The email below has been doing the rounds in American cyberspace, and recently arrived in openUSA's inbox. It makes a stark point about the double standards in media coverage of the election.
I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....
* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.
* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
Sarah Palin may be the new darling of the media, but that attention comes with a price. At some point glowing hagiography dims into scrutiny. Yesterday, the Republican vice-presidential candidate showed why the initial "Palin bump" in support for McCain is not as substantial as it seems. In her first public interview since her nomination, Palin was found out by a surprisingly serious and probing Charles Gibson (this was the same interviewer who brought shame on the fourth estate by making Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton talk about flag lapel pins). She was floundering in her answers, her nervousness thinly veiled by a tightly set jaw and the excessive repetition of the interviewer's name. Amongst a number of cringe-worthy moments, her ignorance of the content of the Bush doctrine (video below) and subsequent evasiveness stand out. Like a frustrated schoolteacher, Gibson cut her short, saying that he was "lost in a blizzard" of Palin's words.
Obama's pig-and-lipstick remarks earlier this week sparked a firestorm of righteous indignation from the McCain camp. Yet even elements of the frenetic conservative blogosphere admit the ridiculousness of the criticism. The Democrat has coolly dismissed the attacks (video below), but will it be enough to stave off the headline hunters who have locked on to Obama's "macaca moment"?
Barack Obama's more traditionally "liberal" acceptance speech in Denver confirmed to many commentators, like David Brooks, that the Democrat's campaign is now becoming increasingly conventional, replacing high-mindedness with political shrewdness. This recent ad seems to support the notion of a "normalising" Obama campaign, as it takes the offensive against John McCain and Sarah Palin.
The Nation's Victor Navasky pens an excellent piece on the missteps of Obama's campaign since his defeating Hillary Clinton. Obama risks aping the failures of John Kerry if he frets too much about the "illusory middle".
His mistake is the same one that the last two Democratic candidates for
President--Gore and Kerry--made. The assumption (shared by too many
campaign consultants) that the way to woo those in the center is to move
towards the center. Arianna Huffington, I believe, has a point when she
advises, "Instead of targeting the swing voters he should target the
unlikely voters." But I would argue there's nothing wrong with
targeting the swing voters. What's wrong is to pander to them on the
assumption that the way to win them over is to move towards the center.
The reason they are undecided is precisely because they are not
Democrats or Republicans, and they don't care about left vs. right.
They care about finding someone they can connect with, a candidate they
can trust. And as soon as they see a candidate who appears to be
listening to his consultants and pollsters rather than being true to
himself, they see a candidate who has betrayed what they care about
most: authenticity.
During the pageantry of the Convention, will Obama continue to make that pitch to the "centre"? Or from the bosom of the Democratic Party, will Obama speak from a position of strength and on his own terms?
Ahead of the Democratic convention, the Obama camp has plenty of material with which to strengthen its own position on Iraq and with which to set about attacking McCain. First, the Bush administration is close to agreeing a deal with the al-Maliki government that will set in place a phased withdrawal of most US troops from Iraq by 2011. The Republican candidate will not be able to lampoon the Democrat on Iraq when Obama's plan for the country more closely resembles that of the White House. Furthermore, McCain's vociferous support for the "surge" - about which he has routinely bludgeoned Obama - may be tempered by a dark turn of events in Iraq. Al-Maliki has launched a campaign against the leaders of the Sunni "Awakening Councils" - the militant groups co-opted by the US last year to fight against fundamentalist radicals - threatening to broaden internecine rifts in Iraq. As some analysts warned in 2007, the empowering of Sunni tribal factions would invariably threaten the central government. Obama's advisers will be parsing the Iraq news ticker and finding ample cause to whittle away at the robust facade of McCain's foreign policy.
This week has seen the launch of Republicans for Obama, an initiative undertaken by former Republican politicians and senior advisers. Reaffirming the Obama campaign's appeal to bipartisanship and "unity", the group's website insists that
We need a leader who can lay the foundations of another American Century—someone who can get past our partisan and ideological divisions, as we strengthen our standing in the world and tackle the challenges we face at home. We need a leader who understands our differences, but who also knows the importance of finding common ground. While we continue to debate and address many issues on which we all have strong opinions—abortion, gay rights, the relationship between church and state, to name a few—we need a leader who can command the support needed to break our government’s paralysis and meet the growing challenges we face as a nation.
One of the feathers in Obama's cap is the sense of his novelty and strength as a politician whose appeal transcends traditional political boundaries. The publicity surrounding Republicans for Obama reinforces this impression. A sceptic's take is in the FT by Christopher Caldwell (senior editor at the neoconservative Weekly Standard).
In a whimsical column comparing Obama to Mr Darcy, Maureen Dowd records one Texan voter's nervous appraisal of Obama's physique.
