Added blog. to make sure it was sent to the new Mpls., MN groups.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lucia-brawley/president-obamas-arts_b_136616.html
PRESIDENT OBAMA'S ARTS
by Lucia Brawley
At 10 years old, Mordecai Santiago was already the toughest kid at the 52nd Street Project, the renowned Hell's Kitchen not-for-profit where I volunteered as an academic tutor and arts educator. Though diminutive in stature and "held back" in school, Mordecai wielded an authority beyond his years with children and adults alike. Officials at his over-crowded elementary school had diagnosed Mordecai with A.D.D. and wanted to put him on Ritalin. He shared a small, low-income-housing apartment with four other siblings and two parents. They had no computer.
But Mordecai was a natural on the piano. He loved to play Beethoven's Fur Elise by ear on the only piano in the after-school clubhouse. Since he'd never had a proper lesson, his fingering was incorrect, but he hit every note flawlessly. The only way I could get him to finish his homework, was by promising him "piano time" at the end of every tutoring session. He often would rather play his own haunting compositions than go home.
His unadulterated love of music inspired me to ask fellow Harvard alums to donate piano lessons to kids at the program. Offers flowed in by email in overwhelming numbers. However, the administrators of the program, already under-staffed, under-resourced and over-worked, regretfully explained that they could not accept.
In Mordecai, a tough, brilliant, little kid in baggy jeans and a puffy North Face jacket, I saw up-close the precarious fate of millions of American children who might evolve into great artists or great criminals, at the flip of a coin. Without proper funding for programs like the 52nd Street Project, the latter possibility becomes an inevitability for too many kids.
In order to stay true to the campaign's message of hope, progress and action, I would like to see an Obama administration accomplish a broad array of arts policy goals. Arts education must find its way back to American public schools, not only as a proven measure to bring up students' math and science scores, but to allow students a means of self-expression that will save their futures - as well as saving the system the cost of trying and incarcerating many of them. Even if they never go into the arts, a youth's acquired creative problem solving abilities will serve her in any field.
Imagine art and performance exchanges between students from different areas and strata of American society, in order to create dialogue that bridges psychological gaps between demographic groups and regions.
More than an educational tool, the arts offer unique diplomatic opportunities. In the Kennedy tradition, there should be exchanges between students and adult artists from our country and other countries around the globe, perhaps in partnership with the U.N.
Controversially, during the Cold War, the CIA infiltrated Eastern European theater groups, in order to inspire revolt within oppressive regimes and prevent democratic regimes from turning Communist, as illustrated in The Cultural Cold War:The CIA and the World off Arts and Letters, by Frances Stonor Saunders. Whether one agrees with such secretive programs or not, do they not reflect the diplomatic potential of the arts, as an alternative to overt military policing?
Acting in Hungary, a country famed for its great composers, I saw young students well versed in classical music. How wonderful it would be to see original U.S. musical forms as part of every American child's curriculum: jazz, folk music, rock'n'roll, and hip-hop. What could be more patriotic than embracing our nation's cultural contributions to the world? And why not include world music and dance as an integral part of the American-immigrant and global stories?
With an eye toward valuing the contributions of artists, as all other developed nations do, I would like to see artist-tailored unemployment and healthcare insurance for those who can prove a history of work in their chosen field. And, to offer alternatives to a justice system that now reinforces the dehumanization inherent in an excessively stratified society, I would like to see more programs like Rhodessa Jones' "Medea Project," that helps rehabilitate inmates in the Bay Area correctional system, by allowing them to enact their own stories, thereby exorcising the causes of their anger and accepting responsibility for their actions.
Visual art projects helped children overcome the trauma of having witnessed 9/11. Imagine the benefits of music and art therapy for every soldier returning from Iraq who suffers from PTSD.
The arts humanize society, not merely in a spiritual and emotional sense. We have tangible historical evidence of how the arts have directly contributed to the fortification of a troubled America. F.D.R.'s New Deal - especially relevant now, as we face the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression - included the Federal Writers Project, Federal Theater Project, Federal Art Project and Federal Music Project, each of which employed artists in ways that served and uplifted society and the economy as a whole. In their 1995 essay, "New Deal Cultural Programs: Experiments in Cultural Democracy," Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard state that, rather than homogenize distinct regions with a big government agenda, these projects set forward in vivid relief the unique beauties of each region, inspired progress within the labor movement, and led to commercially viable enterprises.
Today, Barack Obama often speaks of a deficit, not merely economic, but of empathy. He reminds us that, "I am my brother's keeper." Obama's campaign has inspired an unprecedented amount of creativity through songs, artwork, dance and dramatic arts, and captured the imaginations of people worldwide. If a President Obama chooses to utilize his historic grassroots organization beyond the campaign, in order to successfully put forth initiatives that stand up to corporate special interests, he must remember that the arts will be the primary mouthpiece for galvanizing the people's partnership.
November 5th, 2008:
This was a triumph for decency, consistency, fairness and compassion. It was the much-deserved outcome of a flawless campaign and the final vindication of the most inspiring figure in American public life since FDR. The tears and emotion on the faces of so many people united as one were genuine. This is the final proof that the truth is a powerful thing. A life-changing election, and my first as a participant. I feel proud of my U.S citizenship, and vindicated in my decision to settle here.
