U.S. Politics archives
In 1992, the Republican National Convention opened the "Culture Wars" which would define American politics over the next decade. On the floor of that convention, Pat Buchannan famously declared, "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself."
That war is over but there's a new culture war in America.
With the juxtaposition of this year's Republican and Democratic conventions and the game-changing nomination of Gov. Sarah Palin as the next Vice President of the United States America entered a new Culture War pitting two visions of America - and two parts of America - against one another.
The new Culture War is big city versus small towns.
The new Culture War will be fought between the beer-drinking, jorts-wearing Florida Gator fans and the chardonnay-sipping Trojan nation of the University of Southern California.
The new Culture War will be waged between the bicoastal jet-set and those that they refer to as "flyover people".
The new Culture War is Scranton versus San Francisco.
On one side of the Culture War are two lawyers, Barack Obama and Joe Biden; one a big-city machine politician, and the other who hails a train station along the Boston-Washington corridor, home of the Eastern Establishment.
On the other side is a self-described maverick senator from the wild west, John McCain. Joining him is a small-town mayor who surprised her detractors beating incumbents time and again in a meteoric rise to power.
This is a subtle change, but an important one, and is a distinction that the left-leaning media missed dearly when they derided Palin's years of experience on the city council and as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Why? The fiercest battles between Obama and his former rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton were not fought in the metropolises along the coast. The votes that dragged out the primary were cast in small cities, with small-town mayors and small-town issues.The swing voters in November's general election will also be in these small towns, the communities that dot the landscape you can see from from Row 1, Seat A on the redeye out of San Francisco.
In many ways, Wasilla, Alaska may become a proxy for each and every one of those small towns. These are cities and towns where the politics of Washington are impossible. The divisiveness and partisanship of Washington won't work in Wasilla, or any other small town, because everyone knows each other, everyone's kids know each other, and people know better than to make enemies of their own neighbors.
When people in Latrobe or Scranton (once Biden's hometown but he's long since rinsed the coal dust off his Gucci loafers) hear Palin's story they understand and respect it even if they disagree with her on the issues. They can relate to a working mother who got involved to stop her home town from being a place where going off to war was a more attractive than staying. They can relate to Bristol Palin's out-of-wedlock pregnancy because, well, what else is there to do in Wasilla? And kids, well, they make mistakes. They can also relate to the story of a hometown girl who skyrockets into the spotlight. And they want her to succeed, because her success is theirs.
In the new culture war, Palin the the voice for the residents of small towns across America, the towns where those crucial swing votes will be cast. Deriding Palin and her experience in Wasilla, is deriding not just the Governor of Alaska, but all of Wasilla, and every town like it across America.
Former would-be vice president John Edwards was right to say that there are two Americas. There is Wasilla and there is Washington. There is Newark, Ohio and there is Newark, New Jersey. There is Scranton and there is San Francisco. And the first battle of this new Culture War has been engaged.
When John McCain picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate at the start of the Labor Day weekend, analysts immediately labeled the move as a cynical ploy to woo Hillary Clinton's female voters, who still felt jilted by the Democratic Party's selection of Barack Obama as their nominee.
But only a political insider would see the world so narrowly. It's men, not women, that Obama should be worried about losing.
Like others, I do not see Kim Gandy and the National Organization for Women stumbling over themselves to put a woman in the White House as they did earlier this year. It's the married men, who felt abandoned by the Republican Party on its march towards theocracy whose votes are put back in play with the selection of Sarah Palin.
Within twenty four hours of the Palin pick, one of my best friends declared his excitement for the McCain campaign. He made this announcement as I was driving him home from the airport - he had been in Denver all week at the Democratic National Convention. My father and my brother voted for Obama in the Texas Primary, but on the heels of the Palin nomination, my father wanted to know how he could donate to McCain's campaign and let them know that it was all about her.
So what gives? I've had trouble explaining this transformation to others because most people see politics as linear. Obama, on the far left of American politics, is about as far away from the anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-tax cut Palin as you can get. Even my two-dimensional, circular theory of politics - that Big Government Liberals and Big Government Conservatives aren't so far apart - fails to explain how one woman could cause such a tectonic shift in people's political persuasions.
Sarah Palin's greatest asset is not the fact that she has more executive experience than Barack Obama and Joe Biden - combined. Her track record of fighting corruption and reforming government may not boost her running mate's chances. Nor will, Sarah Palin win over many voters because she lowered property taxes in Wasilla by sixty percent when she was Mayor.
No, Sarah Palin brings a new aesthetic to the once pallid McCain for President Campaign. The effect that Palin, a former Miss Wasilla and runner-up for Miss Alaska 1984, has had on the McCain campaign goes well beyond men's tendency to avoid thinking with their heads. She's making an old man look young.
American voters like to see their leaders as a reflection of themselves. That is why we hold politicians to a higher moral standard than, say, Hollywood actors. To many men across the country, Obama, the fresh-faced candidate of change was young and virile, and offered hope not only for the country, but for themselves. Although the projection of self upon the candidate was imperfect - Obama is indeed young, and with his svelte physique he doesn't look like most Americans - it was the best among many poor choices.
But the addition Sarah Palin to the GOP ticket changes the equation. As Rush Limbaugh put it, she's a babe.
You've, of course, heard the expression that we are the company we keep. I am well aware that people perceive me differently whether I am hanging out with my twenty year-old buddies than when I am with my friends in their thirties. I don't even want to think about how the look at me when I am enjoying happy hour with my sixty year old associates!
Likewise, perceptions of John McCain and Barack Obama have shifted because of their selection of a running mates. Throughout the next few months, Sarah Palin, an intelligent, charming, attractive woman half his age, will be by John McCain's side as he makes his case to become president. To many men, that's got to be the American Dream. John McCain, overnight, went from an American Methuselah, to a political version of Hugh Hefner.
So I have to ask: who wins the virility wars now, Barack?
After a brief midsummer bump, consumer spending is on the decline, always a signal of a drop in economic confidence by your average American. The economic stimulus checks of 2008 apparently did not provide the same benefits of the 2001 payments which, until the World Trade Center attack, pulled the country out of the Post-Tech Bubble Recession.
Of course, the U.S is still not in a recession. American exports are surging and the dollar is strong. The price of oil is falling, so inflation should be less of a worry. So what gives? Why are consumers not buying in to the economic rebound?
The American consumer is under a lot of stress. Wage inflation is not keeping up with actual inflation, so as people's paychecks remain constant, their cost-of-living continues to rise. And the amount of pressure they're under - when it comes to paying taxes to Uncle Sam - remains constant.
Although some may argue about the efficacy of the 2001 Economic Stimulus Package - labeling that year's payments "Bush Tax Cuts," as if the president's name were a four-letter word - the fact remains that when it was time for Congress to try to salvage the economy this year they took a page from the Karl Rove's 2001 playbook and wrote a check to every American taxpayer.
In fact, Congress doubled the amount of the checks! But somehow, they did not have the same effect.
Why not? Well, there were three main differences between the 2001 Stimulus Package and the 2008 version.
For starters, in 2001, we all received our tax rebate checks in the mail. That $300 may not have been much, but it was something tangible. It felt like relief.
In 2008, in order to speed up the effects of the stimulus package, Congress and the White House decided to send money to taxpayers via direct bank deposit, so it would hit their bank accounts immediately.
That's kind of like the difference between reading an actual newspaper and reading on-line. If I have the calendar, datebook or whatever section sitting in front of me, I will at least see if anything is interesting. On-line, I seldom venture into that section of the newspaper website. With the decision made for me, I get what I want how I want it and move on.
