Ms. Speaker

“Today we have broken the marble ceiling.”  So proclaimed Nancy Pelosi as she took control of the House, the first woman to hold the Speakership.  It was a truly exciting moment not merely for the women that she addressed with those words but for all Americans.  Watching the swearing in on C-Span, was one of those rare being witness to history experiences.  The atmosphere on the floor with numerous children sitting at the side of the parents or grandparents (who included the new Speaker) for the special occasion and in the visitor’s gallery above was both warm and festive.  Lots of hugs, a sense albeit momentary, that this was not Democratic or Republican history being made, it was American.

But before we congratulate ourselves on this milestone, let’s not forget how long it took to reach this point.  It was 1789 when the first, Frederick Muhlenberg, ascended to the office and every Speaker since, a period of 218 years, has been a man.  Thanks to those revered Founding Fathers who apparently took the words “all men are created equal” literally. women remained disenfranchised and didn’t even get the right to vote until 1920 a mere six years before the new Speaker’s father Thomas D’Alesandro took his seat in the Maryland House of Delegates.  Indeed it is a sign of how modest our progress has been that the election of a woman as Speaker is big news.  Perhaps the old Virginia Slims tag line, “you’ve come a long way baby” resonates, but still in an unmistakably small voice.  Sure we’ve had some progress, but it’s been at the margin.  Ninety women may now sit on the House floor and that should not be discounted, but real breakthroughs, a chain of repeating accomplishments remains illusive. 

We now have had female Secretaries of State in two successive administrations (though both only in second terms) and, thanks to President Clinton, a second woman finally made it to the Supreme Court, but as of last year the first was gone and another woman has not taken her place.  In fact gender backsliding is the rule not the exception.  Both India and Israel elevated women (Indira Ghandi and Golda Meir) to Prime Minister in just over two decades after their founding and Margaret Thatcher held that post in London for a record setting eleven years, but their tenures were aberrations, one-offs not to be repeated in the intervening years.  Germany now has a woman atop its government, but don’t count on there being another any time soon.

The Speaker’s triumphant words notwithstanding, both the marble and glass ceilings remain in tact where most of us live and work.  Also, let’s remember that despite the considerable powers of the Speaker, thanks to Henry Clay’s conduct of the office, it remains only in the line of succession – the second at that – not at the center of real power which resides in the Oval Office not on the Hill.  Perhaps we will see a first woman President in 2008 with Hilary Clinton entering the race in the weeks to come, but her election much less her nomination, is by no means a foregone conclusion.  Even I who would so much like to see a woman in the White House have my doubts about her (largely about her stance on the War) and at this point am looking more to potentially the first President of color, Barack Obama, whose positions are more in line with my own.  But ironically it may not be people like me who will make it difficult for Hilary; it’s a lot of women.  As one of them put it to me in an email just yesterday, “I don’t think we’re ready for a woman President, perhaps a Vice President first”.  Sadly, that sentiment is still widespread and has little to do with Ms. Clinton’s supposed polarizing personality. 

The truth is that Americans are still more comfortable with the notion of women in supporting roles.  Even there, the independence of a Betty Ford praised at her husband’s funeral last week still stretches the limit as did the role of Ms. Clinton when she expressed more interest in health care than in baking cookies.  Eleanor Roosevelt, probably the most activist First Lady in history was widely reviled in her time and many in the country breathed an audible sigh of relief when Bess Truman stayed home in Independence and Mamie Eisenhower kept largely to herself even when in the White House.  So men may have a strong lady behind them, but they continue to rule.  When we depart from that “norm” we require a level of performance never demanded from men.  Make no mistake about it, everyone will be waiting for Nancy Pelosi the gentle lady from California’s every misstep.  She will be expected to embody perfection and will be given little if any slack.  That’s where things really are.  With that reality, the only question I would ask of my fellow men as they consider the new Speaker and other women in high places is, given our largely preemptive power, have we done such a great job at running things all these years?  Consider what our entitlement has wrought in this increasingly troubled world.  Need I say more?  So congratulations Ms. Speaker, we’ve been waiting for you.