Congratulations, President-Elect Obama and my best wishes as you begin the resurrection of our country and launch the beginning of a new era in our way of belonging to the world.
Peter
Good Morning, I hope this letter finds you well. Everything is wonderful here, I cast my ballot 20 minutes ago and was excited by both the turnout and overall attitude of the voters. I wouldn't expect to find many McCain supporters in my neighborhood. I've decided to write you for reasons other than to tell you how I am, as that is usually unwavering and remains so today. Instead, I'm asking for an open ear and mind to speak to, although it may already be too late.
Regardless; whenever you step into the voting booth today (I remember you used to do it in the evening) I want you to really stop and think about your reasons for voting one way or the other. I know you don't vote strictly by party line, and though I respect the importance of the "undercard" it is really only the Presidential Election I'm speaking about. I understand your frustration with politics. You have been through many elections, seen many successes, many more failures, lofty dreams, broken promises, and rampant corruption. You've seen candidates promise not to raise taxes and do so, and do damage by lowering taxes and increasing spending. You've been through lame ducks, war hawks, resignations and assassinations; seen your peers in the middle class go from having 2 cars to having foreclosed homes, and seen gas go from under $1 to over $5. You have reasons to be pessimistic, and thankfully the right to do so. This race has been no different. You have heard the promises, exposed the lies, been through the same irrelevent negative campaigning, and listened to the scare tactics. But not all is negative. You have seen a campaign that has energized regular people, broken down traditional voting demographics, turned away from corporate control and raised millions from those who could barely afford to give pennies. I believe, though our party affiliation doesn't agree, that our family is relatively congruent in our moral stances: we hope for Universal Health Care, are pro-choice, for gun regulation, against the war in Iraq, and believe in investment in research and development of alternative energy sources to help cure our addiction to foreign oil. We know it is tough for anything to happen in this political world, but things need to happen if we expect to get back to a position of leadership. There was a time when the world looked towards us for direction. When it was our policies, and our leaders that helped push the world into new technological areas or against human rights violations. This world hasn't expected much from us recently as we, the voting citizens of this country, let what our country was known for slip away and become distracted in a mess of ineffectiveness. Our children aren't educated, our infrastructure is outdated, our middle class is poor, and our economy is a playground for the wealthy. We have millions of troops stationed around the globe, but a lack of interest in true areas of necessity and a President that refuses to acknowledge our most outspoken foreign critics (Chavez, Kim Jong Il, Ahmedanijad). It is due to these dire circumstances that people like you become so important. Someone who has seen a lot, and because of it, has grown weary about the future. Someone who doesn't feel right about shaking things up because the shake ups may never pan out. But it is only with a major consensus that changes can really happen in this country, and we can begin to build our way back up. It has thus far been a terrible new century for this country. Nations that we have helped create our surpassing us in innovation and governance, while we've turned our political landscape into a reality tv program. With all that being said, there is a chance to begin on a new path. We can't guarantee that the path is the right one, or that we will get along it far enough to make a difference but it's worth a shot. Now I know you may have already voted, and in the end given your location in an overwhelmingly Democratic state your vote won't seem to make much of a difference, but it is going to be more than just pulling a lever. When all is said and done we have already built a coalition that looks past differences and pessimism. We've started moving the gears towards making things happen in this country that so desperately need to happen, and we will continue to do so. But we need people like you; people with good moral standing, a penchant for intelligence, a desire for something different. People who gave up on politics years ago, but can remember the times when they believed they made a difference. It may be our time now, but as the adage goes: the more, the merrier. Here's to the hope for change! P.S. If things do not go my way, put together some bail money, because I'll most likely be in prison by tomorrow. Love,Son
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l07COcgwmXU&watch_response
This video is beautiful. i had goosebumps from beginning to end, and it touched me deeply. thank you for sharing it. YES WE CAN. VOTE 4 CHANGE!
One Week.
I've been making calls. It's easy. Easier than you think.
If you're reading this between 9am and 8pm, stop reading this and start making calls via n2n. Now.
If you're feeling complacent, here are four reasons not to.
If McCain pulls off an upset, you'll be kicking yourself for not doing more. So do more.
October 11, 2008, Gail Collins has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times this morning.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/opinion/11collins.html?th&emc=th
In it she conjures up the unforgettable image of John McCain attempting to stir up hatred and frenzy in his increasingly narrow "base" of supporters - those who can be incited to express the ugliest of delusions and, perhaps, the acting out of something much worse based on them. When a woman grabbed the microphone at a rally yesterday to describe Obama as an "Arab", there can have been few images in politics as memorable as the look of - was it awful realization? - on McCain's face as he rebutted his own follower (to boos from the crowd) and shamefacedly defended “that one”. I almost felt sorry for him, since he is the real loser, whatever the eventual outcome of this election, since he has sold his soul to fully embrace the sordid strategy that Bush and the very same people now advising McCain used on him in 2000. His wife, who was similarly a target of that strategy in 2000, has with breathtaking cynicism also accused Obama of running the sort of hateful campaign that they are themselves engaged upon, surely a prime case of projecting one’s own attributes onto one’s opponent. Not really what the country needs right now, following the weeklong massacre on Wall Street.
