Exchange of Political Views

Thanks to Pat Fields and to Adamaria Francis:

Dear loving Friends of the Heart,

In a recent issue, Boone Posey wrote about some minority political feelings. We feel that we owe it to our readers to give both sides of a controversial issue; but we also owe them a response to every serious inquiry, or any serious challenge.

Thus, we have written the following letter to you, our peace-loving
friends:

[NOTE:] We will place the original letter in quotation marks, and our responses will be outside the marks:

"Dear Barbara,

Over the past few months, I have read your contribution to this newsletter, and I have a few comments. I wish that this type of political comment were a part of this newsletter, as it was intended, I believe, to be a forum for positive and more spiritual banter and good information."

Yes, we do work hard and consistently to keep the uld ["Universal Love Digest"] spiritually relevant. Spirituality implies positivity, but our real world is not some "Pollyannish" dream without negativity. Exposing negativity is a part of the positive path.

The areas that appear political, on first glance, are really not about mere politics at all, but about spiritual principles. We know that the shame and greed of foolish leaders is against not only our country, but crimes against ecology and humanity. They are truly spiritual concerns.

They need to be exposed. And spiritually educated people need to be introduced to these lies, crimes, and acts of horrible violence. Exposing lies and liars has always been a part of truth-teaching. [Jesus set a good example in Matthew 23.]

"I believe it has been used as a political 'soap box' for too many things."

We have tried hard to "cut down" the number of articles that we share with you, our beloved efamily, with the public, and with other friends. We have had much to say about the interfaces between politics and compassion-- especially when the never-elected administration has broken all the rules of decency, resulting in the deaths of four thousand American girls and boys, and perhaps, a million others, including women and children.

You say that "too many things" have been considered in the ezine. But, actually, in the tens of millions of books written about politics and morality, we have considered only one subject: The failure of the present administration, which claims to be "Christian," to live up to simple and clear guidelines of compassion, and to serve greed. That is not many, but only one subject!

For us to keep silent about these issues would make us appear as apathetic, or even supportive of evil-- which we will never be!

"And most of these political statements is to trash our President."

He might well be your president, but he is not mine. I have had no president since the year twenty-hundred.

And those sound and solid, fact-based criticisms were elicited by his behavior. Very few have turned against bush because they simply don't like the man. Instead, he has become the primary representative of greed, of corporation-rule (a definition of "fascism"), division, murder, and general hatred. His policies have made America the most feared country in the world, according to 71% of Europeans. The Europeans and other foreign people have come to hate America, once the "light upon a hill" to the world. For the U.S., under bush, has actually invaded a third-world country, and a very poor one, to steal its oil for a few rich bush-cronies. Do gallons of oil really cost gallons of blood?

"I admit that he made some mistakes and is not one of the best leaders we
have had,..."

It is good as a reality-test that you can at least create some agreement in your heart about this. Jimmy Carter expressed the shared thought of tens of millions of Americans when he said that bush was "the worst president in history."

From the beginning, he was a man unfit for leadership. He has proved beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt that he is incompetent, inept, and woefully ignorant.

"but I think he deserves some respect in the fact that he still is our President and the office alone deserves some consideration and respect."

Until this monstrous administration began to ruin the environment, give corporate welfare to giant corporations, and to murder American children for oil, I would have agreed one hundred percent with you.

This is a common, and tired, old argument: "If you don't respect the man, at least respect the office." But this is a very fine, and often impossible, distinction. For, during any administration, the officer is the office, for all practical terms. As I was growing up, I went to a public school; in that school, we were drilled thoroughly to be patriotic, to love and respect our country. We were taught to honor the office of president above all. And I did greatly honor it, until it was
revealed that a rich daddy could buy the office for mere bucks, and then, lie it in the lap of an uneducated, ignorant, and foolish son. Any office that can be "bought" does not deserve our respect-- much less, the profound respect that virtually everyone used to share for this high office. And when the office becomes the source of policies and laws that are anti-ecological, anti-economic, and anti-middle class, it is no longer possible to respect that office.

"I don't agree with war as a solution to any problem..."

Well, then, once again, we are in agreement. But can you not see that by supporting a "war-president," you are in fact supporting all the blood, agony, and torture, rape, and starvation that inevitably comes with any war?

"...but he did what he did because of the advisors around him,..."

What a false and manufactured argument! Bush has grandiosely reminded us, more than once, that he is "the decider." You are, for some reason, trying to clear the record of this man, who is more criminal and thief than president. He himself brags continuously about how he personally made all the important decisions. He sees some of his most horrible mistakes as a "legacy," about which he is very concerned. And he should be! Although he is parading around the country, blowing his own trumpet, boasting of what a "great president" he was, no one is really taking this blow-hard seriously. He has worked hard to cultivate the worst record in history; every time that he could have made a major error, by making the wrong decision, he did make that wrong decision.

