Barack Obama is waging a strategic effort this week to shore up his credentials: between his impending  trip to Europe and the Middle East, Monday's op-ed on withdrawing from Iraq, a new TV ad touting his bi-partisan bill to lock down loose nuclear weapons, and now Tuesday's speech on national security in Washington, DC, Obama seems to be telling those who doubt his ability to lead on the world stage, "Yes I can."

Even the podium at his national security address said it. Sitting just below the candidate's chest, in the familiar font of Obama's campaign paraphernalia, a placard read, "Judgment to lead."

"Judgment" was Obama's rejoinder to Clinton's "experience" in the primaries; and the messaging of the last few days suggests "judgment" might also be a defense against the septuagenarian McCain, although it's not the campaign's strongest suit. Rather, Obama seems to be floating the idea of "strategy" as the way to distinguish his thinking from his opponent's. It's an esoteric argument. In essence, strategy concerns thinking about how one will approach the game as a whole; tactics involve the individual decisions that move the pieces in the desired direction.

Obama is a strategic thinker. He famously out-maneuvered Hillary and her top Democratic Party advisers to win the primaries, following a strategy no one at the time guessed could win, focusing on all fifty states, running hard in the caucus contests, seeing beyond Super Tuesday, raising vast sums from small donors on the web. Obama is also the author of a bestselling and crtically acclaimed book, no small strategic victory. Writing a book requires the author to imagine the logical sequence of events and ideas to get from the first page to the last. The exact words or scenes are the result of tactical decisions. The arc of the story is its strategy.

The arc of Obama's foreign policy strategy is to go from focusing primarily on Iraq to spreading our attention to the rest of the world -- and thus expanding our influence, security, and prosperity. It's like his fifty-state campaign strategy, spread to all four corners.

To get there, Obama suggests five points:

1) End the war in Iraq responsibly
2) End the fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, especially in Iran and Pakistan
3) Secure nuclear materials and weapons from rogue states
4) End the tyranny of oil
5) Re-build our alliances to meet the common challenges of the 21st century 

I can already hear the clamoring: How are we going to end the war in Iraq? End the tyranny of oil? What will we replace it with?

These are tactical questions. Obama is in a Big Thinker moment, comparing himself to George Marshall after World War II. To paraphrase the candidate, the Marshall Plan responded to the United States' need to contain the threat of communism while expanding freedom's frontier. Likewise, Obama identifies the challenge of the current moment -- post 9/11, post-George W. Bush -- as the need to restore our might and moral sway.

Obama is defining where we are and where we need to go, with a few rough guide posts along the way; a first step. A leader, as he sees it, needs to establish the big picture persuasively as a starting point. Note his encouraging words to soldiers: "...on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war." In other words, what our brave men and women in uniform need is a strategy!

I may be that many people, especially those who deal with the mechanics of getting stuff done -- engineers, businesspeople, former first ladies who run for president, and especially soldiers, former or otherwise -- will be frustrated with the lack of specific tactics articulated in Obama's platform.

My brother, a soldier in Iraq, was "unimpressed and even a little turned off" with the Democratic candidate's plan to leave Iraq -- it completely overlooked whether Iraqi security forces would be ready, how long it takes to redeploy not just combat brigades but assets, and the process for establishing a stable political environment in Baghdad.

Details!

...are where the devil is. If the Republicans are going to put up a good defense in November, they must show either that tactics matter -- not only for themselves, but insofar as they influence strategy -- or challenge the Democratic strategy. Obama will not get bogged down in the hows, but  continue to soar high in the whats and whys. That soaring strategizing might be strengthened in the mind of critics by a list of potential cabinet selections that includes the names of strong tacticians and evidence that a president Obama will really listen to them.

                        RALEIGH, N.C. - If Barack Obama's historic campaign to become the first black president boosts black turnout as drastically as he predicts, he could crack decades of Republican dominance across the South.

That's a big "if."

Still, an Associated Press analysis of U.S. Census and voting data from the past four presidential elections shows a potentially dramatic impact should Obama fulfill his pledge to elevate black participation by 30 percent.

That would add nearly 1.8 million votes in 11 Southern states, the analysis shows, enough to tip the balance in several that have been Republican strongholds.

Besides the likely increase in black turnout, the Illinois senator also expects a surge of young voters to help him compete in states that have been reliably red since the once solidly Democratic South flipped to the Republicans in 1964.

"I can tell you that North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama will be in play," asserts North Carolina Democratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield, an Obama adviser. "We're looking strongly at Tennessee and Mississippi."

Obama set the 30 percent goal himself last August at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.

"I guarantee you African-American turnout, if I'm the nominee, goes up 30 percent around the country, minimum," he said. "Young people's percentage of the vote goes up 25-30 percent. So we're in a position to put states in play that haven't been in play since LBJ."

The math backs up his analysis — if he can deliver the turnout he promises. In Georgia, the GOP presidential nominee's average margin of victory in the past four elections was 216,000 votes. If 30 percent more voting-age blacks go to the polls in November than the four-year average — with all else equal, and Obama capturing all of those votes — he would win the state by 84,000 ballots.

Should 90 percent of those voters go for Obama, a figure he achieved among blacks in some primaries this year, he would still have enough to win the state and its 15 electoral votes.

If Obama reached his goal of a 30 percent increase and brought all those new black voters into his fold, he could also win in Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Virginia and Florida. Wins in the six states would give him 81 new electoral votes — enough to beat Arizona Sen. John McCain even if the Republican won almost every other toss-up state in the nation, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Ohio.

A 30 percent boost in black turnout also could pull Obama into a tie with McCain in Mississippi. And in South Carolina, a conservative state that went to President Bush by 17 percentage points four years ago, Obama could come within 17,000 votes — less than a percentage point. Ditto in North Carolina, a state often mentioned as a possible Southern pickup for Obama.

Tom Schaller, a University of Maryland political science professor who has long argued that Democrats don't need to win the South to win the White House, said a 12 percent increase in black turnout across the region would be enough to swing Virginia, Florida and perhaps another state.

But he's not sold on Obama's guarantee.