When a candidate and his surrogates have successfully created a frenzy among their own supporters through the peddling of outright lies about their opponents that play to the basest instincts and most primal fears of those followers, where do they then take that campaign after lighting the fuse of fear, hatred and bigotry? After the lady verbalized her hatred and fear of Obama because he was an "Arab", McCain was left with no possible response other than a weak defense: he is a "decent family man", thereby losing the Arab vote for all time (surely there are Arabs who are also “decent family” men?). Another man asked McCain’s advice about whether he should allow his unborn child to enter a world where Obama was President. McCain simply appeared dazed. Here’s Bob Herbert in this morning’s Times about the unmasking of the Republican legacy and the disastrous consequences of it. McCain's campaign is hardly the polite, respectful, unifying event we were promised.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/opinion/11herbert.html?th&emc=th
Meanwhile, the Governor of Alaska has been scrambling to undermine her own state's report on her and her husband's corruption of her administration through the firing of one of her officials for personal reasons. Palin actually issued her own report card yesterday, predictably exonerating herself from any wrongdoing, while her surrogates have now branded the real report as politically slanted, despite the fact that the committee that oversaw the investigation was primarily composed of members of her own party. Nevertheless, it may make it harder for the McCain campaign to sell her as a reformer, rather than as just another corrupt small-time official, thrust into a postion that is quite clearly beyond her.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/washington/11rove.html?th&emc=th
Despite all this, Obama continues to shore up his lead in the polls: eleven points (52%-41%) in Newsweek yesterday, a journal hardly noted for its left-wing leanings. One would like to think that, with the world economy on the way down and McCain’s campaign lurching in all directions, this game is close to its final bell, but with twenty-five days to go it’s, perhaps, still up in the air. I’m sure that at this point Obama is reading biographies of Lincoln and FDR, since history appears to be on the verge of handing him a similar opportunity to unite and lead this country out of the mayhem created by the perilous and globally toxic legacy of Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush.
October 6th, 208:
Here's a quick reference/footnote to this morning's post. It is a reent short article from the LA Times about McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal. the reader can decide whether it is fair game for Obama's campaign to mention this in the light of our present-day troubles on Wall Street.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks25-2008sep25,0,5467109.column
October 6th, 2008
Clearly, this campaign is entering a new and ugly phase as the Republicans reach the bottom of their almost entirely empty tool kit. Following the Karl Rove play book, McCain’s campaign – the same McCain, that is, who swore that he would never descend to gutter politics, has now indicated his more-than-willingness to do precisely that. The appalling Sarah Palin was unleashed again yesterday, attempting to create another diversion by dredging up the non-issue of Barack Obama’s supposed links to a former urban terrorist (there were none, so she simply slandered him). This morning there is a column by William Kristol in the New York Times, where he displays the very essence of what is so wrong with much present-day partisan journalism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/opinion/06kristol.html?th&emc=th
I observed something similar (though less obviously sympathetic to Palin’s simple lying in order to create voter distraction) among yesterday’s Sunday political talk shows: an utter unwillingness to simply call a lie by its real name. The talk was all of “hardball” politics, or “red meat”, or “hardline” politics, or other euphemisms for what is actually the very serious business of smearing your opponents by lying about them. The sight of various Republican politicians shamelessly endorsing the latest round of diversionary lies as undeniable fact was Orwellian in its breathtaking duplicity. McCain himself talked of “turning the page” on the economic meltdown created by precisely the policies that he has advocated (and participated in) for decades.
It is unclear whether, in the present straightened circumstances, any of these increasingly ugly and desperate measures will assist Republicans in hiding the fact that the government presently being judged by the electorate is in fact their own, but people in rural areas, who listen to right-wing crazies on the airwaves as their sole daily source of political information have shown that they will believe anything about someone if the colour of their skin is not quite pale enough, or if they can be smeared or slandered. This was the subliminal message that Palin was attempting to send out in a campaign speech that should have earned her a lawsuit. She tried to convey that Obama did not see America as “you and I” see America, the clear implication being that Obama is either unpatriotic or a traitor. This is the same garbage that was spewed out by the Swift-boaters about John Kerry, to which the Massachusetts senator, incredibly, failed to respond.
I suspect that Obama’s very well informed campaign will not make the same mistake. There is talk of a short film about McCain’s well-documented involvement in the Keating Five scandal being unveiled today at midday.
The difference between the McCain campaign’s slander and the Obama campaign’s inevitable response is that McCain was truly involved in the Keating outrage, and properly censured by his very own senate. It is a piece of history that will surely resonate with today’s voters as they contemplate their lost investments as a result of exactly this type of corruption on a far grander scale, resulting in the tax payer-funded $850 billion bailout that passed the house and senate last week. Facts, as John Adams observed, are stubborn things. Linking McCain to a financial scandal based on fact in today’s climate is clearly more effective than spreading lies about Obama, where the use of such tactics has become commonplace. Obama should make the following familiar offer to McCain: “You stop telling lies about me and I’ll desist from telling the truth about you”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05rich.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin
It may well be that none of this will work for the Republicans: the polls continue to show a sizeable drift towards Obama both on the national level and in key battleground states. The pullout by the McCain campaign from Michigan also suggests that the Republicans know the game is up. I do not generally believe in conspiracy theories, but Hillary Clinton’s identification of just such a plot being hatched by the extreme Right years ago now appears ever more plausible. Voters should pay very close attention to Sarah Palin. Under her idiotic demeanour and calculatedly reassuring vacuousness, perfectly captured by Maureen Dowd on Sunday in the Times, lies a politician who has a very dark vision of this nation’s future.