"and so we are into two wars."

Yes, this is part of the bush legacy. He has made it clear that he would be doing just fine if we entered a third war, in Iran. The man is psychopathic. (He does not have a conscience.) When five hundred thousand women, children, and innocent men die agonizing deaths, they are just numbers on a report to george. His anti-ecology proves that he has no respect for life, and his eagerness for war proves that he does not know the value of human life either!

"The original war, with Afghanistan, was to retaliate for the attack on 9-11,..."

Maybe. But the bin Laden family had close economic arrangements interwoven with bush's own bank account. One of bush's companies even made fire-arms, making war profitable for both him and Cheney (big-buck connections with Halliburton). War was a delightful win-win! Except for all those inconvenient dead bodies. But they really didn't matter; they were "only" bad guys, "only" Muslims.

So, bush, for money, refused to attack the Middle Eastern country responsible for 9-11, which was Saudi Arabia. No, too many bucks from bush and company's personal bank accounts. But to appear "tough," he attacked a pitifully puny country with a rag-tag "army" whose "soldiers" were sometimes twelve-year-olds!

"and the Iraq war, was to keep the spread of support for Al-Quaida (sp?)..."

When george was told, by a reporter, that Al Queda (Al Chaida) was not even in the entire country of Iraq until the U.S. Invasion, do you know what he nefariously said? He said, "So what?"

"For all the wrong decisions he made, he still has keep the terrorists on the run, and they have not been able to launch another attack on our soil, since 9-11."

This is a tired and wearisome argument, but it says absolutely nothing about bush's competence or incompetence. It is a medal to be pinned, not on george's chest, but on all the hundreds of thousands of women and men in law-enforcement and national protection-- people who carefully did their jobs, often while george slept, or went on another of his interminable vacations to Crawford, TX.

"Now, the future Obama administration has already said that they will slacken up on the security of this country, by not tapping anyone's phones, or keeping a close eye on suspected terrorists groups in this country."

You seem to be missing the entire point that people are willing to sacrifice their rights in order to feel safe. But, in sacrificing their human rights, they also sacrifice mine. Ben Franklin said that if one were willing to give up her freedom in order to be "safe," then she deserved neither safety nor freedom. Bush has voluntarily and deliberately trashed even the most sacred political document in our
history, the Constitution, only because it was convenient. His profile is one of a dictator, not an elected president. He got away with an administration polluted and corrupted with scandal, bribery, dishonesty of many kinds, and a general attitude that the common person did not even matter. All who mattered were his "crony-buddies," the oil-billionaires, plus the billion--dollar corporations. In all of his legislative history, bush never once stood up for the common man, but did so
repeatedly for the corporations. Far from being "a man of the people," he was the perfect "corporation man."

"He [Obama] will be putting us in more danger by doing this and he doesn't think it is a bad decision."

First of all, you have no proof that Obama is adopting, or considering, any legislation, or any action, that will make the common person less secure. If Obama can raise our level of respect as Americans, if he can open diplomatic relations with Middle Eastern countries, then Americans will be safer than ever-- on their own soil, and around the world! For bush has made it clear that he hates all Middle Eastern peoples, and all Muslims, and so they naturally despise him. A president whose middle name is "Hussein" might do wonders for American International politics. The texture of the geopolitical map is going to change; and it is so pitiably ugly, destructive, anti-human, and irrational that it almost has to get better!

"He has also chosen a man to head up the CIA that has no experience in this type of responsibility, and would probably mess it up worse than it was when the Clintons were in the White House."

Not everybody agrees that the FBI was in worse shape when Clinton was in the White House; many say that it became worse, and weaker, under the lawless attitudes of bush and co. At any rate, when it comes to appointments, let's please keep in mind two principles: 1) Almost never is it possible to "hook up the perfect person wit the perfect job." Everyone is imperfect; everyone lacks education and/or experience in some areas. And 2) You can never please all the people all the time. Even the very best of presidents will, from time to time, have less than ideal people working for her. This is where the art of forgiveness interfaces with politics. In time, we all must learn to forgive even george.

"I hope and pray that the new President will succeed in leading this country on a peaceful path, and show great leadership in solving our economic crisis."

We are in fullest agreement here, my friend. Obama has been left a huge pile of unsolved problems; the stacks of paper are ten feet tall!