Time for Change

It’s been some time since my last post.  I must confess a life that has been somewhat in limbo in the back and forth between New York and Chapel Hill in what can only be described as an incremental move.  During the past years I have spent a few hours every other day running in that treasure New Yorkers know as Central Park.  It is a welcome respite of greenery in the midst of the concrete and, however stimulating and engaging, loud bustle of the city.  Looking out my window in Chapel Hill it is as if I’ve moved into the park.  Altogether there is a kind of transitional reverse taking hold of my life.  When it all started in July with an air mattress, card table and four folding chairs (speak of sparse) I defined this place as “the house” from which I made my way back “home” to New York.  As some new furniture (including a real bed) began to arrive and with successive full car trips an increasing number of my possessions from dishes to art coming to rest within these walls, Chapel Hill suddenly emerged as home and the place where I’ve lived for almost forty years became “the apartment”.  You can see I haven’t done this sort of thing often.  The transition will continue, though with ever diminishing impact, until everything is moved and I turn the keys over to the young family that is purchasing “the apartment”.

As they say, it’s been a year, for me it’s been an interesting one with a forward look, but for the country and the world, for the human family, not one that many will remember with much fondness.  If you are one who believes in symbolism there was plenty of it in the closing days, the three most dominant involved deaths, perhaps appropriately so.  Gerald Ford died peacefully in California a few days ago, Saddam Hussein was executed in Baghdad and just as we were ready to ring in 2007 it was reported that the 3,000th American succumbed to the violence that is Iraq. 

President Ford, as those of us old enough to have experienced Watergate know (40% of Americans were not yet born when it happened), returned stability to a government that had been torn apart and discredited by the what was sadly only the first throws not the end of the Imperial Presidency.  Ford was a refreshing every-person who embodied a kind of essential decency that we all hope characterizes the real America.  But in a larger sense while Ford’s body lies in state at this moment only a corridor away from his beloved House Chamber, we lost him and his kind of politics and governance a long time ago.  Civility, which he embodied, died so many years back that even public affairs junkies like me can’t fully visualize it any more.  So as Gerry Ford will be laid to rest amid limited (his wish) pomp and circumstance, we will be reminded of what is no longer but which, as his life demonstrated, apparently can be.

Saddam’s end can only be described as a gangland execution carried out by sectarian thugs wearing the hoods that we have come to associate with terrorists.  An ironic twist, that lays to rest the charade of “fighting it there” and bringing democracy to Iraq.  After a trial that should have taken place in The Hague but played out as a pathetic circus in a mock court setting followed by a laughable appeal process, the Shiite Prime Minister authorized back alley justice.  What could be more appropriate and symbolic of the quagmire that is Iraq these three years after our ill conceived invasion?  Ink stained thumbs of voters notwithstanding, if this what democracy is all about we are all in real trouble, though clearly not nearly as much in trouble as the children, women and men who now inhabit the cradle of civilization.  If there was any doubt left that Iraq has submerged into civil war and that radical Shiites are pulling even more strings in this puppet government than the Americans just take another look at the grainy cell phone images taken in that dark room early on Saturday morning.  Muqtada al-Sadar, the man whose Mahdi Army you may remember we routed early in the conflict, is alive and well, presiding in the not so hidden back halls of the apparent real seat of government, Sadar City.

We probably won’t know who the 3000th U.S. service person to die in Iraq was – war is one of those imprecise things.  More likely than not he or she was young, another twenty something, perhaps even a late teen.  It is hard to justify any of these losses or the many more lives that will be spent in various forms and stages of incapacity long after the hostilities end.  It isn’t only that war sucks; it is that this kind of war undertaken dishonestly and led ineptly makes those losses all the more poignant.  Of course we must all support our troops, the cannon fodder sent forth on a misguided mission each of whom have committed themselves with good conscience and a valor lacking in their national leaders.  Not only have they been sacrificed for what is undoubtedly going to end badly, but those who sent them lack any sense of urgency as they muddle toward a new way.  Gerry Ford died peacefully, Saddam at the hands of modern day Al Capone’s, but these kids and the lesser number of older more seasoned warriors along with them died senselessly.  Ford’s death makes one nostalgically sad, Saddam’s angry but these 3,000 make you really mourn.