Taxpayers didn't see an actual check so they were less likely to go out and spend the money. They used the "surprise" cash - oh, look, we've not overdrawn! - to pay down debt or skip a savings payment.
The 2001 Stimulus Package was more than just a bunch of checks going out to everyman. In addition to the $300 checks in the mail, marginal tax rates were reduced across the board. The rich and ultra rich were paying less taxes on every dollar, but because they reinvested their proceeds from the stimulus, the rich and very rich ended up paying a greater share of taxes after their tax cut than before.
Now that's stimulating the economy!
This ties into perhaps the greatest difference between the 2001 and 2008 stimulus packages, when it comes to boosting consumer confidence. In 2001, the rebate checks accompanied a marginal tax rate reduction from 15% to 10% on the first $6,000 of taxable income with even more reductions as paychecks went higher. This meant that, after the stimulus checks were spent, people continued to see paycheck inflation without the negative effects of wage inflation. Every two weeks, they had more money than they had before. And that's what kept the economy running.
So if Congress looks to pass yet another economic stimulus package before the election - hey, they're Democrats, anything can happen - they might consider taking a pass on the politically expedient tricks of sending people checks right before the election. Instead, they should look at what worked the last time around and stop teasing taxpayers.
There's nothing better to grab a nation's attention than a good old-fashioned sex story. It seems every few months, politician we've never heard of - and some we have - has his personal indiscretions exposed across the national media.
When it comes to covering sex scandals, the press is so consumed about coming to the party too soon - under the guise of concerns about privacy or propriety - that they never time a story's release appropriately. And it's a tortured path that leads - regardless of the political orientation of protagonist - to criticism of political bias.
Since 2007, readers of the National Enquirer, Slate's Kausfiles and, well, the Internet, have been familiar with the name Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer for former Senator John Edwards. Only this last week, however, did I realize that her name was not pronounced "Riley," because there was nary a peep about her - and the suspicions surrounding her involvement with the Edwards campaign - in the national press.
When Edwards was caught hiding from photographers in a Beverly Hills hotel restroom at 2:40 in the morning, did we hear about it? Did we see the pictures of Edwards coddling Hunter's child in a room of that very hotel? Not until John Edwards admitted to having an affair with Hunter did the story of Edwards' extramarital affair break into the mainstream media consciousness.
It is more curious when the story broke rather then how. That Edwards was cheating on his cancer-stricken wife had been known throughout the Democratic primaries. To ignore that, as the press did, only served to benefit their story line of a competitive primary season and, as some of her supporters allege, to hurt Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the Democratic nomination early.
While the effects on the Democratic Primary are debatable, the timing of the Edwards story raises an important question about political coverage: what does the media know about the two presumptive nominees, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, and when will they tell us what they know?
Sex scandals involving Republicans always seem to get exposed right around election season. The media sat on the Mark Foley Instant Messaging scandal from May until after Labor Day in the 2006 election cycle. In the 2003 recall election, the Los Angeles Times dropped a stink-bomb of a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger's grabbiness the Thursday before voters went to the polls. And only after Senator John McCain secured enough delegates to become the presumptive Republican nominee that the New York Times ran its poorly-sourced sex scandal story on the Senator.
Meanwhile, the media sat on the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal until the story was forced into the open by the Drudge Report and we all learned of the infamously stained blue dress. The media apparently knew nothing about New York Governor Elliot Spitzer until the FBI went after him. In all fairness, they pounced on the David Vitter story when the Republican Senator admitted he had hired a call girl. And Sen. Larry Craig's frequenting mens' restrooms for sex was widely known across Internet chat rooms and political sites for two years before a courtroom confession broke his story. Had his Minneapolis encounter not occurred, questions about his tap-dancing skills surely would have arisen in his next re-election campaign. In these cases the press only reported the stories when their hands were forced.
Will Republicans only learn the truth about their nominee after the Minneapolis convention, when it is too late to change horses? And, pray tell, what does the media has on Obama, the media's own personal love child? If there were something scandalous, would American know about it before it is too late? Somehow, I have to wonder.
With only 13 weeks to the Presidential election, I have basically tuned out. I have a hard time placing all my chips on Barack Obama's judgement, which lacking experience, is all he has to offer. And since John McCain gleefully bucks the bedrock beliefs of the Republican Party, I am turned off by his candidacy.
I like to think of myself as a moderate Republican, one who believes that the government should stay out of our pocketbooks and out of our personal lives. The values that attract me to the Republican Party are simple. I believe in limited government, personal responsibility and individual liberty. There is a role for government in providing things like infrastructure and a common military defense which would not otherwise be provided by the collective actions as individuals. But as far as the government's job, that's it.
Unfortunately, the Republican nominee for president has made his reputation as a maverick by violating those very principles. When you look at the volumes of experience John McCain has had in the United States Senate, his "moderation" from Republican values, always seems to involve extending the long arm of big government.
John McCain's signature legislation, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, flies in the face of the Republican principles I hold dear. It says who may speak, and how much, and it assumes that no one can be trusted to be free from corruption. So much for personal responsibility!
As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee in the late Clinton Administration years, McCain battled the tobacco industry, pushing for higher taxes to pay for anti-smoking programs and to pay states' healthcare costs, once again, expanding the role of government because people cannot be trusted to make their own decisions.
McCain became a media darling partly by challenging George Bush for the presidency eight years ago, working the press on a personal level as a way to combat the the president's winning strategy. And in the early days of the administration, the Arizona Senator embraced his "maverick" label to contrast himself with the new Republican President.
He took on climate change, the losing Democratic nominee's issue, and HMO reform, an issue embraced by then-new Sen. Clinton when she was First Lady and then cast one of two decisive votes to keep George Bush's 2001 tax cuts from being permanent. So much for individual liberty when it comes to the pocketbook!
After September 11th, it was John McCain who pushed legislation to federalize airport security.That fact that should be written on the bottom of the trays at airport security stations where you take off your shoes, and unload you hair gel and MacBook from your carry-ons.
When justifying his votes for Democrat-backed Supreme Court nominees Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Steven Bryer, McCain claimed that, "under our Constitution, it is the president's call to make." But when President Bush made his choices for the courts, McCain stepped in with the "Gang of Fourteen" preserving the right for Senators to filibuster the his party leader's nominees.
Most of McCain's fourth term in office has been spent negotiating immigration reform legislation which would extend the hand of government deep into the hiring practices of businesses around the country. "Enforcement first," if it means a crackdown on employers, is a big government, not a small government, approach to fixing immigration problems in America.
At the Republican Convention, McCain will try to cast himself as a conservative since he has already lost the media love affair to his opponent, Barack Obama. But McCain's record - and, unlike Obama he has a long one - shows where and how he breaks from Republican values, expanding government and taking away personal liberty based on the assumption that people cannot be trusted to take responsibility for their own actions. That's a maverick trend I'd like to buck!
With one hundred days before the election, New York Times Columnist Frank Rich has declared Democratic nominee Barack Obama the "Acting President" of the United States, based, apparently on the candidate's ability to assemble large crowd and amass television ratings. But as he basks in the glory of his European adventure, is it possible that Barack Obama has peaked too soon?
In the world of college football, coaches have to remind their players and alumni boosters that championships aren't won in September, they're won in January. The same is true of electoral politics. An "acting president" in July must still win in November.
Unfortunately for Obama, the headiness of his European coronation may turn against him in the next fourteen weeks.
The greatest risk for any public figure is to offend the media, it's main pipeline - yes, even in these days for Facebook, IM and blogs - to voters. When Bill Clinton wagged his finger to the press corps in 1998, and was later proven to be a liar, the press turned - really turned - against him for the first time in his administration.
