Gray's Gazette

Back to Work

2011-08-21T15:47:00.004-05:00

After too long away, I've decided to re-open this blog with a more clearly-defined purpose in mind, i.e., the creation of a viable third political party offering a valid option to the existing partisan duopoly.

Having spent much of my life in and out of politics – and playing a significant role (at the local and state level) in both parties, I've reached the firm conclusion that they simply will not do. In my view, both the Republican and Democratic parties have failed the nation since at least the late 1960's. Given their present ideas, or lack thereof, neither seems ready to offer effective leadership in the decade or two left to me as an active citizen.

Enough is enough.

Today's Republican Party can be understood, if at all, as the victim of some sort of brain injury. The party and its leaders increasingly embrace policies designed to appeal to the least-informed among us – policies which appeal to bigotry, ignorance, superstition, fear, narcissism and greed. After the recent kerfluffle over the debt ceiling, it is scarcely possible to take the Republican Party seriously as an organization of responsible adults. There are individual exceptions, but as the party continues shifting further to the right, these rational Republicans have become an endangered species.

Today's Democrats are scarcely better. Where they are right on the issues - which they occasionally are - they lack the will power and political savvy to make good. More often, they, too, are simply wrong – though generally ways which suggests the early stages of senility rather than traumatic brain damage. The main problem with the Democrats, as Talleyrand said of the Bourbons, is that they forget nothing and learn nothing. Combining terminal ineffectiveness with a kind of political ancestor-worship, the Democrats call themselves “progressive”, but they seemed obsessed with salvaging or restoring policies which – however wise or well-intended they might have been in the long-ago mid-20^th century – have today grown unwieldy, overly expensive, or simply corrupt.

Neither party seems to have a rational view of present reality – either with respect to our internal challenges nor the challenges which confront us globally. Much less does either party have a compelling vision for America's future. One might say truly, if simplistically, that our present parties offer a choice between the 1950's and the 1960's – though, to be sure, the Republicans seem increasingly to have abandoned Eisenhower's 1950's for Coolidge's 1920's.

The point, which I hope to make over the course of many essays, is that neither party is adequate to the needs of the present and the challenges of the future. Since I came of age, in 1972, every election has come down - not a to a choice of leaders - but to a choice of the lesser of two evils.

Today, at sixty, I can no longer allow fear of the “greater evil” to define my choices. Life is too short! Both parties have proven themselves unworthy of the public trust. Each should be replaced by something better.

As a progressive, I intend to focus on describing the essential characteristics of a party which could tackle the challenge of replacing of the Democratic Party as the voice of well-informed, thoughtful citizens concerned with the future of their country and their planet.

Welcome back! I trust this will be a productive use of your reading time.

A Reluctant "No" on Health Care.

2010-03-16T01:24:00.002-05:00

The battle lines have been drawn, and Congress will soon hand President Obama either a stunning victory or a humiliation such as he has never faced before.

Either way, it is too bad.

After a miserable rookie year, the President has finally begun to figure out what a more seasoned politician would have known to begin with: The Republicans play to win.

This is not something a Democrat can easily understand. Having spent the last forty years losing ground to a party which represents only the interests of the wealthy and powerful, the Democrats are not exactly expert at winning. Indeed, when they win at all, it's usually through a combination of nominating a candidate who is Republican-lite and running in a year in which the GOP has spectacularly embarrassed itself.

Still, anyone who reads the papers and doesn't spend all his time listening to himself practice great speeches for the history books must have known that the Republicans would draw a line in the sand over any attempt to reform health care. After all, they've defeated Democratic efforts time and time again since, oh, Harry Truman. They know a winner when they see one - and when the new effort is put forward by someone with even less Washington experience than Bill Clinton, the game seems about as unpredictable as a first round NCAA game between the first and sixteenth seeds.

But, all that said, is the battle between the two major parties really the issue here?

For two long, Americans have taken their cues from the media and that bastard academic pursuit known as "political science". In a nutshell, both approach politics as a series of distinct games - election cycles - with a clear winner and a clear loser. When you think that way, it's not difficult for any right-minded American to pull for the "good guys" - President Obama and the congressional Democrats.

But, difficult as it is for many to believe, the real progress of the Nation does not hang upon which of the two parties wins the next election cycle. It depends upon understanding the actual challenges which face us, developing a coherent approach to those challenges, and then crafting specific policies which will help our society move forward.

And the two-party system, with its forced choice between two entrenched parties, is not exactly the mechanism for thoughtful, pragmatic, and progressive thinking.

What's needed -- and right now -- is a third party organized along different principles. A party which defines winning -- not in terms of gaining a majority in the next election -- but in terms of moving the national dialogue forward. The proper model, in American terms, lies in the anti-slavery parties of the 1830's and 1840's -- parties which would rather defeat a half-hearted sympathizer than an outright opponent.

Parties, in short, which ran candidates in order to provoke debate, thought, and societal evolution.

What's needed today is a third party which emphasizes a simple, revolutionary ideal: The ideal which our Founders called "the Commonwealth". That is, an understanding that the aim of politics is not personal or group aggrandizement or enrichment, but the good of the whole society. And not just today's society, but future generations, as well.

A Commonwealth Party would, necessarily, favor opening up opportunities to the most talented and able members of the rising generation. It would necessarily favor the greater economic opportunity found in an entrepreneurial, as opposed to a vertically-organized, corporate economy. It would inevitably be "green".

But it would not necessarily embrace a bureaucratic/regulatory model as the automatic solution for every ill, as the Democrats do. It would, very possibly, prefer market or quasi-market strategies to statist ones. It would not necessarily embrace or reject some of the values of the social conservatives.

A Commonwealth Party would ask different questions, and thus come up with different answers.

And it would not, in my view, have any use for the excessively complex, incredibly expensive, Rube Goldberg monstrosity of the present Democratic health care plan.

A Commonwealth Party would, I submit, reject the whole notion of protecting various powerful interest groups by coopting them. Instead, it would ask a different question: Looking around the world at the host of different, working models, what model would best suit the genius of America?

It would invite the American people to compare the health-care systems of France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Canada, and a half-dozen other countries; choose the best; and make modifications to suit it to the needs of this country.

Then, having a clear, simple alternative in mind, it would begin a gradual process of moving the American people away from the monstrosity we have to a workable, single model which would serve us all.

Indeed, I envision a Commonwealth Party conducting a sort of "Survivor" game -- perhaps online -- in which different systems were inserted into a single-elimination bracket and compared, using both statistics and real-life examples. After each comparison, the American people would be invited to vote for their favorite, until one model emerged as the winner.

This model would then be compared, in full detail, with the present American "system", and a final vote would be invited.

I can't imagine the choice would be in doubt.

If the Democratic Party had any faith in the American people, it might have done something like this. Instead of gathering representatives of the health insurance industry, Big Pharma, and the AMA behind closed doors to craft a deal, they would have invited a public debate on the merits of existing systems.

Instead of focusing on committee hearings and leaving the field open for AM radio hosts to shape public opinion, they would have used the new and old media to engage the people in discussing what was good for the Nation.

Instead of ducking debate on the floor of the Senate, they would have welcomed a filibuster as a great opportunity to prove the superiority of their plan to the GOP alternative -- which is, essentially, the status quo.

The Democrats did not of these, because, in the end, they are not about governing well -- or governing at all. They are, like the Republicans, about winning the next election.

As I reject this way of thinking, I can find no reason to support the present health care proposal. No one has even suggested -- seriously -- that this is a good plan. They merely suggest that "we" can't let the Republicans win this battle.

Well, who says we can't?

For myself, I say, to hell with the Democratic Party. It might be "better" than the Republicans, viewed in the very narrow perspective of a binary choice. But I reject the limitations of that choice.

The Democratic Party is not the party of progress. It is, by its continued existence, the greatest obstacle to the rise of a genuine party of progress.

Passing a legislative monstrosity would only perpetuate the existence of this political dinosaur, while saddling the Nation with still more expense and bureaucratic red tape.

I say to hell with it. To hell with the Democratic Party. And to hell with the health care bill.

Absence of Vision

2009-03-07T14:41:00.003-05:00

Reading the more liberal columnists lately, there seems to be a general consensus that the Republicans have run out of ideas. Not surprising, really. In recent years, the GOP has nailed its colors to the mast, taking any number of irrational positions, such as:

All taxes are bad; all tax cuts are good.
Markets can always be trusted; government, never.
Global climate change probably isn't happening, and it if it is, it's just a cyclical thing.
A tiny bundle of cells with human DNA is entitled to the same dignity as a living person.
Gun laws which make sense in the country and in the suburbs also make sense in our large urban areas.

Obviously, a political party which ties itself to this brand of political fundamentalism is bound to come a-cropper. And, though there are signs that less extreme conservatives - like my early prediction for the party's 2012 presidential candidate, Newt Ginrich - are moderating somewhat, there is no feasible way for a Republican nominee to run on a platform which denies the values which have been drubbed for decades into the receptive minds of the Republican "base".

What the liberal pundits - and the generally pro-Obama corporate media - refuse to acknowledge is that the Democratic Party has no more new ideas that the GOP. We live in an "age of faith" - as witness the nation's willingness to hand over the presidency to a man about whom we know next to nothing. Both parties are, in a sense, fundamentalist, ideological, and backward-looking. Even the President, who shows flickers of vision, seems locked into a retrospective mindset.

Thus, the need for an entirely fresh look at the state of the nation, and the world, as we approach the vernal equinox of 2009. Abraham Lincoln said it in words which every American high school student should be required to memorize:

"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

In posts to come, I will be attempting to set forth some ideas which - in my judgment - might form the basis of a new view of reality.

For today, let's start with one: In this time of economic crisis, we don't need to create millions of new jobs. We need to move toward a society in which fewer Americans have jobs.

When I was teaching History, I used to observe to my students that, to the best of my knowledge, not one of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, or the members of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, had a job. They were planters, farmers, lawyers, doctors, and - in one famous case - a printer; but they were all self-employed. In many cases, they were what we would call entrepreneurs.

They thought of themselves as independent, as indeed they were. They answered to no one, and thus, could think for themselves. Thus, the Founders.

Some forward-looking economists, including Charles Handy, have predicted that the present century will be one in which ever fewer people have actual jobs, in the sense of working for someone else. More and more, people will have small businesses and/or work as independent contractors.

And what's wrong with that? For some time now, the driving forces in America's economy - at least, the productive (as opposed to consuming) side of it - have been the small business owner and the highly-skilled independent contractor. Even in the good times, the big corporations weren't really creating that many jobs. And the jobs they created didn't provide high pay or good benefits.

Yet, even today, we continue to treat our educational system as though its mission were to produce factory workers - cooperative, punctual, unquestioning drones who are very good at memorizing trivia and very reluctant to take risks.

We need just the opposite.

Similarly, even as President Obama pours billions into sinking corporations in hopes of creating jobs, he is pursuing health care options based on the overall model of employer-provided benefits.

What if he truly "thought anew"? What if he envisioned a health care system which had, at its core, the liberation of Americans' entrepreneurial genius?

For some time - even before the recession - I have been arguing that there must be at least a million "dilberts" out there who have a dream of starting a business of their own, but who are held back by the fear that they would be unable to provide adequate health care for themselves and their families. If I'm right - and I'm confident that I am - a health-care plan that actually guaranteed quality, affordable insurance to individuals and families could liberate a million entrepreneurs. It might well be the biggest thing since the invention of the microchip.

Unfortunately, such a health care approach will be impossible so long as we focus on preserving an old system which doesn't work: a system in which health insurance is provided by big corporate employers, who buy it from other big health insurance corporations, to be spent (all too often) at big corporate hospitals and medical practices.

We're not going to build a new economy, or a better society, if we aren't willing to let the dinosaurs die. And, Detroit aside, I can't think of a more deserving group of dinosaurs than our big health insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical companies whose profits they underwrite.

At any rate, this is merely a beginning: One new perspective which might liberate us to think of ways in which our nation might be saved - and might move toward a better future.

Let's think in terms of fewer jobs, and more small enterprise and self-employment.

There is more to this, and I'll pick up the thread next time. But my point is this: Based on the evidence thus far, the Democrats - and their new president - don't seem to be any more future-oriented than the Republicans. They simply have the advantage which comes, for a brief while, when your one and only opposition falls flat on its collective face.

By 2012, the Democrats might well have done the same, in which case, one party of old ideas will again replace the other in a continuing process of nothing new.

Commonwealth Book Club update.

2009-02-27T17:13:00.003-05:00

The Commonwealth Book Club will discuss "Three Cups of Tea", by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, at its March 14 meeting. Location TBA, but most likely the Hopewell Library. New members are welcome.

The Commonwealth Book Club is in its fourth year. We have around twelve active members and average about seven per session. Our goal, thus far met, is to read and discuss ten "serious" books per annum. Upcoming authors include Thomas Friedman and Malcomb Gladwell, and I'm lobbying the group to read a good biography of Andrew Jackson.

"To Govern is To Choose"

2009-02-26T19:57:00.002-05:00

It's an old saying, but age does not lessen its truth: "To govern is to choose."

The more I watch our new President, the more I doubt his understanding of this fundamental principle. The stimulus package seemed to have something - indeed, a great deal - for almost everyone. There was little evidence of choice. We can do it all, the President said - borrowing a trillion or two now and paying it back later.

Now comes the new budget outline, following the same paradigm. Plenty for everyone, and it will all be paid for (and the deficit halved) by rising receipts when the boom-time economy magically returns in a year or two.

Once again - for the third presidency in a row - I have the impression that there are no adults in the White House. Clinton made choices, true, but his choices were political choices - forced upon him when the opposition took control of Congress. Bush spent like a Democrat - especially on his war and his military toys - fully expecting the prosperity bandwagon to roll on forever. And now, Mr. Obama seems bent on outdoing them both!

The great irony is, of course, that the very generation which worked ceaselessly to elect Mr. Obama stands to pick up the tab for his undisciplined approach. When the bills eventually come due - which can hardly be that long - it is the Millennials who will face the huge interest payments, dwindling discretionary funds, bloated bureaucracy, decaying environment, and hordes of foreign creditors demanding their pound of flesh.

Three years ago, I was a Democrat - a member of the Virginia State Central Committee. But the longer I hung around Democrats, the more I realized that most rank-and-file Democrats live in a parallel mental universe where nothing has a cost and good intentions justify the worst policy choices.

The best thing that can be said for Democrats seemed to be this: They aren't Republicans.

But that wasn't enough. I quit the Democratic Party (for the second time) and have decided from now on to have nothing to do with either party. Neither has the slightest idea of fiscal discipline - or of making any hard decisions which conflict with their desire to win elections.

I say, "a plague on both their houses!" We need something new - a party of virtue, willing to declare that the Emperor (Republican or Democrat) has no clothes.

Let it start here.

Obama is a superb politician, but nothing more. He looks very good right now, because he is willing to promise everything to everyone, at no cost to anyone. But that will pall, in time. Americans, too accustomed to facing their own dismal finances, aren't about to believe Mr. Obama's sub-prime budget-making for long.

Too bad their only alternative is to elect Republicans in 2010, or 2012...

There's Something about Barry.

2009-02-20T14:14:00.004-05:00

Just a quick thought for this busy day: I keep wondering when President Obama will move beyond campaign mode and start outlining a future for the country.

As the candidate of the "out" party, running against a monumentally unpopular President - and make no mistake, Mr. Obama ran against President Bush, not John McCain - candidate Obama consistently defined himself in terms of his differences with the last administration. Even when his tone was positive, he spoke in terms of what he wasn't for, what he wouldn't do.

It worked brilliantly, but this is no longer the campaign.

The other day, in The New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert quoted the President as follows:

“Now, I have to say that given that they were running the show for a pretty long time prior to me getting there, and that their theory was tested pretty thoroughly and it’s landed us in the situation where we’ve got over a trillion-dollars’ worth of debt and the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, I think I have a better argument in terms of economic thinking.”

Read that carefully. The central assertion goes something like this: "I must be right, because the other guys were so very, very wrong."

As a rare progressive supporting John McCain, I ran into that logical fallacy again and again during the campaign. In essence, the case for Mr. Obama seems to have been, "Sure, he's not very experienced or tested. But at least he's not Bush. Bush has been so awful, Obama's got to be an improvement!"

Which, of course, ignored the fact that John McCain, also, wasn't George W. Bush. The fundamental mistake of McCain's campaign was his failure to make that apparent - and, indeed, doing almost everything he could to make himself look like America's least popular politician.

But it also ignored the very real possibility that a bad president can be succeeded by another equally bad, or even worse. Take, for example, Franklin Pierce and his successor, James Buchanan.

Here's my point: President Obama is still working that same line. The Bush policies were a failure, therefore mine will be better. They were wrong, so I must be right.

