By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
"That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me."
That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies.
President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.
Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough. That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.
Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Here's what the president said:
"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they're talking about me. Actually, he wasn't – or, to be more precise, he wasn't talking onlyabout you.
Yes, there are plenty of Democrats who are in favor of negotiating with our enemies, and a few Republicans, too – President Bush's pal James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group was full of proposals to barter with Iran and Syria and everybody else. But that general line is also taken by at least three of Tony Blair's former Cabinet ministers and his senior policy adviser, and by the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party and by a whole bunch of bigshot Europeans. It's not a Democrat election policy, it's an entire worldview. Even Barack Obama can't be so vain as to think his fly-me-to-[insert name of enemy here]concept is an original idea.
Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks arethe end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing – chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It's easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything.
And, as the Iranians understand, talks provide a splendid cover for getting on with anything you want to do. If, say, you want to get on with your nuclear program relatively undisturbed, the easiest way to do it is to enter years of endless talks with the Europeans over said nuclear program. That's why that Hamas honcho endorsed Obama: They know he's their best shot at getting a European foreign minister installed as president of the United States.
Mo Mowlam was Britain's Northern Ireland secretary and oversaw the process by which the IRA's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness became ministers of a Crown they decline to recognize. By 2004, she was calling for Osama bin Laden to be invited to "the negotiating table," having concluded he was no different from Adams: Stern fellow, lots of blood on his hands, but no sense getting on your high horse about all that; let's find out what he wants and give him part of it.
In his 2002 letter to the United States, bin Laden has a lot of grievances, from America's refusal to implement Sharia law to Jew-controlled usury to the lack of punishment for "President Clinton's immoral acts." Like Barack Obama's pastor, bin Laden shares the view that AIDS is a "Satanic American invention." Obviously, there are items on the agenda that the free world can never concede on – "President Clinton's immoral acts" – but who's to say most of the rest isn't worth chewing over?
This will be the fault line in the post-Bush war debate over the next few years. Are the political ambitions of the broader jihad totalitarian, genocidal, millenarian – in a word, nuts? Or are they negotiable? President Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took umbrage at, he said:
"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously."
Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah:
"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So, too, are those of Hezbollah's patrons in Tehran.
President Reagan talked with the Soviets while pushing ahead with the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. He spoke softly – after getting himself a bigger stick. Sen. Obama is proposing to reward a man who pledges to wipe Israel off the map with a presidential photo-op to which he will bring not even a twig. No wonder he's so twitchy about it.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Stop Believing Obama
Stop Believing Obama
By Philip Klein
Published 5/12/2008 12:08:39 AM
David Axelrod laughed.We were in the spin room following last month's debate in Philadelphia, and I had just asked Barack Obama's chief strategist to respond to a statement made by a top Hamas adviser endorsing Obama's candidacy, and favorably comparing the young Illinois Senator to John F. Kennedy.
"I like John Kennedy too," Axelrod responded. "That's about the only thing we have in common with this gentleman from Hamas. We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it's flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps."
Just a few days later, Obama was asked, at a diner stopover, about Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas, and his response was, "I'm just going to eat my waffle."
Last week, Obama described it as a "smear" that John McCain, in response to a question, correctly noted that a spokesman for the terrorist group publicly expressed support for Obama.
But on Friday, McCain was further vindicated when the Times of London reported that Obama adviser Robert Malley had to sever ties with the campaign, because the newspaper was about to report that the prominent critic of Israel had been regularly engaging in talks with Hamas.The Obama campaign has suggested that Malley's role with the campaign was "informal." But this is the same campaign that tried to downplay Obama's 20-year relationship with Jeremiah Wright (who, among other incendiary remarks, referred to Israel as a "dirty word").
Why was there a need to sever ties if none really existed? And if Obama is so utterly opposed to dealing with Hamas, as he has stated publicly, then why would he have an adviser, even an "informal" one, who was doing just that?
THROUGHOUT THE CAMPAIGN, Obama and his staffers have dismissed any scrutiny of his views on Israel with a blend of outrage and sarcasm, as if his record of support for Israel is so extensive, so undeniable, that anybody who raises doubts about his actual views is launching an inquisition. But as is the case with most issues, Obama is such a blank slate, and has such a thin public record, that voters are forced to parse his statements, sift through his past, and examine those he chooses to associate with to get a better sense of his underlying philosophy.
Obama has touted his foreign policy approach as a break from "conventional Washington thinking." As part of this approach, Obama has boasted of his willingness to engage in direct talks with our enemies, including Iran, without preconditions.Iran has consistently been deemed the leading state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department, has vowed to annihilate Israel within the context of seeking nuclear weapons, and has helped finance Hamas. Why should it be beyond the pale to question the earnestness of Obama's vow not to negotiate with Hamas, when he has promised, as part of his sweeping program for change, to negotiate with its patron, which shares the same ultimate goal?
It's no secret that within elite liberal foreign policy circles, one of the primary laments is that the United States hinders peace in the Middle East by being too reflexively pro-Israel.So when a liberal politician comes along and assures that same crowd that he is going to do away with "conventional Washington thinking," it is only fair to wonder whether he is sending an unspoken signal that he also plans to tilt the balance of U.S. policy in the Middle East in a direction that is more favorable to the Palestinians and more critical of Israel.
ALI ABUNIMAH, a Palestinian activist from Chicago, insists that at least in the recent past, Obama wanted to see U.S. policy move in that direction."In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor," Abunimah has written. "On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
Abunimah says that as late as 2004, during his tough primary race, Obama praised him for his activism, and apologized, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front."
The Obama campaign has disputed Abunimah's account, and there is no audio to back him up. But Abunimah has released a photo of Obama breaking bread with Edward Said, one of the leading anti-Israel intellectuals of the 20th century, at a 1998 Arab community event in Chicago. Furthermore, Obama has ties with Rashid Khalidi, who currently serves as the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. Khalidi, who once served as a flak for Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, is an active proponent of the view that U.S. policy is too biased in favor of Israel.Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that Obama spoke at a going away party in honor of Khalidi in Chicago in 2003:
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases... It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."
