The Nerve Of Some People

The classic illustration of chutzpah is of course the guy who murders his parents and then begs the court for mercy on the grounds that, "I'm an orphan, your honor."

But not far behind in the "have they no shame?" department is the cavalcade of Republicans denouncing Obama's health care proposals (and pretty much anything else the President has tried to do) on the grounds that it will increase the deficit. Particularly odious are the ones who claim, "Well, it would be nice to do something about health care, but we just can't afford it. The country is broke."

They do have a point; by conventional standards, we are broke, or very nearly so. But thanks for noticing now, Republicans; a shame it escaped your notice when you - that's right, YOU - were busily bankrupting us.

Not everybody has such a short attention as to have forgotten that President Clinton handed the federal government over to George Bush with not just a balanced budget, but a surplus that stretched as far into the future as prognosticators could prognosticate. Within two years Republican policies had turned those surpluses into not just a deficit, but, by the time the Republicans had been turned out of office, the biggest deficit in history.

Where was all this talk of fiscal responsibility when the Bush administration pushed through the tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the richest Americans and saddled all Americans with generations of debt? When a lying and/or delusional President led us into a mostly pointless and - even considering the merits of removing Saddam Hussein - an incredibly mismanaged and wasteful war? We can't afford to provide even the most basic health insurance for all Americans? Oh, but you had no problem passing that colossal unfunded liability masquerading as a prescription drug program for seniors but which in reality functions as a means of funneling hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare to our poor, struggling pharmaceutical companies.

Now we've even got the teabaggers, rabble rousers and hatemongers attacking Obama for spending or at least lending jaw-dropping amounts of federal money on trying to stabilize the economy, bail out the financial system, and ameliorate the pain of millions of Americans who've been thrown out of work. Never mind that at least half the money involved was committed before Obama even took office, and that it was the loony-tunes wackonomics of a couple generations of right-wing "thinkers" that landed us in the soup in the first place.

I'll be the first to admit that the deficits we're currently running up are making me nervous, not least because it won't be that long before I myself will be at least partially dependent on the fiscal soundness of the Medicare and Social Security programs. But the way I see it, we don't have much of a choice other than to commit the resources, even if they're only borrowed against years of future earnings, to put the country back on a sound footing. Roosevelt had to do it in the 1930s to combat the Great Depression (which the Republicans, just as now, said we couldn't "afford" to do anything about). In the 1940s, virtually nobody questioned the necessity of going massively into debt (even greater debt than today when expressed as a percentage of GDP) because they recognized that having a balanced budget wouldn't do us much good if we lost the Second World War.

We're in a similar situation today. The economy isn't quite as bad as it was in the Depression - yet - and the threat posed to global civilization by a total financial collapse isn't as serious - yet - as that posed by the Nazis, but things could get a whole lot worse in a hurry if those in power miscalculate. I don't have total faith in Obama, and I have considerably less than that in many Congressional Democrats, but considering what the Republicans have done to our economy and what they continue to do to our body politic - i.e., tear it to bits for short-term political gain - I'm far more inclined to trust a rational and idealistic young President over the jabbering idiots and slavering jackals who were running this place before he took office.

And in answer to your next question: yes, even if my taxes have to go up. It's a bit galling, no, strike that, it's very galling indeed to accept that those of us with moderate incomes will almost certainly have to pay more to repair the damage done by those who got incredibly wealthy in the course of looting the American banking and securities systems, but we're the ones who - whether through apathy or insufficient resistance or, in some cases, voting for Ralph Nader - who let the foxes into the henhouse, and whether it seems fair or not, we're going to be paying - probably for quite a long time - to clean up their carnage.

Waiting For Obama

Way back in November I started grousing about why, having elected a new President, we had to wait two and a half months for him to take office. In Britain, and in most other countries with a parliamentary system, the new Prime Minister goes straight to work the morning after the election.

It's tradition, of course; our lengthy interregnum (it used to be considerably longer, as some of you will know; until halfway through FDR's Presidency, Inauguration Day wasn't until the 4th of March) was established at a time when our newly elected leaders had to make their way to Washington on horseback over uncertain roads in the dead of winter. And of course there was (and still is) that ridiculous rigmarole with the Electoral College: regardless of what happened the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, a new President isn't actually elected until the middle of December.

Never mind, though, the waiting is nearly over now, waiting that has been especially frustrating and fraught with anxiety this time around as a leaderless and seemingly rudderless country has continued to stagger toward financial Armageddon. Outgoing Presidents understandably diminish in significance as the time for their departure nears, but Bush has plumbed new depths in the lame duck Olympics, presiding over what might be more properly dubbed a zombie administration. Dead as a doornail yet still twitching, still capable of running amok and wreaking havoc.