“He needs to put some meat on his bones,” said Diana Koenig, a
42-year-old Texas housewife. Another Clinton voter sniffed on a Yahoo
message board: “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.”
openUSA remembers its Shakespeare and Julius Caesar's wariness of his scrawny would-be assassin Cassius.
Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Over on OurKingdom, Ian Parsley corrects Barack Obama's version of Northern Irish history. Standing near the ghost of the Berlin Wall last week, the US presidential candidate claimed that walls had “come down in Belfast, where Protestants and Catholics found a way to live together.” "Secret sectarianism," according to Parsley, remains a potent force in Irish life and a dark fact that shouldn't be overlooked, even when Northern Ireland is reduced to the quaintness of an example.
Some Republicans seem to think so. He may not have the muscle to turn Republican bastions against John McCain in the presidential election, but some GOP representatives fear that Obama's mobilisation of black voters may have lasting consequences for congressional races throughout the region.
New York Times columnist Gail Collins pens a colourful - albeit whimsical - piece on the history of public interest in politics in the United States. She contrasts the rowdy, crowded and often bloody character of US politics a century ago to its comparatively tranquil and staid modern incarnation. While unconvincingly suggesting that video games and women are responsible for this transformation, she briefly points in a more compelling direction:
People are also less enthusiastic about politics because they no longer
think of their political affiliation as being central to their
identity. Once reformers arrived with the 20th century, Americans were
taught to prove they were good citizens by studying the party
platforms, not by getting in a fistfight at a bar. Since nobody
actually did study the party platforms, folks simply slunk home and waited for the invention of radio and professional sports teams.
If we accept Collins' description as largely true for the US, how does the American example stack up against the world? Take, for example, the nature of student politics, so often the cauldron in which political identities are forged (or not forged). Twinned with violence, bristling senses of political affiliation remain common around the world. One need only look so far as an Indian college campus, for instance, to feel the uncomfortable heat of party political identity. Elsewhere, fierce party identities may induce less violence but are no less prevalent. In British student unions, aspiring student politicians are affiliated with political parties. In their American equivalents, on the other hand, such naked and presumptuous politicking would be totally out of place. Why does party identity persist in many parts of the world and not in the US?
Collins doesn't ask what it means in a democracy for party identity to be out of vogue. But even without the bluster of party tribalism, American politics cannot substitute "modern" indifference for cool, reasoned engagement.
While Obama claims to seek the "transcending of race" in the United States, his campaign for the White House is having quite opposite effects elsewhere in the world. According to the New York Times, Obama's success is spurring African youth in France - where institutionalised laïcité suppresses the recognition of religious and racial identities - to return to Négritude,the black intellectual movement of the 1920s and 30s that was pioneered by the late Franco-Caribbean writer and politician Aimé Césaire.
The US Constitution has come under the cross-hairs of a group that wants to fundamentally change the way America elects its presidents. The National Popular Vote campaign seeks to do away with the elaborate electoral college system by the 2012 presidential election, replacing the "vote of states" with a species of more direct popular election. Calls for the sweeping change - which would have indelible effects on the way campaigns are strategised and run - have gained momentum since 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost out in the electoral college. Lawmakers would be forced to amend the Constitution in order to put such a system in effect, a process that requires the consent of three-quarters of states and a two-thirds majority in Congress.
Proponents of the popular vote argue that presidential candidates ignore so-called "safe states" - like California and New York - in favour of the more contested "swing states" - Ohio, Florida, etc. Its critics fear that a turn to the popular vote would push the already isolated rural communities of the country further off the political map. At the base of the debate is an underlying tension between the city and the hinterland, the coast and the heartland. Would a popular vote - democratic election in its simplest, purest form - strand small-town America in the wilderness?
Not content with setting up staff in every single state, the Obama campaign is branching out on the spiritual map. The Christian Broadcast Network previews the Joshua Generation, an initiative set to be rolled out by the campaign in the next few weeks. It will appeal to young "faith voters", amongst whom Obama is deemed to be increasingly popular. Can the great liberal hope win the hearts and minds of evangelicals normally left to Republicans?
Obama's general election strategy seeks to aggressively court voters in traditionally Republican states. On the one hand, as the New York Times suggests, Obama may not be as committed to a "new politics" as he claims to be, and is readying himself to "play dirty". On the other, Obama is relying on broad-based grassroots and internet organisation to build support. As one seasoned campaigner told openUSA, Obama's many grassroots initiatives, including the Obama Organising Fellows, are unprecedented in presidential campaigns.
Obama deliberately refused to resort to many traditional tactics in his contest with Hillary Clinton, never attacking her personally. In this way, he appeared to rise above the "petty politics" of the past and embody a newer, ennobled mode of political action. Does the groundswell of popular support for Obama echo the newness of his personal politics? Is it possible to turn a bid for the Oval Office into a social movement? And if it is a social movement, what is it about beyond Obama?