Instead of flirting with her on the phone, as Kristol indicates he did, or continuing to see her as nothing more than a silly side show, or discussing her high heels and bee-hive hairdo, journalists should instead be taking their role as the Fourth Estate of American democracy seriously and placing the McCain-Palin ticket under the very close scrutiny that it deserves. They should be asking – with some urgency – how such an apparently inappropriate choice for vice-presidential candidate was made in the first place: through ineptitude or by malevolently “intelligent” design? The Republicans who have governed this country more or less for the last forty years are not about to let the game go without a fight – or perhaps something worse. Voters need to be aware of the potential dangers posed by the real prospect of a Republican Götterdämmerung. The inheritors of Nixon’s legacy are not going to go quietly.
Well, the second great debate, this one between vice-presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin is over and, predictably, the media are, by and large, calling it a draw. Nothing illustrates better than this the dangerously low level to which public discourse about public discourse has sunk in this country. The country is in a shambles economically, militarily and politically, the government is beyond impotent: truly insightful leadership is urgently required and, yet, media comment on this sham of a debate (it was not a debate, but two separate, watching-the-clock series of extended sound bites – the opposite of debate, in fact) centred on whether the cynically nominated Palin was able to successfully gull the public into believing that she is now, or could ever be, ready to assume the government of this nation. That one of our major political parties has allowed her to come this far is seriously disturbing.
The problem with these debates is really both in the format and the level – and style – of moderation, which allows the participants to be judged according to the shallowest of criteria. On this occasion, the exemplary Gwen Ifill, perhaps attempting to keep a low profile since McCain’s campaign staged its latest diversion by cynically attempting to make her an issue, was essentially hamstrung in her proper role of keeping the candidates' responses to her questions to the point. With these factors influencing events, it is clear that the resulting level of television fails utterly as a medium through which to convey anything substantially pertinent to the serious business of choosing the country’s leadership. Those who claim that "government is the problem", or at least irrelevant, have certainly contributed to trivializing the informative tools available to us when deciding on electing it.
Palin’s by now familiar Fargo-esque performance was judged successful solely on the basis that she narrowly avoided the absolute embarrassment to which she was subjected in her unscripted interviews earlier in the week. By any rational assessment, and remembering for a moment that this was an encounter between two candidates who wish to be second in command of the world's until recently Top Nation, it was no contest at all. Even with Biden's frustratingly evident unwillingness (or perhaps conscious decision not) to genuinely engage Palin and properly refute the idiocies that spouted forth from her robotic countenance as she stared into the camera like an over-coached first year drama student, it was nevertheless clear that Biden was knowledgeable, real and intelligent while Palin was none of those things. When asked specific questions she blatantly refused to answer and returned to the few areas in which she has evidently been coached: low taxes, her credentials as an energy expert and McCain’s and her own (bogus) “maverick” status, the latter belied at every turn by McCain’s actual, long and very public record. As she lied about her own credentials as an environmentalist and how that goes along with her intention to drill for oil in wilderness areas, Biden could surely have mentioned, for example, the Exxon - Valdez disaster. I would have. So, with no refutation by her opponent of this or any other of her bogus claims, she was basically free to frame the discussion her way. As a result, in the end Palin was at most judged on how well she could appear to possess knowledge and experience that, in reality, she clearly does not. I believe that her deliberate and quite calculatedly folksy appeal to the Joe and Jane six-packs in which this country apparently abounds is as fraudulent as her politics are frightening. For the real story of Palin and her likely approach to continuing in Dick Cheney’s immediate footsteps, I suggest a careful examination of the evidence in her own state, where the scandal of an investigation and Palin’s own outright refusal to cooperate with it continue to unfold on a daily basis.
Apparently the debate rules precluded any meaningful engagement of one candidate with the other. I trust that this is the reason why Biden allowed endless opportunities for clear and effective refutation of outright lies go unchallenged. It is as if his handlers had told him not to engage her at all for fear of appearing to bully. In following this advice he allowed her to intimidate him with simple untruths, repeated robotically, unchallenged. In terms of his own depth of knowledge and fitness to lead, Biden acquitted himself perfectly well. One hopes that sufficient numbers of Americans, newly alarmed by their sudden rousing from twenty-eight years of Republican-induced slumber, are sufficiently alarmed by the proximity of the ground now looming at the bottom of the precipice to make the right choice. Recent polls and McCain’s own hastily-mounted retreat from Michigan suggest that that is the case. Perhaps Palin’s idiotic reiteration of Reagan’s own great fraud – that government is the problem – even as she now seeks to control it, will be laid bare for voters, bathed in the harsh light of present day reality.