Look at the quotation again. Mr. Obama never actually says what his argument is. He says that the Bush policies were disastrous - which is manifestly true - and then insists on the conclusion that "I have a better argument".

Really?

The deeper we go into this recession, and the longer I watch this administration, the more I fear that there is no guiding vision behind the Obama economic policy. It seems to consist of gestures and sound-bites, e.g., protectionist steel policy in the stimulus package, balanced by assurances that the new legislation means nothing if it contradicts our treaty obligations.

That's campaign stuff: A gesture to Group A, another to Group B. Baffle 'em with bullshit. Make policy after you're elected.

Well, you've been elected, Mr. Obama. The first of your 48 months has flown by. And we still don't have anything like a vision of the America which will emerge from this economic crisis.

The campaign is over, or should be. If you start running for re-election this early, I promise you, it ain't gonna happen.

This is one of those relatively rare times when the best political strategy is to govern well.

A Fresh Start.

2009-02-13T13:16:00.003-05:00

I have been away from this space for too long - from writing for too long. The hiatus I took from the Village News last fall has evolved into a permanent parting of the ways. I wish my old weekly well, but we are no longer moving toward the same horizon.

This blog, and its sister, must of necessity become my principal outlet. When we survive this economic crisis - and if newspapers do - I'd like to see my thoughts in print again. But for now, here we are - a little blog, with aspirations.

Above all, my hope for this blog - and for everything I do in the public sphere - will be to create a movement for a third political entity. For lack of an alternate term, a third party - but with this distinction. I'd like to see a third party which defined itself - not in terms of winning elections - but in terms of moving the public conversation forward. A party inspired by the example of the anti-slavery parties of the 1830's and 1840's - the stubborn, righteous little parties which eventually shattered the Whig coalition and gave rise to the intelligent, forward-looking, and relatively virtuous Republican Party of Lincoln.

I'll stop for a moment to reiterate this point, because it seems so utterly at odds with what the "political scientists" preach. I'd like to build a party which defined itself in terms of moving the national conversation forward. A party willing to lose an election - or many elections - in order to make itself heard. A party willing, indeed, to sabotage certain types of candidates - particularly those cold-blooded narcissists who run in the name of good ideas and noble ideals, but in the service of themselves, alone.

It will take me some time to define with any precision where this party would stand, but a starting place would be with the liberal Republican tradition - the tradition of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, of Wendell Willkie and Everett Dirksen, of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Christopher Shays. I seek a party which can balance a maximum of individual liberty with an understanding that we all have a moral, as well as legal, obligation to the greater good - what the Founders would have called the commonwealth philosophy. A party which, as part of that greater good, felt a strong commitment to preserving a liveable environment for our children and grandchildren.

A party which, if it held a few seats in the present Congress, would be equally impatient with the right-wing Republicans' capitalistic myopia and the Democrats' Euro-socialist opportunism.

A party which might support the new President from time to time, but which would consistently urge a longer-range vision.

For this much is certainly true: America - and the rest of the world - will be remade by the current crisis. There is a way to emerge from this as a better society, and that way is almost certainly not to be found the in ideas of New Deal-New Frontier-Great Society statism. Nor is it to be found in propping up an obsolete automobile industry; nor in preserving legal and policy environment which has enriched the developers and bankers and given us suburban sprawl; nor in infusing new life into an employment-based health insurance system which serves to keep bright people working for large corporations instead of freeing them to start new, small enterprises.

I hope my old readers and friends will find me here - and that they will give me the time to make my case. Much of what I say will be uncongenial to supporters of President Obama - and downright heresy to the supporters of his predecessor. Indeed, supporters of each will be horrified to learn that I regard them as more similar than otherwise - as I find their two parties more alike than the only two alternatives in a political society have any right being.

At any rate, I ask you to come with me on a continuous thought experiment. I've always thought outside the box, and my regular readers have learned that I occasionally come up with a thought worth pondering. It's all a matter of turning off that internal editor which automatically rejects anything truly different.

For what we need now, most assuredly, is something different - something new. Perhaps something so old that it appears new.

And so, to begin...

'Tis New To Thee

2008-11-19T19:10:00.005-05:00

In the final scene of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Miranda - upon meeting a number of gallant Milanese and Neapolitans - exclaims, "O, brave new world, that has such people in it!"

Her father, far older and more worldly-wise, replies, "'Tis new to thee."

Well, Miranda, you've done it again.

The American people - suffering from a chronic short-term memory deficit - have once again elected an inexperienced but appealing young Democrat to "change the way Washington does business".

As they did, with such indifferent results, in 1990, 1976, and 1960. It's a fairly reliable pattern, pointed out to me by my friend Adam Sharp. Every sixteen years since the era of black-and-white TV, the Democrats have offered up an appealing outsider and the citizenry - having had their fill of Republican government for the nonce - fall for him.

They vote for change, and they get a Democrat.

Two weeks into the Obama transition, it looks like we've got another, typical Democratic administration.

The mainstream media, having done their dead-level best to elect Senator Obama, are still congratulating us for our wisdom in following their lead.

But already, if you care to look, you can see the signs.

Rahm Emanuel, of the Clinton West Wing, for Chief of Staff. Eric Holder, Janet Reno's deputy, at Justice. Tom Daschle at HHS.

And abundant talk of Hillary at Foggy Bottom, if Bill will agree to curb his activities.

The media would have us believe that Obama is following the example of Abraham Lincoln, as portrayed in Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals - and so he may be.

But Lincoln was, for all his ambition, a profoundly humble man - a quality which not even the most fervid Obamaniacs attribute to their leader.

Moreover, Lincoln, the leader of a very new party confronted with a unique emergency, needed the advice and support of his erstwhile rivals to solve the secession crisis.

What Obama is doing feels different. It feels like a power-play - an effort to assert his control over the entire Democratic Party by co-opting the Clintonites, bringing aboard men who have held powerful leadership positions in the House and Senate, and adopting a mainstream Democratic agenda.

So far, this is only a feeling with me. I didn't vote for Senator Obama, but I believe any patriotic American would have to wish him well, given the present state of the nation.

Still, I have the strongest suspicion that - having bought a pig in a poke - we're about to learn that we have actually elected a very ruthless politician, with a Chicago ward-healer's approach to party discipline.

The two chief clues are these:

Rahm Emanuel is what Leo McGarry would describe as a "war-time consigliere". He's not the guy you bring aboard if you're going to take the collegial, team of rivals approach. He's the guy you bring in to enforce gleichschaltung on a notoriously unruly party.

And the proposed bail-out of Detroit's Big Three isn't the first policy initiative of a change agent - much less a defender of the environment or free trade. It's a big-spending, union-friendly, and enormously protectionist measure to satisfy powerful interests within the Democratic coalition - free trade and global warming be damned.

This blog has been on a lengthy hiatus while I watched in fascinated horror as the American people - including most of my friends - fell in love with Senator Obama.

I hope I'm reading the signs wrongly, but I have promised my friends that I reserve the right to say "I told you so!" - loudly and often - if their wunderkind turns out to be another Clinton, or Carter, or JFK.

I just hope that's the worst he turns out to be...

McCain’s Winning Strategy

2008-07-23T18:45:00.003-05:00

Last year, re-reading The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam’s magnificent history of the Vietnam War, I encountered a passage which has since haunted me. Writing of President Kennedy in June, 1963, Halberstam reflects:

"It was as if he were liberated from the insecurities of his first two years with that one act [the Cuban missile crisis], and now, more confident of himself, more confident of the nation’s response to him; he was the President." [Emphasis added.]

Having grown up with the Camelot myth, it took some reflection before I could embrace Halberstam’s hard-headed assessment – that, for all his charisma, style and self-confidence, JFK had only begun to reach his potential when his presidency was brutally cut short.

But this reflection, more than anything, has led me to conclude that – despite significant differences of policy and philosophy – I must vote for John McCain this November. Simply stated, I fear that Barack Obama would prove another JFK – requiring at least half his term to become, effectively, President.

And, right now – in a dangerous world – we can’t afford that.

Mine is not a romantic outlook. My goals are decidedly progressive, but, as a student of history, I don’t believe charisma is a substitute for experience. Nor do I see Congressional Democrats – under untested leadership and shaky after eight years of knuckling under to President Bush – as prepared to govern without a steady hand in the Oval Office.

That said, I could be far more enthusiastic about John McCain if he used his candidacy to move the Republican Party toward the center – and not just as a matter of short-term campaign strategy.

For almost three decades now, Americans have been misgoverned by an entrenched, two-party system consisting of a party of bigotry, ignorance, greed, chauvinism, and superstition and a party of mere opportunism, with no principles beyond a desire to win the next election.

McCain can’t reform the Democrats, but – win or lose – he could use his campaign to move his party back toward the “big tent” which offered full participation to moderate and even liberal Republicans.

And, in my judgment, such a move would be McCain’s best chance for victory.

For this much is certain: If McCain continues wooing his party’s reluctant conservatives into the fall, he won’t be President. His winning strategy – which is also, I believe, America’s best hope – involves greater boldness and vision.

If McCain wants to win, he must embrace three realities:

First, while most Americans respect him, not many are excited about him. He has yet to energize a substantial group of citizens to counter the legions who have fallen under the spell of his charismatic opponent.

And this matters.

The election of 2008 won’t be won by eking out 270 electoral votes with a carefully crafted, swing-state strategy. It will be won by capturing the heart of America.

Second, McCain must address the age question. Few doubt his present vitality and fitness for the presidency, but the Oval Office exacts an enormous price from most occupants. McCain can certainly serve one four-year term, but it’s fair to assume he might not opt to seek re-election.

Thus, his choice of Vice-President – and his ability to elevate other potential successors – will be of particular importance, not only to his candidacy, but to the future direction of his party.

Third, McCain simply must address the challenge at the heart of Obama’s strategy – which is the suggestion that McCain’s election would, in effect, prove a third term for George W. Bush.

It’s really the only good argument Obama has – and McCain must meet it head-on.

In addressing these three realities, McCain should begin by reading one book – Christine Todd Whitman’s It’s My Party, Too – a moderate Republican’s appeal to restore the Republican “big tent” which social conservatives have worked so sedulously to destroy.

It’s a short book – McCain could skim during a single transcontinental flight.

He should read it – and then offer its author the second slot on his ticket.

He couldn’t do better.

Christie Whitman served seven years as Governor of New Jersey – constitutionally, the most powerful chief executive in the fifty states. She went on to head the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bush – resigning when her sincere environmentalism ran afoul of the administration’s pro-corporate agenda.

Offering the Vice-Presidency to Governor Whitman would accomplish many things.

First, given her history with the Bush Administration, it would clearly signal that McCain’s administration would be no “third term”.

Second, choosing a running mate of clear presidential caliber would effectively blunt the age question.

Third, a Whitman candidacy would electrify two significant groups: Moderate-to-liberal Republicans, marginalized since the Reagan Revolution of 1980; and millions of women still unhappy with Hillary Clinton’s treatment at the hands of the Democratic establishment and the mainstream media.

Finally, a McCain-Whitman ticket would scramble the electoral contest in interesting ways.

1. New Jersey’s 15 electoral votes would come into play.

2. Whitman would help in the eastern half of vital Pennsylvania, among New England’s moderate Republicans, and with the “snowbirds” of Florida.

3. Looking beyond McCain’s presidency, Whitman – as a potential future candidate -- would offer the prospect of moving the Republican Party back toward inclusiveness.

But if putting on the ticket would energize moderate and liberal Republicans, McCain could go further in this direction by elevating a second prospective successor – America’s leading Republican moderate.

The day after the Democratic convention, McCain should fly to Sacramento and - standing next to California's governor - announce that his first legislative proposal to the 111th Congress will be a Constitutional amendment removing the bar to naturalized citizens serving as President.

With this announcement, McCain would claim the respectful attention of every immigrant group in America. He would also put Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California– with its 55 electoral votes – seriously into play.

These two steps – nominating Christie Whitman for Vice-President and proposing an amendment opening the Presidency to naturalized citizens – would hardly suffice to win McCain the White House.

But, by energizing millions of voters, quashing talk of a third term for the Bush administration, and moving the Republican Party back toward the American mainstream – it would considerably level the playing field.

Other Than Mr. Spitzer...

2008-03-12T18:34:00.003-05:00

Governor Eliot Spitzer's icarian plunge has been all the news this week, but it has never been my object to belabor the obvious.

The other prominent politician who should be kicking himself these days is John Edwards, whose precipitate departure from the Democratic race looks more foolish with each primary or caucus.

Granted, Mr. Edwards was no match for the celebrity of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama - but could no one in his camp have foreseen the possibility of a deadlocked convention?

I did not publish to this effect - which will affect my credibility with some - but I recall telling friends in late 2007 that the front-loading of the primary season would very likely lead to at least one party choosing its nominee the old-fashioned way. It seemed to me obvious that - with the mechanism of momentum-building removed from the picture - no candidate would be likely to secure a majority of delegates in advance.

Sadly, no campaign - other than Mayor Giuliani's - foresaw this possibility. And because he was alone in this, he failed.

But imagine another scenario. Imagine that Giuliani, McCain, Huckabee, and Ron Paul all announced - at the outset - that they intended to focus on the states where they had the best shot at winning delegates. Had they done so - putting their time and money where it would do the most good - they might all still be in the race.

This argument has even more force on the Democratic side. Had the lesser-known candidates all adopted a strategy of campaigning only where they were strongest - plainly advertising their intention of going to the convention with a pocketful of delegates awarded by proportional representation - not even a unanimity of super-delegates could have forced a decision before Denver.

Indeed, with his strength among working-class whites, John Edwards could easily have made it to Denver with between 10% and 15% of the delegates. Suppose that, instead of ending his campaign, Edwards had said:

"It is now obvious that I am not going to be the first choice of the majority of Democrats. But I hope to demonstrate, in time, that I am the second choice of most Democrats - and perhaps, come Denver, the final choice of my party. Thus, I will continue my campaign - scaling down to accommodate my limited funds, and focusing on states where I can win the most delegates. I will pursue the strategy Abraham Lincoln pursued in 1860, campaigning so as to earn the respect of all Democrats - and, should the convention deadlock, offering myself as a legitimate, tested alternative to the two front-runners."

Had Mr. Edwards offered himself on this basis, he might now be the beneficiary of many votes from Democrats and independents who are having second thoughts about Senator Obama, but who remain reluctant to endorse Senator Clinton. He might be in a position to help the party leadership avoid a head-to-head bloodbath in Denver.

And he might - just might - have wound up in the White House.

-30-

It's All About 2012.

2008-02-27T14:16:00.002-05:00

Lately, I've been hearing from disappointed readers of my columns in the Chester Village News - and a few from this page - questioning how an outspoken progressive can dismiss the keen, problem-solving intellect of Hillary Clinton and the remarkable charm and rhetorical talents of Barack Obama to support J0hn McCain.

The answer resides in my admittedly unusual perspective - the product of a lifetime of reading and teaching History. Put simply, I tend to take the long view.

This has not always paid off. As an investor, I'm not always good at holding the stocks which my long-range view leads me to choose. In the public sphere, I often find myself in the precarious position of being well ahead of public opinion - not a good place to be in a democracy.

Still, it's an honest perspective, and I recommend it to the 10% or so of thinking Americans who resist the temptation to obsess over the latest headline - who struggle daily to understand where we are in the long march of History.

So, with that stipulation, my view of the upcoming presidential election is concerned - not with who wins in 2008 - but with who wins in 2012, and thereafter.

After all, the President who takes office 0n Tuesday, January 20, 2009, will confront a heculean task - cleansing the Bushean stables.

America will be, very likely, at the tail end of a recession or in the first months of a tentative recovery. The new President will confront a Federal budget badly out of balance - with many key operations of government sadly underfunded - at a time when raising taxes would be risky.

The new President will confront two long, inconclusive wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - and a number of long-postponed problems (Pakistan, Sudan, North Korea) with the potential to become military.

The dollar will be low, oil will be high, and - as America will still have done nothing about global warming - the world will be waiting for our lead.

The new President will need to focus on climate change as part of an overall effort to reestablish decent relations with most of the world and to put our intelligence and security operations back on the right side of our own Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and other aspects of international law.

And the new President will face a Congress with very questionable leadership. Under Speaker Pelosi, the House is slowly becoming a functioning body - but the Speaker continues to depend on a handful of conservative Democrats for her majority. The Senate will have a larger Democratic majority - under leadership with a long-standing habit of pusillanimity.

And - election year fantasies to one side - Washington will still be Washington. Interest groups will still ignore the general welfare in favor of their peculiar constituencies. Lobbyists will still far outnumber our elected representatives. Legislation will still require subtle arts and brutal arm-twisting.