In contrast to the unholy presence still stalking the White House, we have a President in waiting who, for the first time in many people's memory, looks, acts and speaks like a President. I know some of you felt that Clinton fit this bill, but while he was more adequate to the task than most, he never fully convinced me. The first Bush, while downright statesmanlike when compared with his son, was still a bumbling martinet that someone memorably described as the human equivalent of post-nasal drip. And as for the present Bush, well, the best that can be said for him is that he's lowered the standards of governance to a point where a Kang and Kodos duumvirate could look appealing.

I've had the TV on in the background all afternoon as Obama's train journeyed down the Eastern Seaboard on its way to Washington, and I stopped writing to listen to his speech in Baltimore. I don't mind admitting that the man had me in tears. Maybe I'm entering my second childhood, but I haven't been so inspired, so filled with hope and anticipation, since as a starstruck 13 year old I waited for John F. Kennedy to mount the Capitol steps.

If anything, I'm more impressed with Obama. If he hasn't quite reached the rhetorical heights that JFK soared to, he's getting very close, and I find his overall message more consistent and substantive. Watching him pull together a governing coalition when, at least on paper, none is needed has been a wonder to behold; it's getting harder by the day to find even a Republican who has much bad to say about the man.

With the exception, of course, of right wing talk radio. "The radicals have taken over," Sean Hannity bellows, but he barely seems to have his heart in it. Even Rush Limbaugh sounds resigned to a near-term future of growing irrelevance. This could all change, and quickly, if Obama makes a spectacular mistake early on, but so far the man has barely put a foot wrong. It's almost scary, in fact, to see the awe and devotion he commands. I don't think there's been an American politician in my lifetime, any and all of the Kennedys included, who came close. I suppose one can't help wondering what would happen should he choose to use that power for evil purposes, but part of his strength is that on one wants to think of him as being capable of such a thing.

Obama has done a superb job of convincing us that he plans to be President of all America, and that being the First Black President is almost incidental to him. As it may well be, but it's hardly incidental to the tens of thousands of African-Americans who turned out to watch his train come through or to hear him speak in Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore. Or who are already gathering on the Mall in anticipation of Tuesday's swearing-in. An enduring image for me will be the husky black man who stood alongside the train tracks somewhere in Maryland as the President-elect's train came rolling through with Obama and Biden waving to the cheering crowds.

Slightly rough-hewn and wearing a peacoat and watch cap, he could have been a warehouseman or a dock worker, or the slightly menacing character you might consider crossing the street to avoid if you're out alone late at night. He stood watching impassively until just before Obama came level with him, and then suddenly, somewhat awkwardly, pulled off his watch cap and stood there bareheaded in the January chill until the train had passed.

What I'm getting at is that this man did not look like someone in the habit of taking his hat off for anyone, had probably not planned on taking it off for Obama, and yet was caught up in the moment just as so many of us, of all colors and communities and religions and parties, were caught up and lifted up by a President-to-be who, rather than pander to our base self-interest, spoke to what is noble and admirable in us as a people, who rather than offer us a chance to line our pockets and feather our nests, challenged us to look more deeply into ourselves and what we are capable of offering to one another.

I normally avoid like the plague any reference, other than caustic, to the hippie songs and sentiments of my youth, but it's hard not to be reminded of that line advising writers and critics to "keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again." Something momentous is happening in America, something potentially more momentous than anything I can recall, and where it will end is anybody's guess ("Don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin"), but it's impossible to deny that the times indeed are a-changing. Six months, a year or several from now we may be moaning that it was not at all the sort of change we'd bargained for, but for the moment I'd prefer to suspend disbelief and cynicism and let myself get caught up in this great national (and worldwide, really) outpouring of hope and faith.

With that in mind, I'll be leaving for Washington myself on Monday, intent on somehow being a part of it all. I don't have tickets to any of the events, and chances are I'll never get close enough even to see the new President in the flesh, but I want to be there nonetheless, to be in my own small way part of history. 41 years ago, acting on a similar impulse, I jumped into a friend's car and rode 16 hours so I could be there for the siege of the Pentagon in October 1967. At the time I was part of a ragtag army of disaffected youth who openly espoused the destruction of America; today I travel with a far mightier army, one far more representative of the true nature and spirit of this nation, come to celebrate and save it.

We're All Socialists Now, Comrade

Given that he's writing for the Telegraph, it's not likely that Simon Heffer will see the above sentiment as a salubrious development. But like it or loathe it, it recognizes an ineluctable fact: the radical, ideologically driven devotion to the principles of "free" markets and enterprise that has reigned triumphant since the days of Ronald Reagan is now dead as the Wall Street cat that hasn't managed so much as a desultory bounce during these past ten days of Black October.