WITH THIS PAST as prologue, many of the statements (or omissions) Obama has made on the campaign trail raise questions about his true stance on Israel.When Obama said, "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people," did he really mean as he later clarified, that nobody was suffering more from the failure of the Palestinian leadership? Or was he trying to start a "conversation" about whether the U.S. is too focused on Israeli suffering, and not enough on the suffering of the Palestinians?
When he was asked by Brian Williams in a debate last year to name the top three allies of the United States, why did he filibuster the question without naming Israel?When he said in February, "I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel," what did he mean by "pro-Likud"?
There is an active strain within the liberal foreign policy community that believes that since Hamas was democratically elected and controls Gaza, any peace process would have to include talks with their leaders.
When Carter met with Hamas last month, Obama was slow to criticize the former president. "I'm not going to comment on former President Carter," Obama said at first. "He is a private citizen, and you know, it's not my place to discuss who or -- who he shouldn't meet with." (Obama, interestingly, didn't employ the private citizen dodge when he called on NBC to fire Don Imus last year in the wake of the controversy over the radio show host's racially insensitive remarks.) While Obama did eventually criticize Carter's trip, it was only after much prodding, and he still didn't consider the question important enough to disrupt his waffle-eating experience.
On a number of other issues, there has been a pattern of Obama saying one thing on the campaign trail that was undercut by his advisers. We saw that when his economic adviser assured the Canadians that Obama wasn't really serious about the anti-NAFTA rhetoric he was spewing in Ohio.We saw that when former adviser Samantha Power, speaking of Obama's plans to withdraw troops out of Iraq, said Obama wouldn't "rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate." And now we have Obama's public opposition to Hamas undercut by the fact that an adviser is meeting with them.
SO IS IT REALLY a stretch to wonder whether Obama would eventually support talks with the terrorist group, despite his public pronouncements to the contrary?This is not a theoretical matter. Ahmed Yousef, the same Hamas adviser who said that the terrorist group supports Obama, wrote a Washington Post op-ed last June arguing for engagement with Hamas.The group is obviously embarking on a strategy, similar to the one Arafat pursued during the Oslo peace process, of making public overtures of peace abroad, duping naive Western leaders into granting them legitimacy and the financial aid that comes along with it, while continuing to support terrorism at home.
Clearly, Hamas views Obama as an easy mark.The interesting thing about Obama's candidacy is that his lack of experience, and the mixed messages he sends, enable close observers to come to drastically different conclusions as to what kind of policies he would support as president.Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing Jewish magazine Tikkun, said, "Based on my conversations with Obama, I have a very strong belief that he shares the Tikkun perspective..." But the staunchly pro-Israel Marty Peretz assured "friends of Israel" that they could trust Obama. Abunimah, the Palestinian activist from Chicago, is disappointed that Obama has sold out to the pro-Israel Lobby, while Hamas adviser Yousef chalked up Obama's pro-Israel statements to election year posturing, and declared that the terrorist group still wants him to win.
Obama is running for the most powerful job in the world without much of a public record of which to speak. Yet those who demand to know a little bit more about the candidate by scrutinizing his statements and relationships are arrogantly dismissed as engaging in "smears" and being divisive for refusing to simply take him at his word.
Welcome to the new kind of politics.
Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.
By Philip Klein
Published 5/12/2008 12:08:39 AM
David Axelrod laughed.We were in the spin room following last month's debate in Philadelphia, and I had just asked Barack Obama's chief strategist to respond to a statement made by a top Hamas adviser endorsing Obama's candidacy, and favorably comparing the young Illinois Senator to John F. Kennedy.
"I like John Kennedy too," Axelrod responded. "That's about the only thing we have in common with this gentleman from Hamas. We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it's flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps."
Just a few days later, Obama was asked, at a diner stopover, about Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas, and his response was, "I'm just going to eat my waffle."
Last week, Obama described it as a "smear" that John McCain, in response to a question, correctly noted that a spokesman for the terrorist group publicly expressed support for Obama.
But on Friday, McCain was further vindicated when the Times of London reported that Obama adviser Robert Malley had to sever ties with the campaign, because the newspaper was about to report that the prominent critic of Israel had been regularly engaging in talks with Hamas.The Obama campaign has suggested that Malley's role with the campaign was "informal." But this is the same campaign that tried to downplay Obama's 20-year relationship with Jeremiah Wright (who, among other incendiary remarks, referred to Israel as a "dirty word").
Why was there a need to sever ties if none really existed? And if Obama is so utterly opposed to dealing with Hamas, as he has stated publicly, then why would he have an adviser, even an "informal" one, who was doing just that?
THROUGHOUT THE CAMPAIGN, Obama and his staffers have dismissed any scrutiny of his views on Israel with a blend of outrage and sarcasm, as if his record of support for Israel is so extensive, so undeniable, that anybody who raises doubts about his actual views is launching an inquisition. But as is the case with most issues, Obama is such a blank slate, and has such a thin public record, that voters are forced to parse his statements, sift through his past, and examine those he chooses to associate with to get a better sense of his underlying philosophy.
Obama has touted his foreign policy approach as a break from "conventional Washington thinking." As part of this approach, Obama has boasted of his willingness to engage in direct talks with our enemies, including Iran, without preconditions.Iran has consistently been deemed the leading state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department, has vowed to annihilate Israel within the context of seeking nuclear weapons, and has helped finance Hamas. Why should it be beyond the pale to question the earnestness of Obama's vow not to negotiate with Hamas, when he has promised, as part of his sweeping program for change, to negotiate with its patron, which shares the same ultimate goal?
It's no secret that within elite liberal foreign policy circles, one of the primary laments is that the United States hinders peace in the Middle East by being too reflexively pro-Israel.So when a liberal politician comes along and assures that same crowd that he is going to do away with "conventional Washington thinking," it is only fair to wonder whether he is sending an unspoken signal that he also plans to tilt the balance of U.S. policy in the Middle East in a direction that is more favorable to the Palestinians and more critical of Israel.