In short, the next President will confront an inbox over-flowing with problems left behind - and often created - by one of the most incompetent, secretive, devious, power-hungry Administrations in our history.

He, or she, will have to deal with this enormous backlog - with limited financial resources - at a time when a badly-divided people continue divided. Faced by a challenge so daunting, there will be little time for an inexperienced President to find his feet, pull together a team, and develop a positive agenda - especially if he wants to be re-elected.

Frankly, I don't think it can be done. In my judgement, the next President will be overwhelmed by his challenges - and the impatience of the American people. He will, almost certainly, serve only one term.

Which leads logically to this question: Given a choice between a relatively moderate, very experienced Republican whose positions on the most pressing issues I can live with, and a relatively inexperienced Democrat riding a nascent progressive wave - which gives me the best prospect of a truly progressive president in the more promising - if admittedly hypothetical - conditions of 2013?

As I see it, a Democratic victory in 2008 - followed by a disappointing four years - leads the GOP to return to a hard-right candidate in a winning Election Year 2012.

On the other hand, a McCain victory in 2008 will give us a President competent to handle the worst of Bush's mess and moves the GOP slightly toward the center - while giving time for progressive forces to complete their takeover of the Democratic Party and prepare for a truly progressive administration in 2013.

If this seems entirely too suppositional, I leave you with this question: If you could go back in time and arrange for Al Smith (or some other Democrat) to defeat Herbert Hoover in 1928, would you do it? Would you allow the Democrats to bear the blame for the Crash of '29 - and assure a series of Republican presidents through the Depression and World War II?

I, for one, would not. The crises of depression and war assured 20 years of Democratic rule - and took America a long way down the road toward the successful, liberal-centrist polity of the mid-20th century.

It is only with dread that I imagine America in an all-out war - with the extraordinary wartime powers of government in the hands of mid-20th century conservatives. We might barely have escaped - if at all - some form of homegrown fascism.

So, likewise, I can more readily contemplate a one-term President McCain (2009 - 2013) than a President Huckabee, Santorum, or Jeb Bush taking the oath of office on January 20, 2013.

How McCain Can Win

2008-02-16T11:57:00.003-05:00

John McCain may be the best-qualified candidate remaining in the presidential field, but as Obamania sweeps the campuses, the cities, and the more liberal suburbs, it's starting to seem that he faces a daunting challenge putting together the necessary 271 electoral votes.

Strategic suggestions abound, but many of them are hopelessly out-of-date in the changed context of 2008.

For example, McCain can't simply cozy up to the conservative base that elected George W. Bush, because that base has been decimated - and more than decimated - by the most incompetent Administration since James Buchanan. Even if the base were willing to be wooed, everything MCain did to please them would alienate critical moderates.

Nor can McCain negative on Obama, because - let's face it - the national media have fallen in love with the gentleman from Illinois. And because, frankly, attacking a black candidate is too easy to label as bigotry in an America still coming to terms with issues of race.

Nor can MCain counter Obama's lock on the black vote with an appeal to the Hispanic community because the Republican Party has painted itself into an absurd corner with its abuse of rational immigration reform as "amnesty".

Moreover, Senator Obama is incredibly articulate - and his calls for national unity and a new beginning can stir even the most jaded to at least temporary enthusiasm.

Let's assume, for the moment, that Obama has no serious skeletons in his closet - an uncertain assumption for any politician emerging from the Illinois Democratic machine. If that is the case, McCain's likely opponent has only one weakness - a weakness any high school debater would spot immediately.

He never deals with the costs. Obama promises a virtual cornucopia, but he never talks about who will bear the burden. His "Yes, We Can" is, upon examination, as illusory as the rising prices of last year's real estate market.

But how can McCain make this point?

Not, I think, in the manner which has proven so ineffective for Senator Clinton. Americans are not in a rational mood this year, so an appeal to rational cost-benefit analysis will scarcely move them.

What McCain must do is offer an equally inspiring agenda - but one which calls for sacrifice.

Think of it.

Suppose McCain begins by revisiting his vote against the Bush tax cuts, pointing out that his rationale was one of shared sacrifice. Suppose he reminds voters of his "tough talk" in the Michigan primary. Suppose that he goes on to throw a challenge in the teeth of Grover Norquist and the other anti-tax vermin, confessing that the Republican Party's failure of leadership has stemmed from its willingness to borrow and spend, rather than to bear the present burdens of present benefits.

Suppose McCain were to borrow a page from JFK's inaugural address and offer a program of real sacrifice.

As long as our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans must share the burden by paying - not borrowing - the costs of the war.

As long as America is addicted to foreign oil, we must use a creative tax formula - perhaps a per gallon fuel tax, with an exemption for the first 30 gallons purchased by an individual driver each month.

As long as global warming is a threat, a bold program of lifestyle-altering programs will be enacted to make America the world's leader in reducing carbon emissions.

And long as some young Americans bear the price of keeping us safe, all young Americans will be required to participate in a serious National Service program - eighteen months of active military duty, followed by time in the reserves, or thirty months of approved civilian service - to be completed before age 25.

Such a strategy would be risky, but it has three great advantages. First, it suits the personality and personal history of John McCain - a patriot and hero who bears in his flesh the scars of the personal price he has paid for his country.

Second, it would have the effect of throwing into profound contrast the cost-free utopianism behind Obama's candidacy.

Third, it would challenge the core of Obama's support - privileged, educated young people - to ante up with something more than words.

Which might, indeed, alienate America's entitled generation, of course. But then, Senator McCain has precious few votes to lose among this demographic - and many to gain among older Americans who understand that all good things come with a price.

The First Thing We Do...

2008-02-13T17:29:00.004-05:00

In Henry VI, part 2, one of Shakespeare's low-life characters offers this advice: "The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers."

Even in Queen Elizabeth's time, I expect that line drew loud applause every time.

The longer I consider the political paralysis of modern American politics, the more inclined I am to paraphrase the Bard: "The first thing we do, let's kill the Democratic Party."

No kidding.

On Tuesday, I dropped by the Enon Volunteer Fire Department to cast a vote in one of Virginia's open primaries. I requested a Republican ballot and cast my vote for John McCain.

Now please understand: I was born into a Democratic family. Virginia Democrats, to be sure, and pretty conservative. But parents loyal to FDR, and to Harry Truman - grateful for the New Deal, Democratic leadership during World War II, and, especially, for the G. I. Bill, which set my Dad off on a course which led to eighteen years in the General Assembly and a stint as Attorney General of Virginia.

I joined the Chesterfield County Democratic Committee as soon as I was old enough to vote, and attended the first two state conventions for which I was eligible.

But by the time I was 25 - in 1976 - I had grown disenchanted with a party which didn't seem to stand for anything beyond winning the next election. I quit - hung out in the limbo of independence for a few years - and tried my luck at being a progressive Republican.

That lasted two years - long enough to work for John Warner in his first Senate campaign and escort Elizabeth Taylor (then Mrs. Warner) to a couple of events. Then Ronald Reagan took over the GOP, and progressive Republicans became the spotted owls of American politics.

I tried coming home. I took a key role in Gary Hart's 1984 campaign in Virginia. When the Supreme Court elected George W. Bush, I even rejoined the Democratic Party - served on my Congressional District Committee, and trudged the streets of Manchester, NH, for Howard Dean.
But it didn't take. The Democratic Party still hadn't become a party of vision or principle - just a mechanism for winning the occasional election - when Republican arrogance handed them an election they couldn't lose.

And so they remain today.

I realize millions of Americans are excited about the prospect of a President Obama - or even a President Hillary Clinton. But I see nothing but the prospect of continued disappointment. Obama's prescriptions are too vague - and the man himself is too lacking in experience. I can just imagine what Congress and the lobbyists will do to his agenda.

And as for Senator Clinton - even if she won, she'd start with two strikes against her and a biased ump behind the plate.

The problem is that the Democratic Party - the party that rolled over for the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, the Protect America Act, No Child Left Behind, the Roberts and Alito nominations, etc., etc. - the party which couldn't even bring a resolution of impeachment against Alberto Gonzalez - is still what it is.

Vapid. Timorous. More interested in holding onto a few seats than enunciating an agenda for actual American progress.

Which is why, after much soul-searching, it has come to this. I don't believe the Democratic Party - today's Democratic Party - is capable of governing. Not under Hillary. Not under Obama. Not under John Edwards, or Howard Dean, or Al Gore - or any candidate I have supported in the past.

LBJ might have twisted enough arms to give them the illusion of a spine. FDR might have charmed them into taking a stand.

But I'm not even sure about that.

Which is why - at a season when most progressive, liberal, and just decent Americans are filled with optimism - I find myself adopting the role of curmudgeon.

There's a great cause out there to be fought for. But it requires something American politics hasn't seen since at least the Progressive Era - if not the 1840's and 1850's.

It requires a disciplined, courageous party of the center-left - not a radical party, just a determined one - which doesn't define winning in terms of getting the most votes in the next election.

Which defines winning in terms of winning the national debate - of moving the national agenda.

Of doing, in short, what the Christian Right has spent the past several decades doing to the Republican Party - standing so firmly for principle that it would prefer to lose an election rather than be taken for granted by a major party which doesn't really care than much about its agenda.

I intend to write at length about how such a party would operate, but the principle is simple. Just as the Liberty and Free Soil parties laid the necessary groundwork for the triumph of Lincoln and the Republicans, so now, this Nation needs a party which will lose elections - but force at least one major party to address serious issues about the future of America.

The Democratic Party is what it is - and what its institutional DNA makes it - a coalition of special interests with no overriding agenda beyond winning elections. A Jacksonian contraption at the service of the personal ambitions of whatever candidate gains its nomination on the way to the White House.

An obsolete machine whose very survival precludes the rise of a party of genuine progressives - not matter how bold its rhetoric or charismatic its current leader.

Watch This...

2008-01-29T13:13:00.000-05:00

Things are moving quickly on primary front. The rallying of the Kennedy clan behind Barack Obama may be only the first salvo of a series of blue-ribbon endorsements intended to sweep the Illinois Senator to victory on Super Tuesday.

Here's the tipoff: The Party leadership's choice of Governor Kathleen Sibelius to respond to the President's final State of the Union address.

You have to assume that large segments of the Democratic Party - even within the Beltway - are restless with the notion of returning the Clintons to the White House.

And even more unnerved by the prospect of following the Clintons to defeat in November.

Senator Clinton continues to generate high negatives in the polls, and her husband - thanks to his suddenly-public temper and recourse to racial politics - is rapidly gaining on her. These factors alone would not be sufficient to cause Democratic insiders to desert the Clinton banners, but there is more.

The GOP, against all odds, is beginning to rally behind the one candidate who could actually win in November - Senator John McCain. It's too soon to be certain. Movement conservatives - following the lead of Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the AM radio tribunes - might yet tempt Republican regulars into an act of mass self-immolation.

But McCain has a hidden asset. Unusual among US Senators, he has a gift for forming genuine personal friendships. This shows in such things as the loyalty of fellow Senator Lindsay Graham - and in the curiously cordial relations between the McCain and Huckabee campaigns. Fred Thompson - who is yet to endorse a rival - is reported to harbor feelings of genuine friendship for McCain.

Combine this with the fact that virtually all of the Republican field actively loathes Romney, and it looks possible that Republican insiders - led by McCain's fellow Senators and fading rivals - may likewise rally to a champion with a real chance of becoming President.

This has to worry Democrats. In too many scenarios, McCain whips Clinton in the general election.

But Obama might be another story.

Which brings us back to Governor Sibelius. If, as I begin to suspect, Capitol Hill Democrats are slowly lining up behind Obama, there is one segment of the Democratic coalition which will have to be conciliated - white women over 50, the core of the Clinton base.

How better to do this than to nominate an articulate, pragmatic, rising star like Governor Sibelius - a moderate from the red-state heartland - as Obama's running mate?

I'm going out on a limb here, but if Florida comes in for John McCain - and does enough damage to Rudy Guiliani - it's going to start looking a lot like the tide has turned in McCain's favor.

And if that happens, expect to see a host of big-name Democrats beginning to endorse Senator Obama - a few names every day from now until Super Duper Tuesday.

And that could do it.

So watch this: Obama becomes the consensus choice of the Democratic Party leadership. Sibelius begins to be seriously discussed as his running mate.

And the GOP - unwilling to cede the enormous, wealthy demographic of over-50 white women - starts looking for someone like New Jersey's moderate, pro-environment Christine Todd Whitman as a running mate for Senator McCain.

The Case for John McCain.

2008-01-23T19:55:00.000-05:00

A good friend picked up my last post for his blog, but headlined it in such a way as to suggest that I am still supporting John Edwards.

Sadly, that ship has sailed.

While I hope John Edwards will adopt a second-choice, convention-oriented strategy - that would require him to break with the entire tendency conduct of his campaign so far, i.e., he'd have to do something strategically intelligent.

As a potential president, I really like John Edwards. As a candidate, though, he seems to have caught something chronic from John Kerry.

Actually, the decision I've reached - and it surprised me, too - is that the best thing for the progressive movement is for the Democratic Party to nominate Hillary and go down in flames to John McCain.

I'm not sure the Democratic Party can ever be reformed, but the present Hillary-Obama brawl is basically a war of old-line insiders: the Clinton/DLC machine, minus some of their black supporters vs. the Illinois Democratic machine, plus most of the black Democratic pols. Whoever wins this fight, it isn't going to be the folks who rallied to Howard Dean!

What needs to happen is for the Democratic Party to get so shockingly upset - for President, not Congress - that it either becomes open to reform, or begins to die and make room for a new party (or some entity to replace a party) on the Left.

Which leads me to the conclusion that - assuming Edwards continues to blunder toward extinction - what progressives should do is cross over and support McCain.

At 73 (on January 20, 2009), McCain would almost certainly be a one-term President - and a President eminently qualified to deal with the nastiest parts of the Bush legacy: the mess in Mesopotamia; the flagrant disregard of the Constitution and Geneva in the name of "national security"; and America's failure to take the lead on the environment.

Indeed, as a Republican - assuming the next Senate doesn't have 60 Democrats (exclusive of old Joe) - McCain would probably have more success wrapping these things up than any Democrat.

Besides, between the Bush deficits and the incoming recession, there won't be a lot of money for things like health care in the next four years. It's going to be a "lost" administration in terms of truly progressive legislation.

So I say, let McCain clean up Bush's mess - and elect a staunchly progressive Congress to keep him from doing anything dreadful. It would give McCain the sweetest kind of revenge for 2000 - reversing much of Bush's policy, and moving the GOP toward the center.

And it would give us time to find an outstanding, progressive candidate (Democrat or otherwise) for 2012.

The Case for John Edwards

2008-01-22T12:31:00.001-05:00

Having awakened this morning to news of cascading overseas stock markets, my first thought was whether I had the courage to stick with my battered Roth IRA portfolio, or whether I should start bailing out and taking my losses.

I decided to stick. It's gonna hurt for a while - perhaps as long as a year. But I've invested in solid companies which looked - a few months ago - to have strong upside potential, and which are, even now, stocks Warren Buffet wouldn't sneer at.

Reflecting thus, my thoughts turned to John Edwards, whose recent fortunes would arouse the sympathy of many on Wall Street - had they any to spare.

And it occurred to me that Edwards should stick, too. For one very simple reason.

It ain't over.

The campaign between Hillary and Obama is getting nastier - and more personal - by the week. Each of these celebrity candidates seems to feel somehow entitled to the Democratic nomination, and their increasing petulance threatens to become just a bit much.

And that's Edwards' first hope. If Hillary and Obama become so obnoxious that they start alienating voters - particularly independents with no particular stake in either front-runner - he might start attracting second looks.

As an alternative, or simply a protest vote against the adolescent antics of the leaders.

But there's more to it. With the Super Duper Tuesday primaries likely to split indecisively, it's not inevitable that someone will arrive at the Denver convention with a majority of the delegates.

And if Clinton and Obama - and their respective backers - keep acting as they now are, it's entirely possible neither of them will be able to win the convention. A deadlock could emerge, with neither candidate's supporters willing to switch.

Which would leave John Edwards in an interesting position.

He might, of course, play kingmaker - but if I were Edwards, I'd be thinking about snatching victory from the jaws of third place.

He should start talking, openly, about adopting Abe Lincoln's strategy from 1860.

In that fateful year, Lincoln arrived at the Chicago convention in third place - but as everyone's second choice. The leading candidates - Seward and Chase - despised each other, and the supporters of each felt that, if their man couldn't win, they were damned if they'd let the other guy get the nomination.

In the end, that worked out well for Lincoln - and the Nation.

If I were Edwards, here's what I'd say. 'For now, my presence in the campaign might encourage my two opponents to play nice - but if they refuse to do so, I might wind up being the only candidate left who can unite the party.