It's a bit edifying to see the Masters of the Universe scramble like so many squealing mice for their bailout of government cheese, in much the same that the class bully goes bawling to his parents the minute some upstart has the temerity to bloody his nose, but given that we're the ones expected to pay for this disaster - not to mention suffer its consequences - it's scant consolation.

Like many people of my generation, I grew up steeped in parental tales of the Great Depression, riddled with a gnawing guilt about wasting money or failing to either use or save every scrap of anything that might ever come in handy, and deeply suspicious of any person, corporation or institution that seemed to exhibit a cavalier or proprietary attitude toward the nation's wealth. My father did most of the griping - a clear case of horses for courses, as I'm sure you'd agree if you'd ever met the man - but as it turns out, most of his anti-capitalist bias, including his 1936 vote for Norman Thomas, was motivated by his loss of $300 in a 1932 bank failure. Apart from that, he had a relatively cushy Depression, even going off to study at art school for a couple years in the mid-30s.

My mother, on the other hand, was made homeless when her parents' house was repossessed, leaving her family to shelter in the unheated attic of acquaintances from church, something I never knew until more than 70 years later, when she almost tearfully described the shame she had felt over something she, as a bewildered and frightened 12 year old, had had absolutely no control over.

All the worst tales of the Depression seemed to revolve around the early 1930s, even though some of the most dire economic conditions were yet to come later in the decade. But it seemed as though once the do-nothing (or, perhaps more accurately, the do-all-the-wrong-things) Hoover administration had been turned out of office and replaced by Roosevelt and his New Deal, the spirits, if not the bank balances, of the people never sunk quite so low again.

So in at least one sense we're very fortunate that the Crash of '08 has come at a time when we're only three months rather than three years from an election that could and almost certainly will alter our future as dramatically as any in memory. Note that I didn't necessarily say whether this alteration will be for the better or worse: while I grow more convinced by the day that the election of John McCain - and his eventual replacement by a President Palin that would ensue with the grim certainty of a Greek tragedy - would be a disaster of greater than Hooverian proportions. I know I'm not alone in feeling that McCain has managed to squander the fundamental respect that he enjoyed from most Americans, even dyed-in-the-wool Democrats - by resorting to a mean-spirited McCarthyism and ill-considered opportunism that - I never thought I'd see the day - actually makes the present occupant of the White House look good - well, not so bad, anyway - by comparison.

I don't say this lightly; it was less than six months ago that I could have imagined myself possibly voting for McCain. Back then I thought Barack Obama, despite his rhetorical gifts and statesmanlike demeanor, was simply too far to the left on too many issues. Although he's managed to allay my suspicions in some areas, I still fear he might turn out to be more of a Carter than the Roosevelt (either one will do, but preferably FDR) we clearly need.

And yet, just as we were told - whether correctly or not - about the bank/Wall Street bailout, we don't have a lot of options in the matter. A McCain-Palin presidency would likely usher in a depression on a scale that even veterans of the 1930s might be unable to imagine. At the beginning of that depression, Americans were without virtually all the government assurances and insurances that we've come to take for granted in the intervening 70 years. The government was able to introduce ideas like Social Security, bank deposit insurance, stock and banking regulation, job and infrastructure programs, none of which brought immediate relief, but all of which began the absolutely necessary process of restoring people's hope and confidence that things were ultimately going to turn around.

Today we have all those programs and more, to the point where one of the only tools left to the government is to flood the market with newly minted - and thus increasingly less valuable - dollars, to the point where there exists a very real possibility of the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world doing an Iceland, i.e., collapsing into national bankruptcy. When that happened to New York City in the 1970s, the rest of the country could barely suppress its snickers and Schadenfreude over how the mighty had been brought low: can we expect any different from an international community that feels - rightly or wrongly - that it has been unjustly condemned to live in America's shadow during this past half century?

Right now it looks as though Obama, despite the contemptible depths to which McCain has shown himself willing to stoop, is likely to sweep into office in a landslide, much as FDR did in 1932. Will he be up to the task of uniting and inspiring a nation on the scale necessary, not to mention bringing in the sort of brain trust that will be needed to extricate ourselves from the calamity that unregulated and unconstrained avarice has brought us to? We can only hope, comrade, we can only hope. At this point we don't have a whole lot of other options.

Obama: Too Wimpy To Be President?

The way things are going, you have to ask yourself if Barack Obama really wants to be President. Coming off a triumphant and nearly flawless convention, three to six points ahead in the opinion polls, facing an apparently weak opponent who wasn't particularly loved even by his own party, Obama was blindsided when McCain, who turned out to be far less moribund or dull-witted than he'd appeared, completely outmaneuvered him with his wily pick of the Alaskan pit bull for VP.