ALI ABUNIMAH, a Palestinian activist from Chicago, insists that at least in the recent past, Obama wanted to see U.S. policy move in that direction."In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor," Abunimah has written. "On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
Abunimah says that as late as 2004, during his tough primary race, Obama praised him for his activism, and apologized, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front."
The Obama campaign has disputed Abunimah's account, and there is no audio to back him up. But Abunimah has released a photo of Obama breaking bread with Edward Said, one of the leading anti-Israel intellectuals of the 20th century, at a 1998 Arab community event in Chicago. Furthermore, Obama has ties with Rashid Khalidi, who currently serves as the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. Khalidi, who once served as a flak for Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, is an active proponent of the view that U.S. policy is too biased in favor of Israel.Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that Obama spoke at a going away party in honor of Khalidi in Chicago in 2003:
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases... It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."
WITH THIS PAST as prologue, many of the statements (or omissions) Obama has made on the campaign trail raise questions about his true stance on Israel.When Obama said, "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people," did he really mean as he later clarified, that nobody was suffering more from the failure of the Palestinian leadership? Or was he trying to start a "conversation" about whether the U.S. is too focused on Israeli suffering, and not enough on the suffering of the Palestinians?
When he was asked by Brian Williams in a debate last year to name the top three allies of the United States, why did he filibuster the question without naming Israel?When he said in February, "I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel," what did he mean by "pro-Likud"?
There is an active strain within the liberal foreign policy community that believes that since Hamas was democratically elected and controls Gaza, any peace process would have to include talks with their leaders.
When Carter met with Hamas last month, Obama was slow to criticize the former president. "I'm not going to comment on former President Carter," Obama said at first. "He is a private citizen, and you know, it's not my place to discuss who or -- who he shouldn't meet with." (Obama, interestingly, didn't employ the private citizen dodge when he called on NBC to fire Don Imus last year in the wake of the controversy over the radio show host's racially insensitive remarks.) While Obama did eventually criticize Carter's trip, it was only after much prodding, and he still didn't consider the question important enough to disrupt his waffle-eating experience.
On a number of other issues, there has been a pattern of Obama saying one thing on the campaign trail that was undercut by his advisers. We saw that when his economic adviser assured the Canadians that Obama wasn't really serious about the anti-NAFTA rhetoric he was spewing in Ohio.We saw that when former adviser Samantha Power, speaking of Obama's plans to withdraw troops out of Iraq, said Obama wouldn't "rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate." And now we have Obama's public opposition to Hamas undercut by the fact that an adviser is meeting with them.
SO IS IT REALLY a stretch to wonder whether Obama would eventually support talks with the terrorist group, despite his public pronouncements to the contrary?This is not a theoretical matter. Ahmed Yousef, the same Hamas adviser who said that the terrorist group supports Obama, wrote a Washington Post op-ed last June arguing for engagement with Hamas.The group is obviously embarking on a strategy, similar to the one Arafat pursued during the Oslo peace process, of making public overtures of peace abroad, duping naive Western leaders into granting them legitimacy and the financial aid that comes along with it, while continuing to support terrorism at home.
Clearly, Hamas views Obama as an easy mark.The interesting thing about Obama's candidacy is that his lack of experience, and the mixed messages he sends, enable close observers to come to drastically different conclusions as to what kind of policies he would support as president.Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing Jewish magazine Tikkun, said, "Based on my conversations with Obama, I have a very strong belief that he shares the Tikkun perspective..." But the staunchly pro-Israel Marty Peretz assured "friends of Israel" that they could trust Obama. Abunimah, the Palestinian activist from Chicago, is disappointed that Obama has sold out to the pro-Israel Lobby, while Hamas adviser Yousef chalked up Obama's pro-Israel statements to election year posturing, and declared that the terrorist group still wants him to win.
Obama is running for the most powerful job in the world without much of a public record of which to speak. Yet those who demand to know a little bit more about the candidate by scrutinizing his statements and relationships are arrogantly dismissed as engaging in "smears" and being divisive for refusing to simply take him at his word.
Welcome to the new kind of politics.
Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
The company Obama has kept
Rod Dreher: The company Obama has kept
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, May 11, 2008
Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. His e-mail address is rdreher @dallasnews.com.
Forty years ago this month, Paris exploded in left-wing student riots that led to a nationwide general strike. The revolutionary fervor of France's soixante-huitards ('68ers) spread widely, including to American campuses. If you're wondering when the Good '60s of peace, love and civil rights gave way to the Bad '60s of anarchy and violence, May 1968 is as good a historical pivot point as any.John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton at the time. Barack Obama was 6 years old. Yet the restless spirit of '68 haunts this year's presidential campaign, especially the White House bid of Mr. Obama, who, having pretty much missed the '60s – "Civil rights, sexual revolution, Vietnam War. Those all sort of passed me by," he told The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan last year – was supposed to take us beyond those divisive traumas.
It's not working out that way. His former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is an unreconstructed '60s radical, a fire-breathing disciple of James Cone's period-piece black liberation theology. Mr. Obama wrote in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, about his attraction to the leftist pastor's church as a vehicle for social change. If black nationalism would uplift the race, he wrote, "then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence."
That's a remarkable admission of a racialized "ends justify the means" morality. It helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to stick with a crackpot like Dr. Wright. It also might explain why an up-and-coming Barack Obama found nothing particularly wrong with rubbing political elbows with Bill Ayers, the Chicago university professor and onetime fugitive member of the revolutionary, communist Weather Underground.
Mr. Ayers, an unrepentant '60s domestic terrorist, is an academician in good standing and an active member of Chicago's progressive community. It is unremarkable that a rising star in Chicago Democratic politics would collaborate with Mr. Ayers, which tells us something about the soixante-huitard generation.