'And believe me, I don't mind being everyone's second choice - so long as I'm their ultimate choice.'

It's a long shot, but it beats bowing out.

So, just as I'm holding onto my portfolio, I think I'll hang onto my Edwards bumper stickers for a while longer.

You never know...

Thinking Long-Term

2008-01-15T12:49:00.000-05:00

As the primaries and caucuses continue winnowing the field for 2008, I've reluctantly - but not that reluctantly - reached a conclusion diametrically opposite to that of many eager Democrats.

2008 isn't going to be a Democratic year - and that could be a very good thing.

To begin with, I'm increasingly convinced that - for all the excitement generated by the first credible Black candidate for president, and the first credible female candidate for president - the Democratic field is fatally flawed.

There is, of course, the obvious fact that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton has a resume which inspires confidence. Neither has any serious administrative or foreign policy experience. Neither has an impressive legislative record - particularly in critical areas such as budget and finance. Thus far, the Democrats seem to be eliminating candidates in reverse order of qualification - a trend which could, if followed to its logical conclusion - result in the nomination of Mike Gravel.

More disturbing, however, is the emerging appearance of troubling character flaws in the two leading Democratic candidates. Since New Hampshire, each has shown an increasing tendency toward petulance - as though each believed himself or herself somehow entitled to the party's nomination. The Clintons - both of them - have stepped up their attacks on Obama. In response, Obama has played the race card.

And away we go!

This should not, of course, be that surprising. The Democratic Party has long been more of a coalition of interest groups than a party devoted to something like principled governance. Given that fact - and the fact that two of the largest Democratic constituencies are African-Americans and Boomer generation feminists - it was almost inevitable that things would get intense between two campaigns with strategies rooted in identity politics.

But with Obama playing the race card against the Clintons - long great favorites with African-American voters - the Democratic nomination fight is teetering on the brink of unprecedented nastiness. Someone will win, of course - but whoever does seems destined to do so at the cost of alienating a large chunk of the Democratic base.

How sad that John Edwards - whose third-place campaign could only benefit from staying "above the battle" - seems determined to get down in the muck with the others.

In addition to the emerging flaws of the two principal contenders, it's beginning to look more and more like the next President will be saddled with three enormous problems: a recession; Iraq; and President Bush's legacy of deficit spending, administrative incompetence, and executive overreach.

However those of us who consider ourselves liberals and/or progressives may want an activist administration to tackle challenges such as health care, global warming and improved education, it seems increasingly clear that the President elected in 2008 will spend most of his or her term cleaning up Mr. Bush's mess.

And on a rather straitened budget.

In other words, as I have suggested before, progressives might actually be better off voting for a respectable Republican in 2008 - if there is one; and focusing on nominating and electing good candidates for the Senate and House of Representatives this year; and start working on electing a competent, experienced liberal/progressive President in 2012.

At least, that's what I've come to. The next President will have to spend four years cleaning up after Mr. Bush - certainly one of the worse presidents in American history. It's a thankless job, and whoever gets it will have a hard time winning re-election.

So, are progressives better off winning in 2008 - putting an inexperienced, budget-strapped, and damaged Democrat in the White House? Or surrounding a moderate-conservative Republican with strong Democratic congressional majorities - and thinking long-term?

The Real World

2007-12-28T15:27:00.000-05:00

In the aftermath of Mrs. Bhutto's assassination, thoughtful Americans have begun to reconsider their presidential options in light of one, overriding truth.

It's a dangerous world.

Without setting aside the very real dangers of global climate change, we must never forget old-fashioned perils such as rogue regimes with nuclear weapons - a genuine possibility in the case of Pakistan.

Our next President must, of course, be capable of addressing such dangers - should they arise - as well as acting with wisdom and foresight to avert them. He or she must also have the greatest possible freedom of action - consistent with our institutions and values - in order to act with speed and precision when the occasion calls for it.

That's why, in my judgment, we need a President who can disengage US forces from Iraq- ending President Bush's apparently open-ended commitment to pacify and unify a country which has been irreparably fragmented.

We can't afford to remain as we are - tied down in an endless conflict which is wearing down both our soldiers and their equipment and costing us the services of our rising class of junior officers. We need to get our troops home to refit, retrain, and rest up for the next crisis.

For there will be new crises. And we can never know when.

Yet, though we must get out of Mesopotamia, we must also leave that region in a sufficiently stable condition to sustain itself with new civil or international conflicts. Withdrawing will do no good if we find ourselves having to go back in a few years hence, to deal with a "Bosnia on steroids".

I set forth these considerations with the greatest reluctance. If I had my druthers, I'd want our next President to devote his or her energies to solving health care, finding the funds to improve K-12 education, and taking a serious swing at global climate change.

But there will be no money, no political capital, and precious little presidential time for such matters if we remain tied down in Iraq. The next president will wake up each morning to a briefing on Baghdad - end each day with another. He or she will spend a considerable portion of each day dealing with a war which should never have been - but which is - and every minute spent on Iraq will be minute not spent on make America a better place in which to live.

Which leads to one inevitable conclusion:

No candidate's domestic agenda makes the slightest difference without a plan for withdrawing from Iraq, while leaving a stable situation behind. There will be no health care reform, no bold environmental policy, no educational progress - no progressive agenda at all - so long as we remain in Iraq.

Which is why I've begun thinking seriously about whether this is the year to elect a Democrat. With the possible exception of Joe Biden, no Democrat has offered anything like a realistic vision for bringing our troops home. In the case of Hillary Clinton, at least, there's no plan for ending that commitment at all.

Which leads to this question:

If no Democrat has a plan for getting us out of Iraq, aren't we better off electing a sane Republican - assuming one is nominated - and letting the GOP tidy up its own mess?

After all, the two major parties have been trading the White House back and forth since 1992. Indeed - counting Bush 41 as a third Reagan term and LBJ and Ford as continuations, respectively, of JFK and Nixon - the pattern goes back to 1952.

If the next President is a Democrat, and he or she wastes his or her term cleaning up the mess in Mesopotamia - there's a good chance the GOP wins the White House in 2012. It could be 2020 before we elect a President with the will and resources to carry out a genuinely progressive agenda.

I realize that, in our modern world, we tend to live in and think for the moment. Electing a Democrat in 2008 would be far more satisfying than electing a Republican.

But until I see a Democrat with a realistic plan for Iraq, I continue to wonder - what's the point?

Narrowing the Field

2007-12-26T11:14:00.000-05:00

A version of the following appeared as one of my weekly columns in the (Chester) Village News.

Thus far, I’ve named my dream candidate for president – and my nightmare. Today, I’ll briefly survey the rest of the field.

Logically, I’ll start with the Democrats. As a progressive – or, if you insist, a “liberal” – I tend to agree with Democrats more often on the issues, though not so often that I don’t wish for a third option. Given the Democrats’ reluctance to take bold positions – or nominate bold candidates – I’m increasingly inclined to regard them as bigger obstacle to progressive government than the Republicans.

I'm also concerned that electing a Democrat in 2008 would be a wasted opportunity. If the mess in Mesopotamia dominates the attention of our next Commander in Chief – and a combination of war and economic slowdown limit the funds and political capital available to make real progress on such issues as health care and the environment – we might as well elect a decent Republican, if there is one, and leave it to the GOP to clean up their war.

We can always elect a Democrat – or someone even greener and/or more progressive – in 2012.

That said, several Democrats strike me as credible candidates. Senator Joe Biden is an experienced, intelligent statesman with solid foreign policy and national security credentials. He’s also unusually insightful; Biden was years ahead of the curve in detecting Iraq’s tendency to fragment into three essentially separate states. I just wish he had the gumption to proceed to the logical conclusion – endorsing outright partition as America’s way out.

Bill Richardson – the only Hispanic candidate in the race – has a most impressive resume. A former Congressman, Cabinet member, and Ambassador to the United Nations – Richardson is now Governor of New Mexico. His diplomatic credentials – especially in negotiating with people who don’t like us – are remarkable. Richardson isn’t exactly charismatic, but if we need a President to undo the damage Mr. Bush has done to our foreign relations, he seems a solid choice.

Barack Obama strikes me as a man who will be President. But not, I hope, yet. He’s obviously highly intelligent and articulate – and his approach to international affairs reminds me of the confident pragmatism of JFK. Also – considering the two presidents to emerge from the “me generation” – his not being a Boomer is a real plus. That said, three years in the U.S. Senate isn’t much experience. Obama in 2012, maybe. Obama in 2016, sure. But in 2008?

In terms of policy positions, intellectual brilliance and overall talent, John Edwards is clearly the class of the Democratic field. He’s a marvelous communicator, and his roots go deep into the half of America too long neglected by both parties.With a friendly Congress – and quiet on the international front – John Edwards might prove another FDR. But without a workable exit strategy from Iraq – and Edwards doesn’t have one – how much could he really achieve?

On the Republican side, I confess, I’m more entertained than impressed. Ron Paul, a genuine libertarian, is a voice Americans need to hear – but not from the Oval Office. Texas oughta send him to the Senate.

Mike Huckabee has charm, and he’s obviously no dummy. But in the 21st century, can we afford to elect a President so indifferent to science that he can’t accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution?

Rudy Giuliani is an American original - a character out of some 1930's tough-guy flick. I agree with him on many domestic issues, but I’m wary of his Napoleonic ego.

Mitt Romney is intelligent, accomplished, articulate. He even looks presidential. But from his record, I can’t tell if he’s conservative, liberal – or a political android, his opinions stored on an infinitely rewritable memory chip. My gut tells me Romney is all about Romney.

He reminds me of Mark Warner.

Which brings us to John McCain, a man I’ve long admired. McCain isn’t perfect. Occasionally – as with his embrace of Jerry Falwell – his ambition leads him to do things that occasion a real frisson.

But, as David Brooks – The New York Times’ brilliant conservative columnist – recently noted, McCain is the only genuinely great figure in the race. McCain has character. He’s always thought for himself. He’s proved willing to tackle thorny issues, such as campaign finance reform. Having been tortured, he rejects the use of torture. He’s good on the environment. He also seems capable of unlimited growth.

In that sense, he reminds me of Senator John Warner, one of America's national treasures.

McCain also strikes me as the candidate best qualified to clean up the mess in Mesopotamia. An Annapolis man, McCain was an early critic of Mr. Bush’s misconduct of the war. He called for a “surge” – and took the resulting heat – long before the President.I’ve never agreed with McCain on Iraq, but I trust him. He’d use his best judgment and keep an open mind toward the war’s shifting fortunes – never clinging to a policy out of sheer stubbornness.

Yes, he’s a Republican – but if Mesopotamia remains the dominant issue confronting America through the next four years, we might just need a man of John McCain’s character, background and abilities.

Now, to be clear, I’m still hoping some Democratic candidate will enunciate a viable endgame for Mesopotamia. I don't see anything working, short of a three-way partition, withdrawing our long-term troops into an independent Kurdistan, and dealing with the consequent unpleasantness with Turkey - but maybe someone will come up with something.

However, until I see that plan, I’m leaning toward the honorable Senator from Arizona for 2008 - and working toward a genuine, progressive/green insurgency in 2012.

Not With a Gun to My Head

2007-12-03T12:16:00.000-05:00

The following is part two of a three-parter on the choice confronting liberal and progressive citizens in 2008. The original, slightly modified, version appears in my regular column in this week's Chester Village News.

With Iowa and New Hampshire less than a month away, I still find myself scratching my head over the presidential field. So far, my main achievement has been to identify one candidate for whom I could not – under any foreseeable circumstances – cast my ballot.

Senator Hillary Clinton.

I write this at the risk of offending. The valid aspirations of generations of American women have – for many – become wrapped up in Senator Clinton’s candidacy. Woe betide the man who speaks ill of her.

But I’ll take that risk, because it’s not Senator Clinton’s gender that bothers me.

It’s her character – and her last name.

The Clintons – Bill and Hillary – seem to me to embody everything that has gone wrong with American liberalism. Simply stated, whatever principles they started with have become entirely subordinated to their unquenchable ambition. They will do whatever it takes to win high office – and having won, to hang on.

As a result, they – and their allies – have nearly completed the decades-long process of neutering the Democratic Party as an instrument of progressive government.

At least since the rise of Ronald Reagan, Democrats have been playing the political equivalent of a “prevent defense” – which, as every football fan knows, too often prevents winning.

Witness Mr. Clinton’s two terms. True, he balanced the Federal budget – an admirable achievement. But he fumbled health care reform in his first year – and never tried again. He did nothing serious about Social Security, immigration, or the environment.

Indeed, despite remarkable skills as a communicator, he never – after his first year – mounted a serious effort to rally public opinion on behalf of any major, progressive policy initiative.

As I see it, Mr. Clinton enjoyed being President more than exercising the powers of the presidency. To understand how little he used these powers, one need simply compare Mr. Clinton’s presidency with that of his successor – a man with a fraction of his intellectual and rhetorical gifts, but possessing an unshakeable will.

From my perspective, Mr. Clinton’s presidency was a holding action – a waste of eight years. And his most unforgivable failure – one in which his First Lady was fully complicit – was his refusal to resign after the Lewinsky scandal.

Had Mr. Clinton resigned, Al Gore would have become president – with two years to establish himself, shake off the taint of a scandal in which he played no part, and set a new course.

Given the closeness of the 2000 election, it’s inconceivable that a President Gore would not have defeated Governor Bush – in which case, much that has gone so badly wrong over the past seven years might have been avoided.

Yet, even after it became clear that the scandal would, at best, reduce Mr. Clinton to the lamest of ducks, the Clintons clung to office. In so doing, they failed their party – and their country.

In my view, this failure is sufficient justification for rejecting Senator Clinton’s candidacy. Still, in fairness, I’ve watched for signs that a second President Clinton might be better than the first.

I’ve seen none.

Senator Clinton supported the resolution authorizing President Bush’s invasion of Iraq – and waited until public opinion turned against the war before cautiously speaking against it. Even today, she has made clear that she expects to keep American troops in Iraq at least through her first term as President – which essentially means she would have neither the money nor the political capital to advance her domestic agenda.

Senator Clinton has supported President Bush’s escalation of tensions with Iran – an unnecessary confrontation which will likely result in serious, unnecessary blowback.

She has offered only the feeblest criticisms of the President’s violations of the Geneva Conventions, the Bill of Rights, and the constitutional separation of powers.

In short, she has sedulously avoided any expression which would limit the powers of the office she hopes to win – a disturbing portent. From her behavior, Senator Clinton strikes me as the most cold-bloodedly ambitious person to seek the Oval Office since Richard Nixon.

That said, good friends have asked the obvious question: If 2008 came down to a choice between Senator Clinton and some arch-conservative Republican, wouldn’t you have to vote for her?

Nope.

As a student of History, I like to think long-term.

True, electing Senator Clinton would deprive the GOP of the White House.

But it would also commit the US to at least another four years in Iraq. That, in turn, would mean additional hundreds of billions – funds better devoted to health care, education, alternative energy and a decaying infrastructure – being poured down a rat hole.

Electing Senator Clinton would also assure her campaign for re-election in 2012 – virtually guaranteeing that no truly progressive candidate would appear on the ballot before 2016. And, given the balance between the two parties – and the consequent trend of alternating decades in power – a Clinton victory might well mean waiting until 2020 or 2024 for another shot at a genuinely progressive presidency.

Life’s too short – and the crucial issues are too pressing.

Thus mindful, I can justify electing a Republican to deal with the mess his party made in Mesopotamia – and devoting my efforts to electing a true progressive in 2012.

And if Senator Clinton is the nominee, that choice will become far easier.

Already?

2007-12-03T11:53:00.000-05:00

We should be thinking of Christmas.

Not entirely, of course. There are storm windows to put up, gutters to clean, fallen leaves to compost, outdoor plants to mulch. But with December ‘round the corner, we Virginians shouldn’t be worrying about next year’s election.

Folks in New Hampshire and Iowa should, of course. They’re accustomed to it.

If the two major parties hadn’t mismanaged things so badly – if self-important states hadn’t begun leapfrogging each other in search of more clout – we wouldn’t have to think seriously about our presidential options until early March, when there’s not much else to think about.

But here we are. Thanks to a truncated nomination process, there’s an excellent chance the presidential field will have been narrowed two finalists before the first robin of spring – and a fair chance neither will be someone most of us would trust anywhere near the Oval Office.

If it turns out that way, we’ll have an eight or nine month “fall campaign” to look forward to. Great fun, no doubt, for hardcore loyalists – who’d vote for a trained chimp if it got their party’s nomination – but rather an ordeal for the rest of us.

