Politics and Outrage: Geoff Rynex

Obama Destroys Goodwill on Healthcare by Commenting on Local Law Enforcement Issue

2009-07-24T15:09:00.001-07:00

Following suit with Congress, the media has decided to cast aside the boring and unimportant debate on health care reform and instead shift the nation's focus toward public reaction to the arrest of African American scholar and beloved former major league home run king Henry Gates. President Obama has, to this point in his career, managed to stifle wingnut opponents by generally being above comment on things like misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges, but has tragically chosen to break that trend by saying police, "acted stupidly" in arresting Gates. Other than being an acquaintance of Gates', it's unclear why Obama would decide to say anything at all on the question other than, "Well, I'm the president of the United States of America and have been a bit too busy trying to fix the free world to know enough details to comment on this issue. You want the Mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Thanks, now, what were we here for again?" Not the best timing for his Terri Shiavo moment. Now the floodgates are open and all we can do is jam q-tips through our eardrums as the Rush Limbaughs of the world take carte blanche to make scientifically proven statements of genius like this. Barack Obama hates America and cops and health care and babies because, "...let's face it. President Obama is black."

Wait, so we're NOT getting healthcare?

2009-07-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

Harry Reid has decided to ask the professor for an extension on his big Health Care Reform paper. Congress won't pass health care reform before the August recess that everyone in town's been sitting at the edge of their swivel chairs waiting for since June. Cooler heads will no doubt prevail after a month-long vacation, and health care should totally be solved by, like, mid-September at the latest. In other news, the economy lost almost half a million jobs last month. Recess for EVERYONE!

Great Ideas In American History

2009-07-23T11:18:00.000-07:00

I love bars. I really do. They're a good place to meet interesting, socially lubricated people. A lot of fun nights start out in bars. They've got everything you could ever want: attractive people, booze, games, music, chicken wings- or do they? Now I know what you're thinking. I've been thinking about it for a long time myself. Bars are awesome, but when the hell are they going to find a way to mix the alcohol with guns? It only seems logical, and it's a much more definite way to decide the outcome of a bar fight- Indiana Jones style. Luckily, brave legislative pioneers in Tennessee and Arizona are all over it. Both states passed laws yesterday allowing patrons to carry firearms into establishments serving alcohol. This can't fail.

Hope for a Sane Drug Policy

2009-03-16T17:41:00.000-07:00

Slate's Andrew Marantz points out in a recent article that the nomination of potential new Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, meant to be a happy medium between civil libertarians and the tough on crime crowd, appears to be a disappointment to both. Marantz notes however that Kerlikowske is, above all, a pragmatist, which coincides nicely with Obama’s allegiance to doing “what works.” He calls Kerlikowske’s nomination a “victory for common sense.”

One of the principles Obama has professed both during his campaign and in his short time as president has been deference to reality over political ideology. The war on drugs provides potentially the clearest litmus test for Obama’s willingness to put this principle into action, and a measure of its effectiveness. More than a half trillion dollars has been spent on the drug war since its inception, with the Bush Administration ramping up spending on the prosecution of marijuana crimes to $4 billion a year. This despite the fact that the “gateway theory” about marijuana at the heart of the administration’s efforts to curb pot use was debunked in studies before it had ever even been put to use by government anti-drug crusaders. This shift in priorities paved the way for the epidemic rise of methamphetamine, which, along with cocaine and other harder drugs, is responsible for the vast majority of the drug-related violence that is ostensibly the focal point of the war on drugs.

Though experiences in the drug war bare out that it may be a lost cause in general, the wrongheaded battle to eradicate pot use has been the root of the failure of the War on Drugs over the past decade, and it is on this issue that Kerlikowske’s tenure as Drug Czar will succeed or fail. That said, the question Marantz needs to address is: did Kerlikowske’s experience after the passage of Initiative 75 in Seattle change his way of thinking about the problem, or will he bring his prior objections to the federal level with his hands untied by the law? In other words, will Kerlikowske continue to flush billions in federal money down the toilet on chasing after potheads and medical marijuana growers, or will he shift the office’s priorities toward “what works?”

Further, with regards to drugs, how far is the Obama Administration willing to explore pragmatic options? Might it be possible to sell the decriminalization or even the legalization of some drugs to the American public as a means of diverting the billions of dollars going to drug enforcement toward economic recovery, or even as a means of bringing in tax revenue? Experiences in many countries that have decriminalized and legalized marijuana have yielded better results for far less money. Perhaps Obama, with Kerlikowske’s help, can shift the conversation on drug enforcement using the angle of economic prudence, much like we’ve seen with the energy crisis, which was once perceived to solely be the concern of archetypal tree-hugging hippies. The War on Drugs long ago took a back seat as a priority in the minds of Americans, but it might be Obama’s most clear-cut opportunity to demonstrate his allegiance to “what works,” in a way that, for the first time in the history of the drug war, actually might.

Ha Ha!

2009-02-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

In our absurdist revelation of the day slot, we've got a woman in Italy who had the nerve to defy the government AND the church (two-fer) by... dying. She'd been in a coma for more than 16 years and completed her immoral act of civil disobedience while the Italian government and church bickered with her father over whether her feeding tube would be removed, as per her wishes. Score one for sanity.

I Don't Feel Stimulated

2009-02-05T22:21:00.000-08:00

Is all the vitriol and stupidity surrounding the stimulus package getting you down? I know it’s been a huge bummer for me. The Democrats want to disburse money in the bill. The Republicans want to make it OK for people to hold onto theirs. How on Earth are we supposed to navigate our way through this minefield of completely unique and complex economic opinions? I mean people, this is really revolutionary stuff… Tax cuts? Spending? whoa- we’d better slow down with all this crazy change. Seriously, it’s too much.

Given that it doesn’t appear any type of third way solution is forthcoming, it looks like Congress had better choose between tax cuts or spending, and the American public had better be able to get behind whatever they choose. Hey, there’s an idea! Let’s see what America thinks is the best plan. But how? If only there were some democratic tool that would allow us to gauge the public opinion on how the economy could be saved… Some way where people could just, I don’t know, vote or something on whose ideas were better. Man, that sure would make things easier…

Sarcasm aside, seeing SENATOR John McCain on television babbling about how he doesn’t believe the stimulus as proposed by PRESIDENT Obama’s administration is the right way to go is simply stunning. Is this guy serious? What did we flush that billion dollars in campaign contributions down the toilet for if not, at the very least, to decide whether the fundamentals of Obama’s plan or McCain’s were better?

The problem doesn’t lie with McCain alone however. His idiocy is just part of a greater Republican strategy of completely ignoring the messages they’ve been sent via recent elections and simply proceeding with the basic party agenda- tax cuts.

Tax cuts can solve everything don’t ya know. Tax cuts are all you need to have a healthy and fair functioning capitalist economy. Companies know how to spend their money. I mean look, that John Thain had great taste. Companies always use the money they save to create jobs and reorganize their business models. It happens all the time. That’s why over the last eight years, which marked the rein of one of the most business-friendly administrations since trust-busting was all the rage, the American economy has exploded into the free-market utopia we all love to marvel at as we dress in our best for a thrilling Friday evening at the soup line.