They may have failed at revolution, but they succeeded in changing the culture. (A famous soixante-huitard slogan: "Live without limits, and enjoy without restraint.") They did so in large part by, to use the Marxist Antonio Gramsci's phrase, "marching through the institutions." Pulpits. Professorships. Publishing and media. And in some cases, politics.
It's not "guilt by association" to inquire to what extent Mr. Obama – whose moral and political conscience was shaped by his education at elite universities, his street activism and his tutelage at Dr. Wright's knee – shares the views and assumptions of the soixante-huitards. In terms of style, he's plainly not one of them. But his deeply liberal voting record marks him as at least a fellow traveler. Besides, as Rolling Stone magazine put it last year in a sympathetic profile, Mr. Obama's is "as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from."
This may be of no matter to the left, but Mr. Obama is not running for mayor of Berkeley, president of Harvard or prime minister of The New York Times.
But if the '60s radicals went too far, they had ample cause to protest – especially against the war in Vietnam, which the U.S. government had been lying about and would continue to lie about. The radicals weren't all wrong about American power. Know why the terrorist team of Ayers & Dohrn never went to jail? The FBI broke so many laws trying to catch them that putting them on trial would have been futile.
"By any means necessary" was not just an ethic of the far left (ask Ollie North). Nor is it a thing of the past, as the Bush administration and its allies have so amply demonstrated in relentless pursuit of the president's prerogatives. If it's fair to judge Mr. Obama by the ideological company he keeps, Mr. McCain deserves the same. Meaning well is not exculpatory.
That said, Mr. Obama's radical baggage is more politically damaging because it deflates the hope many voters invested in him. He was once the man to deliver American politics from the storm and stress of the '60s generation – "Goodbye to all that," as The Atlantic headlined Mr. Sullivan's much-read pre-primary encomium to Mr. Obama's transformational potential.
Not yet, alas. Against his own conscience, the ambitious but insecure young Mr. Obama compromised with the malevolent spirit of '68 for the sake of worldly gain. For the consequences are not proving to be as little as he expected.
Said the Devil to Faust: "In the end, you are exactly – what you are." Yes.
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, May 11, 2008
Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. His e-mail address is rdreher @dallasnews.com.
Forty years ago this month, Paris exploded in left-wing student riots that led to a nationwide general strike. The revolutionary fervor of France's soixante-huitards ('68ers) spread widely, including to American campuses. If you're wondering when the Good '60s of peace, love and civil rights gave way to the Bad '60s of anarchy and violence, May 1968 is as good a historical pivot point as any.John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton at the time. Barack Obama was 6 years old. Yet the restless spirit of '68 haunts this year's presidential campaign, especially the White House bid of Mr. Obama, who, having pretty much missed the '60s – "Civil rights, sexual revolution, Vietnam War. Those all sort of passed me by," he told The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan last year – was supposed to take us beyond those divisive traumas.
It's not working out that way. His former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is an unreconstructed '60s radical, a fire-breathing disciple of James Cone's period-piece black liberation theology. Mr. Obama wrote in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, about his attraction to the leftist pastor's church as a vehicle for social change. If black nationalism would uplift the race, he wrote, "then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence."
That's a remarkable admission of a racialized "ends justify the means" morality. It helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to stick with a crackpot like Dr. Wright. It also might explain why an up-and-coming Barack Obama found nothing particularly wrong with rubbing political elbows with Bill Ayers, the Chicago university professor and onetime fugitive member of the revolutionary, communist Weather Underground.
Mr. Ayers, an unrepentant '60s domestic terrorist, is an academician in good standing and an active member of Chicago's progressive community. It is unremarkable that a rising star in Chicago Democratic politics would collaborate with Mr. Ayers, which tells us something about the soixante-huitard generation.
They may have failed at revolution, but they succeeded in changing the culture. (A famous soixante-huitard slogan: "Live without limits, and enjoy without restraint.") They did so in large part by, to use the Marxist Antonio Gramsci's phrase, "marching through the institutions." Pulpits. Professorships. Publishing and media. And in some cases, politics.
It's not "guilt by association" to inquire to what extent Mr. Obama – whose moral and political conscience was shaped by his education at elite universities, his street activism and his tutelage at Dr. Wright's knee – shares the views and assumptions of the soixante-huitards. In terms of style, he's plainly not one of them. But his deeply liberal voting record marks him as at least a fellow traveler. Besides, as Rolling Stone magazine put it last year in a sympathetic profile, Mr. Obama's is "as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from."
This may be of no matter to the left, but Mr. Obama is not running for mayor of Berkeley, president of Harvard or prime minister of The New York Times.
But if the '60s radicals went too far, they had ample cause to protest – especially against the war in Vietnam, which the U.S. government had been lying about and would continue to lie about. The radicals weren't all wrong about American power. Know why the terrorist team of Ayers & Dohrn never went to jail? The FBI broke so many laws trying to catch them that putting them on trial would have been futile.
"By any means necessary" was not just an ethic of the far left (ask Ollie North). Nor is it a thing of the past, as the Bush administration and its allies have so amply demonstrated in relentless pursuit of the president's prerogatives. If it's fair to judge Mr. Obama by the ideological company he keeps, Mr. McCain deserves the same. Meaning well is not exculpatory.
That said, Mr. Obama's radical baggage is more politically damaging because it deflates the hope many voters invested in him. He was once the man to deliver American politics from the storm and stress of the '60s generation – "Goodbye to all that," as The Atlantic headlined Mr. Sullivan's much-read pre-primary encomium to Mr. Obama's transformational potential.
Not yet, alas. Against his own conscience, the ambitious but insecure young Mr. Obama compromised with the malevolent spirit of '68 for the sake of worldly gain. For the consequences are not proving to be as little as he expected.
Said the Devil to Faust: "In the end, you are exactly – what you are." Yes.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals
Individuals with conservative ideologies are happier than liberal-leaners, and new research pinpoints the reason: Conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities.
Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found.
Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.
The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."
To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance.
In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.
If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted both a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.
"Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives," the researchers write in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, "apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light."
The results support and further explain a Pew Research Center survey from 2006, in which 47 percent of conservative Republicans in the U.S. described themselves as "very happy," while only 28 percent of liberal Democrats indicated such cheer.
The same rationalizing phenomena could apply to personal situations as well.
"There is no reason to think that the effects we have identified here are unique to economic forms of inequality," the researchers write. "Research suggests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their marriages compared with their more traditional counterparts, apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labor."
The current study was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Copyright © 2008 Imaginova Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found.
Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.
The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."
To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance.
In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.
If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted both a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.
"Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives," the researchers write in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, "apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light."
The results support and further explain a Pew Research Center survey from 2006, in which 47 percent of conservative Republicans in the U.S. described themselves as "very happy," while only 28 percent of liberal Democrats indicated such cheer.
The same rationalizing phenomena could apply to personal situations as well.
"There is no reason to think that the effects we have identified here are unique to economic forms of inequality," the researchers write. "Research suggests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their marriages compared with their more traditional counterparts, apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labor."
The current study was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Copyright © 2008 Imaginova Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Left Is Wrong
May 07, 2008
The Left Is Wrong
By John Stossel
She was once the darling of conservatives like Newt Gingrich, but now you can't watch a television news-talk program without seeing her calling for more government and showing scorn for those who want less.
She's Arianna Huffington, website impresario and author of "Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made Us All Less Safe".
I interviewed her for "20/20" last week because I was impressed by the success of the website she created. In just three years she made the Huffington Post a hot liberal opinion site.
What happened to Huffington's beliefs? In 1994, she worked to promote the Gingrich Revolution. She appeared at political events with Bob Dole.
"I definitely called myself a conservative," she told me. "I actually believed that the private sector would be able to address a lot of the issues that I believed were very important, like taking care of those in need. And then I saw firsthand how difficult it was. ... One of the problems with the Right is that they don't believe in facts, and they don't believe in evidence. And I was willing to change my mind, confronted with new evidence. And we would all be better off if we were willing to look at new evidence."
So she turned to big government.
"What we need is serious government policies to address poverty."
But they don't work, I said.
"They don't work as well as they should be working, but there's a lot more we can do."
She believes the old AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) program helped the poor and therefore welfare reform was not a good thing.
"[Reform was] not a success. A lot of people have been left without job training and therefore without the ability to really lead productive lives."
I pointed out that since welfare reform, eight million people left the welfare rolls, and many found jobs they like, jobs that pay better than welfare. Although her favorite political candidates say life for the poor has gotten worse, incomes of the poorest Americans are actually higher today.
Confronted with a chart showing that, Huffington acknowledged that lower-income people are generally better off.
"In general. In general ... But you know we have over 30 million Americans living below the poverty line."
But the Census Bureau says the percentage of families living below the poverty line fell from 11 percent in 1996 to 9.8 percent in 2006. The percentage of single mothers below the poverty line fell from 32.6 percent in 1996 to 28.3 in 2006. That looks like progress to me.
But Huffington had this retort: "The fact that we used to live in caves is not a justification for the state of affairs right now."
Like most liberals, she believes America needs more regulation. OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) should be strengthened to protect workers.
I tried to acquaint her with the facts. While it's true that since OSHA started, deadly job accidents have dropped, the truth is, deaths were dropping before OSHA. Between the late 1930s and 1971, job fatalities fell from more than 40 to fewer than 20 per 100,000 workers. After OSHA was passed, fatalities continued to fall, but no faster than before. It's misleading to credit regulation for the improvement. Government gets in front of a parade and pretends to lead it.
Huffington's reply: "If you were the husband of one of the women who died recently because OSHA regulations were not sufficiently implemented, you would not be so cavalier about the speed at which things get better."
As if the government could guarantee zero job deaths.
Huffington has also joined the war on global warming. "We have two Priuses," she says.
I pointed out that she also has a $7-million house that burns more carbon than a hundred people in the Third World. She said:
"There is no question that the fact that I'm living in a big house, I occasionally travel on private planes -- all those things are contradictions. I'm not setting myself up as some paragon who only goes around on a bicycle."
That honesty is a relief. If only she and others would own up to the other contradictions in the Left's call for endlessly intrusive government.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/the_left_is_wrong.html at May 07, 2008 - 06:09:35 PM CDT
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urchinTracker();
The Left Is Wrong
By John Stossel
She was once the darling of conservatives like Newt Gingrich, but now you can't watch a television news-talk program without seeing her calling for more government and showing scorn for those who want less.
She's Arianna Huffington, website impresario and author of "Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made Us All Less Safe".
I interviewed her for "20/20" last week because I was impressed by the success of the website she created. In just three years she made the Huffington Post a hot liberal opinion site.
What happened to Huffington's beliefs? In 1994, she worked to promote the Gingrich Revolution. She appeared at political events with Bob Dole.
"I definitely called myself a conservative," she told me. "I actually believed that the private sector would be able to address a lot of the issues that I believed were very important, like taking care of those in need. And then I saw firsthand how difficult it was. ... One of the problems with the Right is that they don't believe in facts, and they don't believe in evidence. And I was willing to change my mind, confronted with new evidence. And we would all be better off if we were willing to look at new evidence."
So she turned to big government.
"What we need is serious government policies to address poverty."
But they don't work, I said.
"They don't work as well as they should be working, but there's a lot more we can do."
She believes the old AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) program helped the poor and therefore welfare reform was not a good thing.
"[Reform was] not a success. A lot of people have been left without job training and therefore without the ability to really lead productive lives."
I pointed out that since welfare reform, eight million people left the welfare rolls, and many found jobs they like, jobs that pay better than welfare. Although her favorite political candidates say life for the poor has gotten worse, incomes of the poorest Americans are actually higher today.
Confronted with a chart showing that, Huffington acknowledged that lower-income people are generally better off.
"In general. In general ... But you know we have over 30 million Americans living below the poverty line."
