If the Obama Administration were to be definitively evaluated today it would be hard not to draw these conclusions:

• Obama inherited a financial mess caused by a Bush Administration’s failure to regulate the financial sector, among others, and an American public drunk on credit (while having their wages redlined).

• The Liberal ideology which Obama espouses is determined to bring economic health back to the Middle Class and to stitch-up a social safety net to include universal healthcare.

• To do these things Obama will need some cooperation from the Conservative side of the House so has made some significant effort to reach out a bi-partisan hand by appointing Republicans to his cabinet, or trying to, and including tax cuts as a large measure of his stimulus plan (35%), even though they have a relatively small impact on stimulus.

• The Republicans, apparently following the Conservative radio shocking heads, have drawn battle lines against the ‘reckless spending’ of the stimulus bill and demand more tax cuts of the kind that helped to create the mess under the Bush Administration.

• The mindless rancour that substitutes for what should have been a deserved ‘honeymoon period’ has poisoned the political climate in DC and may well arrest all efforts to fight what may become a losing battle to right a failing economy.

• And it’s hard not to conclude that Republicans, without workable solutions of their own, are, instead, determined to obstruct all efforts of the Democrats.

• And the country continues to rot.

This headline spells the merciful end of the Bush Doctrine: Bush will work with G7 on credit crisis.

The ‘if you’re not for us, you’re against us’ president seems to be blindly feeling about for help, any help to solve yet another world crisis he has exacerbated if not flat-out created.

The knock on Bush during his initial presidential campaign was that he was not intellectually up to the challenge of running his country. That he has spent his nearly eight years in office proving the accusation is indisputable. But who can take solace in predicting his incompetence?

Remember when the UK Guardian ran that mini-campaign to get Brits to bring pressure on that particular county in a swing state to influence the election for Kerry? They used the argument that everyone, foreigners included, has a vested interest in the outcome of the US election. The Guardian was forced to back off but they were right at the time, and brilliant in hindsight.

No one can take any pleasure in watching the denouement of this pathetic presidency. The most we foreigners can do is to hope that the next president recognizes the scope of the education crisis in the country and does something about it to prevent the election of more presidents ‘I’d like to have a beer with.’

Of course, if the appeal is to John McCain it will already be too late.

The disparity between what the US spends on its military and what it spends on diplomacy, roughly $600 billion vs $37 billion, will shape the future. How could it not?

Sure guns costs more than butter. But in both cases there is an irresistible temptation to use what’s in the pantry.

And that’s the essential problem. As the US becomes increasingly owned by others; as it withers as a superpower; as it confronts Russia and China over perceived aggressions; as it lashes out at its own failings — as it most certainly will — US leaders will instinctively reach for what is nearest at hand to deal with its angst, and that won’t be butter, it will be guns … as it has been since WWII.

Stick John McCain in the Oval Office and this probability becomes an inevitability.

Two weeks ago the US military budget, already greater than all the military budgets in the world combined, passed through Congress with nary a murmur … and that at a time when there was a veritable shit-storm over a bail-out of roughly the same amount.

That the Military Industrial Complex holds the country hostage has been conventional wisdom ever since Eisenhower coined the term in the ’50’s. And it has never been more true than today.

A weakened US desperately needs friends: friends who won’t pull the financial rug out from under it (China); who will collaborate and cooperate in dealing with real conflicts (EU); who will cooperate in energy generation and distribution (Russia); who will participate constructively in trade (Americas, Asia); who will cooperate globally in the fight against terrorism (Middle East et al)

You don’t tend to attract friends when you’re pointing a rifle at them, or threatening to.

The US is an emasculated Superpower. It now has to start to play well with others. And to show that willingness it must cut its military down to size.

It’s time for the US to re-join the community of nations.

As a Canadian, I have been an inveterate US watcher for maybe 50 of my almost 65 years.

Until today I have prided myself on this. The US is the most politically and economically important country on the planet and I’ve been making the effort to try to understand the country’s mechanisms, machinations and impact on the world. Good for me.

And my fascination isn’t just economics and politics. Over the years my interest has broadened to include the American media, American lifestyle and much of the rest — in fact, most everything but US celebrity, which somehow escapes me.

And mine is no casual curiosity. I start every day reading about what’s up with the US and how is it impacting the world.

I have rationalized this voyeuristic fascination with what I once called the ‘Ten Year Rule.’ To understand what is happening in the United States is to learn what will happen in Canada in about 10 years. However, with the dreaded rise of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (a Bush wannabe) I now think of it as the ‘Four Year Rule.’

So, while friends immerse themselves in the provincial backwaters of the Canadian political scene, I have been gloriously riding the oceanic current of Americana. And because of my studies (US 101), I will understand Canada many years before Canadians understand themselves. This is serious, even important scholarship. Again, good for me.

But it was all bullshit. I found that out this morning. Sarah Palin told me.