For their part, Democrats, including Obama, haven’t done much to drive home the point that the changes to the stimulus the Republicans favor are pretty much the exact same thing that dumped us into this nightmare in the first place. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are, let’s face it, incompetent in their leadership roles. I’ve heard that Reid is a dynamo behind the scenes and knows the Senate rules better than anyone, but I have yet to see, in his two-plus years at the helm of the Senate majority, anything of import as a result of those skills. Pelosi has the unique gift of being able to completely smash years of built-up good will for anything- be it a cause, or a bill or the Democratic Party as a whole- with a couple of snide comments; comments that aren’t ever even particularly witty or scathing- just irritating enough to collapse an entire Democratic initiative.

Obama correctly recognizes this moment in American history as one that needs to be handled with bold but steady action. He knows he must maintain an air of dignity and calm in the face of these dire times. His view of the situation leads him to believe that, in order to meet all of these qualifications, the stimulus and his efforts to influence its passage have to be managed on a bipartisan basis. This is false. Adherence to the myth of the effectiveness of bipartisanship is a naïve rhetorical notion that needs to be done away with for all time in this country. As with many of the ailments of American society circa 2009, we can blame this one on George Bush and his band of psychotic megalomaniacs.

It goes like this. The George Bush era was marked by fierce partisanship. He was unapologetic in governing on a 50 per cent plus 1 basis. He rammed every legislative initiative he could down Congress’ throat when he didn’t just circumvent the entire legislative process outright. If anyone got in his way or raised a dissenting voice, he or his minions ruin their political careers (see: Max Cleland). What were the results of these actions? Almost a trillion dollars spent on a meaningless war. Our country’s reputation around the world eviscerated. Banks failing all over the place. Home foreclosures and unemployment staples on nightly news reports. Crumbling infrastructure. No visable improvement in any single aspect of life. To put it simply, George Bush ran a very partisan administration, and at the end of his time in office America had become a hellhole. People can then be forgiven if these observations lead them to believe that partisanship is a bad thing, but maybe there’s no causal relationship there at all.

I submit that the complete and utter failure of the Bush administration in every aspect of governance was the result of simple incompetence, corruption and a set of ideas that were bad to begin with. The laundry list is too long to rehash here, but I’ll give the briefest of lists of examples of each; Hurrican Katrina relief efforts, the U.S. Attorney scandal, and tax cuts (there they are again) as an answer to every possible economic question. Let’s say Osama bin Laden had been found carrying out nuclear weapons from Iraq in a radio flyer with receipts on them signed by Saddam Hussein, or that New Orleans had been restored to the bustling cultural and tourism center it was pre-Katrina. Let’s say tax cuts had sparked an outpouring of private investment into millions of new jobs that were focused on creating energy-efficient cars and buildings. Would anyone be lamenting the evils of partisanship if any those things had happened?

Obama can be bold, calm and dignified by not getting in petty battles with petty men and women in Congress or in the media. But he doesn’t need to sacrifice the ideas that people voted him into office to execute in the first place. And he certainly doesn’t have to show deference to people who are literally advocating more extreme versions of the economics that got us to this point. If people wanted John McCain’s stimulus package, John McCain would be the president. If people thought tax cuts were the way out of this repression (recession heading toward depression), Republicans would have a majority in both houses. Republican ideas have failed, and been rejected. This is reality. Obama must govern based on this reality.

To caste an even darker pall over this whole situation, all the prize-winning economists we’ve spent the last eight years ignoring while we established this free-market paradise say the entire argument in Congress is pointless because the stimulus would need to be about TEN TIMES the size of anything being discussed in order to have any prayer of even making a dent. Fat chance.

My fellow Americans, you endured an awful lot of mindless political babble over the past two years to be putting up with this same old stuff now. You contributed record amounts- ungodly amounts- of money to political campaigns. You gave your time. I gave more of my time and money to the effort than I have to anything else in my life. I’m not alone. We all have a lot invested in this. My best friend is about to graduate college as a history major. For the last four months he’s been half-joking about starting a career as a forklift operator when he gets his now-useless diploma. The joke gets a little less funny every time. We’ve got PhDs jumping over each other to run cash registers at McDonalds. Spare me the “any job is a noble/ honorable/ whatever” speech. You don’t want to have dedicated years of your life to something, only to have it have been a complete waste, and neither does anyone else- no matter how honorable. We can do better. We saw the promise of better with the hope of “change you can believe in.” How about starting by demanding the change you signed up for.

EXTRA*This article says more in a few sentences than I could say in a book. Note the last sentence.

Oh My God it's All Over

2008-12-17T23:20:00.002-08:00

So- sorry again for the abandonment. One campaign turned into another... and another- all with nondisclosure agreements. And whoa- things have changed, huh? My guy won the election. At least my first guy did. Good stuff. The other two didn't fare so well, but hey, I did my job so I feel pretty good about my first (and, God willing, last) forays into the campaign life.

There's far too much to cover in a simple blog post and I'm already feeling the rust getting in the way of the quality literary and political analysis all ten of you who've read this thing had come to expect in your two-year on and off, awkward relationship with the internet sensation that has been Politics and Outrage (formerly known as Final Audit). I would however like to say that I just completed what is possibly the most ridiculous Google map of all time tracing my travels around this great blue country of ours since June. It adds up to more than 10,000 miles- almost all of which were in a car. And that excludes the daily commute. I also got a tattoo and a philosophical theory on life, though not necessarily in that order. Anyway Barack Obama is the president and gas is cheap so hey- energy crisis solved!

I am going to try to muster the strength after six plus months of 16-hour day, seven-day weeks to get this thing back up and running again. After all, the things causing outrage never really cease do they? Now that my former big boss has the big job it's time to hold his feet to the fire. And do that I will. Although I've gotta say, so far, so good.

In any event, you're likely to see something of a new bent on all things political and otherwise, as my eyes seem to have opened upon some new things since I last wrote. I'll continue however to be the fair, eloquent and level-headed couch pundit you've all pined for all these many months. Let's not let it be six months before we talk again eh?

Come on back and tell your friends. They'll thank you for it.

Geoff

The Job

2008-06-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long delay between posts, but the writing frequency tends to slide when the impetus created by a column writing class isn't there anymore. After a long and stressful process and after sadly having to turn down what would likely have been a great writing and reporting opportunity, I have finally landed somewhere- with the Obama campaign. I'm sure it shocks those of you who know me or read the blog to know that I actually favor Barack Obama, but I can't be expected to be objective about everything.

So I'm making the long journey back to Chicago in my probably-won't-make-it-but-gonna-try-anyway car starting out this Friday, and then me and my oldest political co-conspirator are hitting the road to Virginia, where we'll be working for the Obama campaign as organizing fellows for a minimum of six weeks. I'll do my best. Anyway, I could spend all day bragging about how I'm going to live in a stranger's house and how I'm not getting paid at all, but the point of my writing on this is to let you know that, like last year, it's very likely that the campaign will make me cease the blog while I'm on it, so sorry. If they don't make me stop however, expect that in the forty-five seconds of free time per week I'll have that I will be keeping you apprised of life on the campaign. Wish me luck, but more than that, wish Senator Obama luck.

Later,

Geoff

Barack Obama is Smart- Get Over It!

2008-04-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He is smart. He's smarter than you. He's smarter than me. He's the smartest man in the room. He wants to be the president of the United States. I want the president of the United States to be smarter than you. I want him to be smarter than me- a lot smarter. It's an impossible job, but I want the person who is flailing around trying to do it to actually know the difference between a Sunni and Shia. I want them to actually know and respect the words of the Constitution. I want them to know the ins and outs of economic theory. I want them to know everything, and if they don't I want them to find guys that do, and hire them. Anti-intellectualism is, well... it's the dumbest thing around. Roger Simon over at Politico has a great commentary on how the ridiculous requirements of campaign politics are starting to warp the best parts of the Obama candidacy.