Heretofore, Barack Obama has enjoyed an amiable relationship with the media, and in some cases, journalists' conduct could be considered lewd, which has led both of his rivals, Clinton and McCain, to cry foul. But the campaign's treatment of the press during Obama's whirlwind tour of the middle East and Europe seems to have soured them on the candidate.
Even before his feet hit the ground in the Middle East, Barack Obama's relationship with his press entourage when Der Spiegel took a quote from the Iraqi president out of context and interpreted it as an endorsement of Obama and his policies. Having the American press root for you is one thing - that's just us, kids - but having the foreign press manipulate world leaders on your behalf is not likely to win many votes on this side of the Atlantic.
This unique turn of events continued. On the first stop of Obama's whirlwind tour, when in Afghanistan, he had no official press pool, no reporters and no press conference on the ground. NBC's Andrea Mitchell broke ranks with her network colleagues and actually criticized the candidate for conducting what she called, "fake interviews."
Later on the trip, reporters complained that at Obama press conferences, only the candidate was given a microphone, so only the candidate could be heard but not the reporters' potentially hostile questioning.
By the time Obama arrived in Berlin to give his Victory Column speech, the mood of the press had turned on the candidate. In the coverage I saw his remarks played second fiddle to the setting and its place in history which were steadily compared to Berlin speeches by presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Substantively, Obama's speech did not measure up.
I must admit that I was busy celebrating my birthday, in grand style, over the weeklong Obama trip, but I do not once recall hearing Barack Obama's voice until his appearance on Meet the Press Sunday morning. His arrogance in not responding to legitimate questions from Tom Brokaw was off-putting, not only to me, but, I suspect, also to the media.
The press has gotten a taste of the "Acting President" Barack Obama administration, and I don't think they like it. With fourteen weeks to go, Obama's greatest risk is told in the Greek tragedy of Icarus, who soared on wings made of wax, and ignored the warnings not to fly to high. Drunk with the power of flight, he flew too close to the sun and the wings melted, there was no one there to catch him. If Obama continues to run his campaign like a presidential administration - with tightly-choreographed events and restricted access to the candidate - his alleged allies in the media may no longer be there should he start to fall.
For more than a decade, with the exception of the first 100 days following Newt Gingrich taking the House Speakership and the three months immediately after George Bush's election, America has basically had a do-nothing Congress. It takes a crisis to get anything done.
And with the solvency of America's housing financing system on the brink of failure, Democrats in Congress are playing a deadly game of chicken as they stare down the White House.
Any small crisis - "Social Security is going bankrupt in twenty years" or a "we're welcoming out ten millionth illegal immigrant" doesn't prompt Congress into action. It takes a serious crisis like "some lady in Florida is about to be euthanized" before Congress acts.
For more than a year now, Congress has known that the nation's housing markets were in trouble. Credit was flowing too freely, people were acting irresponsibly, and our banks were losing money. Last fall, the issue took center stage as Congress and the President put up proposal and counter-proposal to stabilize the housing markets.
When instability in housing credit markets spilled over to Wall Street, prompting the collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns, the issue took center-stage in the Presidential election. In return there was plenty of finger pointing and little action.
In keeping with that tone - blame the other guy, a key element in any crisis - all Congress had done until last week was advance a housing bill which the President had already threatened to veto.
Late last Friday, however, the game changed, when a Reuters report suggesting that the Federal Reserve might open the discount window to mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Fed's action implied that these two institutions may be facing a liquidity crisis similar to that which send Wall Street into a panic just four months before.
The Treasury Department and Federal Reserve worked furiously over the weekend to come up with a plan to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac afloat, thereby protecting the mortgages of millions of Americans. On Sunday, they unveiled a plan, but it's a plan that would require action by Congress.
Uh oh. People like myself - no fans of government intervention - would prefer to leave well enough alone. If Congress is doing nothing, then they can't do nothing to screw up my life. I can do that well enough on my own, thank you very much. With Congress' approval ratings but a fraction of President Bush's - who's at historic lows - I would imagine most Americans would prefer that this Congress do nothing. Whatsoever.
So I got a sinking feeling in my stomach Monday morning when CNBC reported that Congress would consider amending its Housing Bill to include the proposals developed by the Fed and Treasury. The showdown over one piece of legislation had taken on a new intensity. In exchange for the solvency of the nation's housing markets, President Bush would have to give in to Congress and sign legislation he would have otherwise vetoed. That's what I - and pretty much anyone looking at this situation - might describe as a blatant effort to hold the nation hostage to one's own partisan demands.
Luckily some folks in Congress are getting the point that now is not the time to play political hardball with the nation's financial markets. Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd has signaled his willingness to take out the provisions of the housing bill that President Bush finds most objectionable.
I have no specific objection to what Congress is considering to address the housing crisis in part because I, like most Americans, have no ides of what exactly is in the bill. But if this action is worth taking now - if it would help the nation's housing markets - then shouldn't they have acted sooner?
If Congress believes that their housing bill might have helped avert the current liquidity crisis in the housing markets, then they shouldn't have been dragging their feet to score political points. The message is pretty clear: If Congress isn't willing to step up and admit some culpability, then they're tacitly saying that the legislation that they had done nothing on for months, would in fact do nothing to help the housing markets.
Over the last week, Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have engaged in a serious policy debate over energy policy. With oil pushing $140 a barrel, and gasoline breaking $5 a gallon in some parts of California, the debate shows the contrasts between the two candidates and, unfortunately, the shortsightedness of American politics in general.
John McCain's proposals to bring down energy costs are based primarily on the economic theories of supply and demand. McCain wants to increase supplies by allowing offshore drilling and domestic exploration, and constrain demand by challenging the private sector to develop new, gas-sipping technologies. What else would you expect from a Republican?
Barack Obama's idea for bringing down oil and gas prices, however, should offend anyone who got a passing grade in their freshman economics class in college. Obama's plan to bring down gas prices would be to tax oil companies' profits. Of course, after those profits are taxed the cost of the tax would have to be passed on to the revenue-generating side of the equation, to the consumer. Obama would then redistribute these taxes to help poorer Americans pay at the pump. What else would you expect from a Democrat?
But what we need in America are not partisan "solutions" like those but real alternatives for Americans to stop using gasoline altogether. The best way to end America's dependence on foreign oil is to get Americans to stop using oil. And the fastest way to accomplish this in a long-term way is to adopt new transportation and planning policies which allow Americans to abandon their automobiles altogether.
Out of the blue this weekend, my parents commented that they really liked my story about the cobwebs growing on my car eight weeks ago then struck the fear of God asking me if I thought they could live in my neighborhood without a car. After catching my breath, I found the polite response: "I am sure you could live without a car in Texas, too."
But, really, such a lifestyle is impossible in a subdivision outside San Antonio's Loop 1604, but there are plenty of parts of the city where such a lifestyle would be possible as long as two elements are present: density and mass transit.
Detroit won't like it and neither will our "friends" the Saudis, but if enough Americans abandon the idea that they must have a half-acre estate with the white picket fence, a haven best accessed by car, not subway, bus or train, we really could use less oil. Instead of suburban sprawl, we should pursue a model of Jeffersonian Urbanism, where we live in dense, but walkable and livable, neighborhoods. Only when we can get out of our cars will we forget about the price of gas.
With transportation infrastructure - highways and subways - the axiom is and has always been, "build it and they will come." Expand the freeway and, over time, people will just move further away from their jobs and the freeway will be congested. Build a subway and jobs and housing density will increase near the subway stops until a natural built-in ridership exists. One clearly reduces car and oil dependency, the other doesn't.
