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.
Thirteen years ago, when I moved to Los Angeles, the city had just lost its two professional football teams. Then the Rams packed up for St. Louis and the Raiders went home to Oakland, leaving a gaping hole in the City of Angels' civic pride. Los Angeles was no longer a big-league pro-football City.
Last week, there was a bloodbath on First Street home of the Los Angeles Times, which announced that two hundred and fifty jobs, including 150 reporters would be cut. The newspaper that once aimed to be the West Coast's answer to the New York Times and its Manhattan elitism has become, overnight a shadow of itself and its ambitions.
The question I found myself asking was not whether the Times was dead - it has been dying for awhile - but whether Los Angeles will miss it in a decade, or, as with professional football, will we hardly know we miss it.
The day after the layoffs at the paper were announced, I found myself about fifteen minutes behind schedule for my morning gym routine. This can be dangerous, because the Precor cardio machines which perfectly cradle a newspaper and have no moving parts fill up quickly within the first hour that the gym is open.
To my dismay, that extra fifteen minutes of sleep meant that indeed, I was relegated to some other cardio machine, so I chose the one next to my friend Ron, who had forgotten his iPod that morning.
"Luckily," I told Ron, "there's no longer thirty minutes worth of reading in the paper any more! It's gotten so bad, I have to bring a pen to work on the Sudoku puzzle just so I can make it through a workout."
Ron agreed, and commented about how on a recent Sunday, his $1.50 paper barely kept this attention through brunch.
I suppose a paper it is good for tactile people like myself to entertain ourselves while slavishly fighting a jihad on the waistline. And newspapers are good to have if your pet makes a mistake on your carpet. But beyond that, print is becoming less and less relevant.
Is there a need any longer for a Los Angeles perspective on Iraq, or would people rather turn to national news outlets? Why bother checking my stocks in the morning paper, when the markets already are open in New York? Most information is old by the time it gets in the paper and people are turning online to get the latest, fastest information.
There is a watchdog role at the local level for a print publication. They have the resources and gravitas to cover City Hall, but only if they want to. But, in concentrating its efforts on competing with the East Coast papers like New York's Times and the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times abdicated this role to its regional competitors. And it got beaten, consistently, in the local markets.
Similarly, when it comes to what's going on in Los Angeles' scores of neighborhoods, a newspaper falls short. Instead, hundreds of weblogs have cropped up covering our communities from a wide angle of perspectives. Usually there is an agenda involved, but at least these bloggers admit to having bias, unlike the paper!
Some of the best content in the Los Angeles Times is the traffic coverage of Steve Hymon. Traffic is just about the one issue that unites everyone within the Los Angeles area, rich or poor, urban or suburban. Hymon covers the issue diligently on-line with his Bottleneck blog which is edited and reprinted for the paper on a regular basis.
Hymon's efforts offers a glimpse of things to come, I think. When Pro Football left Los Angeles more than a decade ago, it did not mean the death of weekend recreation in Los Angeles. Since the NFL left, the sport enjoys high ratings in the city as people watch NFL games from other parts of the country. College football at USC and UCLA is thriving like never before. And people have discovered hiking, biking or other sports. We don't miss the NFL.
And while Los Angeles currently mourns the changes at the venerable Los Angeles Times, in a decade I doubt we will miss it. If the paper wants to keep publishing, perhaps the best model would be to cut its staff of writers even more, and hire editors. Those editors can pick from among the city's best and brightest bloggers and (with a contributor agreement) select the best of Los Angeles' online content and republish it the next morning.
It may not be "journalism" - as we know it, now - but this melding of formats would control costs, and democratize the press like never before. Make a system like that work, and we'll be glad that the Times as we knew it lives no more!
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.
It's "Jobs Week" in the John McCain for President campaign, focusing on policies that will help create jobs in the American economy. Keep taxes low, balance the Federal budget, making health care more affordable and establishing energy independence will help create jobs, according to the GOP Presidential contender.
But the bad feelings between McCain campaign and the Republican party's more conservative supporters over the nominees outspoken moderation on immigration is clouding the discussion. At the heart of the jobs debate, is the question of immigration. Unlike during past recessions, when immigrants were blamed for coming here and stealing American jobs few people are making that argument. Instead, the consensus seems to be that the immigrants who are here are working jobs in America, but they aren't necessarily taking American jobs.
In fact, the first question any uninterested observer should ask about the American economy is, why create jobs if we are importing labor? Because we are doing just that. America is importing labor when we outsource jobs to India or China. We import labor when we hire illegal immigrants to cook our food and clean our toilets. These are all jobs Americans could do, but even with unemployment increasing by the tens-of-thousands, we're not.
Before my brother and his family stayed in my apartment a couple weeks ago, I tried hiring some help to clean the place up. I asked many of my friends for referrals, and they extolled the virtues of Google Language Tools when dealing with their maids. But when one question came up - does he or she have the right to legally work in the United States? - the silence was deafening.