Barack Obama is Black- Get Over It!

2008-04-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

There is a phrase that keeps popping into my head as this soul-deadening Democratic primary wears on. I try to stay positive in the face of this phrase. I try to dismiss it as a problem of the past. But I can’t. The numbers testify to its seriousness- to its significance. It represents what may be Barack Obama’s biggest weakness, and there’s nothing he can do to change it- unforgivable blackness.

Unforgivable blackness was a phrase coined by W.E. B. DuBois to describe the struggles of legendary heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson as he tried to earn the respect and acknowledgement of white boxers and the media. Johnson dominated the sport in his time, winning bouts all over the world. The more fighters he beat, the harder it was for him to find competition. White fighters began to refuse to fight him, saying that he was “inferior.” Fighters that did face him could rarely say the same.

While Hillary Clinton scrapes the bottom of the campaign barrel in an egomaniacal attempt to steal the nomination, her new strategy of trying to paint Obama as unelectable is an underhanded appeal to the same irrational race-baiting tactics used to denigrate Johnson a century ago, and to denigrate other African Americans for centuries before that.

It didn’t start out this way. When Obama was 30 points down in national polls and Clinton was shopping for new Oval Office drapes, she wasn’t talking much about Obama being unelectable. When her experience argument was doing well and she had Bill’s coattail support of the black community, she talked about health care, not electability. Then Iowa happened. Bill Clinton started talking tough before New Hampshire, attacking Obama’s veracity and war opposition record. A win there erased any doubt the campaign had left about using attack politics.

The days before and after South Carolina were marked by racially charged campaigning. Bill Clinton brushed off the huge defeat by comparing Obama’s run to the doomed campaign of Jesse Jackson. At this point, the Clinton camp had lost the black vote, and they knew it. There was no more reason to pander for it.

The stalemate of Super Tuesday confirmed that the Clinton campaign had been outclassed and outworked on the ground by Obama. Having planned for the campaign to be over after Super Tuesday, Clinton stumbled through the month of February, taking loss after loss. She was down so many delegates by the time of the Texas and Ohio primaries that her nomination would have been inherently illegitimate.

Recognizing the desperation of her situation, Clinton finally turned to the race issue. Of course, it’s no longer politically prudent to attack a candidate directly on the basis of their race. And with a candidate who has enthralled audiences as Obama has, Clinton’s task has become reminding voters that Obama is black.

The Jeremiah Wright controversy allowed her to do that and simultaneously demonstrated the sad reality that race is still an issue for any candidate. Obama was left to defend the fundamental differences between the white and black church and, in a speech gracefully elucidated some of the unspoken complexities of American race relations, the fundamental differences between black and white people. Clinton harped- created more divisions. Obama shouldered the responsibility.

Clinton’s Pennsylvania victory only moved the battle closer to the inevitable choice between a clean Obama nomination or a stolen Clinton one. Since then, that nails on chalkboard euphemism “unelectable” has become the central talking point of the campaign. Clinton has recast herself from “anti-hope” to “the great white hope.” Though their platforms are almost identical, though he has almost twice as many primary victories and though he’s defeating her in the popular vote, Obama is now unelectable according to Clinton.

By unelectable of course, Clinton means black. Clinton’s task is now to convince every Democratic voter and, more importantly, every superdelegate, that they should throw their support to her because Barack Obama is black and America will not elect a black man to be its president. It is a harmful line of logic and Clinton’s perpetuation of it is why she will not get the nomination.

Yes, there are voters who will not vote for a black candidate. But Obama’s campaign message is about hope. It’s about a belief that not only can things get better, but that they are better. Obama constantly reminds people about how his life story could not have happened anywhere but America. After all, Jack Johnson couldn’t even eat in most restaurants to celebrate his victories. So though Obama has a tougher road ahead because of his race, we can take heart in the fact that, despite Clinton’s implications, his race no longer makes it impossible to travel that road.

Obama will likely back into a nomination victory sometime in June, just after Puerto Rico casts the final ballots of the campaign. Clinton’s message about Obama’s electability will have been hammered into the collective Democratic mind and rightfully rejected. It will be our chance to prove that we want a new time and place, where Clinton is the standard bearer for the old time and old place.

The unelectable argument expires at the end of a primary season, so John McCain will be left with only two choices. He can attack Obama’s character, or he can attack his policies. Obama has Rezko and the Weather Underground, McCain has temper, Budweiser and Geritol. In 2008 it will be unforgivable blackness versus unforgivable age. With the problems facing the country today, I want to believe people recognize that it’s time to look past race and look toward actual leadership. Besides, no one could do worse than the last eight years, dominated by unforgivable stupidity.

What Happens if Clinton or Obama Wins?

2008-04-14T02:58:00.000-07:00

Dread
The light streak fades in and out through the bottom of the bouncing window shade, and after a few seconds I realize just what’s happened and gather my bearings. My head is heavy and my eyes are swollen. I shuffle to the bathroom and wrench my neck under the faucet for a drink of lukewarm water and stare into the mirror. I can’t believe I did it again. I swore I never would after last time. Who am I kidding, I say that every time. Still, this time felt different. Everything was going right. But once again all that’s left is hollow disappointment and rank powerlessness. There’s going to be a considerable period of recovery from this one. Ugh, how could she do this? How could she just steal it away like that and live with herself? How in the hell did Hillary Clinton just win the Democratic nomination for the presidency?

There’s no use in questioning it of course. I, an active Obama supporter, see once and for all how the system works. There’s no room for hope in this place. Who can keep up hope when a president can spend eight years in office with a smug smile and a pack of barely concealed lies without any kind of pushback. There’s no room for somebody who believes there can be fundamental change in America- no room for someone who thinks we can actually be better. Depressing as it is, I have to give her credit.

Early on it looked like she was the hare, failing to end the race early on as she expected. But she dug in, made some changes, worked the rules, and waited for Obama to slip up. She knew that people would grow weary of all the flowery hopespeak and grand delusions of civil empowerment while they were bringing home smaller paychecks and fighting their own children for jobs. She knew that the bitter would resent being called bitter. She bet on America settling short of its own ideal, and she was right.

What do I do now? I believed Obama and I believed in him. His concession speech is on. He is elegant and gracious. It stings. He would have made a great president. After all, no one person can really do the job. It’s about inspiring others to get the job done. I can’t think about this anymore. I’ve got a lot of deprogramming to do- eight months of mounting hatred for Clinton and her veiled pessimism, where once there was merely a preference for Obama.

It’s back to square one. Forget Obama ever existed. Hillary Clinton is a more than competent leader with essentially liberal values in a country that needs them more than ever. She said she would bring change too right? Well, that’s what we need is change. She could undo a lot of damage. Tomorrow I’ll shoot out some emails to see what I can do to contribute to the effort to elect the Democrat. Today though, I’m going back to bed to let myself mourn and my stomach writhe. My heart may not be all the way in it for Hillary, but I’ll do whatever I can to make sure it’s her over McCain, that’s for damn sure.

I sit at the breakfast table, pour myself a bowl of Cheerios and stare past the TV, letting the coarse song of the pundits numb me. I groan to myself, “never again.”

