Seriously Considering Barack

Will have to be (comparatively) terse here. Taters boiling for morning hash-browns, anticipating annoyingly early pottery-foray by spouse, and late start on post in any case, thanks to need to respond to appreciated emails from several of you out there.

I'm not set on a candidate. Frankly, the incredible destruction wrought on the principles of representative democracy and the standing of the US in the eyes of the world by the Limbaugh/Rove/Cheney debacle may preclude any candidate from resembling even a partial saviour. That's certainly how it appears to me now. HRC, Obama, and Edwards, all certainly an order of magnitude preferable to any republican you can name, in office or aspiring, will all struggle mightily imho when it comes to the goal of correcting the incredible damage done by bush to our country.

But I continue to monitor input from those better-connecting and more clear-thinking than I. Tonight's post is on Obama. I've got clips from two posts at Anonymous Liberal, in the order in which I came upon them. Due to length I have excerpted somewhat mercilessly. I know of some important aspects that were as a result not captured here. Get thee to a link please.

First, in the form of advice to the candidate:

For a moment, I'm going to pretend that I'm a hotshot political consultant and not some anonymous dude on the internets.

Much has been made of Hillary Clinton's improved standing in recent national polling. Her goal has been to improve her standing with the party base while projecting an aura of inevitability that causes money and endorsements to flow her way and marginalizes her opponents. This is definitely the right strategy for her to pursue, and to date, she has executed it flawlessly. There is little doubt that the nomination is hers to lose at this point.

That said, because of our peculiar electoral system, following such a strategy exposes a candidate to one significant vulnerability. The better a candidate is at surrounding him or herself with an aura of inevitability, the more momentum an opposing candidate can generate by pulling off a surprise victory in an early contest. Like a rubber band being stretched, the more Clinton increases her national lead and cements her status as the presumptive nominee, the greater the snapback will be if she loses in Iowa. The higher you rise, the harder you fall. Just ask Howard Dean.

And therein lies the opportunity for Obama. Many have suggested that Obama needs to start going after Clinton, that he needs to do something dramatic now in order to change the direction of national polls. I think that's a fool's errand. Obama is not the slashing type and if he tried to be, much of his appeal would be lost. Moreover, it's not as if there is some gaping difference between the candidates when it comes to policy. Obama thinks that he would be a better general election candidate, would exercise better judgment as president, and would be a more effective agent of change than Clinton (and I tend agree). But those differences don't make it easy to draw sharp contrasts in a primary race, particularly without coming across as obnoxious and self-obsessed.

So rather than trying to take Clinton down a notch nationally, Obama needs to think locally. He needs to focus most of his resources on winning Iowa, where the polls indicate a much closer race. The significance of the Iowa caucuses depends almost entirely on expectations. If Obama (or Edwards for that matter) manages to pull off an upset in Iowa, it will instantly puncture the aura of inevitability surrounding Clinton and create major momentum going into the next series of contests. Overnight, Obama would enjoy a huge bump in the polls, both nationally and in New Hampshire, just like Kerry did in 2004, and he could potentially ride that momentum all the way to the nomination. And ironically, the more Clinton is perceived to be the national front-runner going into Iowa, the harder she'll fall should she lose and the more momentum will transfer to the candidate who pulled off the upset.

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And I also appreciated this earlier post making the pro-Obama case rather cogently:

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Political observers from across the ideological spectrum agree that Obama is, hands down, the most charismatic and engaging candidate either party has to offer at the moment. Charisma, of course, is not in and of itself a qualification for president, but its importance is often under-appreciated. Presidential contests are, in large part, referendums on the perceived character of the candidates. Many voters, including a large percentage of so-called "swing voters," rely on visceral or emotion criteria every bit as much as intellectual criteria. They often vote for the candidate they "like" better.

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What should be clear to anyone who has paid any attention to the slow-motion trainwreck that is the Bush presidency is that judgment and intelligence matter far more than anything else. Presidents are not islands unto themselves; they surround themselves with advisers of all kinds, most of whom have far more experience in their area of expertise than the president can ever hope to have. A good president is someone who has the judgment to surround himself with a qualified and diverse group of advisers, who has the intelligence to understand what his advisers are telling him, and who has the curiosity and discipline to ask the right questions, challenge assumptions when necessary, and go wherever the facts lead him.