"I'll believe a 30 percent increase in the black vote when I see it," Schaller said. "If Obama does it, he will have proved to doubters like me that his organizing skills in Chicago coupled with his vision and charisma are truly transformative. It'll be a thumping on Nov. 4."

Obama's advisers admit they have a distance to go.

In four Southern states that were able to provide figures by race — North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana — the number of registered black voters has risen 12 percent since the beginning of 2006. That's a remarkable run, and one that could be further buoyed by an increased turnout among blacks already registered. But white turnout has been up, too.

Also, there's no way Obama will win all black votes, even in this history-making election as the first black candidate on a major-party ballot. About 11 percent of black votes went to Bush in 2004, though that figure is expected to decrease substantially in this year's race between Obama and McCain.

And there is no guarantee that Obama will keep the support of all Democrats who voted for John Kerry, Al Gore and President Clinton in the previous three elections. An AP-Yahoo News election survey has found that 8 percent of all whites say they would be very uncomfortable voting for a black presidential candidate, and even 16 percent of Democrats say they would have at least some reservations.

"It would be an important change in the dynamics of Southern politics if Obama reached his goal of increasing black voter turnout by 30 percent," said Ferrel Guillory, who tracks Southern voting as director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "But he probably can't win simply with that. He's still got to be attractive to white voters."

There are important other factors sure to affect whether this year's vote follows the trends of past elections.

McCain's history of bucking Republican orthodoxy could draw moderates to the GOP. On the other hand, 25 percent of voters who call themselves "very conservative" are either backing someone other than McCain or remain undecided, the AP-Yahoo News election survey shows.

As for Obama's registration drive, in North Carolina's Durham County, where 38 percent of residents are black, local Obama organizers boast a volunteer roster of 4,700 people — equivalent to about 2 percent of all people who live in the city of Durham. Faulkner Fox, a local leader for Obama, said the group's members, both black and white, are registering voters at a pace she hasn't seen in 20 years of organizing.

Still, experts wonder. David Bositis, who tracks black voting trends for the Washington-based Joint Center on Political and Economic Studies, says the primaries showed "there is something going on in terms of black voters already. There's evidence they're charged up for this election." But he also said he's more comfortable predicting a turnout increase of 20 percent.

McCain's campaign so far seems comfortable with his chances to continue the GOP's success in the South. The Arizona senator is setting up a campaign organization in Virginia and is considering doing the same in North Carolina. Other staffing decision are to be determined, advisers said.

"I certainly don't fault Sen. Obama for trying to put some states in play that haven't been in play in the past," said Mike DuHaime, who advises both the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign. "It's probably a smart political move. I don't think it will pay off in terms of electoral votes."

         

                                   

         

AFP/Getty Images

       

            July 17, 2008--It is paradoxical to say it, but the success of Barack Obama frightens black people almost as much as it excites us.

To hear some barbershop talk, it is as if the racial progress in America that Obama's success has helped to crystallize also brings with it a death knell for true racial justice. If Obama becomes the president, every remaining, powerfully felt black grievance and every still deeply etched injustice will be cast out of the realm of polite discourse. White folks will just stop listening.

A black president means that America no longer has any race problem to talk about! It would mean there is no longer any special debt to African Americans to be repaid! Kiss that 40 acres and a mule goodbye, my friends (or that BMer and a Rolex in modern reparations exchange units). Dinesh D'Souza, author of The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society wins and Derrick Bell, author of Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism loses.

Although I do not personally feel this concern, I do understand this anxiety and why it has some black folks waking up in night sweats. If you believe, as most black people do, that racial discrimination is still a serious problem in this country; if you believe, as most black people do, that the public schools serving too many of our children are failing; if you believe, as most black people do, that the criminal justice system is stacked against our youth; and if you believe, as most black people do, that the economic inequality blacks face cannot be overcome without social policies focusing on the special circumstances of our communities, then a black president poses a dilemma.

Obama's success would seem to undercut these beliefs. If America really is so bad, then one has to ask: How does a black man get to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States?

What black folks fear is that a monumental success for one black man might simultaneously become a setback for the whole race. I am more hopeful than this analysis suggests. But I also appreciate the context feeding the apprehensions. Affirmative action in employment and higher education is already greatly weakened by state and local referenda around the country as well as by court rulings and federal administrative practices.  Our public schools remain troublingly segregated.

The political pressure for serious desegregation efforts was spent long ago.  Three hundred plus years of systematic discrimination—slavery, followed by Jim Crow segregation, followed by urban ghettoization—laid the foundation for what is now an enormous gap in accumulated economic wealth between blacks and whites. This gap shows little to no sign of narrowing.

To make matters worse, basic racial prejudice remains a serious problem. The primary season produced clear evidence of the substantial number of whites who will not vote for a black president, even one as exceptional and as otherwise popular as Barack Obama. Beyond this, a very large body of social-science research points to the persistence of negative cultural stereotypes about African Americans as lazy, sexually irresponsible, unintelligent and more prone to crime and violence.

These racial stereotypes carry broad social potency. Such views influence whites' perceptions of the types of neighborhoods they are willing to live in. They also affect the texture of day-to-day interactions blacks have with whites, whether dealing with waitresses, sales clerks, police officers or corporate executives. And of course such cultural beliefs carry real political potency having contributed to the general public vulnerability of affirmative action and social-welfare policies over the years.

But Obama's success worries us not just because it contradicts the narrative of an enduring racism problem, but because his whole candidacy has advanced and played upon a post-racial mythology. After all, Obama frequently speaks of his white mother, his immigrant Kenyan father, his "typical white person" grandmother and how his story of hybridity and political bridge-building "could only happen in America." The prominent post-racial drumbeat leaves some wondering: Where are the black people in this tale?

Or, to put a high-dungeon, barbershop, black-cultural nationalist spin on it: A black man who has gotten the Democratic nomination for president without articulating any specific agenda targeted at the interests of African Americans has set back the cause of racial justice. He has, in effect, actively collaborated in removing a discussion of the needs of black communities from the public-policy agenda.               