Hope
The pure happiness and loss of anxiety is almost enough to illicit tears. I’ve waited for a moment like this all my adult life. The people I love- the people I’ve spent hour upon hour with dreaming and talking of this day- are all hugging each other. Wolf Blitzer has never looked so beautiful reigning over the Situation Room. The atmosphere is euphoric. It’s our time now. My limbs tingle as I feel the year and a half of hope and hard work melt off of me. Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president after a drawn-out battle with what, at times, felt like the entirety of American history.

We were so close to giving up on the idea that someone with a message transcending Cloak Room minutia and fear mongering could actually be successful. Hillary was not going to give up. She was never going to be gracious, and she would never listen to appeals for the good of the Democratic party or the country at large. Positivity and hope have been vindicated as useful ways to make way through American politics. It’s a great day to be an American. But it’s not over yet.

Yes, we have phonebanked, canvassed and raised ungodly amounts of money thus far, but John McCain is a formidable opponent, held largely separate from the image of Republicanism that America has grown bitter toward over the course of the Bush Administration. Focus will be key. We must learn from our success and keep it rolling into the general election. America believes in the possibility of change. They want it. We have supreme confidence that Obama can deliver it. We are more energized than ever. We won’t stop working to get this man into the White House until November.

I have to take a few deep breaths and reflect every few minutes to really take in what has happened. Never since I gained a political consciousness has a candidate like Obama come around. Never has one that I’ve cared about been successful. And never have I felt that my country yearned for this kind of high-reaching leadership the way I have. We Obama supporters want to be called on to solve the problems of the future. We want ownership of the successes or failures of the country. We want to be believed in. Obama’s granting us the courtesy of faith has proven to be uplifting to us and politically expedient for him.

No time to waste. I am calling everyone I know who could possibly get me on the campaign in an official capacity. If Obama is to win, I want to be on the front lines for the victory. Yes we can. Yes we did. And yes we will.

The Cubs Blog

2008-04-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, I launched a blog and Web site for Cubs fans last year as part of a class project. I'd like to get the Web site back to work again, though that may not be for awhile. The blog however, is something I think I'm going to get back in the habit of doing, because I'm pretty excited for this season. So tell your friends and co-workers, and loathsome local Sox fans to visit cubsfanla.blogspot.com. The Chicago Cubs are getting ready to win it on lucky number 100. Woo woo!

John McCain: The Pin Hovering Above the Balloon that is America

2008-04-07T17:24:00.000-07:00

John McCain is running against history. He will run against either a candidate who has a presidential pedigree, or a man who is the most inspirational human being since either JFK or Jesus, depending on who you ask. He is running against father time. He is running against an overwhelming Democratic tide. He also just might win.

Barack Obama may have started a new movement, but John McCain could be the beneficiary of the rotten fruits of the old one. McCain’s lack of appeal to the conservative base of the party would appear to be a positive now that he has emerged from the Republican primary. The middle ground between the Hugh Hewitts and the Michael Moores of the world has long been the area where most Americans find themselves politically, and McCain’s appeal, whether warranted or not, is greatest in that vast center.

In the wake of Bush, the first MBA president, and Bill Clinton, a former hippie, John McCain is a throwback. The story is pretty familiar by now. Born into a distinguished military family, McCain continued tradition of his father and grandfather, and served as a Navy pilot in Vietnam where he was shot down, captured, and tortured for more than five years. Along with his reputation for frankness, he is known for having a bad temper and an affinity for the ladies. In other words, he sounds like many of the presidents of previous generations. It is these attributes that help him command the respect and admiration of Republicans and Democrats alike, attacks by prominent conservatives notwithstanding.

On the issues, McCain doesn’t stand in many areas that are controversial to anyone who doesn’t attend Minutemen rallies. Despite its importance as an electoral issue, most people don’t understand or care about economic policy beyond their own jobs and paychecks. That is to say, if people don’t have a job or paycheck, or have inadequate jobs and paychecks, they won’t care which historical economist captured the imagination of the president and his advisors in high school. They’ll care that they get a better job and paycheck, and whoever sells their plan as the most likely to get it for them is the one who will win the economic vote.

For his part, McCain has stated that he, “doesn’t really understand economics.” Whether this was an ill-timed example of straight talk or an attempt to appeal to the sensibilities of voters in the, “I like George W. Bush because he’s just like me” kind of way remains to be seen, but logic would have it that America might be leery of another president who is just like them, and yearning for one who is up to the task of running the free world. And if that’s the case, McCain’s claim of ignorance and his recent statements that, “it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers” doesn’t inspire much confidence that he’ll be able to sway the 10.3 million borrowers who received loans for high-rate mortgages in the last three years, or anyone else feeling the effects of what is looking more each day like a recession. Still, McCain is likely to pick up any economy-based votes that lean in a traditionally Republican direction.

Regardless of his knowledge or stand on economics, his inability to draw the kinds of crowds of a Barack Obama, or his enormous financial disadvantage, McCain seems to endure as a viable contender in the general election. A large majority of recent polls have McCain winning in head-to-head match-ups with both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Impossible as it may seem with the torrent of energy behind the Obama campaign and the huge disparity among Democratic and Republican primary turnout, his best chance is to downplay the historical and rhetorical implications of this election and to make it a run-of-the-mill matchup between Republican and Democrat, and to do his best to look like the better candidate regardless of the world and national political and economic climate. He needs to create a political vacuum in which the war in Iraq can be won with some minor adjustments, the economy is suffering a temporary case of the hiccups, and where the right amount of experienced leadership can cure whatever ails the country.

It appears as though McCain is the perfect candidate to do just that. He has little connection to George W. Bush. He has a well-worn reputation as a maverick in the Senate- willing to vote on principle and not the party line. His borderline obsessive support for the Iraq War would seem to render his candidacy a joke when taken with regard to supposed public opinion of the conflict, but it hasn’t. Instead, people have taken it as another shining example of his willingness to buck popular opinion and flex his principles. His murky stances on many of the wedge issues that the Bush Administration used to drive voter turnout could prove more of an advantage than a hindrance, since that great center of American politics is pretty murky on those issues as well. Much has been made of Barack Obama’s cross-party appeal, but McCain is the original cross-party poster boy of this generation. In 2004, John Kerry went so far as to extend an offer of the vice-presidency to McCain.

As late as this past fall, McCain’s candidacy looked like a train wreck. He was broke and his staff had been working unpaid since summer. The battle over his bipartisanly abhorred immigration legislation spent much of the summer on the front pages. The Republican base hated him. He was older than Fred Thompson and more unpredictable than Rudy Giuliani. It looked like he was headed back to the Senate with his maverick tail between his legs. But here he is- the like-it-or-not option for anyone with an R on their voter registration card. McCain has simply shown an astounding resilience- one consistent with someone who was able to rebound from years of torture to become a successful and widely respected legislator. He may truly be a candidate of destiny.

God help us all if he really is.

Is the War in Iraq a Prop now?

2008-03-31T11:03:00.000-07:00

The war in Iraq has long been an issue that is distant and vague to most of the country. The ideal notion that it was ever the most important issue in the minds of Americans is an illusion built on a five-year history of a country that saw more people vote in American Idol than in the last presidential election, when it could have made a difference, and that has obsessed far more over sex scandals in Washington than it has over contracting scandals.

Rather than focusing on a lack of war coverage now, we should consider ourselves lucky that the war got as much media attention as it did as before issues like the housing bubble, unemployment and the mortgage crisis- issues that are more real and have a more direct impact- transitioned from the supposed paranoid ravings of a few liberal economists to full-blown economic crises that have left many Americans reeling.