The influential pollster John Zogby couches his analysis of Hillary Clinton's defeat in terms of generation. "Boomerism" has been swept off the political landscape by an electorate tired of its leaders' "self-centredness and permanent adolescence" - the supposed "hallmarks" of the Baby Boomers. According to Zogby, both the Clintons and George W Bush exhibit the traits of their generation:
They (we, because I was born in 1948) are consumed with being the centre of attention, the bride and groom at every wedding, so much so, that the ends don't simply justify the means, they are one and the same. Getting elected is the game, the final goal, the definition of self-worth. In his recent book, former White House spokesman Scott McClellan decried the mentality of “the permanent campaign” that he said permeated the White House of George W Bush (the other Boomer president), which in some respects mirrors the Clinton behavior.
Politics, or their illusion, are an end in and of themselves for Bush and the Clintons. Both Obama and McCain represent, in separate ways, a less self-centred politics.
In the final analysis, Hillary Clinton is smart, charming – and the wrong person for the times. Voters have moved beyond Boomerism. Now, Americans will choose between an older version of duty, honor, glory, and a return to the American Century vs. a new vision of global pluralism, diversity, change, and youthful vigor.
Despite losing emphatically in South Dakota last night, Barack Obama secured enough delegates to declare himself the Democratic nominee. He claimed victory before an audience of 20,000 in St. Paul, Minnesota, with a further 15,000 gathered outside the arena. The US media was quick to note the seismic implications of the moment. The New York Times gushed, "Senator Barack Obama claimed the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday evening, prevailing through an epic battle with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in a primary campaign that inspired millions of voters from every corner of America to demand change in Washington," while Politico was equally sanguine: "Sen. Barack Obama Tuesday night swept aside two centuries of American history and dethroned the dynasty that has dominated national politics for a generation."
Hillary Clinton has yet to concede, though it is likely that she will make her plans clear later today.
It's a fundamentally bold, hopeful brand of politics. And I think it's no coincidence that that theme's been at the center of his campaign. Relative to Clinton, you see two people with similar policy agendas. But Clinton comes from a school of politics that says liberalism can't really win on the questions of war and peace, identity and authenticity, crime and punishment. It says that we live in a fundamentally conservative nation, and that the savvy progressive politician kind of burrows in and tries to make the best of a bad situation. It's an attitude very much borne of the brutally difficult experience of organizing for McGovern in Texas and running for governor in Arkansas at the height of Reaganism. Relative to McCain, Obama thinks it's possible to accomplish things in the world. He thinks the United States faces a lot of serious international challenges, but doesn't see them as primarily driven by menacing and implacable foes. Obama thinks that a combination of visionary leadership and shrewd bargaining can greatly improve our ability to tackle key priorities without any great expenditure of our resources.
From an outsider's perspective, of course, this is one of the most refreshing aspects of Obama's persona, his recognition - or at least the perceived recognition - that the 21st century global political order places tremendous limits on US action and even greater imperatives on US diplomacy.
But how, on the one hand, can Obama retreat to self-defeating populism when he campaigns in the rust belts and then, on the other hand, underline the complexities facing American foreign policy without seeming disingenuous?
In Britain's Sunday papers, two of Washington's leading journalists pen very different obituaries for the Clintons. Michael Crowley, an editor at The New Republic and frequent blogger, fills the Observer with a long, intimate portrait of Bill and Hillary's rise and fall. The emphasis is on their resilience, and though Crowley says that the nomination may have slipped out of Hillary's hands, he concedes that the "impossible" will never be far beyond the reach of the Clintons.
In stark contrast, Andrew Sullivan sweeps the Clintons aside in his Sunday Times column. The Atlantic editor and blogger can't wait to move on to the upcoming clash between Barack Obama and John McCain:
As the Clintons fade ungraciously away, the emergence of these two from the dust of an astonishingly vivid and endless primary campaign comes to me, at least, as a massive relief. These two men are easily the best each party has to offer, the two most capable of talking to the other side: serious, decent, principled figures with, of course, their fair share of political shading.
Which is to say, "out with the old and in with the new." Hillary Clinton's downfall lies not her first name - her gender - but her last, laden with history - alternately triumphant and thorny perhaps, but history nonetheless. Her critics suggest she is not as equipped to remake the US in the 21st century as Obama is. The skulking tactics of much of her campaign reaffirm the impression that she is a politician as familiar with the mud as with the sun. Efforts to tar Obama by association (to Wright, Ayers, etc) will probably prove futile. Most Democrats want to look forward to a less blemished America of Obama rather than remember the America, and the politics, of the Clintons.
The ACLU blog has reproduced several extensively redacted documents it received from the CIA as part of its ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. A particularly illuminating one is pasted below:
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