politics

Last week, Carol Thatcher unwittingly illustrated how an archaic word from a different generation retains much of its racially-charged potency to this day - and rightly drew condemnation for it. This week, it was the turn of imagery to dredge up the unseemly spectre of the past.

A storm of publicity has gathered around the offices of the New York Post, after a cartoon published in Wednesday's edition of the newspaper - depicting the author of the recently-approved economic stimulus as a dead, crazed chimpanzee - was accused of being a not so subtle exercise in jingoism by both commentators in the media and civil rights activists.

Speaking to the media, Reverend Al Sharpton declared that "the cartoon in today's New York Post is troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys."

"One has to question whether the cartoonist is making a less than casual reference to this when in the cartoon they have police saying after shooting a chimpanzee that ‘Now they will have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill,'" he added.

A press release was quickly issued by the newspaper, defending its cartoon as "a clear parody of a current news event" - the shooting dead by police of a chimpanzee in Connecticut on Monday after the creature mauled its owner's friend - and denouncing Rev. Sharpton for being "nothing more than a publicity opportunist."

However, with the furore over the cartoon refusing to abate, and a group of protestors converging on the newspaper's headquarters, the Post softened its stance in a Friday editorial, saying that "to those who were offended by the image, we apologise."

Whether simply a poorly executed sketch that was misconstrued - as the Guardian's USA blog rightly points out, the author of the stimulus package referenced in the cartoon would be the Democratic congressional leadership, not President Obama himself - or something more sinister, the controversy surrounding Sean Delonas's work highlights an interesting dilemma: the challenge now facing the professional satirists whose job it is to subvert the image of the first African-American president of the United States.

Distorting facial features as a means of highlighting the excesses and frailties of our public figures has been a staple of political satirists' trade in the western press since Thomas Nast's pioneering work during the Tammany Hall era, providing some iconic and enduring images: from the defiance of Winston Churchill's bulldoggish scowl to, more recently, Tony Blair's unnervingly large and perfectly-formed dentures and the increasingly simian features of George W Bush.

However, as highlighted recently in an article on the Huffington Post, cartoonists in the American press now find themselves in unchartered waters, as they try to tread an increasingly thin line between caricature and stereotype when penning their work: draw President Obama's lips too large, or his ears too big, and an artist may inadvertently face the same charges of racism and xenophobia levelled at the New York Post this week.

As CNN columnist Roland S. Martin succinctly put it: "What could be seen as silly humour if President George W Bush were in the White House has to be seen through the lens of America's racist past."

Tell Rall, president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, summed up the difficulty this paradigmatic moment in American history has invariably posed for his organisations' members, noting that, "without a doubt, people are stepping more gingerly. People are tiptoeing their way through this."

The alarm bells should have sounded for many during the general election. Seeking to poke fun at the right-wing media's continued chatter over Obama's "true" religious beliefs and purported affiliation with terrorist organisations, The New Yorker magazine placed on its front cover a depiction of Obama and his wife standing in the Oval Office: replete with turban, salwar kameez, camouflage pants and an AK-47 rifle. The cartoon, while playing on the issue of religion rather than race, was quickly rounded upon by critics who believed it reinforced popular misconceptions about the Democratic candidate - including his own campaign, which denounced it as "tasteless and offensive."

With more than 45 months left in President Obama's tenure, it seems inevitable this issue will arise again; particularly given that interest groups such as the NAACP are set to become even more vigilant in their monitoring of the media's output after this week's incident.

Consequently, political cartoonists now face the unenviable challenge of marrying outrageous and provocative iconography with political correctness: a damning restriction of free speech, which may, ironically, provoke a self-fulfilling creative backlash that results in the production of more vitriolic and jingoistic works.

As decorated American cartoonist Jules Feiffer noted, "outside of basic intelligence, there is nothing more important to a good political cartoonist than ill will." American political cartoonists are starting to get tetchy.

It appears that MSNBC may have finally made their much-anticipated decision as to who will succeed the late Tim Russert as the next host of Meet the Press: the most watched Sunday talk show in America and the longest-running television show in broadcast history. In an article posted Monday, The Huffington Post is reporting with some confidence that David Gregory has seen off stiff competition to land the coveted anchor role when Tom Brokaw's run as interim host wraps up in January.

While widely respected within the media world, and viewed by many as a rising star, the prospect of Gregory being handed the keys to arguably NBC's most prized broadcasting possession has actually appeared increasingly slim in recent months. Unable to carve out a slot for himself amongst MSNBC's stellar cast of polemicists, Gregory found himself saddled with Race for the White House in March of this year: a bland panel show covering the American presidential race that clearly lacked a creative direction and suffered from its tendency to recycle talking heads chosen largely from MSNBC's own in-house pool of talent. The decision to renew the show into the New Year--under the revised and equally uninspiring moniker 1600 Pennsylvania Drive--only cast further doubt as to whether Gregory would ultimately be handed an opportunity by the network to truly shine.