"I want him to have every success and hope he governs like he said he would in his campaign, by reaching across the aisle to show cooperation with both parties in Congress."

His history in working with Congress is very promising.

"But, I think he has already made some bad decisions in his choices for his cabinet, and this has shown that he may be in for some long and hard confirmations from the Congress."

Congress is notoriously difficult to please, as it should be, in a polycultural society. But Obama has a fine way with words, and has even written a couple of books. If you have not read them, they do come highly recommended!

"I could be wrong about this, but I think there will be some controversy about the new cabinet and how well they can perform their duties."

No doubt; every new cabinet in history has stirred controversy-- often, not surprisingly, from the losing party. There has never existed a "perfect president," "perfect Congress," or "perfect cabinet." But Obama is, so far, surrounding himself with people largely of wisdom, well-educated, and with shining reputations for integrity. There are no perfect people on this planet, so let us be careful not to demand perfection! But when an honest cabinet replaces the likes of Cheney and Rice, that very honesty can lift our country together into a new feeling
of hope and optimism.

"As you can probably tell from all I have said, I lean toward the republican side of the political spectrum."

Yes, your lean to the right is a part of your pattern of selfexpression. But beware the tendency of rightwingers to see only themselves as right, and to paint all disagreement as "unpatriotic or even "evil."

"I did vote for McCain/Palin, as I thought they had a better chance of achieving the change in Washington that we needed."

Unfortunately, and a bit amusingly, John McCAin stole the theme of "change" from Obama. Johnny, you will remember, first ran on a ticket of "experience," until the inexperienced and comical Palin got on board!

"I hope that Obama will do a good job, as I have said before, and I will support him in his efforts where I can."

I think that this is a healthy and rational decision.

"I also hope that any decisions made about our national security will be made with the utmost of care and that we don't end up fighting the terrorists on our soil and possibly having a major conflict right here in our own back yard."

I am certain that Obama shares this concern, as do the hundreds of thousands trained in emergency-management, law-enforcement, military strategy-- in other words, the large ocean of people who will still be carefully guarding Americans against fanatics and crooks.

"A lot more Americans will be in danger and we will suffer more losses than we ever did on 9-11."

Yes, that would be true; but, at the moment, this is nothing but science-fiction. So, let's keep our heads, and not panic! Terrorists have their reasons for attacking America; but so far, the reasons not to attack have been stronger and more valid. (This has almost nothing to do with who is president, btw.)

"I hope you and your supporters have given this some thought."

Of course we have. We are not idiots! My friends, if anything, are more intelligent, educated, and observant of the world-situation than are average people.

"Fighting on our own soil will change the whole picture of this 'war on terror'"

Yes, but let's always remember that it has not happened. It is the negative illusion, the favorite scare-tactic, of some rightwingers-- nothing more.

"I just hope that the liberals won't do away with gun ownership before this happens."

This is another matrix-threat of the right. They have an almost "armageddonish" approach to the future, bathed in blood and horror. In this scenario, everyone grabs as many dried bananas as she can, and shoots with her handy little machine-gun anyone who threatens her bananas. And there are always "hordes" of mobs trying to get her bananas! It's all just bad science-fiction.

"I have carried on long enough, but wanted to reply to your comments, both the recent ones and the past ones. I feel this country is one of the best in the
world to live in."

I, and most of my friends, might surprise you when we agree with you. We also love America. The right has no monopoly on this, whatever they tell you about those "evil liberals who hate our country." This is sheerest nonsense, and anyone who is a "liberal" or who has "liberal" friends will deny this false accusation. In fact, it can be strongly argued that we progressives care more for our country than those who care only for dollars. For those on the right, anything can be justified-- war and ecological ruin, for example-- if it brings in enough dollars. This utter consumption by materialism and bucks is a major disease that severely infects the Republican Party. Until they relax a little, and loosen up, they will continue to drive away the young, and anyone else with a conscience. (Did you notice that almost everyone in the McCain/Palin crowds were white and old? There's a reason for this!:)

Anyway, we progressives are not from another planet. We share the strongest values with most Americans. We believe in the sacredness of life; kids should not be murdered out of greed for gold, nor should others.

We are delighted with the great blessings of this country; in fact, the way that we celebrate that freedom is by speaking our minds. Those who celebrate freedom, and yet, would like for the progressive side to shut up and sit down are mere hypocrites. For the founding fathers and mothers of our country were often "radical liberals," from the vantage point of the Crown. And, at any rate, they lived-- and died-- so that all voices could be heard.

We love and treasure our country so much that we work every day to preserve laws that guarantee liberty. We also work to save our country-- its ecology, clean air, and pure water. There are no better ways to love one's country.