So let's take those royalties from John McCain's offshore drilling, or the receipts from Barack Obama's windfall profits tax, and invest them in mass transit. Let's also ease environmental rules not on oil companies, but on towns and cities, so that they can use their planning process to create livable, dense, walkable, urban neighborhoods. Do that, and only those who choose to live a car-oriented lifestyle would complain about gas prices. But it would be their choice, and American's don't look kindly on poor lifestyle choices.
The motto of the United States Marine Corps is simple and profound: "Semper Fidelis", Latin for "always faithful." And, as any Marine can tell you, there is no such thing as being a "former" member of the corp. "Once a Marine," goes the saying, "always a Marine."
But the government these men and women serve does not always live up to the promise of loyalty it asks its members to make. That's a sleeping problem for the thousands of gay and lesbians who have served our nation honorably in the Marines, or any branch of the Armed Services. At any time, a recent veteran could risk losing his or her health, education or other benefits, even after years of service and their spouses will never be treated equally under the law.
Even after the California Supreme Court's historic decision granting marriage equality, not all Californians have the right to marry - and those who don't are the ones who deserve the right most. With a nervy nonchalance, in it's Q&A on Gay Marriage, the Los Angeles Times states that, "Marrying or attempting to marry a person of the same sex is grounds for dismissal from the service."
That just seems just plain wrong particularly since the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policies let many gays in the military serve with honor and distinction. But the awkward compromise of the Clinton era doesn't just apply to those on active duty. According to the Service Members Legal Defense Network, an organization that fights for equal rights for gays in the military, the injustice of Don't Ask, Don't Tell extends far beyond one's enlistment. It covers veterans of all wars and of all ages.
Regardless of when they served, gay and lesbian veterans and their spouses are denied equal treatment in life and death. Although my grandfather violated military laws by joining the Army before he was eighteen, the enthusiastic soldier lays buried in the cemetery at Fort Sam Houston. Next to him lay my grandmother, who never served a day in her life but was entitled to be buried next to her husband as a dutiful - and legally recognized - spouse. Such a privilege would not be afforded to a gay draftee from World War II or Vietnam.
It is even worse for the men and women who are just now returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. While nearly three thousand service members have been dismissed under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" since the beginning of the Global War on Terror, tens of thousands more have left the service after their first enlistment. Although they survived in the closet for years and finished their active duty honorably, as they return to civilian life, they must still keep the closet door shut, or risk being discharged and imperiling their veterans' benefits. Soldiers, sailors or marines who are no longer on active duty are subject to the provisions of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". So are veteran members of the National Guard, Reserves or Individual Ready Reserves even after they have left active duty and are allegedly living civilian lifestyles. For all these men and women, that means no statements regarding their sexual orientation, nor sodomy, nor hugging, nor hand-holding...and most certainly no marriage!
The burden on these veteran reservists is already great enough. After putting their lives on the line to defend our freedom in combat, they are returned to civilian life with a years-long noose around their neck: the threat that, one day, they may very likely get called back to duty.
For some, this burden can result in a near paralysis, where the uncertainty of their future keeps them from making any commitments beyond the time that they know they have for certain in civilian life. And for our gay and lesbian veterans, the military is telling them that they must go it alone. Anyone who says they support the troops should find this contradiction morally repugnant.
According to SLDN, not only is gay marriage out of the question, but so are accepting domestic partnership health care benefits, joining a group like the Log Cabin Republicans, or being added to a partner's USAA policy (or vice versa), if the law is strictly followed. And these are rules governing civilians in strictly civilian settings.
For gay and lesbian veterans, the unfortunate reality is that, until "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is repealed, they must hope that the ones they love, and those that love them, are more abiding by the spirit of Semper Fi than the government they've so loyally served.
If you think gas prices approaching five dollars a gallon are putting a pinch on your lifestyle, well, be glad you are not trying to run an airline. Only a couple years ago, did America's air carriers return to profitability after the double-sucker-punches of 9/11 and the fear of jet-fuel - literally - SARS pandemic. Today businesses that were profitable when oil cost $60 or $70 a barrel are facing fuel costs nearly double.
The average American can respond to the rising cost of gasoline in four ways: Cut our gas consumption, cut other costs, find new revenue sources or go further into debt and hope that someday something will happen to sort everything out. That seems to be the approach being taken by America's air carriers as well.
To conserve fuel, the airlines are flying at slower speeds and grounding inefficient planes. To cut costs, the airlines continue to reduce meals served on board and using fewer flight attendants.
In order to pick up a few extra bucks, the airlines are raising the costs of some on-board food options, and charging customers to check a bag - following a model of European low-cost carriers like EasyJet and Ryanair.
But none of these measures will save the industry if crude hits $200 a barrel, as some predict. At that point, the only option will be for the American air carriers to whip out the credit card of corporate debt until they are saved by bankruptcy or a bail out.
When Wall Street faced a credit meltdown earlire this year, a weak dollar meant that foreign cash was able to stabilize the markets. Money from sovereign wealth funds kept the financial services sector afloat amid the violent credit contraction called by the nation's housing meltdown. For the airlines, however, such a bailout is not an option; foreign investment in American air carriers is limited to a 25 percent.
Unfortunately, it is the foreign air carriers who seem to know how to run an airline these days. Outside the United States, it feels like the golden age of flying as Singapore breaks in the new Airbus A380, Emirates introduces a new level of luxury to premium cabins and Lufthansa controls an network of national air carriers that rivals many empires.
So rather than having to bail out the airlines with taxpayer dollars - yet again - why not let foreign investors bail out our air carriers? Let's see if the golden age of flying we see abroad can be extended to our shores!
There are a number of myths behind the limits on foreign investment: We need American carriers for national defense to transport our troops in times of war, foreign carriers do not have the same safety or security standards, American workers will lose jobs, only the most profitable routes would be flown, and so on.
Most of these arguments can be addressed either by simply looking at the realities of today's airline industry. Safety and maintenance are already being outsourced to foreign countries. American workers already are losing their jobs and unprofitable routes are being cut. Minor adjustments to existing regulations would also address concerns.
So why not rid the airline industry of the ban on foreign investment and see what happens? Would Lufthansa add United to Swiss, Austrian and its other affiliated carriers? Would an EmirContinentalates Airline, based in Houston and Dubai become the global superpower linking the USA and the Middle East? What innovations could these successful foreign carriers bring to our failing airline industry?
Until Congress allows foreign investment in American airlines, they can pass all the passenger bills of rights they want, but it won't improve the bottom line of American air carriers to the point that they can invest in more fuel-efficient, environmentally-friendly airplanes.
And your rights as a passenger won't matter if your carrier one day says, "Aloha!"
As Hillary Clinton prepares to bow out of the Democratic race, I cannot help but feel that she is doing the nation, and her party a disservice by leaving the campaign.
She's clearly got support. And not just from folks like me who began this political year vowing to "vote for a New Yorker."
Since the media all but declared Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee in February, the voters have tried sending a message: he is not their man. Since March 1st, Obama suffered major losses in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and was trounced at the polls in Rhode Island, Kentucky, West Virginia and Puerto Rico. Since Obama became the party's front-runner the actual Democrats going to the polls have rejected his campaign of ideological extremism.
Somehow that message hasn't made it past the media hype supporting Obama. And given the Democratic National Committee's resistance to count every vote, maybe it is time for Hillary Clinton to concede the nomination. But she shouldn't give up on getting to the White House.
Independent campaigns that work apart from established parties often have more impact on day-to-day politics than we - or party historians - like to acknowledge. Lincoln's support came from abolitionists working outside mainstream politics. Teddy Roosevelt's ideas about 20th Century governing - encapsulated in his run for the White House as the "Bull Moose" candidate - led to substantive changes in the Republican Party politics. The Clintons themselves benefitted from independent Ross Perot's messages on fiscal policy - and heeded them once they gained th White House. If Clinton truly believes that the Democratic Party is disenfranchising voters in key swing states, then she should denounce its efforts, just as Obama, eventually, denounced his former pastor and church and launch her own run for the White House.