However, the decision to choose Gregory over flashier and more high profile candidates such as Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow is a huge vote of confidence for the Los Angeles native--and one that is justly deserved. Having engaged in a number of fiery exchanges with members of the Bush administration--the President himself included--while a member of the White House press corps, Gregory has quickly carved out a reputation for possessing excellent journalistic instincts, a rare ability to clearly identify "the story behind the story," and a tenacious and unrelenting style of interrogative pursuit: assets that would all mesh perfectly with the format of the highly decorated Sunday talk show.

Moreover, by choosing Gregory over Matthews and company--the pioneers of MSNBC's newfound strategy of jettisoning objectivity for opinion, which has seen the network mimic Fox News's rating success at the cost of drawing strong criticism during the presidential campaign season--MSNBC executives would ensure that the reputation of one of the few last great bastion's of balanced objectivity within the American third estate remains intact. Anyone who questions whether such an edifying description is truly merited need only look at Colin Powell's decision to announce his endorsement of Barack Obama's candidacy on the show a few weeks ago--and the almost country-wide outpouring of grief following Russert's death in June of this year

The significance of the transition period for an incoming presidential administration cannot be overstated: not only does it offer the opportunity for the President-elect to identify the priorities within his or her legislative and policy agenda for the forthcoming term, but it also represents the first true test of managerial acumen at the highest governmental level; just ask Bill Clinton, who endured a number of early and largely self-inflicted blows to his executive authority as a result of tardy mobilization and ill-judged selections for his supporting cast (cf. Zoe Baird).

As such, the actions of the Obama transition team in the coming weeks should not be observered merely for the sake of palace intrigue. Instead, like a candidate's general election campaign, transition offers a fleeting glimpse as to how well prepared a future Obama administration is to meet the challenges ahead, while at the same time acting as a rough indicator as to what the President-elect's advisers believe are the key issues that need to be addressed internally between now and January 20th 2009. Over the brief but fervent period of time that has elapsed since Obama's electoral victory, I would suggest that the following has rung true:

If the Presidential race provides insufficient drama tonight, watch out for the results of the Senate races also taking place. There look likely to be some real nail-biters. Foremost among these is the match-up in Georgia between incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin. The race looks so close that it may end up in a December runoff, prolonging the election season yet further. Another close race is in Minnesota, with comedian Al Franken challenging Republican Senator Norm Coleman. This should have been a solid Democratic gain this year, but Franken has proved to be a less than ideal candidate, with the race essentially tied in the polls.

The outcome of these races should interest us all, even if we are not Minnesotans or Georgians. The workings of the Senate mean that a minority of over 40 can effectively stall any legislation, so the Democrats are desperately hoping they can reach 60 seats. It looks unlikely at the moment, but if this is truly a landslide for Obama, he may have sufficiently long coat-tails to get his party there. Amid all the excitement and triumphalism that would surround an Obama victory, we should not forget that he may have a difficult time bringing about the change he has promised.

Update: The Democrats have managed to win Elizabeth Dole's seat in North Carolina, a pleasing result for them...

The Huffington Post is carrying an intriguing story regarding a survey conducted exactly two years ago by polling company SurveyNow, gauging the balance of voter support across the country in the event of a hypothetical Barack Obama-John McCain presidential showdown in 2008.

Interviewing 600 voters in each state, SurveyUSA was able to extrapolate that an Obama candidacy would take Illinois, Hawaii and the District of Columbia-and that's it. This would have left him with a grand total of 28 total electoral votes, and culminated in a landslide victory for John McCain.

If Howard Wilson was right in his assertion that a week is a long time in politics, then this should prove ample evidence that two years is a very very long time indeed.

Given that the barriers of race and gender have been progressively eroded throughout the prolonged campaign season, many people have argued that this year's general election is something extraordinary by most measures.

For Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar, however, the 2008 election represents a potentially profound turning-point in American history.

As Richard Reeves reports, the New York Historical Society recently hosted a conference entitled "Do Elections Matter?" To kick-off the event, Amar put forth his thesis that the United States has experienced four "pivot point" elections in the 219 years since the founding fathers forged the country's constitution: 1800, 1860, 1932, and either 1968 or 1980.

In each case, Amar argued, socio-historical forces conspired to ensure that the outcome of each election shaped the direction of the country and the dynamics of its politics for generations to come.