Joy and Peace,

the staff of the uld

Movie Review: "W"

***

This movie is not as funny as it could have been. Indeed, it could well have been something of a semislapstick-nature film, with non-stop laughs, as in a Mel Brooks film.
But, although it had its amusing moments, it was a fairly serious semihistorical study of George W. Bush, the very soon ex-president. It flashes back and forth among the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, and early twenty-first century. It gives only a few minutes to the time when the young George W. Bush was doing drugs, boozing, and breaking the law in his late teens and early twenties. Then, it gives only a few minutes more to the time when he was lying, stealing, robbing, making enemies, fornicating, and failing businesses in his early twenties and thirties. (There is barely a mention of a young girl whom he had got pregnant; she disappeared from the screen faster than she disappeared from history!)
George grew more arrogant as he aged, and a bit stranger. He had various jobs given to him by his rich daddy and his daddy's friends, and he utterly failed at each and every one. His personal psychotic break climaxed in his idea that "God" told him to run for the office of president-- another job given on a silver platter by his daddy.
He found new ways to lie, and people whom he could hire to lie for him, as president. He lied the U.S. into a war that cost about three trillion dollars, a war that murdered four thousand American girls and boys, and nearly a million innocent Middle Eastern men, children, and women. The movie did not, could not, take the time to explore all the massive errors and terrible mistakes made by an administration ruled entirely by greed. The movie does not go into the sad history of the worst president in the history of the world. It just gets a "toe in the
water" as he begins the Iraq war.
This movie is semi-serious, and gives George a chance; it records even one of his nightmares, which must have been abundant. And it exposes how he feels like a "failure" to his father, in sibling rivalry with his brothers. George is human, but this very fact can dilute the true evil, and also can obscure the real ignorance, lack of education, and absence of sophistication that marks this man, consumed with personal greed, and obsessed with the success of the wealthy, including his beloved corporations. The movie does the best it can in its short duration, taking a small "slice" of the complex man's history. It does not have time (who does?) more fully to explore his evil, his incompetence, or his ignorance.
The next president will require at least decades even to begin to undo all the damage done by George. It will take our country centuries completely to recover, especially on an international scale. So, let's make sure that we elect a president who is committed to ending the stupidity, ineptitude, and just plain dumbness that has stained our country for the past eight years.
*******

A Very Good Read

Thanks to Barbara Baty.

The Choice
October 13, 2008
The New Yorker

Never in living memory has an election been more critical than the one fast approaching—that’s the quadrennial cliché, as expected as the balloons and the bombast. And yet when has it ever felt so urgently true? When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a Presidency has—at the levels of competence, vision, and integrity—undermined the country and its ideals?

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign. The only speaker at the Convention in St. Paul who uttered more than a sentence or two in support of the President was his wife, Laura. Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.

The Republican disaster begins at home. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak. During the Bush Administration, the national debt, now approaching ten trillion dollars, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a half-trillion-dollar deficit, a precipitous fall from the seven-hundred-billion-dollar surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush Administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top one per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half. The unfairness will only increase if the painful, yet necessary, effort to rescue the credit markets ends up preventing the rescue of our health-care system, our environment, and our physical, educational, and industrial infrastructure.

At the same time, a hundred and fifty thousand American troops are in Iraq and thirty-three thousand are in Afghanistan. There is still disagreement about the wisdom of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his horrific regime, but there is no longer the slightest doubt that the Bush Administration manipulated, bullied, and lied the American public into this war and then mismanaged its prosecution in nearly every aspect. The direct costs, besides an expenditure of more than six hundred billion dollars, have included the loss of more than four thousand Americans, the wounding of thirty thousand, the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and the displacement of four and a half million men, women, and children. Only now, after American forces have been fighting for a year longer than they did in the Second World War, is there a glimmer of hope that the conflict in Iraq has entered a stage of fragile stability.

The indirect costs, both of the war in particular and of the Administration’s unilateralist approach to foreign policy in general, have also been immense. The torture of prisoners, authorized at the highest level, has been an ethical and a public-diplomacy catastrophe. At a moment when the global environment, the global economy, and global stability all demand a transition to new sources of energy, the United States has been a global retrograde, wasteful in its consumption and heedless in its policy. Strategically and morally, the Bush Administration has squandered the American capacity to counter the example and the swagger of its rivals. China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other illiberal states have concluded, each in its own way, that democratic principles and human rights need not be components of a stable, prosperous future. At recent meetings of the United Nations, emboldened despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran came to town sneering at our predicament and hailing the “end of the American era.”