But the Census Bureau says the percentage of families living below the poverty line fell from 11 percent in 1996 to 9.8 percent in 2006. The percentage of single mothers below the poverty line fell from 32.6 percent in 1996 to 28.3 in 2006. That looks like progress to me.
But Huffington had this retort: "The fact that we used to live in caves is not a justification for the state of affairs right now."
Like most liberals, she believes America needs more regulation. OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) should be strengthened to protect workers.
I tried to acquaint her with the facts. While it's true that since OSHA started, deadly job accidents have dropped, the truth is, deaths were dropping before OSHA. Between the late 1930s and 1971, job fatalities fell from more than 40 to fewer than 20 per 100,000 workers. After OSHA was passed, fatalities continued to fall, but no faster than before. It's misleading to credit regulation for the improvement. Government gets in front of a parade and pretends to lead it.
Huffington's reply: "If you were the husband of one of the women who died recently because OSHA regulations were not sufficiently implemented, you would not be so cavalier about the speed at which things get better."
As if the government could guarantee zero job deaths.
Huffington has also joined the war on global warming. "We have two Priuses," she says.
I pointed out that she also has a $7-million house that burns more carbon than a hundred people in the Third World. She said:
"There is no question that the fact that I'm living in a big house, I occasionally travel on private planes -- all those things are contradictions. I'm not setting myself up as some paragon who only goes around on a bicycle."
That honesty is a relief. If only she and others would own up to the other contradictions in the Left's call for endlessly intrusive government.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/the_left_is_wrong.html at May 07, 2008 - 06:09:35 PM CDT
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Thursday, May 1, 2008
Democrats and the Killing Fields
Democrats and the Killing Fields
By ARTHUR HERMAN
May 1, 2008; Page A17
Most people have never heard of Operation Frequent Wind, which ended on April 30, 1975, 33 years ago. But every American has seen pictures of it: the Marine helicopters evacuating the last U.S. personnel from the embassy in Saigon, hours before communist tanks rolled into the city. Thousands of desperate Vietnamese gathered at the embassy gate and begged to be taken with them. Others committed suicide.
Those scenes are a chilling reminder of what happens when a great power decides to cut and run. Two of the three presidential candidates are proposing to do just that in Iraq. We need to remember what happened the last time we gave up on an unpopular foreign policy, not only in humanitarian terms but in terms of American power and prestige.
Actually, the U.S. had won the war in Vietnam on the battlefield, just as the surge has done today in Iraq. Over Easter 1972, South Vietnamese forces, backed by U.S. airpower, crushed the last communist offensive, killing nearly 100,000 North Vietnamese troops.
The North was forced to sign peace accords in Paris recognizing the Republic of South Vietnam. The last 2,500 U.S. support troops went home. What they left was a fragile but sustainable peace, and an elected government in Saigon that was growing stronger every month.
But with 160,000 North Vietnamese soldiers still in South Vietnam, keeping the South free was going to require continued U.S. help, especially air support and military equipment if the North ever attacked again.
Democrats and American public opinion, however, had had enough. Much like Iraq today, the vast majority of South Vietnam had been pacified. Its government was taking on difficult but essential political changes, including land reform. The Democratic-controlled Congress, however, did not want to hear about success. They assumed failure in Vietnam would complete their rout of the hated Richard Nixon, who was already out of office thanks to Watergate, and position them for victory in the 1976 presidential election.
Meanwhile, the American public had been conditioned by the media to see Vietnam as a failed policy, and taught that America had gotten itself in the middle of a "civil war" which the Vietnamese had to sort out themselves. Once the last American troops left Vietnam, public opinion would never tolerate re-entry into a war widely seen as a blunder and endless quagmire.
In early 1975 the communists launched a massive attack. President Gerald Ford asked for $1 billion in supplemental funds to help the South Vietnamese, and Congress refused. They had already pulled the plug on the U.S.-supported government of Lon Nol in Cambodia. Ford had no choice but to order the evacuation of remaining U.S. personnel.
After nearly two decades of devastating war and 58,000 American combat deaths, the U.S. left Southeast Asia. As the last helicopter lifted off from Saigon, the New York Times's Sydney Schanberg wrote an article with the title, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." And the Times's columnist Anthony Lewis asked, "what future could possibly be more terrible than the reality" of a war that had cost so much in lives and treasure?
With the North Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Rouge taking over, the world was about to find out.
At least 65,000 Vietnamese were murdered or shot after "liberation" – the equivalent in terms of Vietnam's population at the time, of killing three-quarters of a million people in today's U.S. The new communist regime ordered somewhere between one- third to one-half of South Vietnam's population to pass through its "re-education" camps, where perhaps as many as 250,000 died of disease, starvation, or were worked to death (the last inmates were not released until 1986).
That number does not include the thousands of "boat people" who tried to flee the totalitarian nightmare of communist Vietnam, and perished at sea.
Cambodia's fate was even worse. At least one and a half million innocent Cambodians were butchered or starved to death in the Khmer Rouge's killing fields and re-education camps, put to death by a fanatical regime that believed that anyone who wore eyeglasses must have "bourgeois intellectual tendencies" and be shot.
The scale of moral collapse and suffering went beyond Indochina. The pullout had a ripple effect on U.S. power and prestige, just as the proponents of the so-called "domino theory" had warned. American foreign policy, crippled by remorse and self-doubt, stood helplessly as others rushed into the power vacuum.
Marxist-Leninist regimes emerged not only in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but in Ethiopia and Guinea Bissau (1974), Madagascar, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Angola (1975), Afghanistan (1978), and Grenada and Nicaragua (1979). Soviet troops were welcomed in Fidel Castro's Cuba for the first time since the 1962 missile crisis. Cuban troops traveled freely to Africa to prop up Marxist regimes there.
In 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini was able to establish his brutal theocratic rule over Iran, confident that America, having learned "the lessons of Vietnam," would never intervene.
The judgment of history, as Raymond Aron once remarked, is without pity. History will judge how America and its leaders handle global responsibility in Iraq and the Middle East in the next decade.