To me, Sarah Palin is the very personification of Americana. She’s good-looking, stylish, smart with a strong family, passionately held views and values and the confidence to boldly speak out. Talk about American can-doism: she is the very embodiment of it. If there was ever a single person who is a walking personification of her country and culture, Sarah Palin is it. And the masses love her for it.

And so do I. She is so irresistible I’m already taking a second look at American celebrity. Maybe I’ve been missing out on something.

But Sarah Palin has found me out. This morning, while watching a youtube of her interview with Katie Couric (herself a wonderful caricature), Gov Palin taught me that my fascination with the US has never been an important quest to understand my Canadian tomorrows. No. My fascination with the US has always been about what the United States does best: entertainment.

The thing about being the ‘biggest’ is that there is an implication that you are always the best. Certainly, we hear that as a constant message coming out of all the states. We are fed that refrain so often we come to, if not believe it, we believe IN it. We give the US every benefit of the doubt. So when they tell us someone is stupendously bright and brilliantly intelligent, hey, we tend to believe them.

When Sarah Palin walked onto the stage at the Republican Convention I was mesmerized by an unknown leader of the free world, maybe even THE leader of the free world. But who is she? Her speech told us a little about her and a lot about her Conservative attack skills.

And then in ensuring days we learned more. Not a lot, it just sort of dribbled out in innuendo and rumour, none of it as fact. The weeks after the Convention were stunning American theatre where the woman on the pedestal shrank before our eyes as the reality dawned on us that her constructed persona was all artifice. The man who would never sacrifice a war to win an election had mastered a wonderful slight of hand: he had sacrificed his country to win over his base.

This became crystal clear in the Katie Couric interview. The ‘verbage,’ as Palin calls it, that flowed so freely from the governor was so simplistically sophomoric and oddly inarticulate that we became utterly convince that her incompetence is so absolute that McCain-Palin really would be a third George W. Bush term.

That interview was the moment when I finally understood that I hadn’t open the newspaper ever morning to actual learn about the last 24 hours in the life of the preeminent Superpower, the United States of America. No. My less noble intent every day had always been to pick up the most current thread in an on-going and highly entertaining sitcom about a bunch of people I loved to watch but don’t really care much about — so many Jerrys and Georges and Kramers and Elaines who I forget that moment the show is over.

So why do I do this to myself? Why have I spent so much of my time in such an absurdly empty pursuit? There is an answer. Because I can’t stand to study my own country — that is far, far too serious to me.

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 moose burgers, 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.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience. … If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian. … If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society. … If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you’re very responsible.
If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s. … If you’re husband is nicknamed ‘First Dude’, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

If you respect science, you’re spiritually bankrupt. …. If you believe Adam & Eve and Satan shared acreage with the dinosaurs and the world is about 6,000 years old, you’re qualified to appoint Supreme Court justices.

……. OK, much clearer now.

This from a friend, Craig Yeo

John McCain has become the very parody of the maniacal, get-elected-at-all costs politician. The new McCain knows a lot, a whole lot. This new McCain is a stunning contrast to the old Straight Talker who cozied up to the press to tell it like it is.

The new McCain appears to wants the oval office way, way too much.

But why? It’s not that he intends to bring any fresh ideas to the oval office. He doesn’t. None. At 72 years old, he is running a campaign of, essentially, more of the same … and expediently calling it change. So why bother? If there is nothing in particular you want to accomplish in office, why seek it? The only possible answer is … hubris.

It’s hard to escape the observation that McCain is running a stupendously vainglorious campaign, highlighted by the constant refrain of “I know!”

A few examples…

• On creating a new energy policy for the US: “I know how to do that and I will do it.”

• On wars: “I know how to win wars.”

• On world leaders: “I know them all.”

• On the world: “I know the world.”

• On the economy 1: “I know Americans are hurting now.”

• On the economy 2: “I know how to fix the economy.”

• On greed: “I have always opposed greed of Wall Street and I know how we can fix this.”

• On his arch-enemy: “I know how to catch Bin Laden.”

• On Iraq and Maliki: “I have been there too many times. I’ve met too many times with him, and I know what they want.”

• On Spain, apparently uncertain where it is: “I know the issues, I know the leaders.”

Mind you there are some things he admits he doesn’t know:

• Houses: I don’t know how many houses I own.

• Technology: I don’t know how to use a computer.

• Economics: “I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.”

It may be reassuring to some that he “knows the world,” but I doubt the world he knows has much to do with the 6 billion people who share it with him.

But what do I know.

We occasionally hear of honourable Japanese businessmen falling on their sword as penitence for immoral business decisions. Indeed, didn’t the Japanese Prime Minister recently resign as evidence of his humility at low public favour?

So accountability does exist … in some parts of the world. But not in the West, not in the bastion of capitalism … and only capitalism.

How many men and women resigned in protest from the abysmally ineffective, oil-first George W. Bush administration? Those that left seemed like so many Colin Powells, slinking away when their positions became untenable.

How many failed corporate Goliaths have willingly stepped down from their lofty heights, even after stripping their companies of any value, without the assistance of a golden parachute? Have any?