What outrage there ever was over the war in Iraq was a luxury America and the media no longer believe they can afford. Think about the scores of horror stories about deception and violence in the lead-up to and execution of the war that garnered front-page attention in the national papers and on the major networks over the five years of the war. America has been bludgeoned over the head by the fact that there were no WMD in Iraq and yet a huge amount of people still believe that we found them there. The media told anyone who would listen that the Bush Administration lied to get the country into the war. The media reported on the utter ineptitude at every level of execution of the war- from the summary firing of every competent government worker in Iraq to millions of dollars going missing to Abu Ghraib to Haditha to Blackwater to over 600,000 dead Iraqi civilians out of a population of 21 million.

The media reported on all of this every single day for years- literally years- and yet on numerous occasions when Congress has been presented the opportunity to end the war and act on the piles of information the media provided, both the House and Senate have failed to do so. If the war was ever the most important issue to America, the anger over it was never great enough to force even the slightest deterrence on the part of the Bush Administration, or even a Congress that supposedly came into power on the coattails of a war-weary public.

The coverage was there all along. The facts were there and nobody did anything about it. Then came the surge. All it took, for a country that supposedly prioritized the war above all other issues, to completely disregard every fact and meaningful issue about it was a dubious but fierce effort on the part of the Bush Administration to simply tell everyone that, after the infusion of a few thousand more troops, everything was OK. Forget the fact that none of the political goals- which were the conveniently ignored reason for the surge- have been or are anywhere near being met. Never mind that all the “stability” in the country over the past months, as has been heavily reported, has been based on tenuous alliances with the same people we were fighting in years past, and brokered by making offers of arms and money to the groups.

The coverage was there all along. The war just never impacted enough people beyond its nebulous wrong-headedness. The damage the war has caused to our national reputation and ability to do diplomacy has always been too obscure to move the masses. Because many people don’t even know anyone, or know few, who have actually participated in the war, there has never been a national sense of anxiety such as there would be in a war where anyone was eligible and likely to serve. With people buying the surge story and a shifting tide of public opinion toward the ridiculous notion that the war can be won, and the country’s economic troubles forcing the government’s hand in ways the war never has, what more could the media do? It has to be disheartening to have covered your aspect of the war as a reporter, to have risked your life or your career to do a good job, and to watch your work get buried and ignored in the blizzard of talking points and bogus denial of the Bush Administration.

It now looks as though the alleged stability in Iraq could collapse at any time, and the media has sprung to action. But it seems that no matter what news comes out of Iraq, tax relief checks and an assurance from the old white men that the violence will decrease will be enough to plug the ears and cloud the minds of the country.

I Just Hate Movies About Cards SOOOOOO Much

2008-03-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

So of all places, The New Republic has confirmed what I've known all along- 21 sucks. I'm not sure why this got my attention, but I just keep seeing commercials and bus stop signs for this thing all over the place, and it irritates me that Hollywood cannot get it through their head that movies about cards are not entertaining, which is why they are all filled with sex and violence and other actual entertaining things like that. I know what you're thinking- "But Geoff, what about 'Rounders?" NO! Rounders sucked, and I even like Edward Norton AND Matt Damon AND John Malcovic. "Geoff, surely you liked The Color of Money, right?" NO! And that was about pool anyway. Cards are not entertaining, and neither is Kate Bosworth, and that's all I can muster during this soul-crushing and interminable break until HIllary wins Pennsylvania and decides to crush our spirits in the national vise until the Convention, when she steals the nomination and we all move to France, where, if there's a God, they don't make movies about cards.

Clinton Could Help Women as Much by Losing

2008-03-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

As I looked back on the Democratic primary season thus far it occurred to me that I find myself defending Hillary Clinton to those who profess their hatred for her less and less as the process plods on.

An Obama supporter from the beginning, I nevertheless resented how so many otherwise reasonable people practically foamed at the mouth for what seemed to be completely intangible reasons at the thought that she might ascend to the presidency. I had nothing against Clinton. I admired her wittiness and realism in the face of sometimes clownish opposition. I admired her plan to end the war by revoking the Congressional authority given to the president to conduct it. Today, it’s hard to get back to that frame of mind as she threatens to tear the Democratic Party apart in vain attempts to usurp the democratic process.

Still, is it possible that by antagonizing so many people and rousing such negative passion, Hillary Clinton is actually advancing American politics past its long history of gender bias?

As much as pundits have latched onto the idea of Clinton becoming the first woman president, her attempts to relate to other women in town hall meetings and other events on the trail have sometimes come across as run-of-the-mill political pandering. This should be considered a credit to Clinton though. At times, it has been difficult to sympathize with Clinton as a woman struggling to succeed in a man’s game. She’s just so good at it that she can’t carry it off. She entered this race as the overwhelming favorite and has done little in the way of exploiting her femininity as a means of showing America that she would approach the presidency in a different way.

She has ceded no ground to Obama on willingness to use military force and many of her campaign themes are decidedly more “masculine” than Obama’s. She has sought to cast herself as “the fighter” and is perceived as more of an establishment candidate than Obama and, arguably, McCain, in contradiction to any notions the electorate may have of a female president overhauling the foundations of American politics.

If Clinton keeps up her current strategy of attack ads and negative conference calls, she is going to finish the campaign, for better or worse, as the most politically conventional candidate. Barack Obama has run a campaign that is entirely new in a number of ways, and John McCain can’t decry his own high-profile supporters for their negativity fast enough. Both Hillary’s support and opposition however stem in large part from the perception that she is the tried and true politician in the race- a typical legal-rational leader in the mold of so many who have come before.

This may not translate well for Clinton personally, but in terms of female equality, it is the most sophisticated level of acceptance anyone could hope for. For Clinton to be thought of as just another brick in the wall and not merely as “the woman candidate” would be a major step in American politics.

The ideal is not for people to advance because they are different. It’s not the day when someone becomes the first female president we should celebrate. Rather, it’s the day when a female president comes to office, and no one thinks anything of it. We’ll know we’ve reached the mountaintop, so to speak, when a female or black candidate can lose based on the content of their character, and not their gender or the color of their skin.

If Clinton does not gain the nomination, it will not be because she was perceived as too soft or emotional. It will be because she is Hillary Clinton. She carried around a formidable reputation and a lifetime of political baggage before ever setting foot on the trail. She will lose the nomination on her own merits.

There will, for the foreseeable future, be an element of society that will vote against any woman running for office, regardless of her qualifications. But with every 40-year-old man that gets offended and switches his vote when Clinton runs her “3 a.m. attack” ad, America seems to be heading in the right direction.

New Title

2008-03-03T19:03:00.000-08:00

What started out as an underhanded and sarcastic ode to a former classmate and allusion to a past career turned into an on again, off again forum for my thoughts and observations on politics. Dozens of fans have accidentally stumbled onto the site while searching for funny pictures of John McCain or Hillary Clinton or mushroom clouds, and it's really been touching. Such was the existence of Final Audit. I have come to believe however that the title may have outlived its own self-serving cleverness and I've decided to switch it to something a bit more fitting for the topics of discussion. So tell your friends, Digg the articles, Facebook 'em, or whatever you can to get people to come to...uh... ah yes- Politics and Outrage.

Thanks and remember the homeless.