Yes, there is still a deep racial wound in the soul of America. It will be years before the wound has really healed. African Americans have every right to press for serious redress of these grievances, and we must insist that our community leaders do so. But, I also submit, it is not the task of a presidential candidate to make this his or her core agenda. We are all better off with Obama pursuing what the distinguished Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson calls a "universalistic policy" agenda.

Such an agenda speaks broadly to the interests of all Americans, not just to those who might benefit from affirmative action or anti-discrimination efforts. Proving that an African American can do just this with sophistication, eloquence and genuine mainstream, multiracial electoral appeal is a huge political achievement. This achievement will pay dividends, I have no doubt, that will advance the specific needs and interests of black communities.

Yet, it's true that an Obama presidency will undercut certain race-based claims in political discourse and public policy. Critically, we as a people have arrived at a point where a whole new style of intervention and treatment is likely to be needed. The politics of the perpetual outsiders demanding inclusion will finally end (read: Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson will get less face time). And good riddance (perhaps). We've come too far over too many years for shrill protest to still be our main political posture today, no matter how necessary and relevant in the past.

It is time to put in place all of the elements of what it takes to be serious and effective insiders; insiders who can lay claim not just to important backstage roles (i.e., Vernon Jordan) but all of the major front-stage ones as well (i.e., Harold Ford, Deval Patrick, Colin Powell, Donna Brazile, Condoleezza Rice).

Like it or not, this is our moment as a people to shift decisively to a politics of those who are full-fledged, thoroughly integrated players in the big game.  We still have burdens to bear and claims to press that reflect our distinct experience and circumstances. There is struggle against racism that must continue. But insisting on an agenda for our most ambitious elected officials that has basically been in steady retreat since the 1978 Bakke decision is not the answer.

We need to stop all the whispering, all the doubting and all the fear. Obama's success is unalloyed grounds for celebration and rejoicing. It says great things about how far the nation has come and about the future for black people. But the one thing it does not say is that the struggle for racial justice is over. It ain't. The White House is not racism's final frontier. The brothers in the barbershop are right on this one.

Because America is still segregated, because there is still serious anti-black discrimination and bias, because racial prejudice remains embedded in our cultural DNA, the struggle against racism must go on. Obama's success is proof that those who waged this struggle in the past did not do so in vain.

The next stages of this struggle will call for new strategies, new ideas and almost certainly a larger dose of self-help and self-assertion from within black America itself. Obama's Father's Day remarks on absentee fathers and taking responsibility for children hit just the right note in this regard. I have rock-solid faith that having Barack Obama in the White House will take matters toward full realization of that next level of inclusion and social justice.

            Lawrence             Bobo is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Sociology and of African and African American studies at Harvard University.          

State Legislature Passes Bill Mandating That Individuals Who Complete Felony Sentences Be Informed Of Voting Rights.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 16, 2008

NEW ORLEANS - Louisiana’s lawmakers stood up for democracy when they passed, and Gov. Bobby Jindal signed, a new law requiring the Department of Public Safety and Corrections to notify people leaving its supervision about how to regain their voting rights. The law, Act No. 604, also requires the Department to provide these individuals with voter registration applications.

“By requiring notice of voting rights reinstatement to those completing their felony sentences, the Louisiana legislature and Gov. Jindal have taken an important step towards ensuring that all of Louisiana’s eligible voters can exercise their fundamental right to vote,” said Marjorie Esman, Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana, which lobbied in favor of the bill.

“The ACLU of Louisiana will be working with Voice of the Ex-Offender (VOTE) to help ensure that the Department of Public Safety and Corrections implements the bill quickly and effectively,” said Norris Henderson, VOTE’s founder and director.

Louisiana

In

Louisiana

Research has shown that people with criminal records who vote are half as likely to be re-arrested as their non-voting counterparts, and people who vote are also more likely to give to charity, volunteer, attend school board meetings, serve on juries, be interested in politics, and cooperate with fellow citizens in community affairs.

“So in addition to ensuring compliance with

Louisiana

Numerous criminal justice, legal and religious associations support voting rights for people who have completed their sentences, including the American Correctional Association, the American Probation and Parole Association, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the American Bar Association. 

“The enactment of this legislation shows that the right to vote transcends partisan politics,” Esman said. “This bill is about the strength of our democracy.”

Additional information about the ACLU of Louisiana can be found online at:

www.laaclu.org

Additional information about the ACLU’s effort to end felony disfranchisement can be found online at: www.aclu.org/votingrights

One of the common Republican criticisms directed at a potential Obama presidency is that its first two years will be marked by instability, poor management, and inexperience. But if managing an enterprise as large and politically complex as a presidential campaign is any indication of how either of these candidates will perform day one in the White House, it is McCain's campaign, not Obama's that should be worrying American voters.

Since announcing his candidacy last April, McCain has been unable to get control of his organization. The campaign's messaging, strategic planning, grassroots, and fundraising operations all have been mired in disarray. Most of the mess is attributable to the candidate's inability to establish a clear chain of command at the top and to quell infighting among senior staff, a somewhat stunning revelation when considering McCain's stature in the Party and past experiences as a presidential contender. But while the chaotic state of McCain headquarters has become a well worn subject over the past two weeks, with a litany of Republican elected officials and strategists questioning the candidate's chances in November, as well as mainstream media figures such as Bill Kristol and Adam Nagourney writing pieces chronicling the myriad and ongoing staffing problems, few seem focused on the more substantive issue of what all of this means for a McCain first term if he is actually elected.

With only 110 days left in the election, there is no discernible answer as to what a McCain presidency would look like, who would be the key players organizationally, where the primary policy focus would be directed, and how he would avoid the mistakes of management and judgment that have thus far pervaded his campaign. In fact, if the past year of inner circle shakeups is any proxy at all for how a first term might be run under McCain leadership, it is a disquieting reality.