For example, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson defeated Federalist John Adams in 1800, and over the next six decades the foundations for the Democratic Party in its current form began to emerge; Abraham Lincoln's victory in 1860 marked the beginning of Republican dominance well into the next century; FDR and the socialist New Deal Democrats set the agenda for much of the post-War era; finally, Nixon's presidency (or Reagan's, depending on your personal perspective) coincided with a golden era for conservatives, which now appears to be steadily waning.

A crucial catalyst to these elections all having the impact on the direction of American society  that they did is that they all occured against a backdrop of three important trends: economic decline, over-reactive wars, or a climate of paranoia based on perceived enemies abroad which subsequently results in the repression of civil liberties at home.

As Amar points out, these very issues resonate as strongly in this year's election as the four pivot point elections that preceded it--given the recent economic meltdown in Wall Street and looming recession on Main Street, the high cost and unpopularity of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars amongst the general public, and the repeal of a number of civil liberties via legislative measures, deemed necessary as part of President Bush's ‘War on Terror'. Consequently, in years to come we may expect to see the 2008 presidential election prove as influential an electoral event as these aforementioned elections.

While Amar's thesis is intriguing--if perhaps a little too quick to dismiss victories from figures such as Wilson, Carter and Clinton as arberrations simply because they polled below the 50 percent threshold--it also reflects a belief increasingly expressed by members of the media and academia alike that this year's election will bring a pronounced and quite profound sea-change in the social and political landscape in American culture.

More significantly however, in contrast to what Democrats and many members of the media may say, Amar's thesis suggests that this seismic historical shift will not nescessarily be on the condition of an Obama victory on November 4th.

A week ago, I wrote about the possibility of a Sarah Palin candidacy in 2012. Since then, Palin and those close to her appear to have brought this closer to reality by distancing themselves from John McCain. That makes sense if she wants to continue her ascent through the Republican ranks, because recriminations are sure to abound if McCain loses in six days' time. In fact, they have already begun. Joining a growing crowd of conservative commentators and intellectuals, moderate Republicans like Tom Ridge, the former Governor of Pennsylvania, have criticised the choice of Sarah Palin as running mate. (Ridge was widely believed to have been one of McCain's preferred VP picks before concerns about his base pushed him to choose someone more conservative.) Meanwhile, those further to the right have suggested that McCain's problem was that he was not conservative or aggressive enough.Palin has at times come close to voicing this latter critique, publicly urging McCain to "take the gloves off" and make Jeremiah Wright more of an issue. She would certainly not be the moderate wing's choice of candidate in 2012. I argued a week ago that moderates' criticism of her cannot fail to do some damage, but that non-moderates have a disproportionate influence in the primaries. Since then, discussion of her chances in 2012 has intensified, as evidenced by this summary in The Week.  I disagree with the dissenting voice quoted there, who suggests that people like me overestimate her political talents. Uneven though her performance has been this time around, she has shown an ability to draw huge crowds and intense support, and before her brand was tainted she enjoyed widespread popularity. Even more telling are her earlier achievements, which include unseating an incumbent governor in Alaska's Republican primaries, a truly impressive feat.This is not to deny that Palin would face significant challenges. Additional conservative critics may yet emerge once the campaign is over and the need for them to bite their tongues ceases. Assuming McCain loses, she is bound to attract some of the blame. Her popularity in Alaska shows signs of decreasing from its (very high) initial base, and events there may yet damage her. She will face formidable opponents, possibly including a better-funded Mike Huckabee and a re-energised Mitt Romney (whose former staffers have been involved in spreading anti-Palin spin to reporters, according to the American Spectator).  And, awkward though it is to say so, her looks - which constitute a significant part of her appeal for some people - will begin to fade as she goes from 44 to 48.

In a piece noting how Howard Dean's career has turned around since becoming Democratic National Committee Chairman, J. Patrick Coolican argues that the Democrats' bright electoral fortunes in the past couple years are a clear validation of the "fifty state strategy" Dean himself launched in 2005.

By allowing candidates to move closer to the centre over issues such as gun control and abortion rights in certain areas of the country, Coolican argues, the Democrats have become far more competitive across the United States; moreover, Coolican suggests that "Republicans better find themselves a Howard Dean, and fast" if they want to arrest the slow bleed from red to blue that is expected to continue at polling booths next week.

While Coolican is right to praise Dean's energetic stewardship of the Democratic Party in the past three years, and his protracted efforts to court conservative voters, I would be hesitant to suggest - as Coolican strongly implies - that we are witnessing or are on the cusp of some kind of "Democratic Revolution" similar to the one masterminded by Newt Gingrich and his GOP peers in 1994.