In doing so, Hillary Clinton can remind Democrats what the party used to stand for, and return to her husband's roots as a populist centrist. Hillary has an opportunity to wake up the echoes, cheering the names of Hiram Johnson and Susan B. Anthony, to lead a post-partisan, Post-Progressive coalition to victory, whether the odds be great or small.
A post-partisan, Post-Progressive Clinton would have a chance to win because - unlike other years - the two main parties choices are so stark. And I think many Americans like me are a little turned off by the choice between Republican John McCain and Democrat Obama. With McCain we have a Washington veteran, who claims to be conservative, but is best known for bucking the party of small government to advocate big government programs and regulating our freedoms. The alternative - a partisan ideologue whose oratory is easy on the ears but has shown no ability to accomplish anything other than win the affections of young voters and the popular press - is no more attractive.
Making things worse: At this juncture in the campaign, Obama and McCain have spent so much political capital speaking to their base that they have forgotten to speak for Americans. So who knows what they'll do once they're elected? A third-party Hillary Clinton, freed of the shackles of Democratic ideology, could talk to real Americans and address the issues straightforwardly.
On Iraq, she could say that, based on the intelligence given, her vote to authorize the war was the right one, and anyone who voted against the president - given what we thought we knew - would be dangerous to have in the White House. Now that we know that we had faulty intelligence, she can say she regrets the vote, but the U.S. must now focus on how we can keep winning the peace and bring our troops home victorious. That's straight talk you won't hear from Obama or McCain.
Clinton could focus on balancing the budget, just as her husband did, by growing the economy and controlling spending. While McCain's fighting pork-barrel spending sounds nice, it produces but a drop in the bucket when it comes to balancing the budget. Meanwhile Obama's plans would vastly expand government spending, while his tax hikes would send the economy back into recession.
A third-party Clinton could talk honestly about healthcare, free of the shackles of the nurses unions and other special interests which get in the way of true reform, and could offer a safety-net of care for Americans supplemented by insurance for those who need private healthcare.
And a Post-Progressive Movement for the 21st Century could tackle the 800-pound gorilla in Washington: entitlement reform. Ross Perot scared the bejesus out of voters with charts talking about how Social Security and Medicare would eat up the Federal Budget, helping Bill Clinton gain the White House. The problems Perot outlined in 1992, are about to come to roost and the Clintons owe it to America to be talking about them, now. Understanding that we have no option but to fix these systems, the American people will rally behind a candidate who talks solutions that are not seen as partisan.
By returning to her Democratic Leadership Council roots - the path of moderation that served the Democratic Party well - Hillary Clinton today has the ability to transcend politics and be the post-partisan leader Americans have been seeking. She can choose to fall in line and put party ahead of principle, give in to the will of the media ahead of the will of the voters, and prove correct those who selected a candidate other than the inevitable Clinton. This is an important choice for one other reason: If she cannot stand up for the voters who supported her, then we should not trust her to stand up for America when it counts.
Last September 26, I broke with conventional wisdom and predicted that the economy, not the war in Iraq, would be the deciding issue in the 2008 election. I was wrong. Ironically, the issue that President Bush heralded as the most important challenge facing America before 9/11 will be the issue that determines his successor: China.
Regardless of what happens with the economy - whether we slip into a recession or narrowly avoid one - the issue will be an afterthought by August 2008. Either things will be getting better - as recent activity on Wall Street seems to indicate - or the issue will have lost its political currency as the drumbeat of recession fade to provide little more than the background rhythm to the campaign march.
Much to this political junkie's regret, it looks more and more like the two parties' conventions will provide no more drama than usual. Instead, the conventions and the campaign will be framed by what happens in the two weeks prior: the Beijing Olympics.
How we relate to China is perhaps the critical question facing America today. When he came to office, President Bush made it his top priority, engaging China in a dialectical competition of superpowers old and new. But then 9/11 happened and the world's most populous country fell our of America's consciousness, as the U.S. slowly developed a relationship with China that was more codependent than competitive.
The China Question is about much more than foreign policy and the basic question of whether we should have a competitive or a cooperative relationship with the country. Each approach is a dual-edged sword.
The chief argument for why we need a cooperative approach with China is economic. China is beginning to rival oil in its importance to America's well-being. America's ability to have growth without inflation depends on our ability to outsource manufacturing to China, while growing our science and service sectors here at home.
This trade benefits everyday Americans by keeping the products we buy affordable, and it benefits China by giving working-class jobs to millions of its inhabitants. Ours is a symbiotic relationship that, if broken, could have disastrous geopolitical consequences.
At the same time, China's economic growth comes at a cost to the environment that can be seen on our shores. As much as a quarter of the air pollution in Los Angeles comes from China, and with its smoke-belching ships coming in to port in San Pedro and Long Beach, the Chinese can probably be considered the single-largest source of pollution in California.
China can no longer get a pass on the environment like it got in the Kyoto Treaty. Unless China joins in the fight against climate change, no regulation or cap-and-trade system here at home will make a dent. If we restrict our economic activity with environmental regulation while allowing China to pollute at will, the sun will set on the American empire faster than the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Morally, pursuing a cooperative relationship with China is dubious as well. Beijing's human rights record is notorious and while its subjects are beginning to enjoy economic liberties, the concept of universal human rights is foreign to them. How can we claim to be defenders of freedom, whilst turning a blind eye on the world's great oppressors?
Pulling out of China, economically, would be exponentially worse than pulling out of Iraq militarily, but maintaining the relationship without action on the environmental and human rights front will also place us in peril.
The China Question has everything: the economy, the environment, human rights and geopolitics. But it does not have partisanship, yet. Neither ideology espoused by John McCain, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton provides a logically consistent answer to the many issues it raises.
This voter wants to know how our would-be Presidents would approach this tangled web with China, and after the world focuses on Beijing this summer, many others will be asking the same question: Is China friend or foe, or is our relationship status summed up with, "It's Complicated"?
Although I am a registered Republican, I am first and foremost a capitalist. So much of the last ten weeks of my life has been developing and managing an online outreach campaign on behalf of one of the Democratic presidential candidates.
While I have learned a lot about the internal divides within the Democratic Party - and at times wondered how we Republicans ever lose elections to these people - I have also gotten an insight into the American voter on a state-by-state basis. I've come to one conclusion: a good number of Americans still don't know who Hillary Clinton is.
In purchasing Google Adwords, I have gotten a behind-the-scenes look at what people are searching for, and the numbers are staggering. In Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, more than two-thousand people per day misspelled Hillary Clinton's name; In Indiana and North Carolina, one out of six searches for Hillary Clinton have just one "L" in her first name. Another five percent are looking for Hillary Rodman Clinton, who apparently served eight years First Lady of the NBA Bad Boys Club.
It's not as if Hillary Rodham Clinton weren't First Lady of the United States for eight years, or that her first name were not printed on her campaign materials - the signs and placards at all her events let you know which Clinton is running: Hillary! Yet people who own computers and are researching the candidates still don't seem to know her yet.
Unfortunately for those people who do not yet know who Hillary Clinton is, Googling her isn't going to tell you much. The first page of results yields her official campaign website, her Senate website, the White House website and her MySpace profile, all of which will tell you what she wants you to hear. The rest of the links - CNN, Washington Post and the New York Times, for example - only give information on the candidate from a media-filtered perspective. The only "independent" source is Wikipedia, and I imagine the Kossacks will get to that page at some point.