Obama graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. Trust me when I tell you that only an exceptionally smart and keenly analytical person can accomplish such a feat. It's hard to get into a good law school. It's even harder to distinguish yourself from the pack once there. Obama is more than qualified when it comes to intelligence.

Obama has also shown good judgment in the past on key issues. In late 2002, in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, it seemed like everyone went collectively nuts. The press, including most liberal pundits, were accepting everything the administration was saying at face value. They were failing to ask obvious questions and vilifying those who did. Amidst this hysteria, Obama got up in front of a crowd in Chicago and said the following:

Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president.

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Obama is certainly not perfect, and he has a lot to prove over the next year if he wants to earn the support of Democratic primary voters. Between now and then, there are all sorts of things he can do to prove himself either more or less worthy of the honor of being the party's nominee. And he'll of course have to overcome some very serious and capable opponents. But, in case it's not obvious by now, I find it very hard not to root for him. He intrigues me in a way that few politicians have, and I very much want to see him succeed.

Beltway Pundit Idiocy, Act iv

One of the terrific features of the Internets (sic) is the ready access it (they) provides to a wild variety of viewpoints and perspectives. I am specifically here focused on the recent meltdown of the NYT firewall that has for a year or so constrained those of us unwilling to pony up despite pain of losing access to non-pareil writers like Krugman, Rich, Herbert, and Dowd.

While I was feeling unmitigated joy at the wall collapse, I'm hereby reminded that it has also released some totally idiotic, reality-allergic, and potentially contagious writers (ironically, I am hearing Kingston Trio's "Tijuana Jail"). Specific subject here is David Brooks, notoriously factless and routinely unquestioning and unthinking mouthpiece for the powers-that-be. I.e., the poster for non-journalist. But it alerts me that we now also will be seeing the whacko Friedman in public again (he fully enshrined now with a sobriquet of his own, the "Friedman Unit (FU)," after his shamelessly repeated claims for years that we need "just another six months" in Iraq before complete triumph is inevitable).

I'm going to lean, roll of the dice, on TRex at FDL here, although I was first alerted to this latest Brooks absurdity by Glenn G at Salon (linked below, I believe). You should read both Glenn and TRex in toto. If only Brooks would settle for shooting a deputy down or some comparable crime:

David Brooks writes like mildew grows. His column today, “The Center Holds” is less an essay than an accretion of poorly chosen words and conjectures that makes yours truly yearn for the good old days (was it only last week?) when the Times Select wall kept this stuff contained and protected the unwary against random exposures.

Once again, Brooks is in full-throated warble about the glories of some non-existent “center”, and how it’s good that the Democrats in Congress have shafted the “bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the ‘netroots’.” Because, as Glenn Greenwald notes, “Brooks, of course, cares deeply about the health of the Democratic Party and wants only what is best for it”.

Completely unencumbered by facts, research, poll numbers, and in fact, virtually free of the craft of writing altogether, Brooks projects his own feelings about the state of the American political mind on to a mythical construct he calls “the American people”, conjecturing that since he is The Cosmos, all Americans must be as frightened and alarmed by the netroots as he is.

Never mind that poll after poll demonstrates that the American people are disgusted with Congress’s current “appease the Republicans at all costs” tack. The Americans who voted in a Democratic majority are feeling some pretty severe pangs of buyer’s remorse. But Brooks, messiah-like, knows what America wants more than America itself and believes that the netroots must die, so that we all may live, allelu, allelu, now and forever, world without end, amen.

Citing “high school educated women in the Midwest, and the old Clinton establishment in Washington” as the Rosetta Stone of 2007’s grim realpolitik (but providing of course no poll numbers, research, or facts to back this framing up), Brooks declares that passion is dead, milquetoast is the new black, and that the Democrats in Congress are damn right to “privately detest the netroots’ self-righteousness and bullying”. Does Brooks even know any “high school educated women in the midwest” or are they just another figment of his overheated imagination?

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A Little Bush Character Back-Check

A good summary/reminder here about the overall "character" of that little unevolved frat-boy who seems to have such a charming bunch of pals (some of whom, to my relief, have recently moved on to more remunerative yet probably even more disturbing and human-rights-abusing settings).

He's obviously far more of a compatriot of the dark losers in B movies than anything resembling a positive role-model. Of course we know that, and anyone watching him mince around eviscerating the standards of even lower-class civility ought to. But even the Hayden/Widmark/Mitchum clan, as actual people, were from what I can tell distinctly more accountable than this sorry little worm - though in some cases similarly flawed.