Enough said. In terms of promoting any sort of useful policy discussion, these debates are a write off: ninety minutes of sound bites and stump rhetoric, with weak moderation that allows the candidates to simply ignore questioning (Palin blatantly announced that she was not going to respond to the questions if she didn’t want to). Worse than that, they seduce people into assessing their potential leaders based purely on fleeting image and, in Palin’s case, their ability to lie directly into the camera in order to maipulate. The idea that the election of the leaders of the free world could hinge on the television public’s perception of whether they won a shallow (and surprisingly boring) television encounter perhaps explains how our country has drifted so far off course. Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR? Could any of them have even been elected according to these criteria? And post-debate discussion: should partisan spin from commentators from both sides replace serious attempts by the journalistic fraternity to cut through self-serving lies and discover truth? I think not. I would like to see a referendum on the state of the media in this country and how it serves our highest notions of what should – and should not – decide our government. I believe that, at present, our democracy is very poorly – and dangerously – served by the currently constituted “Fourth Estate”.
In the last few days I have had some challenges while spreading the word about Obama. I was all set to go to a rally in Tucson, had my Obama hat and my sunscreen---and my car wouldn't start! I learned that the AZ heat kills car batteries with no warning. So I kept my hat on and sat at the dealership for 2 hours. In the waiting room I had a very strong urge to yell out, "Is everyone in here registered to vote?" It was hard to sit there. But a few people looked at my hat and smiled.
The other setback in the past few days has been some very odd reactions by friends/extended family to forwarded emails regarding the campaign. People seem to show their essential natures when faced with dramatic, emotional events. It reminds me of the behavior I've witnessed surrounding weddings and funerals. Any underlying dark emotions will come to the surface. A couple people whom I'd never suspect have answered some very innocent forwards (ie: by Deepak Chopra and by a meditation teacher) with disgust. Yes, disgust. ???? Bizarre reactions from democrats who support Obama. It is difficult to not take this kind of lashing out personally, especially because it comes out so violently. The only way I can handle these attacks is by seeing that they are clearly not about me or about Barack. They must be about fear. I understand that. I don't like when the result is pointed at me, but I get it. We are all in this fast moving current of rushing campaign waters. The waves are deep and the danger strong. No one wants to drown. Everyone is scared. And everyone thinks they know what we should do, or what we can't do, or what Barack must do. I know it's just the fear of losing so much and the need for change that causes this hurricane, but it makes me think of how a person drowning will push their rescuer under.
I can only control my own actions. I pick up the phone and call the next voter. I protect the part of me that has unabashed hope and faith in the change to come. I keep swimming.
September 29, 2008 6:09 am
William Kristol wrote this in the New York Times this morning
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/opinion/29kristol.html?th&emc=th
I was first cab off the rank in response.
— Peter Watchorn, Cambridge, MA
Already the talking heads are declaring the first so-called debate a draw, when, clearly, in terms of the presentation of anything resembling substantial or real solutions in the face of the current mess, it was anything but. To anyone who harbours even a reasonable hope that a Presidential candidate might actually be able to master the details of the job and save the nation, Barack Obama, the first mixed-race candidate for President (he is no more black than white, by the way, revealing just how far America has to go in this regard) clearly won with a methodical and incisive presentation of the case for change: laying out the requirements for a better future to replace the appalling plundering of the country that has occurred during Bush’s administration. He also did it without rancour or patronizing his opponent, something that cannot be said of McCain, whose clenched grin as Obama hit home became increasingly strained. On any fair assessment, especially taking into account McCain’s transparently inept political theatre of the previous few days, Obama creamed him.
In truth, the inordinate weight given to these debates, based on the premise that responsibility for electing an American head of state apparently should hinge on a ninety-minute televised series of images and sound bites, seems especially troubling in the face of the very grave reality that is looming here and now: the prospect of a full re-run of the 1930s. The ultimate trivialisation of the whole political process is the cynical elevation by the Republican Right of the woefully inept Sarah Palin as McCain’s running-mate. Is it not interesting how the polls regarding her are framed: the question posed: “is she ready?” seems to imply that one day she might be. Perhaps the CBS interview with Katie Couric, which was simply beyond belief, will cause even a few honourable Republicans to request that Palin finally recuse herself for the good of the party.
Barack Obama himself performed as creditably as one would expect: he was cool and efficient, in command, far more sober than when he is in full rhetorical flight (I would have liked to have seen a bit more of that side, since the gravity of the times seems to require a great speech from the agent of change). His calm and presidential behaviour throughout the week leading up to the debates was the antithesis of McCain’s: perhaps a glimpse of what is yet to come. Where McCain shifted strategy, staged diversions and finally attempted to grandstand with his public “halting” of his campaign until a bailout deal was concluded, only to resume it again when Obama failed to blink, the Democratic candidate never missed a beat, a comparison that should not be lost on voters at large seeking stability and cool in its next leader. However, there remains one major and lingering residual issue that lies at the root of America’s present-day delusion about itself that even Obama could not touch. It is the key to all the other issues of greed, intolerance and government failure: the twenty-eight year legacy of Ronald Reagan, a conservative icon who is mentioned by many Americans, including many who should know better, in the same breath as Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt: as if he was a benevolent figure of true substance. He was not.
I mention Reagan because his example was the mantle in which McCain attempted to wrap himself several times during the debate (predictably, there was no mention of the despised Bush, except by Obama, with whom the Democrat successfully linked McCain).
