead, and he blew it — and we don’t have all that many chances left.

  • My two cents

    I suspect I will write more on this, eventually, but for now, here’s what I’ve sent to the Obama campaign regarding the Senator’s disappointing collapse on FISA:

    I have contributed over $500 to the Senator’s campaign, more than all my previous contributions in my life. I had intended to donate all the way to the $2300 limit. No more. I am finding it hard to even type the words that express my disappointment and my revulsion at the Senator’s craven position on the amended FISA bill that was just passed by the House. His words are disingenuous and misleading, and indicate either that he does not understand this issue or that — cynically — he assumes ordinary Americans won’t understand it.

    As a senator he has taken an oath — the same oath he hopes to take on Inauguration Day — to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic. A law that circumvents the Fourth Amendment, hands the executive unfettered powers of surveillance, and grants immunity to those who have flagrantly broken the law to date — that sort of law is the death knell of a free republic.

    The Senator claims to offer change. I had hoped that the change would be Democrats standing up for what is right, stepping up to defend the Constitution. I had hoped the Senator would know to put principle before politics. I am no rosy-eyed daydreamer. I understand that taking the right stand would entail risks and would expose the Senator to the vacuous accusations of unpatriotism that is the forte of the rabid Right. I even concede that, with so many of his colleagues abandoning their own duties, there is a good chance that he would expend political capital only to be defeated.

    I don’t care.

    There are times to play the cards you’re dealt, and there are times to kick over the table and refuse to play the game. True leaders understand the difference. When fundamental protections that have been hallowed by centuries face erosion and destruction, I think the line is pretty bright. Senator Obama should have known that this is an issue on which there should be no compromise. This is the issue to take to the American people, who are smart enough to understand the threat. This is the issue to take to the wall, to the very edge, because if we tolerate the destruction of our Constitution, there will be no America in which to raise our children.

    I am surprised and shocked and saddened that apparently the Senator does not see this. And until I see evidence that he does in fact have both the savvy and the character I thought he did, I will not contribute another penny. I will route that money, instead, to groups like ActBlue and the ACLU, who have their eyes on the ball.

    The final irony here is that — literally at the moment I heard the news — I was clicking over to this site to donate another $100 as my show of support for his decision to reject public financing. From what I know of his supporters, he might come to regret that decision… a lot of us will be holding back.

  • Call to Action: Oppose Telecom Immunity

    Tomorrow (Jun 20) the House is likely to pass a “compromise” revision to the FISA law so as to, in effect, grant complete immunity to telecommunication companies who knowingly broke the law in supporting the Bush administration’s illegal eavesdropping program. Make no mistake: This isn’t about the telecoms per se — House Democrats offered to “substitute” the federal government in place of the telecoms if they were assessed damages, and the Republicans balked. This is about protecting President Bush and his crony cabal from the process of discovery, because a civil lawsuit stands as a major route of investigating the lawlessness of this junta.

    Glen Greenwald has more details and he writes more cogently than I could. Right now, I’m joining his call for any freedom-loving American to contribute whatever you can to ActBlue’s campaign against the perpetrators of this travesty. Clearly the only way to reform the poor behavior of the Congress is to punish those who transgress, and raising money for blistering ads to run against vulnerable members is one way to do that. Please, follow the link and consider donating.

    Let America be America … help restore the rule of law.

  • Shameless but useful Me-too!

    As much as I hate just pointing to other people’s blog entries, I had to link to something from the Carpetbagger Report: “It’s a delicate dance, and John McCain is ‘liable to break a hip’“. In it, CB lists all the different ways John McCain has flip-flopped since beginning his current run at the Presidency. I suspect I’ll have cause to refer to it (and its inevitable successors) a lot during this campaign.

    Let’s be clear: It’s OK for a politician to change his/her mind. People change and situations evolve. But McCain, in particular, has run as the straight-talker, the dead-eye with keen judgment who isn’t moved by political winds. Yet every one of his many many flips have moved him from the “maverick” position towards one that just happens to line up with the special interests of whatever group he happens to be addressing. That’s not straight-shooting. That’s not even political evolution.

    It’s pandering, pure and simple, and if a panderer wants to run on the strength of his so-called convictions, well I think he ought to be hoist on his own petard.

  • Another disturbing slip

    On 2008 May 22, John McCain attacked his presumed opponent Barack Obama (and of course, that’s just politics, so it’s fine), saying

    But I am running for the office of Commander-in-Chief.

    Here’s the problem. McCain is wrong. He’s not running for the office of Commander-in-Chief. In case it’s slipped his mind, he’s running for the office of ???????? ????? ????????President of the United States. One of the roles played by the President — but only one — is Commander-in-Chief.

    At first I was going to just note this and move on, assuming it’s just a mildly disturbing shorthand, a tea-leaf you have to peer at. I was going to caution that this creeping tendency — to identify the nation’s highest civil office soley with its military aspect — is a sign of the crumbling of our American ideals and that we all just blow by it too quickly.

    Then I went online and read a few posts that scared the bejeebus out of me. Because apparently a lot of people don’t recognize even the abstract point. They literally do identify the two roles as if they are inseparable. In my life I’ve played the game of “What would it take to turn the Republic into an empire?” It’s always been fun and diverting. Suddenly I realize: We’re already almost there, not legally but in the far more important substrata of our social discourse. Too much of the America populace is ready to bow down and accept a strong man.

    Yet people always like to tell me It Can Never Happen Here… when it virtually already has.