Geoff

Clinton Just Doesn't Get It

2008-03-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

As a fund-challenged college student, I opted not to get cable television this year. To make up for this, I have accrued a tech savvy that has allowed me to, with various levels of legality, watch just about anything I really needed to see over the internet. Such was the case with last Tuesday’s Democratic debate in Ohio. Thanks to the good people at the city of Cleveland’s Web site, I was able to scrap MSNBC.com’s shoddy streaming presentation of the debate for a clean, clear version that ran with a 30 second delay, about 15 choppy minutes in. Much to my irritation, my rage didn’t stop once I escaped the menaces of lag and slow broadband. The clarity of city.cleveland.oh/us only made things worse as I realized what the problem was. Hillary Clinton just does not get it.

Clinton has grasped for a way to set herself apart from Barack Obama ever since Obama started climbing polls in Iowa. Her experience argument needed another component, and so, unable to match Obama’s oratorical skills or charisma, she seems to have settled on playing the role of wet blanket- the stoic, competent wonk whose insider knowledge and perseverance would slog America through this dark period and get us back on our feet again.

Her original intent, presumably, was to inject some realism into the campaign to boost her experience argument, and as a counterpoint to Obama’s soaring rhetoric about changing the fundamentals of Washington politics. She, after all, had been through it before, and knew better than to think that a few good speeches would break the partisan divide in Congress or get us out of Iraq. But somewhere along the way, Hillary wildly overshot her target and turned herself into the “anti-hope” candidate- rarely a good label to be endowed with, let alone embrace.

The Ohio Democratic debate last Tuesday put the perils of being anti-hope on public display. Everywhere Clinton wanted to go, she looked whiny and pessimistic. And every minute she spent complaining about always getting the first debate question or making ham-handed references to Saturday Night Live was another minute where Obama didn’t have to defend what may be a legitimate issue with his health care plan.

This political tone-deafness only gives legs to Obama’s assertion that his judgment trumps Clinton’s, and that all the experience she trumpets isn’t necessarily an advantage. After all, how many unemployed or poorly employed Ohioans and Texans were moved to Clinton’s camp by the SNL crack. It may be funny, and many of her complaints, like Obama getting favorable press treatment, might have merit. But the bottom line is that someone who wants to draw votes by claiming her vast experience has taught her how to play the game of politics should know that calling foul and arguing semantics is not the way to get votes- either in an election or in Congress.

A seasoned politician would recognize the political climate they’re in and the way the winds are blowing. Obama has started a movement and gained support in a way that simply defies the pessimistic, battle-hardened perspective Clinton presents. In a month where Clinton fell just short of setting a record for fundraising, Obama’s campaign has apparently raised, “significantly more.” It’s based mainly on speeches that could prove to be hollow. It has happened in places where he may not be able to win a general election. It’s foundations are with people that may not know anything about his policies. And it may be completely unfair. But it has happened nonetheless, and Clinton has not co-opted that energy, which was her only real option. She has stubbornly diminished it and refused to offer anything but the gloomy prospect of another four years of 50 percent plus one politics- just with a Democrat at the helm this time around.

In 1979, revolutionary pollster Pat Caddell presented an epic memo to President Jimmy Carter, suggesting that America was suffering from, “a crisis of confidence.” This argument eventually reached the public in the form of Carter’s infamous, “malaise speech.” The country grew to resent that notion, along with the negativity and implications that people’s problems were in part their fault. Caddell and Carter may have been on to something, but it didn’t matter. Partially because of this, Carter lost his bid for re-election in a landslide later that year to Ronald Reagan, a man whose overwhelmingly positive legacy is vastly a result of his ability to inspire people rather than beating them into political submission.

Mark Penn, who by most accounts steers the ship of the Clinton campaign, has his political roots in polling as well. Though it may be too late, Penn needs to learn from Caddell’s mistake and adjust the campaign to the idea that being right and winning don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Clinton’s warnings and arguments could very well prove prophetic, but she won’t get to prove her judgment as a president if she can’t first prove it as a candidate.

Obama media-shy?

2008-02-26T12:56:00.000-08:00

The Politico today published its latest piece to hammer away at Barack Obama's frustrating refusal to speak at length with the traveling press corps.

The media complaining about a lack of access is as sure as the sky is blue, but the Obama campaign's evasion of the mainstream media in favor of smaller media outlets is disconcerting, especially given Obama's admirably staunch positions on transparency. Obama wants to make just about everything the government does as easy to access as Youtube videos when he's president, but he doesn't seem to want anyone to have insight into the daily rigors of his campaign schedule. It's true, as the Politico piece notes, that campaign reporting tends not to focus on issues the candidates care about- or even issues at all- but as engaging and moving a public figure as Obama is in speeches and at rally's, it raises unnecessary, and probably unfounded, questions about his substance to have him not have any real conversations with campaign reporters.

John McCain has, until the NYT's questionable article last week, largely let McCain's mixed record off the hook, 'maverick' persona intact, because McCain has been so willing to talk to and answer questions for anyone who will listen. As Ryan Lizza's recent piece in the New Yorker pointed out, sometimes McCain's openness goes on to the point of awkwardness when reporters simply run out of things to ask.

Obama doesn't need to go that far, but he cannot keep counting on such fawning coverage if he continues to make national reporters' jobs impossible, and keeps going over their heads to local news media. He's got to play the game to an extent, for his own sake, and for America's sake. To the degree that many Americans are reticent about Obama, it's largely because they worry his rhetoric is hollow and because they don't know much about him. He could change that pretty easily. Yes, he risks making a gaffe, and more personal accounts with the man will surely pierce the otherworldly aura he has built in the minds of his most fervent supporters. But neither a successful presidential campaign or presidency can be had without at least throwing the reporters covering you a bone once in awhile. Maybe it's all part of his plan. Tease until he either wins the nomination outright or it comes down to convention, and then open the floodgates if or when he needs the good pub. It's genius. Why didn't Hillary think of it. Maybe then she wouldn't have to rely on coverage like that which produced this photo.

An Appeal to the Better, More Futuristic Angels of your Nature

2008-02-25T13:38:00.000-08:00

No I don't get paid for this blog. I don't even advertise on it. But, I'm writing this afternoon to beg you, if you visit the blog, to spread the word about it to friends, co-workers, fellow students, enemies, frenemies, casual acquaintances, your bartender, your butcher, and your mom. There are a bunch of ways to do that. You can just tell 'em about it, give them the link or, if oral communication isn't your thing, I've installed those nifty little buttons at the bottom of every post. Clicking on them will directly post the blog article to one of the dozen or so services that handle those things. Among them is Facebook, Technorati, Digg, Del.ic.ous and Reddit. Those are all the big ones, plus a bunch I've never even heard of, so no excuses! Do me this solid people. One day it will be repaid in kind.

The Democratic Nomination must be democratic

2008-02-24T23:31:00.000-08:00

Maine didn’t work out. It was a caucus. Everyone knows caucuses favor the candidate people really care abou… er… are undemocratic. Virginia? Well, they probably just got sucked in by all those speeches he plagiarized from his campaign chairman. On to Wisc- what? He won by how much? Well of course, Wisconsin is right next to Illinois. He’s from there you know. A lot of the delegates he has won have been in red states. Those are meaningless. Let’s see him win a state where a Democrat will actually have a shot at being elected president, like Texas.

With few opportunities left to salvage her campaign, and with Barack Obama surging in the two states she hopes to do so in, Hillary Clinton is running short on options. Last week, an anonymous Clinton campaign staffer told The Politico that the Clinton camp would start trying to woo Obama’s pledged delegates. The campaign denied this vehemently. For weeks now Clinton has fought a sub-campaign to get the delegates from Michigan and Florida seated at the Democratic National Convention, despite an agreement the candidates made after party rule violations by those states. Her only hope now would be to win Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania- not impossible- and hope to take the fight all the way to Denver in August, where the convention would be held. At this point, if Clinton does manage to win those three states, the delegate race would probably still be close enough to go all the way to the Convention.