Meanwhile, at this joyous season, those of us who want any say whatsoever in choosing our next president must turn our minds from higher things. It’s time to make that contribution. To write letters or make calls to voters in Iowa or New Hampshire. Or, if you’re really dedicated, to go there in person and hit the streets.

But first, you have to pick your candidate.

I’ve been following the campaign for nearly a year, now, and I still haven’t managed that trick. I’ve narrowed my list to a handful of individuals I can actually imagine voting for, but my true first choice isn’t in the field.

If Al Gore decided to run – as a Democrat, a Green, a Whig, or as the nominee of the Prohibition Party – I’d be there.

Please understand, this has little to do with the mess in 2000. I believe the wrong man won – or rather, was declared the winner – that year, but I wasn’t that emotionally invested. In 2000, after eight years as vice president, Mr. Gore had apparently lost touch with himself – so much so that he needed consultants to tell him how to talk, how to dress, etc. As a result, he presented himself as a man so wooden, so without personality, that he actually managed to lose to George W. Bush.

I am – by contemporary standards – fairly liberal, but I also value authenticity in public men and women. In 2000, I voted in the Republican primary – for John McCain – who appeared to have plenty of that.

Today, however, Al Gore is no longer the uncertain heir apparent of 2000. Since his defeat, he has, simultaneously, gotten back in touch with himself and grown in stature. He stands much taller now. He speaks with deep conviction. His passionate advocacy of environmental responsibility – which won him both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize – reflect lifelong, deeply held beliefs.

Al Gore has matured into a great man, yet you can see in him the youthful Senator from Tennessee. He’s regained his integrity.

And that’s important.

Any student of history knows that great presidents are neither born nor made. Of our 43 presidents, only George Washington entered office prepared for the role – which is logical, considering that the Framers shaped Article II precisely to fit him. Every other president grown into the job – or failed to. Indeed, the main quality shared by our greatest presidents has been a capacity for growth.

There are other essential qualities: intellectual curiosity; energy; an understanding of history and of human nature; and the personal experience of loss or defeat. It’s hard to name a great president – or a great ruler from any era – who did not enjoy these qualities.

But a capacity for growth tops the list. And Mr. Gore – in the past seven years – has clearly demonstrated that quality.

There are other things. Mr. Gore understands our planet’s environmental challenges – and how these relate to such issues as social and economic justice and global cooperation. He also understands that these interconnected issues will have far more impact on America’s future than the plotting of Islamic fanatics living in caves.

Of course, Mr. Gore says he’s not running – and I suspect he’s wise. His stature – nationally and globally – is now higher than that of any living president, including the incumbent. He enjoys a level of credibility which would inevitably be tarnished if he became a candidate.

Still, if he changes his mind, his candidacy would become – for many Americans – the crusade of a lifetime. Previous insurgencies – Bobby Kennedy in ‘68, Gary Hart in ‘84, Howard Dean in ‘04 – would seem like rehearsals. I just don’t see it happening.

Which leaves me with a harder choice. In coming weeks, I’ll take a stab at winnowing the field – looking for a president.

The Vampire Party

2007-10-22T12:07:00.000-05:00

For a year now, I’ve tried writing a piece about why I’ve given up on the Democratic Party.

I attempted a restrained approach, and it came out like a compressed history lecture. Give me 50 minutes and 25 bright students, I could make it scintillating. Packing it into 1000 words or less, it became simultaneously, a brain-buster and a complete yawn.

So I tried letting myself go, resulting in blood-curdling screeds which – while emotionally satisfying – lacked the credibility essential to persuasive writing.

Finally, it came to me. October. Halloween. Vampires.

A theme...

If I could offer one piece of advice to young progressives, it would be this:
The Democratic Party is Count Dracula.

Which is not to recommend the obvious alternative. I have contemporaries who became Republicans decades ago and feel compelled to “stay the course” – out of team spirit, stubborn pride or the hope of getting it right in their next incarnation.

But it’s difficult to imagine significant numbers of intelligent young Americans voluntarily joining the party of George W. Bush.

That said, it doesn’t follow that anyone should – out of loathing for the President – become a Democrat.

Campaign for individual Democrats, sure. If Edwards or Obama – or (it’s apparently possible) Hillary – turns you on, hie thee off to New Hampshire over Christmas break and knock on doors.

I did it in for Dean in ‘04 and – even at my advanced age – it was a blast.

Just don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

Because I’m serious, the Democratic Party is Dracula. It should be long dead, but it lives on – and on – by drinking the lifeblood of generation after generation of young Americans.

It lures them with the vague promise that this generation can seize control of the party, reform it, and turn it – once again – into the great liberal/progressive party of FDR, Harry Truman, and the Kennedys.

Ain’t gonna happen.

The reasons for this are too abstruse and technical for brief treatment, but if you’re up for some homework, I can point you in the right direction.

And it’s important. After all, this isn’t like choosing a college or a first spouse. People transfer and divorce, but most Americans change religions more often than they change parties.

You really should bone up before selling your political soul.

Here’s my basic argument: The Democratic Party can’t be changed because – as one of two major parties – it has a powerful institutional bias toward winning the next election.

Makes sense, right? You can’t govern if you don’t win.

But you also can’t govern – as progressives – if you take money from every special interest on K Street, run to the center, and then, once elected, whip out some liberal agenda you forgot to mention during the campaign.

Voters don’t like it. It’s a question of legitimacy – one of the rare concepts from Political Science that actually makes sense. In a democracy, citizens tend to hold you to what you said during the campaign.

To get away with a radical, hidden agenda, you need something special – say, the Great Depression or 9-11. And you can’t count on that.

Nonetheless, the people who run the Democratic Party – a diverse, but powerful group of insiders – insist, above all, upon winning the next election.

After all, they want to get back into those impressive majority suites on Capitol Hill – or even better, those cramped little offices in the West Wing.

But of course, if your agenda is winning the next election, you don’t want to risk scaring people. Or making them think.

Which is why the Party insisted that Al Gore tone down the environmentalism in 2000. And why they dumped Howard Dean for the “electable” John Kerry in 2004.

I didn’t say Democrats were smart.

Now, you might ask, if winning the next election isn’t the goal, what is it?

Winning the debate.

To transform America, a party must first stake out a bold vision of a better society – then spend the decade or two it takes for the voters to come around.

When I was a kid, in 1964, Barry Goldwater did just that. His minions captured the Republican Party – and Goldwater took one of the worst electoral poundings in American history.

But sixteen years later, Ronald Reagan rode Goldwater’s conservative vision to victory – and the Republicans have been in power ever since.

You might ask, couldn’t today’s young progressives stage the same sort of coup within the Democratic Party?

Unlikely. Coups only succeed except against centralized power structures. Unlike the corporate-style Republicans, the Democrats are essentially a vast coalition – with maybe ten distinct power centers – virtually impregnable to a hostile takeover.

Besides, it’s been tried. Generation after generation – including mine – has joined the Democratic Party, determined to reform it, inject new life into it, and turn it into a progressive counterpart of the GOP.

What actually happens is that Dracula thing. Young progressives, drained of their idealism, slowly morph into middle-aged pragmatists capable of nominating Walter Mondale over Gary Hart, John Kerry over Howard Dean – or Hillary Clinton over someone with a pulse.

Meanwhile, with no party advocating a viable, progressive alternative, the Republicans continue defining the terms of the national political debate – which recedes forever farther rightward.

There’s only one way to change this – and it starts with a stake to the heart.

Still dubious?

Here’s your homework.

Study the decline and fall of the 19th century Whigs – the only major American party to give way to a more viable alternative. You might start with David Potter’s 1976 classic, The Impending Crisis.

Do some reading, then ask yourself: If the principled opponents of slavery had stuck with the Whigs – instead of forming smaller, more radical parties which moved the debate to the left – would we ever have had a President Lincoln? Or an Emancipation Proclamation?

Today’s situation seems analogous.

It’s your call, but to me, joining the Democratic Party is about as wise as allowing that charming Count with the intriguing accent to lure you onto a dark, deserted balcony.

Happy Halloween!

Going Down With the Ship

2007-07-10T17:45:00.000-05:00

During a recent a campaign appearance, Senator Hillary Clinton described one of the main challenges of her prospective administration as undoing virtually the entire program of President Bush.

Given the realities of politics, Senator Clinton’s proposal was breathtakingly ambitious. Granted, her target audience – Democratic primary voters – regards the Bush presidency as a disaster. Nonetheless, erasing the work of an eight-year administration would be a mammoth undertaking, even for a President with no other agenda.

Historically literate citizens realize that – good or bad – established policy is nearly always harder to undo than to initiate. But this leads, inevitably, to a further consideration.

If the entire Bush administration has been such an unmitigated disaster, wouldn’t it have been easier to avoid the whole sordid mess by preventing Mr. Bush’s election in the first place?

And if so, wasn’t First Lady Hillary Clinton in an ideal position to do just that in 1998 – by insisting that her husband resign at the nadir of the Lewinsky scandal?

After all, Mrs. Clinton knew the precedent. President Nixon, crippled by Watergate, was forced to resign when his own party turned against him. Indeed, since Vice-President Spiro Agnew had already resigned in disgrace, Gerald Ford – America’s first appointed Vice-President – assumed office.

The result was entirely positive, for the nation and the GOP.

Relieved of the distractions of scandal and the faltering leadership of a President hopelessly on the defensive, America began addressing a host of problems – including the endgame in Vietnam.

And the Republican Party – by refusing to follow Nixon into oblivion – put itself in position to run a strong race in 1976 and to recover the White House in 1980 – the beginning of nearly three decades of power only now drawing to a close.

Apparently, it never occurred to most Democrats – including Mrs. Clinton – to follow the Nixon precedent.

It did occur to me. In 1998, mine was a rare Democratic voice urging President Clinton to resign. Sadly, Congressional Democrats – and the First Lady – chose another course. Instead of demanding Mr. Clinton’s resignation, they rallied behind him – effectively dooming the prospects of his successor.

Instead of running as the incumbent – and his own man – Vice President Al Gore was tainted with the stench of a scandal in which he had played no part. Despite a roaring economy, Federal budget surpluses, progress on most international fronts, and a general sense of national well-being, Mr. Gore lost – by the narrowest of Electoral margins – to a candidate promising to bring personal morality back to the Oval Office.

The result has been six years of scandal, incompetence, assaults on the Bill of Rights, and needless, bloody war – with nearly two more to go.

None of which would have occurred had Governor Bush faced an incumbent President Gore in 2000. Under those circumstances, Mr. Gore would almost certainly have won election in his own right, and America – and the world – would have taken a very different course.

Yet today, congressional Republicans - ignoring the Nixon precedent – are repeating the Democratic blunder of 1998.

It’s a poor choice.

Imagine, if you will, that congressional Republicans summoned the courage to confront President Bush with this ultimatum:

“Respectfully, sir, your usefulness is at an end. Your credibility – the indispensable coin of the American presidency – is lost. The list of your failures is long. Almost unattended, Afghanistan is slipping away. Two years after Katrina, a major American city still lies in ruins.

“Worst of all, we are mired in a Mesopotamian civil war which cannot be ended under your leadership. Perhaps the situation can still be saved. Perhaps not. But your mental inflexibility, your inability to heed advice that does not conform to your preconceptions and your obsession with your ‘legacy’ virtually assures defeat.

“They also assure an electoral disaster for our party in 2008.

“It’s time for you to go.”

Now, Mr. Bush is a stubborn man, but congressional Republicans have the means of persuasion. President Nixon left office – not because of Democratic pressure – but because congressional Republicans were prepare to impeach him.

Once again, grounds for impeachment exist.

Mr. Bush’s deliberate falsehoods in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; his sweetheart deals with favored corporations; his complicity in the political removal of Federal district attorneys; and his utter disregard of statutory and constitutional protections for individual privacy and the rights of prisoners and defendants – any one would provide legitimate grounds for impeachment.

If they chose, congressional Republicans could compel Mr. Bush to resign – preceded by Mr. Cheney.

And if, following Mr. Nixon’s precedent all the way, Mr. Cheney’s replacement were someone of stature and military competence – a Colin Powell, say – Republicans might yet stand a chance of retaining the White House, and regaining Congress, in 2008.

It won’t happen, of course. As the Democrats clung to Clinton, the Republicans will go down with Bush.

But if the whole tragic cycle ends with Mr. Clinton back in the White House – as the President’s consort – Republicans will have only themselves to blame.

Who Will Lead?

2007-02-05T13:23:00.000-05:00

I'm looking for a candidate for President, and thus far, the search isn't going well.

There are a fair number of candidates - mostly Democrats - whom I could support on the basis of domestic issues. Assuming Al Gore has really ruled out another run, I'd probably sign on with John Edwards right now, except for one thing.

Mesopotamia.

In terms of America's future, there will be more important issues facing the next President. Global warming. Energy independence. Our mediocre public schools. Health coverage for all Americans.

All of these will probably have more impact on the long term well-being of the nation than the final resolution of the mess in Mesopotamia.

But none will so clearly demonstrate the character of America - and of the man or woman we choose as our next leader.

Simply stated, the way we leave Mesopotamia - and what we leave behind - will be a test of our national character.

We have a decision to make: Whether to take responsibility for the mess we have created - or attempt to fob it off on the feeble "government" of our creation while we scuttle away, leaving behind a situation more dangerous to regional stability - and our national interests - than Saddam ever was.

As things now stand, there is only one certainty. Whichever candidate is elected President in 2008, he or she will have - or profess to have - a strategy for the prompt withdrawal of American forces in Mesopotamia.

There may be candidates who oppose withdrawal, but - short of a military or political miracle - such candidates have no real chance of election. The American people have turned their backs on this war - and there is no precedent for their regaining enthusiasm for an unpopular war once they have expressed their opposition at the polls.

In other words, as things now stand, come January 20, 2009, our options in Mesopotamia will be reduced to how we choose to save face.

In the meanwhile, however, the campaign of 2008 is upon us. Out of that campaign, there may come a policy which better reflects our national honor - and serves our national interests - than mere withdrawal. In my view, the candidate who offers such an option will deserve - and very probably win - the election.

It's a risk - advocating the restoration of what our neighbors to the north call "peace, order and good government" before we leave Mesopotamia. It's far easier to play to the discontents of the majority by calling for some sort of pull-out. It's far easier to blame the Iraqis, or their government, for failing to solve the problem.

But it isn't their problem to solve. It's ours.

America's invasion of Iraq shattered the state almost beyond repair. Our subsequent failure to impose order and rebuild the infrastructure - added to our inane policy of attempting to transform Iraq into a Western-style democracy - led to civil war.

If we leave now, while laying the blame on the government of Iraq, the sequel will be one of two things: An intensification of civil war, which will eventually draw in neighboring states; or a Shi'ite-dominated Iraq dependent upon Iran for military and political guidance.

Either outcome would be disastrous for the US.

As I have written before, the obvious solution is for the US to cut the Gordian knot by partitioning the former Iraq into three states.

The key to partition is to award both Mosul and Kirkuk, with their surrounding oil fields and a decent territorial buffer, to a new Kurdistan. In return for independence and US protection, this Kurdish state would be required to observe three conditions: Hosting long-term US bases on Kurdish soil; agreeing not to encourage Kurdish separatists inside Turkey - or, without US permission, inside Syria or Iran; and committing to pay a gradually-declining percentage of Kurdish oil revenues to the new Sunni state in return for peace.

Assuming the Kurds accepted national sovereignty on these terms, the US could then sever the Sunni and Shi'ite portions of Mesopotamia - partitioning Baghdad along the Tigris River and using US force to assure an orderly exchange of populations within the divided city.

That done, US and British forces could turn the new Sunni state over to the supervision of its responsible neighbors - preferably under the overall guidance of Jordan. The new Shi'ite state would, inevitably, come under the tutelage of Iran. The border between the Sunni and Shi'a states would remain ours to patrol until arrangements could be made for a UN peace-keeping force.

The great advantage of partition lies in its expedition and relatively orderliness. Mesopotamia is already breaking apart. That is its fate. But the separation is now occurring with a maximum of lawlessness and bloodshed. The establishment of three states under US supervision would permit the peaceful exchange of populations and - equally important - the return of nearly a million refugees representing much of the educated, propertied, and professional class of the former Iraq.

Partition is the best thing for the people of Mesopotamia. It would also serve long-term US interests.

Done properly, partition would establish a new balance of power in the Middle East. The new Kurdistan would operate as a check on Turkish pretensions and as a potential US tool for influencing the good behavior of Iran and Syria - both of which contain large Kurdish enclaves adjacent to the new Kurdish state.

The new Sunni state would be small, relatively weak, and without oil. It would, however, contain a large part of the educated and professional class of the former Iraq and - aided by the temporary oil subsidy from Kurdistan - it could well transform itself into something like a modern society. Indeed, if Fareed Zakaria is correct, its very oil-lessness could prove the key to its evolving democratic institutions.