Since then the tables have turned completely, and it's Obama who looks like he's sleepwalking into oblivion. Oh sure, he's still putting forth solid, sensible proposals couched in crystal-clear and at times downright elegant language, but suddenly nobody is listening. They're too busy watching Obama get pummeled and pushed and bullied every which way from Sunday by a doddering old wreck and his strident female sidekick.

When it comes to making a scripted presentation to a stadium or lecture hall full of adoring followers, there's no one in the business who comes close to Obama (though Palin shows signs of giving him a run for his money). But in the rough and tumble cut and thrust of everyday politicking, Obama is like a deer caught in the headlights, the skinny kid on the playground who bullies naturally gravitate to, and who tries, usually with humiliating results, to reason his his way out of his predicament.

Americans like a little testosterone in their Presidents, and Obama is showing none. Joe Sixpack can be forgiven for asking how a President Obama would stand up to the Russians or Islamic terrorism if he turns to jelly in the face of insults from an inarticulate old man and a glib but ultimately silly woman. Even I, though I still want Obama to win, can't help wondering if he's up to the job.

This whole ridiculous lipstick-on-a-pig business (a phrase, by the way, that McCain used himself last year, and that Vice-President Cheney used at least three times during the 2004 campaign), for example: it's the perfect opportunity for Obama to stand up tall, and with an appropriate measure of disgust, say to the American people, "They (McCain and Palin) must think you're really stupid." He used that phrase once in reference to McCain's newfound strategy of selling himself as an agent of change, but he should make it his mantra, repeating it every time some Republican operative or talk show host tries to hijack the discussion into the realm of preposterous namecalling and accusations, every time McCain or his minions trot out yet another lie about taxes or national defense or "change."

Instead he staggers from one onslaught to the next, barely able to mount a credible defense, let alone the sort of scorched-earth offense he needs to lay on the bald-faced liars running the Republican campaign. Why isn't he? Either he's being very badly advised or he simply lacks the character.

Obviously I'm hoping for the former but fearing the latter. Could it be that Obama so resolutely plays Mr. Nicey-Nice-Above-The-Fray because he's wary of coming across to his white supporters as an Angry Black Man? Possibly, but if so he's already taken it way too far. Or maybe his mother taught him never to pick on girls, which might explain why he circles warily but speechlessly around The Palin while she's busily running off with his female voters. Or - and here's a touchy subject - could it be his experience with affirmative action, and its implicit lesson that adequate is a reasonable substitute for excellent?

Obama has refused to discuss whether he was a beneficiary of affirmative action, but given the period when he went to college and the college he attended (Harvard has been especially assiduous in its pursuit of minority students, perhaps in hopes of defusing its longstanding reputation as a bastion of white male elitism) make it fairly likely. The bitter irony is that, as demonstrated daily by his obvious erudition, he had no need of affirmative action programs, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have been part of one, nor that he didn't absorb one of affirmative action's most pernicious lessons: that second or third best is more than good enough when combined with the "right" skin color.

I'd hate for any of this to be true, and love for Obama to prove me wrong by coming out kicking and screaming and cussing and punching on tomorrow morning's news. But I hope for the best while fearing the worst: that once again the Democrats will hand the country over to the radical right not through a paucity of ideas but from a failure of nerve. If nothing else - if Obama just can't bring himself to say something mean about his opponents - get Hillary Clinton on the case. Promise her Secretary of State or whatever else her little heart desires, but turn her loose on McCain and Palin and I guarantee you'll see some results. You might also get people wondering, "Tell me again why we nominated him instead of her," but that's the chance the Democrats have got to take. Unless of course they - and you - are quite happy with the way things are.

Take That, You Damn Community Organizers!

Back when I lived in the mountains of Northern California, our little 12 volt black and white TV only picked up one channel with any regularity, and among the shows I most avidly watched were Green Acres and The Dukes Of Hazzard.

No one needs to justify a liking for such brilliant windows into the American soul, but if I ever felt guilty about being parked in front of the TV when there was wood to chop or varmints to roust, I told myself that I was gaining insight into the ways and wherefores of my neighbors. Toss in a dash of Hee Haw, Petticoat Junction, a hefty measure of Hank Williams Jr.'s "Country Boy Will Survive", and you had your finger on the pulse of Greater Laytonville (pop. 995 or 1,036, the highway sign declared, depending which side of town you were entering from) and the back side of Iron Peak.