Unquestionably, the Democrats are likely to reap even greater electoral spoils in the House and Senate, and are tantalisingly close to securing an overall majority in both. However, is this surge of support fuelled by some enthralling ideological vision for the future outlined by the Democratic leadership, or a substantive legislative and policy agenda serving as a roadmap to traverse the difficult times ahead?

Video below. For my part, I find it quite powerful: Powell talks fluidly and with surprising strength of feeling for over five minutes, pausing to tell the story of a Muslim-American who died in the Iraq War to illustrate the inappropriateness of the 'smear' that Obama is a Muslim. Getting that message across may be the most valuable task Powell performed today, and it carries more weight coming from him than it would from the mouth of any Democrat.

The communist witch-hunt headed by Senator Joe McCarthy in the late 1940s and early 1950s represents one of the darkest periods in American history: an era of frenzied paranoia and suspicion, when distrust and intolerance ran rife throughout many spectrums of American society. That this atmosphere was carefully and deliberately cultivated by senior elected figures, hell-bent on purging what they perceived as the subversive invasion of Communist influences across the nation at the expense of destroying innocent people's lives and reputation in the process, has made it all the more regrettable and reprehensible.

It was this spectre of fear mongering that resonated in the words of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann during her interview (found here) with MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Friday's edition of Hardball. In the interview, Bachmann sought to draw a clear connection between liberal politics, the Left, and anti-Americanism while espousing the usual talking points regarding Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright that McCain surrogates and attack ads have regurgitated in recent days. As Bachmann argued:

"If we look at the collection of friends that Barack Obama has had in his life, it calls into question what Barack Obama's true beliefs and values and thoughts are. His attitudes, values, and beliefs with Jeremiah Wright on his view of the United States-is negative; Bill Ayers, his negative view of the United States. We have seen one friend after another call into question his judgment-but also, what it is that Barack Obama really believes?"

Unfortunately for Bachmann, she clearly didn't have the sufficient intellectual flexibility to weave this charge in a coherent argument, and given sufficient rope to hang herself by Matthews, she suggested that that the American media take a "great look" at the current Congress and investigate how many of its members are "anti-American" as opposed to "pro-American."

It should come as no surprise that Bachmann's performance has drawn sharp criticism from the Democats, and has prompted a campaign to censure her behaviour. The introduction of such a simplistic and politically charged dichotomy into the final weeks of this race, however innocous or ill-crafted, represents an alarming and totally inappropriate reversion of the McCarthyite politics of half a century ago. Whether Bachmann's charge was sanctioned by the McCain camp is moot: this particularly distatestful attack is a direct product of the negativity which has become a mainstay of GOP electoral strategy in recent election cycles, and is a strong indictment of what Peggy Noonan referred to this week as a trend within the Republican Party towards promoting a "new vulgarization" of American politics.

The impact the result of this year's general election will have on the activism of the United States Supreme Court in the years to come has been all too frequently overlooked and underappreciated by political commentators based outside of America.

However, with three Justices likely to vacate the bench in the near or immediate future, and with divisive issues such as abortion rights, affirmative action, and campaign finance reform all likely to come under the Supreme Court's scrutiny sooner rather than later, the next American president will find himself in a prime position to solidy or shift the current ideological composition of the Court will his choice of replacements.

As such, as Herman Schwartz from the Nation discusses in detail, the choice voters make at the ballot box in November will have repercussions for future generations of Americans in the realm of social values equally if not more profound as the economic legacy which will inevitably follow the current volatility in the financial markets.

I'm afraid this post is entirely lacking in substance, but since John McCain's occasionally strange facial expressions probably affected the debate's impact more than the canned substance on offer, I felt I had a duty to share this freeze-frame. Captions are welcome.

Those of us who are expecting some last minute drama to emerge from tonight's debate - the third act of what so far has been a relatively lacklustre piece of political theatre - will be sorely disappointed.

There will be no sharp quips or witty sound bytes that leave an indelible imprint on the memory of those who watch at home, or lofty ideas that seem to crystallize in front of our very eyes by virtue of their sheer simplicity and allure. The stilted and excruciatingly restrictive nature of America's presidential debates, combined with the tendency engrained in both candidates to frame and shape their arguments in a perambulatory and occasionally labyrinthine style of rhetoric, will take care of that.

Similarly, those hoping that McCain will somehow pull-out a final trump card, throw a political "Hail Mary" - or one of the plethora of other euphemisms typically employed by commentators in recent days to describe a man desperately searching for a way to postpone his slide into the political abyss - need to reconcile themselves with the cold, hard reality of this year's campaign.