Perhaps 2007 will be better.  We will have divided government and possibly some semblance of checks and balances, but presidents in our system hold most of the cards.  George Bush rules.  Logic and the facts on the ground suggest that we should begin the process of disengagement, the sooner the better.  More likely, if reports are correct, is a Johnson-like escalation that so-named “surge” as if it were some kind of inevitable force of nature in already turbulent sea.  The ’08 presidential aspirants are already lining up, some of them so unlikely that you wonder why they bother.  Could vanity be coming into play?  Most of these pretenders either come from the past, been there heard that, most carry the distinct baggage of what Republicans mockingly call “flip flop”.  They voted for and then voted or spoke against.  Most, in both parties, are bet hedgers moving back and forth from one interest group or ideology to another.  Perhaps it’s the way it has to be done in this democracy at this time, but I hope that’s not the case.  I’m still with Barack Obama, with something and someone totally new and fresh.  I expect that 2007 will tell us whether he has both the intention and possibility of taking it all the way to the White House in January 2009.  I think he does and will, but surely remain humbled by many wrong calls.  Let’s hope the odds are in my and our favor this time.

I’ll be fully moved in 2007 and am looking ahead with anticipation to the refreshment of change.  Change, now that’s something that we all need in times like these.  I bet that’s what you toasted to last night – real change.

Gates, Group, Obama and Cheney

What a day it was.  I have been a little off my blogging game of late largely because I’m somewhat in limbo.  I’m in Chapel Hill but still not out of New York, settled and unsettled at the same time.  But who could experience yesterday without hitting the keys?

Robert Gates won nearly unanimous approval as the new Defense Secretary late in the afternoon with only two dissenting votes, both of them Republicans.  That may or may not be a message to the President.  In the case of Rick Santorum, until he was defeated some weeks ago a key member of the Senate leadership, perhaps it was a “thank you for all your help” farewell note.  Gate’s approval was assured from the moment he answered that fateful question from incoming Chairman Carl Levin.  No, we’re not winning in Iraq.  If I hadn’t heard it – I watched the entire hearing (except of course the classified session which even C-Span couldn’t invade) – I would never have believed it.  Gates practiced the unusual in Washington even for John McCain, straight talk.  That was new for all of us and perhaps for him as well.  I don’t remember such open candor during his days before and at the CIA.  But as everyone pointed out, he had nothing to lose.  He didn’t seek the job and truth be told Bush needs him at this point not the other way around.  As the Senators saw it, both during the soft ball questioning on Tuesday and yesterday in their “debate” and vote, so do we all.  It was a rare bi-partisan moment; take note.

When I turned on the news early in that same day around 6:30 AM, I saw that Group finally coming out from their undisclosed location and they too were candid.  It was quickly noted that nothing they said or suggested was actually new, much of it had been bandied about here and there during the three long and agonizing years since “shock and awe”.  But Jim Baker reminded us, it would be new for the President who, recent change in language notwithstanding, has remained steadfastly wedded to staying the deadly course.  Speaking of language isn’t it emblematic of this Administration to send out Dan Bartlett their communications director to engage the press in the aftermath of this important report rather that their national security advisor.  Perhaps they were trying to duck the really substantive questions that Steve Hadley might have had to field, but more likely it’s just the way they do things.  Spin it right and perhaps people will forget it.

The press of course had their own ideas of whom to talk to and while it would have been unimaginable just a short time ago, beyond the usual suspects, Barack Obama was at the top of the list.  It’s hard to get through a political talk show these days without hearing Obama’s name and we’re also beginning to see the usual treatment coming to the surface.  That means speaking skeptically about the Illinois Senator which is to be expected.  But it also reminds one that pundits in Washington often talk without doing their homework.  One such fellow (who I heretofore respected greatly) suggested the other day that yes Obama was getting a lot of attention but of course we don’t know where he stands on most issues.  Hello, “The Audacity of Hope” number one best seller.  He obviously missed that one.  It was much like a comment I heard across the table at Thanksgiving where another guest a seemingly bright and thoughtful young Episcopal Priest told me in conversation that she did not agree with Sam Harris, another best selling author (in this case writing on religion, her field of expertise) whom I happened to mention.  Turns out, she hasn’t read either of his books.  Much like that pundit, it was hard to take her comment seriously.  Any way, Obama’s book (which by coincidence I finally finished yesterday) is one that I would I commend to his and your attention.  While by no means the last word, Obama lets you know exactly where he stands on a broad range of domestic and international issues.  He also does it in beautiful lucid and elegant prose.  I don’t know how many Shakespeare’s he read recently, but clearly a page or two of literature has passed before his eyes over the years.  I can’t imagine President Obama pointing to a prime minister standing next to him at a press conference and referring to him as the right “guy” for the job.