Well, not completely, but it was a start. I say this only to explain why VP candidate Sarah Palin and her remarkable entourage/family/posse don't appear nearly as strange to me as they do to some of my fellow cosmopolitan elitists. I lived side-by-side with people very much like them for better than ten years, and came to like and respect quite a few of them. Ever since then I've felt uncomfortable using words like "redneck" or "white trash," because they seem just as thoughtless and abusive as racial slurs like "nigger."

Which might be a little unfortunate at the moment, since it would be only too convenient to dredge up just such words to deride and dismiss the Palinistas. But I'd hate myself in the morning, and what's worse, I'd be stooping to the same level they did in attempting to whip up hatred and suspicion against big city slickers who read books and, like, know stuff. Not to mention those dreaded "community organizers."

To be fair, the term "community organizer" has been known to raise my own hackles from time to time, especially when appropriated, as it often is, by unprincipled scam artists of the Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson ilk. If I were advising Obama, I'd tell him to think up another name for his work on Chicago's South Side, because to quite a few people, "community organizer" is always going to come off as a synonym for "rabble rouser."

Never mind that COs come in all shapes, sizes and political motivations. Someone ringing doorbells for the Natural Born American Yahoo Party or organizing a book drive for the PTA is every bit as much a community organizer as that shady beardo soliciting donations for the Communist Front to Overthrow Everything. It's just one of those phrases that's gotten stuck with a negative connotation, like "peace" or "liberal" or "tolerance and understanding."

Anyway, back to Hooterville, which is apparently where the newly energized GOP expects to find the constituency to propel it into power for another four years. As I said, I found many of my rural neighbors to be charming, down to earth, and wise in many ways of the world, and by that I don't just mean how to gut and skin deer and bear or where to lay culverts to keep dirt roads from washing out in the winter monsoons.

Once I got over my initial big city suspicions about them (and they over their country suspicions of me), we could sit and talk for hours about everything from local politics to global cosmology. We didn't always agree - far from it - but we were often able to have a good laugh about our differences.

But there was the occasional time when it stopped being funny. Like when the lady who owned the local bar - it being the only one around, she had more congregants than all the town's churches combined - was stymied in her attempt to build an asphalt batch plant on her back 40, which just happened to be smack dab in the center - such as it was - of town and next door to the high school. Not only did she shut down the bar for the day, leaving an entire community bereft and adrift, but rampaged around town with her gun muttering dark threats about anyone and everyone who might cross her.

Nobody did, and as everyone hastened to point out, she was a good old girl about 99% of the time. Just had her tetchy spells every now and again. Or the town's logging supplies baron, who despite having strong and not always well thought out views on everything, especially when it came to the desirability of cutting down trees, was an incredibly generous and community-minded fellow. Hell, he once tossed $20 in my tip basket when I was playing piano at a local restaurant, and as those of you who've heard me play can attest, that's real charity in action.

But he was also the one who spearheaded the campaign that was to briefly make Laytonville an object of international mockery when he tried to have Dr. Seuss' The Lorax removed from the elementary school reading list because it allegedly painted loggers in an uncomplimentary light. The town meeting that ensued was like having the Republican and Democratic conventions conducted simultaneously in the same rec room.

Sarah Palin would be right at home in Laytonville, and if the town should ever grow big enough to have a mayor, she'd be elected in a landslide, because not only does she share the views of the local matriarchs and patriarchs, she's a heck of a lot better looking. And if I still lived there, I'd give her a good-natured ribbing from time to time, but otherwise would probably get along with her just fine.

But if you were to propose to me that she, or any of the other colorful local characters were the second most qualified person to be President of the United States, I'd assume you'd gone clear out of your ever-loving mind. And yet, this is essentially what John McCain has just said to the country. Okay, what he's really saying is, "I've made a cold-blooded calculation that nominating this woman will give me the best chance of winning the election, and if I should croak and leave the rest of you stuck with her as President, well, that's the way the cookie crumbles," which shouldn't be too shocking coming from a politician whose primary, if not sole purpose in life is to win elections and wield power.

Only trouble is that McCain has constructed an entire career out of pretending NOT to be that kind of politician, only to blow that carefully crafted image to smithereens at the final hurdle. It's hard to imagine that six months ago, when I was more concerned about what I saw as the Democrats' overly leftist tendencies, I could have seen myself voting for him.

His willingness to risk saddling us with a right wing, religious demagogue - he is 72, after all, and not in the best of health - was more than enough to write him off all by itself, but if there were any doubt remaining, his sanctimonious yet deeply and fundamentally dishonest acceptance speech will have put paid to that.

"Change is coming," he declares? Hello, John, you and your party have been in charge for the last eight years and you've succeeded in nearly bankrupting the country. You're going to cut spending and balance the budget? Of course you are, just like you've been doing for the past... oh wait, biggest budget deficits in history, massive increases in public spending... Don't get me wrong; I'd like a tax cut as much as anyone. But as any of you who's ever had a credit card or a mortgage can attest, it's nice to get an increased credit limit, and even nicer to be told you don't have to make any payments for a year or two, but sooner or later you have to start paying off your bills or you go broke.