The great weakness of partition would lie in the fact that half of the former Iraq would come under Iranian tutelage. However, as I have pointed out before, an American withdrawal without partition would most likely leave Iran in control of the whole of Iraq - and leave Iraq in greater need of Iranian military and political aid in order to suppress Sunni separatism.

Without partition, Iranian influence over Iraq would, presumably, last indefinitely. With partition, Iranian influence over the Shi'ite rump would be of shorter endurance. As soon as the Shi'ite state regained stability and began producing considerable oil, the differences between the new, Arab state and its overweening Persian neighbor would begin to become apparent.

To me, all this seems obvious. Partition is the only responsible course - given that Americans will no longer support a long-term commitment of military force to carry out the President's impossible mission.

Yet to date, no Presidential candidate has stepped up to the plate. Instead, we continue to hear variations on two themes: "Stay the course - with more troops"; and "Blame the Iraqis - and withdraw".

The former course does no justice to our national intelligence. The latter, no credit to our national character.

And neither does much credit to the ever-growing number of politicians who think themselves worthy of the office of President of the United States.

What The Decider Should Decide

2007-01-16T13:34:00.000-05:00

In all fairness, George W. Bush was never cut out to be president. But for the accident of his birth, this modestly gifted man would have spent his life in relative obscurity – a good neighbor, pillar of his community and church, and all-around good guy. Living the ordinary life for which Nature fitted him, he would likely have been happier.

Assuredly, his country would have been.

Instead, Mr. Bush – president by virtue of his last name, a bit of Oval Office hanky-panky, and the decision of a divided Supreme Court – is now challenging James Buchanan for last place in the historical rankings of America’s presidents.

Personally, I doubt he’ll make it. Buchanan, after all, lost seven states – not in the electoral college – from the Union. Had it not been for the extraordinary leadership of his successor, Buchanan might have gone down in history as the last President of the United States. In terms of character, at least, the decisive Mr. Bush stands head and shoulders above the dithering Buchanan.

Unfortunately, given his disinclination for personal study or deep reflection, Mr. Bush’s decisiveness has often proved a weakness. He has relied too readily on the advice of others of his class – well-heeled men in tailored suits who speak in the ultra- macho, football-and-combat vernacular popular among those who earn millions without ever getting their well-manicured hands dirty.

As a result, Mr. Bush has decisively put himself on the wrong side of many issues – environmental, scientific, economic, and social. For these errors, History might well forgive him. But he has also led his country into an absolute quagmire in Mesopotamia – overextending our military to the breaking point, alienating our allies, and bankrupting our treasury.

For this one mistake, many times compounded, History will almost certainly judge him harshly.

In his decision to commit 21,500 additional troops to the mess in Mesopotamia, President Bush has disregarded the judgment of his fellow citizens, clearly registered in the mid-term elections. He has flown in the face of informed military opinion, as reflected in the outspoken opposition of retired generals who had heretofore supported him. He has lost the near-unanimous support of Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Today, Mr. Bush is approaching the nadir Mr. Clinton reached after he lied to the nation about his relations with Miss Lewinsky. A weakened President, having lost his majorities in both houses of Congress, enters the last two years of his presidency with dismal approval ratings and his party on the verge of mutiny.

Eight years ago, I was among the handful of Democrats who publicly urged Mr. Clinton’s resignation. My reasons had something to do with his infidelity, more to do with his mendacity, and much to do with his forfeiture of that priceless presidential asset – credibility.

But my main reason was that I was more interested in the issues Mr. Clinton championed – and the party he led – than in the man himself. Mr. Clinton had become a liability. If he resigned, President Gore could have used the next two years to regain the policy initiative – and to enter the 2000 presidential campaign as a prohibitive favorite for election in his own right.

Looking back over the past six years, it’s painful to think where America might be today had President Gore won re-election in 2000 – as he certainly would have.

We would, of course, have troops in Afghanistan. More troops, including the special ops teams which were diverted from chasing Osama to overthrowing Saddam.

We’d probably not be in Iraq, though we might have peacekeeping forces in Darfur.

We’d probably still be operating at or near a balanced budget, instead of running record deficits fueled by upper-class tax cuts. We’d likely be moving toward energy independence, and leading the world in combating global climate change. And New Orleans would probably be a lot closer to realizing its renaissance.

But that’s my fantasy. Mr. Clinton decided to cling to office – and history took a different course.

Today, I’d like to present a Republican fantasy – one that will almost certainly not happen – but which could happen, if Republican leaders consulted their own self-interest.

Suppose those leaders compelled Mr. Bush to face the fact that he has led his country into a mess from which he lacks the judgment, imagination, and political clout to extract it.

Suppose they persuaded him to act with extraordinary patriotism and self-sacrifice – to rescue Iraq from civil war, his country from quagmire, and his party from near-certain defeat in 2008.

Suppose Mr. Bush demanded Dick Cheney’s resignation and nominated Colin Powell to replace him – and then, upon Powell’s confirmation, followed Richard Nixon’s example by resigning the presidency.

Can anyone doubt that President Powell, soldier and diplomat, would be uniquely equipped to tackle the complex military and diplomatic challenges of Iraq?

Can anyone doubt that President Powell, with two years of incumbency under his belt, would handily defeat any Democratic challenger in 2008?

Can anyone doubt that, as America’s first black President – and a Republican – Mr. Powell would preside over a party realignment that would dwarf the fantasies of Karl Rove, making the Republicans a majority for at least for the next few decades?

It won’t happen, of course. Mr. Bush, like Mr. Clinton before him, will lead his party over a cliff in 2008.

Because no Republican will tell him it’s time to go, the future will be left to The Decider.

Why Presidents Can’t Quit, Part Two

2007-01-11T17:13:00.000-05:00

Last week, I explored the curious historical fact that American presidents never resign from office – even in circumstances which would be regarded as completely untenable in a parliamentary democracy. With the exception of Richard Nixon, who resigned only to avoid the inevitable shame of impeachment and removal, no president – even under conditions of disability or disgrace – has chosen to leave office before the end of his term.

This historical anomaly has much to do with the weakness of American political parties vis-a-vis incumbent presidents. Another explanation lies in the absence of historical precedents. Simply stated, Americans – with their characteristic ignorance of how other democracies govern themselves – simply can’t imagine resignation as a viable option, because it doesn’t appear in their own history.

Today, as an intellectual exercise, I’d like to imagine that – over the course of American history – two or three presidents had been compelled to step down by the leaders of their parties. Imagine, for example, that congressional Democrats had insisted that Woodrow Wilson do the right thing after a series of strokes disabled him. Or that Warren G. Harding – instead of dying with suspicious convenience on the eve of scandal – had been forced to resign in favor of the upright Calvin Coolidge.

Would these hypothetical events, combined with Nixon’s resignation, have created sufficient precedent for Americans to consider resignation as a viable part of our political heritage? And, if so, might we have witnessed other historic resignations in our own times?

I was not a writer when George H. W. Bush announced for re-election in 1992, so I cannot prove what follows. But I recall, during several Charlottesville bull sessions, strongly advocating that President Bush resign before the end of his first term – not in disgrace, but to win greater glory.

My argument ran as follows.

President Bush stood at the pinnacle of national and international esteem. He had deftly managed America’s response to the implosion of the Soviet Union and its aftermath. He had, for the first time since the Korean War, rallied the United Nations to repel an act of military aggression by force, thus restoring the independence of Kuwait.

That said, Mr. Bush appeared to have no second-term agenda. He was running for re-election, it seemed, not because he had “fire in the belly”, but because he liked being President. Without passion or agenda, he seemed likely to lose to whomever the Democrats nominated.

But what if the President indicated a willingness to resign a year early in order to be named the first American Secretary-General of the United Nations? He would, by that single, dramatic act, add immeasurably to the prestige and power of the UN – while securing his place in history as the man gave up the world’s greatest job in order to make the UN a viable force for peace and justice in the world.

He would also permit the Republican Party to choose a candidate up to the challenge eventually provided by Bill Clinton.

It is, of course, inconceivable that President Bush would have followed this course. That is precisely my point. It shouldn’t have been inconceivable.

In 1998, after the Lewinsky affair had derailed the Clinton presidency, I joined a handful of other Democrats who called for the President to resign – not because of his sexual peccadilloes, but because his subsequent lies had destroyed the most indispensable of presidential assets – his credibility.

Understand, please, that I’d always liked President Clinton. I still do. But I believed he had forfeited any chance of achieving further policy successes. I also believed the Democratic Party would fare far better in 2000 if a President Gore entered the campaign with two years of incumbency to his credit – and considerable distance between himself and the Clinton scandals.

Today, looking back on the disaster of the Bush presidency, I regard Clinton’s failure to resign as one of the most consequential decisions in American history.

Had Clinton resigned, we would – in all probability – be in the ninth year of the Gore administration. American troops would certainly be in Afghanistan. They would almost certainly not be in Iraq, though we might now be doing something about Darfur.
America would be leading the world in seeking alternate energy sources and combating global warming. The Supreme Court would probably remain balanced between its left and right wings. And New Orleans, I sincerely believe, would be far closer to a brilliant renaissance.

In historical hindsight, Democrats, liberals – and all those who have lost loved ones in the Mesopotamian quagmire – have much to regret in Mr. Clinton’s decision to cling to office.

It isn’t hard to imagine Republicans, a decade hence, feeling much the same about their inability to compel the resignation of the disastrous George W. Bush in time to salvage their prospects in 2008.

Why Presidents Can’t Quit, Part One

2007-01-02T18:47:00.000-05:00

The death of Gerald Ford has become – as befits our late President – a welcome opportunity for the American people to reflect upon our recent history.

In contrast with the funeral for Ronald Reagan – which was transformed by Hollywood grandiosity, a full-court press by an administration and Congress eager to claim his mantle, and the obsequious timidity of our media into something resembling the deification of a deceased Roman emperor – President Ford’s passing has offered that most useful of occasions, a teachable moment.

To be sure, there has been great emphasis on the positive, which is only natural and proper when burying an honorable man. There has also been a good deal of popular sentimentality about a bygone era which – but for the fact that we Boomers were much younger and slimmer then – hardly merits much nostalgia. But there has also been refreshing candor and some genuine effort at honest appraisal – an attempt to anticipate the long view of history in assessing Mr. Ford’s 2 ½ years in the White House.

Over the past week, I have begun to realize that we may gain a relatively balanced assessment of Mr. Ford’s presidency in our own time – something which will almost certainly not happen with respect to presidents with so many idolators as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, or so many detractors as Richard Nixon.

Fascinating as I find these proto-historical appraisals of the Ford presidency, though, what keeps intruding into my thoughts is the simple fact that Mr. Ford came to office through the only presidential resignation in our history.

The only one.

And I find myself thinking what a fine thing it would have been had other recent presidents taken advantage of Mr. Nixon’s precedent.

If you think you know where this is going, you’re partly right – but I have a larger point in mind than the fate of the current administration. Especially since the dawn of the 20th century, a number of American presidents have overstayed their welcomes – to the detriment of their historical reputations, our national interests, and their own political parties.

As a student of both American and English history, I have often reflected upon the disadvantages of the American presidency in comparison with the office of Prime Minister. First among these, in my estimation, is the fact that – by the logic of our Constitution – ex-presidents almost never make political comebacks.

To be sure, John Quincy Adams served with distinction in the House of Representatives after losing the presidency to Andrew Jackson. Martin van Buren and Millard Fillmore ran for president as candidates of third parties. And the redoubtable Theodore Roosevelt – having voluntarily left office after two terms – actually came in second as the Bull Moose candidate for president in 1912.

But, with the single exception of Grover Cleveland, no former president has ever regained the White House – a fact which perhaps accounts for the extreme reluctance of presidents to surrender office one hour before they constitutionally must.

Once in office, almost every president – including President Ford – has sought re-election. Once re-elected, every second-term president has clung to power – even Mr. Nixon, who resigned only when his removal became certain.

Even presidents whose administrations have sunk irredeemably into failure, irrelevance, or – in the case of Woodrow Wilson – literal impotence, seem to find resignation unthinkable.

Under parliamentary constitutions, by way of contrast, prime ministers are far less apt to cling to office past the point of absurdity. Assuming that human nature is everywhere much the same, the relative intransigence of American presidents cannot be attributed to some greater degree of arrogance or addiction to power.

Institutional factors cause Presidents to cling to office. The American presidency is, in many ways, an extraordinary office – vested with incredible domestic and international power – but it is also a pinnacle achieved only once. Especially since the enactment of the 22nd Amendment – which forever ends the future prospects of any president elected to a second full term – there seems little incentive for a president to leave office before his time.

In addition to the office itself, however, there is another factor which makes it nearly impossible to persuade a sitting president to step down – the relative weakness of the Republican or Democratic party vis-a-vis an incumbent president who is, among other things, its de facto head.

This has led to a great curiosity in American politics – the fact that a party’s fortunes can suffer more from the re-election of its incumbent president than from his defeat by their rivals. Parties, of course, are institutionally incapable of taking this view, but it is nonetheless worth exploring – if only for the edification of those considering starting a third party which might someday replace one of the two parties presently sharing power in this country.

I will explore these ideas further in a subsequent post.

A Tax America Needs

2006-12-27T10:25:00.000-05:00

It all comes down to oil.

But for oil money, we would likely never have heard of George W. Bush. Or, for that matter, Osama bin Laden.

Ponder that.

Oil money funds the rising power of Iran – and, through Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. It provides much of the financing for Vladimir Putin’s resurgent, disturbingly neo-Soviet, Russia. It enables the Bolivarian revolution which threatens to sweep out of Venezuela to dominate the Caribbean and Latin America.

Even as oil money strengthens our adversaries, America keeps sending dollars abroad to support its oil habit – a fact which has transformed us from the world’s generous creditor into its biggest debtor. At its heart, our permanent trade imbalance has less to do with Wal-Mart than with the corner Exxon station.

Setting all that aside, emissions from automobiles play a critical role in the dawning emergency of global warming.

We must begin cutting back on our consumption of oil, and every thinking American knows it.

The problem is, of course, that our two political parties prefer to focus on replacing foreign oil with something else. Preferably, something produced domestically. Ideally, something produced in abundance in the politically-vital state of Iowa.

Which is simply no answer at all. A gallon of corn-based ethanol requires nearly a gallon of gasoline to produce – making the ethanol subsidy a poor bargain, but a magnificent political boondoggle.

Besides, even if we could grow our own, switching fuels would do little to slow the melting of polar ice-caps, the rising intensity of violent weather systems, the lengthening life-cycles of destructive insects, and the spread of tropical diseases into once-temperate zones.

To reduce our dependence on oil, while addressing global environmental catastrophe, we must use less energy.

To use a word grown curiously hateful to modern conservatives, we must conserve.

The most effective first step toward conservation would be to engage ordinary Americans in thinking seriously about how to reduce their individual reliance on gasoline. If we could do that, the rest would follow.

The proof? Consider what happened to the market for gas guzzlers during last summer’s spike in oil prices. Or the less dramatic, but equally significant, changes in driving behavior.

Market forces work. But that does not – must not – mean we should be entirely at the mercy of unregulated markets. We can manipulate markets to provide incentives for conservation – and the obvious way to do that is artificially to raise the price of gasoline and diesel fuel at the pump.

What we need, as every thoughtful American knows, is to raise the price of gasoline. And the obvious way to do that is through a whopping gasoline surtax, payable at the pump.

The problem with this obvious solution is politics. Big Oil, Detroit, and the Club for Greed would go after a surtax the way Big Pharma and the insurance industry went after the Clinton health reforms.

You can picture the TV ads.

Still, a gasoline surtax is the obvious answer. And, since Americans aren’t very good at trading short-term pain for long-term gain, we need a surtax that doesn’t hurt too much, too quickly, or cause massive disruptions in our lives.

Indeed, we need a surtax that is easy to avoid. Because, as much as Americans hate taxes, they love avoiding taxes even more.

What we need is a surtax that seriously influences energy consumption, but is relatively easy to beat.

Something like this...

A Federal surtax of $1.00 per gallon on gasoline (and diesel) – exempting each licensed, adult driver from the surtax on the first thirty gallons purchased each month.

With modern technology, it should be a simple matter to issue each licensed driver a magnetized card – like a valued customer discount card – which gas station pumps could be adjusted to read. The card would automatically exempt the bearer from the surtax for the first thirty gallons purchased each month. Beginning with the thirty-first gallon, the surtax would kick in.

The average American drives around 10,000 miles a year – about 30 gallons a month in a reasonably fuel-efficient vehicle. Thus, most Americans could avoid paying the tax by making minor modifications in their driving habits. Those who prefer driving gas guzzlers would have to get more creative – but most people could avoid the tax, with a bit of effort.