McCain invoked Reagan’s name constantly and Obama never once called him on it, in my view missing the opportunity presented to lay the responsibility for our present way of thinking at the feet of the Republicans’ own icon. Perhaps the “debate” format does not allow for it, perhaps it is still taboo for a politician to expose the myth. However, no discussion of where America is at today and how to move it forward is valid until Reagan and his dreadful legacy are fully exposed and understood for what they were – and are: a blunder of the first order in which the American people were gulled into acquiescence by a smooth-talking actor. All the hallmarks of Reagan the arch-opponent of good and efficient government for the majority were there in plain view from the time that he was brought on board for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 campaign. Despite Reagan’s later smooth and reassuring persona, that of the arch-conservative Governor of California who opposed civil rights and bashed unions was Reagan’s true face, his legacy the trickle-down disaster he would ultimately bring to the national arena, brought to its full flowering by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the whole neo-conservative movement. And it all led to a re-run of the conditions that created the Great Crash and the Depression.
It is essential that this “wrecking crew”, in the words of Tom Frank, is finally shown the door.
Finally, I recommend two recent splendid books that lay the whole thing out far better than I could hope to do. First is Paul Krugman’s The Conscience of a Liberal, which makes the reader proud to be one, showing how important it is for progressives to bring an end to the conservatives’ hijacking and re-casting of the word “liberal” as a synonym with incompetent, and the second is Robert Kuttner’s: Obama’s Challenge, an incredibly prescient book that was published just before the present troubles came to a head and predicts them with breathtaking accuracy. Kuttner has great confidence in Barack Obama, and believes that he can – and must – assume FDR’s mantle. The times we live in demand it.
I have been using the Neighbor to Neighbor tool to call voters in New Mexico. At first I was terrified! I worried that McCain supporters would scream at me or slam down the phone--and I'm sure that is still a possibility! However, the people I have spoken with really want to talk. A couple were Obama supporters who share my enthusiasm. A few were shy, but eventually made it clear they will be voting for Obama as well.
But this afternoon I spoke to Brandon in Farmington NM. He said he was undecided. I asked if he was leaning one way or the other and he said he was considering Obama, but that he is strongly Pro-life. He's 33 years old. Wow. Pro-life was not something I was expecting to talk about! I am avidly Pro-choice. I started by saying that I, as a woman his age, was concerned about Palin's view on choice in the case of rape or incest. I explained that if I was in that horrible situation that I'd want to have options. Then I said that one of the wonderful things about Barack is his ability to respect other points of view and to be tolerant. I told Brandon that choice means that his personal beliefs should be respected--just as mine should be and that what is important is that each of us can act for ourselves from our own values, as long as we in turn respect others' right to do the same. I asked if he had any other concerns and he said no. I said that if he agrees with Barack on everything but choice, then that's like 90%. And if that's the case, I was certain that he'd only agree with McCain about 10%! So I told him that if he agrees with Barack 90% of the time and he has knowledge that there is tolerance and respect for his personal beliefs as they relate to his personal actions the other 10% of the time, then his vote seems pretty clear to me.
Then Brandon asked where I was from. I said CA. He said that where he lives there are NO Obama supporters. He said it's like sports and all his buddies root for the home team. He doesn't feel comfortable bringing up the clear problems of the Republican policies of the last 8 years, and he feels alone. I told him that on Nov 4th, he would not be alone. I said I and many others would be with him. And that together we can make a change and elect Barack Obama.
I don't know if anyone reads these blogs besides me, but if you do and you know anyone in New Mexico, we have got to make our presence known there. We have to give people like Brandon the support they need to stand away from the pack and vote their conscience.
September 18th, 2008:
The Republican "bounce" after the convention is dissipating like a fog in San Francisco around midday. One always wondered what it would take to get people back to the incredibly serious, even seismic nature of this election and away from the endless, petty distractions cooked up by the Republicans and served up in lieu of news by the corporate media. Actually, what is occurring is perhaps nothing less than a final rousing of the population from the dream-like state into which America sank back in 1980 under the auspices of a certain B-grade Hollywood movie star whose job was to make Americans forget about threatening reality and feel good about their country again after the Vietnam debacle and the stag-flation of the 1970s. That sleep has now lasted twenty-eight long years, with only minor interruptions. The last eight years have represented a total abdication of consciousness.
There is nothing like a genuine 1920s-style scare in the financial markets (and serious talk of depression, not the more minor kind of upheaval we can now only hope for) to remind people in a timely fashion just how much we all depend on government - responsible, committed and representative government - and just how irresponsible it is for one side of politics to systematically erode confidence in that government by encouraging people not to participate in or know about it. Even now, the potential Bush successor, Candidate McCain is in a state of total confusion, on the one hand arguing for knocking out the few remaining planks of responsible regulation and government monitoring of Wall St, while simultaneously jumping opportunistically on the bandwagon of "change" by belatedly advocating government overseeing of the markets. McCain has become a split personality, literally running against himself, as if his entire senate career as an advocate of throwing government overboard had never existed. His multi-faceted position is, as the population is beginning to sense, baloney, pure and simple: untenable and illogical. McCain is now entirely in the thrall of "advisors", who are actually a weird assortment of Bush advisors and lobbyists, whose input to McCain's campaign has left nothing of the so-called anti-establishment maverick. Even the last desperate act of nominating a more-right-than-Attila the Hun nonentity like Sarah Palin to be his running-mate, thereby trumping the Democrats' hold on the women's vote also appears to be unravelling, as voters are forced back to contemplating the ruin that is unfolding all around them and searching for a solution to it. Here is what one of the more competent (and responsible) members of the Republican Party, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska had to say about it all, as reported this morning by Associated Press:
"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials," Hagel said in an interview published Thursday by the Omaha World-Herald. "You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."