The election of 2008 is the first in more than half a century in which no incumbent President or Vice-President is on the ballot. There is, however, an incumbent party, and that party has been lucky enough to find itself, apparently against the wishes of its “base,” with a nominee who evidently disliked George W. Bush before it became fashionable to do so. In South Carolina in 2000, Bush crushed John McCain with a sub-rosa primary campaign of such viciousness that McCain lashed out memorably against Bush’s Christian-right allies. So profound was McCain’s anger that in 2004 he flirted with the possibility of joining the Democratic ticket under John Kerry. Bush, who took office as a “compassionate conservative,” governed immediately as a rightist ideologue. During that first term, McCain bolstered his reputation, sometimes deserved, as a “maverick” willing to work with Democrats on such issues as normalizing relations with Vietnam, campaign-finance reform, and immigration reform. He co-sponsored, with John Edwards and Edward Kennedy, a patients’ bill of rights. In 2001 and 2003, he voted against the Bush tax cuts. With John Kerry, he co-sponsored a bill raising auto-fuel efficiency standards and, with Joseph Lieberman, a cap-and-trade regime on carbon emissions. He was one of a minority of Republicans opposed to unlimited drilling for oil and gas off America’s shores.

Since the 2004 election, however, McCain has moved remorselessly rightward in his quest for the Republican nomination. He paid obeisance to Jerry Falwell and preachers of his ilk. He abandoned immigration reform, eventually coming out against his own bill. Most shocking, McCain, who had repeatedly denounced torture under all circumstances, voted in February against a ban on the very techniques of “enhanced interrogation” that he himself once endured in Vietnam—as long as the torturers were civilians employed by the C.I.A.

On almost every issue, McCain and the Democratic Party’s nominee, Barack Obama, speak the generalized language of “reform,” but only Obama has provided a convincing, rational, and fully developed vision. McCain has abandoned his opposition to the Bush-era tax cuts and has taken up the demagogic call—in the midst of recession and Wall Street calamity, with looming crises in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—for more tax cuts. Bush’s expire in 2011. If McCain, as he has proposed, cuts taxes for corporations and estates, the benefits once more would go disproportionately to the wealthy.

In Washington, the craze for pure market triumphalism is over. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson arrived in town (via Goldman Sachs) a Republican, but it seems that he will leave a Democrat. In other words, he has come to see that the abuses that led to the current financial crisis––not least, excessive speculation on borrowed capital––can be fixed only with government regulation and oversight. McCain, who has never evinced much interest in, or knowledge of, economic questions, has had little of substance to say about the crisis. His most notable gesture of concern—a melodramatic call last month to suspend his campaign and postpone the first Presidential debate until the government bailout plan was ready—soon revealed itself as an empty diversionary tactic.

By contrast, Obama has made a serious study of the mechanics and the history of this economic disaster and of the possibilities of stimulating a recovery. Last March, in New York, in a speech notable for its depth, balance, and foresight, he said, “A complete disdain for pay-as-you-go budgeting, coupled with a generally scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement, allowed far too many to put short-term gain ahead of long-term consequences.” Obama is committed to reforms that value not only the restoration of stability but also the protection of the vast majority of the population, which did not partake of the fruits of the binge years. He has called for greater and more programmatic regulation of the financial system; the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, which would help reverse the decay of our roads, bridges, and mass-transit systems, and create millions of jobs; and a major investment in the green-energy sector.

On energy and global warming, Obama offers a set of forceful proposals. He supports a cap-and-trade program to reduce America’s carbon emissions by eighty per cent by 2050—an enormously ambitious goal, but one that many climate scientists say must be met if atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be kept below disastrous levels. Large emitters, like utilities, would acquire carbon allowances, and those which emit less carbon dioxide than their allotment could sell the resulting credits to those which emit more; over time, the available allowances would decline. Significantly, Obama wants to auction off the allowances; this would provide fifteen billion dollars a year for developing alternative-energy sources and creating job-training programs in green technologies. He also wants to raise federal fuel-economy standards and to require that ten per cent of America’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2012. Taken together, his proposals represent the most coherent and far-sighted strategy ever offered by a Presidential candidate for reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.

There was once reason to hope that McCain and Obama would have a sensible debate about energy and climate policy. McCain was one of the first Republicans in the Senate to support federal limits on carbon dioxide, and he has touted his own support for a less ambitious cap-and-trade program as evidence of his independence from the White House. But, as polls showed Americans growing jittery about gasoline prices, McCain apparently found it expedient in this area, too, to shift course. He took a dubious idea—lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling—and placed it at the very center of his campaign. Opening up America’s coastal waters to drilling would have no impact on gasoline prices in the short term, and, even over the long term, the effect, according to a recent analysis by the Department of Energy, would be “insignificant.” Such inconvenient facts, however, are waved away by a campaign that finally found its voice with the slogan “Drill, baby, drill!”