Perhaps more interesting from my perspective is who advertises to the Googling masses for each candidate. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have made a point of "owning" their search pages. Search for either candidate and their own website is the sponsored link that returns - at a cost of somewhere near $3 each time someone clicks on the link, a fortune in click-through ad rates. Go try it and come back, while the folks in Mountain View ring the cash register. Somewhere there is GOP experiment that might be called "Spend Obama's Money Experiment" waiting to happen.
When I Google Clinton, an ad for Time Magazine shows up, and when I Google Obama, I get the Chicago Tribune, along with an ad saying Obama gets an "A+" on Middle Class Issues, but when I click on it, he really has an 80% rating, with 50% absences. That website must be grading on a curve!
The role of the Internet in politics continues to evolve. While the blogs were all the rage back in the 2004 campaign, segmentation and specialization in readership and editorial has made them little more than an echo-chamber for preaching to the choir.
With contextual advertising - buying ad depending on what the reader has called up on the page - it is possible to do some very elegant micro-targeting. Look up the MySpace profile of a veteran of the Marine Corps, as I did a few weeks back, and see an ad from John McCain, targeted directly towards service members and vets. But this is also a risky strategy because such ads could also end up on less-than desirable websites using similar keywords - "service" and "men" in their contexts. For my editor's sake I won't link to them here, you will have to use your imagination.
With search marketing, there is the prospect of reaching persuadable voters, who for whatever reasons are going online to look for information about the candidates. And right now, a well placed search-marketing ad campaign can be done efficiently if targeted to the right search terms and geography.
But as more political consultants and interest groups realize that they, too, can end up on Hillary Clinton's search results - and get a decent click-through rate - it may be that the real winner in this primary and future elections is neither Clinton nor Obama. It's Google.
Friday morning, short on time, I decided to take my car down to the post office to check the company's mailbox. As I turned on to Santa Monica Boulevard and looked in the mirror, I got something of a surprise. On my car, between the drivers'-side mirror and the door there were cobwebs!
Since returning from Washington, D.C., more than a week before, I had not touched my automobile. I either walked wherever I needed to go, took a taxi, or relied on the good graces of good friends to get me home for bedtime.
So when I hear President Bush say there is no magic want to control fuel costs, or Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the mainstream media moaning over the cost of gasoline, I find it difficult to have sympathy. If I can reduce my need for buying gasoline to practically zero - living in Los Angeles - so can most Americans. And, I've found, you don't need to buy a Prius or Smart Car!
In 2000, when gas was less than $2 a gallon, I drove more than 24,000 miles a year. Commuting across the San Fernando Valley to work, going to the gym in Santa Monica and visiting my brother in the Fairfax district added miles quickly.
Today, with gas prices well above $4 a gallon in my neighborhood, I fill up my tank less than once a month. Here's how I did it.
The first thing I did to reduce my commute. I moved closer to work, then got a job closer to home. Eventually, I worked it out so I could have a home office. That has the best commute of all: the walk home from Starbucks at which point the "home" becomes the "office". The hill is pretty steep, but I can make it.
Step two for me, was to learn to love walking. Sure it doesn't burn as many calories as running, and it is not as fast as taking the car, but most of the places I need or want to go can be found within walking distance. Gym, dry cleaners, grocery stores, pharmacies, and countless forms of evening entertainment, are within a mile radius of my house, which are but a leisurely twenty-minute walk.
My biggest challenge was to learn that the bus doesn't bite. Sure a subway would be nice, but this is L.A., so subways really aren't an option, yet. There should no longer be a social stigma to taking the bus for trips of a mile or more, and at a buck-twenty-five, it is cheaper than the gas and parking fees it would require to take a car for a similar trip. I just wish Los Angeles' bus system were more reliable. Some days I can wait for a half hour only to see three busses stacked up one behind the other!
The final thing I have learned from this eight year journey is the value of friendships! Yes, sometimes that mile-long walk be fine on the outbound, but getting home, it can seem daunting. My liberal friends, supportive of my car-free lifestyle, have no qualms giving me a ride when I want one, and the conservative ones who offer, well they're just heaven-sent.
So my challenge to America is to stop complaining about the cost of gasoline and start making better personal decisions. At some point you will no longer care if gas cost $4 or $14 a gallon!
In the meantime, anybody interested in a low-mileage 2006 BMW 325i? I'll brush off the cobwebs.
Although Pennsylvania's "decisive" primary decided absolutely nothing, Democratic Party leaders should learn a few things from the past seven weeks. Senator Hillary Clinton is not backing down and is finally willing to fight for the nomination. Barack Obama can outspend his opponents 3-to-1 and still not shift enough voters to win an election. And, most importantly, if Clinton can win in Indiana and Puerto Rico, the party's leaders will face a tough decision in August not between two candidates but about the future direction of the Democratic Party.
Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton can win their party's nomination on pledged delegates alone. The decision will come down to two groups of party leaders - the infamous super-delegates and the much-less scrutinized Democratic Party Credentials Committee, which will decide whether to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan.
Led by Alexis Herman, James Roosevelt, Jr. and Eliseo Roques-Arroyo, the Committee is made up of three representatives from each state's slate of delegates, and they will end up deciding whether Florida and Michigan's delegates and each state's superdelegates will get a vote in Denver. Whether or not Florida and Michigan count could well be the deciding factor between whether Clinton or Obama has a lead in pledged delegates, the popular "vote", or in both.
Obama supporters have their talking points at the ready for this fight: their candidate is a once-in-a-generation leader who has brought new voters into the Democratic Primary. Turn them away with what might be seen as backroom manipulation of the "popular" vote - a decision to count Michigan and Florida after all - and they may never come back.
For any political operative, that is a seductive logic: rather than dividing the existing political pie between Democrats and Republicans, make it larger by bringing in new voters. But it's doesn't really hold up.
Here in California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger brought new voters into the California electoral process when he ran for Governor in 2003 and again in 2006 when he ran for re-election. The Republican governor carried 57 of 80 Assembly Districts in 2006. 22 of these were seats held by Democrats. Since 2002, Republicans have not picked up any state Legislative seats in California; as far as California Republican candidates are concerned, Schwarzenegger has no coattails.
The Democratic Party's last once-in-a-generation transformational leader, John F. Kennedy, remains a great inspiration to his party and to this nation. But how well have Democrats done since the Kennedy Administration?
Conversely, the risk to the Democratic Party of not seating the Florida and Michigan delegations is much greater. For starters, both Florida and Michigan are swing states, which if either is lost, could swing the Electoral College to Republicans.
More important is who actually voted in the Florida and Michigan primaries: people who took the time to go to the polls and cast a ballot they weren't even sure would count. Those are a die-hard voters.
In grassroots politics, these folks would be called "fours" or "fives" - meaning that they had voted in four or five of the last elections. As opposed to the "zeros" or "ones" who joined the Democratic Party primary process only to cast a ballot for Barack Obama, you can bet your money that these "fours" and "fives" will be casting votes regardless of who is on the ballot.
To deny the votes of the Democratic Party's most loyal voters in two critical swing states is a risky gambit. To deny their voice solely to appease "Obama voters" who have shown no previous support for the Party, nor evidence that they would were his name not on the ballot, is a sucker's bet - one that even as a Republican, I could not in good conscience recommend they make.
Editor's Note: Scott Olin Schmidt holds a significant financial interest in a corporation which is advising an independent expenditure committee on marketing of pro-Clinton websites. But that still doesn't mean he'll vote for her.
Conventional wisdom in Republican circles and among the mainstream media is that the longer and hotter the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination gets, the better for our nominee, John McCain. Republicans giggle with glee at the sight of two Democrats tearing each other apart, with the same gusto as the media looks with horror.