Could Palin lead the country if GOP presidential nominee John McCain could not?
"I think it's a stretch to, in any way, to say that she's got the experience to be president of the United States," Hagel said.
McCain and other Republicans have defended Palin's qualifications, citing Alaska's proximity to Russia. Palin told ABC News, "They're our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."
Hagel took issue with that argument. "I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia,'" he said. "That kind of thing is insulting to the American people."
Hagel, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In July, Hagel traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Though he didn't expect to be asked, Hagel had said he would have considered serving as Obama's running mate.
Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 6,500, before becoming Alaska's governor in December 2006.
Palin visited soldiers in Kuwait and Germany last year and said in an interview with ABC News that her only other foreign travel had been to Mexico and Canada. She also said she had never met a foreign head of state.
Hagel told the newspaper that other governors have been elected to serve in the White House without experience in Washington. He said judgment and character were also important for the job.
"But I do think in a world that is so complicated, so interconnected and so combustible, you really got to have some people in charge that have some sense of the bigger scope of the world," Hagel said. "I think that's just a requirement."
And that's a senior member of their own party, folks!
That Senator Hagel even has to remind us of these things just shows the dangerous level to which the entire expensive and interminable campaign process, aided and abetted by disgraceful media coverage has sunk. The scary proximity of Palin to the actual Presidency should induce a general wakefulness. I find McCain, and his newly Frankenstein-esque political persona to be just as scary.
So it seems that the election campaign may finally be getting back on course. As Palin is seen by more people, away from her teleprompted soundbites on the stump, her utter inadequacy (and the cynicism of her party for nominating her in the first place) becomes clearer by the minute. The polls still seem to be close (showing how far we have to go to get the message to sink in). Perhaps Joe Biden got it right this morning when he offered the explanation that, simply, people are always skeptical about major change: real, fundamental change. As was also observed more than once in this morning's press, Obama's strategy remains what it has always been: stay on the issues and don't get down in the mud. Be the authentic voice of change. He's right, of course. The present economic disaster has come along right on cue in order to lend authenticity and gravitas to Obama's obviously correct analysis of what's going on and suggestions on how to fix it. One must have confidence, as Obama seemingly does, that when Americans get a chance to see and hear the voice of reason and truth directly pitted against its opponents the comparison will be sufficiently, devastatingly obvious to make them choose wisely. However, that will still require a far higher degree af wakefulness and sense of real purpose than has been evident for the last eight years. We still have a ways to go.
What is disputed less and less, and what Candidate McCain makes more and more clear with every inept speech he gives on the present dramatic economic meltdown (though it's not really surprising, given the way the Republicans have run the place for eight years), is that the only way his message differs from that of the present beloved Presidential Incumbent is in the delivery, and perhaps the level of his grasp of things, which appears less certain even than Bush's own. One would never have believed that George Bush could appear to be an articulate spokesman for anything, but direct comparison with McCain's confusion on the stump is helping him appear that way. Now there's one way to have your legacy enhanced: odious comparison with your own aspiring successor!
The question is: will the American people finally embrace reality in favour of increasingly dangerous fantasy? Approximately $860 billion-worth of taxpayer-funded bailouts for failed corporations, not to mention a further $10 billion a month paying for a war that no one seems to know the reason for, suggest that taxpayers would do well to get engaged this time around. Perhaps government is largely invisible to people when it runs as it's supposed to. They sure start to notice its absence, however, when it becomes disfunctional on such an awesome scale as we have witnessed in recent years, whether it's during a Hurricane Katrina or in the mishandling of perhaps the major financial crisis of our lifetime. Bush is as invisible as the Wizard of Oz. The disaster now evident in financial markets has its analogies in every other aspect of government that the Bush Bandits have touched, which makes the prospect of getting a handle on the proper role and function of government a daunting prospect indeed for the next President and his team, whoever that might be.
Let's hope that the American people, newly awakened, will at last embrace the change that's really needed.
___
September 15th, 2008:
Here's a brilliant little piece by the great Garrison Keillor received today.