The contrast between the candidates is even sharper with respect to the third branch of government. A tense equipoise currently prevails among the Justices of the Supreme Court, where four hard-core conservatives face off against four moderate liberals. Anthony M. Kennedy is the swing vote, determining the outcome of case after case.

McCain cites Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, two reliable conservatives, as models for his own prospective appointments. If he means what he says, and if he replaces even one moderate on the current Supreme Court, then Roe v. Wade will be reversed, and states will again be allowed to impose absolute bans on abortion. McCain’s views have hardened on this issue. In 1999, he said he opposed overturning Roe; by 2006, he was saying that its demise “wouldn’t bother me any”; by 2008, he no longer supported adding rape and incest as exceptions to his party’s platform opposing abortion.

But scrapping Roe—which, after all, would leave states as free to permit abortion as to criminalize it—would be just the beginning. Given the ideological agenda that the existing conservative bloc has pursued, it’s safe to predict that affirmative action of all kinds would likely be outlawed by a McCain Court. Efforts to expand executive power, which, in recent years, certain Justices have nobly tried to resist, would likely increase. Barriers between church and state would fall; executions would soar; legal checks on corporate power would wither—all with just one new conservative nominee on the Court. And the next President is likely to make three appointments.

Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, voted against confirming not only Roberts and Alito but also several unqualified lower-court nominees. As an Illinois state senator, he won the support of prosecutors and police organizations for new protections against convicting the innocent in capital cases. While McCain voted to continue to deny habeas-corpus rights to detainees, perpetuating the Bush Administration’s regime of state-sponsored extra-legal detention, Obama took the opposite side, pushing to restore the right of all U.S.-held prisoners to a hearing. The judicial future would be safe in his care.

In the shorthand of political commentary, the Iraq war seems to leave McCain and Obama roughly even. Opposing it before the invasion, Obama had the prescience to warn of a costly and indefinite occupation and rising anti-American radicalism around the world; supporting it, McCain foresaw none of this. More recently, in early 2007 McCain risked his Presidential prospects on the proposition that five additional combat brigades could salvage a war that by then appeared hopeless. Obama, along with most of the country, had decided that it was time to cut American losses. Neither candidate’s calculations on Iraq have been as cheaply political as McCain’s repeated assertion that Obama values his career over his country; both men based their positions, right or wrong, on judgment and principle.

President Bush’s successor will inherit two wars and the realities of limited resources, flagging popular will, and the dwindling possibilities of what can be achieved by American power. McCain’s views on these subjects range from the simplistic to the unknown. In Iraq, he seeks “victory”—a word that General David Petraeus refuses to use, and one that fundamentally misrepresents the messy, open-ended nature of the conflict. As for Afghanistan, on the rare occasions when McCain mentions it he implies that the surge can be transferred directly from Iraq, which suggests that his grasp of counterinsurgency is not as firm as he insisted it was during the first Presidential debate. McCain always displays more faith in force than interest in its strategic consequences. Unlike Obama, McCain has no political strategy for either war, only the dubious hope that greater security will allow things to work out. Obama has long warned of deterioration along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and has a considered grasp of its vital importance. His strategy for both Afghanistan and Iraq shows an understanding of the role that internal politics, economics, corruption, and regional diplomacy play in wars where there is no battlefield victory.

Unimaginably painful personal experience taught McCain that war is above all a test of honor: maintain the will to fight on, be prepared to risk everything, and you will prevail. Asked during the first debate to outline “the lessons of Iraq,” McCain said, “I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear: that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict.” A soldier’s answer––but a statesman must have a broader view of war and peace. The years ahead will demand not only determination but also diplomacy, flexibility, patience, judiciousness, and intellectual engagement. These are no more McCain’s strong suit than the current President’s. Obama, for his part, seems to know that more will be required than willpower and force to extract some advantage from the wreckage of the Bush years.

Obama is also better suited for the task of renewing the bedrock foundations of American influence. An American restoration in foreign affairs will require a commitment not only to international coöperation but also to international institutions that can address global warming, the dislocations of what will likely be a deepening global economic crisis, disease epidemics, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and other, more traditional security challenges. Many of the Cold War-era vehicles for engagement and negotiation—the United Nations, the World Bank, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—are moribund, tattered, or outdated. Obama has the generational outlook that will be required to revive or reinvent these compacts. He would be the first postwar American President unencumbered by the legacies of either Munich or Vietnam.