I went the safe route and hired a service, so they would have all the employer liability, but even then, only one of the three team members spoke English. Clearly the 6.8% of California workers on the unemployment list have not been looking for work cleaning toilets in West Hollywood.
But as John McCain revises his position on immigration as quickly as Barack Obama decides to look at the facts on the ground into consideration when he decides what to do in Iraq, one angle to the immigration debate gets left out. More than securing our borders and offering amnesty to undocumented immigrants, the best way to solve the problems at America's southern border is to create jobs...Mexican jobs.
While it is unadvisable to make sweeping statements about millions of people at once, it seems clear that the reason for the large numbers of undocumented workers in America is for better economic opportunities. And when "economic opportunity" means being a dishwasher or line cook, you know that things must be bad back home. And if they hated their families enough to get away from them by heading north, then why keep sending money back?
Unfortunately, on the campaign trail, the position of creating jobs in Mexico is not much of a winner if you're running for President of the United States. Instead, it is being danced around, referred to as part of more general discussions of trade issues and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Senator McCain is an ardent supporter of NAFTA and all free trade. Conversely, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama caused a stir back in February when he said that NAFTA, "ships jobs overseas and force parents to compete with teenagers for minimum wage at Wal-Mart," and that he wanted to renegotiate the 1993 deal. .
Closing America's border to free trade, however, would probably create a giant sucking sound of immigrants coming north as lost jobs in maquiladoras make the perceived economic opportunity of minimum wage jobs in America even greater, especially if President Obama increases the minimum wage, to boot!
On the other hand, Republican John McCain has gone out on a limb and embraced free trade with the same fervor that he has embraced the equally popular Iraq War. It's dangerous politically, but smart as a policy. Keeping free trade with Mexico creates jobs south of the border producing everything from tomatoes to Volkswagens.
Only if the opportunity gap between Mexico and the United States can be closed will illegal immigration cease to be an issue. We can close that gap by tearing down America's economy, or by helping build Mexico's economy and creating Mexican jobs. I'd hope we can all agree on the latter.
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.
If you ask the average American, their belief in the economy is shaky at best, with consumer confidence in May at its lowest point since October 1992 - when the United States was coming out of recession. But I'm not joining that parade. I see little silver linings on the economic cloud just around every corner.
There's sound economic theory for my hopefulness. From September to February, the U.S. Federal Reserve engaged in an aggressive series of interest rate cuts in order to fight off a coming economic slowdown. In theory, the liquidity injected into the markets should take about six months to cycle through and result in economic benefits. Meaning, we should start seeing the economy turn over the summer. And I think we are.
My first indication that the economy was improving came a few weeks back when in my email inbox I received an unsolicited job offer from New York City. Apparently the company was looking to expand and could not find enough qualified local employees.
Since then, I have received two similar emails from recruiters trolling the message boards of CareerBuilder.com and contacting me - through a profile that had not been updated in three years. Either my late-20's skill sets are now in hot demand for jobs ranging from Internet marketing to energy lobbying, or businesses are expanding and desperately seeking skilled workers. Being the humble person that I am, my bet is on the latter.
I see signs of an improving economy when I looked at Los Angeles over the Memorial Day weekend. From what the media told us, high gas prices and a slow economy meant that travel over the holiday was going to slow down. But look around Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards over the Holiday and you'd have thought it was a ghost town - locals packed up and left in large numbers.
Looking at my Facebook friends, I can tell you that, unscientifically, they're not hurting economically, either. They are traveling to Minneapolis, New York, London, Chicago, Ireland, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Florence, Manchester and Cairo - and that is just from the first two pages of their status updates. Maybe that says more about the Facebook "friends" I choose, but it tells me something about the state of the economy, too.
And despite the weak dollar and allegedly weak American economy, I sure saw a lot of Americans as I did a tour of major European airports traveling to and from Paris, France before the holiday weekend. Security lines at London Heathrow, Frankfurt-am-Main and Zurich's Kloten airports were congesting with octogenarians with fanny packs and white socks - the usual tell-tale signs of the American tourist abroad.
Compared to a 4.20 Euro Caffe Latte at Starbucks in Paris - that's $6.40 in George Bush Pesos - food inflation in America is de minimus. When American tourists return home to see that gasoline still costs about half of what the Europeans are paying and that food is but a fraction of what it costs abroad, the idea of inflation seems relative.
Sure, the cost of gas and food and airfares are going up. But these prices can only be supported if people are able to pay them. And each time an airline announces a new price hike or fee increase they do so only because they believe people will be willing - and able - to pay. That does not sound like a recession to me.
In a few months time, you can accuse me of wearing rose-colored glasses. But I am betting you won't. In economic theory, the liquidity injection - that's extra cash - started when the Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates last fall should be kicking in just about now.
Indeed, everywhere I turn, there's reason to be an economic optimist.