Sept. 10, 2008 | So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, "Throw the bums out!" They've been running Washington like a well-oiled machine to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Mayor Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo.They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend 20 or 50 (or pick a number) billion go floating out the Treasury door. Hello? Do you see us out here? We are not fruit flies, we are voters, we can read and write, we didn't just fall off the coal truck.It is a bold move on the Republicans' part -- forget about the past, it's only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be -- and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to. Paste a new face on my Facebook page, maybe become the Dauphin Louie the Thirty-Second, the rightful heir to the Throne of France, put on silk tights and pantaloons and a plumed hat and go on the sawdust circuit and sell souvenir hankies imprinted with the royal fleur-de-lis. They will cure neuralgia and gout and restore marital vigor.Mr. McCain has decided to run as a former POW and a maverick, a maverick's maverick, rather than Mr. Bush's best friend, and that's understandable, but how can he not address the $3 trillion that got burned up in Iraq so far? It's real money, it could've paid for a lot of windmills, a high-speed rail line in Ohio, some serious R&D. The Chinese, who have avoided foreign wars for 50 years, are taking enormous leaps forward, investing in their economy, and we are falling behind. We're wasting our chances. The Republican culture of corruption in Washington hasn't helped.And a former mayor of a town of 7,000 who hired a lobbyist to get $26 million in federal earmarks is now running against the old-boy network in Washington who gave her that money to build the teen rec center and other good things so she could keep taxes low in Wasilla. Stunning. And if you question her qualifications to be the leader of the free world, you are an elitist. This is a beautiful maneuver. I wish I had thought of it back in school when I was forced to subject myself to a final exam in higher algebra. I could have told Miss Mortenson, "I am a Christian and when you gave me a D, you only showed your contempt for the Lord and for the godly hardworking people from whom I have sprung, you elitist battle ax you."In school, you couldn't get away with that garbage because the taxpayers know that if we don't uphold scholastic standards, we will wind up driving on badly designed bridges and go in for a tonsillectomy and come out missing our left lung, so we flunk the losers lest they gain power and hurt us, but in politics we bring forth phonies and love them to death.I must say, it was fun having the Republicans in St. Paul and to see it all up close and firsthand. Security was, as one might expect, thin-lipped and gimlet-eyed, but once you got through it, you found the folks you went to high school with -- farm kids, jocks, the townies who ran the student council, the cheerleaders, some of the bullies -- and they are as cohesive now as they were back then, dedicated to school spirit, intolerant of outsiders, able to jump up and down and holler for something they don't actually believe. But oh Lord, what they brought forth this year. When you check the actuarial tables on a 72-year-old guy who's had three bouts with cancer, you guess you may be looking at the first woman president, a hustling Evangelical with ethics issues and a chip on her shoulder who, not counting Canada, has set foot outside the country once -- a trip to Germany, Iraq and Kuwait in 2007 to visit Alaskans in the armed service. And who listed a refueling stop in Ireland as a fourth country visited. She's like the Current Occupant but with big hair. If you want inexperience, there were better choices.(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)
The various failures on Wall St. takeovers and bankruptcy filings that are being reported today: Merrill Lynch & Lehman plus the recent government bail-outs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are beginning to expose the iceberg below the visible tip: grave and fundamental weakness throughout the US economy in the wake of the 8 years of accelerated government detachment from (if not active aiding and abetting of) the breathtaking corporate greed and corruption that has brought us all to this precarious position. This is not to mention the overall 28 years of wanton and systematic erosion of public confidence in the power and effectiveness of government through the gutting of Federal regulations put in place during the New Deal and after in order to ensure that a 20s-style depression could never happen again. This situation is the inevitable outcome of the Reagan creed, repeated ad nauseum to a gullible public, that government is always the problem, never the solution. Interesting how quickly the same people who enthusiastically overthrew public confidence in government for years now demand its action to bail things out.
It is not yet clear whether the economy will tank to the extent that it did in the early 30s, although conditions for a free-fall are all in place. What the very real threat of this might do is to finally wake people up and force them to focus attention on the real issues in the November Presidential election. To do this they will need to see through the latest attempts by members of the incumbent governmental party to create a smoke screen and somehow pose as agents of change when, in fact, they are the agents of the present disaster and the unbelievable destruction that is growing by the day. The policies they are proposing would not only lead to more of the same, but ensure a disaster of greater magnitude than the one now threatening to envelop us. The Democrats have a perfect opportunity to expose the McCain/Palin ticket for what it is, backed up by daily and abundant evidence as the economy slides further towards recession, if not worse: a Trojan Horse. A ruse.
Perhaps we may even finally get the public's attention past the unspeakable and dangerous trivialization of our present, deeply serious situation by such sideshows as the appointment by John McCain of the lightweight reactionary, Sarah Palin as his running-mate, surely the most laughable and cynical elevation of a minor public figure since Caligula appointed his horse a pro-consul in order to upset the Roman senate.
Perhaps the American public will finally get the true debate it so desperately needs to have in order to make an informed choice in November. In the 30s there was an FDR waiting in the wings and an electorate smart enough to choose him. In Obama we have, perhaps, our modern equivalent. Will the present day electorate also make the correct choice? Let us hope that the frightening reality now looming will force the electorate to cut through the junk currently being served up for its consideration as politics and select its government wisely.
As I write this it appears that the Obama campaign has sharpened its message and emerged from its period of bewilderment over the sudden artificial celebrity of Governor Palin. There is no need to get in the mud with Karl Rove's successors and their lying diversions to win this election. The simple, repeated and effective placing of credit where credit is due for the current disasters on so many fronts: i.e. to the Republicans, including both McCain and Palin, is all that is needed. It is possible that, if this can be done effectively then the electorate will grab the life vest being offered. Obama needs to fully engage with the waffly, ill-informed McCain, summon all his considerable oratical skills for the upcoming debates, and leave the handling of the less important Palin diversion to others. The gravity of the situation demands it.