The next President must also restore American moral credibility. Closing Guantánamo, banning all torture, and ending the Iraq war as responsibly as possible will provide a start, but only that. The modern Presidency is as much a vehicle for communication as for decision-making, and the relevant audiences are global. Obama has inspired many Americans in part because he holds up a mirror to their own idealism. His election would do no less—and likely more—overseas.

What most distinguishes the candidates, however, is character—and here, contrary to conventional wisdom, Obama is clearly the stronger of the two. Not long ago, Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said, “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” The view that this election is about personalities leaves out policy, complexity, and accountability. Even so, there’s some truth in what Davis said––but it hardly points to the conclusion that he intended.

Echoing Obama, McCain has made “change” one of his campaign mantras. But the change he has actually provided has been in himself, and it is not just a matter of altering his positions. A willingness to pander and even lie has come to define his Presidential campaign and its televised advertisements. A contemptuous duplicity, a meanness, has entered his talk on the stump—so much so that it seems obvious that, in the drive for victory, he is willing to replicate some of the same underhanded methods that defeated him eight years ago in South Carolina.

Perhaps nothing revealed McCain’s cynicism more than his choice of Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who had been governor of that state for twenty-one months, as the Republican nominee for Vice-President. In the interviews she has given since her nomination, she has had difficulty uttering coherent unscripted responses about the most basic issues of the day. We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy. This is funny as a Tina Fey routine on “Saturday Night Live,” but as a vision of the political future it’s deeply unsettling. Palin has no business being the backup to a President of any age, much less to one who is seventy-two and in imperfect health. In choosing her, McCain committed an act of breathtaking heedlessness and irresponsibility. Obama’s choice, Joe Biden, is not without imperfections. His tongue sometimes runs in advance of his mind, providing his own fodder for late-night comedians, but there is no comparison with Palin. His deep experience in foreign affairs, the judiciary, and social policy makes him an assuring and complementary partner for Obama.

The longer the campaign goes on, the more the issues of personality and character have reflected badly on McCain. Unless appearances are very deceiving, he is impulsive, impatient, self-dramatizing, erratic, and a compulsive risk-taker. These qualities may have contributed to his usefulness as a “maverick” senator. But in a President they would be a menace.

By contrast, Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. It is part of what allowed him to overcome a Democratic opponent who entered the race with tremendous advantages. It is what helped him forge a political career relying both on the liberals of Hyde Park and on the political regulars of downtown Chicago. His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.

Nowadays, almost every politician who thinks about running for President arranges to become an author. Obama’s books are different: he wrote them. “The Audacity of Hope” (2006) is a set of policy disquisitions loosely structured around an account of his freshman year in the United States Senate. Though a campaign manifesto of sorts, it is superior to that genre’s usual blowsy pastiche of ghostwritten speeches. But it is Obama’s first book, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” (1995), that offers an unprecedented glimpse into the mind and heart of a potential President. Obama began writing it in his early thirties, before he was a candidate for anything. Not since Theodore Roosevelt has an American politician this close to the pinnacle of power produced such a sustained, highly personal work of literary merit before being definitively swept up by the tides of political ambition.

A Presidential election is not the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize: we elect a politician and, we hope, a statesman, not an author. But Obama’s first book is valuable in the way that it reveals his fundamental attitudes of mind and spirit. “Dreams from My Father” is an illuminating memoir not only in the substance of Obama’s own peculiarly American story but also in the qualities he brings to the telling: a formidable intelligence, emotional empathy, self-reflection, balance, and a remarkable ability to see life and the world through the eyes of people very different from himself. In common with nearly all other senators and governors of his generation, Obama does not count military service as part of his biography. But his life has been full of tests—personal, spiritual, racial, political—that bear on his preparation for great responsibility.

It is perfectly legitimate to call attention, as McCain has done, to Obama’s lack of conventional national and international policymaking experience. We, too, wish he had more of it. But office-holding is not the only kind of experience relevant to the task of leading a wildly variegated nation. Obama’s immersion in diverse human environments (Hawaii’s racial rainbow, Chicago’s racial cauldron, countercultural New York, middle-class Kansas, predominantly Muslim Indonesia), his years of organizing among the poor, his taste of corporate law and his grounding in public-interest and constitutional law—these, too, are experiences. And his books show that he has wrung from them every drop of insight and breadth of perspective they contained.