Finally there is Mary Cheney.  She made news yesterday or at least her news surfaced in the press.  You could almost hear the hands ringing with glee as another tabloid special seemed ready for prime time.  It appears that Mary is pregnant and that this spring she and her partner Heather Poe are going to be parents.  Now you know that Dick Cheney is not one of my favorite people.  Arguably the most powerful Vice President in our history, I feel he is also among the most destructive political figures of my lifetime.  If we are in a mess in Iraq, Dick Cheney is largely, though clearly not solely, to blame.  The man is secretive, disdainful of anyone who disagrees with him, a dissembler of the truth and a principal practitioner of ugly national and international divisiveness.  That said, in this instance he did something noble.  His office issued a simple statement “the vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation to the arrival of their sixth grandchild”.  Perhaps he is wrong on many things, but when it comes to real family values, tires hitting the road, it would appear that he gets it.  That doesn’t make me like his public persona or actions any better, but on a human level, I tip my hat.  “Eagar anticipation”, “grandparents” words of ownership, love and responsibility.  That’s where things really are or should be.  Perhaps, as Barak Obama suggests, there is hope.

Dim Light at the Tunnel's End

There was an audible sigh of relief as the returns came in this last Tuesday and perhaps one can even say of tempered joy when two days later the one time Presidential aspirant George Allen conceded the Senate’s leadership to the Democrats.  While the new Speaker and Majority leader to be, rallied the faithful in victory mode, most of us knew that what we were witnessing remained more a hope than a done deal.  As the pink slipped Donald Rumsfeld said, the war in Iraq is complicated, apparently an insight that came to him only after being forced to stand half smiling next to the President and his named successor, a bone fide Poppy Bush retainer.

Are we feeling better?  Yes for sure.  Was this election enough to turn the tide not merely in Iraq but on a host of domestic and international problems?  I wish a yes came easily in that regard; it does not.  Just as Rumsfeld acknowledged the complexity the war, Bush pointed to what was in fact an accumulation of very narrow victories born out of a country still deeply divided many of whose citizens are so turned off that even when they do vote (still a paltry 40%) they often do so holding their noses or at the very least without enthusiasm.  This was basically a vote against – anyone but – not yet a vote for; an expression of hope rather than of any real conviction that the new gang in town would get us back on track.  One of those critical power turning wins was in Missouri which is known as the “show me state”.  I can think of no more apt metaphor for where we are the morning after. 

Many of us have been complaining for years now that the Bush Administration and its finally discredited Defense Secretary had no plan for the morning after taking Baghdad.  They still don’t seem to have one and both we and the Iraqis (indeed the world) are suffering the consequences.  I sure hope Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have concrete plans (which they say they do) for this morning after this election both internationally and domestically.  Of course, where we really are at this juncture has to be put into context.  The Congress, albeit theoretically a co-equal with the Executive, is no such thing.  As Orwell said, “all pigs are equal but some pigs are more equal than others.”  The power of the Executive, while suffering its own ups and downs, has essentially been growing systematically over the years and no more so than under this Administration.  President George W is a far cry from the founding father George W not merely in substance but in philosophy.  If you have any doubt about the power of the Presidency just look at what use Bush made of it despite losing the popular vote and having to be imposed on us by the Supreme Court.  In the days following most Americans thought whoever emerged from that nightmare of vote counting couldn’t do much (harm) given the questionable mandate.  Some of us at least hoped that were the case.  Were we all wrong!  Presidents, all on their own can do a great deal, good and bad.  Congresses, even with a substantial majority in place is much more confined.  It may be able to prevent but can’t really initiate, certainly not in the same way as the President.