Not in McCain World, apparently, which is apparently the same la-la land occupied by Bush World, and which is powered by what the first, not quite so incompetent Bush correctly derided as "voodoo economics." Many if not most of our current financial troubles can be traced directly to the Republican policies of the past eight years: the plummeting value of the dollar which has made everything, particularly oil, appear to be far more expensive than it is, is a direct result of Bush attempting to run the country via a series of increasingly dodgy sub-prime loans.

McCain's only strength is, or at least appeared to be, with regard to the war. However you felt about the war at the beginning - I was neutral, perhaps very slightly in favor, but in retrospect think I should have opposed it, at least until such time as we had an administration capable of running it - it's both cowardly and irresponsible to suggest leaving the Iraqis to their own devices now that we've dismantled their country for them. But while Obama has moved toward the center - maybe not quite enough, but at least in the right direction - on this issue, McCain is resorting to cheap appeals to faux-patriotism and hey, did I mention that I was a POW?

That's not to say he doesn't also have some sound and reasoned things to say about how to oppose terrorism and Islamism, but unfortunately, I just don't believe or trust him anymore. I'm also afraid of his legendary temper. It's one thing to go off half-cocked in the Senate, where you've got 99 other Senators to act as a counterweight, but quite another when you've got your finger on the nuclear trigger.

So, blogger comes out in favor of Obama. Not exactly earth-shaking news, though it might come as such to those who for whatever reasons have come to perceive me as some sort of neo-con race-baiting lackey of Fox News and the Michael Savage show. My friend Ben Weasel, a fervent McCain supporter, warns that Obama will be a "disaster," and I'm not so sure of my opinions that I'd deny this was possible. If he's as left wing as he once appeared to be, we could have another Jimmy Carter on our hands, compared to which I'd almost welcome a President Palin. If he's as pragmatic and as reasoned as he's appeared to be lately, we could have another JFK.

(Not So) Beautiful Losers

Up until Obama gave his acceptance speech Thursday night, I'd been mentally composing a diatribe about how the Democrats seemed to place more of a premium on looking good in defeat than on actually gaining and wielding power. You're familiar with the syndrome, I'm sure, especially if you live in or near one of our latte-sipping capitals: people looking up from their copy of the Times or the New Yorker to deliver a pursed-lip sneer at "that idiot Bush" or "those red state morons" when in fact they are more interested in validating their own cultural and moral superiority than in actually doing the hardscrabble work necessary to effect an actual change in the way government works (or, as increasingly seems to be the case, fails to).

We saw Al Gore and John Kerry in turn throw away what should have been easy victories because of their petulant "I can do it myself, Mommy" refusal to wield the slightly tacky but still powerful weapon that was Bill Clinton, and by their slightly wonky, cerebrally aloof manner that alienated millions of potential Democratic voters who might have sensed that George W. Bush had little if anything in common with their interests, but nonetheless related to him because he came across like a normal human being instead of a computer-generated composite candidate.

I'm still concerned that Obama will manage to blow the election in a not dissimilar manner, even though - or perhaps because - he comes across as being at least twice as smart and ten times more eloquent than the disastrous Gore-Kerry diumvirate. Even though I don't particularly care for Hillary Clinton, I was astounded when Obama chose, with all due respect, an old hack like Joe Biden as his VP candidate when putting Hillary on the ticket would have virtually guaranteed him victory in November. That plus a summer of waffling and a few too many platitudes had me convinced that we had yet another presidential contender who was more concerned about looking good in defeat than doing what it took to win.

Obama's rousing football stadium performance went some way toward allaying my concerns, though I in no way thought it the masterpiece of oratory that the MSNBC and CNN talking heads seem to think it was. Are none of them old enough to have seen a Kennedy speech, I wondered (that's JFK, not Bobby, who in my opinion suffered from Obama-itis himself)? My criterion: if I'm watching something on TV, be it a political speech, a movie, a football game, whatever, and find myself gradually starting to poke around on the internet instead of paying full attention, then something's lacking. Granted, when as a young boy I listened to Kennedy speak, he didn't have to compete with the internet or much else in that pre-multimedia age. But what made his rhetoric so riveting was the way he could artfully blend the profound and the profane, mixing high concept political philosophy with down and dirty ward politics. Obama comes closer to that level of discourse than any politician I've seen since the days of JFK, but he's not there yet, and bear in mind that Kennedy barely won the election (some say it was just as surely stolen as was Bush's 2000 triumph) against an opponent considerably less attractive (though perhaps with a bit more substance) than John McCain.