  • The decline of American political reporting

    As always, let me begin by stating I am an Obama supporter, so I’m a mite sensitive on the following. But it shocked me this morning to hear NPR’s coverage of the “debate” last night. We’ll leave aside the astonishing fact — which they tried to explain away — that forty minutes (nearly half the debate!) focused on indirect or minor issues of the campaign … on the sort of thing that everyone knows is silly but raises because it’s going to matter to someone else. Yes, I mean Jeremiah Wright and Rezko and especially the tempest-in-a-teapot “bitter” comments.

    But then the NPR anchor mentioned that the “point” was to see if Sen. Obama could survive the same pointless assaults in the general. The reporter, Juan Williams, sagely agreed and commented “Obama seemed pretty bruised by both sides” in the debate.

    Both sides? Really?

    I had been under the naive delusion that the two sides of the debate were Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. Is Juan Williams really implying that the Illinois senator bruised himself? That he was launching attack upon ludicrous attack on himself? No, that’s just nonsense. So I had to think deeper, and suddenly I had a flash of inspiration. Juan Williams was being unwontedly candid about the dynamics of American political coverage.

    There were hotel furnishing in Bulgariathree sides represented yesterday: Senator Obama, Senator Clinton, and the self-appointed, self-important, scandal-driven, smug media. Apparently they too are officially arrayed against Senator Obama, at least now that he is the presumed frontrunner. It’s the most striking confirmation of the bias the press has against anyone succeeding… first they build you up, then they cut your feet off, then they blame you for tumbling and failing to meet everyone’s (that is, their) expectations.

    Viewed that way, Senator Obama was bruised by both (other) sides in the debate. Indeed, considering he was taking fire from an unexpected direction and from a supposed non-combatant, he came through pretty well, I think. It’s going to be a slog to the convention, and it’s going to be hard on any American interested in a fair process, but I think he showed the strength that will carry him there.

  • Bitter taste

    {Minor edits for grammar.}

    For full disclosure, I am an Obama supporter, I feel he is the best candidate both in terms of electability and in terms of actual ability to do the job. I’ve watched his campaign with interest and rising enthusiasm. All of that said, I think people have to recognize that his statements in San Francisco, saying that working class people are “bitter” and so “cling” to their guns and their religion, has been a giant misstep. It was a gaffe pure and true, and he is paying the traditional price: Time spent off-message, defending and responding rather than proposing and advancing.

    A lot of what he says is true, nonetheless, and if you read the context, you will see that his major sin is choosing words that can be taken many ways. And hey, it’s politics, and politics ain’t a tea party. His opponents can, and probably should, use this to their advantage in an attempt to define him for America. That doesn’t mean that I agree that his remarks were “elitist” and “talked down” to working class America. But it’s McCain’s right, or Clinton’s right, to make that case.

    Obama’s main problem was his choice of the word “cling”:

    And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

    This would all have passed without notice if he had chosen his words better. For example, if instead of saying people “cling” to guns or religion, he could have said they “fall back on” guns and religion — the things in their life that they can control, that give comfort and surety. Why didn’t he? To be honest, because it is all too easy for a Democrat to fall into language that dismisses such beliefs as tools of cynical manipulation. Here’s the bigger question: Why is it so easy? Because for a generation and a half, one party (the Republican party) has used those beliefs as tools of cynical manipulation. Appeals to patriotism, to gun ownership, to faith, are easy and cheap and — if the record of the Republicans is any guide — meaningless.

    The truth of that lies in the speed and tone of the response from both McCain and Clinton. They piously promise to protect the little guy, they publicly feel umbrage for him, they pat him on the head. They don’t speak to the concerns that Obama did, the reasons that he thinks that middle America might be “bitter”. They don’t offer any actual solutions for their distress. Instead they facilely promise to somehow recover every job that’s been lost.

    Obama missteps because he tries to speak about the plight of the working class without having been a member. He doesn’t get the lingo. Fair enough. But the other two nominally-major candidates go much further. They celebrate their false membership in the working class. They too have never belonged but they appoint themselves to feel the outrage of the class.

    In the end, in my opinion, that is condescending — that is “talking down” to the working class.

  • Why We Fight

    Every once in a while, someone comes along and says something that makes you wish you had said it first. For me, it’s often Keith Olberman. In this clip, he calls out President Bush and names him for what he is. Let’s hope it’s like we read in those fantasy novels — that naming someone undermines their power.

    Only eleven months to go — this old Republic might just manage to survive the Worst President Ever.

  • Civics Lesson

    I’m sure that this is going get me marked as a rabid Obama supporter (which I am not). But I can’t help but gush over his impressive response on the issue of church and state. In an interview with BeliefNet, he was asked, “You wrote in The Audacity of Hope about the role that faith and faith-based programs could play in confronting social ills. Isn’t your view on that similar to George W. Bush’s?”

    His answer — the clearest ever seen — follows below the fold.

    (more…)

  • Finally, an unvarnished truth from Senator Clinton

    In the Jan 21 debate, on the subject of national security, Senator Clinton said,

    And if it is indeed the classic Republican campaign, I’ve been there. I’ve done that.

    See? She’s confessing that she and Bill really do steal plays from the Karl Rove playbook… she’s “done” a Republican campaign.

    Wait, wait. You say that that’s not what she meant, that “clearly” she was commenting on the kind of campaigns she’s faced, not endorsing those tactics? I don’t know, it sounds a lot like parsing it to have it both ways…

    (Obviously, I hope, I’m trying to draw a comparison to the freak-out that occurred when Sen. Obama noted the historical fact that Ronald Reagan was good at motivating people to vote Republican. Somehow his clear-as-day remark transmogrified into worship at the altar of Reagan. But Clinton’s comment — that her nomination would put us through the same Republican assaults we’ve suffered since, well, 1992 — apparently that’s not worthy of note.)