The majorities in 2006, most especially in the Senate, are very thin and the Democrats are further challenged by their truly large tent compounded by a notorious lack of discipline.  Of course neither attribute has to be bad.  In fact, one might argue that the electorate has begun to question the advantages of lock-step single ideology governance.  That’s what we’ve had over the last six years and look where it has gotten us.  Still, to have any impact, the new majority will have to be pro-active which means putting themselves on the line.  In the past few days, I’ve heard various pundits suggest that the much awaited Baker-Hamilton study group may provide cover to both the President (permitting him to change course with honor) and the new Congressional majority (saving them from having to author a plan of action).  Perhaps so, but that is hardly good news.  The last thing we need is new leadership already looking for cover.  Americans, including and perhaps most especially those who reliably vote for them, know that Democrats oppose current policy.  What we want to know is what those who have been given our support will do about it.  Nobody expects an instant fix, but we do demand at least a dim light at the end of the tunnel.

In 2004 we were told that values dominated the day.  In fact, while scoring higher than any other single issue, value inspired voters represented a tiny minority in the 20 percentile range.  The value thing was no more than hyped spin mouthed by partisan voices and willingly transmitted by an largely uncritical (and in this case lazy) press.  The value story made good news.  This time around, corruption was more frequently sighted than anything else, and given the history of the past two years that’s hardly surprising.  But what is talked up most in the post mortems is that Americans are looking for consensus, for middle ground not for polarized ideologies and dispute.  That may well be true and perhaps only by working from the middle can anything be accomplished in these next two years.  It is also a disturbing idea.  The truth is that there is nothing wrong with strong divergent ideas.  George Bush and the Republicans have taken The United States to a place with which many of us disagree and moving ahead may require a radical departure from current policy and orientation.  The problem is not whether there is a Left or a Right but whether the conversation about widely different points of view can be conducted with mutual respect and a modicum of humility.  That is what has been missing of late and that’s what we must bring back to the national discourse if we are to escape the present morass – if the light we see is more than a dim, albeit hopeful, mirage.

The Closet of Hypocricy

It seems that it’s not only the deeply religious Jack Abramoff who hardly ever visited the White House now we learn that the Evangelical leader Rev. Ted Haggard was rarely seen or heard from there either.  How quickly good friends are forgotten at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Haggard may not be a household name, but in addition (until yesterday) to leading one of the nation’s largest and most influential megachurches, he also headed (until this past week) the 30 million member National Association of Evangelicals.  Haggard, whose church is just down the street, was also deeply involved in the controversy about the heavy handed mix of church with state at the Air Force Academy.  He is also a neighbor and ally of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and of Washington’s Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council.  Perkins you will remember did a lot of sanctimonious gay bashing during the Foley episode, but that was in another news cycle.

In all of this, one can’t help but to be reminded of the king of all gay gay-bashers, J. Edgar Hoover.  The word hypocrisy comes to mind then and now.  Haggard was a leading member of the chorus of Evangelical leaders who characterize what they like to call “the gay life” as if it isn’t a real life for a considerable percentage of the human population, as sinful.  He was also a vocal opponent of same sex marriage (which percipitated his outing).  It appears that, despite early denials (doesn’t that sound like a politician) what he does and what he says may be very different.  It is the kind of societal double standard that has been so devastating to the gay community and which to this day keeps many members of our so-called welcoming society locked in painful closets.  If Bill Clinton’s claim not to have inhaled failed to pass the credibility test, what do you think about Haggard’s claim of buying methamphetamines but just throwing them away.  Ah, the good old tooth fairy is alive and well in Colorado. 

All of this can be viewed as just another symptom of the unraveling of the faith-based moralistic Bush Administration, so closely allied with the Religious Right and specifically with the Evangelicals of the Haggard, Dobson and Perkins ilk.  But in a more rudimentary sense it stands as another reminder of the negative and oft insincere role that religion is playing in our times.  On the domestic front, people like this, aided and abetted by those now in control of the Republican Party, want to get into both our bedrooms and our doctor’s offices/operating rooms not to mention inject their medieval teachings into our public schools.  Globally, they leave behind a trail of blood which is far more polluting and devastating than some of the worst ecological disasters.  And just as Democrats and liberals have stood on the sidelines watching but expressing what is at best muted criticism, mainstream religion, with very few exceptions, either says nothing or changes the subject altogether.  Karl Rove would be proud of both of them, and no doubt is at the very least grateful for their help of silence, or as the Religious Right might put it, abstinence.