• First, McCain Campaign Version 1.0 was run literally into the ground by July of 2007 by advisors John Weaver and Terry Nelson, who under McCain's supervision mismanaged his finances so badly that they bankrupted the campaign. Overspending on offices, staff (Weaver hired his fiancée and her brother), polling, and consultants (Weaver increased his fees to $20,000 a month even as the campaign stumbled) forced the campaign to take out private loans, a matter now under FEC investigation, simply to stay afloat.
• Then came Campaign Version 2.0 in August 2007, which continued on uninterrupted through June 2008 with McCain's hiring of lobbyist Rick Davis and number two Charlie Black. Far from achieving the goal of correcting the earlier mistakes of the Weaver/Nelson era, Davis and Black instead exposed more deeply than ever McCain's organizational ineptitude, including his unwillingness to completely banish or fire past advisors no matter how incompetent, his failure to define clear roles through established hierarchy, and his inability to provide a philosophical framework from which his campaign could launch a coherent attack on Obama. As Nagourney's piece last week pointed out, early missteps by McCain were not met with decisive action, but rather by incorporating a "swirl of competing spheres of influence, clusters of friends, consultants and media advisers who all represented a matrix of clashing ambitions and festering feuds."
• Finally, Campaign Version 3.0 arrived in early July 2008, when McCain announced a third campaign shakeup that almost inconceivably fell exactly on the 1 year anniversary of his 2007 ousting of John Weaver. This latest "adjustment" appears to have firmly passed control from Rick Davis to Bush-Rove era veteran Steve Schmidt (incidentally in the process making McCain even more vulnerable to claims that his campaign is being cast in the mold of a Bush third term). But if McCain believes that the promotion of Schmidt will finally put to rest the problems of the past, he is likely to be disappointed again. His inner circle remains filled with people who have been demoted without losing their official titles, like Davis, who continues to occupy the title of campaign manager even as Steve Schmidt manages the campaign, a complicating fact that guarantees infighting will persist. Even more concerning is the revelation that McCain himself may still be unsettled with his inner circle even today, a point highlighted by Bill Kristol's article implicating the lingering influence of former McCain senior aide Mike Murphy over McCain. With all of this it seems likely that McCain Campaign Version 4.0 or some hybrid thereof is not far off.

Contrast this against the Obama organization and the differences are stark. They remain focused, organized, and well managed. Notwithstanding some shuffling of his policy team earlier in the year, Obama has made no major changes to his inner circle since announcing his candidacy. Moreover, the chain of command is defined and clear. At the top of the campaign sits David Alexrod and David Plouffe, with the former focused on message and communications and the latter on operations, political, and grassroots. There is no question as to their ability to make decisions on behalf of the candidate. This structural coherence has allowed the campaign to largely avoid the political infighting between staff that so paralyzes McCain's efforts. But perhaps even more impressive has been Obama's steady hand at the helm. He has maneuvered and managed his unlikely campaign through difficult waters in the primaries, defeating the Clintons, and so far effectively defending against the early attacks of McCain leading into the general. He also has adeptly unified the two houses of the campaign effort, the presidential campaign and the DNC, typically a messy business and a logistical nightmare. This organizational leadership augurs well for Obama's ability to execute a seamless convention later this Summer and enter the general with a strong party infrastructure behind him. Even more important is what it says about how he might manage his first few years in the White House if elected. With the Fall approaching and the campaigning reaching its peak, McCain's current political team will no doubt ratchet up the charges of inexperience and youth against Obama. But these cries will likely fall on deaf ears if Obama continues to deliver a consistent message and organize effectively through November. Who knows, though, maybe McCain Campaign Version 4.0 has something better up their sleeves that we haven't yet seen.

Of course, what Jackson said was way out of line and wrong. That's an easy call.

But the bigger picture is the ugliness of Jackson's sentiment as it relates to -- and somewhat represents -- the discomfort of the black civil rights leadership of yesteryear with this new blood that some of them seem to think hasn't been properly vetted by the "old guard."

Some members of this senior generation of leaders seem to think that perhaps Obama should have sought approval from them before running, and since he didn't, then he deserves to be held in contempt. He isn't one of "them," he doesn't owe "them," and therefore cannot be trusted.

Well, as one of "them" -- not only a member of that generation of leadership but one who counts many such leaders, including Jackson, as friends and colleagues -- I have to say that it is time for the old guard to step back and let the new guard take control. Without question, that new guard is best represented by Obama.

I realize quite well how difficult it is to step down after so many years in the limelight, and after having paid so many dues. It's easy to fall into the trap of believing that we are somehow owed something by this new generation, that we should have one hand on the steering wheel at all times.

We do not have that right. The simple truth is that our generation -- my generation -- has not only failed to fulfill the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, but we have also failed this younger generation. We gave them nothing, and yet it is a member of this generation that is coming closer to fulfilling King's dream than any one of us ever thought possible.

The current condition of America's black youths -- and black America in general -- did not come about as a result of President George W. Bush's atrocious economic policies. This is a crisis that has been brewing for the past 40 years, ever since the civil rights movement was supposedly coming to a close because we had achieved integration -- as if that all by itself was reason enough to proclaim success. Since then, more than $30 million has been spent by the government on poverty programs, yet even with all that we have failed them.

What we, as members of the old guard, need to realize is that some of us are reflexively reacting to situations based on the past, because the past is our experience. It's what we know best.

But the politics that we understood has been forever changed into something that few of us are equipped to comprehend fully. And if we are not equipped to comprehend it adequately, then how can we convince ourselves that we should lead it? That's like demanding to drive a stick shift when all you know is automatic.

For too long, we have participated in our own genocide. We have placed the noose around our own necks. So when a member of the younger generation of leaders comes to us with a different kind of hopeful message -- one not written by us -- we need to give them the opportunity to lead and to serve.

Most certainly we will not always agree with the message, but we have an obligation to support the messenger.

After all, who are we to say that our message was always unmistakably on point? I'm old enough to know better, and so are my friends and colleagues in the civil rights movement.

One final thing: We keep making the mistake of looking at Obama as an African-American leader. He is an American leader, and there is a difference. Jackson ran as an African-American leader, as did the Rev. Al Sharpton, because that was the only option available to them, and that's fine. Obama is the next step in our political evolution.

Perhaps you like it, perhaps you don't. But you would be wrong to disrespect it.

THE REV. JIM HOLLEY is pastor of Little Rock Baptist Church in Detroit. Write to him in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226 or at oped@freepress.com.