Still, the Obama show was as impressive a spectacle as anyone has seen in American politics in recent memory, if ever, and if they'd gone whole hog and hired the Chinese architects of the Olympics opening ceremony to orchestrate it, the election might have been all wrapped up by Friday morning. Until, that is, wily John McCain took advantage of Obama's nixing-Hillary blunder to slip a fast one past the Democrats by nominating a VP out of far right field and instantly wipe about 90% of the orgy of wasn't-Obama-wonderful musings right off the media map.

True to form, Democrats laughed and sneered at the seemingly oddball choice of Sarah Palin, and you can't entirely blame them. While Obama's rally offered at least a whiff of Triumph Of The Will, McCain's unveiling of Palin was pure, unabashed Babbitry. To see McCain awkwardly pawing at the undeniably milfish governor was a bit like nervously watching grandpa at a wedding when he's had more than his customary glass of wine and has possibly forgotten to take his meds: part cringeworthy, part appalled fascination at the prospect of what he might say or do next.

But Palin herself, though far to the right of mainstream America, has a powerful presence that, even if it only energizes the previously uninspired or disenchanted evangelicals, is going to considerably strengthen the McCain ticket. Even though I strongly disagree with her on the great majority of issues, I found her very likable, and imagine she would be a heck of a lot more fun to hang out with than Joe Biden or perhaps even Obama himself. George Bush won his elections, despite also being ideologically out of step with most Americans, on similar grounds, even though his clownish wisecracks and self-deprecating humor never completely disguised the bullying frat boy that was also a part of his persona. Unless Palin does or says something incredibly stupid in the coming campaign (or if the thousands of researchers and bloggers already engaged in frantic archeological excavations of her entire life and career come up with some real scandal), she'll be a more formidable candidate than Bush ever was, to the point where Republican partisans might start to wonder why McCain is heading the ticket instead of her.

The election is still Obama's to lose, but none of this drama would have had to happen if he'd taken the obvious and common sense step of appointing Hillary as his running mate. Hey, JFK by all accounts could barely stand Lyndon Johnson, but he knew that all his high-faluting ideas about New Frontiers and torches being passed to a new generation would amount to zilch if he didn't first accomplish the task of winning the election. I'm not advocating an all-out Macchiavellian approach here, just a little old-fashioned pragmatism. Hell, I don't even know if Obama would turn out to be a great Kennedy-esque President, or a disastrous Carter-esque one (at this point I'd settle, albeit reluctantly, for a reprise of Bill Clinton), but in light of the crises and challenges facing the world today, I think taking a chance on Obama seems immeasurably more appealing than continuing with the dreary rendezvous with catastrophe that the Bush interregnum has proved to be. Now it just remains to be seen whether Obama wants it bad enough to make it happen.

Say Goodnight, Jesse

In light of the print and air time already given to Jesse Jackson's intemperate outburst against Barack Obama, what more could I possibly add? Not much, probably, except to say good riddance to the Rev. Jackson, who not only lost any remaining credibility as a spokesperson for the African-American community (credibility which in retrospect he probably never should have had in the first place), but also, with any luck, may finally cease being a millstone around the neck of black America.

It's been pointed out repeatedly that Jackson's fit of pique no doubt stemmed from the realization that he is finished as a serious political force, completely and utterly eclipsed by Obama's cool rationality and unforced eloquence. By contrast, Jackson is and has long been an embarrassment, a fast-talking hustler who frequently reinforced some of the most negative stereotypes about black men playing fast and loose with the truth. Those of you old enough to remember the outcry that saw Amos'n'Andy banished not only from the airwaves but from the collective American memory for its allegedly racist caricatures might also notice an uncanny resemblance between the Rev. Jackson and that show's gobbeledygook-spouting ambulance chaser, Algonquin J. Calhoun.

Even Al Sharpton, who normally makes JJ look downright statesmanlike, has been speaking up for Obama and putting the diss on Brother Jesse, but as much as I'd like to believe this marks a tentative first step into reputability for New York's own clown prince of race baiting, it's more likely that Rev. Al has seen the graffiti on the wall: for all his promises of greater economic opportunity and justice, Barack Obama may have signed the death warrant for one well-established profession, that of the perennially and professionally aggrieved black man.

Because frankly, when you've got an articulate, eloquent, educated and apparently upright and decent presidential candidate who happens to be black, what need is there, really, for one-note shuck and jive artists of the Jackson-Sharpton ilk? "The white man is holding me down" just won't play when you've got tens of millions of white men happily voting to be governed by a black man; it just just makes it all the more obvious that the cult of victimology so profitably mined by Jackson, Sharpton has done more harm to black America in recent years than the white man ever could.