As Winston Churchill said of the appeasement of Hitler at Munich, in 1975 Americans were "weighed in the balance and found wanting." We have a responsibility to the Iraqis – and to the memory of those we left behind – not to let that happen again.
By ARTHUR HERMAN
May 1, 2008; Page A17
Most people have never heard of Operation Frequent Wind, which ended on April 30, 1975, 33 years ago. But every American has seen pictures of it: the Marine helicopters evacuating the last U.S. personnel from the embassy in Saigon, hours before communist tanks rolled into the city. Thousands of desperate Vietnamese gathered at the embassy gate and begged to be taken with them. Others committed suicide.
Those scenes are a chilling reminder of what happens when a great power decides to cut and run. Two of the three presidential candidates are proposing to do just that in Iraq. We need to remember what happened the last time we gave up on an unpopular foreign policy, not only in humanitarian terms but in terms of American power and prestige.
Actually, the U.S. had won the war in Vietnam on the battlefield, just as the surge has done today in Iraq. Over Easter 1972, South Vietnamese forces, backed by U.S. airpower, crushed the last communist offensive, killing nearly 100,000 North Vietnamese troops.
The North was forced to sign peace accords in Paris recognizing the Republic of South Vietnam. The last 2,500 U.S. support troops went home. What they left was a fragile but sustainable peace, and an elected government in Saigon that was growing stronger every month.
But with 160,000 North Vietnamese soldiers still in South Vietnam, keeping the South free was going to require continued U.S. help, especially air support and military equipment if the North ever attacked again.
Democrats and American public opinion, however, had had enough. Much like Iraq today, the vast majority of South Vietnam had been pacified. Its government was taking on difficult but essential political changes, including land reform. The Democratic-controlled Congress, however, did not want to hear about success. They assumed failure in Vietnam would complete their rout of the hated Richard Nixon, who was already out of office thanks to Watergate, and position them for victory in the 1976 presidential election.
Meanwhile, the American public had been conditioned by the media to see Vietnam as a failed policy, and taught that America had gotten itself in the middle of a "civil war" which the Vietnamese had to sort out themselves. Once the last American troops left Vietnam, public opinion would never tolerate re-entry into a war widely seen as a blunder and endless quagmire.
In early 1975 the communists launched a massive attack. President Gerald Ford asked for $1 billion in supplemental funds to help the South Vietnamese, and Congress refused. They had already pulled the plug on the U.S.-supported government of Lon Nol in Cambodia. Ford had no choice but to order the evacuation of remaining U.S. personnel.
After nearly two decades of devastating war and 58,000 American combat deaths, the U.S. left Southeast Asia. As the last helicopter lifted off from Saigon, the New York Times's Sydney Schanberg wrote an article with the title, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." And the Times's columnist Anthony Lewis asked, "what future could possibly be more terrible than the reality" of a war that had cost so much in lives and treasure?
With the North Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Rouge taking over, the world was about to find out.
At least 65,000 Vietnamese were murdered or shot after "liberation" – the equivalent in terms of Vietnam's population at the time, of killing three-quarters of a million people in today's U.S. The new communist regime ordered somewhere between one- third to one-half of South Vietnam's population to pass through its "re-education" camps, where perhaps as many as 250,000 died of disease, starvation, or were worked to death (the last inmates were not released until 1986).
That number does not include the thousands of "boat people" who tried to flee the totalitarian nightmare of communist Vietnam, and perished at sea.
Cambodia's fate was even worse. At least one and a half million innocent Cambodians were butchered or starved to death in the Khmer Rouge's killing fields and re-education camps, put to death by a fanatical regime that believed that anyone who wore eyeglasses must have "bourgeois intellectual tendencies" and be shot.
The scale of moral collapse and suffering went beyond Indochina. The pullout had a ripple effect on U.S. power and prestige, just as the proponents of the so-called "domino theory" had warned. American foreign policy, crippled by remorse and self-doubt, stood helplessly as others rushed into the power vacuum.
Marxist-Leninist regimes emerged not only in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but in Ethiopia and Guinea Bissau (1974), Madagascar, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Angola (1975), Afghanistan (1978), and Grenada and Nicaragua (1979). Soviet troops were welcomed in Fidel Castro's Cuba for the first time since the 1962 missile crisis. Cuban troops traveled freely to Africa to prop up Marxist regimes there.
In 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini was able to establish his brutal theocratic rule over Iran, confident that America, having learned "the lessons of Vietnam," would never intervene.
The judgment of history, as Raymond Aron once remarked, is without pity. History will judge how America and its leaders handle global responsibility in Iraq and the Middle East in the next decade.
As Winston Churchill said of the appeasement of Hitler at Munich, in 1975 Americans were "weighed in the balance and found wanting." We have a responsibility to the Iraqis – and to the memory of those we left behind – not to let that happen again.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Osama Crashes the Democratic Party
April 24, 2008
Osama Crashes the Democratic Party
By Froma Harrop
What was so shocking, terrible and unfair about flashing Osama bin Laden's ugly mug on a political advertisement? Hillary Clinton's TV spot was the first Democratic ad to make pictorial reference to the al-Qaida terrorist. It was about time.
How much the ad helped Clinton achieve her impressive victory in the Pennsylvania primary is hard to tell. It was a vague message touting her ability to deal with emergencies and cited a variety of them -- the 1929 stock market crash, the Cuban missile crisis and Hurricane Katrina, as well as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
What's clear is that the ad itself wasn't as effective a pitch for Clinton as was the indignant response of Barack Obama's surrogates. An Obama spokesman condemned the spot as "the politics of fear."
If Obama's supporters want to argue that their candidate can better handle these challenges than Clinton, then fine, they should do so. But for some unfathomable reason, they insist on drumming Osama bin Laden out of polite Democratic conversation, such as there is any these days.