But I, for one, am not quite convinced that a protracted nomination battle will be a bad thing for the Democrats in the end. While there is plenty of schadenfreude for Republicans watching Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama wallop each other, the mudslinging between Democrats may work to their favor in the end.
My five year-old nephew would be able to see the allegory for the McCain campaign in an old children's tale, the Tortoise and the Hare. For those who do not remember the Aesop, the story goes like this: a rabbit and a turtle are in a race, the rabbit gets off to a quick start while the turtle plods along steadily. The rabbit decides to take a rest, but is overtaken and passed by the turtle and loses in the end.
The Republican nomination process felt a lot like that rascally rabbit this year. In 23 mere days between New Hampshire and Florida, John McCain went from also-ran to the nominee. It really wasn't much of a race. Since then, he has toured the nation, and the globe, but has he not really been in an all-out campaign mode - unlike both Democrats.
Before the 2008 Presidential Election began, neither Clinton nor Obama had ever faced much of an electoral challenge; let's face it, Rick Lazio and Allan Keyes are no John McCain. But just as a vaccination introduces a small but manageable dose of a virus into the system in order to build defenses against a disease, the Democratic mudslinging between Clinton and Obama could ultimately inoculate the eventual nominee from Republican attacks, whomever he or she may be. And they will have months of campaign trench-warfare under their belts by the time their party picks a nominee. That's more time on the road in campaign mode than John McCain has had in his nearly eight decades.
The names Tony Rezko or Reverend Jeremy Wright seem today to be road bumps to the nomination for Barack Obama. But by addressing these issues, and absorbing their impact in March, not October, the junior Senator from Illinois may be able to inoculate himself from these issues later on. Likewise, Travelgate, Whitewater, Monica, Bosnian snipers - and more - will be old news by the time that Hillary gets the nomination, should that come to pass.
In contrast, John McCain has by and large managed to get this far without enduring many attacks. Outside of a below-the-belt article from the New York Times, the worst that McCain has faced was an ad by Mitt Romney which only referred to the Senator metaphorically as a Republican proxy for Hillary Clinton.
Between now and September, John McCain will be an afterthought in the national media, as newspapers, television and the websites large and small all focus on the merits of having either Clinton or Obama in the White House. Come Labor Day, McCain will be the political hare. He may need to be awakened from his nap!
So to my Republican friends, I must say, "be careful what you wish for," and to my associates across the aisle, I say, "simmer down," it's always darkest before the sun rises.
Over the Easter Holiday, as I listened to messages of hope and redemption, I was reminded not of my early years attending a suburban Texas Protestant church, but of the presidential candidacy of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.
The core mesages of Obama's campaign - hope and change - are at their heart, messianic. Weren't hope and change the virtues Christ himself was preaching as he led his followers to Jerusalem to overthrow the corrupt leaders in the temple? Obama's candidacy offers many Americans hope that one man can go into the temple known as Washington, D.C. and rid the place of its corruption, bring its inhabitants together and deliver us to a promised land - a changed land - of peace and prosperity.
Like others, I am somewhat troubled by the devotion of Barack Obama's followers. To hear Obama's supporters speak reminds me of some evangelical Christians in their devotion to the man and his cause. Such is the degree of faith Obama supporters are required to maintain that I'm reminded of a famous quotation: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."
I don't feel as though I'm exaggerating. Not too much, anyway. About ten days ago, I was chatting with two friends, one who has been on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton and one who is a reporter for a local news station. To protect his identity, we'll just say he's Not Backing Clinton. Here is how I recount the conversation:
"If you think the media is biased towards Obama, we are not. If we have a bias, it is towards the truth," my reporter friend started.
"Oh really?" was all we had to say to egg him to elucidate.
"See McCain and Clinton, they have long records of public service and public statements, and so we can check and see if they're telling the truth. But because they have records to contradict what they're saying, we have to report on it. Obama has no record to contradict what he says, so therefore, we must assume that everything he says is the truth. And so, if it seems we are biased towards Obama, it is because our bias is for the truth, and Obama is the Truth."
At that point, I had to get another cocktail.
The similarities between Obama supporters and Evangelical Christians are becoming clear: they are both based on a fundamental reliance on faith. Clinton and McCain supporters tend towards empiricism - basing their vote on a candidate's record and ability to implement solutions, Obama's followers must put aside their skepticism and have faith in their candidate's vision.
Because he has no record of, you know, actually doing things in the United States Senate, Barack Obama must ask his followers to believe in his ability to implement hope and change, just as the Bible asks its readers to have faith that the earth was created some 5,000 years ago.
So no, Barack Obama is no secret-Muslim Manchurian Candiate trying to infiltrate America's political system. Rather, Obama is exploiting people's need to believe in something and with soaring oratory has attracted a flock of believers.
With the rapid collapse of financial house Bear Stearns over the weekend, the collapse of the house of cards that Wall Street built atop America's housing boom is underway--despite temporary market rallies indicating otherwise. And while much attention will focus on how a company deemed solvent on a Wednesday could be belly-up by Sunday, America needs to come to grips with the fact that accountability for the current credit crisis is widespread.
When economic and financial systems are in crisis, the initial urge is to take action to mitigate the pain. But in mitigating the effects of the housing bust, we may only be spreading it out longer and delaying the time that we can recover. What is really needed is a full-scale assault to root out the causes of the housing collapse before we can begin the growth cycle anew.
The knee-jerk reaction in Washington - and on the campaign trail - is to do whatever it takes to keep people in their homes. This is admirable, and certainly a worthy goal but it should not be done with a carte-blanche for all Americans who are facing foreclosure or are struggling to pay their mortgages. Blame for the recession America seems to be facing, and inflation we are currently fighting, lies not solely at the feet of Wall Street, but at the front porches of hundreds of thousands - if not millions of Americans - whose action should warrant their being labeled nothing more than"Main Street criminals".
Housing prices were able to inflate in America over the past decade not because Americans were becoming wealthier, but because many unscrupulous Americans defrauded the nation's financial systems.
I have no doubt that the FBI, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and - eventually - Congress will conduct investigations into Bear Stearns and whichever financial institution takes it in the chin next. But such investigations will only focus on the symptoms, not the causes, of America's current economic turmoil.
What we need now, are further investigations into how so many people got into homes they could not afford. Let's do some quick cocktail-napkin math. If at the peak of the housing boom, the median price of a home in Southern California's San Fernando Valley was $750,000, then that would require mortgage payments in the range of $4000-5000 per month. To qualify for such a mortgage, that would require an income close to $200,000, especially in such a high-tax state. And how many people are making that kind of money? Not even in tony Beverly Hills does the median income come close to those levels!
The state attorneys general need to go back to the work that they gave up after scoring some high-profile victories in their investigation of the mortgage industry. Mortgage brokers, realtors, and appraisers who profited unscrupulously need to be held accountable for putting Americans in a place of peril by lending money and encouraging those who couldn't afford big-ticket mortgages to buy - on little more than faith and wobbly credit.
But the investigation should not stop there. Before anyone benefits from a "foreclosure freeze" or other federal program to keep them in their homes, their mortgage applications should be reviewed. If anyone facing foreclosure lied about their income, assets or ability to pay, then not only should they not receive mortgage assistance, they should be prosecuted for fraud by the local District Attorney. These Main Street Criminals essentially robbed their bank with a pen, and not a gun. In many cases walked away with more cash than one could likely get from an armed robbery.
Every day, the rest of us Americans are paying for these excesses. We pay with our taxes going to bail out people in mortgages they cannot afford, and we pay with the billions of dollars needed to bail out Bear Stearns. We pay with inflated housing costs, we pay with each rate cut that sends inflation higher and the dollar lower, and we pay with soaring costs of commodities, every time we buy a cup of coffee.