This also reaffirms the general venality of the editorial page program at the Washington Post. The named author for this piece - Charles Lane - is unfamiliar to me. But there is a significant history over the past few years at the least of totally disingenuous support for the venality of the Cheney-Bush intifatada by regulars on the Op-Ed page, as well as a few episodes of fascinating playground fisticuffs from purported "umbuds," normally thought of as advocates for reader's-rights, or at least neutral arbitrists.

Dan Rather's stature in my mind is frankly much higher now than it ever was when he was an anchor on CBS. The whole Texas Air National Guard (TANG) business, with (possibly) recreated/forged documents in full agreement with what all the other evidence that the bush cabal was not able to shred, is a fascinating exhibit in corporate-media manipulation by a cynical political apparatchik. And of course, CBS management here expands upon their familiar role as most incompetent of news-broadcasters by way of their conscious burying of critical information that media in our country are expected to be promulgating.

But this needs to be said and circulated repeatedly, as we are apparently a people of limited intelligence and even more limited attention-span. Pssst, America: your C-I-C is a habitual liar, never having followed through on his commitments. Liar. Criminal. AWOL.

What does that say for 41 and Barb? Of course they have their own war-crimes to atone for, but what must it be like as parents to know of (and, yes, complicit in) this stuff? They raised at least one character who belongs in a horror movie. OK, prison.

David Neiwert, more familiarly resident at Orcinus, does wonders in re-energizing this issue at FireDogLake. Do link through, I merely plucked first part of post which is excellent throughout.

The credibility of the Washington Post’s editorial page took another hit today with Charles Lane’s nasty hit piece attacking Dan Rather — suggesting he’s not in his right mind — for suing CBS in the aftermath of the “Rathergate” ratfucking. Especially the nut graf:

Finally, no one in his right mind would keep insisting that those phony documents are real and that the Bush National Guard story is true.

On both counts (as with nearly all those preceding), Lane is factually and profoundly wrong. There were plenty of reasons at the time to think that the so-called “proof” that the “Killian documents” were fraudulent was itself mostly fraudulent, or at best fatally flawed. And there are plenty of reasons to believe that they may well have been authentic — including the study by Utah State professor David Hailey [PDF of the study itself here], who concluded that he was “totally persuaded they were typed.”

Moreover, Rather’s attorneys point out in their complaint (which Lane appears not to have read) that the private investigator hired by CBS in the aftermath of the debacle concluded that “the Killian documents were most likely authentic, and the underlying story was certainly accurate.”

As Eric Boehlert — whose contemporary reporting for Salon on the story was authoritative and convincing — wrote in his book Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush:

Not one of the key facts, all established through Bush’s own military records, were altered by CBS’s botched National Guard report. But the MSM, having already displayed little initiative on the story, took the 2004 CBS controversy as confirmation that they had been right in 2000 to wave off the issue of Bush’s Guard duty; that there was nothing there. Spooked by the angry conservative mob assembled online and that had been taking aim at CBS and its anchor Dan Rather, the MSM in 2004 quickly sprinted away from questions about Bush’s service and focused its attention solely on CBS’s sins.

The CBS fiasco essentially buried the hard factual reality based simply on the very authentic public records — namely, that George W. Bush failed to live up to his military commitments in a time of war, and that he and his minions continue to lie about it to this day.

It’s important to remember that at the time of the CBS report, there were many reports that reached this same basic conclusion, including Boehlert’s, an accounting in the Boston Globe, and even a damning report in U.S. News and World Report. It’s likewise important to remember that, because of the manufactured and utterly phony “Rathergate” controversy, the White House never did answer the questions that CBS raised in the course of its reportage utterly separate from the documents:

– Did a friend of the Bush family use his influence with the then-Texas House Speaker to get George W. Bush into the National Guard?

– Did Lt. Bush refuse an order to take a required physical?

– Was he suspended for “failing to perform up to standards”?

– And did he complete his commitment to the Guard?

The established record — contrary to Charles Lane’s fantasy — shows clearly that the answers to these questions are “yes,” “yes,” “yes,” and NO. Yet this has never been made clear to the public — and it’s actively obfuscated by mendacious nonsense like Lane’s.

The CBS report, and the way it fell apart, had all the earmarks of a classic ratfucking. Most of all, it allowed the White House to lie with impunity about Bush’s military records afterward, and to continue doing so to this day.

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