   By DAVID PAUL KUHN   

It may not sway many voters, but on Friday, as Barack Obama embarked on an extended trip abroad intended in large part to relieve concerns about his commander in chief bona fides, the terms of debate on Iraq began a dramatic shift that appears to favor his candidacy.

President Bush, who’d been opposed to any timetable for removing American forces from Iraq, reached an agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to set a “general time horizon” for a withdrawal.

“It’s a devastating blow to the McCain campaign — not just that Maliki moved to Obama’s position but that Bush did as well,” said Richard Holbrooke, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations for the Clinton administration.

Saturday, the shift continued when the German magazine Der Spiegel ran an interview with Maliki in which he called for U.S. troops to withdraw “as soon as possible, as far as we're concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

(While a spokesperson for Maliki later claimed the prime minister’s comments "were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately,” Der Spiegel stood by its report and The New York Times late last night verified the translation’s accuracy.)

For the first time in the national security debate, Obama’s advisers believe that McCain has been placed on the defensive, since his reluctance to support a “time horizon” now differs not only with the position of his Democratic opponent but also with those of the White House and the Iraqi prime minister.

Staffers for the McCain campaign emphasized the continued differences between Obama and the president, particularly that the White House has not agreed to a specific time frame.

Maliki’s comments, though, have put McCain in a difficult position, in which his support for the surge and for a continued troop presence seems to defy the wishes of the democratically elected Iraqi government.

Shortly after the prime minister’s interview appeared, Democrats began circulating a 2004 interview with McCain in which he responded to a question asking what he would do if “a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there” by saying, “If it was an elected government of Iraq ... I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.”

In a statement issued several hours after Maliki’s comment was published, McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, though, said that “timing is not as important as whether we leave with victory and honor, which is of no apparent concern to Barack Obama."

By Sunday night, the McCain campaign had begun revising its position, telling Politico that it was not necessarily opposed to setting a “time horizon” in the future, so long as that clock was started only after other objectives were met.

“John McCain supports reducing troop levels based on the conditions on the ground and the security of Iraq and if, and only if, that is consistent with a ‘time horizon’ then of course he would support that policy,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

The McCain campaign also stressed that they do not view Maliki’s statement to the German magazine as an official Iraqi position, and that a McCain administration would consider the view of Iraq’s government a key factor in determining America’s policy in that nation.

“There is an obvious push in Iraq to assume sovereignty in their own country but I’m not sure that they want us to leave for security reasons,” said Max Boot, a McCain foreign policy adviser and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I don’t see any evidence that the government of Iraq or the parliament have come to the conclusion to call for a withdrawal within 16 months.”

The White House has “gone from no timeline, to a timetable,” said Susan Rice, Obama’s foreign policy adviser. “I think [the White House] discovered in terms of their negotiations with the Iraqi government that the Iraqi [position is] strikingly close to Obama’s position, if not identical.”

Maliki's push for a timetable — which his national security adviser hinted at two weeks ago — reflected the internal logic of Iraqi politics, which echoes the dynamic here in the United States: leaders, constrained by the unpopularity of American ongoing military presence in Iraq, feel pressure from their constituents to make a convincing case that they are committed to ending the American military presence.

Maliki’s interview in a German magazine, which appeared on the first full day of Obama’s overseas trip, seemed aimed at an American, as well as an Iraqi, readership. It’s the most aggressive comment Maliki has made to date while navigating a complicated political dynamic in which the prime minister of a sovereign nation has to take care with his comments about the US troops that continue to run much of his country lest he be accused of meddling in a foreign nation’s politics.

"Maliki needs to demonstrate to the Iraqi people that the United States is not going to be around forever," said David Dunford, a retired career foreign service officer and former ambassador to Oman who spent the spring of 2003 in Baghdad working for the Coalition Provisional Authority as a Senior Ministerial Liaison to Iraq's Foreign Ministry. "The Status of Forces Agreement is a public test of how the Iraqi government is going to look to Iraqis."

Obama supporters hope to trap McCain on the surge, even while conceding that violence in Iraq has dropped sharply since troop level went up: Either McCain is correct that the surge has changed the national dynamic, in which case it’s no better than a vestige, or it hasn’t, in which case it’s pointless to sustain it.

McCain has tried to counter by shifting the focus of his argument. According to a McCain adviser, the campaign began re-focusing its foreign policy argument last week to emphasize that it was the surge in troop levels, supported by McCain and opposed by Obama, that has allowed for the discussion of a scheduled withdrawal of American forces, opposed by McCain and supported by Obama. Still, that means arguing the surge has already accomplished its goals, which cuts against his argument for maintaining an American military presence in Iraq.

When McCain has used his military background to tout his commander-in-chief credentials, Obama has responded by claiming that his initial opposition to the war in Iraq demonstrates his sounder judgment on world affairs. Until this week, Obama’s argument seemed entirely backward-looking — it was, after all, not a policy proposal but rather a boast about his view on a decision that had already been made. Now, though, McCain’s support for the surge seems equally academic going forward, as Washington and Bagdhad have moved toward Obama’s call for a timetable for withdrawal.

Obama’s upcoming meeting with Maliki may clarify the extent to which the Iraqi prime minister is throwing his weight behind Obama’s position, and the extent to which he’s using it to gain leverage over a lame duck president eager for a foreign policy triumph.

“Maliki’s comments are not going to determine the outcome of the election,” Holbrooke said. “But they still leave McCain in a very tough spot and could reshape the dynamic of the debate on Iraq dramatically in Obama’s favor.”

Avi Zenilman contributed to this story.

The Baltimore Sun's Washington bureau chief Paul West ominously warns: "European adulation for Obama will make him the continent's poodle."

And even Maureen Dowd appears to have bought into the McCainites' Euro-phobia, suggesting Obama "can't be seen as too insidery with the Euro-crats" lest Obama-wary Americans "wonder what he's doing there, when they can't pay for gas, when the dollar is the Euro's chew toy, when Bud is going Belgian and when the Chrysler Building has Arab landlords." And don't forget all those German cars on our roads. Which we can't afford to drive because gas is too expensive (for which, according to McCain, we can blame Obama).