From Wall Street to Main Street, everyone who contributed to the current credit crunch must be held accountable. Because the rest of us are paying, day after day.
The world is watching American elections like never before. After eight years of the Bush Administration, the prospect of change is palpable, especially in Europe, a continent that is clamoring to regain its relevance in the world. But the world should be cautioned: Be careful what you wish for.
On a recent trip to Europe, my suggestion that John McCain may well be the next president, drew pleas from Europeans that we Americans cannot let the world down. "It's time for a change," I was told, echoing the monosyllabic campaign message of Barack Obama.
Well, the biggest changes in foreign policy that Democrats are proposing come in the guise of economic policy. Both Clinton and Obama have threatened to pull out of the NAFTA free trade agreement unless their demands are met. That's foolish pandering and Republican nominee John McCain is right to criticize them for this: What message would that send to our allies around the globe about how we treat our two closest friends in the global community?
Globalism is real. Although some Americans may see other countries around the world getting richer and think that wealth is coming - literally - at their expense, that is the wrong lesson to learn from the global economy. Instead, the growing interconnectivity of the global economy means that we must all care about each others' well being and economic welfare because when anyone catches an economic cold, we all stand to suffer the sniffles.
In a speech to the Georgetown University Forum on Global Competitiveness, former Spanish President Jose Maria Aznar hit this point on the head when he pointed out the impact that America has on European economies through trade, investment and labor movement. The economic impact of the U.S. on Ireland is twice that of the impact in China. Anzar's observation that Europe can only be an economic power, not a military one, requires that Europe keep its borders open to trade, and that America do the same.
At the same conference, former Clinton Assistant National Security Advisor Anthony Lake - now and advisor to the Barack Obama campaign - came to a different conclusion from the same set of facts. He started from the basic premise that we should not attack globalism or praise it, we should accept it. That's refreshing coming from an Obama advisor but his solution seems to offer a return to the past, not a move forward.
Lake then spoke about the world's problems - from competition over scarce commodities such as corn or oil, to Global Warming to the War in Afghanistan - and correctly pointed out that no one country can "solve" these problems alone. But even if the United States has the willingness to say "Yes We Can" and change our approach to these issues, Lake worries that the rest of the world - Europe, in particular - lacks the institutional support to make change happen.
When you look at Europe's greatest institutional model - the European Central Bank - Lake seems to have a point. Since adopting the Euro, the less well-off countries of southern Europe have seen their economies flourish, but growth has come at the cost of inflation. Conversely, in northern Europe, the inflation that came after the initial adoption of the Euro has subsided, but they now suffer from the choke-hold of high interest rates and low growth.
My "Amsterdam Beer Index" - handy for the casual traveler trying to figure coss - show that the cost of a Dommelsch has gone from 2.95 Euros down to 2.50 and as low as 2.20 over the past three years, remaining steady in dollar terms, but also a clear (albeit anecdotal sign) of a slowing Dutch economy. Why? The ECB has chosen to forsake growth in order to fight inflation, at the cost of double-digit unemployment and growing unrest.
Militarily, Lake implied, Europe's institutions are even worse off and they must be bolstered if they intend to cooperate with the United States in NATO and fighting the war on terrorism. Europe, the potential future Secretary of State alleged, has gotten a free ride from the U.S. during fifty years of the Cold War and eight years of Bush unilateralism.
The only conclusion I can draw from that is that after pulling out of NAFTA, the Obama Administration would try to re-militarize Europe. As someone who remembers what he learned about the last time protectionism and militarization were the global norms, I have to say that sort of change - a change to the past, not the future - isn't exactly what we're looking for. Is it?
It has become a standard political axiom: when it comes to presidential races, Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. Regardless of whether the voters ultimately confirm this conventional wisdom, there's one bipartisan truth: breaking up is hard to do.
As a sizeable portion of the nation goes ga-ga over Barack Obama, we should remember that political love affairs seldom last as long as the break-ups. Here in California, we've seen just how difficult it can be when a political love-affair turns sour.
Former Governor Gray Davis was popular enough to win two terms in office, but when he cheated on Californians by lying about the extent of the budget crisis in 2002, the Golden State quickly threw the bum out with a special recall election less than a year later.
In dumping Davis, Californians fell hard on the rebound for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, developing what now seems like a co-dependent relationship.
We swept Schwarzenegger into office in 2003, on the hopes that he could shake up the broken system called California government. Two years later, we rejected each of his appeals to fix the state's problems, which sent his popularity plummeting. While many expected a break-up in 2006, Californians went back to Schwarzenegger to stand by our man for another four years. With another budget crisis looming, and the state looking once again un-governable, many wonder what kind of doormat the California voter must be to have Arnold walking all over them!
Likewise, across the pond, the French are rapidly falling out of love with President Nicolas Sarkozy. Although he was elected less than a year ago, his jet-set lifestyle and very public romance with Italian songstress Carla Bruni, the French have soured the President on their choice, like an uncorked bottle of Bordeaux.
With today's news, Democratic voters are no doubt having an inner debate between the attractive, smooth-talking Casanova or the practical fiancée who promises to put food on the table every night. Until Tuesday evening, infatuation had been winning over pragmatism.
But all love affairs must end, and with the candidacy of Barack Obama, the question is whether America breaks up with him before popping the question in November and meeting at the altar on January 20, 2009.
Obamamanics got a taste of what the break-up with Barack could feel like this week, when we learned of secret meetings between the Senator's advisors and a foreign government.
When reports first trickled out of Canada a week ago saying that Barack Obama's economic advisor had met with a representative of the Canadian Consulate and said that the Senator was really not a protectionist despite his rhetoric on NAFTA, the campaign denied that such a meeting took place. But when internal memos proved otherwise, the Obama campaign started backtracking. The lies, and the duplicity left many voters feeling scorned and made what should have been a coronation in Texas and Ohio into just another leg in this marathon primary. Kind of like Obama was cheating on his "wife" - the American public.
A marriage is a lifetime commitment, and one not to be taken lightly. Still, in politics and, more importantly governing, four years can seem like a lifetime. The wedding date is set for America's next love affair. But who will be at the altar? And will we still have butterflies in our stomachs?
Since I am not running for president of the United States and winning over voters in Florida is not critical to my career choices, I can say one thing without hesitation: it's time to tear down the wall between the United States and Cuba.
Although Cuba's "elected leaders" did little more than continue their dynastic politics in handing over leadership to lifelong Cuban President Fidel Castro's brother, Raúl, last week, the handover offers the United States an opportunity to affect change we can believe. It's time to end the Cuban embargo and allow free trade, travel and investment in our island neighbor.
If we learned anything from the end of the Cold War, it should have been that free trade leads to free people. Our embargo on Cuba may have served only to prop up Fidel Castro, but by opening up the borders to Cuba, we will either bring down the regime of Raúl, or force it to bring change.
A year ago, writing about the war in Iraq, I wrote that, "the day we see a Starbucks in Baghdad will be the day we know we've won the War on Terror." That is because multi-national corporations have a stabilizing effect on global politics. They force their host countries to adopt investor-friendly policies, while keeping countries where they hold investments from fighting each other.
My uncle, Jerome Schmidt, just returned to the States from Vietnam. It was his first trip back since he served there in the United States Army three decades ago. In his daily correspondences with family and friends in the states, Uncle Jerry had one recurring question: why did we fight this war?
His questioning of the Vietnam War wasn't fostered by the anti-war sentiments of the 1960s, but rather by the realization that Vietnam today is as free and capitalist as America. In fact,