It is this state of affairs that has driven Sam Harris to write an even more biting follow up to his “End of Faith” indictment of religion, the recently published slim volume “Letter to a Christian Nation”.  Harris in his first book and even more pointedly here castigates religion past and present for both its violent and hypocritical acts, not to mention unproven contentions the like of which we accept nowhere else in our lives.  He argues that, far from being deprived of a moral compass, non-believers and avowed atheists are just as likely to possess a strong moral compass as are those who profess being followers of a God.  Harris doesn’t have much hope for religion of any kind or stripe, perhaps even less than was evident in his larger and more comprehensive volume.  I certainly haven’t come to that ultimate conclusion, but my own exploration of this subject (hopefully resulting in a book) is leading me down a similarly critical and disheartening path.  The real question ahead of us is whether the Haggards of this world are giving religion a bad name or if the underlying nature of religion is merely the bad apple on which they feast?  Whatever the case, chalk this one up for the bad guys.  Take that to the voting booth on Tuesday.

Into the Stretch

We’re into the home stretch and the Administration is out there doing its usual pre-election thing.  The President, speaking to friendly audiences in Texas and Georgia, is insisting this election is about taxes and terror.  Meanwhile, the Iraq war is bleeding the country’s financial resources and Osama bin Laden remains not merely on the loose but it would seem no longer seriously hunted.  One wonders how long it would have taken the public to realistically assess our progress in Iraq had the war not been waged on borrowed funds and, aside from the looming deficits that will impact on the next generation, no visible sacrifice.  Higher taxes to cover the cost, not to mention a draft that touches all rather than a tiny fraction of American households might have put things in a different light.  The question isn’t only whether the public would have soured earlier, but given the potential of real and widespread sacrifice whether they would have signed on in the first place.

Dick Cheney is out there doing his thing as well.  The man who spoke with such certainty about an Al Qaeda-Iraq connection and the existence of WMDs long after both were discredited theories, now tells us that the current escalation of violence – more than 100 US service personnel killed in October – is just part of an insidious insurgent plot to influence our election.  Aside from the acknowledgement of our military leaders that things have been deteriorating for many months, the fact is that Iraq has now become the primary issue for a majority of voters is not because of calculated asaults timed precisely for our election but because Cheney and his colleagues have made such a terrible mess of things from the run up to a terribly misguided war right through this bloody month.  To this moment the Administration rejects any talk of strategic change, which might admit a mistake, and will consider only the possibility of altering tactics, something to which I’m not sure the Vice President has even given his nod.

Finally, and classically, Don Rumsfeld has weighed in as only he can.  He still of course talks about the messiness of war – “things happen” remains his attitude even three years after he first pontificated as such over the disastrous looting that set the stage for a country out of control – anyone’s control ours or the now sitting democratically elected Iraqi government.  But Rumsfeld has taken concrete action in face of adversity.  Responding to the disaster under his watch, he has set in motion a major new public relations effort aimed at the 24/7 news community.  As the Secretary sees it, what we really need is some focus on the good news out of Iraq or at the very least, one would have to assume, better management of the bad news that is at this point impossible to hide.

So we prepare to go to the polls.  All the trends seem to be in favor of change.  We’re cautioned however, that while this Congressional election may indeed have been nationalized, Tip’s law that “all politics is local” remains the norm, and a tough hurtle to overcome even in these extraordinary times.  More pointedly, I think of Yogi, “it ain’t over till it’s over” which gives me pause.  In the end I don’t see this so much as a test of the Administration as one of the American voting public.  Have they at long last had enough?  It will also be a major test for the Democrats not so much before November 7 but after should they win either or both Houses.  The question then is whether they will actually function as leaders or evidence the maladies of post traumatic stress brought on by years of being beaten in one election after another either by the Republicans superior numbers (albeit often at the margin) or superior tactics aided so importantly early on by the Supreme Court.  That, by the way, was not an example of judicial activism if that’s what you wondered.  Activist judges are only those who rule against conservative ideology.  In any event, post the hoped for victory, just saying no won’t do any more.  The vague and often glibly pronounced criticism will have to be replaced by concrete alternative proposals and a readiness to talk to the “bad guys”.  I don’t mean the Iranians, North Koreans and other usual suspects though that is long over due, but the Republicans.  I also don’t mean talk at, but talk to and with.  The problems we face today are enormous and another two years of vicious bickering, sometimes for its own sake, simply won’t cut it, nor can we afford it.  We need solutions to urgent problems and waiting out Bush’s last two years on some kind of virtual side lines isn’t a luxury the country can afford nor is it what we at this point can only hope the voters will have signed on for.