Of course, at no point does the McCain campaign or anyone in the media point out what, exactly, is the danger to America if our closest allies actually, you know, don't hate us.

They also fail to mention that along with being our allies, the European countries Obama is visiting are also democracies -- so it's a lot easier for their leaders to make nice with us if their constituents don't view our president as an object of disdain and ridicule.

And, as Jason Linkins points out, George Bush keeps giving them reasons for ongoing disdain and ridicule. As does McCain. Is it really better for America's standing in the world to have a president who doesn't know that Czechoslovakia no longer exists and who thinks there is a border between Iraq and Pakistan?

Iraq has shown us what an essentially go-it-alone war looks like. 

And the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan -- resulting in more U.S. troop fatalities there in May and June than in Iraq -- is a tragic reminder of the consequences of a U.S. military spread too thin, and of not having our allies fully backing our efforts.

Given a recent poll showing the German public prefers Obama to McCain 67 percent to 6 percent, it's no surprise that McCain would try to spin his opponent's popularity there as a black mark on his record. It's also no surprise that McCain isn't willing to admit that our allies' antipathy toward Bush and his policies -- exacerbated by the contempt the Bushies always seemed to delight in directing at them (see Rummy on "Old Europe") -- has cost us dearly in blood, treasure, and goodwill. But it is a surprise that the media are so eagerly parroting the "popular is a problem" meme.

Thankfully, most Americans understand that having a president who is lauded around the world is infinitely better than having one who is loathed.

The Daily Voice Staff Reporter

"There is no such thing in America as race transcendence, and Obama's going to find that out real soon," says talk show host Tavis Smiley.

During an interview with the Associated Press, Smiley suggested it is not possible to become "post-racial" because "if you push the envelope too far, you're going to hear about it."

Smiley also defended himself from critics who charged that he was overly critical of Senator Barack Obama this year after Obama chose not to attend Smiley's annual "State of the Black Union" event in February.

In a statement issued then, Smiley denied charges of jealousy and said he had enjoyed a collegial relationship with Obama for many years.  Smiley said Obama's failure to attend the event was a "missed opportunity." After the controversy, the talk show host said, "I personally have no intention, no interest in discussing this matter beyond this commentary no matter what's said about me."

But now he's talking about the issue again, if not the specific incident. "Just because Barack Obama is black, doesn't mean he gets a pass on being held accountable on issues that matter to black people," Smiley told AP. "I'm not an Obama critic or a McCain critic. The term itself is dismissive and insulting," he said.

"This is what I do -- asking critical questions," Smiley continued. "Now some of you regard it as keeping a brother down, holding a brother back. Because you regard it that way, you don't understand that this is the role that I've always played."

THE best thing to happen to John McCain was for the three network anchors to leave him in the dust this week while they chase Barack Obama on his global Lollapalooza tour. Were voters forced to actually focus on Mr. McCain’s response to our spiraling economic crisis at home, the prospect of his ascension to the Oval Office could set off a panic that would make the IndyMac Bank bust in Pasadena look as merry as the Rose Bowl.

     

Frank Rich/The New York Times

       

“In a time of war,” Mr. McCain said last week, “the commander in chief doesn’t get a learning curve.” Fair enough, but he imparted this wisdom in a speech that was almost a year behind Mr. Obama in recognizing Afghanistan as the central front in the war against Al Qaeda. Given that it took the deadliest Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul since 9/11 to get Mr. McCain’s attention, you have to wonder if even General Custer’s learning curve was faster than his.

Mr. McCain still doesn’t understand that we can’t send troops to Afghanistan unless they’re shifted from Iraq. But simple math, to put it charitably, has never been his forte. When it comes to the central front of American anxiety — the economy — his learning curve has flat-lined.

In 2000, he told an interviewer that he would make up for his lack of attention to “those issues.” As he entered the 2008 campaign, Mr. McCain was still saying the same, vowing to read “Greenspan’s book” as a tutorial. Last weekend, the resolutely analog candidate told The New York Times he is at last starting to learn how “to get online myself.” Perhaps he’ll retire his abacus by Election Day.

Mr. McCain’s fiscal ineptitude has received so little scrutiny in some press quarters that his chief economic adviser, the former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, got a free pass until the moment he self-immolated on video by whining about “a nation of whiners.” The McCain-Gramm bond, dating back 15 years, is more scandalous than Mr. Obama’s connection with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mr. McCain has been so dependent on Mr. Gramm for economic policy that he sent him to newspaper editorial board meetings, no doubt to correct the candidate’s numbers much as Joe Lieberman cleans up after his confusions of Sunni and Shia.

Just two weeks before publicly sharing his thoughts about America’s “mental recession,” Mr. Gramm laid out equally incendiary views in a Wall Street Journal profile that portrayed him as “almost certainly” the McCain choice for Treasury secretary. Mr. Gramm said that the former chief executive of AT&T, Ed Whitacre, was “probably the most exploited worker in American history” since he received only a $158 million pay package rather than the “billions” he deserved for his success in growing Southwestern Bell.

But no one in the news media seemed to notice Mr. Gramm’s naked expression of the mind-set he’d bring to a McCain White House. And few journalists have vetted the presumptive Treasury secretary’s post-Senate history as an executive at UBS. The stock of that banking giant has lost 70 percent of its value in a year after its reckless adventures in the subprime lending market. It’s now fending off federal investigation for helping the megarich avoid taxes.

Mr. McCain made a big show of banishing Mr. Gramm after his whining “gaffe,” but it’s surely at most a temporary suspension. When the candidate said back in January that there’s nobody he knows who is stronger on economic issues than his old Senate pal, he was telling the truth. Left to his own devices — or those of his new No. 1 economic surrogate, Carly Fiorina — Mr. McCain is clueless. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, a supporter, said that Mr. McCain’s latest panacea for high gas prices, offshore drilling, is snake oil  —  and then announced his availability to serve as energy czar in an Obama administration.