Such an easily avoided surtax would produce relatively little revenue, but it would work a gradual change in individual consciousness. Like dieters counting carbs, drivers would start keeping track of how many gallons they consumed each month.

Families would give more thought to consolidating trips. Those in the market for cars would look more seriously at fuel efficiency. Intelligent drivers would slow down a bit, which would make us all safer.

A surtax would also exercise a slight, but continuous pressure against long-distance commuting – thus working subtly to curtail suburban sprawl.

But the immediate impact of the surtax would be nothing compared to its long-term utility. Having established a method of encouraging conservation, we could gradually ratchet down the number of gallons exempted – say, one gallon every two years – until, in twenty years, the surtax applied to every gallon over twenty.

That’s a serious reduction in gasoline consumption – but one which allows plenty of time for Detroit to design sexy, fuel-efficient vehicles, and for developers to discover the potential of reviving our cities and close-in suburbs. Time, indeed, for our metropolitan areas to get serious about mass transit.

A surtax along these lines would provide a flexible tool for gradually moving America toward serious energy conservation. It wouldn’t be painless, but it would minimize disruption while imposing a slow, steady market pressure in favor of energy conservation.

And it would square with what we know about Americans’ attitudes toward taxes. By involving all of us in a perpetual hunt for new ways to avoid using more than the exempted number of gallons each month, it would enlist American ingenuity in a permanent search for ways to reduce our dependence on oil.

Worth a try, don’t you think?

No Virginia, There's No Obama Claus!

2006-12-20T11:02:00.000-05:00

[Owing to the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, I've opted to post my piece in this week's Village News rather than write something uniquely for Gray's Gazette. I trust you will find it worthwhile. RG]

I was probably eight or nine when I started questioning the stories. Anyway, old enough to have mastered long division and to have a basic grasp of geography.

I asked Dad how many people lived in the world. Armed with this information, I did two calculations.

Assuming, naively, that most people lived in families like ours, I divided Dad’s figure by four to derive the number of houses in the world. I divided the result by 24, which I took to be the number of hours Santa Claus – by following the sun – would have to complete his deliveries in a single night.

Studying the result – the number of houses per hour Santa would have to visit – I drew the only logical conclusion. Which was fine, until I decided to share it with my little sister, who didn’t take it well.

Dad then sat me down for a serious talk about the difference between being a good thinker and a good big brother.

This episode stays with me – as does the moral Dad drew. It’s great if a little kid can use logic and long division to solve childhood’s most urgent existential problem – but nobody likes the bearer of ill tidings.

Which is why I approach today’s topic with some trepidation.

At present, all over America, desperate Democrats, liberal independents, idealistic youth, and disciples of Oprah are working themselves into a frenzy about Senator Barack Obama. They’re starting to believe – they want so much to believe – that this bright, engaging young politician is the answer to our nation’s prayers.

And I can’t see it.

Senator Obama might someday be president – perhaps even a great one. But if he runs now – on the message that has propelled him to such sudden and remarkable popularity – I fear he’s doomed to failure.

Because Senator Obama is suggesting that we can have Christmas all year ‘round. He’s selling America the heartwarming Hollywood ending in which everyone comes together as one – the final scene of It’s a Wonderful Life; the cheering crowd scenes at the end of Rocky II, Hoosiers, and a hundred underdog films; Tinker Bell reviving because we all believe – and clap our hands.

Senator Obama has latched onto the popular illusion that democracy would be ever so nice if we all set aside our personal interests, freed ourselves from hatred and prejudice, and dismissed our philosophical differences as just so much idle speculation.

He’s asking why we can’t all get along – and ignoring the obvious answer.

Because we’re not saints.

In this real world, each of us pursues real interests and ambitions. All of us are hampered by hatreds and prejudices inherited from our backgrounds or engendered by personal experiences. And none of us knows everything – or understands everything he knows.

Because this is so, in any society, conflict is inevitable. Especially in a free and democratic society.

We may tell pollsters that we want an end to partisan politics – but pollsters seldom ask which of our personal interests or beliefs we’d be willing to sacrifice for the sake of unity.

Thus, polls fail to disclose that the only bipartisanship most of us would actually accept is one in which those who disagree with us shut up and allowed us to do things our way.

And that’s precisely why Senator Obama is not – and cannot be – what so many Americans want him to be.

He’s obviously an attractive candidate. He might even ride this hunger for unity to the White House.

But once in office, he’d have decisions to make. Every decision would produce winners and losers. And very quickly, Americans would begin to remember that – barring exceptional times of emergency, mourning or celebration – a President can’t really bring us together.

No one can.

At this season, we celebrate the birth of an infant who grew up to preach a gospel of universal brotherhood and peace.

He was killed for it – as were Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas K. Gandhi, and thousands of others, famous and obscure, across the bloody pages of human history.

Which is not to say that the dream – of unity, brotherhood, universal peace – is a lie. The dream is as real as Santa Claus.

But it isn’t the end of the story.

On the day after Christmas, after a long hot bath and lots of Ben-Gay, Santa must start planning the logistics for next Christmas. George Bailey must reopen the Building & Loan and start figuring out how to repay his neighbors’ generosity.

And we must all face jobs and homework; bills, mortgages, and tuition; and the thousand-and-one challenges involved in the pursuit of happiness in a fast-paced, complex society.

Which is why Christmas is so essential. We need this time – so rare in the calendar – to set aside our differences and celebrate the things that unite us.

But what makes Christmas essential is precisely what makes a perpetual Christmas impossible.

Just like the sort of bloodless, non-partisan unity Senator Obama is selling.

The Slow Death of the Democratic Party, Part Two

2006-12-12T14:32:00.000-05:00

In my previous posting, I suggested that the Democratic Party appears to be traveling down a path to destruction first blazed by the 19th century Whigs. Today, I’d like to bring those musings into the present day.

First, a partial disclaimer. Historical parallels are a tricky business. Heraclitus rightly observed that “you cannot step twice into the same river”, for history never precisely repeats itself.

But there are patterns. In many ways, history is the unfolding story of human nature writ large – and human nature changes, if at all, at evolutionary speed. Which is why we can still suffer with Job, feel fear and pity watching Greek tragedy, and delight in good productions of Shakespeare.

It is also why nearly every great leader – from every era – has been a student of history.

Because history instructs us, I devoted my last posting to a consideration of the demise of the Whig Party in the 1850's. To summarize, I suggested three major themes:

First, that American political parties – like many human institutions – are permanently defined by the circumstances of their creation. However they may evolve over time, they can never escape the organizational DNA which went into their original organizations.

Second, that political parties begin to die when they begin defining themselves in terms of another party or parties. Stated another way, a party which loses the ability to define a vision of the future – in its own terms – is in grave peril.

Third, that, because America’s two-party system is largely self-perpetuating, a political party can survive for a long time despite dysfunctional organizational DNA and the loss of vision – but that it will eventually shatter when confronted by a great emerging issue it cannot address.

My purpose here is to suggest that the Democratic Party’s organizational DNA is ill-suited to the 21st century – or indeed, to the world of the late 20th century; that, in response to the Reagan Revolution, the Democrats have lost – perhaps irretrievably – their ability to define a vision for America’s future; and that, given those weaknesses, the Democrats now face a cluster of related issues which they may well prove unable to negotiate.

Beginning with the Democratic DNA, one critical weakness in the party has been, from its inception, an excessive reliance upon Presidential leadership. And this makes sense, given that the party was founded in direct reaction against the alleged “corrupt bargain” which denied Andrew Jackson the presidency in 1824. Party organization developed around the national convention, which focused the attention of party leaders on the business of nominating a presidential candidate. Jackson, the party’s founder and first President, was an extreme exponent of executive power – to a degree unprecedented at the time, and not to be seen again in peacetime until the late 20th century.

Throughout its history, the Democratic Party has measured its achievements in terms of its great and near-great Presidents. Unlike the Republicans, the Democratic Party can celebrate no period during which it achieved significant progress primarily under Congressional leadership.

Not surprisingly, then, Democrats have less to show for their periods of legislative control except when the White House was simultaneously held by a strong Democratic president. To a far greater degree than their Republican colleagues, Democratic Senators tend to neglect the possibilities of legislative achievement in order to pursue their own presidential ambitions – a fact which, ironically, makes it difficult for any Democratic president to cooperate effectively with a Senate thronging with his potential successors.

Even today, the newly elected Democratic Congressional majority – swept to power on a wave of public revulsion over the chaos in Mesopotamia – has no plan for ending the war. Indeed, despite the undeniable fact that the war authorized in 2002 – a war against the Saddamist regime – has been over for three years, the incoming Congressional leadership has dismissed out of hand the option of ending American involvement by cutting off funds.

It is, of course, utterly impossible to imagine Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, or Bob Dole adopting such a posture of unilateral disarmament. The leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid has started by tying its own hands – a dark omen for the next two years.

The Democrats’ presidential obsession has meant that – to an unhealthy degree – the Party has permitted itself to be redefined every four years by whichever candidate secures its nomination. It has also gradually led the party from a pattern of glorifying past heroes (FDR, Truman, JFK, etc.) to a perpetual search for the next great savior-leader who will rescue the party from obscurity.

The present “rock star” status of Barack Obama – a man of undoubted ability but precious little governmental experience or achievement – is only the latest instance of the Democrats’ chronic desperation.

The second weakness in the Democratic DNA is, simply, that the Party has always been more a coalition than a movement. Arising, as it did, during a period of pronounced sectionalism, the Democratic Party necessarily played down internal differences while focusing upon the personality of Andrew Jackson.

This fact has never really changed. Today’s Democratic Party can most readily be defined by listing its major component groups: labor, particularly the teacher’s unions; African-Americans; feminists and pro-choicers; anti-war voters; senior citizens; and trial lawyers.

The fact that most of these groups are declining as a percentage of the American population is disturbing enough. The fact that each group wields an effective veto over new policy initiatives has – in recent administrations – entirely thwarted the efforts of Democratic presidents to fulfill the dynamic role assigned to them by their party.

In addition to its increasingly dysfunctional DNA, the Democratic Party has, since the Reagan Era, shifted almost entirely into a negative mindset. Anyone who has spent time among Democrats will know that party activists focus far too much of their energy on denunciations of their partisan foes – often in the most intemperate language – and far too little on developing workable policy proposals.

Since Jackson’s day, Democrats have been great haters, but historically, they have also been great dreamers. This is, quite simply, no longer true. JFK and LBJ were the last Democratic presidents to set forth – and follow through on – bold new undertakings. During the 1980’s, Ronald Reagan, an erstwhile New Deal Democrat, borrowed FDR’s visionary vocabulary – and the Republicans have never given it back.

Thus, even today, with new Congressional majorities and a phalanx of Presidential candidates, not one Democrat seems capable of enunciating a bold vision for a better America. George W. Bush may be the lamest of ducks, but the far-too-loyal opposition continues to allow him to set the national agenda – and the terms of debate.

All in all, then, the Democratic Party of today seems incapable performing either of the essential functions of a political party – offering an alternative vision when in opposition, or governing when in power.

Obsessed with presidential leadership, Democrats seem determined to squander their new legislative majorities while waiting for a new Moses to lead them out of the last four decades of political imbecility.

Paralyzed by the incompatible elements within their coalition, they seem entirely unable to proclaim a vision for a better America

Meanwhile, a cluster of intractable challenges – the widening gap between the secure and the insecure in America; declining educational quality for most young Americans; growing trade and Federal deficits; a global environmental crisis; America’s excessive dependence upon non-renewable energy sources; and the persistence of terror networks intent upon doing Americans harm – is coming together to form a perfect political storm.

The name of that storm is the 21st Century – or, as seems increasingly likely, the Post-American Century.

A party capable of governing – or worthy of survival – would not only offer a plan for meeting this perfect storm, but a vision of calm seas and favorable winds on the other side.
Incapable of either, the Democratic Party seems doomed to break apart in the rough seas which are now overtaking it.

The Slow Death of the Democratic Party

2006-12-11T11:15:00.000-05:00

For all but a handful of its 217 years, the United States has operated under a two-party system. The names and identities of the two parties have changed from time to time, but not that essential fact. For whatever reason – and the explanations are legion – Americans seem to prefer the two-party model.

Given that fact, it has been monumentally difficult for even the most muddleheaded incompetence to kill off one of the existing political parties. Only twice, thus far, has the death of a major party made room for the rise of something new.

But it might be happening again.

In the early 1800’s, the Federalists managed to do themselves in out of sheer, aristocratic arrogance – but only because of the untimely death of Alexander Hamilton, a genius who combined the political shrewdness of Karl Rove with the ability to – you know – govern effectively.

The demise of the Federalists led to a brief period of one-party rule – the curiously misnamed “Era of Good Feelings”. This ended in 1824, when Americans experienced the only presidential election to be conducted along the lines the Founders had imagined when they drafted the Constitution. Four candidates – John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay – divided the electoral vote, and the House of Representatives chose among the top three.

Curiously, Clay – the odd man out – was Speaker of the House, and thus in position to throw the election to one of his erstwhile rivals. He chose Adams, who had finished second to Jackson in the electoral and popular votes. Jackson, infuriated, stormed off to found the Democratic Party.

Within a decade, Jackson’s opponents had coalesced into the Whig Party, which enjoyed apparent success for some twenty years before suddenly imploding in the mid-1850's. The death of the Whigs came as a shock to many, but it made room for the emergence of the Republicans – and Abraham Lincoln.

Which brings us to the point of this brief historical review. Leaving out the haughty Federalists, who never entirely reconciled themselves to the dirty business of seeking votes among hoi polloi, the Whigs have been the only major American party – so far – to die.

The reasons for the Whigs’ collapse are complex. Serious readers will find a brilliant introduction in David M. Potter’s 1976 classic, The Impending Crisis: 1848 - 1861, but for my purposes, I will focus upon my own favorite theory – that the fatal weakness of the Whigs lay in their origins.

Having arisen in opposition to Andrew Jackson – the dominant figure of the era – the Whigs adopted the tactics of an opposition party. They imitated Democratic organizational forms, campaign methods, and – when possible – candidates. They defined themselves largely in response to Democratic initiatives – particularly Manifest Destiny – rather than setting forth an alternative vision of America’s future.

And they were flagrantly opportunistic. In 1836, having no candidate capable of defeating Martin van Buren, the proto-Whig opposition ran three regional candidates – hoping thereby to throw the election into the House of Representatives.

In 1840, the Whigs nominated an Indian fighter, William Henry Harrison, hoping to portray him as a second Andrew Jackson. To strengthen their ticket, they actually nominated an anti-Jackson Democrat, John Tyler, for Vice President – with the curious result that the first Whig administration was led, for three years and eleven months, by a member of their rival party.

In 1848 and 1852, the Whigs nominated military heroes with neither political skills nor experience. They got lucky when the tactless Zachary Taylor died, putting the politically adept Millard Fillmore in the White House just in time to play a crucial role in engineering the Compromise of 1850. They got lucky again when the bombastic Winfield Scott lost in 1852.

All in all, like many human institutions, the Whigs never succeeded in transcending their origins. They did well enough during the 1840's, under the leadership of great statesmen like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, but they never succeeded in putting one of these giants in the White House.

With the passing of the giants, the Whigs – an opposition party defined by opportunism – drifted toward their doom. They finally went to pieces when confronted by an issue which offered no room for opportunistic maneuvering – the expansion of slavery into the West.

For some time now, I have been impressed with the parallels between the long-ago Whigs and the modern Democrats. Of course, the Democrats, unlike the short-lived Whigs, have been around for nearly two centuries. However, since the rise of Ronald Reagan – a titanic figure who resembles Andrew Jackson in many ways – the Democrats have redefined themselves largely as an opposition party, with all the weaknesses such a posture implies.

In my next posting, I will explore the weaknesses, perhaps fatal, of the modern Democratic Party. In future postings, I’ll examine my reasons for thinking that the death of the Democratic Party, should it occur, might not be altogether bad for America – or the cause of American liberalism.

Solving the Mess in Mesopotamia, Part Two.

2006-12-06T11:17:00.000-05:00

In my previous post, I focused on the political situation in the US, which, in my judgment, renders improbable an acceptable resolution of the mess in Mesopotamia.

Nonetheless, I promised to set forth what I would do, if I were President. It’s easy to deplore the present lowering of expectations for Iraq’s future and wash our hands of the business – yet that tendency, in itself, merely offers our political leaders an excuse for their failure to think creatively and act boldly.

Bad as the situation is, there are things the US can do to make the best of a bad situation. But to act, we must first assess the situation.