As for Obama, he continues to grow in my estimation: his soft-pedaling or jettisoning some of his more loony-left positions makes me far more enthusiastic about the possibility of voting for him, and his willingness to speak straightforwardly and honestly about some of the social dysfunctions rife within the black community - the sort of stuff Jesse Jackson needs you to believe is entirely the fault of the government, structural racism, and whitey - marks him as the kind of leader Americans of all colors have been crying out for.

Yes, I know it could be mere political posturing, but as of now I'm inclined to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. He seems to have reawakened a sense of possibility and idealism that 20 years of Bushes and Clintons had all but killed off. When Spike Lee - who I've previously never had much time for - and I start singing from the same Obama hymn sheet, it's hard not to believe something's afoot.

"Here's the thing," Lee says, "I don't know why people are questioning whether Barack Obama is black enough. For me, that's an ignorant statement. There are middle-class, educated black people who speak the way he does. ... We have to try to move away from this so-called image of what black is, which is largely influenced by rap and that type of stuff."

And I join in saying hallelujah: I've been arguing for years against the notion, largely promulgated by an unholy coalition of guilt-ridden, clueless whites and then Jackson-Sharpton poverty pimp/race hustler crowd, that the only way for someone to be authentically "black" is to come across like an angry, loud-mouthed ignoramus. Obama, on the other hand, gives people of every race something they can both identify with and aspire to.

"I'm for Mr. Obama," says Spike Lee. "I think he's gonna win. And it's going to be a better day not only for the United States but for the world." As of July 10, 2008, that's pretty much exactly how I see it.

Obama

I was 13 when John F. Kennedy was elected, but I remember it more vividly than any election since. I especially remember Inauguration Day, when the nuns brought in televisions so we could watch the first Catholic president take office. I remember Robert Frost trying to read a poem despite the lectern having caught fire, the dignitaries standing about bare-headed in the bitterly cold aftermath of the previous night's snowstorm, the almost giddy feeling that things in Washington and in the country as a whole were never going to be the same again.

No doubt some of that feeling came from being 13, an age at which things never are going to be the same again, but it was at least as much inspired by the speech that Kennedy gave, some bits of which I can still recite from memory today. JFK has his share of critics who claim he was all style and no substance, or that he was merely a well-groomed and glib front man for the same corporate interests who had always run things, but I don't think anyone can deny that he had the power to move and inspire people in a way that no American politician since has been able to do. In fact I've often theorized that part of the reason the 60s started out so hopefully yet ended in a paroxysm of nihilism and madness was the collective disillusionment of the young people who'd pledged their troth to the New Frontier only to see that vision violently snatched away while still in its infancy.

Commentators have tried to hand the "Kennedyesque" mantle on any number of politicians since then, essentially on anyone who was reasonably articulate and didn't look as though he had one foot in the grave. But to my way of thinking, none of them - not even RFK, who to me always felt like a weak and insincere facsimile of his older brother - has come close to deserving that description until Barack Obama.

I'm still not sure I can vote for the guy - I think he's wrong on the war and I'm not even sure what he believes on some of the other issues - but I sure want to. Even the TV pundits and commentators were all but endorsing him tonight after his electrifying victory speech in South Carolina. "Hillary is toast," I kept thinking, which may not be true at all, given her tenacity and huge financial advantage, but she certainly looked tired and inconsequential alongside the momentum Obama has built up for himself.

And while I'm as cynical as the next guy about vague calls for "change" (the one truly sour note was the audience chanting rather mindlessly, "We want change" as if they were a mob of street beggars), Obama's claim to have a built a coalition "as diverse as anything America's seen in a long, long time" was, if anything, an understatement: it's beyond a doubt more diverse than anything America's ever seen.

Even Republicans figured out how to pepper the audience that the TV cameras see with as many black faces as they could find, but it would have been impossible to script or contrive the race-mixing evident in Obama's supporters. The only places I've previously seen that degree of integration is in Coca-Cola ads and the New York City subway, but this looked a lot more real than former and more pleasant than the latter.

Do I think Obama can be elected president? I do, and at this point, even though I disagree with him on some important issues, my vote is his to lose rather than the other way around. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for some scandalous revelations to surface (especially likely with the Clintons in the hunt) or some shocking faux pas on his part. And as for the Kennedy thing, well, just as I was mulling that thought over in the aftermath of his speech, wondering if I were getting carried away with nostalgia and sentiment, came the news that Caroline Kennedy had endorsed the man, saying, "I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

What does she know, some might argue; she was only a small child when her father died. But there are those of us who do remember John F. Kennedy, and right now I'm inclined to think she may be right.