The day after Pennsylvania, The New York Times ran a nutty editorial, "The Low Road to Victory," that bashed Clinton for waving "the bloody shirt of 9-11." Oh, is referring to the event that obliterated the World Trade Center -- still a blank in Lower Manhattan -- an irrational demagogic appeal to old grievances? (One suspects that the Times regrets its endorsement of Clinton in the New York primary, especially since she became unfashionable in fancy circles.)
An enduring fear of terrorism may help explain a remarkable SurveyUSA poll that shows Obama virtually tied with McCain in Massachusetts. In super-liberal Massachusetts! The same poll has Clinton leading McCain in that state by a comfortable 55 percent to 42 percent.
Rest assured that the Bay State remains as socially progressive as it ever was. And Obama is right in line with the prevailing sentiment there that the war in Iraq was a dreadful mistake. But his seeming head-in-the-hole stance toward the widely viewed threat from terrorism unsettles many.
The hysterical response to the Clinton ad by some Obama backers doesn't help dispel these concerns. Most unappetizing were the accusations that Clinton had tried to slime Obama the way a Republican ad applied the hatchet to Georgia Democrat Max Cleland in 2002. According to left-wing lore, the Republican ad cruelly linked the senator's picture to bin Laden's, costing Cleland -- a patriot who had lost three limbs fighting in Vietnam -- his re-election. What the ad did was remind Georgia voters that Cleland had repeatedly voted against bills to create the Department of Homeland Security.
Bear in mind that Cleland's objections had merit: The new department would have suspended union rights, and there was no justification for that. But his steadfast opposition reflected a startling tone-deafness toward an electorate scared out of its wits by the recent Sept. 11 attacks and demanding immediate action against terrorism.
No one doubts that McCain worries about terrorism. True, he is intimately linked to the disastrous (and counterproductive) Iraq war. But he's gotten something of a pass by frequently criticizing the war's conduct and the Bush policy on torture. And he offers reassuring promises to restore international cooperation.
McCain is thus free to convince social moderates that he's no right-wing boogey man. His compassion tour recently made stops at the civil-rights landmarks in Selma, Ala., and the hurting factory neighborhoods of Youngstown, Ohio.
Liberals who blast allusions to terrorism as scaredy-cat politics really aren't listening. They're certainly not helping Obama's prospects should he become the Democratic nominee. Bin Laden and friends remain on the loose, and the public has a right to fear them.
fharrop@projo.com
Copyright 2008, Providence Journal Co.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/osama_crashes_the_democratic_p.html at April 24, 2008 - 09:48:31 PM CDT
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urchinTracker();
Osama Crashes the Democratic Party
By Froma Harrop
What was so shocking, terrible and unfair about flashing Osama bin Laden's ugly mug on a political advertisement? Hillary Clinton's TV spot was the first Democratic ad to make pictorial reference to the al-Qaida terrorist. It was about time.
How much the ad helped Clinton achieve her impressive victory in the Pennsylvania primary is hard to tell. It was a vague message touting her ability to deal with emergencies and cited a variety of them -- the 1929 stock market crash, the Cuban missile crisis and Hurricane Katrina, as well as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
What's clear is that the ad itself wasn't as effective a pitch for Clinton as was the indignant response of Barack Obama's surrogates. An Obama spokesman condemned the spot as "the politics of fear."
If Obama's supporters want to argue that their candidate can better handle these challenges than Clinton, then fine, they should do so. But for some unfathomable reason, they insist on drumming Osama bin Laden out of polite Democratic conversation, such as there is any these days.
The day after Pennsylvania, The New York Times ran a nutty editorial, "The Low Road to Victory," that bashed Clinton for waving "the bloody shirt of 9-11." Oh, is referring to the event that obliterated the World Trade Center -- still a blank in Lower Manhattan -- an irrational demagogic appeal to old grievances? (One suspects that the Times regrets its endorsement of Clinton in the New York primary, especially since she became unfashionable in fancy circles.)
An enduring fear of terrorism may help explain a remarkable SurveyUSA poll that shows Obama virtually tied with McCain in Massachusetts. In super-liberal Massachusetts! The same poll has Clinton leading McCain in that state by a comfortable 55 percent to 42 percent.
Rest assured that the Bay State remains as socially progressive as it ever was. And Obama is right in line with the prevailing sentiment there that the war in Iraq was a dreadful mistake. But his seeming head-in-the-hole stance toward the widely viewed threat from terrorism unsettles many.
The hysterical response to the Clinton ad by some Obama backers doesn't help dispel these concerns. Most unappetizing were the accusations that Clinton had tried to slime Obama the way a Republican ad applied the hatchet to Georgia Democrat Max Cleland in 2002. According to left-wing lore, the Republican ad cruelly linked the senator's picture to bin Laden's, costing Cleland -- a patriot who had lost three limbs fighting in Vietnam -- his re-election. What the ad did was remind Georgia voters that Cleland had repeatedly voted against bills to create the Department of Homeland Security.
Bear in mind that Cleland's objections had merit: The new department would have suspended union rights, and there was no justification for that. But his steadfast opposition reflected a startling tone-deafness toward an electorate scared out of its wits by the recent Sept. 11 attacks and demanding immediate action against terrorism.
No one doubts that McCain worries about terrorism. True, he is intimately linked to the disastrous (and counterproductive) Iraq war. But he's gotten something of a pass by frequently criticizing the war's conduct and the Bush policy on torture. And he offers reassuring promises to restore international cooperation.
McCain is thus free to convince social moderates that he's no right-wing boogey man. His compassion tour recently made stops at the civil-rights landmarks in Selma, Ala., and the hurting factory neighborhoods of Youngstown, Ohio.
Liberals who blast allusions to terrorism as scaredy-cat politics really aren't listening. They're certainly not helping Obama's prospects should he become the Democratic nominee. Bin Laden and friends remain on the loose, and the public has a right to fear them.
fharrop@projo.com
Copyright 2008, Providence Journal Co.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/osama_crashes_the_democratic_p.html at April 24, 2008 - 09:48:31 PM CDT
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