The term flip-flopping doesn’t do justice to Mr. McCain’s self-contradictory economic pronouncements because that implies there’s some rational, if hypocritical, logic at work. What he serves up instead is plain old incoherence, as if he were compulsively consulting one of those old Magic 8 Balls. In a single 24-hour period in April, Mr. McCain went from saying there’s been “great economic progress” during the Bush presidency to saying “Americans are not better off than they were eight years ago.” He reversed his initial condemnation of mortgage bailouts in just two weeks.

In February Mr. McCain said he would balance the federal budget by the end of his first term even while extending the gargantuan Bush tax cuts. In April he said he’d accomplish this by the end of his second term. In July he’s again saying he’ll do it in his first term. Why not just say he’ll do it on Inauguration Day? It really doesn’t matter since he’s never supplied real numbers that would give this promise even a patina of credibility.

Mr. McCain’s plan for Social Security reform is “along the lines that President Bush proposed.” Or so he said in March. He came out against such “privatization” in June (though his policy descriptions still support it). Last week he indicated he isn’t completely clear on what Social Security does. He called the program’s premise  —  young taxpayers foot the bill for their elders (including him)  —  an “absolute disgrace.”

Given that Mr. McCain’s sole private-sector job was a fleeting stint in public relations at his father-in-law’s beer distributorship, he comes by his economic ignorance honestly. But there’s no A team aboard the Straight Talk Express to fill him in. His campaign economist, the former Bush adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, could be found in the June 5 issue of American Banker suggesting even at that late date that we still don’t know “the depth of the housing crisis” and proposing that “monitoring is the right thing to do in these circumstances.”

Ms. Fiorina, the ubiquitous new public face of McCain economic policy, adds nothing to the mix beyond her incessant display of corporate jargon, from “trend lines” to “start-ups.” Before she was fired at Hewlett-Packard, its stock had declined 50 percent during her five-plus years in charge. She missed earning projections  —  by 23 percent in one quarter  —  much as she now misrepresents both the Obama and McCain records. This month she said Mr. McCain wanted to require insurance plans to cover birth control medications along with Viagra, when in fact he had voted against it.

Ms. Fiorina received a $42 million payout (half in cash) from H.P., according to a shareholders’ subsequent lawsuit. With this inspiring résumé, she now aspires to be Mr. McCain’s running mate. So does the irrepressible Mitt Romney, who actually was a business whiz before serving as Massachusetts’s governor. Beltway wisdom has it that the addition of such a corporate star will remedy Mr. McCain’s fiscal flatulence.

But Mr. Romney, while more plausible than Ms. Fiorina, is hardly what America wants at this desperate time. His leveraged buyout dealings as co-founder of Bain Capital induced plant closings, mass layoffs and outsourcing. If Mr. McCain truly intends to “put our country’s interests” above politics and reach across the aisle to move the nation forward, as he constantly tells us, why not go for a vice president who’s the very best fit for the huge challenges at hand?

The obvious choice would be Michael Bloomberg — who, as a former Republican turned independent, would necessitate that Mr. McCain reach only halfway across the aisle, and to someone who is his friend rather than a vanquished rival he is learning to tolerate.

Romney vs. Bloomberg is not a close contest. Bloomberg L.P. has roughly three times the revenues and employees of Bain &  Company, where Mr. Romney ultimately served as chief executive. Mr. Romney rescued the Salt Lake City Olympics while running it in 2002, but Mayor Bloomberg revitalized New York, the nation’s largest metropolis, after the most devastating attack in our history. The city he manages has more than twice the budget of Mr. Romney’s state.

Yes, Mr. Bloomberg is a closet Democrat and an alpha dog who doesn’t want to be a second banana. And his views on gay civil rights and abortion would roil the G.O.P. base. But Mr. Romney shared some of those same views before he flip-flopped, and besides, these are not ordinary times. Millions of Americans are losing their homes and jobs. Whole industries are going belly up. The national crisis at hand, not yesterday’s culture wars, should drive the vice-presidential pick.

Mr. McCain reminds us every day how principled he is. That presumably means he’d risk a revolt by his party’s dwindling agents of intolerance and do everything in his power to persuade Mr. Bloomberg to join his ticket in the spirit of patriotic sacrifice. The politics could be advantageous too. A Bloomberg surprise could impress independents and keep the television audience tuned in to a G.O.P. convention that will unfold in the shadow of Mr. Obama’s address to 75,000 screaming fans in Denver.

But this is fantasy political baseball, not reality. Mr. McCain, sad to say, hung up his old maverick’s spurs the day he embraced the Bush tax cuts he had once opposed as “too tilted to the wealthy.” And Mr. Bloomberg? It’s hard to picture a titan who built his empire on computer terminals investing any capital, political or otherwise, in a chief executive who is still learning how to do, as Mr. McCain puts it, “a Google.”

Rolling Stone reports on the Color Of Change/MoveOn petition that rapper Nas brought to the offices of Fox News today:     About four hours after the announcement that his controversial, politically charged ninth album was number one in the country, Nas was on a small podium in front of Fox News headquarters in New York City protesting what he sees as racist attacks against Black Americans and presidential candidate Barack Obama. In a brief prepared statement, the multi-platinum rapper pointed out examples of what he and ColorOfChange see as a long racist smear campaign against the Obama family: The onscreen graphic that referred to Michelle Obama as the Senator's "baby mama"; Bill O'Reilly casually using the phrase "lynching party" to refer to attacks on the Senator's wife; referencing to the couple's infamous fist thump as a "terrorist fist jab." Said Nas, "Fox poisons this country every time they air racist propaganda and try to call it news. This should outrage every American that Fox uses hateful language to talk about the person that may be the first black president."     The rapper stood next to 19 neatly stacked cardboard boxes, with the number 620,127 taped to the side of each one -- over 600,000 signatures gathered by ColorOfChange demanding that network president Roger Ailes "find a solution to address racial stereotyping and hate-mongering before it hits the airwaves." Fox rejected the petitions, but Brave New Films says that Comedy Central's The Colbert Report will accept them instead.