The Obama Fuss

Barack Obama has made it to prime time.  Magazine covers, television interviews and the subject of countless columns including most of the Op-Ed voices at the New York Times.  We’ve heard all the pros and cons, the urging to run, the reservations including this morning’s slow down and wait message from Bob Herbert.  I for one cast my vote for an Obama candidacy in a post last May when voicing concerns about both John the Savior McCain and Hilary the Inevitable Clinton.  Because so much has been written and said these last two weeks, I am a little reluctant to join the chorus, but perhaps a word from an ordinary voter not a professional pundit can justify yet another Obama piece.

It’s interesting that we are suddenly faced with so much Presidential talk just two weeks before such a critical mid-term Congressional election.  To be sure much is being said about the potential for a Democratic takeover of the House and Senate.  The country does seem at long last to be mad as hell and unready to take it any more.  One wonders what took it so long, but to carry the cliché, “better late…”  We’re focused on the Presidency for one simple reason, that’s where the power lies and that’s the only place where a change of direction can take place.  Six years ago when, as John Kerry might put it, Al Gore first won and then lost the election, conventional wisdom had it that an appointed President in a split country would lack the power to do much harm.  So much for conventional wisdom, as we find ourselves, in retrospect, arguably the most damaged country on the globe.  Of course our discomfort pales in comparison to what is being faced by the citizenry on the streets in Iraq or in the nightmare that is Darfur, but not relative to where we could or should be.  That damage, that dramatic turnaround of events symbolized by a record surplus turned into a record deficit both actually and metaphorically can in the final analysis be laid at only one doorstep, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  We’re focused on ’08 in ’06 for good reason.

And why Barack Obama?  I think it all boils down, certainly for many Democrats but perhaps for some Republicans as well, to one simple fact.  We’re tired of holding our noses and voting for the last man standing chosen from a field of the uninspiring, the less or the just barely acceptable.  We simply want to be excited about our candidate, to be counting the hours till Election Day when we can pull the lever for our standard bearer.  Al Gore wasn’t Bill Clinton and John Kerry wasn’t, yes you guessed it, Bill Clinton.  Just look at the field today, in both parties.  Is there anyone out there about whom a majority of Americans, much less a broad spectrum of party loyalists can get excited?  Sure Senators have a poor record of success in winning the presidency, Jack Kennedy being the exception.  Hello, the relatively inexperienced Jack Kennedy had charisma, that something special that made your heart beat a little faster.  I encountered him first on my college campus in the presence of, among others, the Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren and no one could take their eyes off him.  Don’t tell me emotions don’t count.  Clinton, who is our reigning political superstar, may be a policy wonk and he may be able, unlike Bush, to put not only two but thousands of words together coherently and elegantly, but ultimately it’s emotion, his aura, that carries the day.

Leadership is not about clever (and misleading) slogans, but about getting people to follow both little people like you and me and world leaders, all at the same time.  Barack Obama may be untested in the regard, but at least he shows the potential.  He holds out the possibility that we can rekindle the fire within and with it restore not superficial flag waving but real pride in being Americans.  That’s a heavy hurtle to put on someone’s plate, perhaps it’s asking too much, but if not now, when?  This country is moving ever so closely to the historic tipping point that has plagued virtually all of the world’s great empires, the one that leads ever so certainly to decline and then destruction.  The Republican National Committee is running a commercial showing Osama and company, a ticking clock in the background.  It’s likened to the famous Daisy commercial run against Goldwater in 1964.  Hopefully the Democrats will counter with the simple but powerful question, “why is Osama still around on your watch” – done hold your breath.  The fact is, the GOP ad is accurate, not the face of Osama, but the ticking.  People are getting excited about Barak Obama because, realistic or not, they hope he might be able to stop it.