After a campaign season that made many Democrats optimistic about the party’s chances at taking back the White House, it now looks like they may be left asking the same question they were before the campaign started- how will they screw this one up? After eight torturous (both literally and figuratively) years of Republican rule in the Executive Branch, the president’s approval ratings are below drinking age, public opinion on the issues is vastly in their favor, they have had a strong field of candidates and far more coverage of their primaries than the GOP has. For the GOP’s part, their nominee’s strongest attribute is his unwavering support for an unpopular war. Of the economy, which is fast becoming America’s most crucial issue, the Republican nominee has said that it’s, “not my strong suit.” The GOP, and the country, have set ‘em up, and as usual, the Democrats seem to be doing everything possible to avoid knocking them down.

Going to the convention creates a strong possibility that the nominee with fewer pledged delegates could win the party’s nomination. This could happen a few ways. In the event that neither candidate has amassed the 2025 delegates necessary (a likely scenario), the superdelegates could make the final decision and give the nomination to the loser of the primary season. The superdelegates are the 796 now infamous Democratic governors, party officials and members of congress who cast their votes with allegiance only to their personal preferences.

If the superdelegates overrule the people, forget about the nomination process- the entire Democratic party may never recover. Voters who rightly feel as though their votes were meaningless are unlikely to support a candidate in the general election that they didn’t vote for in the primary. This means a John McCain presidency. Combine McCain’s stated willingness to stay in Iraq for 100 years with the American electorate’s complete abandonment of a Democratic party that has disenfranchised them, and you might actually have a Republican president presiding over the execution of this same Iraq War in 2103- all because the Democratic party allowed 796 self-motivated political actors to overrule the will of millions of Americans. All you have to do is turn on CNN to find stalwart Democrat Donna Brazile confirming the theory that Democrats will abandon the party. She has said she would do so herself if the superdelegates overruled the will of the people.

More specifically, if Barack Obama wins the popular vote and superdelegates hand the nomination to Clinton, expect race riots short-term, and long term heating of racial hostilities over the longer term, as well as the possibility of losing the sizable black vote to apathy for decades. The many independents and young voters who have turned out in record numbers for Obama might be soured on the political process for good, leaving a looming power vacuum on the political scene, one in which any type of extremist could come to power down the line. This is how dictators come to power. The Democratic nominating process, the rules of which were designed to lessen the chances of an extreme, insurgent candidate taking the prize, could end up leaving America with a much worse type of extremist. At the least, America’s and the world’s many urgent problems would likely remain ignored and unsolved.

The party can expect similar results if Clinton is successful in her bid to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates she dubiously won. Hillary and Bill Clinton cannot be allowed to hijack the nomination at the expense of the future of the entire party and country. The same would go for Barack Obama if he were in her position. The Florida and Michigan delegates should be counted, because voters in those states will be important to the general election, but the right thing to do is to hold new primaries or caucuses in the states, where both candidates would have time and permission to campaign, and a rightful winner could be determined. No other scenario allows the Democrats to maintain credibility when they claim, whether on the election or the economy, to be responsive to the people.

This plan, combined with a public pledge by the superdelegates to support the candidate who wins the most pledged delegates will ensure the integrity and the future of the Democratic party. A party that has been forced to swallow the bitter pills of the Bush Administration all the while knowing that their nominee was railroaded in 2000 by a similarly undemocratic glitch in the system needs to make sure it doesn’t happen within its own confines. If the Democrats do this, they can finally knock ‘em down in November.

The NYO's got nothing on me

2008-02-22T16:44:00.000-08:00

Check out this piece in the New York Observer today speculating on the reasoning behind the NYT's publication of the McCain story. And take note that my speculation (off the mark as it may turn out to be) came first. Choire Sicha makes a couple of interesting points about the NYT and The New Republic scaring each other into rushing out their respective stories.

The NYT and John McCain

2008-02-21T23:03:00.000-08:00

I've been furiously trying to figure out what to make of the John McCain NYT story from Wednesday and I just can't do it. Reading it for the first time, it just didn't feel like an article that would be in the New York Times. It had all the trademark characteristics of one of their signature bombshell pieces- it had the hype (first discussed in a typically tacky banner headline in December on The Drudge Report), the seemingly out-of-nowhere release on the Web site on a Wednesday evening, the team byline, the decades old black and white photo, and the feel from the lede that it was a big deal.

And then... it just wasn't.

The article bounced around between almost silly innuendo suggesting that McCain had engaged in an affair with a lobbyist, a shallow and vague narrative detailing McCain's history of bucking both the establishment and his own stated principles, and a rehashing of his questionable role in the Savings and Loan Scandal of almost twenty years ago.

I felt unsatisfied when I finished. It felt wrong. It felt like they were grasping at straws. More than anything though, it felt like something, or rather, many things, were missing from the story. It read like code. The message was clear, but this was the New York Times, not the National Enquirer. It's the Paper of Record. They just don't put out these stories for no reason, and they certainly don't do it without having a few facts to back them up. A blog post by Noam Scheiber on the New Republic Web site put it well. "The story reads to me like it had originally been much more ambitious, but had its guts ripped out somewhere along the way. The obvious question is whether those guts will ever trickle out now that this story has surfaced," said Scheiber.

This hit the nail on the head from my perspective, and along with giving me some sense of comfort that it was all part of the Gray Lady's master plan, it got me to really thinking and making some conclusions. So at the risk of looking like a foolish outsider, I've narrowed it down to two possibilities- either the Times has a lot more than they published and just doesn't have the sourcing to put it all out there right now, or they just really missed the boat on this one. Indulging the latter possibility, this is a big screw up and it hurts the credibility of the paper to have it looking like it was running, as McCain's campaign put it, "a hit and run smear campaign," against the candidate. It's just more red meat for those out there who are eager to bunch the Times in with that familiar old boogie monster, the liberal media. All that said, I'm not willing to write off the Times on this one just yet, and here's why...

Over the past few years, there have been a few Earth shattering developments/ stories to come out of the Times. First, there was the 2003 Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal, which contributed to the resignation of executive editor Howell Raines and greatly damaged the paper's image. Then of course, there was the horrible debacle of Judith Miller's reporting on Iraqi WMDs, which further hurt the paper and helped lead the country into war with Iraq (such is the influence of the Times). Then came two stories that should have been boons for the paper, but were spun by conservatives such that many people outside liberal circles and journalism view them negatively- the NSA Wiretapping story of December 2005 and the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program story, both reported and written by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau. These stories exposed potentially illegal government surveillance programs, the scope of which was shocking to most Americans at the time.

Instead of being heralded for its dogged reporting and service as a watchdog, the Times was criticized by the right as unpatriotic and, as Rep. Peter King of New York claimed, treasonous. Nevertheless, no one at any time criticized the veracity of the stories. They were dead on and struck devastating blows to the Bush Administration's already laughable record on civil liberties. They put forth serious issues of government transparency in the execution of the War on Terror. Unlike the McCain story, the stories don't rely on conjecture and leading circumstantial evidence. They were criticized precisely because they were so accurate, not because they weren't. Conservatives derided the paper for allegedly exposing vital processes by which the government monitored terrorists and prevented future attacks, though evidence pointed to the fact that terrorists already knew about the finance tracking program and that its effectiveness was in making finance transfers difficult for terrorist groups. This was simply a way of discrediting pieces of good journalism that happened to make the Bush Administration and compliant Congressional Republicans look like Big Brother.