Watch video of the scene from Color of Change:

"This Is The Moment When We Must Defeat Terror And Dry Up The Well Of Extremism... A New Generation - Our Generation - Must Make Our Mark On The World"... Police Estimate More Than 200,000 At Speech... McCain Reacts: "I'd Love To Give A Speech In Germany... But I'd Much Prefer To Do It As President"


Watch Video Here:

By Sophia A. Nelson

There she is -- no, not Miss America, but the Angela-Davis-Afro-wearing, machine-gun-toting, angry, unpatriotic Michelle Obama, greeting her husband with a fist bump instead of a kiss on the cheek.

It was supposed to be satire, but the caricature of Barack Obama and his wife that appeared on the cover of the New Yorker last week rightly caused a major flap. And among black professional women like me and many of my sisters in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, who happened to be gathered last week in Washington for our 100th anniversary celebration, the mischaracterization of Michelle hit the rawest of nerves.

Welcome to our world.

We've watched with a mixture of pride and trepidation as the wife of the first serious African American presidential contender has weathered recent campaign travails -- being called unpatriotic for a single offhand remark, dubbed a black radical because of something she wrote more than 20 years ago and plastered with the crowning stereotype: "angry black woman." And then being forced to undergo a politically mandated "makeover" to soften her image and make her more palatable to mainstream America.

Sad to say, but what Obama has undergone, though it's on a national stage and on a much more prominent scale, is nothing new to professional African American women. We endure this type of labeling all the time. We're endlessly familiar with the problem Michelle Obama is confronting -- being looked at, as black women, through a different lens from our white counterparts, who are portrayed as kinder, gentler souls who somehow deserve to be loved and valued more than we do. So many of us are hoping that Michelle -- as an elegant and elusive combination of successful career woman, supportive wife and loving mother -- can change that.

"Ain't I a woman?" Sojourner Truth famously asked 157 years ago. Her ringing question, demanding why black women weren't accorded the same privileges as their white counterparts, still sums up the African American woman's dilemma today: How are we viewed as women, and where do we fit into American life?

"Thanks to the hip-hop industry," one prominent black female journalist recently said to me, all black women are "deemed 'sexually promiscuous video vixens' not worthy of consideration. If other black women speak up, we're considered angry black women who complain. This society can't even see a woman like Michelle Obama. All it sees is a black woman and attaches stereotypes."

Black women have been mischaracterized and stereotyped since the days of slavery and minstrel shows. In more recent times, they've been portrayed onscreen and in popular culture as either sexually available bed wenches in such shows as the 2000 docudrama "Sally Hemings: An American Scandal," ignorant and foolish servants such as Prissy from "Gone With the Wind" or ever-smiling housekeepers, workhorses who never complain and never tire, like the popular figure of Aunt Jemima.

Even in the 21st century, black women are still bombarded with media and Internet images that portray us as loud, aggressive, violent and often grossly obese and unattractive. Think of the movies "Norbit" or "Big Momma's House," or of the only two black female characters in "Enchanted," an overweight, aggressive traffic cop and an angry divorcée amid all the white princesses.

On the other hand, when was the last time you saw a smart, accomplished black professional woman portrayed on mainstream television or in the movies? If Claire Huxtable on "The Cosby Show" comes to mind, remember that she left the scene 16 years ago.

The reality is that in just a generation, many black women -- who were mostly domestics, schoolteachers or nurses in the post-slavery Jim Crow era -- have become astronauts, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, engineers and PhDs. You name it, and black women have achieved it. The most popular woman on daytime television is Oprah Winfrey. Condoleezza Rice is secretary of state.

And yet my generation of African American women -- we're called, in fact, the Claire Huxtable generation -- hasn't managed to become successfully integrated into American popular culture. We're still looking for respect in the workplace, where, more than anything else, black women feel invisible. It's a term that comes up again and again. "In my profession, white men mentor young whites on how to succeed," a financial executive told me, but "they're either indifferent to or dogmatically document the mistakes black women make. Their indifference is the worst, because it means we're invisible."

As someone who recently left a large law firm to work in the corporate sector, I have to agree. I liked my firm, but I always felt that I had to sink or swim on my own. I didn't get the kind of mentoring that I saw white colleagues, male and female, getting all around me. The firm was actually one of the better ones when it came to diversity, and yet of 600 partners, only five were black women.

A 2007 American Bar Association report titled "Visible Invisibility" describes how black women in the legal profession face the "double burden" of being both black and female, meaning that they enjoy none of the advantages that black men gain from being male, or that white women gain from being white.

Invisibility isn't the only problem. I run an organization dedicated to supporting African American professional women and often run empowerment workshops at various conferences. At a recent such workshop, I asked the participants to list some words that would describe how they believe they're viewed in the workplace and the culture at large. These are the kinds of words that came back: "loud," "angry," "intimidating," "mean," "opinionated," "aggressive," "hard." All painful words. Yet asked to describe themselves, the same women offered gentler terms: "strong," "loving," "dependable," "compassionate."

Where does the disconnect come from? Possibly from the way black women have been forced into roles of strength for decades. "Black women are the original multitaskers of necessity," says one nonprofit executive. "We've perfected it because we've been doing it for so long. But people don't appreciate the skill it requires, and they don't recognize the toll it takes on us as human beings."

For all our success in the professional world, we have paid a significant price in our private and emotional lives. A life of preordained singleness (by chance, not by choice) is fast becoming the plight of alarming numbers of professional black women in America. The fact is that the more money and education a black woman has, the less likely she is to marry and have a family.

Consider these stunning statistics: As of 2007, according to the New York Times, 70 percent of professional black women were unmarried. Black women are five times more likely than white women to be single at age 40. In 2003, Newsweek reported that there are more black women than black men (24 percent to 17 percent) in the professional-managerial class. According to Department of Education statistics cited by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, black women earn 67 percent of all bachelor's degrees awarded to blacks, as well as 71 percent of all master's degrees and 65 percent of all doctoral degrees.

With all the challenges facing professional black women today, we hope that Michelle Obama will defy the negative stereotypes about us. And that, now that a strong professional black woman is center stage, she'll bring to light what we already know: that an accomplished black woman can be a loyal and supportive wife