Ten days ago I described the formidable lead Barack Obama had built up in national and state-by-state polling. Since then, things have only got better for him.

There are now twenty days remaining before America votes - but some Americans have started voting already. Several states allow early voting, and according to SurveyUSA exit polling Obama has already racked up substantial leads among those who have already voted  - an average of 23% in the key battlegrounds of Georgia, Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina and Ohio. Whatever happens in tonight's debate and the weeks that follow, those votes are in the bag. Obama could reveal himself to be a baby-murdering Muslim, and they could not be taken back.

Now, Nate Silver argues that this is not the great advantage pundits take it to be, since most of those early voters will be committed partisans anyway. However, he does take it to show a considerable enthusiasm gap between the Democratic and Republican bases. As I explained in my last post, the ability to turn out voters is key to this election. SurveyUSA may have revealed that the Obama campaign's ability to do that is just as impressive as I described.

Karl Rove's voter mobilisation organisation was widely credited with winning George W. Bush re-election four years ago. This time, the Democrats appear to have the edge in the "ground game". Barack Obama built up a formidable organisation over the primaries, and it was widely credited with winning him the nomination (had there been fewer caucuses, in which organisation is all important, Hillary Clinton would likely have been the Democrats' choice). Armed with a financial warchest far larger than McCain's, he has opened over 700 campaign offices in key battleground states and paid thousands of organisers to create a grassroots army which should make a significant difference come November.

Two recent articles describe the novel - and, by the sounds of it, very successful - approach being taken by the Obama campaign. In Sunday's Washington Post, Alec MacGillis quotes Steve Rosenthal of the AFL-CIO explaining how it can help mitigate the "race factor": "Having white validators, people working these neighborhoods who live in those neighborhoods and are of those neighborhoods, who are saying, 'Get out and vote for this guy,' is really important." MacGillis goes on to report that research shows that face-to-face talks increase a voter's chances of turning out by up to 10 percent. That could make an enormous difference in some of the closer swing states.

The over-the-top reactions of some liberals to George W. Bush's presidency earned the label 'Bush Derangement Syndrome'. I think it's time to diagnose a conservative equivalent: Obama Derangement Syndrome. We've seen signs of it in the video Kanishk posted a few days ago, and in the McCain supporters calling Obama a terrorist and Arab. But what's more startling is its spread to the conservative mainstream. If you have the time, take a look at The Corner at National Review Online - a blog populated by the most prominent journalists from the American right's most widely-read, well-respected journal. On it, you'll find the likes of Andy McCarthy speculating that the real author of Barack Obama's autobiography Dreams From My Father was William Ayers. It really has to be seen to be believed.

The continued salience of the financial market meltdown may mean that the intensity of the media's spotlight will not burn quite as bright, or be as probing, as in previous weeks; nor does the nature of the crime appear sufficiently severe to force John McCain to make a potentially disastrous last-minute change to the Republican presidential ticket. However, there is no doubt that the findings yesterday of the Alaskan legislature into the 'Troopergate' affair hold pronounced political repercussions that will stretch far beyond the boundaries of the Land of the Midnight Sun - and which may ultimately serve as the final death-knell of a presidential campaign that in recent days has looked increasingly frustrated and bereft of ideas.

The damage the Troopergate report has already done to the Republican presidential bid and will prove to do in the days to come is multi-faceted: first, since her unveiling as the Republican vice presidential nominee, one of the central strategies of the McCain camp in assuaging concerns over Palin's obvious inexperience has been to portray her as a Washington outsider who would repeat the same sweeping, take-no-prisoners style of executive reform she achieved during her time as mayor of Wasilla and governor of Alaska.

That the Republicans have struggled to elaborate how Palin would "bring change to Washington" has proven largely inconsequential: as the success of Barack Obama's campaign illustrated so vividly in the primaries, such a message holds strong resonance with an electorate that has bestowed upon the current Congress the worst right track/wrong track poll ratings in American history. However, now tainted with the charge of impropriety, the McCain-Palin ticket has had the credibility of this proposition seriously undermined, and now faces an uphill struggle in selling the Alaskan native as the implacable and unyielding purifying force that the American bureaucracy badly needs to purge it of its excesses.

Moreover, while the campaign has been eager to highlight some of Palin's accomplishments in executive office (reigning in budgetary deficits, energy legislation) and exaggerate others (foreign policy experience), the most thorough investigation into the inner-workings of a Palin administration has produced a portrait of an executive characterized by Time's Michael Scherer as "shockingly amateurish" in its conduct throughout the affair. It raises serious questions about the Alaskan's ability to effectively manage her own executive, let alone the highest in the land.