Here’s how I see it:

First, there is no longer any such thing as Iraq. The US has irrevocably destroyed the state Saddam ruled with such malign, but effective, ruthlessness. Like Yugoslavia after Tito, Iraq has come permanently undone. Through a brutal process of sectarian cleansing and forced migration, three small nations are emerging from this wreckage – corresponding roughly, but not precisely, to the historic Ottoman vilayets of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. It is, thus, more useful to speak of “Mesopotamia” than of the late, departed state of Iraq.

Second, the present situation in Iraq is not a civil war, but what has been called a “Hobbesian war” – a war of all against all. A straightforward civil war between two well-governed sections – like the war of 1861-1865 – would be vastly preferable to the present situation.

These two propositions I regard as indisputable. For the rest, I would act on the basis of six assumptions, as follow:

· Whatever they want, most Mesopotamian Shi’ites would accept control of substantial oil resources and freedom from their lingering dread of a Saddamist revival.

· Whatever they want, most Mesopotamian Sunnis would accept a reasonable share of oil revenues and freedom from the fear of oppression by an Islamist Shi’ite state.

· The Kurds would be delighted with independence, protection against Turkish intervention, and control of Kirkuk and Mosul. Given these things, the Kurds would become a key, relatively democratic US ally.

· Most of the violence in Mesopotamia results either from mutual sectarian fears or resentment of US actions which appear – to each sect – to favor the other.

· America’s only long-term enemies in Mesopotamia are a small Al Qaeda operation (based in the Sunni Triangle) and operatives loyal to Iran and Syria. Once American forces are withdrawn, most interests in Mesopotamia would be prepared to deal with us on a basis of rational self-interest.

· With American public opinion turning rapidly toward an immediate pullout, any constructive action must be taken quickly, or not at all.

Obviously, all of my assumptions are debatable, but debating them is not my purpose here. Instead, I propose to use them in constructing a plan for extricating the US from Mesopotamia without leaving behind a vacuum which will breed endless future trouble for its neighbors – and for us.

This plan would begin with the partition of Mesopotamia into three new states. The US, preferably with British cooperation, would act unilaterally to create a fait accompli on the ground. While the government of Kurdistan should be consulted, it would be pointless to attempt negotiations with the failed Iraqi government or the various sectarian and tribal interests. Population and border adjustments might come in future years, through diplomacy or war, but that is not our concern. Our purpose now should be to create three stable states capable of sustaining themselves during a period of transition and with a reasonable chance of surviving into the future.

The borders of the new Kurdistan should include the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, their adjacent oil fields, and a defensible buffer zone beyond. US forces should be deployed to secure this border and deter invention by Turkey, Iran, or Syria.

In return for the acquisition of disputed territory and resources, the Kurds should agree to pay a substantial, gradually declining, portion of their oil revenues to a stable Sunni state, so long as it maintains peaceful relations with Kurdistan. In return for a US guarantee of sovereignty, the Kurds should be placed on notice that the US reserves the right to withdraw its protection should they sponsor Kurdish separatism in Turkey – or, without our blessing, in Iran or Syria.

The borders of the Sunni state should include majority Sunni areas, including West Baghdad – but excluding the volatile Anbar province. US troops – joined or succeeded, if it can be arranged – by troops from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other friendly Muslim states – should occupy Anbar in force for a period of five years in order to round up Al Qaeda cells and give the Sunni state time to establish itself. Thereafter, if pacified, Anbar could be permitted to join the Sunni state.

The Shi’ite state would include the remainder of Mesopotamia, excluding East Baghdad. East Baghdad – the political base of Muktada al Sadr – would, like Anbar, be heavily occupied by US troops while the new state got on its feet under other leadership. In this case, US occupation would end as soon as the Shi’ite state was prepared to assume control.

Finally, while the US should negotiate for long-term bases in Kurdistan, all US and coalition forces, should be withdrawn from the new Sunni and Shi’a states as soon as either is prepared to take responsibility for its own survival.

And that’s it.

This proposed solution is far from elegant -- but it would work, at least in the sense that it would end the present struggle of all against all by creating two mutually hostile states. Future conflict could thus be channeled and subsumed into a conflict of states – amenable to diplomatic, economic and military pressures by the international community.

There are other advantages. An independent Kurdistan would assure the United States of one strong, and militarily dependent, ally in Mesopotamia, while affording us the means of applying leverage against Syria and Iran through their Kurdish populations. Even at the price of strained relations with Turkey, Kurdistan would represent a net gain for US policy in the Middle East.

By creating a Sunni state without oil resources, the US would create the best possibility of a second emergent democracy in the former Iraq. I have long subscribed to Zakaria’s Law – the historical principle that democracy cannot flourish in a state which controls vast natural resources. The argument, as set forth in Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom, is that democratic institutions evolve from a state’s need for revenues, and its consequent negotiations with its productive classes to barter political and property rights in exchange for new taxes.

The new Sunni state might seem barren ground for a new democracy, but there is – or was, until the diaspora resulting from the present chaos – a substantial, educated professional class in the Sunni areas of Mesopotamia. Given a stable state with an infusion of regular, gradually declining, payments from Kurdistan, this Sunni state would have time to develop the productive commercial and industrial bases of a successful republic. In time, this might well lead to the emergence of democratic institutions.

I have less hope for the emergence of democracy in the new Shi’a state, which would be oil-rich and dominated by Islamic politicians. The best that can be said is that an Islamic Republic of Basra would be confined to one-half of the present territory of Iraq. There is, however, some reason for hope.

If, under our present policies, Iraq could somehow be held together, it would inevitably become dependent upon Iran. The Sunni minority would never accept a Shi’a-dominated government, and the resulting civil disorder would compel the Iraqi government – as US trioops withdrew – to look to Iran for support.

On the other hand, a majority Shi’a state, while likely to become a temporary client of Iran, would have less reason to remain so. Independently wealthy, and with less political instability to contend with, the new state would eventually assume its own sense of national identity. As an Arab state, it would gradually begin to perceive how its interests differed from those of its Persian neighbor.

The future I propose is far from ideal, but, as Lady Macbeth said, “What’s done cannot be undone.” Given the alternatives – a perpetual occupation or a withdrawal leaving chaos in its wake – the partition of Mesopotamia offers the best way out of a thoroughly bad situation.

But we must act quickly.

Solving the Mess in Mesopotamia, Part One

2006-12-04T14:02:00.000-05:00

I’m not a soldier, intelligence expert, or diplomat, and the closest I’ve been to Baghdad is Venice, Italy.

Please understand that.

If you believe – as many do – that the only proper foundation for national leadership is real-world, hands-on experience, I’m not your guy.

On the other hand, I’m a lifelong student of History, which Machiavelli – that most tough-minded of political realists – identified as the essential study of leaders.

I’m also a student (and actor) of Shakespeare, himself the greatest of all students of human nature.

If nothing else, I have those two things – History and Shakespeare – in common with Mr. Lincoln, who did a fair job of leading the nation despite a complete lack of previous executive experience or foreign travel and a military career limited to a few months as captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk War, during which his only combat was with mosquitos. (Lincoln’s witticism, not mine.)

I offer this rather lengthy disclaimer because, in Part II of this posting, I propose to set forth the course of action I would adopt Iraq if I woke up tomorrow and discovered that I was President of the United States.

For the fact is that, were I President, I would act along lines entirely at odds with anything suggested by President Bush, most of those running to replace him, the great majority of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, or the distinguished elder statesmen of the Iraq Study Group.

For all their vast and diverse experience – none of these hard-headed, real-world leaders seems to have the vaguest idea how to extract the US from Iraq without leaving behind a power vacuum which would invite intervention by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey – and probably Israel – as well as a safe haven for Al Qaeda in Anbar province.

Which is not to say that our political leaders are incapable of devising a way forward. Success in Iraq simply isn’t their highest priority. The simple fact is that – since the midterms – few of our leaders nearly as concerned with the ultimate fate of Iraq as they are eager to catch up with public opinion.

And public opinion is, once again, headed over a cliff.

Having been duped into supporting an unnecessary and ill-considered invasion of Iraq, the American people have finally exercised the democratic equivalent of the “lemon law”. On November 7, they voted to return this lemon of a war to the folks who sold it to them.

The people want their money back.

Sadly, a war is not a used car. The harm done – to thousands of American troops; tens of thousands of Iraqis; and America’s armed forces, national debt, and credibility as a world leader – cannot be undone. The brutal regime which held together the centrifugal religious and tribal communities collectively called “Iraq” has been dismantled – replaced by a comic-opera parliamentary regime with absolutely no roots in the history and culture of Iraq.

And the fault is ours.

Mr. Bush may have led us into this war, but the great majority of Americans were credulous enough – and ignorant enough – to follow him. All but a handful of our political leaders lacked the good sense or moral fiber to try to slow him down. And those of us who knew better were too intimidated, or too fatalistic, to make much noise at the time.

We all have blood on our hands.

Nonetheless, the American people seem prepared to wash their hands of the whole business, and those who profess to speak for them are now demanding a pullout that will only compound the follies of 2002 and 2003..

But vox populi, vox whatever... If the people demand withdrawal, that’s what they’ll get, and the discussion of our options – from now on – will have more to do with affixing blame and saving face than with the future of Iraq.

Indeed, the dozens of options now under discussion seem to boil down to “cut and run” or “cut and stroll”. With the exception of Senator John McCain, no one is seriously talking about sticking around until Iraq is sufficiently pacified and well-governed to have some chance of surviving.

The Bush Administration seems to have decided on setting “benchmarks” for the Iraqi government – with the obvious intention of blaming the Iraqis when they fail to “take responsibility”. Of course, the Iraqi government has no chance of imposing order – and about the same prospects of surviving an American pullout as the former government of South Vietnam. But as long as the President can blame the Iraqis, he can bring the troops home and start planning for his presidential library.

Congressional Democrats seem content to cling to their pre-election strategy. They’re perfectly willing to place the blame on the Administration, so long as no one asks them for a constructive suggestion.

Most of the presidential wannabes – regardless of party – seem primarily concerned that America’s involvement be ended before November, 2008 – or at least January 20, 2009.

The most interesting approach is that expected from the Iraq Study Group, headed by Bush family consigliere* James Baker. The Group’s main suggestion will apparently be to begin a gradual withdrawal of combat units while inviting neighboring countries – particularly Iran and Syria – to help with the pacification of Iraq.

In realistic terms, this is nonsense. Given the hostility of both regimes to American interests, they can scarcely be expected to make things easier on us. Their interest is to reduce Iraq to a puppet state, and steps in that direction would almost certainly spark counter-intervention by the Saudis, probably the Turks – and, inevitably, the Israelis.

The Iraq Study Group’s recommendations offer an unpleasant future for Iraq – and long-term problems for the US. Indeed, these recommendations are make sense only when seen in terms of Mr. Baker’s loyalty to the Bush family – i.e., as an attempt to shift blame for Iraq’s destiny onto a pair of unpopular states – thus beginning the process of salvaging the historical “legacy” of Bush the Younger.

In short, nothing now being discussed in Washington makes sense in terms of America’s national interests. If we, the people, insist upon getting out of Iraq at any price – and allow our politicians to consult their own interests in doing so – we will be buying temporary relief at the price of future disasters which will make the present war seem like a mere unpleasantness.

Which is why, were I President, I would disregard the voices of nearly everyone in Washington and act decisively – even ruthlessly – to foster America’s national interests.

And I’d start with a change of vocabulary: I’d stop talking about Iraq, and start talking about Mesopotamia.

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Note: I'd written this piece before reading Paul Krugman’s column of this date, but I give him credit for being the first I’ve seen to refer to Mr. Baker as the “Bush family consigliere”. At any rate, if I was ripping anyone off, it was Aaron Sorkin, for Leo McGarry’s line, “I’m a wartime consigliere.”

The Election Nobody Won

2006-11-28T10:30:00.000-05:00

That Wednesday, I smiled.

Correction: I grinned. Everywhere I went, I caught myself sporting a joyous, slightly feral grin of triumph and delight.

On election day, the American people – in their tardy wisdom – had finally dealt the President and his Congressional allies a savage blow. After six years of the most thoroughly wrong-headed maladministration since George III, at least one House of Congress stood ready to check the rampant caudillismo of the Bush Administration.

When George Allen, in his slightly bizarre attempt at good sportsmanship, finally conceded to Jim Webb, my grin grew wider and more lupine.

But only for a day or two.

After all, the Democrats’ electoral triumph was hardly a mandate for progressive government. On the central issue of the campaign, Democrats had sedulously avoided offering an alternative to the President’s failed policy in Mesopotamia, preferring to let the Republicans to hang themselves with endless variations on the theme of “Stay the course.”

As scandal after scandal brought House Republicans closer to implosion, the Democrats had managed only a vague promise to “clean up” Congress. On issue after vital issue, Democratic candidates had contented themselves with documenting the symptoms of America’s woes, while offering no policy prescriptions.

As for the new crop of Democratic legislators, the best that could be said is that they ran as Democrats. Most of them could scarcely be distinguished from the Republicans they replaced, except, perhaps, by their economic populism – a tendency which has led Democrats into folly since the days of Andrew Jackson’s war on the Second Bank.

That’s why my grin faded so quickly. The midterm elections may have given President Bush a well-deserved “thumpin’”, but they offered scant room for optimism about new directions for America. A mutiny aboard the Titanic – with icebergs looming on every quarter – seemed about the size of it.

The problem, as I see it, is that America still lacks a vibrant, modern Liberalism – yet few Democrats can bring themselves even to pronounce the L-word.

Of course, this is not the view of the poli-sci profs and op-ed pundits, who seem convinced that the problem with American politics is extremism and ideological warfare.

But that’s nonsense.

You can’t have ideological warfare without two competing sets of ideas. Contemporary politics bears less resemblance to warfare than to a period of appeasement – an unequal contest between an extreme and aggressive conservatism and a bland, apologetic centrism.

Good or bad, Republicans offer ideas. Democrats respond with carefully-worded criticisms – but few ideas of their own. Thus, Republicans continue to frame the terms of debate, while Democrats – fearful of the “liberal” label – are endlessly drawn toward a “center” which recedes forever rightward.

In party terms, there is no American Left. What Left there is may be found in the desperate guerilla being fought by young internet idealists, television satirists, and the makers of documentary films. And this will not suffice.

Liberal policies can never prevail while liberals remain on the defensive and focus upon the negative. American liberals have enjoyed success only they embraced a spirit of optimism and a clear vision of a better society.

Which makes sense. Liberalism is, by its nature, founded upon a belief in the ability of rational human beings to make life better through social action. The contemporary Left – with its Bush-bashing, its sophomoric cynicism, and its proclivity for conspiracy theories – is anything but confident.

What America desperately needs is a new Liberalism – a Liberalism capable of governing, not just resistance. What’s needed is a not a return to the dream-world radicalism of the late ‘60's and ‘70's, but a constructive, 21st century Liberalism committed to a new vision of what we, as a nation, can achieve. A Rawlsian Liberalism that can reclaim the honorable lineage of the “commonwealth” ideology which animated Jefferson and Madison, Abraham Lincoln, the mature Teddy Roosevelt, and the bipartisan “vital center” of the mid-20th century.

America needs a Liberalism which challenges the notion that freedom is nothing more than a justification for rampant narcissism, consumerism, and greed; which asserts the interests of individuals, families and communities against the dehumanizing tendencies of unrestricted corporate capitalism; and which proclaims the rights of future generations – in all nations – to a planet preserved from the environmental ravages of those now living.

Most of all, America needs a Liberalism which acknowledges that every child born within our borders is endowed with the right fully to develop his or her gifts, talents and constructive passions, regardless of the advantages of birth or background.

How much of that did we hear from Democrats in 2006?

In 2006, how many Democrats challenged the prevailing materialism, consumerism and narcissism of American society – or the corporate culture which sustains and nurtures those destructive tendencies.

In 2006, many Democrats called for energy independence, but how many had the courage to demand real sacrifice – starting with measures to enforce a serious reduction in energy consumption.

In 2006, many Democrats called for better schools, but how many pledged to do whatever it takes to make America’s schools the best in the world – for all our children – even if some necessary reforms displease the NEA?

In 2006, many Democrats called for reducing the number of Americans without access to quality health care, but how many embraced our country’s affirmative duty to reduce that number to zero – stat.

My post-election grin lasted, at best, two days. As a child of the Greatest Generation, growing up in the optimistic decade of JFK, John Glenn, and Martin Luther King, Jr., I never doubted that Americans could solve any problem they set their minds to. But it has been nearly four decades since Bobby Kennedy – the last great Liberal tribune – gave expression to that confident spirit.

It is precisely that spirit that is lacking among modern Democrats.

In the midterm elections, President Bush and his Republican Congressional allies lost. But, given the campaign waged by the new Democratic majority – nobody really won.

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