The exhaustingly, sometimes infuriatingly long campaign of 2008 (and 2007) has had at least one virtue: it has demonstrated that Obama’s intelligence and steady temperament are not just figments of the writer’s craft. He has made mistakes, to be sure. (His failure to accept McCain’s imaginative proposal for a series of unmediated joint appearances was among them.) But, on the whole, his campaign has been marked by patience, planning, discipline, organization, technological proficiency, and strategic astuteness. Obama has often looked two or three moves ahead, relatively impervious to the permanent hysteria of the hourly news cycle and the cable-news shouters. And when crisis has struck, as it did when the divisive antics of his ex-pastor threatened to bring down his campaign, he has proved equal to the moment, rescuing himself with a speech that not only drew the poison but also demonstrated a profound respect for the electorate. Although his opponents have tried to attack him as a man of “mere” words, Obama has returned eloquence to its essential place in American politics. The choice between experience and eloquence is a false one––something that Lincoln, out of office after a single term in Congress, proved in his own campaign of political and national renewal. Obama’s “mere” speeches on everything from the economy and foreign affairs to race have been at the center of his campaign and its success; if he wins, his eloquence will be central to his ability to govern.

We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country’s image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks. At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.

—The Editors

THE INVASION OF GEORGIA: A STUDY IN HYPOCRISY

THE INVASION OF GEORGIA: A STUDY IN HYPOCRISY
By a passionate observer
***

It is transparent hypocrisy for George Bush, in his impotent whining about "Russian bullying," blusteringly and incoherently to condemn the invasion of a sovereign third-world country such as Georgia when he is the author of a precisely similar invasion/occupation of another third-world sovereign nation, Iraq. His pretend shock and horror are vacuous and unconvincing. The Bush demand to "leave immediately" bears no resemblance to his own foreign policy.

So, when he spits and hisses his protests, he is only the object of pretension, satire, and caricature. For he states, in the most disturbing and blustering panic, how this invasion/occupation of Georgia is going permanently to ruin international relations. But even Bush's "selective sight" cannot ignore the parody of his protests, in light of his own rigidity and stubbornness in refusing to budge re the invasion/occupation of Iraq. If Bush is ever to achieve credibility-- and it does not look as if he will, anytime soon-- he must speak from a position in which he is not himself guilty of the charges he hurls against others. On this issue, and many others, he speaks with zero credibility.

*******

The Sigh Heard 'Round the World

*****

On 060308, yesterday, the world's largest sigh of sheer relief was heard around the world. For after that historical day, it became a real possibility that we, as Americans, would and could replace the worst president in history! George w. bush, also known as "dubya," or, "the shrub," has been the most dishonest, corrupt, and incompetent of any public official in our history. He made it impossible for an aware person to respect the office of the president, for he proved that it could be bought with money, and then, prostituted to corporate management. In doing this, he ignored, and even reversed, hard-won laws determined to protect our planet, Mother Earth, and showed that he was willing to end the world as we know it for a fistful of dollars in his personal bank-account.
Now, it appears that it will at least be possible to replace this mindless, heartless greedmonger and warmonger with a simpler man. This man has perhaps not been "tested" yet by the Office, but, at present, is a relieving alternative to the crooks and criminals who have "bought" the U.S. political system for years. Perhaps, someday, the "people" will once again have a "voice."
For the common person-- the average, middle-class worker-- has been ignored if not abused for years, while corporations and the filthy rich have put the president in their "back pockets." Bush has been but the puppet of rich oil-men and other wealthy supporters. Thus, he has been useless-- and, worse, harmful-- as a legislator. From the start, he and his Republican Party have been studies in dishonesty, secret procedures, and operations for money. (As president, bush has stowed away millions.)
Dare we hope that a new president might speak, and work, for the common people-- for you and me? This is the high ideal of this country, although it has been stomped into the mud, and hidden under filth, for years. Is the sunlight of this pleasant vision starting to shine again?
Are we starting to wipe away the thick filth of greed?
We do hope so. Let us have at least the courage to dream again; for without its dream, a people is nothing.
*****

Bush and the Environment

Thanks to Chris Finer.

Last Friday, Martin McGuiness, special assistant to the president for legislative affairs proclaimed "This administration has done more for the environment and addressing energy security and climate change than any other in history."

While the claim that George Bush has done more to address climate change than any administration seems ridiculous, we should always be willing to welcome converts to our movement. If this administration has final come around on the climate crisis, then now is the time for them to take action.

Let's join together and demand the Bush Administration commit to an international treaty that would cut CO2 by 90%.

Send George Bush a message today by visiting:
http://algore.com/talkingpoints

"I'm not a genius. I'm just passionately curious."........Einstein