In public life, has there been a single mia culpa? I failed and I’m sorry! The terror-boss Richard Clark uttered the words to a US congressional sub-committee and seemed genuinely contrite. But he also seemed to be grand-standing as a puritanical counterpose to the monumental administrative and intellectual sleaze of the administration he served: his was the verbal equivalent of taking a shower.

In Canada this week, the Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz made an unimaginable offensive joke about the listeriosis outbreak that killed 17 people. Yes he apologized, but did he do the honourable thing and resign as appropriate accountability? Was he fired? No. He turned the page with a shrug and so did his boss, the Canadian Prime Minister.

There are no expectations of honour any more. Fuck up badly enough and you appeal to the public to pray for you then you field a few softballs on Larry King and … Bob’s your uncle.

Bush endures; ‘Dog’ the Bounty Hunter is back on TV holding hands with Beth while praying for their pert’s repentance; Don Imus pollutes the public airwaves; Mark Foley escaped prosecution after his boot from Congress — with no thoughts of leaving willingly. And no expectations.

There WAS a better day. My youth. “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” — Grantland Rice. That’s a wonderful sentiment that I took to heart on the playing field and in the rink. It should be on every dressing room wall.

It isn’t. Not these days. Instead, we get this:

“Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing” — UCLA Bruin coach Red Sanders

“Image is Everything” — Andre Agassi

Alas, today, image has become the ONLY thing and it doesn’t do much for your image to admit you are wrong. Accountability is for pussies.

As my son used to say, “Oh, well, ah.”

The only reason to invest in the stock market is to make a profit. Duh. And conventional business wisdom has it that the best way to make a profit is to insist that regulators get the hell out of the way and allow market forces to do their thing. They’ve said it often enough. We get it. And so does the G.W. Bush administration, in spades.

But the marauding investors want it both ways. When things go wrong, well, their inalienable right to make money requires their government intervene to insure it will happen: the bail-out.

Fine. Sometimes, bail-outs are probably a necessary evil to protect the larger good. Ask the uber-businessman Lee Iacocca.

But there is something horrifically unsettling, duplicitous, ironic and nauseating to the pitiful sight of watching all the deep pocket privateers voting ‘hurray’ with their money when the government calvary charges in to rescue them from their own avarice. With the announcement of the latest government intervention, tax-payer bail-out, upwards of a trillion dollars, the Dow jumped 400 points.

There may never have been better examples for the need for tight government regulations then the past week in the United States.

The marauding degradation of the environment and its ensuring global warming haven’t inspired a curtailment of the corporate right to profit, not a bit. Now, though, maybe the bail-out of corporate greed and the need for ever-greater profits will put the glow back on REGULATIONS as a way of protecting innocent by-standers from the malicious drive-bys of the profit-crazed laissez-fair privateers.

We must rant while we hope.

The media are fumbling the ball in Georgia today as badly as they did on the run-up to the concocted war in Iraq.

To what extent is the Bush Administration behind the ‘war’ in Georgia? We don’t know, we haven’t been told and, it seems, the media isn’t trying to find out. Time magazine made a tiny stab at it today in an article entitled Who Started the War in Georgia? in which it dismissed direct US involvement in the war with this: ‘Statements from President George W. Bush and others may have embolden Saakashvili to expect US assistance that in the end wasn’t forthcoming, but that’s a far cry from an active role in launching military action.’

The muted allegations are that the US encouraged Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to invade the secessionist province of South Ossetia which had voted to rejoin it’s northern province within Russia. But that’s as far as it has gone, at least in the Main Stream Media.

But elsewhere, the accusations are far more direct. In The Real News, Eric Margolis makes it clear in US missle deal enrages Russia that Saakashvili, who was probably groomed in the US to replace Eduard Shevardnadze as President of Georgia, in fact invaded South Ossetia with the full encouragement of the US which had sent advisors into the country when Saakashvili had been elected in 2004.

The larger question is why is the US so aggressively provoking the Russians? Not just in Georgia but in Poland where the US is planting its missiles and in its advocacy that break-away Soviet states spurn Russia and join NATO.

There is obviously a serious confrontation going on between the US and Russia but who is covering it? Where is the background? The overview? The context? The facts?

The American media seems to have learned nothing from its atrocious coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war and from its complicity in the war. And worse, the American people appear disinterested in demanding the media be held to account: they are simply walking away — from the newstand and the TV.

But the neocons aren’t walking away. Why should they? They continue to foist their world view on a witless President, and they can see four more years ahead.

The collapse of an objective media is the single greatest story of my generation and it will have an enormous impact on the generations to come.

It is too ludicrous to contemplate but what are the chances that Levi Johnston, the red-necked father of Bristol Palin’s baby, will get a rousing ovation at the Republican convention when he takes the stage with the family?

Too ludicrous to contemplate, maybe, but exquisite: the closing of ranks to protect one of their own … because he didn’t use protection.