Now, given all this, it might be helpful to take a look at how the paper handled all these issues internally. Following the Blair Scandal, Raines was presumably forced to resign and Blair fired. While this affair was a black eye to the paper, it was not something that had a lasting mark on the paper as a whole. The Miller WMD reporting ended up tangled with the Plame Affair, which ended in the incarceration and martyrdom of Judith Miller. The paper eventually came to its senses and began to cover Iraq and the Administration with the skepticism one would expect from a paper of the Times' stature. Since the Risen/ Lichtblau stories were ultimately more of a positive than a negative of the paper, we don't need to go into the details of how they handled them after publication. Pre-publication happenings however, are another story entirely, and raise serious circumstantial questions about the substance of the McCain story. Both the NSA and finance tracking stories were heavily scrutinized and edited in-house for factual accuracy, as would be expected. Given the sensitive nature of the stories, the Times went to great lengths to make sure they were unassailable. Once primary reporting on each had drawn to a close, the paper actually went so far as to go to the Bush Administration to make sure they weren't running anything that would be a threat to national security. Editors used their discretion of course about whether the Administration's arguments were convincing, but this is not a step the paper was required to take. But they wanted to be responsible and to tie all loose ends before releasing such huge news on the public. I had the opportunity to be a part of a small meeting last year with Eric Lichtblau, who talked about the process of getting the NSA story published. The duo of Risen and Lichtblau had reported the story for months. It was extremely sensitive and their sources', not to mention their own, jobs were on the line because of it. Here's the part that raises some eyebrows. The story was finished and written in 2004, prior to the presidential election. Not wanting to make any big mistakes, and according to Lichtblau, not wanting to be seen as trying to influence the election, Times executive editor Bill Keller held the story. This from a paper that is continually bashed as being part of the liberal media.

To put this into some perspective, a newspaper, whose job it is to report vital functions of the government and inform the public, in part so that public can make informed electoral decisions, held on a potentially hugely damaging story because the editor did not want to impact the election. This was not an opinion piece. It was not some uncorroborated personal attack. This was a substantive piece of policy related journalism that should have been released for the very reason it was not. Lichtblau was furious at this response, but shared a measure of understanding with Keller. So the story was held... and held. It wasn't until almost two years later that the story finally found the light of day and made its way into the national conversation. By this point, George W. Bush had been re-elected and had put us through, to name a few, the Katrina handling debacle, the Harriet Meirs episode, the Plame denial, the 'last throes' of Cheney, etc. The following summer the terrorist finance story was published after a similarly rigorous vetting process. These stories were true. The reporters had worked ferociously and courageously to bring the stories to light and the New York Times still edited the hell out of them, ran them by the government, held them for long periods of time, and, ultimately, almost spiked them both.

This is the point. After all this, how does the same executive editor, Bill Keller, oversee the reporting and writing of the McCain story for two months, come up with nothing substantive, go through a grueling round of discussions on whether to publish it or not, and, in the end, decide to go with it- if there's absolutely nothing to the story? Could it be that the "guts" Scheiber was referring to are known to the reporters, who just can't get the hard evidence editors are asking for? Are they planning a follow-up to elaborate on the implicit accusations of the piece?

As it turns out, The New Republic has been working on a piece for an upcoming issue that highlights the internal controversy over the story and the arguments over whether to publish it or not. After it was published Wednesday by the Times, TNR released such a piece. Whether this is the whole thing or not I'm not sure. The question raised by this is, did the Times pull the trigger on the story before it was ready to pre-empt a potentially embarrassing TNR exposé. This seems unlikely in light of the fact that the publishing arguments had already happened and were indeed outlined in the TNR piece. The plot grows thicker. According to the TNR piece, one of the reporters on the story, Marilyn Thompson, quit after a months-long stint at the Times to go back to the Washington Post, where she worked for 14 years prior- apparently in part because of the papers' refusal to publish the story before now.

There are just too many holes in the story of this story to so easily dismiss it simply as a shoddy piece of journalism. I hope we get some answers in the coming weeks and months.

Why Have Two pseudo-enemies when you can have Six Real Ones?

2008-02-01T11:26:00.000-08:00

Iraq is having some troubles. You may have heard. Despite our best efforts to surge the problems away, there's a chance that the country could, and maybe should, split into three separate sovereign nations. The Kurds, who have been the only group to be truly supportive of the invasion, are now upsetting the Sunni and Shiite majorities that "run" the central government there, and the United States is in the position of having to work against Kurdish power grabs for the sake of shoring up Sunni and Shiite support... Awkward... This has been a long time in the making though.

There's some fresh hell to parse as well.

Now comes word, courtesy of the NYT op-ed page that Pakistan, in all its democratic martial law glory, is on the cusp of splitting into three different countries as well, all of them to be various degrees of pissed off at us for separate reasons. Ooh!!! and one of the likely countries to be established, Pashtunistan, would combine all the features you love about the complete lack of security on the Afghan border, with the supposed safe haven of Osama Bin Laden that you crave in Northwest Pakistan. This is what happens when you support military dictatorships. Musharraf, who has, at best been negligent in going after Al-Qaeda and at worst, may have directly supported terror efforts himself, is a leader who has, in the name of democracy, fired and placed under house arrest the majority of the country's Supreme Court when they refused to unconstitutionally reaffirm his position, turned a blind eye while numerous human rights atrocities occurred, and may or may not have had Benazir Bhutto, his chief political rival, assassinated in December. Oh, and even if he had no hand in ordering the assassination, his claim that it was "her fault" because she poked her head out of her car at a rally, doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Viva democracy!

Ladies and Gentlemen, your new Attorney General

2008-01-30T11:20:00.000-08:00

As you've probably heard, John Edward bowed out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president today, which is a bit of a surprise as far as the timing is concerned. It was rumored in some circles that Edwards was going to hang in and try to pick up as many delegates as possible through Super Tuesday so that he would have a prime bargaining position at a brokered national convention, and possibly, be the compromise candidate in the event that neither Obama or Clinton could wrestle enough votes from each other in the negotiations. Alas, it is not to be. The big question now on everyone's mind is, who will be the beneficiary of the Edwards exit. Analysis pieces here, here, and at the Caucus Blog over at the NYT.

Also of concern is if and who Edwards might endorse in these last few days before more than 20 states cast their ballots for the Dem nomination. If it wasn't assured before, it seems now that the nomination will be pretty well wrapped up by the time the polls close on Tuesday, and Edwards' support could be a huge momentum boost for the lucky recipient. What do the nominees have to do to woo Edwards? The Vice Presidency seems out of the question. Edwards has been there and done that. It didn't work out the first time, and with his wife's health issues, it doesn't seem worth his while. The attorney general slot is a different story though. Edwards has a well-documented background in trial litigation and his campaign was characterized by his staunch dedication to equality and social justice. This sounds like the perfect candidate to lead the reinvigorated Justice Department Barack Obama has expressed desire to establish. It's a job that suits Edwards in that he could pursue his passion for helping the downtrodden in a more direct way than he could have from the Oval Office. He'd certainly be a step up from Alberto "I don't recall" Gonzales and Michael "is it really torture if we only 'pretend' to drown them?" Mukasey. Election's in six days for the lot of ya'. Don't forget to vote!